Welcome to episode four of the Bitcoin Boomers. I'm Bob Burnett. I'm here with my co-hosts,
Gary Leland and Lawrence Lippard. And today we have a special guest named John Highbush.
John is an old friend of mine. We worked together back about 30 years ago while I was at Gateway
and have kept in touch since we both went into other pastures. In our first episode of
this series, we had a gentleman by the name of George Bodine, and we introduced him as potentially
the most interesting man in the world. But I do think we have another candidate here. John,
and we'll go into the details of his history, but John has had a varied and illustrious career
in politics, in business, in writing, in philanthropy. We're going to dig into a whole
bunch of it. But welcome, John. I'm so glad you could join us. Hey, great to be with you, Bob.
Lawrence and Andy, or Gary. Gary. Gary.
So, John, I think, you know, I alluded to some of the various hats you've worn
kind of in your life. And I'm being serious, by the way, not in jest, that you've led
a tremendously interesting life. I think a lot of us have been blessed to have done so, but
you've touched a lot of lives and seen a lot of things. You and I having a personal relationship,
I know some things that maybe some others wouldn't know. But I thought just to kind of
maybe get people acclimated and introduced to you, we could talk about a few of the things that
you've seen in your life and no one of the things i i i've always found really interesting is um you
had the opportunity to have dinner with lady die and not many people have had that we had a date
with lady oh well excuse me yeah i mean let's upgrade this a little bit yes yes i'm sorry to
shortchange you, John. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that, how you came to have a
date with Lady Di and any observations you might have about her. Okay. Where'd you take her? That's
what I want to know. It's part of the story. No, so I started my career as a young man
working in the Pentagon and that's a little job, almost a nothing job, but moved on to
Capitol Hill. And so I was in politics for the first part of my career and jumped from Capitol Hill.
This is during the Reagan presidency and became Elizabeth Dole's chief of staff when she was
Secretary of Labor for President George H.W. Bush. And when I was chief of staff at Labor for two
years, then jumped over to the American Red Cross of all places because Elizabeth was the first
cabinet secretary to leave the Bush administration, make that jump. And she asked me to come over with
her. And, you know, I told her at the time, you know, the only thing I know about the Red Cross
Elizabeth is they taught me how to swim, I think. And that's a good thing to learn.
Yeah, really. So I was the number three and then the number two under Elizabeth at Red Cross. And she's an incredibly bright Harvard-trained lawyer and incredible personality, hugely smart.
she did so many things while at the Red Cross
one of them was she struck up a friendship with Lady Diana
who at the time was the British
ambassador for the Red Cross worldwide and Diana was
as you might remember from that time was all about landmines
and removing landmines from war torn nations and she came over
to visit the United States
at a time when I had just made the move
from running this big national party committee
to Gateway computers, in fact.
And so, Bob, you may, I know you will recall
our good friend and CEO, Ted White.
So I was only on the job at Gateway for a couple of months
and I was in Ted's office and the phone rang.
Actually, Ted's secretary came in and said,
John, there's a call for you.
And I was in this intense discussion with Ted.
So I'm like, just tell whoever it is, I'll call him back.
So then she comes back and he goes, no, they really insist you take the call.
And I started feeling bad because I'm like, Ted's going to get mad here.
You know, what is it?
So I said, look, I don't care who it is.
I'm in a meeting.
She comes back a third time and she opens the door.
Ted says, just take the stupid call.
I pick up the phone and there's nobody on the line, but there's a recording and it's Frank Sinatra singing happy birthday.
And when it gets to happy birthday, I hear Elizabeth's voice when she says, John.
And and at the end of the recording, it's another recording from Elizabeth's.
It says, just wanted to wish you happy birthday.
And as a birthday present, I'd like to know if you'd like to go on a date with Lady Diana.
yeah this meeting's over
and i flew back and for my birthday she she and bob doll her husband were entertaining uh diana
who was on a visit to dc for the red cross purposes and we all went out for dinner and a date
And it just blew my mind because I at the time, I don't know how many American males I was single at the time were in love with Lady Diana.
I sure was. And so that was drooling through most of the dinner.
And the experience I'll never forget. She had an incredibly bright, great sense of humor, really thoughtful person.
It was just it was one of the funnest nights of my life, I think.
that's that's fabulous so that would have been like what made you john like 98 97 98 something
like that well yeah yeah 97 it was 97. she had just she had gone through a divorce and separated
and all that and she was she was not yet dating that guy if i had dody if i had um but she was
It was right in that moment where she was single and fancy free.
Right.
Yeah.
Now, John has a lovely wife.
Her name is Marcella.
He did very well.
Don't tell her this lady die story.
She would not.
So life was very kind, and she's a wonderful woman.
I'm sure the right thing happened.
But imagine how different history might be had this gone a different direction.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And one of the most, I don't know, pretty tough moments is I wasn't that much further.
I don't know, maybe it was six or eight months.
I'm not getting, I won't get the dates right.
But then she dies crashing in that tunnel in Paris.
It was like, oh, you know, when that kind of thing happens.
and just relatively recently had been with her.
It was really striking.
Yeah.
Now, at the time, John, we were in – were we in San Diego at that point?
Not yet, no.
Were you in Poway?
Still in Sioux City.
We were still in Sioux City?
Yeah, yeah.
We were in Sioux City at that time.
Okay.
so um uh larry or gary you got any any uh comments on that i have no comments about lady
dine except uh that's a great story for sure to be able to say i met elizabeth dole uh one time
she was here in town for um i can't remember what it was it was a someone there was a senator
hutchinson i think uh she was here at an event for her i don't know were you with her at that
No, at that time, when I went from the Red Cross, I got invited to run one of the big national Republican Party committees in Washington, D.C., and I think that's right about the time you probably saw her.
I ran the committee that raises an enormous amount of money and does candidate selection for the Republicans in the United States Senate.
And so it's a job you only hold for two years, every election cycle.
And we succeeded in growing the Republican majority to 55 seats, which at the time was a historic high.
And with that very same time frame, I was supporting her husband, Bob, who was running for president at the time.
So, yeah.
I met him at another function later in the year.
Both of them, though, and maybe it's because they were politicians, basically.
But both of them were great people to talk with.
You bet. You bet.
I mean, Bob Dole had the highest, best Midwest sense of humor you would ever meet.
I mean, really an incredible guy.
But yeah, my job, the first half of my life was just pure politics and nonprofit.
And then I had, I literally remember when I was chief of staff at Labor, I was meeting with all these major business figures, you know, the CEO of McDonald's and all the rest.
And I sat there during the conversation with one of them thinking, you know what, this is interesting. I don't know the first thing about business. I mean, I knew politics and all the rest, but this is a huge hole in my resume.
And I so and that's when I had all these job offers to be a lobbyist in D.C., but Gateway called me and I thought, what is this?
Who's that? You know, well, this little computer startup in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa.
And I said, I got to check this out. And that's that's how I got introduced to the tech space and business.
And, you know, the rest is history. And I guess Bob, that's how you met Bob.
Yeah. Right. Right. That's where John and I intersected. And, you know, I think it's really cool, John. I don't know that I've ever heard you say what you just said, which was that you had that realization that that you you didn't understand and then have this experience in the business side.
And, you know, I think that's one of the huge problems with the political base today is, you know, I do have to interface in my current role with lots of people in Washington.
And it is shocking how little business acumen they have, how little understanding of the way business really works.
And yet they're creating the regulations, they're creating the laws, and it's scary as shit.
Yeah, you bet it is.
And, you know, to some extent, Bob, that's in part a matter of age.
And I say that because, you know, when I was 25 years old as a legislative director working on Capitol Hill, I succeeded in killing a defense platform, a weapons system, put tens of thousands of people out of business.
$5 billion, you know, went away. You know, I mean, there, when you're, those jobs at a very
young age, you get placed with an enormous amount of responsibility and you don't even barely
understand the world right near you, much less, you know, everything around you. And it's, and so
there's a, at a young age, you have a lot of power, but not a lot of knowledge. And, you know,
Of course, you gain knowledge as you move forward, but so much of our, you know, many, many, many of the people that have exceeded to the highest level in politics have never worked a day in their life outside of public office.
And, you know, they take tours of business.
They don't understand them.
You know, so it's a real flaw in our system.
I'm not sure how to fix it.
I definitely support term limits, you know, because if we could,
there's just too much power concentration and people wanting to spend their
career in Washington rather than, you know,
actually go out and be a real person somewhere.
Well, John, since you've been in that field, I guess,
do you think that's ever going to be possible to get term limits since they
have to vote on like cutting their careers out?
You know, I'll put it this way. See, I've always been right of center on the conservative end of the political spectrum.
And I've worked for members of Congress and in administrations where if we could cut federal government spending in half, I'm in.
You know, how do we get there, right?
And because it's the national debt and what it has done to this nation, the whole monetary system, everything, it's just it is so extremely flawed.
And the problem is, if you're an average member of Congress or the Senate, there's nothing in it for you to cut spending.
I mean, it's you know, it puts you in trouble during election time.
And so they accumulate this power by continuing to give away, you know, spend beyond our means.
and so now we've got a $37 trillion national debt.
I think term limits come around
when this nation ends up upside down
into some kind of a revolution
where people have just frankly had enough.
I mean, and do I see that day in the near term?
No, but that is definitely where we're heading.
We are heading off a cliff, a fiscal cliff
and it's because there's no discipline in the system.
We all agree strongly.
I don't think there's anyone here who disagrees with you.
Yeah, it's important.
We've got to reset it.
John, I'm curious, I was doing the research on your background, and I noticed a strong
connection to Reagan, who I admire, and to Nancy Reagan as well.
Can you kind of walk us through some of that, just because I'd love to hear the first-hand
stories of the two of them.
You know what I mean?
You must have seen things that the three of us would never have seen.
Yeah, sure.
Sure. First, while I've been to the White House hundreds of times, I never worked directly for Ronald Reagan.
I was I got now I met him many times and was in meetings with him and I worked a lot for Mrs. Reagan.
But on Capitol Hill, the congressman I worked for, he got swept in on Reagan's coattails in 1980, just like many others did.
And we had this fairly liberal district, which was not easy to get reelected in.
Where was it? What state was it from?
Fifth District of Oregon.
So that Portland suburbs down through Salem, the Willamette Valley, that whole area.
And so to be pro-Reagan and pro-Reagan economics at the time was a near death sentence.
But that's what we were. Not at all. Yeah. So I spent eight years in a touch and go situation where, you know, every two years you thought I'm going to be out of a job because he was, you know, he voted consistently with Reagan.
And Reagan was all about less taxes, less regulation, cut federal spending and strong defense.
That wasn't what Oregon wanted, that was for sure.
So anyways, my first day on the job as a young kid on Capitol Hill, I got to run across the street and watch Reagan hold up his hand, take the oath of office.
And then my last day on Capitol Hill, I got invited down to the White House, shake his hand and watch him get on the helicopter.
And they circled the city a couple of times before he went back west.
But I had been engaged in many, many issues that Reagan was involved in.
So having been around him on the legislative side, I got to know him, Mrs. Reagan.
And so then I went off of my career thinking, well, that's probably the end of my Reagan connection.
But after I left Gateway and did some other things, Mrs. Reagan called me and said, hey, John, would you consider running the Reagan Library?
And I was living in La Jolla at the time.
And I thought first, I was with my son.
We were in a toy store.
He's like five years old screaming.
Hi, John, this is Nancy Reagan.
And I said, yeah, right.
Then there was silence.
So this might really be, it kind of sounded like her.
So they said, no, I'd like you to consider moving up to L.A.
I was living in La Jolla.
Consider moving up here and run the Reagan Library.
I said, well, Mrs. Reagan can ask you one question.
Would you consider moving the Reagan Library to La Jolla?
I just didn't want to move.
And she said, no.
Okay.
Six months later, there I was moving to L.A.
and running the Reagan Library.
And when you run the Reagan Library, between Mrs. Reagan and everybody
and anybody that ever worked for them, they go through there.
I mean, it's just a Reagan fest.
So I spent 13 years doing that.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
That's where some of these stories come in.
You know, you were talking before we went on air about finding a vial of Reagan's blood.
I mean, that was kind of a unique situation.
And I fought my tail off to make sure we fixed that.
And we did.
But it took a lot of effort.
Maybe tell that story.
Yeah, John, tell that story.
Well, you might remember when Reagan was the assassin, when Hinckley attempted to assassinate him in Washington, D.C., outside the hotel.
Reagan didn't know he was shot.
He got shoved in the limousine and he thought he might have broke the Secret Service agent
might have broken a rib when he pushed him in.
And he just said, let's get back to the White House.
And then the Secret Service agent noticed that blood was starting to form on his lips.
And he said, bullshit, we're going straight to GW Hospital.
And they went into the hospital.
So when Reagan, they pulled the bullet out of him and he had lost, believe this or not, he had lost one half of his blood by the time they got up to the table.
Yeah.
So there was plenty of blood to go around.
There was a vial of blood that they took for testing purposes to determine what he had in the system and that sort of thing.
And over the, that blood got put in a storage facility and over the years kind of got forgotten.
And then a nurse found it and stole it and took it home.
And she passed away.
And then her son found it.
And her son decides he wants to sell it on eBay.
And this was not a good situation.
Mrs. Reagan called me and said, have you read this story about Ronnie's blood?
And I said, yeah.
She said, you're going to go get it.
And we had, I mean, lots of lawyers, lots of threats, you know, I mean, we came after
them and they voluntarily gave it up.
They got so scared of what might occur.
And so that blood now is in the safe that in my old office at the Reagan Library It just would have been ridiculous You know you can let something like that happen So did they give it up like no problems They just said oh here the blood
Or did it take a lot of time?
It took about a week of lawyers with big, sharp fangs, you know.
Yeah, it's just fascinating.
I think, by the way, if you're out there,
you've never been to the Reagan Library,
It's a phenomenal facility.
The work that John did to build it, I've had the pleasure of going there and getting a tour from John
and kind of going even into some rooms and things that maybe not everybody gets to go to.
And just absolutely fascinating.
And whether you're a fan of Reagan or not, I happen to be.
But whether you're a fan or not, it's a major part of American history.
and it's just hard not to even walk through those halls and not kind of just feel the vibe, you know,
and it must have been pretty cool to go there every day, John.
Yeah, it really was.
I mean, and the thing is, when you hear the word library, you know,
you just think some big place with a lot of books on the shelves.
It's just so much more than that.
It's an enormous museum.
There's, you know, you climb aboard Air Force One and take a tour of it.
You know, you can, there's events and special exhibits and concerts and presidential debates.
I mean, it's a very, very active cultural center, you know, where many, many things happen.
And it's the most visited of all the presidential libraries by like three to one.
And Air Force One is inside the museum.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys remember Boone Pickens?
Yeah, sure.
Yes.
Yeah, well, Boone wrote a $50 million check to put a big glass case around Air Force One so that the library could accept the plane from the Air Force.
Boone was on the board of the Reagan Foundation at the time.
How did they get it there?
I never asked that question.
Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because that it's there.
There were two Air Force Ones during Reagan's time, both of them 707s.
And this one was essentially being surplused.
It had finally reached the end of its useful life.
But every president from Reagan, actually from Lyndon Johnson on to George W. Bush has flown aboard that aircraft.
And we were crafty enough to get the Senate to appropriate the funds to allow the Air Force to surplus.
And then we had to buy the plane and build all this stuff, you know, around it.
And well worth it because something like 30 percent of all visitors to the Reagan Library come specifically to get aboard Air Force One.
Sure. So. So were a lot of other libraries fighting for that plane if so many presidents had been in it?
Other museums. And Bob, to your question, how big.
So its last flight was out to an Air Force base here in California.
They took the wings off. They took off the tail. They flew it in pieces.
They had to shut down I-5 and, you know, it was really something.
But, you know, it took about a year to reassemble.
And now, if you just charge up the batteries and put gas in it, you can fly it away.
It was restored by GE and Boeing to flying conditions.
Interesting.
Yeah.
That's fabulous.
You know, the great thing about this conversation, we haven't talked a lot about economics.
because I was thinking I was going to tell you guys,
I know you all know economics backwards, forwards.
When I'm thinking about starting a GoFundMe campaign
for me to make up for my lack of knowledge in economics.
So if you guys would be interested in contributing to that.
Yes.
You need to make that for Bitcoin.
On the monitors.
Yeah.
I'll send you one too.
I'll send you Bitcoin and an American dream if Mel will give me that address.
So you'll get another.
If you probably read 10 books, you'll be 80% of where you need to be.
I mean, well, if you could say the creature from Gretchen from Jekyll Island by Edmund Griffith.
You know that book? Nope. That's a must.
It's on the creation of the Fed. It's basically the creation of the Fed.
You know, I don't know how much Bob told you about us, but, you know, as you know, we're all Bitcoiners.
And, you know, our belief and my belief, and I think Bob's and Gary's too, is that really the monetary system is what's led to the broken nature of our country today.
You know, the system is set up to benefit, you know, the politicians and the banks and the Federal Reserve are all kind of a cabal.
And they got together and they rigged the system in their favor.
And that's why we have the wealth inequality.
and that's why we have 30% interest rates
and that's why, it's really why America's not,
you know, the America that we all grew up in.
I don't know where you grew up, John.
Where did you grow up?
What area of the country were you in?
McLean, Virginia, right outside Washington, D.C.
Yeah, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
I think Bob grew up in Wisconsin.
I'm not sure.
Gary, where did you grow up?
Charleston, South Carolina.
Yeah, I mean, as we all recall,
I mean, that was really a vibrant middle class
when we were growing up.
My dad was a shopkeeper
and the guy who ran Ford
lived down the street from us.
He probably made four or five times
what my dad made,
but he didn't make 400 times
what my dad made.
Do you know what I mean?
And it was just,
you know,
it was just a fairer,
more balanced system.
Probably the biggest crime
of our lives
that I know I remember,
and you probably do too,
you're probably similar ages,
was Nixon going off
the gold standard in 71.
That was a really,
really bad thing.
I mean,
when we abandoned sound money
in 1971. That was the beginning of the end. Now, we had enough institutional momentum because,
you know, in 46, we stood at the top of the world having won World War II that, you know,
and all the other countries were destroyed. So, you know, we coasted on that momentum for a long,
long, long time. But, you know, the rot and the creep just came in and pretty soon,
you know, you had Cheney saying deficits don't matter and you had politicians saying, you know,
we got to go make the Middle East safe so we can grab all their oil.
The next thing you know, you've spent $8 trillion and maimed a lot of people.
And, you know, it's just, it's all, it's all frigging tragic.
It's absolutely tragic.
And, you know, I know that in my case, I think really in all three of our cases,
we're all working and supporting Bitcoin because we really believe that Bitcoin is the way out of this thing.
If we go back to a sound money standard, and that could involve gold, by the way, too.
gold is the way we like to look at it is gold is analog sound money and bitcoin is digital sound
money and both of them have the advantage of being distinct from the government the reason the
government's gotten away with all this stuff and it's become so out of control as you alluded to
earlier is that they can just they can print money into existence and and so the temptation to do
that is so large and they do it and that keeps them in power and and you know the cost they don't see
the cost, but the cost is the working class man or woman who goes to the grocery store
and suddenly ground beef is $9 instead of $2 because of all the inflation.
So it's really problematic.
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.
I remember I was on the budget committee staff in Congress and at the time the federal budget
deficit was nearing this all-time high of several hundred billion. And the national debt is not yet
one trillion. We could eyeball it and see in three or four years if the spending kept on the
path it was. It was going to be a trillion. And that just was a mind blower. And now you think
about where we are today. It's absurd. Of course it is. In the book, I go through that. I remember
Remember how everyone was down on Reagan for the deficits and just how irresponsible the Reagan deficits were?
And they were $100, $200 billion.
That was quaint by comparison.
And he also got a lot of real GDP growth.
I mean, there were a few years in there where he grew 4%, 5%, 6% a year as a result of that.
And that's what led to the failure of the Soviet Union.
So one could actually make an argument that it did make sense to deficit spend there.
The problem is guys like Dick Cheney and other guys picked up on it and said, hey, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.
Yeah.
They stepped in.
No, yeah.
In fact, in fact, if you look back at the Reagan years, just like you said, people say, well, he didn't cut the deficit.
No, but he did something that was unprecedented at the time.
He cut the rate of growth of federal spending.
That was like the best you could do, right?
Because Reagan never owned the Congress.
He had Democrats were in charge of the House of Representatives all eight years of his presidency.
I had two.
Yeah, yeah.
Was he the chairman of the House?
Yeah, it was Tip O'Neill and then Jim Wright, who was speaking.
Yeah, right.
Everything was a compromise, right?
So the best you could do was cut the rate of growth of the size of the federal government.
You couldn't cut the government size itself.
Now, Trump's been trying to do it, but, you know, even there, there are all sorts of puts and takes.
And, you know, we're still on this terrible path.
If I remember correctly, Reagan was, and I was just going to say, if I remember correctly, wasn't Reagan super big on trying to get to the line item veto, which he never could get?
Yeah.
I think that would make an astounding difference.
Yeah, well, go back to the fundamental of all fundamentals. Medicine would just get a true balanced budget act passed. You know, but now we're so far off the cliff. I mean, to balance the federal budget, it would take like Bitcoin sized, you know, value and any remarkable, we'd have to cut half of the federal budget as exists today.
You know, it's one of the good macro analysts that we follow says you basically have to cut Social Security, Medicare and defense spending by 50 percent for the next 15 years.
Good luck with that.
Yeah. Well, here's another one.
In in in two years.
Our interest payment on the debt alone is going to exceed all the money we spend on all discretionary programs and all of our defense budget.
Yeah. And then by 2050, interest on the debt alone will exceed the entire federal budget.
You know, what I think is what I think this this review of kind of where we were in the Reagan era and and comparisons where we are now is really important because I think a lot of younger people.
And even older people probably have no concept as like, how did we get here?
And, you know, Larry, for us in the kind of coming from the Bitcoin world and that have have really kind of dug into economics, 71 was a big deal.
Like the the the the Nixon removal of us from the gold standard.
Well, that was a removal, Bob.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's temporarily suspending the redemption of dollars for gold was how it was categorized or how he stated.
But I think what's interesting about Reagan, you know, since we're kind of focused there, was that happened in 71.
Then by the late 70s, we have Carter, the Carter administration.
We have inflation running out of control.
It kind of was the foreshadow of kind of what was going to happen, like this chaos, because now the relationship of really all responsibility was gone and accountability.
John, there's a guy in the Bitcoin world that his name's Jack Mallor.
He's a young guy, kind of one of the guys I think that a lot of us find promising about the future.
I don't know. He's maybe in his early 30s.
But he has this phrase that I give him a lot of credit for.
And he says, no man should have to work for what another man can print.
And I think it's a wonderful way of categorizing it.
And what we've done in this case, the man is the government.
So, you know, at that point, fiscal responsibility became completely it really didn't matter anymore.
Right. I mean, tax to a certain degree, tax revenue didn't even matter that they could print whatever they wanted.
And the U.S. has this strange, not strange, but very preferred position, too, that because the rest of the world is dependent on the dollar, it's the reserve currency, we kind of export inflation.
So when we grow the money supply, we feel it, but about 80% of the impact of that growth is actually felt outside our borders, not inside, which I find kind of immoral and ethical that that be the case.
How do you think, John, if Reagan, ask you to go inside Reagan's head for a minute here.
So if Reagan was president right now and he was looking at this situation, how do you think he would react to $38 trillion and at least the fiscal side of this?
Yeah, well, okay.
So let's wind the clock back first.
when Reagan came into office post-Carter, as you say, inflation was 13.5%. Interest rates were 20%.
Marginal tax rates were 70%. I mean, thank God I wasn't working at the time. I was in
college or something. What did I care? But when Reagan came in office and these kinds of conditions
existed. I don't know how people made it. You know, I mean, so two years later,
Reagan lost 26 Republican seats in the House and a few seats in the Senate. And why is that? You
know, I remember at the time, the mantra was on the Republican side, Reagan was saying, stay the
course, stay the course, you know, fiscal discipline, all that stuff. And the Republicans
Because then Congress was saying, yeah, stay the curse, stay the curse, meaning the pain was so great that they all thought they were going to lose because they started voting against this federal spending and what have you.
And Reagan did lose 26 seats. There's a price to be paid by being fiscally disciplined.
Right. It's why you see this to this very day, even Republicans are jumping ship, you know, Trump ship for certain things because they're just trying to preserve their power or preserve, basically preserve their seat in Congress.
So I have, you know, I watched the phenomenon of Trump in the mid 2015s, and I'm now fully convinced myself.
What Trump does is he wakes up in the morning, he goes under the bed, he grabs this binder and it's the Reagan playbook.
I mean, if you think about what Reagan stood for, Trump's trying to do many of those things, a strong national defense, lower taxes, and from a monetary policy standpoint, as you all know, I mean, he's probably the first and only president that has been pro-crypto, pro-Bitcoin.
And he thinks like a fiscal conservative.
Now, does he have the ability to pull it off in the modern day, especially with the complexion of Congress like it is?
Whole nother question.
You know, I mean, it's now almost like it's like become Mount Everest, you know, and not many people have got enough oxygen to make it up there on their own.
So I now put put in a hypothetical, put Reagan in charge.
First, he'd fall over dead at the size of the debt.
I mean, and he would be urging us to cut spending like you can't believe.
He'd also be, you know, pushing for, you know, supply side style tax cuts and the rest.
But I genuinely think we're beyond the day when those things can work.
I mean, I really do believe that.
I mean, a lot of people don't want to hear this, but I believe there needs to be a revolution of some kind.
because the situation gets so bad that there's no choice but for everything to be turned upside down.
And maybe that's when there's, you know, Bitcoin has its moment.
Until then, you know, Bob, I'm just trying to do it.
It's not as though Bitcoin doesn't make perfect sense like gold does.
However, I'm trying to understand how do you get there from here with every vested interest, every economic interest in the United States based in the current system?
I don't think it's just going to take a couple pieces of legislation and a president that favors it.
I mean, you're asking everybody in Washington who's built their whole careers on power and controlling the monetary policy to say, give up and go home.
And I don't think that's going to be a legal product.
John, do you think Reagan would be a Bitcoiner?
Yeah, I do. I do. Because he was always, I mean, think about this.
let's take technology on the, on the,
what people used to call Star Wars. Yeah.
I mean,
Ronald Reagan had visions of golden dome and everything that we're now
spending money on 40 years ago. I mean,
so he was a great outside the box thinker and he was, you know,
he was the one that he invested in enormous amount of funds and modernizing
the American military through technology. And so, yeah,
I do think he'd be a Bitcoin.
I look under number Paul Volcker was the head of the Federal Reserve under Reagan.
And with the interest rates as high as it were, Reagan kind of went like this.
He's like the Fed has to, you know, we don't have any choice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've tightened monetary policy and put people's lives in misery for a couple of years to get inflation down.
And once we do that, we can get on back on a better path.
And, you know, that is what happened.
However, Ray, even, you know, post Ray.
It was scary for the first couple of years because he didn't know if it was going to work.
And it's like you say, that was the stay the stay the curse part.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we bought a condo then and interest was 17 percent, if I remember correctly or something.
Those 20 percent were going to put my dad out of business.
The thing I love about Reagan was he always, you know, jolly and happy and positive.
but he always understood that government was the fundamental problem.
He came out of that Goldwater, libertarian, West Coast view that who needs a federal government?
To the degree we have one, let's rein it in as much as possible.
With the exception of standing up to the Russians, which one can argue that was a good use of
federal government time and resources.
Yeah, yeah.
In fact, you just almost
stated the line exactly That the most famous line from Reagan first inaugural address which was government is the problem I can remember Is that exactly what you said Yeah I thought it was something similar to that
Yeah, yeah.
I think he said the scariest words are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. You know, on the economic side with Reagan, I think, I mean, as many as remarkably positive some of Trump's actions have been, I don't think he's still not done something that has been as big as defeat the entire Soviet Union.
Right. I mean, that changed the world forever, or at least hopefully forever. And the way he did it was, yes, through I mean, it was was an economic policy.
Yeah, in a way it was, because what he essentially did was he looked at Gorbachev.
He said, we have economic might. We're going to use it and we're going to build, you know, a defense system like you've never seen.
And that was the moment when the Soviets just said, we can't afford this. You know, we give up.
that's essentially the play, but it did cost some money.
We had to rebuild American defenses to make it happen.
You know, when Russia was invading Afghanistan back during that time period,
I guess, basically, I always felt like the end was coming for them soon
because they were overexpanded,
that it would be impossible to keep up with what was going on financially.
Do you ever feel like the United States is in that situation right now?
that we are overexpanded? Carbon copy. Yep. Well, at least during the, you know, roughly the last
10, 12 years, the whole Iraq, Afghanistan, 4A, I mean, you know, what we should have done,
it was, you know, we, you know, we should have gotten a lot of bombers and over a 10-year period
It just struck one time after another from the air and killed whatever we saw moving that looked anything like Osama bin Laden.
But we sure as hell should not have put boots on the ground in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
I mean, a complete waste of time and money.
And we were just way overextended on that front.
And it probably added a couple trillion dollars for our national debt.
So now military strategists, military strategists would say, well, you can't beat those guys unless you have boots on the ground.
And I think our posture should, when we're not looking at beating, we're looking at punishing them.
Yeah, and or just keep them out of our country.
Yeah.
Do you look, John, at the way that Trump is handling Venezuela, which, you know, hitting the drug boats, seizing the tankers,
obviously kidnapping Maduro as a more economically efficient way of trying to achieve something similar?
Yeah, well, Venice first, there'll be a lot of people I know don't agree with me, but I support every single decision he's made with respect to Venice oil.
And, you know, for lots of reasons, but it's a big national security umbrella.
I mean, there are the greatest transit point from which drugs in South America, Central South America flow.
It kills a lot of people. That's one good reason alone.
The second is they ripped us off. We used to have oil companies down there making money hand over fist, and they took that away from us.
But third, I think people don't really fully understand to the extent that China and Russia and Iran were making the country of Venezuela a platform from which to continue to screw with our national security.
That's the part that I observed.
It reminded me it was like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I mean, this is a country in our hemisphere that's very close by, and we've got these three state actors that we really don't like taking over.
And I think, you know, some people say Trump struck Venezuela, and I think he did.
I actually think the CIA actually made the call for the Department of Defense.
Yeah, well, remember Trump came right out and said, yeah, well, we're sending the CIA in there.
I mean, he was very bored about it, and he was right.
Well, you know, but we went and kidnapped a president of Panama, and I don't remember this much action or negativity toward capturing him.
And he didn't do near as much as we were seeing from Maduro.
Maduro, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Listen, we're going to act like the superpower we are or we're not.
You know, if our interests are being threatened, we have to act.
And I think Trump understands that he actually does what he says.
I think now, you know, you know, Trump can shoot from the hip rhetorically.
But I think the world now understands that when he says something just like Reagan, he really needs it.
And that's that's good.
I think that's good to keep people on their toes in that regard.
John, I'm curious, you know, one of the, if I can shift just a tiny bit, we, one of the reasons we do this show, and it's called the Bitcoin Boomers, is Gary, Larry, and I, we're within the Bitcoin community and the Bitcoin cohorts, we're, we're kind of the elders to a certain degree.
And there's a couple others, but there frankly aren't many, at least that are prominent and vocal.
And part of what we're here for is to try to get our generation that we share with you a little more involved, a little more engaged.
And, you know, it's hard because Bitcoin is a strange thing.
It's not like a startup company.
It's not we're not we're not like AI. We don't have there's no there's no company like open AI or Grok or Google out championing it.
There is no leader. There's no central authority. And what it often means, I think, is that the narrative.
The proper narrative certainly doesn't get to people.
and in fact the opposite is true
that we've certainly come to find
that over the last decade or so
that the three of us have been involved
that if we look at major media outlets
whether that's CNN or the New York Times
or the Wall Street Journal
they've been adversarial
and so I think one thing
that I would be curious about is, especially given, you know, your extensive background,
the fact that you keep current with world events, you know, how do you perceive Bitcoin and what
kind of things out there make you question it or the things that are unclear to you? Like,
kind of how do you... And in your peer group, I mean, the people you hang out with,
Yeah. You seem to kind of get it, but do you find that to be the case for your peers or not?
Yeah, I have a good buddy who's a home builder, or he tries to be a home builder here in California, which is not easy.
He's told me this story a few times about this friend of his at the time was a billionaire who made his wealth in the gaming industry.
And this was how many years ago?
I guess it's when $10,000 would buy a lot of Bitcoin.
You guys tell me how many years ago that was.
Probably 15, 12 years ago, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
And this guy went to my buddy, the home builder.
He was fairly well off, but he was in some struggle
because there were some issues with permitting and that kind of thing.
So the guy said to him, look, just give me $10,000.
You ought to bet on this thing called Bitcoin.
And my friend Brian's like, what?
What's that?
He said, no, just $10,000.
I'm telling you, you're going to make them, you know.
And Brian said, no, no, no.
I just, I don't have the excess cash at this point.
And so to this day, he's like, he said, how many billion dollars would I be worth?
Yep.
You know, if I had done that.
So there's, in my peer group there, I'll tell you how my peers feel.
They probably feel like me.
We missed the boat, God damn it.
It was like, you know, you know, if you brought it to me today, I'd be in.
But man, you know, it's just it's like it's too late.
Everybody got in early.
You know, they've done wonderfully.
And no matter when they pass, they will have done wonderfully.
Good for them and good for them.
It's just it's like the train that left the state.
It's almost like, Bob, it's like if you weren't into building A.I.
10, 12 years ago, you know, you're way behind the curve now.
Or if you weren't into, would pick an industry in the tech sector.
And, you know, if you didn't get in early, you're not going to, you'll never really be
a winner.
If you were a PC-e-owned company in 2010, you were too late, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So it's not as though they wouldn't like a lot of it if they could get their hands on
it at some reasonable price.
And I know that the topic would be what's reasonable.
but it's yeah i missed the train you know and yeah it's sad that it's a price bias i mean you know
just to draw a comparison to that i think um amazon is probably the best performing you know
one of the best performing stocks other than nvidia which was just running nuts but but
it comparable to bitcoin is amazon because it came out you know before the gfc in early 2000
when the internet got started and it's up 288 000 from the time and i recall a lot of people you
know in the 2008 period 2010 period 15 they all say oh gosh yeah i wish i'd gotten in on that but
you know you guys have made a ton of money but you're too late well it just kind of kept going
yeah yeah but you know you know people the people who bought at a hundred dollars said the same
thing because they said i could have got this at a nickel and the people who bought it a thousand
dollars said the same thing for a dollar and yeah yeah someone got it for ten thousand someone's got
it for a couple thousand or less and and someday you know it's it's a hundred thousand just under
a hundred thousand a day i mean in 10 years 15 years people say you know you bought your bitcoin
for below a million bucks yeah i bought one exactly yeah you know and it's a million now in fact when
When I sign books at my book conference, when I go to the show to sign books,
I always put the Bitcoin price in there and the date because I want whoever receives the book.
I know their kids will look at that book someday and say, hey, mom or dad met the guy who wrote this thing.
Gosh, when they got this book, it was only $70,000.
It's $3 million today.
That's a good idea, Larry.
It's just going to keep on marching.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
I.
or not you know you know i i go ahead john well i was just gonna say i maybe five percent of the
peers i know have been wise enough to figure out a way to make it at least a per some percentage
of their portfolio right you know yeah i'm not gonna miss out on this and they they can afford
to be that diversified and right they'll they'll treat bitcoin just like they would treat gold
you know um but i would say probably the other the impediment to boomers like myself and others in
my peer group um is that you know you're just so damn busy you know like you know for me i'd be
thinking okay if it's at 90 000 today or something i i think in these big round terms like i need to
get one bitcoin right you know i i know i know i know but that's it's like a lack of sophistication
and understanding yeah how you can get in without having to buy one big solid coin you know and yeah
and that's there's there's a price buy it's one of the reasons some of the other cryptos
exist like we are all bitcoin purists like we would say don't mess with any of the other
shit. It's all tainted. But it attracts other people because it might be $3 or $12 or $20.
This is the next Bitcoin. You know what I mean?
Or, yeah. But there is no such thing. But I really appreciate, I think one of the, it's valuable
because we live in a cocoon, John, or in our own echo chamber. It's valuable to hear from
other people because it helps us kind of prioritize how we talk about it. And I think one of the
things I'll offer just a little bit more to what Gary and Larry have said relative to the you're
too late. The first thing is to understand that there's only 21 million Bitcoin. And, you know,
remember when you just said it, like, hey, if I could only get one, like, which would be a little
under $100,000 right now. Well, there's four times more millionaires in the world
than there are Bitcoin in the world. And we're at a point where, and that scarcity can't change.
So it's different than anything else, whether it's a stock or whether it's gold or anything
else. We've never had an asset in the world, other than maybe a Monet painting or a collectible
item, but where a true commodity had a fixed supply. And you could think of it as we're
competing against, remember what I said before, what man should work for what another man can
print, there is no limit on the money printer. So as that printer keeps rolling, and you've even
said it yourself, like we're headed toward a revolution, and whether that's a violent
revolution or an economic catastrophe, you know, or some combination of the two,
it is a separation from that. So the way, you know, and Larry wrote a great book on this, but
we view it as there is no limit. And even if we wanted to put it into current terms,
there's about $90 trillion of assets in the world today. There's only 21 million Bitcoin. So
you could make an argument that the appropriate price for Bitcoin could be as high as $40 million
per Bitcoin. Because that's what 21 million times... It's 900 trillion. Yeah, or divided into that is.
So that's one thing. The second thing I'll say, though, and it's even Bitcoiners miss this a lot, is that there's Bitcoin, the asset, and there's Bitcoin, the monetary system. So Bitcoin is not just an asset. It is an alternative money system.
so um it it gets its valve do you remember metcalf's law john by chance from your computer
days so it's you know the for those that don't know it's the power of a network is equal to the
square of the number of users of the network so it's a it's a term and whether that's cell phones
whether that's personal computers whether that's whatever but it applies to monetary systems too so
So as adoption of Bitcoin increases, the value of the network increases, its usability increases.
And we're at a point in the adoption of Bitcoin as a monetary network where it already moves more value annually than Visa and MasterCard combined.
So very few people probably understand that, that that's how much movement of money.
And it's doing so in a frictionless way. There's no approvers. Right now, at least,
those are very inexpensive transactions. If I had a billion dollars, I could send you a billion
dollars, John, for about $2, and I could do it in 10 minutes. The existing monetary system cannot
compete with that. And if you think about it, we can't even back up a little geopolitically,
And you think about that, what does that mean for a nation state? So like Russia, which when Russia invaded the Ukraine, one of Biden's first actions, I think it was a mistake, was to kick them off of the SWIFT system.
And the reality is all it did is it forced them toward Bitcoin.
The Russians now, their foreign trade minister openly admits that that is a major part of how they do international commerce now is, you know, selling oil and buying oranges using Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Yeah. So the where I'm getting at is where it's at whether it's at the nation state level or the corporate level or the individual level.
The removal of government or an overseer from the process is part of it.
And we'll even use Reagan's words, right? You know, government is the problem.
Well, let's get them the hell out of money and the monetary system.
Yeah, no, I get it. You see, knowing what little I do about where Bitcoin stands in the halls of Congress and halls of government is, you know, I think Bitcoin is absolutely ultimately going to succeed as, you know, its digital gold.
It's an asset. The world will treat it that way. Washington will treat it that way.
Now, I think the industry is in this interesting situation, whichever industry goes through.
And that is, it's looking for nods of approval and respect and, you know, ultimately regulation that allows the system to grow and flourish.
So the good news is it's well on its way towards getting the necessary regulatory framework to thrive.
It's just one of those be careful what you wish for things, right?
Because, you know, in a regulatory framework, you're inviting all sorts of mischief, you know.
And will the industry be happy with how Washington treats it purely from an asset perspective?
How do you tax it? You know, all that stuff.
The Mount Everest that I see is when the Bitcoin wants to move as it wants to, to go from an asset, digital asset, to becoming the money supply.
You know, that's a big term. But in that is because it forces every single player in the current system to see their power. Right. And how do you bring that about? That that's really I mean, because you may have lots of very conservative fiscal restraint Republicans that would say, yeah, we ought to really ought to move to a system that's highly efficient, that doesn't involve the government and the rest of that.
But in saying and doing that, they are giving up, they are ceding power to another.
Absolutely.
Right?
And why do you get elected?
To gain power and to use power.
Right?
So that why I always feel like on its way to becoming truly the money supplier the monetary system it has to achieve something that I don know that any civilization in history has ever achieved at this level
And that's going to be difficult.
I think our view, the way we're going to get there, John, you're right.
They're never going to give it up voluntarily, just like they're never going to enact term limits.
and rather sadly, because it's going to be a painful episode when it happens,
but rather sadly, what's going to happen is the currency is going to fail.
We're going to have a hyperinflation event,
and at that point in time, there'll be a brief period where there's a little bit of chaos,
and then we'll say, okay, what kind of money can we trust,
and the only choices are going to be gold, silver, and Bitcoin.
Yeah, and if the United States currency fails, that means the world's currency fails.
I mean, everybody's so tethered to it. Right. And so that's why I, you know, I've always people will say, you know, well, this country is so divided, right and left where, you know, everybody's gone to their distinct corners. There's no middle anymore. How do we get Americans to rally with each other and unite?
It's like, yeah, well, what history has proven is you need some absolutely tremendous calamity like a World War II or Pearl Harbor.
Something that's what it takes to get people's frameworks completely altered to change.
Everybody got together after 9-11, John.
Yeah.
I mean, prove your point.
Yeah.
And if that if that's what needs to happen to our monetary system, it's not going to be pretty.
And I don't know for how long, you know, but I know that'll be an earth-shaking event, like something we've never seen before.
I think that's right.
John, if I could go back a second to your statement that you were kind of like thinking you needed one Bitcoin, a whole Bitcoin.
I just want to put this out there.
From what I understand, to be in the top 1% of people that own Bitcoin, you only need a fourth of a Bitcoin.
so you really don't need a lot of bitcoin to have a lot of bitcoin yeah yeah no i get it i get it i
and you know after having this conversation see one of the other probably the worst thing that
happened to me in my in my uh labor at gateway was like many other corporations gateway offered me
well you know you're in the executives you're in the c-suite now so we're going to free of charge
provide you with a financial advisor.
And of course, here comes Goldman, right?
I don't know if you can manage it with Bob, but you know.
Yeah, I had that too, John.
Yeah, so because I was so busy, you know,
doing whatever I was supposed to be doing in my work life,
I said, okay, I'll outsource all my financial advice
and thinking and decisions to this thing called Goldman.
To this day, you know, all my my whole all my everything is tied up and Goldman manages it.
Well, it may be stupid, you know, basically. Right.
I mean, I mean, how much do you think about economics when there's some paid person who's thinking about economics for you?
You know, and but it but I and Goldman as an institution, I know, has been down on Bitcoin for quite some time.
You know, they're not the JP Morgans of the world.
And but this conversation is going to lead me to start asking some pretty tough questions of my financial advisors.
Why I don't have Bitcoin as part of my diversified mix?
I love that, John, because I think that's what you go to your friend.
Right. So your friend, we'll call it a decade or so ago, had even as a billionaire putting ten thousand dollars in Bitcoin.
at that period would have been life-changing. Had Bitcoin gone to zero, it wouldn't have changed
his life at all. So I think, I write a monthly newsletter now for Financial Advisor Magazine,
it goes to 400,000 wealth and financial advisors. And that's part of what I've been telling them for
several years now, is I say, hey, you're going to have to be accountable to the people who years ago
said to you, what about Bitcoin? And you said, no, it's too risky. It's speculative. It's a Ponzi,
you know, whatever it is. Well, it's not. It's roughly the sixth most valuable asset in the
world. It's roughly on par with Amazon right now. And you told them for all these years to stay away.
And now you have a difficult situation because what's happening is a lot of them are pivoting.
Morgan Stanley and, you know, Fidelity and even like Vanguard has now changed their tune.
Like, how do you do that?
How do you go to them and say, oh, now, like you said, I feel like I missed the boat.
So you're going to go to them after they feel like they missed the boat and tell them now to get in?
Like, it's very, very weird situation.
And they were dead wrong.
Obviously, they were dead wrong and they didn't do the work.
A lot of their own vested interests are all about keeping Bitcoin out, right?
I mean, they make money from selling stocks, and so they're going to sell.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I've often said it's only a matter of time until somebody brings a class action lawsuit against these advisors and says, hey, you know, this is the best performing financial asset in the last 16 years.
Why didn't I own any?
That's your job is to put me in these good assets.
You know, I'm going to sue you for malpractice.
I mean, I don't know how much traction they'll get on that.
But the point is that, you know, they're being people are being forced to reckon with it.
And yeah, yeah.
You know, I don't know.
And you guys have probably thought about this, but I'm trying to understand is what parallels, if any, exist behind the evolution of A.I.
and Bitcoin, you know, and I just say that because, you know, the world right now is half of it's on fire.
you know say i can't wait for ai think of the productivity gains i'm going to get go go go you
know and who cares about the rules whatever um and the other half is scared to death i'm going to
lose my job you know this is going to be the end of the world uh you know robots will run the world
and it's like okay well the truth is somewhere in between but it's just it's an accelerated
situ you know the situation is just accelerating where these ai advances are upon us quicker than
than we even know.
And I'm wondering, it just makes sense to me
that from a monetary standpoint,
I'm not surprised that the digital economy
is gonna just move along with AI.
And that's gonna be a lot of wind at its back, I think.
I'd be interested in your viewpoint on that.
Well, I think, go ahead, Larry.
No, I agree with that.
Yeah, I agree with what he said.
Yeah, I think there's a lot there.
I mean, that's probably a whole episode in and of itself, John.
But I'll say a couple of things.
You know, one, as it pertains to AI, I think AI is going to need a currency.
And the logical currency of AI is Bitcoin.
So I think there will be a correlation as this thing matures.
And in fact, there's interesting examples.
If you look at, let's say, a Tesla car, and instead of thinking of the car as owned by somebody, you think of the car itself as an entity which wants to preserve itself.
I'll use this as an example.
Well, it can drive off literally out of the factory and start earning money.
it can start giving rides and it can collect and know that it has that that it can collect bitcoin
and know that it's getting it and and it knows when it needs a recharge it knows when it needs
new breaks um and it has a currency by which it can sustain itself and so you can if you i think
that's an easy example for people to get but you know it could be a robot it could be even a
a completely virtual agent that now has a mechanism by which it,
it can do, it's kind of scary shit, but it's, and,
and it's wild, you know, to think about.
I think it will happen way faster, you know,
even though all of us are in the back nine of life,
I think we will see this in our lifetime, you know, and,
and probably even within the decade,
we'll see these sorts of things fulfill themselves.
I think interestingly, John, we came through an industry, the personal computer industry, and we look at the way it changed the world, the way adoption occurred, the way it changed labor and all those sort of – and I think that was a foreshadow.
This will be a bigger impact, but what happened – I think you entered in the mid-'90s, right? I think that's when you came to Gateway.
So you came in and we started working together almost at the inflection, a key inflection point, I would say. You, you know, you entered there. I happened to start about 15 years before that. And, you know, we went through the classic curve of the innovators, the early adopters, the early majority.
I think you came right as we were leaving the early majority and kind of entering the mainstream.
And that next six, seven years, which when we worked together at Gateway, that was the real glory day of that.
And that's where the world changed.
Because prior to that, and I'm sure you remember that, prior to when you joined, was it like 96, 97, John, something like that?
Yeah, 1996.
So, you know, we didn't have broadband.
There really was no Internet.
People were largely using their personal computer to do things like word processing and spreadsheets.
They maybe had an email account, but it was through AOL.
It was a very different kind of world.
And what happened over the next seven, eight years is, you know, it changed everything, right?
We went from one PC, maybe in each house or each classroom, to every student has one, every desk in every business has one, everybody has their own laptop.
You know, mobile computing.
Yep.
We saw administrative jobs collapse, right?
Clerical jobs, administrative jobs, you know, completely collapsed.
I think all those sort of things.
but AI is
AI is leaps and bounds
beyond that
yeah I think that's it you really put it well Bob
it's almost like AI needs a monetary system
that can keep up with it
that's what it seems like
that'll be when that is like
yeah
John do you
you mentioned like you're not
really been active
You're letting Goldman kind of, you know, at a personal level.
But do you view organizations, we'll use the Reagan Foundation, which I know you are no longer active, when they look at managing their endowment or their trust?
I'm not quite sure what structure you guys have.
How do you see them looking at something like Bitcoin?
and you're part of the, you know, so the Waite Family Foundation and philanthropic,
you know, endeavors. How do you see them looking at it?
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when I started at the Reagan Foundation,
I was stunned that its endowment was only like $30 million and that, you know, that number,
I mean, that would be enough to pay for three quarters of a year of operations.
I mean, it was just way too small.
So we went on a huge development spree.
And by the time I left, we had $350 million in the endowment.
And interestingly enough, yep, Goldman managed to set money too.
Anyways, Andy, the thing about Bitcoin and I'll say, let's say the nonprofit world, which Reagan Foundation would be.
So the entire nonprofit sector has a more conservative dial on their investment strategy than you would if you were a business or in private enterprise.
right? Because, you know, you've got donors, not customers, and you have to watch every dollar like
a hawk if you want to stay tax exempt and grow. So I would say, you know, like while any company,
Microsoft or others have this piece of Bitcoin in their investment portfolio, the harder not to
crack will be the major endowments, whether Harvard or the Reagan Foundation, what have you,
because they're just naturally like, oh, man, if it's an asset that goes up and down and way too
much, you know, they'll stay away. I think it'll take some stability and more broader acceptance.
And it will reach the point where smart endowments in the nonprofit space will invest
and we'll get involved.
But I think at least at this point,
it's probably, you know, further out on the horizon.
Larry and Gary, I have a few other things for John,
but they're kind of like way off
in a completely different direction.
What else do you guys got?
I'm good.
I'd say go that direction or wrap either way.
I wonder how I get a
personalized tour of the Reagan
Museum next time
like Bob got
when you send me your book
just put a little
card in and I'll shoot you back
I'm happy to make that happen
you know because
they still like me enough that
I can
you get the kind of tour that Bob did
you get to literally
sit at Reagan's desk and
Yeah, that was the highlight, honestly.
Yeah, I'll never forget that.
Sounds pretty great.
Yeah.
I have no questions, Bob.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Well, yeah, we're going to kind of move off of Bitcoin because I think maybe we'll close with this.
I mentioned John is one of the most interesting people in the world.
And after, I guess it was no simultaneous with running the Reagan Library, John authored a couple books.
At least the first one, right, John?
The first one you completed, at least while you were there.
Did you do the second one, too?
I did.
Second one.
Yeah.
And I had the pleasure of going to the Reagan Library where we had the, I guess the unveiling, John, I don't know what you would call that, where you unveiled the book.
But the first book was called The Shroud Conspiracy.
And it's a book.
I've read The Shroud Conspiracy and the sequel to The Shroud Conspiracy both a couple times.
They're phenomenal books.
I guess you wouldn't call it historical fiction.
John, what would you call it?
Maybe kind of –
If you're familiar with The Da Vinci Code and that style.
Yeah.
It's a scientific religious thriller.
Yeah.
And this one, as you can probably guess from the title, involves the Shroud of Turan.
And so I think, John, maybe just kind of, you know, why did you write that book?
And what I'm also interested in your perspectives on the Shroud itself.
Sure.
Yeah. Well, I just bought the book, John.
Thank you. Both became bestsellers, which was kind of nice and somewhat of a fluke because I had never written novels before.
When you're in politics, you better know how to communicate. So I knew how to write. I knew how to write well.
One of my degrees is in English. By the time I hit the Reagan Library, I had written every style of right opinion pieces for Wall Street Journal or Times or The Washington Post.
presidential memorandum, speeches for the president, you know, letters to constituents,
every kind of writing you can imagine. I never thought I had the patience to sit there and write
a full-length novel. And I thought, well, you know, I'll just try. So one night I came home,
I chained myself to my desk and I wrote the first paragraph in the first chapter and was on from
there, but I never thought that anybody but my wife and kids would read it, if even them, you know.
But when I, as a fluke, I sent it to somebody who said, hey, you need to get an agent. This is pretty
good. So I did. And three weeks later, boom, Simon and Schuster picked it up and we were off to the
races. And, but the idea for these, this series is built on when I was 17 years old, I sat there,
you know, I'm Catholic. I went to a Catholic high school and we sat in this religion class one day
and they showed this film by the Catholic Church, which is about the Shroud of Terrain. And,
you know, when you see the shroud and you look at the image that's on that famous cloth and you
stare at it and you're like, you've been raised, always kind of wonder, well, what does Jesus Christ,
what did he actually look like? And you look at the shroud, it's kind of stunning.
It, you know, so have you seen it in person? Yes, I have. I have. Yeah. Now it's not on display in
the public very often because the church is hugely careful about lighting and, you know,
as an artifact, especially that old, you have to be extremely careful about exposing it to
radiation, outside light, you know, ultraviolet, all that. So it put the idea in my head that this
is a story that could be very fascinating to write about. And 35 years later, it's still on my mind.
I went, Bob Wood knows this fellow very well, Ted Waite, who I worked for after Gateway. I ran
the Reagan, I ran the Wade Institute. One of our projects was, let's go find the
lost airplane of Amelia Earhart. So I went down in the South Pacific for two months,
aboard some really big ships, trying to find her aircraft, you know, based on formulas that would
determine where she probably entered and crashed and the rest of that. But anyways, when you are
vacuuming the ocean floor for two months. There's a lot of things that are, you know,
you have a lot of time on your hands. And so it was on that trip that I developed the plot
for the book. But I didn't write it right away. I waited till I was at the Reagan Library and I
had some time. And so at nighttime, I just, for six months straight, every night I went and
wrote this book. And it's about a, a historical anthropologist who was a
an atheist, you know, Tim, God's an absurd concept. And, and he's made a
and made a lot of money proving religious relics as fakes around the world.
And he does it using science.
We have a great team of scientists.
They're able to prove through carbon dating and any number of other means
what's real and what's not.
And so I thought, well, why don't I put that to the test?
I took this guy as the character who was asked by the Catholic Church
to prove or disprove the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin,
burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
And it's the book is kind of fascinating because it's not just a scientific whodunit, but it is it's a journey.
It's not just a journey around the world.
It's a journey of internally what happens to him when he discovers through scientific means that the shroud is real.
It is authentic because you can imagine as an atheist that throws his world into a total tailspin.
tailspin, because now he has to believe that there really is this thing called faith really
has something behind it.
And so the book's kind of a love story and a science story and a religious story.
And it ends up getting very out there because in this plot, this group of individuals wants
to steal a speck of blood from the shroud in order to recombine the DNA and create a
second coming of their own.
through cloning of Jesus Christ.
And so it's a big, big tale.
And fortunately, it sold really well.
Hopefully, one of the things I'm spending in my lonely retirement
is trying to figure out if I can get the books converted into a full-length feature film.
And I'm making some progress.
We'll see where it goes from here.
Yeah, that was...
That's a fascinating story.
Yeah, it is.
And I remember, you know, John, even having that conversation with you,
uh right after the book was released and and reading it that yeah this is um well as dan
brown stuff is right i mean they've they've largely been turned into really great movies
or frankly i don think a movie does justice to it i think it better done as like a a 10 netflix thing or something like that so yeah So what do I know But I will say this and I appreciate you sharing this John
I think to try to bring it back to Bitcoin, I think what is interesting,
and I encourage everybody to get the book, read the book.
And if you're a Bitcoiner, think about the protagonist, Bondurant.
Is that, was it John Bondurant? Do I remember it right? He's an atheist and he becomes a believer. And I think there's an analogy to Bitcoin too, that there's a whole bunch of people out there that are non-believers.
that and, you know, part of what we're doing is, you know, we're converting them much like,
you know, through the truth, right? Through the truth, you know, what is money? And,
and John, you know, we, we view this, the three of us, I'm speaking for the three of us,
you know, it's very much a good versus evil battle that we think, you know, money and the
abuse of the monetary system creates a great deal of, and maybe even almost all of the problems
of the world. And if we have a truthful form of money, we have a society that has a chance.
Yeah, really. I mean, that's interesting. I think you're right. You're absolutely right.
In the end, the good conquers.
Hey, John, I have a question on the shroud real quick. This is a long shot, I know, but
you don't happen to know who Russell Brealt is, do you?
Russell, what's the last name?
Breault, B-R-E-A-U-L-T.
He's a friend of mine who's been studying the Shroud since 79, probably.
Wow, okay.
And so I would have been surprised if he hadn't read your book and messaged you or something.
It's the only reason I asked.
Yeah, you know, in fact, there's an extraordinary exposition right now down in Orange County
where there's a whole museum that is dedicated to the shroud
and the controversy and the science and all the rest So it I knew it was a long shot but I just thought I ask Yeah
It's a really, it's, you know, another quick
side story. As I went, I didn't, in the plot of
this book, one of the
antagonists
comes to find he has pancreatic cancer.
And he's given just a few months to live.
And I remember at the time as I was researching,
what are the five worst cancers you can get?
Pancreatic was like right at the top of the list.
And I didn't know at the time, but as I was writing,
I too had terminal cancer.
And I was on the list of five.
and
so I decided to finish
the series before I passed
I was given three months to live
and boy did that ever put me into
a faith tunnel
but at the end of the day
here I sit
having given less than 1% chance to live
just like the character in my book
who was also given a second life
but through very bad meetings, I'll just say that.
So it's kind of, it's interesting
how this world spins around sometimes.
You know, by the way, the way I survived,
I ended up, you know, I was asked this question
when I launched the book,
because a lot of people know about that story,
especially those close to me.
And I had, I underwent five years
of experimental treatments.
And finally, it was this combination
of brand new immunotherapy drugs that I took.
But interestingly enough,
after the first immunotherapy treatment,
I also got on a plane
and I flew to Lourdes in France
where, especially if you're a person of faith,
in the Catholic faith,
there's the site of a miracle.
I'm going there in April, John.
Okay so I immersed myself in the springs of Lourdes And when I came back six weeks later for the first time in five years my scan showed it was clean wow like it was gone now people say well
what did it was this miraculous spring or was it the immunotherapy and i say i don't know maybe it
was a combination of both um but um it just you were asking about that bob in terms of the book
I thought I'd just relate that story quickly.
Yeah.
Well, I thank you for sharing that, John.
Obviously, as your friend and somebody I respect tremendously, I'm so happy you're here.
Like, it is a blessing.
I've sent plenty of prayers for you back in those days.
And, you know, you had a bunch of prayer warriors fighting for you at that time.
But I am a believer in such things.
And like I, Lola, my wife and I, we had last year, we went to Barcelona and then we took, we went up to see the Black Madonna.
I saw that. I saw that. That's great.
Yeah. And just outside of Barcelona.
And we just went to another site in the Philippines recently where I forgot the name because it's a Filipino name.
But anyway, you know, what a wonderful story.
And, you know, John, I'm so happy that we got to do this.
I think we talked about it probably a year ago doing something like this.
But we finally pulled it off, and I think people are going to love this.
I really, really enjoyed spending this time with you.
Thank you.
You bet.
I learned a lot.
Thank you, guys.
I did.
I learned a lot.
And the next call I'm going to make is to Goldman Sachs.
Yeah.
If you need me.
You'll have some ammunition.
You'll say, hey, you've got to read this book.
You know, this will explain your life.
I'll tell you what.
If you send me those books, I'll send you some copies of mine.
How's that?
Sounds like a deal.
Sounds like a deal to me too.
Hey, I just want to remind everybody,
I got a message from Mel.
Don't anyone turn their computers off
when you get through until we get the okay.