Why The World Is Moving Towards Bitcoin, India, & Networks | Balaji Srinivasan

Anthony Pompliano (0:02)

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to The Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get in to today's episode.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are surely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

Balaji Srinivasan (0:54)

The purpose here, imagine if Bitcoin had been built from the very beginning, to be something that would give birth to a thousand cryptocurrencies. You design it somewhat more differently, right? And that's what Network School is. I know I don't have all the answers. Some people will do Vegan Network States, and some people will do Carnivore Network States, and some people will do like Latin Immersion, and you know, there'll be Mennonites, and there'll be Catholics, and there'll be Janes and Sikhs, and all different kinds of different groups, people, Catalonians, Basques, language groups, cultural groups, ethnic groups, all kinds of stuff that I can't even predict.

Anthony Pompliano (1:30)

What's going on, guys? Today, we got a great episode with Balaji Srinivasan. He's back and he delivers. We talk about geopolitics. What's going on with China? Why are they getting stronger? What's going on with the US decline? How is India as a chessboard piece going to actually play both with China and the US.? We talk about Bitcoin, gold, land and guns. And Balaji explains what's going on with the network school and what he's actually been building all the way out there near Singapore. This conversation is great. I always enjoy talking to my friend Balaji, and you guys will enjoy this one as well. Here's my latest conversation with Balaji Srinivasan.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:01)

Is this is this Pomp coming on the Network State Podcast? Or is this Balaji going on The Pomp Show? I guess it's a double header.

Anthony Pompliano (2:08)

All right. Balaji, we got a lot to talk about. Let's start with the US decline and China's strength. You had a great tweet thread where you talked about the fact that the country that positions itself as the most powerful is doing that on purpose. They want to show strength to the world. China, who people deem is behind, actually wants to appear weak while it grows strength. Explain the dichotomy between these two countries that really seem to be the leaders of what seems to appear to be this multipolar world we're headed towards.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:41)

Yeah. So basically, the thing is that I, like you, I believe in American values and I believe in the America that we both grew up in. And so, I just want to preface everything by saying that I am a reality shell, right? So say I am a shell for observable physical reality, right? So where the numbers are, I try and figure out where the numbers, what the actual reality is, and then I kind of shape my worldview accordingly as opposed to vice versa, right? Okay. So that in mind, let me show you some numbers from the posts that you're mentioning.

So this post over here, okay, shows what some people call the skull graph, right? And can you see the screen there?

Anthony Pompliano (3:25)

Yes.

Balaji Srinivasan (3:27)

Okay. So this shows that on a number of different kinds of charts, China has passed the US, okay? So it's passed the US in energy consumption. It flipped over here in about 2010 It passed in manufacturing value add that it also flipped in about 2010 It recently actually passed in the Nature Index of Highly Cited Papers around 2022

And you can argue with that measure, but within academia, it's one of the better measures we have, because there's a lot of subjects like, especially in material science, in the physical world, where it's just very hard to build in America. And so China is pushing ahead civil engineering on a scale that humanity has never seen, just giant bridges and tunnels and all this kind of stuff. So some of it at least is plausible that they're pushing forward areas of applied science, and then you can argue with some of the others. And there's more charts like this. This is their chart. Do you see this one of robot stock? Yep. Right. This is another one of the electricity generations from our world and data. This is cars, right? They just went vertical starting in about 2020 They've basically beat Japan and Germany, who are no slouch in cars. Japan does Honda and Nissan, Germany has Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Those countries are known for craftsmanship, they're known for automobiles for generations. But the flip to an electric car meant that China could flip them because it changes architecture car. And actually even as amazing as Elon is, BYD is now outselling Tesla in many markets, right? Which is a Chinese competitor. And I can show many graphs like this. But the point is that in some ways, you know, like a lot of the stuff on China that said, oh, China's, you know, it's gonna fall into a ditch, it's gonna get old before it gets rich. I think of that as like the stealth on the Chinese stealth bomber. Which is to say during the Cold War, the US never underestimated the Soviet Union.