Why This Billionaire is All In on Crypto, AI & Psychedelics | Christian Angermayer

I think we're living in the most amazing and at the same time most crazy complex time ever. AI is the final game and whoever wins that will stay on top for good because AI is kind of that disruption machine in itself, if that makes sense. So, and I think that is what Europe didn't understand, that they're losing out, but they're losing out for good.

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All right, everyone, welcome back to Empire. Very excited about this.

We have my dear Christian Angermayer, who runs his family office, Apeiron.

You may remember, came on Empire back in 2021, was talking Bitcoin, psychedelics. We're going to talk about that and a whole host of other things. So Christian, welcome back.

Thanks for having me again. Great pleasure.

Life is good?

Life is good. Bitcoin is good. Markets are great. So yes.

Life is always good with you, I feel.

I try to be always happy. I think that's like the the one and only reason why we're here, to be happy. So it's not meaning that I'm happy every day, but it's kind of the thing which I strive for. At the end, I think it's very simple as well. Just do what you want to do in a nice way, like not egoistic, but like just like live your life how you want to live it and try to not surround yourself with assholes. Yes, that's actually a simple— but like, that is actually what I— when I sold my first company or the stakes in my first company, That's what I was thinking. I was like, okay, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I never had sort of planned it or thought it through in terms of financial gains or returns. So when I sat there and had more, I come from a very basic family, like a farm village. So like in 2000, what are we talking about, 2004, yeah, I was sitting there, I was like, I had more money than I ever thought. And I was like, how do I actually want to structure my life so that it makes me happy? And then the two things which came up were like, oh, Yeah, first of all, don't surround yourself with assholes. So I just want to work with people who I genuinely like and want to be friends with. Yeah, you make mistakes, but I try to sort of have that. And the second one was like, I only want to invest in and start companies about topics which truly excite me. So I don't want to do something only for making money. So, and these two things, Served me well.

Yeah. So, okay. So I was— I listened back to our conversation last time. I realized there's kind of a missing part of your story that I don't know too much about. So I know the beginning of your story, small town, become a very successful biotech entrepreneur, make millions early on in your life, and that's— have some great success. Then there's this missing window. And then I know about the later part, which is very successful entrepreneur and backer of many great founders in crypto and Compass. And we can get into that in a little bit, but the middle part is missing. So my question for you is, like when did you become— go from this kind of successful biotech entrepreneur to like the Christian Angermayer that we know, the billionaire funder of all these massive things and you put on the global map and people want to get in touch with you and kind of the person that you are today?

Well, I think I would see it like as a, as a line with sort of ups and downs, but like it's a continuous thing. It's not that I woke up one day and was like, oh my God, my life has changed or whatever. Like it's kind of these constant sort of hustle and growing. Like, sort of, for example, like, so I started in biotech, but then I had sort of this detour, uh, like between— we're talking now 2005 till 2012— where I did a lot of actually financial, traditional financial services. So I used to own the largest, um, which is called an IFA network in Germany. So I had to build up a company. It was a buy and build strategy. So we bought up sort of smaller players and built the number one IFA network with like 18,000 independent financial advisors sort of working for us and distributing products. Or also we just had it when we talked before, like, and by the way, I ran, I have to say, I ran in a lot of things sort of kind of accidentally, but in a planned way, meaning like how I also see my life is like, I think you need to be sort of, or I believe in positive thinking and sort of if you go through life and sort of you just expect the best, but I truly believe that. I think like everything which is happening to me is A, happening for a reason, and B, it's ultimately good for me. That can be even something negative. And I know I always have to give this disclaimer. It sounds easier when we're sitting here in New York and we're all doing fine. And then like people are like, yeah, but like what is, I'm like going through these hard times. But I can tell you that I had very, very hard times. Both business and private. And when you're in it, like, they suck. Like, it's not— I don't want to sugarcoat it, but I always try to remember myself, especially in the hard times, they happening for very positive reasons. And if I look back now on the last 27 years since I started being an entrepreneur, I would say it always turned out then true that with a little bit of distance sometimes, I was like realizing, oh wow, this is why ABC or whatever happened to me. And for example, like, so this is also, I see like how I try to approach new topics. Like I just let them come to me, so to say, like sort of in this detour. I want to finish, I did a lot of financial services in Germany, but then via mutual friend, long story, like who happens to be the president of Rwanda. So he convinced me like of Rwanda, Africa. So I bought a small bank in in Rwanda. Then I needed to hire a CEO. The CEO was like, "I don't want to run a small bank in Rwanda, but if we have a bigger vision, I'm going to come." And ultimately, out of that puzzle, things like we have built up— it was between 2007 and 2012— the third largest commercial banking group in Africa, which I then sold in 2013. So that's sort of in the middle. And then I sort of came back. So after this detour to financial services, and I would call it like the early days of fintech, which didn't have the name fintech, sort of in 2013, '14, I moved back more into tech and biotech. And that's sort of continuously what we're doing since then as a Pyron.

Can you, I don't know if you're able to publicly talk about some of the work that you did with just the Euro crisis in the like 2010s and kind of when you become, this is when I think of you getting on the global map with the kind of the big hedge fund crowd basically? I don't know if you can publicly talk about those days.

A little bit. Like sort of, I mean, I love politics. I think people know that. Like I'm the economic advisor for the president of Rwanda. And I always say like it happened actually between, it happened because like in 2003, '04, when I had my first exit, I think I was very cocky and maybe a little bit of arrogant. Like, you know, when you're a young founder and you're like, okay, I just made it. And then I said things like, oh, I definitely would run Germany better than the guy was doing it back then, whatever.

As every entrepreneur thinks they can do better than the government.

And I tell that every entrepreneur because a very wise friend said, look, you don't understand politics. It's very complicated. Even people like Elon had to see it's not like an easy feat. We can debate if this is good or bad or whatever, but it's a fact. And this person back then, we're talking now about 2003, 2004, introduced me to Angela Merkel, who now people were like, oh my God, Angela Merkel. But this was like, she wasn't the Angela Merkel. Yeah, I actually met her the first time she was still in opposition, but she was already very impressive. And that was sort of my first like, oh wow, this is a world like where, which has its own like rules and complications. But I wanted to learn more. I also realized that I could never be a politician. Because again, talking about happiness and my mental health is like, I wanna be liked. Like, I can't deal with sort of negativity. Yeah, it would make me really miserable. And unfortunately, meaning look at the US now, yeah, the whole political game is really one of kind of like, at least half of the country doesn't like you.

It's a very negative game.

Yeah, it's a very negative game. And I couldn't really live with that. So I decided very early on, okay, I will never be a politician. However, I really, really appreciate politicians because I think they are this underappreciated job. We all make fun of them. We all think, ah, but like, if you really look behind the curtain, how complicated it is. And let's take Angela Merkel, like, yeah, so, and then the euro crisis, like how she held Europe together and like So I was a little bit involved, like all the smart hedge fund people in the world were calling me every day, like George Soros, whatever, you need to do this, you need to do that. But they didn't understand in full how complex that crisis really was. Because like, yes, you had a financial layer, which told you like Europe is kind of, or at least some countries in Europe were kind of bankrupt. But then there was also, there is a historic dimension. There is like, a social one, there is a political one. This is like multi, multi-dimensional chess because the chancellor— because everybody was like, ah, the chancellor of Germany should just pay things off. But she had a coalition in Germany, so she already had a coalition partner to deal with. Then you had 26 other head of states in Europe who had to agree on everything, whatever. And I looked at her doing all of that and maneuvering Europe really through it. Meaning you can criticise her for other stuff because I didn't agree with Germany going out of nuclear and with the way we handled the immigration stuff. But I can tell everybody, Europe or the euro and the eurozone would not exist anymore without Angela Merkel. So I think that is her really, really— if you believe in Europe, which I do as a construct, that is her really sort of big legacy. Yeah. So I spent a lot of time in the Euro crisis on sort of like bridging that understanding gap between international investors who only saw Europe as a balance sheet and sort of German and European politicians. And that was definitely one kind of hindsight for me, like, I want to say breakout, but like I met a lot of really cool people We just talked that Mike Novogratz is coming later on the podcast. I met Mike via that and many other. I met Peter Thiel via that political work. And that definitely was sort of—

So the political work is how you started to get in with the Soroses and Novogratzes? Yes. Got it.

Because they were sitting sort of at the epicenter of the biggest trade. The biggest trade for 2, 3 years was European sovereign debt.

Yeah. Let's talk Europe for a sec. So I have your note here.

I try still to be uplifting, but even with my optimism, it's really hard.

Let me read the line that you emailed. So I'm lucky enough to be on your email newsletter and I like it because you don't hold any takes back. And hopefully I can share this publicly. You said in— I pulled up, I was just reading your old emails to me over the years and you said in September 2023, you said, broadly speaking, The European project is finished.

Kind of.

Yeah.

It's sad because we fought so much for it during the euro crisis, but sort of we're dying in complacency. But it's also like— and it's worse now, by the way. I wrote this one in September 2023, and especially because of the election of Donald Trump, who I know it's a very, very contentious topic. But as a foreigner or as a European looking at America and spending a lot of time here, I would say we can all debate a lot of things about Donald Trump, but if I boil it down, what he's doing for the economy and especially for the leadership of the US in tech and especially in AI, it's unprecedented. And I think he's cementing the US dominance over the rest of the world for the next decades to come. I'm very sure, and I know it's a very controversial thing I'm saying now, But I'm very sure if we're looking back in 20, 30 years, because history judges people differently and also like in a historic view, it often comes down to the very few but very important decisions people make. So, and I think in 30, 40 years from now, if people look back, they're going to see Donald Trump as one of the best presidents of the newer time for America because he did all doing the right things in terms of economy and especially AI. And that alone is like, and if I look now at Europe, we are the big losers because China is kind of trying at least to keep up. I think America will be the winner in the AI race, but Europe is not even trying. It's not even there on the map. So, and I think we in Europe, again, I see myself half as an American, but like the Europeans have not fully understood how consequential and negatively consequential sort of that inaction and inactivity is. Because I think what the Europeans are secretly thinking, if you look back over the last literally hundreds of years, like the worlds and nations have moved in cycles. And yes, at certain times, certain nations were like ahead of others in terms of technological innovation, whatever. But it kind of always leveled out and then other nations rose, whatever. My worry or hope for America is that kind of AI is the final game and whoever wins that will stay on top for good because AI is kind of that disruption machine in itself, if that makes sense.

And it compounds, yeah.

So once you figured out AI, it compounds so strongly that I think you will practically, this country, and I think it's going to be America, will be the dominant force for practically forever. Meaning like, well, let's see what 100 years is. But like, so, and I think that is what Europe didn't understand, that they're losing out, but they're losing out for good. And I think at the end, Europe will just be like a vassal state of the United States.

So, okay, there are like these two truths that I kind of hold in my head and I want to get your opinion on. So on one hand, I agree with you, right? When it comes to fundamental substance and innovation, the US is the leader. Most of the great AI, both hardware and software things in AI and robotics are coming out of the US today. And that's fantastic. I think you and I are both very long the US and we can talk about your US dollar thesis and all that kind of stuff. On the other hand, the US feels more polarized than ever. At a societal level, it feels like I'm not saying we're crumbling, but like we feel maybe we're descending more into civil war-like arena than ever before. Not saying we're, you know, a civil war kicking off anytime soon, but like it does feel like we're going down that path a little more than ever before. I'm very curious to get your take on just like how you see society in the US today in light of the comments before.

Well, it is, it is, I think, how you describe it. The only thing I would say I believe that sort of AI hegemony and economic hegemony because of AI hegemony is kind of trumping everything else for now. So yes, I think— So you can have all these problems, but if you're winning at AI, you'll be fine. Yeah, so I think, and if you, that's like, if I for one second, like just how I see companies, and by the way, it's so true also for governments, they just completely don't understand it. Yeah, I think Trump does, is like how I look at companies and every founder who I ever invested in will know that is like, I believe every company, take a startup which just literally started or take Goldman Sachs or any company in the world at any stage has roundabout 1, 2, or 3, not more. We call it trigger factors, call it catalysts, whatever. So, and my thesis is that only those 1, 2, or 3 things really matter. If you reach them successfully, you're gonna go on the next level. And by the way, then you have new ones. It's a never-ending hustle as an entrepreneur. But like what I tell entrepreneurs, really, really, A, obviously know. Sometimes I meet people who don't even know what these 1, 2, or 3, and sometimes it's really just one sort of thing, is what it is. And then focus on that. I mean, yes, if you wake up as a CEO and a founder, you have hundreds of things and emails and WhatsApp, and you need to also juggle a lot of other things. But you need to always make sure that you spend enough time and focus on really like, do I get these 1 or 2, 3 things right? Yeah, because when I get them right, that's the only— if you miss them, the rest of your 100, 200 things on your task list are irrelevant. And I think it's the same for politics. Yes, I don't want to sort of diminish or like neglect all the problems America has and maybe even sometimes the current government is even sort of making worse. But if I look what I believe, look, it's very subjective, yeah, but what I believe what really truly matters and number one is AI and you could add robotics hegemony, they're doing everything right. And then even like on other things like how they, for example, push Bitcoin and crypto. Like you could say, oh, he's saying that because he owns a lot of it. No, because like there is a real strategy behind. Also what I, again, I just want to mention it because there is so much divisiveness here. If I look as a European, as a German on the current American government, it's a super competent one. That whole thing, oh, these like, yeah, this whole what the half of the country is saying about Yeah, you have to admit, like people like Scott Bessant, by the way, whom I still know because he was working in the hedge fund industry and was my counterpart. And I just told him actually when we saw him once, like, isn't it funny how the tables have turned? Because in the Euro crisis, he was shouting at me and was like, oh, you Germans, like you're doing this wrong and this wrong. It's like now people tell you what to do. Well, I think you're doing everything right. Like I think, Scott is one of the most competent and best hedge fund managers, but also now as a Secretary of the Treasury, he's amazing. And you can go through Howard Latnick, like amazing, like successful banker. Like they all know their shit, so to say.

Yeah, yeah.

I wish, for example, other governments had the same depth and quality. Again, you can disagree. I always tell my Europeans when they're like, ah, but they're doing this. And I was like, Look, we can disagree on actions, but I think we have to acknowledge that Trump really assembled an amazingly competent team.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's, I think, why they thinking, and by the way, all the connecting thread, I think, of the current government in the US is most of them are entrepreneurs. Trump is an entrepreneur, kind of Scott is like hedge fund manager entrepreneur, like Howard Latnick is an amazing entrepreneur, built up Cantor, and they thinking about the government, I think how an entrepreneur should think about, uh, about their company. And I think that's a good thing. So I think that's why they really getting so many things done.

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Yeah, maybe let's get into your AI. You mentioned this AI thesis a couple of times. I'm curious to just get your view on the next— almost how the future unfolds over the next decade or two with respect— and then maybe there's a second question there, but we can tie it into one, which is like, and what should we be doing about that, both from the investor and the entrepreneur's shoes?

Okay, by the way, complicated because I don't even— I don't have an answer at all. Like, I just can give you my thoughts. I think we're living in the most amazing and at the same time most crazy complex time ever. Like, and I don't even know if we fully, I don't know, appreciate that in how crazy and interesting and sort of transformative that time is. Like, no human being has ever lived in a similar—

I was listening to Acquired. I don't know if you know the podcast called Acquired, but it was a, yeah, with Toby from Shopify was on it. And I listened to a great episode the other day and he said, I think we will look back and, you know, maybe it's 50 years or 500 years, and we will read about this period of time, 2025, like we read about the fall of the Roman Empire.

100%. Or any other, exactly, like the very, like, and more, like it's even crazier like that, I think. And meaning my base theory is like, first of all, I already told you, like the one country which will sort of, which will gain the lead in AI. And again, I think it's already decided. If at all, then it's a race between China and the US. The one country which wins the AI race will be the dominant superpower forever because then AI, we can go into defense, into everything, will reshape the world. The second one is like, I truly believe that humans will more or less stop working over the next 10 years. Maybe it's 12, maybe it's 8.

10 years.

Yes. I think it's going to go much quicker. I just checked it. Like, what was the number? Like, I think it was, I don't want to say the wrong number now, ask ChatGPT, but like it was more than 20% or something of the jobs in America, an insanely high number, are related to driving a vehicle. Yes. Gone. Yeah. Then another insane number was like 15% or something like that. Also insane. Is related still for human labor to putting a parcel from A to B in a warehouse, like gone.

So that's 25% of the job force is either driving or moving a thing from A to B.

So then you have most of the lawyers, low-level lawyers gone, most of the auditors gone, most of the bankers gone. I mean, we can go through everything. I think maybe even doctors, like I think in every job we're gonna have a small amount of very specialists, and then there are jobs who require more of a human touch because we want it, not maybe because they require it, maybe just because the customer wants it, like a doctor, a nurse, or whatever. But overall, especially when you're not only talking about AI, but the true merge between AI and robotics, yeah, because still at the moment robotics, it's kind of brute force. They like they're not really understanding the room. Like they see something and they know I can move it from A to B. Yeah, but once we move from, I think hopefully I'm not the specialist, but like from more like large language models to large geometric models. So really truly helping AI and by that robots to truly understand the world. Like I think I can't see anything else. Like nobody can tell me like what should we then do as humans that most of the jobs will be gone and not being replaced. I think so this old idea of, yeah, but when the car came, yes, the horse carriages were replaced. But like, I don't think this is happening this time because even if there is for a brief amount of time a new job, this new job is going to be disrupted very quickly by AI again because that's what AI is, a disruption machine. So, but it doesn't need to be bad. So that's, first of all, I think that's going to really mess a lot of things up. Not because it's bad. So what I also believe, I believe at the same time, AI and robotics together will create so many efficiency gains that society as a whole can afford giving people, let's call it universal basic income. So it can be other forms, by the way. But in Germany already, we have something called Bürgergeld, which means like citizen money, which is UBI. I'm not a fan because it's too high because like actually the UBI in Germany is so high that it doesn't make sense for low-level people to work anymore. So they just say like, I get more money if I get UBI than having a job.

This is already how it exists?

This is already how it exists. And more than 10% of the German workforce are already on UBI. So, and we can afford it. So I think society will be able to afford giving those people who have no job anymore. And by the way, maybe it's also like, I don't want to make it that black and white. Maybe people have a job still because like, we want to feel like we have a job, but it's only required to show up one day a week. And you kind of do a little bit and move a pen from left to right and then you go home. Like, it can be like, it doesn't need to be that 90% have no job or 80%. They might just have a job which requires less and less time. So, and I also think it's going to be gradually. So we're going to look back in 10, 15 years and realize, okay, wow, that's what we've done. Yeah, but anyway, long story short, I deeply believe that more or less people will stop working, but also that we will be able as society, as governments, to give them more or less the same purchasing power. So, and now my good sort of positive view is that could allow us to be truly human again. Because like, if you look at human development, the fact that we're working 10 hours a day, 5 days a week is very unnatural. So if you go back pre the invention of agriculture, when we were hunter-gatherers, and by the way, they are still—

You rest all day and then maybe you do a big sprint.

Yes. And so the average time work time, like for making a living, a hunter-gatherer society deploys is around about 2 hours a day to make a living. So the rest of the day, hunter-gatherer societies, what did they do? 3 things. They slept and rested, they had sex, and they sat around the campfire and told each other stories. That's, by the way, why we're having a podcast, like why we're talking. That's why when you meet somebody new, most likely you try to find out whom have you in common. Oh, and have you heard he has a divorce? Da da da da da.

Yeah.

So this kind of gossipy nature we have is part of our evolution because that helped us sitting around the campfire and sort of bonding as a larger group of humans. So, and I personally think that was a better life than what we have now. So then we invented agriculture. Agriculture forced us to be sort of Sesshaft, what is it called in English, to stay at one place. And it allowed us to scale as a society. So agriculture and changing our lifestyle was a success for our species, but was actually very bad for the individual person because all the big problems from nutrition to like living densely together, which allows bad bad diseases to break out, to working much more than we did before. So I actually also believe that the storyline a lot of religions developed about the paradise we got kicked out describes actually the invention of agriculture. So meaning, oh, there was a time way back where humans had a better life and then we kind of got enslaved. That's actually how the Bible starts. We got enslaved to agriculture.

Yeah.

And everything like that. So, and I think we have, so that is sort of my very optimistic view.

So you think we are going from—

We're going back to paradise.

Back to paradise in 10 years. Around about, yes. Maybe 15, whatever. What does that do for, okay, good side is paradise, bad side in my, the thing where my head goes is work gives people meaning. Exactly. And there's an ego that you get. And when you're successful at work, you have you feel good about yourself and meaning and yeah, what happens with that?

Well, I think the problem is not the end state. Again, the end state, I think, can be truly paradise. The problem is the transition. And exactly what you said, A, we attach meaning to our jobs, but then B, we also like every time something changes, and by the way, I spend a lot of time because I'm really worried about that part. About going back and looking at other big technological revolutions or in general big societal changes, yeah, over the last hundreds and thousands of years. Unfortunately, it always ended in an interim disaster, and only then after that disaster, the end state was actually an improvement for humanity. And I think we're At least I would say some people positively, we do think about the end state or we start as a society thinking about what could be the end state of AI and robotics. But I think way too little are politicians and entrepreneurs and whatever, all the stakeholders thinking more about the transition. Because again, I just want to repeat it, what went wrong in the past was never actually the technological improvement, but was always the transition to it.

Yeah, you need almost mass destruction and then the rebirth comes.

Exactly. So, and the problem is though, even if we did accept it, which we shouldn't, like that there is a sort of mass destruction, whatever, we're now living the first time in an age where mass destruction would really mean— I mean, you can say that the First and Second World War were obviously already horrible, And I think the total amount of deaths over the two world wars is more than 100 million people, if I remember it right. And we didn't have weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, which we have now. So think about the same sort of insanity just now. I think we cannot, meaning for many reasons, we shouldn't even accept it to think about it at all. But like, I think now that would be even worse than any other time before.

Yeah.

And, and let me give you— before I come to the—

have you read The Fourth Turning, by the way?

I know what I know about it.

It basically posits that history unfolds in these like 80 to 100 year cycles.

Yeah.

And so if you track that back, so, okay, 17— let's go— 1780 was like the French Revolution, American Revolution. 80 years after that, Civil War in America. 80 years after that is World War II. 8 years after that is 2020, which is where we are today. And you basically go through these periods of massive societal upheaval, and the key is institutional change, and it gets very destructive, and then there's rebirth.

I already believe it only for one thing, is because why 80 years? Because then always the generation—

That's right. It's roughly the length of the human lifespan.

Yes. And who experiences— And by the way, Sorry, another topic we discussed, like where I think this is happening is like, how stupid can people be in America going back the socialistic route or at least even considering it?

Yeah.

And by the way, every person you ever talk to, and in Europe we have more of that than America. I mean, you have the Cuban community, whatever. But like in Europe, like Eastern Europe was communist, like, and they don't want to go back because they still lived it. And like, I feel like it's so sad. I meet young people and they're like, no, why not try it? I was like, because it failed. Failed every single time. Yeah. And not just failed, it spectacularly failed and it cost hundreds of millions of lives, but they don't remember. And they're like, no, we can do it. Like, it was like, no, like anyway, so that is, I think that sort of the memory is fading how bad things were. And so, but going back to AI, like sort of one first, one just very tangible and very sort of the last innovation cycle, how it failed. And then I have at least one idea what we could do better. But like, so what I think is very interesting because everybody can do it, if you go online and look up the newspapers between kind of 1850, 1870, and 1910. So why I'm picking that timeframe, and by the way, a big shout out on the positive side to Cathie Wood because she told me that actually years ago, roundabout when I was on your podcast and I met her for the first time. She was looking at stock market valuations in the time like 1850 to 1910, which were very high, but for a reason, because at that time we as humanity invented 3 groundbreaking technologies, what we in our modern terms would call platform technologies. We invented the car, electricity, and the phone. And by the way, these were groundbreaking innovations for an agriculture society. And if you go back in the newspapers, and I think newspapers are great because you feel like the zeitgeist, the sentiment of the time, is like, it was super optimistic. So the elites in Berlin, London, Paris back then, they were like, we're gonna change the world because of these 3 things. Like, there was a guy, Jules Verne, like some might know him, the author, like he wrote a book in 80 Days Around the World and about flying to the moon. And like, by the way, everything we now, we got later, like, and he even was talking about sort of rockets who come back and whatever, reusable spaceships and whatever. So the time was full of like a brimming optimism. But what they forgot, like I would say the elite, is they were 90% at the time were farmers and they didn't see a future for themselves in it. So, and again, by the way, positively, there was a later future, but like They didn't see it. And what I also believe with all the work we're doing in mental health, the number one bad emotion in humans is fear, because fear really reduces us to our primal instinct. And literally fear brings out the worst in us. And all these people had fear because they were looking at a future and they didn't understand what's happening. They didn't see a place for them. And out of that fear, that's my personal theory, is like they resorted to two very, very toxic, but in the first instance, very soothing and simple ideologies, which was communism and National Socialism. Because what these two ideologies did, they took that fear of the people and turned it into hate for others. Like the communists were like, it's all about the rich people. Let's kill them. And the National Socialists, all about foreigners and especially about the Jews. Let's kill them. And I don't want to sound oversimplified because this was a very complex time, but I think that was, I deeply believe, one of really underlying trends for all then the atrocities which came. So I believe that sort of fear of technological change resulted in these National Socialists and Communism, which ultimately resulted in two world wars. And only after, if you then look at the '50s and '60s, we truly got the world. Like we were flying to the moon. We got all of that, what the people were dreaming, but at the cost of 100 million dead people. And that I think is like, should be, and I think it's not, but should be our number one thought is like, I do think actually the future with AI and robotics will be awesome. So it's not the end state, but it's the transition. And again, because I can repeat it this time, we're dealing with a world with even more people and with even more dangerous weapons. But I think we're dealing with the same psychological reactions. And you already see it. I think the whole divisiveness you were mentioning, like all what we're seeing, like the resort— by the way, going back to political violence as kind of a normal thing, All of that is, I think, not even the early days. I think we're in the middle of the same process which happened 1850 to 1910. And I think that's really, really bad. And I think as a society, we have to think about how can we manage transition better.

Yeah, it feels like this is a decade-long trend. 2020 to 2030 is the transition years.

Yeah, maybe another 5 years. Yes. Yeah. But like, we just started and I think we all feel uncomfortable. Yeah, and it's just going to get worse.

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You know, there's this feeling amongst investors and founders, I think, right now, which is almost like angst, which is you kind of feel this world accelerating. And when you talk to a lot of people, I'm sure you talk to the similar groups of folks. There's this feeling that like you need to win right now. Like right now, right? Like right now. It's not tomorrow. It's not next year. It's right now. You need to make money right now.

You need to go public right now.

You need to raise your capital right now. You need to figure out the new AI breakthrough right now.

Do you get that feeling?

100%. I have it as well. And I think about it a lot, and I think it's very simple why. And again, sometimes you have feelings and people start acting on that, and you never think about why do I have these feelings. And I had that with a lot of investors, and when I then asked them if they feel the same, they were all like, yes, exactly, but just didn't know how to describe it. It's like nobody knows how the world will look like in more than 5 years from now. I think that's the maximum window. I realized all of that, coming back on the professional side, but I realized all what you just said when my 15-year-old godson asked me what he should study and what he should become. And I was like, I don't know. And I think like I should know maybe more than some others. Like I think I should have, so I did not, so I more talked with him than I said, because I don't know, sort of try to be agile. Like I resorted to those things, but I don't know how the— I have—

So this pithy, like learn how to learn and—

Yeah, I have ideas how the world— I told you, like again, one big idea I have is like we're not working at all. So, but like it's becoming very blurry. Everything post-5 years, I think is becoming very blurry for every investor, every entrepreneur. And I think that sort of gut feeling of not knowing how the world looks in 10 years is kind of reducing everything to now because you don't even dare to make long-term bets anymore. You want to make a bet which pays off in 2 years because that's kind of the time you still can sort of judge. Like, exactly what you said is, I think, is the consequence of even the smartest people in our industry don't really know how the world looks like in 5 years plus. And that's why I think we need to start. I think what— What I think what we need more is like real philosophers. If you look at other times where the same amount of change happened, like the French Revolution, like again, these 1850, 1910, whatever, you had philosophers, not only investors, not only entrepreneurs, not only politicians who really talked about what does it mean to be human.

Rousseau and Voltaire.

And we don't have that. Yeah. And because let me like, because I'm an uber optimist and I, I don't wanna sort of stay on this low note because I think, and that's coming to my favorite topic, but I truly believe it. I'm not just saying it because it's my favorite topic. It's like, I truly believe like this time we have one sort of solution. I don't wanna call it weapon because that's so negative, but like one tool, that's the right word, to really make it better this time. And this is psychedelics. Because psychedelics, what do they really do? We can talk about the medical side and we can talk about what we're doing with Atai. But if I really reduce it and try to describe what do psychedelics, why do they help people? A, they help you to truly realize who you are, which is, by the way, already said. I know so many people who before they did psychedelics and they were depressed. And when, when they came out of it, they were like, oh my God, I realize now I should spend more time with my children. And this is so simple. Like, that's what if people ask me about my own psychedelic trips and what I learned and when I tell it to them, Then they're like, ah, Christian, you and your psychedelics, because like I could have told you that. And it's true, by the way. Read a lot of religious books of any religion. Yeah. Read a lot of books from Deepak Chopra to Tony Robbins. And they all tell you the same. Be a good human being, spend more time with the people you love and all of that. And then it goes more details. But it's so hard to listen to that or understand it when you read it. While psychedelics on a very, very hard-to-describe level sort of allow you to realize who you really are, what it is, what you want in life, and what are the key decisions, the one or two trigger factors you need to change in your life to become happy. And then, but they also help people to really reinvent themselves. Like, okay, so they— and by the way, it's not only the spiritual trip, but also there is a side effect of psychedelics we don't talk a lot at the moment because like everybody's focused on the the spectacular psychedelic trip, so to say. But there is a post effect, like the days and weeks after people take psychedelics, their brain is literally a little bit— I say it very simplified, so hopefully nobody freaks out on social media because it's much more complicated. But I would always say your brain is growing, you're building new connection, it's called neuroplasticity. And really the brains of people post psychedelics look like brains of younger people. Younger people are easier able to reinvent themselves and kind of smooth themselves into a new sort of new world. So I truly believe that sort of again, because I always come back because the end state will be great and we just need to help people doing that transition without fear. And that's another point about psychedelics, reduce fear. The first big study we did for psilocybin was one of the strongest and most painful fears is actually fear of death. So we did a study which practically brought us on the map in 2018, I think released it, about people who were terminally ill, were about to die and didn't— hadn't made peace with it and were like really like having panic attacks and, and depression and anxiety, whatever. And we showed that psychedelics can even dramatically reduce or even eliminate that kind of fear of dying. Yeah. So long story short, everything I just described, which is going wrong in our brains at the moment— fear of the unknown, not knowing where our place is in that world, whatever— I think psychedelics can help us sort of transitioning. So, and it's— I think it's the first time humanity has a tool which can avoid the usual sort of, say, catastrophe, and that is truly psychedelics.

Yeah. What can you— so you backed, I think it was Compass in 2017.

So I co-founded Compass and Atai. Yeah. So Compass was kind of a— Technic came first, but it was kind of a spinout of the idea I had to really build sort of the psychedelic mothership. And like in a technical term, I founded Atai some months after Compass. But yes, so Atai is sort of my psychedelic mothership, so which owns still a stake in Compass, which we span out just for financing reasons. The last 4 years in biotech were very exhausting, to say the least. And then Atai owns all the other, from our point of view, commercially relevant psychedelics. So 5-MeO-DMT, DMT, a new version of MDMA, and ibogaine. And then we also have a great discovery program for the future to really find new psychedelic drugs.

Oh, wow. Atai is up 250% in 6 months.

It's finally—

not too shabby.

People are starting to realize both. Like, I think the one thing which I said the last half hour, I truly believe psychedelics are kind of the— kind of the— not the other flip side of the coin, but, you know, I mean, it's a kind of the twin brother of AI. And I really mean it because we need to talk about how to manage transition. And I think the only way I at least know, maybe other people have other ideas, but like the one idea at scale how to manage the transition into a new era are psychedelics. So it's kind of already that, but that's sort of— and if, by the way, if you believe that, which I do, then I believe like give it 5 years after psychedelics are approved and they're not only going to be used for depression, anxiety, addiction, which is the current medical use case, but people will realize and governments and and doctors, oh, we can use it for so much more. And by the way, there is even— we don't even need new words. There is a word in psychology which is called adjustment disorder, which is when something very bad happens to you and you sort of can't cope with it. Usually at the moment, adjustment disorder is used for— the term is used for when people get very, very ill very suddenly, or if somebody passes away, whatever. But I think we're going to take this term adjustment disorder and just realize that we all are suffering from adjustment disorder because in front of our very eyes, the world is kind of falling apart and is being rebuilt. But then on the shorter end, why the stock went up is like we have the true potential to cure, or at least for some people cure and for others make it significantly better, the existing mental health issues. Which is addiction, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and all of that, which already today— and again, I think it's already the sign of the times— are this group of issues are the number one problem for the healthcare system.

And to get more concrete, that means like we try to solve those in certain ways— therapy, SSRIs, different things.

And you believe that it didn't work, by the way. So, so two things you can factually say is like, first of all, the number of patients in mental health is going through the roof. If I would show you a chart of any mental health issue, the number of patients over the last 20 years, and I would not tell you what it is, you would always say it's an infectious disease. If I eliminate the timelines and whatever, just look at this chart in medicine, what is it? You would always say it's an infectious disease. So something clearly— it's so obvious to me that we're not talking more about it. Is already there. It's not even like in the future. The world we're building, and I love it what we're building, look, and I'm part of it, like I'm kind of complicit, but like I also have to acknowledge the world we're building is very bad for our brain already. And as I said before, it's just gonna get worse. Yeah. So that is, and then additionally, all the tools we had so far, therapy, not so good drugs like benzos or SSRIs, whatever, are at best, I don't want to talk down on them because they were the best we had. So it's like better something than nothing, but they were clearly not really working. And at least the SSRIs and benzos have terrible side effects.

Yeah.

So, and here we are and like, meaning at least when we record that, I know the podcast is coming out just in 2 weeks, but like today when we record this, like we had another amazing data set for a Thai, yeah, with a psychedelic drug called 5-MeO-DMT. Where we've shown that we have a phenomenal success in treating treatment-resistant depression. So the worst kind of depression. By the way, with zero severe, yeah, super bad side effects, like just like moderate and mild ones. And that's, people are seeing several things. The one is like how bad the mental health crisis is. Second, that really like psychedelics are the future. Also thanks to the current government sort of mentioning that and being very supportive. By the way, so had been the last one. I always say like, this is not a political issue. The only thing is this government is more open about it and more talking about it, but we always had a great support of any government and of the FDA, whatever. And now they also realizing coming to Atai, and I'm very happy that the stock finally gets the attention, but we have way to go. I do think like, I don't know, I'm the founder, it's my company, I'm obviously biased, but like, I do think if I look at the magnitude of the problem, mental health, and how well positioned we are, literally owning that sector, because we own most of the intellectual property around these psychedelic drugs. And that is what people for a long time didn't understand because they were like, oh yeah, mushrooms grow. Yes, but that's not the medical product at the end. It's a synthetic version of it, whatever. So we were always really strong in intellectual property and IP because that's the only way that we invest billions of dollars in clinical trials is that we own that sector and these drugs then. So but altogether people realizing now, and I do think Atai legit can be a $20, $30 billion company in the next years because we have the solution for the biggest problem in healthcare. And then comes all the political stuff and sort of the even bigger demand for psychedelics, which I just said, which is more like out there, but very concrete as of now. Mental health is the number one problem and we have a solution, at least for a good portion of people.

Yeah. Have you spent time with this current administration?

Yes.

Talking about the tie and psychedelics and RFK. And do you think that there are— do you think that societally we are at the place where this can go mainstream?

Yes, 100%. And for many reasons. And by the way, I would say, and I don't expect to die very soon because I think we're also going to live hundreds of years. But if I someone die, at the moment, I would say the work we've done in psychedelics is the one thing I'm most proud of. So I think the reason why we— and you said it in our prep before, like you were like, hey, like 4 years ago you weren't comfortable talking about your own psychedelic experiences and now you are. Because by the way, the world has changed positively. And I do think it has changed among many reasons, also because of our work, because we give the people the scientific basis, like that this is all really good, very little side effects, whatever, which we hadn't before. But then there are other great people like Michael Pollan, who wrote the book, right? How to Change Your Mind and many other books then later, who's an amazing writer who I credit a lot with the whole zeitgeist shift. But there are TV shows about it.

There's a great Netflix show on it.

Yeah, it's sort of somewhere, but I think we were a part of it. We gave people the underpinnings, sort of the intellectual data stuff. And I think we're there. I mean, I— but by the way, Compass is very close to approval. They had their Phase 3 data, which is sort of the final one, which was great. All the other psychedelics that Tye is doing are coming shortly after. So over the next 3 to 5 years, there are going to be several psychedelic drugs approved. And I think it's going to be like very simplified, like it's always in medicine. At the beginning, people are using it for the very narrow use case, like for example, all the studies at the moment which we are doing are done, most of them for treatment-resistant depression. Why are we doing that? Is because it's the worst form of depression. Treatment-resistant depression means people tried everything, nothing helps, they really in a bad state. Yeah, and so I don't want to sound cynical, I want to sound positive, but like we've shown that even with this sort of worst-case group of people, psychedelics help a lot. But like once they're then approved for treatment-resistant depression, doctors will say, you know what, why would I try 2 or 3 shitty things like again SSRIs or whatever, which have much more side effects? Why should I only use psychedelics for last-in-line treatment? And I'm very sure like very quickly psychedelics will move to a first-line treatment. By the way, if we talk about the stock, not at all included in any research estimate. All the people who are looking at us at the moment, the researchers, the biotech investors, are very narrowly like, okay, you're doing treatment-resistant depression. How many people have— and they always assuming we only focusing on treatment, for example, treatment-resistant depression, and then we're going to have a 10% market share. My very, very, very positive belief is once psychedelics are approved, it's going to be a first-line treatment. And we're going to have more or less like, I don't want to say 100% market share because nothing is 100%, but we're going to have a lot of market share because why would people try stuff which is obviously worse? Like, I don't even understand it. Like, it's like sort of, but investors cannot wrap their head around that new paradigm. I think actually, by the way, in biotech, I looked a lot, but it's like in other industries, investors and researchers have a real issue with paradigm shifting. Sort of drugs. They just take it. So, but hey, I take it because they're already saying in the very like conservative, old school sort of world, everybody's predicting Atai is like a $5 to $10 billion company. And I'm like, well, but we should be much more because the market is bigger. But like, hey, one step after the other.

You get there. Yeah.

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Where else do you invest? What are your— if you kind of bucket this into investment buckets, right? You've got psychedelics are one.

Yeah.

What are the other buckets that you think will do well over the next 5 to 10 years?

So if I— exactly what we just said so far about AI and how the world is changing. So I have 5 sort of, let's call it sectors or topics, like biotech as a whole, because I also think at the end, when you have all the money in the world, meaning as humanity, not just as an individual, we're gonna resort at the end to both physical and mental well-being. Yeah, that's what— if I would ask you, or if we would ask every single human being on the planet, What do you want? Then normally people say first something financial, whatever. But if you like, why do you want a car? Why do you want a job? Why do you want money? Like, why? If you do that at the next dinner, you always come to say, if you press people with the question, what do you want in life, with why do you want that, why? At the very end, they all gonna say, because I wanna be happy. The number one thing every human being at the end strives to be with different then sort of conclusions is to be happy. And that's what we're doing in biotech. We're investing practically in physical, but especially in mental wellbeing. So mental health, neurodegenerative diseases, or prevention of them whatsoever. So biotech is one thing. Then the other big thing is crypto. It's literally biotech and crypto are our two biggest sectors. And in crypto, it's both like a very long position on Bitcoin. I'm not a Bitcoin maxi, but I believe Bitcoin is sort of a class of its own. And then we're building selectively companies in the ecosystem. So we help building as a founding investor Plasma, for example, which is a new blockchain focused on stablecoins and stuff like that. Then we have one a little bit catch-all pocket, because at the end, I said at the beginning of the podcast, I like to do things which excite me, which is called deep tech, which is mostly space tech and AI. And then very important, we have two bricks and mortar topics and sectors. The one is actually hospitality, sport, and entertainment because I believe humans will stop working. And if we get it right and if humans enjoy it, we still need to talk about What are they doing the whole day? And I believe we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna be much more human. We're gonna have much more social life, but that we need to go somewhere. I think, I mean, to a certain extent, I think that will move online. So I think virtual stuff, gaming, whatever it's gonna be, is growing. But I also believe like the more our world is digitized, the more we want the human touch. Like we wanna be with other real humans, not robots. In nice places. So we have a big hospitality business which we started where we own both the brands and the real estate for hotels. We own the largest live entertainment business in Europe doing 6,000 concerts a year from rock and pop to folk or whatever. And we have Enhance Games, which is a big sports thing. Yeah, because I also think people will be even more passionate about any form of sports because what— again, sorry, I'm jumping, but what we haven't even touched let's assume we can make the shift. People need belonging, like, and they need— so I think they're going to be actually a renaissance of religion, which you see it already now. And I think it's important. I'm personally very spiritual and religious. I believe in God.

Are you religious, like Catholic or Jewish or in the tradition?

I brought up Catholic, so I definitely have Catholic elements because it's always how you're brought up. I do believe a tiny bit that if I look at every religion, in the core, it's a good one.

Yeah.

By the way, that is, I think, is an important thing to realize if you go— and in the core, I mean, if you try to really go— again, it's my assumption plus a little bit of science, like, because As you know, all the religions, or at least people strive to know what is really the original message from the founder and what is then the layers and layers and layers like people after put on it. And my feeling is the core message of religions is always a good one, is like, be a good human being, don't be a dick, love other people like Jesus said, like you love, like you want to be loved yourself and whatever. And so, and that is great. Yeah. And then I think the bad part of religion or the problematic part to say always came when religions tried to become an institution because that goes then along with how do we control people? You control people with fear and all of that. So, so that is where Christianity really took a wrong turn in the medieval ages. I think there is where Islam is taking a really, really wrong turn now. But it's how people abuse it. Not, I think, what the founders truly wanted to tell us. By the way, side note, again, I'm coming back to my favorite topics, but like there is great research done. There is one book out which is called The Immortality Key, and there is another book of different scientists coming soon which is proving that most religions are actually based on psychedelic consumption. And that was my— one of my main things. I was always very interested in the history of any religion and in religious texts because I always felt that again, I believe in God. Let's call it more the divine because we also, I told always friends like when they're like, oh, how can you be a Christian? And then people say like they don't like gay people or whatever. I say it's all bullshit because like that is the organizational part. Like, because if you truly believe in a divine being, that being cannot care about what we eat or whom we sleep with or whatever. Because like that is kind of, I think if anybody tells me, oh, I believe God is regulating your sex life or God is regulating your dietary restrictions, whatever. I was like, this is such a big insult because think about it. I was like, I'm busy. Like, I don't want my friends to call me and say, what shall I eat? I would say, go fuck you. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. Like, let's talk about the important things in life. And I think we kind of diminish God and the divine in a very like rude way. To think that a divine omnipotent being is caring with whom we sleep. Like, so that being is hopefully caring whom we love, how we behave as a person, whatever. But I think what I can say is like in all the work with psychedelics, again, I would personally say, my colleagues are always a little bit nervous when I— but I make very clear, I can speak as the chairman of Atai about our science, and I can speak as Christian Angermayer about my personal beliefs, I do think psychedelics do open up a channel to the divine. That is where the real healing comes from. But what I can definitely say from all of our work, we seem to need it. I cannot tell you that psychedelics prove that God exists. We're gonna know that when we pass on, the real proof. But what I can tell you in all the work I've done with psychedelics and mental health, humans need something, some spirituality, some belief in the bigger whatever. And that's why I think coming back to where the world is going, we're gonna— A, there's a renaissance of existing religions, but there are also gonna be new religions. And new religions can be not even where people realize that they're following a religion. It can be like sports, like you're part of something, you want to be a part of a group, like you want to belong, whatever. So long story short, that's why we're investing so much in hospitality, sports, and entertainment. And then the fifth one to finish the overview of what we're doing— sorry, I'm always diverting— is natural resources. Because like what I also think what AI and robotics will do, it will lead to a really a renaissance of an industrial civilization. So we need more energy. By the way, all the AI calculations only work if we have much more energy supply, which leads to nuclear and other forms of energy. So we're investing in uranium, we're investing in copper. Sounds basic, but it's the building material for data centers and all of that. Yeah, and we're investing in gold because I also think—

Oh, I saw you did, we share an investment with Uranium Digital. Yes, love it.

Great company. They're kind of digitalizing the very still old-fashioned uranium trading. Yeah. And I think fiat currencies are going to shit. So that's why investing in Bitcoin and gold. That's our universe.

Back to the religion for a second. It's a theme that I've started to see pop up more and more the last couple of years. And I think people look at folks like Peter Thiel as being kind of one of the driving forces here. I'm just curious to get your take on like, what are you seeing on the ground with religion? Like, maybe what's your prediction for what happens with just religion tying back into society because we've become such a— religion has been my whole life removed. Every year that my life goes on, religion gets more and more removed from society, it feels like. And now that's starting to change.

So, yes. So we removed religion way too much.

And I think there are other forms of religion for me, like Bitcoin and the Red Sox and things like that.

But that's what I said. I think because we removed, let's call it, the real religions, we're kind of resorting back to pseudo-religions, which I don't want to even say is negative. It's just like, again, people need community. Religions aside of God, by the way, serve a very practical— I think human civilizations through all the times realized that they need all of that. Again, even if you take God out of the equation for a second, still religions are important because they give us a lot of things humans crave for: community, belonging, explanations, like in a crazy world and all of that. But now, so I think we had a time, and I think this is still going on, where the traditional— sorry, the replacement religions were going up, like sports and whatever. But now I think that the world is becoming so complicated and so we don't understand it, like we're really resorting to the true religions, which means the spiritual, the spiritual form of it. So, um, by the way, I mean, yeah, it's like, take even the Catholic Church. Like, and by the way, what I think what religions did wrong, again, because they wanted so desperately to become organizations, they kind of killed the spirituality. And that what was haunting them the last 100 years, because like they kind of eliminated the part. It's almost like if you're a brand and like you were a big brand at a certain time because you really had a product which people wanted and needed. And then over time, you kind of increased the prices and whatever, but the quality of the product went down. Yeah, and that's what I think happened with most standard religions. The quality of the product, meaning delivering real spiritual soothing to people, went down and all the bullshit went up. And I think some religions are now, oh, we need to really turn back. I mean, they like tankers. But what I want to say is like the Catholic Church has a kind of part— you could call it a sect, but I think it's fairly acknowledged by the Catholic Church, which is Santo Daime, which is in Brazil, is a part of the Catholic Church or a group subgroup. And they're using psychedelics, by the way, as provenly the early Christians did. And I think that was one of the reasons why Christianity was really spreading so quickly, because if you do psychedelics, it's obviously turbocharging spirituality for your, for your community. And there is actually— there are very interesting documents. I don't want to say the wrong year. It's like the Concilium of Nicaea. Like there, there was a gathering. I think it was— and I just need to take off the jacket because it's getting really hot.

Yeah, it's hot. What is it?

Concilium of Nicaea, which is a town in Turkey now. Nicaea, like I think it was 300-ish, 303 or something.

Yeah, 325.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, and at this Council of Nicaea, it was the first gathering before Christianity was kind of a loose thing, like loose in terms of there were different sects and different— they didn't even call it sects, just different, different movements, whatever. So, and they came together and sort of tried to unify the church and but that also meant they wanted control. And in the documents of this Concilium, like you find sentences which clearly refer to psychedelics where they are like, only the top people should do it. Because if you have an organization where every member is— can communicate to God via psychedelics, it's very hard to say, look, this is what you have to do, because then people were saying, no, but we had our own experience and our own— which, by the way, how it should be. I think religion should be very, very personal. Between, between yourself and God.

Yeah.

And they kind of eliminated that personal element and that concilio and were like, no, you have to go through your priest and to your bishop, whatever, because that's how we're going to control you in the future. And it is sad. And I think that was the beginning sort of of the end because they, they again, over then a long time, they kind of reduced that spirituality. What people came to in this case, Christianity in the first place. And I think now the need is so big that people going back and religions are realizing that. And the Catholic Church is like, as I said, at least turning a blind eye on, maybe endorsing even Santo Daime. And maybe like we see in 10 years that we can go to a Sunday mass and—

Yeah, I mean, it sounds crazy, but I have friends who now— friends who are very against psychedelics. I know ketamine is not really a psychedelic, but it's a semi-psychotropic. I could maybe bucket it in this conversation. And, you know, 5 years ago ketamine was seen as the party drug. And now 5 years later today, I have friends who are in therapy with— and their therapist gives them a little bit of ketamine. And I'm on the subway coming to work today and there's therapy.

Yeah, because it works, by the way, promoted by New York City. But it works because it's a good thing. Like, and by the way, again, just like jumping from— yeah, but like to use a tie again, like Why Atai, the stock is going up, is one other simple thing. So you have— so there is one approved drug which is called Spravato by Johnson Johnson, which is ketamine. I always would say ketamine is a semi-psychedelic or a psychedelic light experience. And it's also not— if somebody has a true problem, I would always say ketamine is stabilizing you. It's kind of a Band-Aid. The real psychedelics are fixing you. But it's great because first of all, it's the one thing which is there and it does help a lot of people, but it has to be taken 8 times. If you do the full sort of how it's sort of recommended, you do it twice a week for like 4 weeks. So roundabout 8 sessions to get the same effect, which we have proven today again and the first time in July with 5-MeO-DMT in one session only.

Yeah.

So that's why people are getting so excited about that type.

How long do you think that you will live?

I think I will live that long that I want to die. I really, I think I'm gonna live very long, like I think some 100 years. At least I have the potential. And I think as long as we stay human, because like it could be that we modify ourselves so much that everything I'm saying now is meaningless because like Everything I'm saying now about myself and my expectation is obviously based on my current emotions or me being me, like me being Christian and me being a human. In the moment we start talking about brain-computer interfaces and that stuff, I could see that we're just changing and then every bet is off anyway. But if we stay in the current, not just form, but also physical and mental form, I think part of being human is that you somewhat want to know what's next. I think we all, even if we don't admit that, have that curiosity in us. So I think, again, if I'm staying human, then I think I can live some 100 years easily, but I will come to a point where I'm like, I had enough. I think this point can be far out. And again, by the way, I think psychedelics can help people staying curious, meaning I'm now already 47, not old, but I feel positively like I'm still in my 20s. And I think psychedelics definitely helped me with that because I don't want to say I have a job because it's my hobby, but the work I'm doing, my daily sort of pastime, running a Pyron and investing is literally like I need to deal with novelty all the time. And I think people normally grow exhausted of that. And the thing, the fact that I didn't, I believe I would at least partially credit psychedelics, which keep me mentally young and open for change and all of that. But again, someone, I think, to answer your question, I'm just going to say like, let's see what's next.

Let's see what's next. Do you think there are people living right now who will live to be 150 or 200?

100%, like me, like us.

You think I could be 150 or 200? Yes, easy.

And by the way, let me explain for a second before people say, oh, he's crazy. Like, because people think, oh, how do we get from the 85 years now to, let's say, 150? So it's not going to happen overnight. It's not that they're going to be one day where we wake up and we're like, oh, now we're living to 150. What's going to happen, though, over the next 10, 20 years, and we again, we're already in the middle we're already in it in this process, is that because of scientific progress, which gonna be in science incredibly accelerated the next 10, 15 years by AI, we gonna push life expectancy gradually. And I already expect that in the next 10 years from now, somewhere, we gonna have this one magic year where we losing one calendar year of life expectancy, but we winning more than 1 year of gain. And from then on, practically that gain can go on very long.

Yeah, you already start to see it a little bit. And I use this app called Function Health. Yeah. And they tell you, you know, your life's— they tell you, you know, I'm 30 years old, but that, you know, you are technically 22 years old. And if you do these things, you could be 19 years old. So you're starting to see glimpses of it.

And it's like, and this is going to accelerate dramatically over the next 10 years, again, with AI and all of that.

Yeah. Tell me about the enhanced games. Enhanced games. Yeah.

Well, one of the coolest things, meaning the two things like—

This is the thing you've done, by the way, that has gotten the most conversation in my personal group texts with high school and college friends who are— none of them are in crypto. None of them are— the most— what's the right word? Honestly, anger might be the—

Anger.

Anger and— like, this is a scam, this should not exist. The most emotion actually is the right word.

But I love it.

And it was very interesting.

And I was like, that is why it's going to be successful.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm very like, people sometimes asking me like, oh, like when—

I should pull up these tweets. Yeah.

People are like, oh, are you bothered? I was like, no, I love them because like, what if you create a new sport event, the one thing you want is emotions. Anger, passion, whatever, but I want emotion. The worst thing is no interest. Yeah. And what we found with the Enhanced Games is at least the one and only company I have ever started so far with the craziest virality and with, by the way, no marketing budget. We're just executing. We haven't done anything. The first games are going to be Memorial Day. 2026, mark it in your calendar, Sunday, 24th, first Enhanced Games in Las Vegas, but globally distributed.

I'll be there.

You're gonna be there. You're gonna hopefully stream and like do podcasts, whatever. But like, we haven't done anything. I mean, we did some side events, whatever, but like the mindshare we occupying is amazing. Like, and I always compare it, we like invested maybe a million dollar in marketing. Yeah, and there is a company called LIV Golf, which the Saudis are doing a new, Nobody knows it. Go to a restaurant with me, but it's exactly what you say. If we go to a restaurant in New York and ask people, do you know Lift Golf? Oh, I think nobody does. Do you know Enhanced Games? 70 or 80% like, yeah, heard of it. And then some will say it's crazy, some will say I hate it, some will say I love it, I can't wait to see it. Like, but the attention and the emotion—

Enhanced Games, for people who haven't seen this, is, uh, it's the first sporting event where performance-enhancing drugs are not only permitted, but they're actually actively encouraged.

Yes, we want people to show us what the human body can do with the work of science. It's, by the way, fits perfectly my worldview. By the way, what I also believe, like, bigger picture is we're going again because we have the time, and I think it's going to be practically one of our almost occupations is to make ourselves the best version of us. So if you look at like the last 100 years, medicine was only focused on healing the sick. And even the term sick is not so easy to define. I mean, there is things like, oh, you have COVID. Okay, we know this is not good. You need to get rid of it. If you have cancer, we know not good, you should get rid of it. But for example, the original definition of medicine and illness was that an illness is a negative deviation from the norm and the medicine is which brings you back to normal. Which is a very slippery slope because for a long time people were like, being gay is a negative deviation from the norm, which made it an illness. And obviously they thought they can find medications to bring it back to the norm, which is obviously not the case. So already there, like, I think the norm is a very slippery thing. So how I see the future evolving for all of us is that it's going to become very, in a good way, subjective, and we can define what we want to be. That is, I think, what science, like both AI and all of that combined with biotech, will truly give us, will allow us to sit there and say, who do I want to be physically and intellectually? By the way, we will gonna see drugs in the next 10 years which make us smarter. I mean, there are already some on the market, but like going to be much better ones. Like, we will see drugs. By the way, which is the best-selling drug group at the moment? GLP-1s, the ones which make you lose weight. And I think the number was 70 or 80% of the people who take GLP-1s or Zempis, Mounjaro, or whatever, are not taking it because they're clinically obese. They just want to be slimmer. And it's fine. It's great. I think we should celebrate that we have now medications, yeah, which can help people to become what they truly want to be. You want to be slimmer? Here's some support. You want to be smarter? We should help people. Why should we condemn people to be just what intelligence-wise what they are? And you want to look better? You want to perform better? Yeah. And by the way, perform— what is performance? Performance on the track and field and swimming or performance in bed? Like you want to have longer sex? Like all of that, I think we're going to allow humans to do, which is, by the way, weird that I have to say it because that's what I always looked at medicine like it should be. But that is so not the current state of both regulation, but even like people, like they're like, no, you should just take medication when you're sick. I was like, why? Like, I don't even understand it. I can't— why?

Like, again, I never thought about it like that. You have a baseline and we now treat medicine as when you fall below your baseline, you get back to it.

And I was like, who defines the baseline? And by the way, the one thing I want to say, and it is very like because like I'm— people know, I think I'm more in the conservative camp. But the one thing actually, to a certain extent, the left-wing side, if you want to say like that, of politics gave us is like the whole trans movement. I think it had some excesses, but what it ultimately said, and that I support, is that you can be who you want to be. Like, the only thing I disagree is when it then became like, oh, you have to I don't know, call me with a certain pronoun. I'm like, I'm gonna do it because I'm a nice human being. And if you want to be called, like, I think it's decent, but like, I don't want to be forced legally, whatever. But that's another discussion. But the base thing of the trans movement is a very, very positive one, that every human being should have the right to define themselves. Yeah. And we only at the moment, the whole political and societal discussion was about sex and gender, but I think they opened up the door positively to a much broader discussion. What is the baseline? What do I want to be? And that I'm very much looking forward. I think it's going to be actually, I think the best and favorite pastimes of humans over the next decade is to literally reinvent themselves physically, mentally, all the time. And Enhanced Games is kind of the front, the consumer-facing product because it's going to show people what science can already do today. And think about it, like what people, how they will react positively if they see a 37-year-old break world records. Like, oh my God, that's what I want to be like. In a year or two from now, we maybe want to have an over-60 category to show like what, how fit can you be when you're 60 plus? And I think we're going to give people At the moment, I, by the way, as I said, I'm very happy with all the anger if there is, like what it is, yeah. But I think once we've done the first game, that anger will actually fully morph into amazement and like, wow, that's what we are capable of as a human race.

So for your own personal life, and you can skip this question if it's too personal, but where do you draw the line? So maybe if you're thinking about, someone's listening to this, they're like, oh, I kind of agree with that. I want to actually start improving. So maybe phase 1 is you start taking some vitamins, vitamin B, some calcium, and vitamin C or something. All right, maybe like I want to push it even more, you start taking creatine or something like that. Like, I want to push it even more, I start taking, uh, Adderall or modafinil or something to focus more and be more productive. Then you push it even more, you start taking testosterone replacement therapy, TRT. Where do you in your personal life— are you— is your mentality like, let me just experiment and push it as far as possible, or Yeah, that's a very short version.

Before I go there, one, and I made a, if anybody wants to read it because I poured a lot of heart into it, like on my Substack, actually the oldest post is like, the future is enhanced and it's about this topic. But there is one important, not disclaimer, just like I have these kind of, again, I actually, I don't like like left and right wing, that thing, whatever. Like I think a lot of, things in like the president of Rwanda. I don't even know if he listens to it, if he remembers that, but he gave me the one sentence which I think is so true and politics should be about because I asked him, sorry, I'm diverting now again, but I think I was like, he reconciled his country with a genocide and many much more problems than we ever had. And he did it so phenomenally well. And I said like, and we talked about left wing, right wing, he said actually running a country is not as complicated as you think, Christian. He's like, you need to use your brain 70% and your heart 30%. And then for most of the things, there are very rational solutions. And only when we over-politicize them and again, trying to pit people against each other, we end up in the mess we are. And the same if I come, because people sometimes say, oh, Christian is saying on podcasts that he's doing psychedelics, but then in a country where it's legal, I have to add a disclaimer. But then on the other side, he's like, oh, they should just be medically allowed. Isn't that a hypocrite? And I'm like, no, like, I think we can merge all of that. It's not always like, oh, you're either very left-wing and right-wing. And if you're left-wing, you're for let's do it all. So, and one of the merge I want to say is like for all of these body enhancement and it's a big disclaimer, but I really believe in it, is first of all, you need to do it informed because it's complicated. And by the way, your body is a very complicated system. Yeah. And so at the ENHANCE games, for example, it's not an everything goes. We have 3 major rules. The one rule is only FDA-approved drugs. Because only when you know, when you've gone through and you can say a lot, and I'm the first one who will raise my hand that we can do better in terms of how long the FDA process takes. But it is a gold standard sort of framework. And once you've done all your trials, yeah, as painful as sometimes I think as an entrepreneur, because you have to spend a lot of money, We know the downsides, we know the upsides, we know a lot about these drugs. So we only allow at the Enhanced Games medically approved drugs. So you can't take cocaine, you can't take crystal meth and all of that. Second, you must have a doctor who is prescribing you these drugs and looking at what your body needs and how the body reacts on it. And third rule, by the way, is you cannot have a negative sort of consequence because we do a full health check. We don't care what you take as long as it's medical. But like, if you did so much of something that you had a problem in your body, we disqualify you. You need to be perfectly healthy to start at the Enhanced Games. So reflecting that on my own journey or everybody who's listening, I would say the first is like you need a doctor doing that with you, at least if you go to a certain level because you need to get your bloodwork done, whatever. You were like, yeah, you said you're at, what's it called? The health—

Functional Health. Functional Health.

Yeah. And like, so learn about your body because also people react differently on different drugs. Yeah. So, and then the second big thing is like sometimes in life, by the way, like everything, like investing is like an upside downside. Like what do you, I come back to what I said in the first minute is like, in order to be happy, you need to know what you really want in life. And if you really want A, and A can be solved with a certain drug and the drug has a little bit of downsides, you might very happily take it because A, is your full desire and it makes you happy. Like other people might say, I'm not gonna take that, right? So again, I really, really think it's the autonomy of people, but combined with a regulatory framework and doctors and approved drugs. And the last point is, and I don't know what your demographics is, maybe if someone like, no, he's such a party pooper, but like, I think no drug should be taken before you're 21. Because especially your brain is really— and 21 is still a very, a very aggressive— like, I would rather say 25, but people are like not gonna buy that. Like, sort of like, but 21, like, the brain is aging actually, or is, is being fully developed somewhere in your early 20s. And if you do any drug before, especially any drug which goes in your brain, it can have very negative consequences. But my number one point is like Don't do alcohol. By the way, that's one of my other big missions in life. Alcohol should be not banned, by the way, it's there, but people should understand how bad of a substance. Anything else, if anybody tells me, "Ooh, ketamine, ooh, psychedelics," or whatever, I'm like, "Look at the science. Science only." There's this great chart. Maybe if you take one thing away of this podcast, like with all the crazy stuff we talked, Google that chart. It's the guy who wrote the book is called David and then Nutt, N-U-T-T, and then the word chart that graphically shows you the harm potential of recreational drugs. And the number one bad drug, really like number one by far, is alcohol.

So alcohol, then heroin, crack, meth, cocaine.

Yes.

The list goes on.

Yeah. And then on the very other side—

The very bottom is mushrooms.

Exactly, because the only risk is you have an accident while you're doing it. But like, but anyway, so, but like coming back to me, like I'm doing it very scientifically. I'm always thinking like, by the way, and I'm trying things. I'm like, hey, can I work more? Yes, you take modafinil or whatever, but then you need to think about like, yeah, what else? Again, life is also a compromise because it's everything. Especially in my case, because like I really, really, I have ADHD and I love it. Like I think it's a superpower. Like I want to do a lot of things in my life. Like I want to be, as we discussed, I want to be a little bit dabbling in politics. Don't want to be a politician myself, but I love the world. Yeah, I obviously have my investment portfolio and we're already very broad from biotech, as I said, to hospitality and sports. But then I want to have time with my friends and my family and my relationship. And like, so I'm always like, But then you realize, oh, if I do too much of modafinil, I can have a lot of more work time. But someone, my sport is like, is not doing well because like I, yeah, it's always a balance and you always need to decide what is at the moment important for you and that can change over time. But yes, I'm very, very sort of libertarian. That's maybe the right word when it comes to the use of medical drugs for whatever pleases you.

Yeah. The, maybe the last thing on my mind here, Christian, is I sent some texts to some folks saying Christian's coming on the podcast. What do you want to know? And many of them said something along the lines of, I want to know how he builds his network and how he thinks about partnering with people and building those relationships. And I think the question, that comment comes because you surround yourself with this amazing group of people, the Brendan Bloomers of the world and Mike Novogratzes and Paulos and Angela Merkel and these big hedge fund managers. I'm curious how you think about building these relationships and networking. And I don't— yeah, the word networking has a negative connotation.

Exactly, that's the point. And I think the point is that a lot of people who are asking that are mostly thinking about it because they think it's a personal gain for them.

Yeah.

And that makes them very inauthentic. So I know if you do it in this order and you're like, ah, then then people think, oh, maybe Christian is also having all these cool friends because like it's helping him in ABC, and it doesn't. It does, but it's the consequence but not the reason. So first of all, there's many friends I have people have never heard of because they're my personal friends and they're not famous. But all of them have one thing in common. They are amazing human beings and have a passion for something. So that is what I'm drawn to. By the way, again, that's very subjective. Other people might be drawn to other stuff, but I'm drawn to that I want to surround myself, what I said before, the first minute, like no assholes, like good human beings who have a passion for something because I think passion is what makes that life livable. But that can be a friend who has a passion for his family. That can be a musician, that can be an actor, that can be a politician. Like, you know what I mean? Like, but like all of my friends have in common that they really are, have a passion for, and once you have a passion for, like often you excel in something. And then I'm genuinely interested in them and they are my friends because they're my friends. Yeah. And then once you are friends with people who have passion for something, then I think often it results in doing something together. You know what I mean? But it's the consequence. It can't be the original reason. I think I feel it even now when people want to befriend me. I think I feel it, hopefully, yeah, very well if people really do it because they really have something they want from me, or are they genuinely interested in me as a human being and what I'm doing. And obviously, if you're interested in me and psychedelics, it might end up, you know, but like, it's really the order. What is the reason and what is the consequence? And by the way, many of these people you just mentioned have been friends for years and years and years. And I didn't do anything with them in business, whatever. They were just friends. And then things happened. Yeah, I know. Like the euro crisis came in 2010. I met Angela Merkel the first time in 2002. Things like that. Like, I know the founders of Tether, Paolo and Giancarlo, since a long time, and Tether just became a thing in 2020. But I always admired how they were looking at the world since 2016. And I think that's the healthy way to develop relationships. And that's also then the— these are the really stable relationships.

Yeah. Christian, amazing conversation, man. Anything that we can do to help you?

I'm very happy, but like, we're gonna find things to do. I'm gonna come to your, uh, to your, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, London event.

Yeah, so very excited. You guys should come to the London event. Christian, thank you, my friend.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.