E190: Raoul Pal: How to Get Rich in Crypto Before AI Changes Everything

Raoul Pal (0:00)

When people say, you know, crypto, it's like boring, I'm like, everything we've ever asked for, from regulation to the US Treasury saying, stable coins are one of the most important single things that we can do, and we don't think that the price is going to explode.

Kevin Follonier (0:11)

So we still think that the price of crypto and Bitcoin is going to explode.

Raoul Pal (0:15)

I can't say well, no, it doesn't. I actually think the whole thing is a super cycle. It doesn't stop.

SPEAKER_3 (0:18)

It doesn't stop.

Kevin Follonier (0:19)

What does that mean?

Raoul Pal (0:20)

It just means it keeps going till 2030 We're kind of in 1997, 96, what happened in the technology boom last time.

SPEAKER_3 (0:26)

Raoul Pal, the co-founder and CEO of Real Vision and founder of Global Macro Investor.

SPEAKER_4 (0:31)

A former Goldman Sachs executive, he is a leading macro investor focused on technology and digital assets.

Raoul Pal (0:38)

The economic singularity is going to happen in 2030 The rise of agents went from zero to everywhere. By 2030, all the study of what we understand of economics, relationships between things, it's going to be so screwed up. We now have basically four years to unfuck our future.

Kevin Follonier (0:51)

What did you learn in the last two years about how to allocate better?

Raoul Pal (0:54)

I've done nothing except buy when it got two standard deviations oversold, this is a log trend and I added more and I bought some Zcash. That's all I've done.

Kevin Follonier (1:01)

You've been early on some of the biggest shifts in crypto and macro, but being early and being wrong can look identical for a very long time. How have you learned to tell the difference?

Raoul Pal (1:08)

It's very difficult for you to be wrong. You have to set yourself up where the secular trend is in your favor and then the probability of getting it wrong is much less. And then you can take bets on things that are more emerging.

Kevin Follonier (1:18)

We've done this six times. What's the question I should have asked you five interviews ago, but I never did.

Raoul Pal (1:23)

You've never asked me the secrets of my good looks.

Kevin Follonier (1:28)

We've been pounding the table on Sui for a while now, and it hasn't been as clear of a winner yet. Have you actually made money on Sui if you look at the average buys, or is this a thesis that you're waiting on another one or two years to play out?

Raoul Pal (1:40)

Yeah, I mean I started.

Kevin Follonier (1:45)

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Last time you were in Singapore, welcome back to Singapore. Last time we did that was our first time together. This is our sixth time.

Raoul Pal (2:25)

I know it's been Singapore twice, Dubai twice, Miami once, London once.

Kevin Follonier (2:30)

Yeah. And as you can see, there is some progress, right?

Raoul Pal (2:34)

It's a lot nicer. The first one was a dump. I thought it was going to be knifed in the corridor.

Kevin Follonier (2:39)

We were bootstrapping a media company, right? That's right. There was actually another podcast studio in Singapore.

Raoul Pal (2:45)

And that wasn't really a podcast studio.

Kevin Follonier (2:47)

No, it was a music studio. It was a closet. It was kind of like a music studio. So it's for artists, right?

Raoul Pal (2:52)

Don't pretend it wasn't cool in any way. And then it was a shoe cupboard.

Kevin Follonier (2:56)

It was kind of a shithole. Like even the place where you go to toilets was this Chinese toilet where you had to like sit down. There was no normal toilet. I was like, fuck man, like, I don't know how long I can get these big people coming here. But it worked out.

Raoul Pal (3:10)

It did.

Kevin Follonier (3:11)

You've done all right. Yeah. We had this beautiful toilet and we had the banana on the table.

Raoul Pal (3:16)

The kiss of death.