Bitcoin & Sports Teams Are The Best Hedge Against Inflation | Chris Kelly

Chris Kelly (0:00)

It is a hedge against inflation. I think that people are rightfully thinking of it that way. And then I think it's also a global store of value, and it's sort of easily accessible from anywhere to anywhere. And it's just incredibly powerful in that way. And so, once it became accepted as a standard, once enough people said, okay, this is gonna work, and the validator network works and everything else, it became the standard store of value.

Anthony Pompliano (0:28)

What's going on, guys? Today, we have a great conversation with Chris Kelly. He's a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings. He's the founder of Kelly Investments, and he's a former Facebook executive. In this conversation, we talk about why he owns Bitcoin, why he likes artificial intelligence, why he owns sports teams, and a brand new idea that he's bringing to the market to go and take minority sports ownership stakes and bring them to the public market. There's a lot packed into this conversation. Chris is someone who's been around the technology industry for a very long time. He understands a lot of what's happening, both in terms of the trends, but the underlying technology itself. And he has made investments in a whole multitude of different areas and industries. And I think that you're going to learn a lot from him. Here's my conversation with Chris Kelly.

All right, Chris, you are the co-owner of the Sacramento Kings. And you also like Bitcoin, which is going to get everyone very excited. So explain a little bit, maybe your journey with Bitcoin and why you like this asset so much.

Chris Kelly (1:18)

Yeah. So I mean, I think that it is a hedge against inflation. I think that people are rightfully thinking of it that way. And then I think it's also a global store of value. And it's sort of easily accessible from anywhere to anywhere. And it's just incredibly powerful in that way. And so once it became accepted as a standard, once enough people said, okay, this is going to work and the validator network works and everything else, it became the standard store of value. The same way that Ethereum turned out to be a...

When Vitalik went deep on Bitcoin, decided that there were some extra features that it might need, that's where Ethereum comes from. And then I think people have been kind of riffing on themes in those areas ever since with other coins. But Bitcoin and Ethereum are kind of well established throughout the world at this point.

Anthony Pompliano (2:10)

What I find interesting is you must have this barbell strategy. I don't even know if you thought about it this way, but Bitcoin is something that benefits from inflation. And so it is scarce, it is digital, it is decentralized, it is non-sovereign, all those aspects. And it's done very well over the years.

The Sacramento Kings or any professional sports team of at least four major leagues, it's not decentralized. It's actually highly centralized. It's not digital, like there's real estate in teams and humans and merchandise, et cetera. But it is super scarce. And so it's almost like you're barbelling and you have a digital store value, you've got an analog store value, you've got a centralized, a decentralized. Like, did you think through that or you're just like, now I just want to own the team because it's cool.

Chris Kelly (2:53)

So, I mean, again, the scarcity and the availability, although I think that there's unbelievable mind share that teams have in people's lives. And that is a powerful, powerful thing. And it's also an area where people come together at the time that our politics can be very divisive.

And there are all these challenges that we have in terms of the way that we get along. People figure out how to have useful and sometimes heated, but also decent rivalries around sports. And so, you know, for growing up with Giants Dodgers and all that and seeing, you know, growing up in the Bay Area and never really become a Warriors fan because they just weren't very good when I was young.

Anthony Pompliano (3:38)

It's like being a Brooklyn Nets fan in New York.

Chris Kelly (3:40)

Exactly right. Don't kill me.

Anthony Pompliano (3:41)

Don't kill me.

Chris Kelly (3:43)

It was pretty easy to do the Kings deal. And for us also, it was keeping it in Sacramento. There was a Seattle based group that included Steve Ballmer that was going to buy the team and move to Seattle. And we said, look, we think Seattle should have an NBA team. They just can't have ours, right? It's pretty good. And then Ballmer went and bought the Clippers and drove the enterprise value of teams up marketly, which we thought was good too.