Beyond Dual Citizenship: The Case for Becoming a Rootless Cosmopolitan

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YouTube automatic captions, grouped into readable passages. Names and wording may contain transcription errors; the recording is the source of truth.

00:00 You have people who pull up with like a like they do like a money spread of passports. >> Yeah. >> This is actually a way better influencer flex, right? >> This is a way better. >> Whoa, look at my like iced out Rolex. Like you're a loser, dude. You're a huge loser. But if you pull out six passports and fan them, that actually is like, okay, that costs more than Rolexes, I guess. >> It's also like, you know, kind of harder to buy. It's like more interesting. It implies that you're like a cultured person or you're like worried about, you know, war or something. I I think it's it's much more interesting way to flex. I would definitely if I wanted to flex, I would definitely flex like not a money spread or a Rolex. I would pop out like seven different passports. Welcome back to another episode of the plausibly

00:46 deniable experience. Thank you to all of our sponsors today. In particular, Citizen X, Poly Market, Zcash, and Passage Press. But today we have a very special guest. We have Alex from Citizen X joining us. Alex has been a friend of the pod for a very long time. Actually the very first person we talked to, I think when I said, "Hey, we want to do a live show. You know, we want to do like once a week. We were looking for sponsors, looking for interesting sponsors that we liked." And I was like, "Oh, Alex, we should reach out." Uh, we've known Alex for a long time. Alex and Lucas famously featured in in GQ around the Trump inauguration. just swagged up, beautiful male models, our beautiful house philosopher, house husband, philosopher, bodybuilders.

01:33 Um, but yeah, Alex, do you want to tell us like really quick a little bit about yourself, your background? >> Sure. Um, so many people know about uh Citizen X. Uh, we sell passports. Uh, that's the the short version of it. Uh the long one is that we work with countries uh that offer citizenship uh programs in exchange of uh investments and donations to mostly high net worth individuals uh who want to to put their capital where their mouth is and basically via passport. And I'm one of the founders and uh the CEO of of the company. Um, basically I I've been uh involved into flax theory since I was uh 14 years old

02:18 uh back in uh 2014, not not uh very long ago. Um and I saw the the the gap uh in the in the market where there was no no easy way to go around these things. uh passports are are probably one of the most important asset classes for for this decade uh in in this century and there was no easy way to to diversify your passport portfolio. Uh so I decided to to start this platform where you can easily uh buy a passport in a secure transparent safe way. The same way you you buy uh crypto in different platforms or you can buy stocks uh you should also be able to buy passports. So when you tell people that you can buy a passport, is there generally confusion over uh because like when when I say

03:04 this, I say like, "Okay, Citizen X is one of our sponsors. They let you buy a passport and then they're like, "What?" Like are they buying like a a black market passport or like and I'm like, "No, it's like legal." Uh and then they're their brain just like shortcircuits. They just kind of sit there being confused for 15 seconds. And if I don't continue talking and explain it to them, they literally it just fries them on the spot. So is that like a what's what's your best explanation for how this is like a legal process? Uh >> so so so I I think there are two things. Uh the first one is that most people and I would say most Americans because what's really funny is that most Americans don't have a passport. Like it's not that they don't have multiple passports, it's that they don't even have one passport because they have >> they haven't even claimed their original document because they've never

03:49 >> Exactly. Exactly. And there's there's a really cool graph about how uh the number of Americans with a passport is rising uh especially in the last uh couple decades. Uh but before it used to be like 20 30% and now I think we're at at around half uh uh 50% 60% of Americans have a passport. But basically uh most people don't know the difference between uh your residency, your citizenship, your passport. Basically your passport is just your travel document. It's a document that you get from a country uh after you are a citizen. Um and citizenship is really what's uh important. It's the the legal status. Uh most people don't know these differences. We usually say buy a passport because it's more uh I would say it's it's funnier. It shocks uh more

04:34 people. And uh in terms of of uh these programs there are also um a lot of ILAL schemes uh that we don't offer uh we don't uh promote we don't uh recommend in any way uh big disclaimer but there exist and I think precisely because of that reason because of all the corruption in governments bribing of of government officials that that is happening in some countries like for example Mexico is a big one for that Um people assume that these programs are illegal. Uh but uh there are other sets of programs like the ones we do. Citizenship by investment, citizenship by donation, uh citizenship by descent programs that are fully legal. Uh they are in backed by the laws of the

05:20 country, sometimes even in the in the constitution. And they have predetermined amounts that you need to invest or that you need to donate to the country. uh precise and very exact uh due diligence requirements uh in a sort of KYC know your citizen kind of way where the countries ask you for a lot of documents to make sure that you're not a criminal you have acquired uh all your wealth in legitimate legitimate ways um and essentially they are way more difficult than uh just illegally going to a country and I feel like for example that's a very interesting trend in Europe where uh the EU is uh very well it is well known that the EU is against uh citizenship by investment programs in

06:05 general. They don't want people to to buy passports. Um the the official story is that they think it's a security risk. Personally, I think that is a a political risk uh because they don't want wealthy people. They don't want people with uh freedom and that's one way where in which they try to cut in but they they are like letting in just a million people over the border. Right. >> Exactly. That was my point that um >> so it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Right. >> Exactly. Uh most of these programs they have way stricter requirements than regular immigration programs let alone all the illegal immigration that is flowing into Europe. Uh but but for some reason they are targeting them. uh they closed the citizenship by investment

06:51 program in Malta. They closed the one in Montenegro uh because Montenegro wants to join the EU. So they should close their program as well. Um and I feel like you know they're they worry about their window being open while the front door front door is is wide open. I mean I posted this this tweet a couple days ago that is uh rich people want a poor country passport, poor people want a rich country passport. Um and and I think that ties into the perception that some uh of the low income people countries they want others to save them. Uh you know some some poor people they want to live off welfare that's why they want a rich country passport. Some countries they want to live from the EU that's why they want to join the EU. Uh

07:36 so there's this this perception in Eastern Europe and some Balkcon countries that joining the EU is is the panacea and they will receive all of these investments, all of this money that will improve the infrastructure and will raise the the the the bar for for the country. That is to to some extent true, but I think that's like uh you know sort of like putting the country on on eststeroids like yes sure you you get some very quick gains but long term uh you know you you might not even work as hard. It has some uh you know problems long term. >> It just can't it can't even have that high of a ceiling, right? if you're if you're giving out enough in benefits to juice people to a given level like you cannot juice everyone to the level of being a deca millionaire or a billionaire or something because you

08:21 just don't have that much in benefit. So, inherently, it's going to be a very capped ceiling versus the rich guy who's saying like, "All right, like I have my money. I just want you to all kind of [ __ ] off and leave me alone, right? Like, I would like to go somewhere that has as little regulation as possible. I don't want to have to hire 17 accountants in order to do something that is a legal obligation every quarter. Just let me let me be." >> Exactly. And the country version of that is for example going back to Poland. They they uh built a real economy and now they don't want the EU to to come and and regulate that and bring all of the nonsense because they don't need them anymore. They are they're already the the engine of Europe. Like it's it's not Germany anymore. Uh now now it's

09:07 Poland. Uh so so I think that's the you know the individual versus the the country version uh of it. I just think it's very funny that you have like all these poor people want to get to the rich countries to like live like the minimal viable lifestyle, right? Like it's like how do I get on welfare and section 8 housing and get like, you know, food stamps as quickly as possible and then you speak to the richest people, you know, and they're just finding like the most cursed country ever. It's like it's like like the rich people I know are like, "Dude, I just got my passport from like Paraguay." Like it's like, "What are you getting from this?" And it's like I get nothing. It's great. Like I I just get literally nothing. Like they just don't screw me over all the time. Uh and it is

09:52 a very fun kind of dichotomy you have between the two sides. Um that is like very very interesting. Um >> so I assume you've met a ton of very interesting people through the process of selling these, right? >> Yeah. I'm curious what kind of person comes and buys one. I'm sure you've >> Is there I want to know. I want to know. I don't think you actually sell US passports, do you? >> Uh, no. Uh, Trump announced that he was going to start selling residency, not citizenship uh with the with the gold card. Uh, that wasn't uh very successful so far. Uh, I don't expect it to be uh very successful uh for the rest of the of the term either. Uh but it's really interesting because it set a precedent as well that if the US cancel residency

10:39 and and potentially citizenship, any country can do it. Um but in terms of of people who are doing these programs, I would say we have um a bit of a different uh clientele uh than than your uh you know typical brick and mortar uh law firm and whatnot. just because you know we we're a tech company so we attract uh more like your post exit founder uh tech founder a lot of crypto people as well uh just because I think uh there's a very good overlap of the people who got into crypto uh in the 2010s because they wanted a plan B they wanted a hedge uh against the system that they didn't trust and now in the 2020s post pandemic post lockdowns they

11:24 realize well how much is my my crypto worth. Uh well, yeah, I can put the seed phrase in my in my head, but if uh my country doesn't let me travel, then uh I'm I'm screwed. >> So, it's not even just letting you travel, right? Like you have the Canadian what was it? It was the the trucker protests in Canada where they literally like if you donated money above $5 to this trucker protest, they froze your bank account. Like you cannot use your bank now. You have lost your money, right? So it is actually just like legitimately a liability to have all of your wealth within one country's financial system because if the country decides to go full Canada on you, you literally have no money now. Like it's just over, right? So at a certain point like yeah, you can diversify investments

12:10 across like houses or equities or whatever, but you kind of need to actually diversify in terms of countries uh to mitigate that risk. Yeah, many people think they are well diversified just because you know they have some some crypto in self custody. They have different stocks. They have real estate in different countries. But what they don't think a lot is that they only have one passport. So if that country decides to revoke that passports or or if they decide to start uh with global taxation or or something like that, they have no options. And then you also have, so you're saying that the EU is now trying to do the thing where they say, "Yeah, I don't know, man. You're going to have to pay us taxes no matter where you live." Like they're going full America mode on this.

12:55 So if America and the EU does this, is there a reason why every single other country that is like remotely successful wouldn't also do this? >> So there's there's an argument against that as well. uh that is that uh no European country has the leverage to implement global taxation like the US uh because that would mean that they would need to renegotiate all double tax treaties with other countries. The US has the leverage to do that and to implement FATKA that basically makes all financial institutions to report back to the US if any US citizen has assets in that financial institution. So there's the argument that for example France they proposed global taxation for the 2025 budget it didn't pass. They proposed it for the 2026 budget it

13:42 didn't pass either. Uh even if it passes in 2027 many people say that France doesn't have the ability to enforce that global taxation. >> Okay. So this is like a US only unlock because everyone else uh just doesn't have the cojones to pull it off. Well, to to me to me there's another argument that is like even if your country doesn't have the capability to enforce it, it doesn't mean that you are not uh that that you should not comply with that requirement. So for example, you have Turkey that has global taxation only on inheritances of Turkish citizens and Turkey doesn't have the capability to enforce that. But that doesn't mean that as a citizen you are not uh mandated to comply with that and you are breaking the law if you are not complying with that. uh and and you get into all of these, you know, issues on

14:27 whether you really want to to break the law uh if you're a French citizen and you might, you know, want to travel back to France at some point. Um and you also get into all these interested interesting initiatives that are coming from the EU like the asset register. Uh they have proposed uh an EUwide register where all EU citizens have to register all their assets. So bank accounts, stocks, uh crypto, uh watches, all all assets should be registered uh in in one central register. Um and and you think about well why are they proposing this now? Well, maybe they have some plans to do something in the future and it would be very convenient to know what assets do you have because if you are not paying your global taxes then they would they would know about it. This is one of

15:12 those really funny things too where you start explaining this to people and you're like, "Hey, so the reason that they're creating a centralized database of all of the wealth of every person uh is likely because they're going to use it for some purpose in the future." And then they'll be like, "Dude, like you're schizophrenic, man. Like they just want to know. There's no like stop thinking about it." >> Yeah. Like it's not that big a deal. And you're just like, like, are you insane? Why else would they do this? Right? It's like, why? Oh, like the US just they just like knowing who owns guns, right? They're not going to do anything about it. Like, we're not violating any amendments, but we just want to know. >> It's very funny. It's like you you get this image of like someone like setting

15:58 up like a cartoonish anvil over your head and then you're like, why are you doing that? And it's like, don't worry about it. I'm just >> aesthetic reasons. Like, haven't you watched cartoons? Like, it looks it's more visually interesting if there's threats around you all the time. >> Yeah. It's just one of those things where like it's very obvious what's going on. And then there's this huge contingent of people that's like look at you and if you say anything like if you ever go like this seems somewhat alarming, they look at you like you've lost your [ __ ] and they like like metaphorically like point their finger at you and laugh with everybody else. And so you get kind of bullied. This is another one of the ways in which CO was really good actually because they did they did all of the things in CO that all of the schizophrenic people said

16:43 like they're never they would never do that dude that's an absurd violation of our personal liberties. The US government would never create like a vaccine mandate bro that's crazy. So, like after they did it, all those people kind of lost half their arsenal of plausibly deniable uh like high jinks that they would use on you rhetorically. >> Yeah. And what would you say like most people in Europe, you know, maybe they're they're choosing to leave Europe or they're choosing to, you know, famously Eduardo Sverin, I believe, is that how you pronounce his name? was the Facebook co-founder who kind of left and he's the one who first implemented kind of the exit rule where now if you try to

17:29 unbecome a citizen of the US, you know, I think unless there's some very specific reason why you're doing it, they hit you with basically an exit tax which is like 10 or 20% right of your total assets. Um where do most of these people go? Like do you see more Caribbean? Do you see kind of like Latam? um maybe some crazy stuff in like Africa or Australia or New Zealand. >> So what's really interesting is that uh most of these people they don't move where they have citizenship. They don't move where they're buying a passport uh just because the overlap of places that will sell you a passport uh is really not that big with places where you would

18:14 want to live both from a lifestyle as well as a tax perspective. uh most people uh that I see moving out of uh Europe and the EU uh they're moving to either Switzerland if they want to stay in Europe. Uh and then there's a lot of people moving to the UAE uh and Singapore. Uh there's also a lot of people moving to the US. Uh but the ones that are uh quote unquote going offshore generally Singapore, the UAE um and and Switzerland, those are the big ones. Now with all the problems in the Middle East, a lot of people are are choosing Hong Kong as well. Uh but that's uh places where where they relocate to basically where where they move to and where they will they become tax residents and they want to pay taxes

18:59 because these places are generally tax friendly. And what's really interesting is that all of these um desirable places they have very uh complex and difficult path uh to citizenship. So in the UAE you will never become a citizen unless you are Pablo D Ro or CC uh who citizenship by exception. Uh no one else uh who just moves to the UAE. No matter if you live there for 20, 30 years, 50 years, you will never be able to get an Emirati passcode. Um something similar happens in Singapore where it's >> I was going to say is really tough. uh from what I have because I mean I knew a bunch of people who have they did it years and years ago and they keep telling me yeah it's just getting harder

19:45 like every additional year that goes by it gets harder to become Singaporean and uh Switzerland is no different I don't think >> it it becomes harder to become a resident or it becomes harder to just be able to move to Singapore uh and it's also you know harder to to to become a citizen uh because of that because you need to live many years in Singapore and you need to renounce all of your previous citizenships. Uh Singapore doesn't allow dual citizenship. So you cannot have multiple passports and then Switzerland it's like 15 20 years depending on the canton and some canton even your neighbors need to approve you. Um so that's why you know these being the most desirable destinations also make people want to buy a second passport from a different jurisdiction because they know that uh if they move

20:31 to Dubai, if they move to Singapore, they will not be able to get a second passport. they just they still depend on on France or Germany uh who implemented uh military conscription recently uh and they have no options. They will never get uh other options living in in these places. >> It also seems like we're increasingly developing like a level of uh like when I hear someone talk about giving up like if you're depatriating from the US which uh and we should probably explain why people do this, right? But people frequently will want to after they've made a lot of money in the US, they will want to give up their US citizenship because when you are a US citizen, you have to pay US taxes no matter where you live, right? So you can be a US citizen and you can go and work in Germany for

21:16 half of the year at a German company. Uh and you have to pay German taxes now, but you also have to pay US taxes. So you're you're just pay you're getting double [ __ ] on taxes forever. Uh there's always there's like kind of some loopholesish, but you basically have to not live in the US while you're doing these uh and not come back for more than like three weeks or something out of the year. So like you can just never see your family, etc. Uh and so people don't want to have to be paying infinite taxes forever and they also don't like how high the US taxes are for things. So they will give up their citizenship. When you do this, you have to go through like a big audit and they go through literally everything that you own because they assume, okay, well, if this person is giving up their citizenship, they probably made a lot of money,

22:02 right? And so we want to make sure that we get our chunk of that. Uh so they do that, but now you're realizing, okay, well actually the US passport was pretty good. Like I was able to go and get into pretty much any country that I wanted to with my US passport. If I want to travel now, people do this thing where they have to piece together like all of these lower tier passports and take like two or three passports to be able to travel in the same way their one US passport would let them. Uh so you'll get like a Greek passport, a Turkish passport, and like an Israeli passport. And now you can kind of visit everywhere that you could with your US passport. Uh >> well that's that that's really interesting because uh the trend for the US passport has to has been uh declining

22:48 for the last I would say 10 15 years. It used to be one of the strongest passports but it's not anymore. Many of these this is what I was saying is now it seems like now that the US passport is losing its like catch all dominance we're kind of moving into a world where uh everybody including US citizens needs to do some sort of weird like passport tessillation where you have multiples of them in order to be able to travel in and out of all the countries that you want to right like the world is drawing uh sort of enough geopolitical allegiances again that it's not just like yeah like come here if you want to like everything's happy golucky we're all free. >> And the other thing is like there's a lot of very funny um like they almost seem like interpersonal like it almost

23:33 seems like an office conflict where like someone steals your coffee and so you steal their lunch and then like by the end of the week like you're just literally like peeing on their desk or something. Like you see these escalations where like Trump will like do something that bothers like some European commissioner or something and then a week later they're like Americans actually need a visa for Europe now and then the US is like we're kicking out 100,000 European students and it is just like this game of chicken of like who can do the most petty thing back and forth between the like political classes in these countries and then there's all these normal people in the middle who basically get their whole like life or their whole like setup gets completely [ __ ] right? Um I I I've seen that one

24:20 happen a lot. >> Okay, we're also not clarifying this I think well enough for the audience, but like in Taipei, if you're from the US, you can go to Taipei and you can stay there for 90 days. You get like just coming into the country, you get a visa uh that lasts you for three months and you can stay there the whole time without like no questions. uh you can get a phone number, you can set up a bank account, like anything you want during that time period. Now, if you go in from like Thailand, if you're a Thai citizen, you can stay there for two weeks. Uh and there's I I think there's even countries where it's like one week or something like that. So, there's just these drastic differences in how the countries treat each other that you don't really notice uh if you're or you previously didn't notice if you were from the US because you always just got

25:05 the maximum visa length. But now, some people hate us. Yeah, I mean uh for example, Brazil just took visa-free access for US citizens. I have a friend who was traveling to to Paraguay from El Salvador. Uh he was going through Brazil. Uh he got stuck there. Uh and the person he was traveling with who was Salvadoran. Uh he managed to uh enter Brazil visa free and then travel to Parag, he got stuck in Brazil because now Brazil doesn't allow US citizens to to enter visa free. and you start seeing, well, if you're an American and you want to do business with bricks, uh, or if you want to do business in Africa or the Middle East, maybe you're better off with with a second passport that is a bit more neutral.

25:50 >> Yeah, that's very interesting. I think also the passport to a lot like a lot of people don't actually seem to understand what a passport is and and I think there's a lot of documentation like this that is built on agreements that were very different when they started 100 years ago. like what a passport was. It was, you know, this sovereign country kind of vouches for this person as one of their own and so they should be allowed safe travels in your country and in exchange you probably allow the same for citizens back in your own country, right? Um, and so I think a lot of people have now just thought of a passport as like a travel document, like it's just your ID but international and it's not actually that. Like there is actually something that a passport means. um it means

26:35 something when a country says hey we accept passports from this place or we don't accept passports from this place that is an actual thing and you can have like a kind of you know if you kind of just go like vacation in in you know in Paris or you know Florida or Mexico you won't really run into that but if you start going to some more interesting countries which are like a little bit more fun sometimes uh you do actually run into cases where you get stopped and they go like hey do you have all these niche vaccines means or you know where is your passport actually from and they start asking you a bunch of questions. Um it's it's very interesting. I I think a lot of aspects of diplomacy like that were sort of built for a very different world, right? It's almost like they were built for a world where like 10,000 people traveled

27:21 a year, you know, and like very few people traveled and your passport actually meant that like someone at a passport office had given you this personally. Um it was very very very different. I I think another interesting trend is with all the the mass surveillance uh most advanced countries were probably transitioning to um individual passports or or more than individual passports assessing the individual rather than his passport. Uh that's why I think more uh countries were start restricting uh visa-free access. uh we saw in the in the previous decades the trend where visa free access was increasing globally uh more countries uh well if you looked at the the number of uh countries that each

28:08 passport can access visa-free it was generally growing I think the trend will will probably reverse um in countries will start becoming more restrictive especially the countries that can assess individuals on a on a one-on-one basis uh with more surveillance tools and stuff like that. Uh, and that's going to become more important than than your password because of what you said. I mean, the the trend was or the practice was to uh put everyone in the same bucket and get the nation state to to vouch for you. Um, I think over time as nation states have more technology. Uh, they will be able to better assess people on a one-on-one basis. That's what happens uh for example with the UAE uh where people from different

28:54 nationalities they can still get a golden visa because the UAE manages to assess them uh on a one-on-one basis and maintain uh security and and safety in the country. Uh so I think passports will probably evolve from from the travel document to other services that the nation state provides. Uh and it's also a bit of the the sovereign individual thesis where nation states need to start leasing sovereignty and providing other services to to people. Uh and that's basically what they're challenging for. So if you had to put together packages to just say okay like let's say you are an exited tech founder from the US uh these are the passports that I would recommend to you to achieve XYZ goals or like let's say you are a European who

29:42 came over and you've been living in the US for so do you have like a pretty good idea of like the demographics of people and what you would recommend to them specifically uh for everything would you want to tell people what those are actually I think that might Interesting. >> Yeah, I mean there are not so many countries that sell uh their passports. Uh we are at all-time highs. They're around 21 22 countries but the relevant ones that have attractive programs are not that many. Uh generally I talk about three tiers. Uh the first or the third tier would be weak passports uh from countries that are not uh really interesting from a visa-free travel perspective, but that will sell you a passport uh relatively cheap uh that are

30:29 basically the the cheapest programs available. Uh and they are not too difficult from a due diligence uh know your your uh citizen uh perspective in terms of what documents you need to provide and and all of that. they're um a bit more uh reasonable. And you have countries like South, for example. Uh it's a dual island nation in in Africa. It's one of the the smallest African countries. Used to be a Portuguese colony. Uh and now they're the cheapest uh citizenship that that you can buy for 90,000. >> Buy these uh buy these passports specifically. Is it mostly to have somewhere to move their funds to uh just as a backup or >> just as a backup but for them personally as a plan B to have a a second passport a second set of documents and and these

31:16 are generally people uh I would say westerners people who already have a strong main passport. So Europeans, North Americans that will not use this second passport to travel. Uh they will just use it as a plan B or as a extra layer of privacy when doing business. >> I think a lot of this and I'm I'm curious if this is where some of this comes. A lot of this is also around kind of COVID era travel restrictions. A lot of people started getting worried, hey, what happens if I get stuck in this country? you know, or some people were like, "Oh, you know, I'm a wealthy American, but I spend most of my time in Italy just chilling and you know, I have to choose now between staying in Italy or going back to the US to see my family and if I go back, maybe I can't come back to Italy." And so that's where having the when you have the second

32:01 passport, no matter how severe travel bans are, you're almost always allowed to go to that other place. And so, for example, if you're an American and there's a travel ban and you just want to leave America because you want to get out of whatever, you know, crazy stuff is going on, it's like, okay, I can leave and I can go to this other place, right? That's a lot of what's happening. >> Yeah. Not just that, but also uh having a common passport for the entire family. uh especially as uh I mean the trend for international marriages is is growing and suddenly you have people for example uh you know an American who's married to a Russian or an American who is married to someone from Haiti >> uh and they have children and maybe they live abroad and their children they have a third passport so putting all family

32:48 under one passport uh is uh more practical from a plan B perspective in case they need to flee the country or in case they want to travel together they have a common passport that allows them to to do so. Uh so that's also another scenario like for example some of these uh tier three passports they have visa-free access to to Russia. For example, Nauru in the South Pacific uh Vanuatu in the South Pacific they have visa free access to Russia and that's something that not every westerner has. Uh you know some of them they might be married to Russian citizens and they want to visit Russia. Uh so they can do so uh under this passport without worrying about applying for visas every time. >> No, that makes sense. >> So then what what's like uh what are the other two tiers you mentioned?

33:34 >> Yeah, the the second one uh would be Caribbean citizenship by investment programs that are basically the traditional countries like Sits and Navy, Santigan, Barbuda, Grenada uh that have visa-free access to the Shenhen area. uh and that's the reason why they are sometimes double triple uh more expensive than the first uh or the previous tier uh just because the EU has been pressuring these countries to raise the minimum contribution required uh because they don't want them to sell so many passports because they consider it a security risk. Uh the reality again is that it's not really a security risk. uh among these five Caribbean countries, they sell on average uh 5,000 passports

34:20 each per year. So it's around 25,000 people per year guarian Caribbean citizenship. Uh if you compare that with uh all the illegal immigration that is flowing into Europe, it's like a like a drop in the ocean, right? Uh so it's not really a security risk. It's more like a like a political stance that they're taking. That's why they they made them raise the the minimum contribution. But basically every country who has uh visa-free access to to Europe and the shenan area uh they have to comply with uh with with uh these requests and that's why the process is uh much more complex uh from a due diligence standpoint in terms of what documents need to be provided. Uh it also takes longer and the the cost is is higher. Uh and generally this this uh the people

35:06 who go after these passports it's because they either really want um a stronger passport as a plan B or they really want to improve their visa-free travel. So for example people with Indian passports uh Pakistani passports, African passports that not only care about Europe but they care about having good visa free access in general. Maybe they want to do business in Africa or they want to do business in uh South America and they cannot travel easily with with their passport and that's why they get a stronger passport like Caribbean. Well, I think a lot of this is also like there's a very high and I've referred a couple people over to you guys etc. I I think a lot of times the type of person who becomes very wealthy is kind of paranoid about things

35:51 kind of ironically. I don't know if it's like if it attracts this type of personality, but it's a person who usually is like very self-driven and has built a lot of the systems in their own life. And then one day they kind of stop and they go, "Okay, wait. I depend on this government for everything. And what happens if I'm traveling somewhere during COVID and you know, they want to force me to get a shot to travel somewhere that I don't want to get or what happens if a war breaks out?" I'm curious like after the stuff in Dubai and Iran started happening, did you guys start seeing a lot more inquiries come in from people um who were nervous about that kind of stuff? >> Definitely. I would say many many Europeans who who were living there, they might have a golden visa and whatnot. Uh but they realize that uh you

36:36 know they they only have one passport. I would say that also especially this last couple of months um demand uh has been driven mostly by what Europe is doing wrong uh rather than uh what what is happening in other regions of the world. I was mentioning for example the the case of Germany. Uh there has been a huge spike in in demand from from Germans. Uh first because of the of the mandatory military conscription laws uh that they introduced for men in military age. And then there was uh this news um about uh all men in military age having to request permission from the army in order to leave the country for over three months. >> Wait, really? If you want to leave for

37:23 three months, right, dude, that's just like the biggest metaphorical anvil over your head. It's like >> it's like so I have to tell you if I want to leave the country for more than three months and it's like why are you going to bar me from leaving the country? And it's like >> no, we just want to know, dude. What are you worried about? It's just >> it's the it's the kind of thing that just does seem to make you very paranoid if you ever think about it at all. Right. Well, it seems like a lot of this also is driven by uh so you know Sailor was saying that yeah, I don't know all these really wealthy people appear to become extremely schizophrenic and paranoid, right? But I think everybody sort of has their level of thing that they worry about, right? Like if I work in an office, I'm worried about like what is my risk? My risk is like what if you know my my secretary seems to

38:09 [ __ ] hate me. What if she starts like gossiping about me to my boss and like I lose? But like after you go up another level, maybe you're like the boss of the company, right? And it's like your risk is another company that's trying to eat you. Uh and then it's like, okay, you make like $200 million and now you're like, wait a second, the actual risk is the government, right? Like you just look at who your counterparty as a risk is every time you're doing anything. And at a certain level of money, I think you start worrying more about like nation state actors and their policy than you do about any given social change going around you, right? Uh but the other thing that you were saying that's really funny is that the uh >> your your business appears to be highly juiced by awful things happening geopolitically, right? So if there's

38:55 like a huge war that goes on or uh some unreasonable thing that a government does, you're uh you're sitting there like, "Oh man, that's really unfortunate for the citizens of this country." while like the perfect Google ad button sending them all >> just >> yeah your meta ads your meta ads look like just a conflict map right like you you start seeing the poly market like the poly market bets on like conflict in Iran start moving up in percentages and Alex just goes like quick get me 10,000 ad placements in Tan right now >> you should do a billboard a billboard in Toron that would be really good not even

39:40 for the people in Toron, but that would be like really good advertising, right? It's probably very cheap to get a billboard in in Iran. We should make that happen. >> Yeah. We also like to be sensitive with with these topics because >> I mean it's uh in many case it's unfortunate. I mean I I like to see the other way around that is that you know even like we have no no impact in these things happening. So, they're going to happen uh despite what we do. >> You seem to be saying that you have no No one seemed to suggest that you have impact. You're you're making it seem like you're pulling the strings of global conflict. Alex is pulling the strings of global conflict to sell a couple passports.

40:26 >> Um but no, obviously obviously it's not a good thing that it happens, but >> I I assume it could you could also say the same about stable coins, for example. like if if governments did not do so bad with with fiat money, stable coins would not be needed. Uh so it's like uh your your your stable coin works because you know so many people are getting fed by by their banks and by their fiat uh currency. >> I think the nice way to say all of this is that you know all of these products, all these companies, they're solutions to an existing problem. So of course when something goes wrong right it's going to be good for them because they were created out of the need and the necessity for such a service in the first place.

41:11 >> When J says in nation state threats as well uh there's there's uh an interesting ladder because you went from corporate threats to nation state threats but I think even within nation state threats there are different types of threats. Um you have the case of Pav uh for example the founder of telegram uh he bought a sanit passport uh and then he also managed to get uh an Emirati passport by exception he moved telegram to Dubai uh and they gave him a a UAE uh citizenship and passport and then when he was arrested in France um it was not obviously Sitz uh the country that uh vouched for him uh to get him out of prison because obviously a small

41:56 island country like Sit has no leverage uh in such a let's say politically charged case uh as as his was with a big country like France. Uh but the UAE managed to use um a fighter jet purchase uh as sort of a of a of a negotiation strategy uh telling France that they will not purchase the fighter jets unless they release their citizen. And that's how they managed to to get him out of prison. Uh and and and he was able to travel on bail to to the UAE. So even even within nation states, depending on on what's your threat model, uh you might need one country or the other to defend you. Uh because not not not all all countries are are made equal. >> That's that's really interesting. So the UAE is pulling military contracts or

42:43 threatening to pull military contracts to bail Pavarov out of jail. I had no idea. Is this just like public knowledge? >> Yep. >> Wow. That's an insane flex. Also, being able to get being able to get someone to pull a uh like a hundred million to billion dollar military contract to get you home is kind of cool. >> I mean, they they they really care about their citizens. That's why they don't give uh citizenship to anyone. Like, you have to be, you know, someone very valuable for them. Uh, like >> if I buy if I buy a passport with Citizen X, okay, and I'm in trouble, will you personally call Macron and tell

43:28 him to get me out? >> That that that that gets me to the last tier. Uh, that is uh in my opinion, what is the the the best passport that you can buy? That is El Salvador. Uh, El Salvador sells citizenship for $1 million. Uh, and many people say that doesn't make sense, you know, compared to Caribbean passports that you can buy for $300,000 or even an African passport exto that you can buy for $100,000. But what they don't realize is that they're not just getting the passport that is also one of the best ones. because it has visa free access to the sharing area in Europe and whatnot, but they're getting citizenship in a country that is aligned with Bitcoin and that is pro Bitcoin and pro-economic freedom and that will actually stand for you if for

44:13 example Europe wants to seize your Bitcoin and they want to seize your assets uh and and and and they will actually do that. They will actually >> will personally show up. He'll personally put Mcronone in jail. >> He'll put him in the El Salvador in jail. He will he will personally defend your your right to self- custody. I'm I'm sure. >> Yeah. No, that is actually true. There there's like a lot of things that it starts getting into. I I think a lot of the type of person it attracts is a person who realizes we're getting into a world that's less stable. And what do you think? I know you guys do some of the best graphics on Twitter. You guys do the millionaire migration graphics which are always very good. And it just never looks good for Europe. I've just stopped looking at them because it's just the same thing getting worse every single week. Um, where are those like

45:00 flows of people kind of going, right? You're you're always looking at kind of this immigration of people who want to get away from their wealth taxes or the huge anvil over their heads, you know, that like will very likely become a wealth tax or, you know, a forced draft or whatever it might become. What do you think are like the places where they end up going? I think uh in Europe there are there are a few places that are still uh attracting uh some millionaires and billionaires. Uh Switzerland is still one of them. Uh I think it has the same trend as as Europe uh as the rest of Europe as the European Union just slower uh because of all the the legacy and the legacy and all the traditions and we're

45:45 just going down but going down slower. That's why many people are still going there. They think, you know, it might still have a couple good decades left. Um, and that's probably the the number one hub in Europe. Then there are some some interesting places in Eastern Europe like uh Montenegro, Poland are some of the fastest growing uh hubs uh in not not just in Europe but in the world in in terms of growth of millionaires and and billionaires. Um, and then you have your typical UAE, Singapore, uh, Hong Kong. That's probably the the offshore trifecta, uh, the most popular places that people are moving to. Um, and then the the US, uh, it's it's definitely on on top of the list. Many people still, uh, decide to

46:31 to move to the US uh, these these days just because, you know, it's probably the biggest economy. uh gives a lot of opportunities and some people you know they don't just look at the tax rate uh they they want to look at their lifestyle and the the opportunities and all of that and it still makes sense for them uh to move to the US but it's surprising that in terms of numbers places like Singapore that is a city state is almost pulling the same number of millionaires and billionaires as the US does uh that is a a much uh bigger country >> yeah that's that's very interesting I I wonder do you so you think that some of these places you know it's like people running out the clock but like you know it's on the same kind of path

47:16 of decline and then so you kind of see like Singapore I think you know eastern like southeastern Asia you see a lot of these people going you see people going to the US and then in terms of countries actually putting out these programs uh we obviously have chatted off air about Argentina and some of these other places the El Salvador one was was coming out and then the the Trump gold cards. What are your thoughts on these programs? And then also, if you were talking to somebody who wanted to design one of these programs, what would you tell them to do? Like, how would you structure it? Because a lot of the times, one of the things that's very interesting is regulators in these types of niche industries usually aren't used to regulating these niche industries. And so, they actually come from some other background. You know, they're like a lifelong bureaucrat or they're a politician that got a role in a cabinet.

48:02 And so, they don't actually know what works and doesn't work. and they often kind of fumble over themselves. So I'm curious your thoughts on those three programs specifically that I think are kind of interesting and then or you know any of them that you think are worth remarking on and you told us a little bit about the El Salvadorian one and then also you know how would you design a program like if you were building one what could make it as good as possible and would make people really worth uh going for it? >> I mean I think there are many things that go into uh designing a I would offer uh when it comes to to a citizenship program. Um there are a few I would say contrarian views uh that I have on the on the industry on the market. Uh one of them uh is that

48:49 countries shouldn't uh pay uh providers for for bringing uh these the citizens to the country. So uh there are some countries that uh they offer uh licenses and to those providers with licenses they offer uh sort of a referral uh payment for bringing uh citizens to to the country. Um I I think that model doesn't work. It is much better to have a model like for example El Salvador does where anyone can apply on on on a platform online and you don't have uh this system of licenses and and referrals and whatn not that ends up causing a lot of trouble down the line with discounting on the programs that makes also the programs lose credibility

49:36 what we were discussing in the beginning >> I was going to ask isn't that like an insane incentive like the idea that you're going to pay people to refer like doesn't this literally just become human trafficking by default as soon as you start doing that. >> I mean the the biggest problem is discounting because uh many providers that don't have a lot of differentiation they just end up competing in price. So if the minimum donation required is 100,000 but the government is paying uh 20,000 as referral then you know the incentive is for that provider to uh offer it for 85. they will still make five >> and they will do unfair competition. Exactly. And and countries try to regulate this in many different ways uh with huge penalties and stuff like that,

50:22 but it's like trying to put uh to put fences to the field, right? Doesn't make sense. Uh the incentives are wrong in the first place. So that that's one one of my views. Uh and then the other one is that uh and probably the the other contrarian view is that this program should be uh based on crypto and and I don't mean that you're going to buy a passport with with fartcoin or or dodgecoin or whatever but I think that using first bitcoin and then stable coins makes a lot of sense for these programs because many countries they're limited um in terms of what banks uh they're using. Uh so for example if they don't have good access to to to the banking system they don't have good uh counterparty uh banks counterpart banks

51:09 sometimes they cannot even accept uh the the the the contributions from people who want to buy citizenship. uh and I think uh crypto uh solves that because countries can accept funds from whoever they want and it becomes sort of a uh sovereign uh fundraising mechanism where countries can sell citizenship directly to to people. >> No, that makes a lot of sense. Speaking speaking of the cryptotypes accepted, uh so you accept stable coins and Bitcoin, correct? >> Yeah. >> Do you accept Zcash? Yeah, I was going to say we have to militantly get we need to get Alex to start accepting Zcash. >> We're we're working on that. Uh we have been working on that and and hopefully

51:54 we we can do that soon. >> We talked about Listen, there's a whole class of people. Okay. Howling Mutant maybe he's in the market for a passport now. Okay. >> Howling Mutant actually can now afford these passports. Yeah. after after the we got him the greatest entry of all time into Zcash with a donation link. He maybe can afford the El Salvadorian passport now. He's going to uh go work the ferry in El Salvador in San Salvador. >> We set up the donation link like right at the pico bottom and then it just like instantly ripped up like 140%. >> Uh at so everyone who donated to him wound up getting like a bonus like 1.4x 4x on their donation, which is just like god tier entry of all time. But uh so I'm actually I'm looking at your website

52:40 right now and I'm scrolling through this. >> Uh I was wondering, you know, normally I see a list of these things, right? So we have we have all of the countries that you can get passports to. Uh and you have the most popular ones it looks like listed at the top. But you know, when you go and like let's say I'm on Amazon, right? And I'm sorting two dollar pencil holders, right? And you can sort by the uh the newest, the highest ranked, stuff like that. Is there any chance that we are going to get a selection bar so we can sort by the most popular passports or uh the highest reviewed ones? >> We should do that. Yeah, >> I think I'm just always very uh I don't know because I see you have >> his passion is design. His passion is

53:27 design. truly. >> Well, I see the request advisory button and I'm like I like I'm I'm a very shy guy, right? Am I really gonna am I really going to request the advisory? I just want to know what everyone else is doing, right? Like it's the classic question. If your mom says >> Lucas wants to go with the >> Yeah. If everyone else jumped off the cliff, would you jump? It's like Yes. If everybody else decided that they wanted the St. Kits passport, I would absolutely want the St. kids passport, right? It doesn't matter what your advisor tells me. >> Of course, I'm jumping off the cliff, Mom. I'm I'm I'm doing it with a correct passport first. >> And I I also see So, you have these you

54:13 have these investment numbers, right? So, it's like the El Salvador passport is about a million dollars. St. Kits one is about 287K. These all have these all have a cost for these things, right? But I presume that the cost is not the same for all of them, right? like in some of and by the same I mean like if you want to get a passport from one country maybe it's like you have to invest this much capital into the country's economy like invest this much into a small business or something whereas in another country maybe you have to own a house that is worth this much or some piece of property or something like that right so is there a difference in terms of like the amount of actual money you need to spend versus the amount of investment that you must just hold in the country where you can technically get it back uh if you are willing you resend the passport. >> These the these are all donations. Um

55:00 some of these programs they also have like uh real estate options and stuff like that uh that are not really popular uh because most of the real estate is government approved. So it's overpriced. Uh you have to hold it for a certain number of years. So you depend on the program still being attractive and everyone is still buying that passport and and jumping off the cliff uh after some years. So, you might end up losing uh more uh capital just because, you know, they might request a $200,000 donation or a $400,000 investment into a piece of real estate. That doesn't make any sense. So, most people, they just prefer to do the donation, keep the other $200,000 and invest it however they want uh rather than going with the

55:45 uh investment options that they have. uh because they're generally not not good from from an investment perspective and people just want to buy the passport and for us specifically uh virtually everything that we do is donation based just because our clients uh what they want to do is they want to buy the passport they don't want to invest in >> yeah I was curious investment can be considered like if you move your stock portfolio or like you hold your bitcoin somewhere else you know or whatever does that count as the in like as if if you subject yourself to the taxation regime somewhere voluntarily does that >> not not not for citizenship by investment uh or citizenship >> it's almost always like real estate right it has to be like something physical >> what what you have and with those

56:34 options is basically residency by investment programs uh where you can uh you know make that type of investment and get residency um and you have the right to live in the country if you live after a certain a number of years. Some countries allow you to apply for citizenship and naturalize. Uh but that's not something that we do just because it's um I would say it has more friction. It depends on where you want to live. Uh you have to generally learn the language. Uh build ties to the country. Uh but I mean there are options for that just not to to get direct citizenship. >> H so in most of these cases it is a donation. So this is like the uh this is like the plasma donation model of

57:19 business where you go and you donate plasma and then they pay you a gift, right? And it's like you're not selling the plasma, you're doing a donation and then receiving a gift in return. So countries do this. >> I want Alex's whole response to be like, "No, it's a donation." just like >> well I I mean it's really >> yeah it's really interesting because the the official uh wording is non-refundable contribution so you are you're not buying the passport you're making a non-refundable contribution uh and and I think it also goes into you know a bit of the uh bureaucratic circus to not call things by their name uh and that's why I really like El Salvador

58:05 because they're saying hey just you know make a donation and we will give you a passport. Uh and they're they're really straight about it. Uh they have uh you know nothing to be to be ashamed about. It's a great way to attract talent and wealth. >> So the countries themselves are actually just saying you can buy our passport actually. They're just doing some goofy linguistic rhetorical uh knot that prevents people from realizing it. That's pretty interesting. >> Some some of them uh there are others like for example south doain in Africa uh that just because they don't have uh for example visa free access to the to the shenen area to Europe they don't care so much and they can be a bit more explicit about it. uh but especially

58:50 with Caribbean countries for example since since they have these ties uh to Europe and they have to comply with the with the EU requirements and all of that uh they can they have to say it in in other ways. >> So I've been looking at your site for a while. You've had the Argentinian passport listed as coming soon for a bit here. It looks pretty awesome in terms of the countries you get access to and uh you know we've got we've got some friends down there. We generally like uh you know it's a nice place. Bonus Iris is good. Uh do you have any idea when this thing is going to get unlocked and what the pricing is going to look like for it? >> Yeah. So so we were uh working uh pretty hard on on that one. Uh they approved

59:37 the law back in July 2025. Um we were quite optimistic about it. We thought that by mid 2026 uh it would be launched already. Uh but I would say progress has stalled a bit. Um and we will we might see it by the end of 2026 at best. Um I'm not so sure to be honest that it will end up happening. I hope so. But there has been just so much uh turmoil uh with the with the implementation and and and so many um I would say unexpected uh developments uh that I'm not not certain that it will uh happen uh in in the end. I hope so

1:00:22 because like you said it's a great passport. I think the program has a lot of potential and uh personally I'm uh quite bullish on on Argentina. I consider myself a libertarian. So, it's great to see what MLE has has done uh so far. Um and hopefully, you know, the the the citizenship program um allows Argentina to also attract uh some more wealth and and and to fund raise, you know, in a in a more innovative way. Uh I think probably it will look like something between 300 500,000 uh dollars. uh it will probably be either donation based or something like a a government bond that considering the the the track record of Argentina, it's probably the same as donation. Um

1:01:13 >> if you purchase our government bond, uh you will make 5% annually on a currency that is deflating by 98% every week. >> It's so funny. Yeah, but it's it's a it's a great passport. So, I hope that that they end up doing something that that makes sense. Uh because again, it has a lot of potential and and personally I would love to see it. >> Do you have a passport from all these? Like like if somebody just goes through and clicks like, oh, let's just add everything to my cart, right? Like let's just buy all of these. I assume there's some countries that uh you know they're like dude you can't just have 15 passports man like come on.

1:02:01 Uh but I assume there's others that just don't care. Like there have to be cuz I mean the US is like yeah you can be like a dual or triple or whatever you just like I I don't care. You can be like a representative in the US while being a citizen of 15 other countries. Who cares? Uh, but that seems like an insane policy that I assume someone else must have looked at and said like, "Yeah, let's not do that one, right? That doesn't make any sense." It's really interesting because the trend has been to uh more countries starting to allow dual citizenship. For example, Germany, uh, up until very recently, I think it was 2022 or so, they did not allow dual citizenship or multiple citizenship. uh so the trend

1:02:46 has been for more countries to allow these things I think because of many you know social uh lifestyle trends that are happening people marrying uh partners from uh different country people living in different countries uh so I think uh that's why uh nation states have uh been getting more flexible with that there's a big controversy um especially I would say in the US it's part of the political debate as well uh on whether whether people should be allowed dual citizenship especially people with uh public positions uh you know your your politically exposed uh type of person uh whether whether they should be able to have uh dual citizenship I think we might seem u uh a reversion to the meme

1:03:34 in that sense uh because I can also see that happening in Europe especially as part of the uh anti-immigration uh discourse uh where where you bucket everyone uh you know you would put everyone on the same basket uh no matter if if they're an illegal immigrant a legal immigrant or a or a wealthy uh migrant um so so I can see that happening um but as for now most countries allow uh dual citizenship multiple most western free countries um >> say because people always refer to this as dual citizenship right but most of the time I look at it, do if they allow dual citizenship, they also allow like

1:04:19 three or four or whatever, are there any countries where they're like, "Yeah, like two two is fine, but beyond that and you're breaking the law, man." >> Yeah. Southto uh is actually a really interesting case. Um because you you can you can buy their passport and it's one of the most popular programs. uh but you can only apply if you don't have over uh three citizenships. Uh so you can apply if you have two or three other passports. So it can be your uh third or fourth passport but no more than that. Um and what's really interesting is that when when I started the company I thought most people would just get you know their second passport and stop there because the biggest marinal improvement comes from going from one passport to two passports. Uh but people

1:05:05 end up building, you know, entire passport portfolios to hedge their risks and have a passport in each of the main regions of the world. You know, they end up having a Caribbean. >> You have people who pull up with like a like they do like a money spread of passports. >> Yeah. >> This is actually a way better influencer flex, right? >> This is way better. >> Oh, look at my like iced out Rolex. Like you're a loser, dude. You're a huge loser. But if you pull out six passports and fan them, that actually is like, okay, that costs more than Rolex is, I guess. >> I It's also like, you know, kind of harder to buy. It's like more interesting. It implies that you're like a cultured person or you're like worried about, you know, war or something. I I think it's it's much more interesting

1:05:50 way to flex. I would definitely, if I wanted to flex, I would definitely flex like not a money spread or a Rolex. I would pop out like seven different passports. Um, those are funny. Who do you Who do you think is the best person to ever do this? Do you think like Pavle, Justin Sun, his excellence Justin Sun has to be up there? >> One of the goats of uh of passport acquisition got the diplomatic passport. >> Yeah, I think his uh excellence uh has the the Sits one, the Dominica one as well. So, he would in the Caribbean and god knows what else. Uh I think Pavl is one of my favorite portfolios, passport portfolios. Uh because he was born in Russia, then he moved to France. He got

1:06:36 the French passport, then he bought the Sits passport, and then he got the Emirati. So he has the EU passport with France, the Caribbean one with S. Kits, and then uh Emirates. I think that's one of my of my uh favorite portfolios, but there are there are many other interesting ones. I think uh Dubai is probably one of these few places where you see this big concentration of people who are thinking about these things. Uh you don't see it so much in the US. Although in places like maybe Miami, New York, you see it a bit more, but I feel like in Dubai just because 80% of the population is immigrant, many of them come from countries with weak passports. Uh it you see how for some people it's a it's a flex. And I have some friends in

1:07:21 Dubai who I don't know they debate whether they should buy another watch or or another passport. Uh it's it's uh really really interesting. >> It's really funny to think about uh I mean in terms of the comparison to any sort of consumer good and the payoff of how this might work. Like that just gets to be an extremely funny calculus. Like I can totally see some prepper from the US in the Midwest who uh he's actually never left the country, right? Like maybe he has maybe this is some like weird online hustle grind set guy who's sold like he's sold so many PDFs, right? He has a PDF about like diet or something. Uh he he's made like $15 million selling his PDFs on the

1:08:06 internet. Uh and he has his US passport, but he starts acquiring all these other passports. like, oh, but like what if what if World War III plays out, but it's like instead of like US going to war with like Russia and China, it's actually like and then he develops some schizophrenic theory where he's like, "Yeah, actually I'm going to need my fourth passport." And so he's acquired all of these, but he's never left the country, right? Like he's just a prepper that has actually never left his like within three miles of his house in the US. Uh this is the person in the US who it makes the most sense for me to buy actually given our country's history of mentally ill prepping. >> I I think that's uh I mean on on the

1:08:52 prepper segment you have two types of prepper. The one who buys ammo and and guns and wants to stay and fight uh and and is willing to to die on that hill literally. Uh and then you have the other type of prepper that is sort of you know buying insurance uh and and buying their their plan B and their and and their exit. >> If you if you had to say which of these you think is more intelligent on average which of these two groups which would you >> which would all my customers are great. All my customers are very intelligent actually compare the IQs of your customer to people who stockpile guns. Personally, I think uh the most intelligent ones do both. Um but but

1:09:40 personally, I I I would not uh stay and fight. I'm more of the uh you know, exit. There's this uh really good book exit versus voice that is like you can either you know uh voice uh you use your voice and try to change the system or you can just exit um and sort of vote with your feet uh and try to to build something new and and and signal that you don't agree with that system by exercising your right to exit. I think I'm more on that group. Uh but I think it's probably smart uh to do both and if you can uh you know defend yourself and and your family uh you should do so uh but at the same time you know have some sort of backup plan B uh in case you can

1:10:25 no longer do that and you need to to exit. That's an interesting distinction, too, because I feel like in the past it used to be like the proportion of people who wanted to stay and fight was much much higher in the past, right? Uh and you could say, well, maybe that's because we've all become [ __ ] but it's also because the thing that you're fighting against got a lot bigger, right? Like it used to be it used to be something that you could imagine in your mind winning, right? But now it's like, okay, bros, like I'm gonna be honest. I'm not sure if I can defeat the US government. like I have low confidence in this happening. I I I think it's also because nation states used to be more homogeneous and people used to be from the same uh

1:11:12 cultural background and group and they used to have like they used to be nations not not just states >> and there's so this also means there's a thing worth fighting for right like there's a there's a specific identity that you have that you want to fight for and preserve and if you take that away it's like I like now I'm just kind of dying for the land, I guess. >> Exactly. Used to be >> Yeah. >> more tied more tied to to the land. And I think nowadays people feel more similar to other people that they might know from the internet but they share the same uh cultural safeguinity

1:11:58 to someone from the US or Argentina or Taiwan uh that is in the same you know for example technological uh bitcoin freedom bubble ccash whatever rather than someone from >> Yes. rather than rather than an NPC from from my country of origin. >> Yeah. This is like the normal theory >> like we now have people getting like we have people getting called back for war, right? Like we have Germans being said, okay, you can't leave the country for more than three months without alerting us, right? So, we we can assume that this is some form of like a draft. If you're telling military-aged males that they have to inform you if they're leaving, right? Uh,

1:12:45 as this happens more and more, people start thinking about like, okay, bros, like if I get drafted to go to war for the US right now, like does am I am I actually going to do this or am I going to be doing am I going to be getting a doctor to write something that says like I have flat feet so I don't have to go to war? And I think increasingly a lot of people are looking at that calculus and saying like, dude, like I don't really support this war. I can't even find the country on the map. Like it seems like they literally have zero chance of hurting us. Uh why would I want to do this? And so, uh, that that kind of is like the the ultimate form of breakdown of a national identity when you have a nation composed of people who like don't even believe that they exist

1:13:31 in enough of a nation to want to be defending the thing, right? Like right now, both the right and the left, if there was a draft, would would oppose this just on principle. >> I'm not entirely sure about that one, man. What I want to ask Alex so what do you think would happen uh or or what other like what other avenues because it seems like you have a very interesting group of people that are your customers and you know we won't ask you I I assume privacy is taken very seriously and you have like infosex standards etc. Um, what other kind of like weird prepping do they do? Like cuz I assume you hear like very interesting stories, right? Cuz you're getting >> You actually have to be at the peak of prepping, right? Like you have to know.

1:14:16 I mean, we were talking we were talking to Campbell the other day and he hit us with something that's very interesting in terms of like I he's like, "Yeah, I think you need like a solar farm, you need a battery bank, and you need like GPUs. You need your own GPU cluster to be running local LLMs so that if the grid goes down for a couple of weeks now you can have access to uh like a supercomput that can tell you how to like rebuild your house and start fires and stuff like that because you're you're [ __ ] like urbanite scum who has no idea how to do any of this, right? Uh and I was like that's actually totally true. Like I I would be benefited way more by having a local AI model that tells me how to cook wild rabbit than I would by having like 100 million bullets so that I can like go to war with my neighbor, right? Like

1:15:04 you seem to have changed. Last time we talked about this, you were talking a lot about how you were going to come beat me up with 300 men in your local militia last time we had this conversation because you become very wouldn't benefit you very much. But like I would do that not even for any resources that you have but just like just because I I think you deserve it, right? And you you doubly deserve it if there's no sort of rule of government or law that can enact punishment on me for it. I think >> I I I I have I have seen the the the LLM stuff. Um I think there's a big trend of uh buying agricultural land. I'm seeing that a lot. Uh these these people are

1:15:50 stocking up on agricultural land uh all over the world. Uh there's a lot of of of bankers as well. Uh people buying and building bunkers. Um do they share the bunker designs with you? Like do you ever get hit with like uh some sort of like a 3DS STL file thing? Like yeah, like it's the Minecraft layout. You're like, "Yeah, I keep my chickens over here. They're like, "This is where I have my sugar cane farm." >> Dude, if I sell bunkers, I would definitely sell people like a Minecraft replica of the bunker, too. >> If I had a bunker, I would do the Brian Johnson thing where I dedicate my entire life and social media presence to giving to giving normal people tours of my bunkers. Like, I would random random

1:16:35 soccer moms off the street and invite them into my bunker and say like, "This is the door where I hide behind if I think there's going to be a nuclear explosion. It's it's it's interesting that bankers and longevity are kind of similar in in a sense because you don't really know if it works until until it's too late for it to not work, right? >> It's like the perfect industry to be in, right? You have zero customer complaints. That's why I always think that the prepping stuff is so funny because you you have this idea that uh it's like, okay, so an unpredictable event is going to happen that disrupts everything in ways nobody can foresee, right? And my

1:17:21 goal now is to try and prepare for this unpredictable event, knowing that by definition it cannot be predicted. And so you just wind up saying like, well, I guess if there's dinosaurs, I need like a huge harpoon, right? Like I guess that's worth like it's like, okay, there's a 0.2% of enormous dinosaurs. So is that worth spending 20k on an enormous harp? I guess, right? Like at a certain level of wealth, sure. Yeah. I I don't know. I think it's very interesting. Have you come across any interesting stories? And I I keep wanting to ask you this, but then I keep realizing like probably a lot of the things you've talked about, you know, for your client's protection, maybe you

1:18:06 don't even find out about it or you're, you know, you can't talk about it. But I am curious if there's like any stories that are actually sharable. I I mean it's it's interesting because some of them they they share a fair amount of personal information or personal stories with us. But these people they are also privacy conscious and and that's why they they come to us as well uh because you know we're the most privacy friendly uh way to do uh this these uh programs. So I >> like for the record for the record here I do believe that you have most of your data stored in Switzerland on Swiss servers right to uh to specifically

1:18:52 support any or to to prevent requests from other uh countries trying to find information on your clients. So, we do have one of the most private guests that we've had here in a while and we are asking him directly about all of his >> cool like having a privacy expert. You have a privacy expert on and you're like what's the juiciest story you've ever heard? Like you have someone's like PR manager on and you're like so what's the worst story about your client that you've ever had to kill in the press? >> Yeah. What is living in Dubai like? I'm kid because I always see the like, you know, I've seen things on YouTube and I hear, you know, like it's it's kind of bad. There's escorts everywhere. >> The hottest country in the universe.

1:19:37 >> I have a couple friends who live there. I need to introduce you. And they tell me the air quality is so bad that they spend all day indoors. >> Personally, I I haven't experienced that. Um, I mean, I was living in in a wood area with a lot of nature, like a really big park. I was walking a lot. Uh the the other day I posted this that Dubai is the only place where I consistently managed to hit 20 25,000 steps a day. And it's true like in no other city I was I was able to do that just because you know it's it's it's warm. I was obviously not not there during the summer. Um but the the weather was great. The air quality was not that bad and I was really walking a lot in a lot of nature and I think the

1:20:22 UAE and Dubai they they have whatever you want. So, you know, you have like the party luxurious scene, but you also have many areas that are very family friendly, family oriented. Um, and in in some neighborhoods like most of the people are European. Uh, and in at some point I was feeling like I was in in >> Yeah, that's very funny. >> Place that is more culturally aligned. I know all these people in the UK who are leaving for Dubai. And then I know all these Middle Eastern people who move to London every year and it's very funny. They're like pear trading each other. Like these people are just like shorting the other person. >> We've we've swapped demographic populations of both of these countries. Yeah. >> I I think it's interesting. I think I think a lot of people rely a lot on

1:21:09 these systems that they don't think about. And you have kind of a unique opportunity where you're selling things to people who have recognized that these systems exist and they realize hey I'm very very very you know like dependent on this very exposed this thing and I don't really understand the risks here. Um, and so you can get like a much better I think, you know, kind of look at like, okay, what do I actually want to get here? You know, what what do I get from this? Um, that is good for me or bad for me. And I'm always curious when I meet these people who seem to have like a lot of material prosperity, but then are effectively buying a bunch of like puts, right? They're they're effectively like shorting civilization and the existence of anything at all. Um, it's like, you

1:21:57 know, these people seem to be pretty smart. The other thing I'm curious, do you see more people who are like just trying to get a stronger passport for themselves? More people who think about the geopolitical situation with regards to like wars and stuff or what kind of mix? Cuz one thing that I always thought was very silly was when Peter Teal and Samman, there was like this piece about how Teal had like a bunker in New Zealand and I was like, New Zealand's like the worst place ever cuz you're right under China. like who's going to come protect you, you know? Um whereas now it seems like he's in Argentina. Uh I was hanging out with some of his staff and it it seems like, you know, that's like a more logical place to be that's very far away from kind of anywhere where it seems like World War II would start, right? The Middle East, Southeast, Asia, etc.

1:22:46 I mean, you also have the the the argument that, you know, if if something like that happens, like there's no really good place to to hide, right? Uh depending on on the scale of of the conflict and and in some cases, you know, it might even you you might not even want to survive uh to to that point in the in the worst case scenario. Uh but I have seen >> you just want to die like like it got so bad that you want >> that's a unique edge I guess. >> I I have seen some some people who who value remote islands for that reason you know like islands in the middle of the Pacific. Um, and that's their their

1:23:32 their plan, their strategy, you know, to to kind of have somewhere they can go to that no one will care uh enough about to to invade or to or to attack. Um, I think within the civilized world, probably Argentina and the southern corn. >> I think Uruguay is very underrated too. People always talk about Argentina because of Malay. Um, but Uruguay is very interesting because the taxes are a little bit lower. I think they're tightening it up a little. Uh, Paraguay always had the crazy tax stuff where I think they like charge you literally zero taxes. Um, my my feeling is that when a lot of these, and this is probably very similar to what you feel about the passport stuff, whenever you really overoptimize for this stuff and it feels like you're getting a crazy

1:24:18 deal, probably what's going to end up happening is that like very shortly some country will look at this and be like, "Wait, why do we have a taxation treaty with Paraguay? They're literally charging zero dollars in t like maybe a $500 flat tax. Like this makes zero sense, right? >> Well, I mean that's what happened with with the UAE and Dubai. They used to have 0% taxes for corporate. Now they have 9% taxes for corporate because other countries they don't like you. >> Yeah. If you have zero like if it's such a good deal, everyone else feels like you're undercutting them and they're just like, "Hey, I'm not going to make it easy for you to undercut me." Um and and so I think those systems are rarely sustainable when you're really like cutting people that much shorter. I think Uruguay is pretty good. And then the nice thing about these places is,

1:25:04 you know, if you really think we're going to a much more uncertain world. We had Kambo on obviously and he talked a little bit about you know the the agricultural crunch that he thinks is coming and I think has started to be reflected a little bit more in the numbers like these countries are now net exporters agriculturally uh energy you know it's it's a pretty favorable geopolitical situation so it's it's very very very well set up um I think it makes sense for a lot of those reasons if you're more in you know kind of some of those prepper camps where you really are trying to hedge against something crazy happening I mean there there there's also the case for uh you know South Africa for example. I have seen some some people uh very bullish. >> Do they go to like these small townships

1:25:49 like you know like the very small because I think if you're in the big cities it's not great right? Uh I mean it's it's more like from um what I know uh more like a a private military company type of situation where you just you know go around with your uh security that is more like a private military company. >> Gotcha. Okay. >> And and and you don't have public security. That's why you need private security. Um but but you know if if you uh get that right uh it it can uh you know also be uh safe enough and if you think about it you know it's also quite far away from from everything has Mediterranean type of climate. Uh so so that's probably also one of the of the good spots for that type of smell.

1:26:37 >> Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I I I I think there's a lot of these things that people really don't think about. I think the US is very well set up where I just don't think you could ever land invade the United States. You know, you have like two or three guns for every citizen. Uh it's incredibly difficult. I I think the US is very safe, but I I think some people, you know, might have reasons why they feel it's like reasonable to say, "Hey, you know, I want some, you know, plan B, like you always talk about it, like the Bitcoiners talk about it kind of." Um, you know, I think there's a lot of reason >> in terms of the US, the the the threat is not so much external, but internal. >> Yeah. I've I've been thinking about this where I feel like the US is going through a national divorce, but instead

1:27:22 of Balkan style, it's like a very American style divorce where it's very slow. Uh, and no one's allowed to talk about it at dinner. Like you're you're at like the family dinner and no one's allowed to talk about the fact that these two people got like separate hotel rooms. they're staying like at different sides of the town from each other and you can't really talk about it. It's it's it's quite interesting. What do you make of it? So, so there there's this um interesting statistic as well about the marriages uh between Republicans and and Democrats and how in the last decades um people are only marrying uh people from uh their same uh political uh >> Oh, that's interesting.

1:28:08 >> Yes. So, Republicans are marrying Republicans, Democrats are marrying Democrats. And if you think about it, you know, some decades down the line when they have children and they raise the children, they will probably raise them or try to raise them under this their same um ideology. So I think that's contributing a lot as well to the to the polarization and and and then you have it as well on the state level uh where you have you know some states uh that are clearly Democrat, other states that are clearly Republican. Um and and I I think you know that separation will uh probably come from from within uh because just you know uh how everything is is getting more polarized um in and >> yeah I mean the clearest example is if

1:28:53 you live in the US uh your biggest threat when you're worrying about anything right like we could literally go to war with I mean I guess we just technically went to war with Iran. Nobody was [ __ ] worried about Iran getting you in any capacity, right? Like everyone was worried about like your hysterical cat lady neighbor like trying to film you saying something bad. Like that's much more of an existential threat to anyone in the US than Iran nuking you or anything. Like it just sounds goofy to even say, right? Like you sound like an actual crackpot. Whereas if you say like, "Yeah, no." Like it's totally reasonable that the crackhead on the street uh could come up to me and then stab me, right? like that's actually >> it's a weird threat model.

1:29:40 >> And then you also have the the economics of it, right? Uh the the depth uh is increasing non-stop. Uh and then they're using that depth to to finance the endless wars. Uh so so that's why I think the the threat is more internal than than external. going back to Europe. It's uh another problem that exists that most of the uh people who came as illegal immigrants to Europe, they are no longer illegal. Uh most of them they have either been regularized or they have acquired full citizenship. So that's a big problem that you have because you know for example in the US you might have some some illegal immigrants and you still have you know the legal tools to to solve that problem

1:30:25 but once someone gets citizenship uh there's there's nothing you can do about it you know you can uh it's really really hard to denaturalize someone uh in many >> in theory you can do it in theory you can do anything right but it is one of those things where you're looking at the available tool set and it's now like, oh, okay, the wall just got >> either either going against human rights or, you know, uh, basically denaturalization was how the the third rights started, uh, you know, basically denaturalizing the the the Jewish people, uh, stripping them away from German citizenship. So, it's a, you know, really, uh, slippery slope. And I think that's that's the very biggest problem that Europe has at the moment.

1:31:10 um that you know all all of uh these people who came as as illegal immigrants and fundamentalists groups and and people like that they have became full citizens now you know they they can vote they have full rights so so it's one of the of the biggest challenges that I think Europe has uh at the moment and that can get you know as as we know from history it can get uh very ugly depending on on which tools you decide to use. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I think all that stuff's very interesting. I think we'll see, you know, what ends up happening in a lot of these different countries. Um I I I don't know. I I always think the political situation is untenable and

1:31:55 then people seem to vote for more insane things. We talk about this with Christian on the podcast, too. It's like Germany finally ended up killing all of their nuclear reactors. It's just like totally ridiculous. Like the most insane thing ever. And the one thing that's kind of weird there is like the one country that's actually been relatively good on the tech stuff has been France which France has always managed to kind of keep its nuclear grid up etc. But now it's kind of worrying, right? Because it's like who's going to win elections in France 20 years from now and have access to like nukes, you know? It's like ah >> I really like this uh quote from uh Vice President Vance uh where he said that the UK is going to become uh the first uh Muslim country to get nuclear

1:32:41 weapons. Yeah, I think it might be France, but yeah, it seems a little uh a little tenuous at the least. I think the big problem in in Europe with the denaturalization and all of that is that kind of any solution to it seems to not really be on the table mostly because of, you know, like what's what you're allowed to do and, you know, what you're not really allowed to do basically. I mean it's it's really interesting and I I have been saying it for a couple of years already now that I think Europe is heading to either one big or multiple civil wars and you know it's one of these things where people just thought I

1:33:26 was crazy but if you really think about it and think about what are the possible outcomes and the possible solutions like genuinely it's it's a very likely outcome I would say in some countries maybe like 40 50% uh probability that it happens. Um and and we're already seeing like uh private groups organizing to take care of the of the streets and and protect people and and you know if you draw some parallelisms with with history you also had like you know these private militias uh groups of people who organized to you know go on the streets and um you know either with good or bad intentions but um it's it's a scary meal

1:34:13 like I I think uh there there that there there's a slippery slope uh for for that. Um and and unfortunately I cannot think of any peaceful, you know, uh solution to to to that problem. >> Yeah. The last thing I wanted to ask you about like you're kind of in the business of selling bunkers in a way, right? Where you you sell things that are like useful in kind of a situation you don't really want to be in, right? kind of like downside protection type of stuff in in a way, right? Obviously, I think, you know, for some for some people it might be about the travel. It might be about getting an easier visa. >> I was going to say I would imagine that a lot of people are buying this actually to provide some immediate utility more so than purely as downside prevention.

1:35:00 I'd be interested actually I don't know like you probably can't give us like the exact percentage breakdown, but like you're nodding your head. I I assume that there's some idea of uh you know the difference in whether someone's buying this because they believe their comp their country is going to explode versus because they need to access something immediately or they would like access to some sort of tax regime or structure. I >> I mean it's it's both. I would say just because most of our users that are westerners, they're buying insurance, they're buying a hedge and a plan B, but some of them uh they they have some immediate benefits. So we talked a lot about visa free travel. So you know they might travel to Russia or to China without a visa. They previously needed one with their European uh passport for

1:35:45 example. But then there are other use cases that are maybe not so popular. Whether is for example uh using it for extra privacy either uh you know a very normal use case like checking into a hotel and not wanting uh them to take a photo of your main passport that might get leaked so you use your your second passport. uh but also you know structuring your uh assets and doing some asset planning. If you're incorporating a trust or opening an offshare bank account, opening a a company somewhere else and you might want to do that under your second passport just to have an extra uh layer of privacy. So that's that's a that's a use case that's an an immediate benefit.

1:36:30 And then when it comes to tax benefits, I mean it always depends on relocation. So, you know, some of them uh they end up moving to these countries, mostly the Caribbean ones or or El Salvador, and basically if you have citizenship, you can just, you know, show up there uh and and that's it. So, it makes it easier, but it's definitely not uh the the main driver. >> I hadn't thought about the uh about just using it as a KYC document because you can assume that basically everything is going to get leaked at some point in the next five years. That's really interesting. That's probably uh that's probably the case that I would most pitch to my mom or something like that, right? >> Well, my my question that I have been wanting to ask here is you said you don't like real estate. Uh and I was

1:37:17 just wondering if you wanted to elaborate on why uh what you prefer instead as assets and what specifically about real estate drives you nuts. I I I am of the opinion that people generally think that real estate is one of the uh risk-free investments uh that you can make. Mo if you think about it, most people have either 90 to to 95% of their net worth in in real estate. Uh in in in western economies, they they take a loan to buy real estate. So there is leverage and they have most of their net worth in real estate and people think that is an investment that is risk-f

1:38:03 free. I think that is probably one of the most risky investments that you can make just because you don't control the underlying asset that is the country. Uh so you know I mean I'm all about mobility and and paying that that premium for mobility. Um Bali has this uh this really good quote that I like. He says that mobility is liquidity and the same way Buffett uh values liquidity because it has a premium. It gives you optionality. Uh mobility is is a bit of the same uh and and and and that your passport is you know like like having cash. So I think the problem with real estate is that you don't control the underlying asset that is the country and you are not only

1:38:48 entering into the specific risk that the real estate has that obviously you are putting all your eggs in one basket you have the risk of of the building or of the house of the region but you also have the the the financial social economic risk of the country and uh I'm seeing it for example where I'm from in Spain I think the country is heading into becoming Venezuela. Uh so so you might have very valuable real estate in in in the city center in Madrid or Barcelona, but if that country uh becomes Venezuela, then you know that that becomes worthless. Um so I think people underestimate the risk that they're incurring uh because basically it's the entire nation uh national risk

1:39:36 and and that's a bit you know to some extent is the same with with government bonds uh and with fiat uh money people think that you know those are at least liquid right like that's >> exactly exactly real estate it's like that but worse >> yeah you have like the main illquidity risk for all of this the fact that like liquidity literally goes to zero the exact second anything sort of sketchy happens in the country. Right? >> My other problem with real estate is just like >> it does seem like we're just not having kids anymore. And so all real estate value is predicated on the idea that someone will want to buy this plot of land from like every single time I look at an economic model of anything now I just think like okay what happens if no

1:40:22 one has kids anymore? Like because truly like aside from people who look at the numbers of how many people are having kids, I don't think anyone knows how bad it is. Like most of Western Europe is under 1.5, right? And like Europe, right? Like we're like we've been living in for the for the entire duration of this country by the way, right? Like ever since America has been founded, we've been in this Ponzi scheme where there is more kids than there previously were, right? So there is now a progressively increasing demand on every single physical asset in the country. Uh and we just like stopped doing that and everyone is like but the normaly bias bro like I don't think it matters that much.

1:41:08 >> One of the things that I also really hate about real estate is that it has some some utility. You know you you you need somewhere to live. Um so so so I think many people look at it from an investment perspective not from a utility perspective and and I mean I think that's really problematic. Um I don't think um capital controls or or uh you know rent controls and stuff like that are the solution. Um just because I believe in the in the free market. Uh but it's just something that that really annoys me, you know, that is a a consumer good, but at the same time is probably the biggest uh asset class from an investment standpoint in the world. >> Well, I think that's from like a from

1:41:53 like a like seeing like a state type perspective. I definitely agree with you. I think if I was a government like one of the first things I would ever do if I got elected would be like just total boomer death. Every boomer would hate me because I would just like assume office. My first thing would be like houses are not vehicles that we'll appreciate. Houses are places for people to live in, right? And like we just need to be able to build more houses. Like, you know, does that mean, you know, I I wouldn't expropriate houses or or do anything that's against the free market, but I would want to like unleash the free market so people can actually have housing, right? I think in Europe that's not a problem just cuz no one's having kids anymore basically. And also because in Europe it's very normal that you like live with your parents until you get married or right up until you get married. So that's like much more

1:42:39 normal. But in America it's like a circle, right? It's like it's like you live with your parents and so now you're a loser who can't get laid and so you live with your parents, right? And it keeps >> so you just you spiral forever to zero birth rate. >> I I get so bad. I think that problem exists in Europe and it's even worse than in the US because in the US salaries at least uh they allow people to in some cases you know buy a house or or leave alone. Uh in Europe people cannot afford to buy a house. They cannot even afford to pay rent in the big cities. uh and everyone wants to be to be in the big cities because in many cases if you are not in the in the big city uh you cannot uh go

1:43:25 to to your office or you have to do like really long commutes uh you cannot meet meet people so so that same problem exists in Europe and it's 10 times worse just because uh there's less uh less uh amount of of uh new houses, new apartments being built. The market is much more restrictive than in the US. And I feel like you have even more uh speculation from people uh just just buying uh you know vacational homes and stuff like that uh than than in the US. I I think one of the big problems that Europe has is that you have all these people who inherited money and like if you think about the type of person you selected for like a rich guy who stayed in Europe and never diversified like

1:44:12 never moved any of their money over to the new world right away from the old world like you've just selected for somebody who just never wants to take risk right and you know you can maybe want to take a little too much risk and that can be bad as well but like there's been a systemic process by which you've selected for people who like, oh, World War, no problem, I'm staying. Like historic persecution of people, no problem, I'm staying. Like just people who will stay through anything. It's like the frog that like just likes being boiled, you know? It's like sitting pretty at like 180 degrees Celsius. And it's like, no, this doesn't even feel that bad. It's actually pretty good once you get used to it. It's like, dude, like you're being boiled. Like they are going to kill and eat you, man. Uh >> it's like you know you know when all of the socialists in America will talk about things like uh the wealth hoarding

1:44:58 they're doing and it's like American wealth is not actually hoarded like American wealth is like typically extremely overleveraged on very high risk bets right like the American the American average is taking out a seventh mortgage on your apartment so that you can go and buy like more shares of Nvidia stock because it went down 0.5% on on the day, right? Uh Europeans actually do appear to do the wealth hoarding thing where they're like, "Yeah, I I hold it all in Swiss Franks because it's like stable, right? Like I don't want to be exposed to any sort of currency deflation." And you're like, "Well, have you thought about buying assets that might appreha

1:45:48 sa so you were saying that it's becoming increasingly hard to make predictions though, right, Alex? Do you frequently make predictions? And if so, what what is your principal prediction market that you would use to do so? Because as you may know, we are sponsored by the beloved prediction market. or Alex, but which which poly which uh which prediction market do you enjoy using? >> Do you ever play around with this stuff? Because I like I honestly mostly wanted to try and use it to program like bots or something because I saw a lot of uh I saw a lot of posts about this on the timeline and I eventually was like ah this is too complicated. So, I just started buying stuff based on like uh Twitter bets, and it appears that is actually a pretty viable strategy for things. Like, you can if you're on

1:46:33 Twitter, usually just be early to most pieces of information. Uh, as long as it's not like some sort of geopolitical conflict or something like that. Like, I'm sure there's someone in the US government that knows that we're going to bomb countries before me, so I tend not to bet on that. But, uh, I don't know. It is interesting how the stuff has basically become like my news source now because it's the first mover for things. >> Yeah, I mean I I I try to actively stay away uh from it because I feel like I would get too too obsessed. Um I think one of the coolest things is that before these type of predictions were only available to like hedge funds and and and people like that. Uh and now you can you you can if if you know where to look

1:47:19 at uh you can make this uh predictions in and using you know some information asymmetries and stuff like that and and really profit from that and I feel like uh if if if I got into that I would take it too seriously and probably like start a hedge fund or something like that uh to to to bet on poly market. I I keep seeing people like I keep seeing photos of like hedge funds like trading IPOs and they just have like prediction markets open like like it's just totally visible. And then I think the other thing that's very interesting is it does seem like everyone's going to get brow beaten into having like non-insider trading um like you know you're not

1:48:04 allowed to insider trade and whatnot. I I I don't know how I feel about that because I think the social utility of this is around the information and if you want to do the information then you know you should let people actually you know basically frontr run you. >> We're now just openly advocating for insider trading because it makes the news more accurate. >> I yeah I kind of am in favor of like just the insider trading specifically on >> Well, the problem is you have to draw these lines that don't make any sense, right? Like whenever you're making an insider trading regulation, you have to say like, okay, well, this person is close enough to it that they're an insider, but this person who's 0.5 feet away is not, right? And like often the

1:48:49 person that you're calling an insider still doesn't actually have, >> you know, like they they might actually have inaccurate information because there is that weird thing where it's like >> if you're the guy like the one guy making the decision now you like obviously you 100% know what's going to happen, but usually the decisions are made in somewhere in the the 20 people around the guy range, right? And all of those 20 people, depending on how recent their information is, they can all be either right or wrong just based on the day or who he tells first about this. And then you have all of the other people who are totally unrelated just reading about all this online. And a lot of those people are going to be more correct than the people who know the guy making the decision uh just because they didn't hear his last inaccurate update

1:49:34 on the news event before he changed his mind. So I don't know. >> I mean, I agree. I think even in traditional markets, the insider trading like designations don't make a lot of sense, right? Cuz like a congressman who literally creates regulation on like a health company is allowed to trade that health company, but then like a random analyst in Wall Street who, you know, like writes, you know, whatever he covers like 20 companies in fintech, he's not allowed to trade health stocks because he works at a like a bank. Like it it's it's very unserious. It's like a very weird system, you know. Um it's it's super hard to really understand, you know, why these choices are the way they are sometimes. >> This is my issue with the whole insider

1:50:20 trading designation is like what what you just laid out is a perfect example. You have the literal Congress people who are just allowed to do it and then you have like guys like Campbell who their job is basically to analyze the industry and spend all day reading about it and they're banned from doing. So the regulation just winds up like [ __ ] the people who uh should rightfully be allowed to do it and then lets Nancy Pelosi run up the world's largest brokerage account which you know >> Yeah. Like all these I always feel like a a lot of times like the the choices that are made are very weird with regards to like who is allowed to trade these things and in what way. I I I just

1:51:05 don't think it's like it feels like it has gone far beyond. It feels like a lot of the banking regulation was like created to like basically punish the banks uh post great financial crisis and there's no like consistent view of like okay but why like why is this this way actually and very rarely can someone actually answer that question. I am looking through I am looking through the poly market pools here though and I'm thinking like Alex dude if you log on to this website it's completely over for you. Like you might be you might be one of the few people who is uh up to date on global politics to the extent that basically like all of

1:51:51 these would just be interesting pools to you if you go to the global politics section. I think it also kind of nerd snipes people like Alex where like you know you're probably a big like put your money where your mouth is guy and then you have views that like you think very few people agree with you on right so it's very hard to not uh you know it's like very hard when you hold both of those things at once to not be like yeah you know I guess I do like no one seems to agree with me and so if I really think I'm right >> too like this happened with the uh this happened with which AI model is going to be the best by the end of the month. Uh, and you see like Google gradually spiking up as they hint at releasing a new model. And like my desire to bet

1:52:36 against Google increases as more people buy it. Like as the position becomes more contrarian, I'm like, "Oh, dude, like these idiots are going to get smoked. I've got to bet against these guys." I mean that there's there's um also the thing that I have learned that being directionally right uh doesn't mean that uh you you're going to be right with the timing. Uh and in many cases, you know, uh I'm um maybe a bit too optimistic with the timing. Um and and I think uh that some things will happen faster than they end up happening. uh and that doesn't uh pair uh very well with uh

1:53:22 poly market and and and uh predictions that are um scoped in time. Um, so, so you know, in in other cases where you're buying a passport, you know, you don't care so much about the time. As long as you are directionally, right? >> As long as you do it before the end of the world, right? As long before you're drafted, you're fine. Right. >> Exactly. Like about polymarket prediction markets in general is that there is an exper. So, if somebody asks you something about like, oh, what what's your call on this poly market thing? And you can tell them like you either buy the green button or you buy the red button and then you don't have to give because like if you ever tell anyone that you like entered a trade, right? Like if I say I'm long Bitcoin, you now have to tell them where you

1:54:07 bought. But you also have to tell them when you sell, right? So now you have this person that's following you around like a baby going asking all the time like, "Dude, what did you do with your money? I I need to know so I can copy you exactly." Right? And if you sell without telling them or like maybe you sell at night, right? But they don't see the text message about you selling until the morning and it's a different price now. And they're like, "Dude, should I do it? It's a different price." Uh so you just wind up with all this annoying nonsense. Whereas with Poly Market, it's like, "Yeah, I don't know. I I bought the green button and I I'm just going to hold it until the XRE of the contract." So like for me as someone who gets asked a bunch of stupid questions, that makes it so much better. Uh but in terms of the actual flexibility of it, it's obviously a little bit of an imposition.

1:54:52 >> Are you are you advocating for financial advice? >> Uh am I advocating for I mean like I would love if anyone would give me financial advice or anything really. So I will always advocate for that. Uh but am I advocating for people to follow any advice that I give? No. I would actually say like it [ __ ] pisses me off when anyone asks me anything about financial advice. And it's also like embarrassing, right? Like you're not even you're not even going and asking like a billionaire or somebody who it makes sense to. You're going to a guy who is like probably not more wealthy than your uncle and ask like you're just stupid. There's no reason why I would have better insight any of these other. So just please stop guys and never take anything that I say

1:55:37 as meaningful investment advice. >> Yeah, I think we can call it there. Alex, I don't know if you need to go, but I do need to go because uh the occasional knocks on the door are getting a little more frenetic, and I think I just >> You should just honestly turn the lights off and go to bed to see what happens. >> Just go to sleep in the com. >> I've always wondered, you know, you know when there's like a bar bathroom where some some guy will like pass out on the toilet and it's like, how the [ __ ] do you get this guy out? Like what are you going to are you going to crawl under? I think the big thing about modern society is if you're willing to act like a homeless schizophrenic, you can actually get away with basically anything. Like you can just like I I'm not sure this is

1:56:24 true now anymore, but there was just a period of time where you could just steal things in in San Francisco and as long as like you didn't seem like a normal person, you like it was just store policy was like in fact like not only could you steal the things and effectively get away with it, but like if somebody tried to stop would kick their ass like the police would memorialize and stop the vigilante from stopping you, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's interesting. But yeah, thank you for coming on. Uh the banging outside of the boardroom is getting uh more and more urgent. So I will have to go attend to uh >> We can't hear any of it, by the way. So I think you're bullshitting. >> No, I'm joking. There's no one no one's banging on the thing. >> There we go. Look at that. Look at that. Alex, you can just call on his [ __ ]

1:57:10 He's just instantly holds. What a [ __ ] Well, I was joking. But yeah, >> there's no like zombie apocalypse, like Call of Duty, you know, Black Ops, like the the council room. It's not No, it's not really like that. But I do I just get this feeling I'm going to walk out and then I'm going to get like a excuse me, sir, our policy. >> Oh, no. There's going to be seven library girls staring at you frowning. It's so over. That never happened before. Like you just advocate like yeah if you're just willing to be an insane person but I'm not. That's my problem. That's actually my main problem. >> In the library for 7.2 minutes longer than I could. >> That's kind of my problem is I'm I'm not willing to be insane. That's why I

1:57:56 notice it cuz I'm I'm jealous of the people who are willing to be insane. >> It's me. I'm the guy. >> Yeah. >> I'm the guy. >> It is actually you. video. It was good to have you. Um, when you leave, >> very important, just hit the red button, but do not close the window. >> All right, guys. We're going to cut it there. Big thank you to our sponsors, Poly Market, Citizen X, Zcash, and Passage Press, specifically Citizen X in this case. And a big thank you to Alex for coming on and telling us all how you can buy passports, and how your country of origin could completely ruin your life if you do not purchase a passport from him. Uh, please also remember to like and subscribe and all that. Just please, no, seriously, actually, you should

1:58:41 subscribe. Uh, you guys are watching like multiple three-hour podcasts and then not subscribing. So, that means that I truly have to yell at you more for this. So, please do that. Uh, yeah. I love you all. Good night. Godspeed.