OG Crypto Investor SOLD HIS BITCOIN For AI | Avi Felman

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**Avi Feldman** (1:00)
Bitcoin is valuable because it exists outside the system. Bitcoin is valuable because if the system makes mistakes, there's an escape hatch. But that only makes sense in a world where the Fed has massive controller, the government has massive controller of the direction of the economy, which was true for a very long period of time. Basically, from the Great Recession up until today, people watch the Fed like a hawk.
Today, that matters less, and it matters less because you're seeing true secular world changing growth in robotics, in AI, in biotech, in defense. Things are genuinely happening. Things are genuinely being built. I mean, SpaceX is a great example of this.

**Anthony Pompliano** (1:36)
What's going on, guys? Today, we got a great conversation with Avi Feldman. He's an extremely successful former hedge fund manager, and he's the host of the 1000x pod. Avi and I talk about the AI trade, why he doesn't own any Bitcoin right now, what's going on in the crypto industry, how he's thinking about biotech, defense stocks, and then we get into the psychology of trader and what's been happening in the market with so much volatility, how you can generate an edge, and then what should you be thinking about going forward, and how to spot a bubble, and maybe when you should sell. All of that much more in this conversation with Avi Feldman. All right, Avi, you were just telling me something that I think we got to get right into, is that you've been in crypto since 2016, but you now own no Bitcoin, and it sounds like almost no crypto, you've completely divested. What's going on? Did you just lose the faith?

**Avi Feldman** (2:16)
Yeah, it's something that I've actually been struggling with for a while, because I actually made crypto somewhat part of my identity for a period of time. I graduated university in 2017 and went straight into the industry because I found that there was a tremendous amount of edge. At that time, basically nobody cared about crypto. You talk to your average person on the street, they had no idea what Bitcoin was. I remember when Bitcoin first made it into the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and everyone was just going, this is incredible. I can't believe it. I can't believe that we've done this. We've won. It's back in 2017 when Bitcoin finally broke its all-time highs again. Basically, from that moment up until 2025, I've had a significant portion of my investment portfolio in crypto.
Today, the world is just a very different place than it was in 2017 It's a very different place than the world was in 2020
When you look back at what happened to Bitcoin in 2020 because of COVID, look, you know as-

**Anthony Pompliano** (3:11)
Crazy.

**Avi Feldman** (3:13)
You know as well as I do, what happened was the entire world shifted online. People didn't have anything to do in the real world. What was happening is that there was so much liquidity shoved into the markets because of the Fed, because of the government, because they were worried that secular growth in America had ended, that there might be an utter shutdown of the markets, and they needed to keep people afloat.
A huge portion of this idea of crypto, if you really dig into it, what is it? Why is Bitcoin valuable? Bitcoin is valuable because it exists outside the system. Bitcoin is valuable because if the system makes mistakes, there's an escape hatch. You can say if the Fed raises rates incorrectly or cuts rates incorrectly, stimulates the economy too much, inflation runs out of control, there's somewhere for you to go.