3 Stories Of People Making Millions In Weird Ways

All right, Sean, there is a documentary that Ari and I were texting about. Did you see it? It was called Martha. It was on Netflix. It was about Martha Stewart.

I haven't seen it. I actually don't know really anything about her.

Great. This is so great because Martha Stewart was a beast.

I really couldn't tell you 5 things about Martha Stewart. So like, was she kind of the first influencer, like in a celebrity influencer who then started launching products, or what's the story?

Martha Stewart was a killer. She was a total shark. She was way sharkier. If you only know her as her put-together image of like this, like housewife who cooks, everything I'm going to say is going to blow your mind because she was a total shark. So I'm going to give you a little bit of her background. So basically she's, uh, born and raised up in the East Coast. She goes to Columbia University. While she's going to school, she becomes a model because she was a cute woman when she was young.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, she was, um, fantastic.

Yeah, very, very pretty woman. Yeah, go Martha! She gets married at a young age, like 19 or 20 years old, but graduates Columbia, and her father-in-law helps her get a job as a stockbroker. And by the way, she studied architectural, like, history or something like that at Columbia, nothing to do with stocks. And so at the age of like 24, 25, she gets this job, and you're probably wondering How on earth did Martha Stewart become a stockbroker? Well, I am wondering. When her father-in-law first met her, he was like, you have this like it factor. Like you are so charming. You are so put together because she had this vibe at a very young age in her twenties. Like she dressed fantastically. She was very charismatic. She was clearly driven and hardworking. And this small, like 10-person operation that was a stockbroking company, this brokerage. They needed a saleswoman, a salesperson, and it was all men at the time. I think this was in the '60s. It was all dudes. It was a very male-dominated industry, but she comes into this interview and eventually works there. And they comment on how her— she's dressed like perfectly, like so perfectly that you're sort of intimidated when you first meet her because she's like perfectly put together, but then she's like really charming and warm and you're like, oh, I, I, I like you. And so she starts like. As a salesperson, basically at the stock company, basically working with, with, with clients and getting them to like trust them and things like that. And she kills it. And so listen to this, at the age of 26, according to this documentary, she said she was making $135,000 a year, which equivalent today is $1 million a year at the age of 26 as a stockbroker. Pretty crazy that she went from being a model to a stockbroker in that short amount of time. And she kills it. And she does it for like 6 or 7 years. Like, it's like a legitimate career for her. And she suggests that one of her clients buy this stock that was like a dollar and it went to like $10. So it killed it. Then they bought a little bit more and it goes something huge, like to $50. It was like this massive stock and it made these clients all this money, but then the $50 stock goes right back down to like $8 or $10. And so technically her client had still made a bunch of money, but that roller coaster ride of like making a little bit of money, then making a ton of money, then losing a ton of money. It like left her kind of distraught. And so she bailed because of that, like, journey. And so she quit. And so in the— when she's like 30 years old or late 20s, she moves out to actually where I'm living now, Westport, Connecticut. She was like, you know, I want to have a kid. I want to like try this housewife life, whatever, and do this thing. And she moves out here and she sits around for a very short amount of time. And she's like, all right, I got to do something. Like, I can't just sit here. And so they buy this like kind of shitty house. And she like totally turns around and redoes the whole thing all by herself. She paints it, she builds this beautiful garden. She learns how to raise goats and chickens and like plant her own garden and like creates this amazing like estate out in Westport, Connecticut, which now it's fancy. Back then it wasn't particularly fancy. And so eventually she gets really into this and she's like, you know, I kind of like this housewife life. What if I start hosting some dinner parties? And she creates these lavish, amazing dinner parties. And eventually all these rich guys who come are like, hey, do you want to like cater my party? And so that's what she starts doing. And so she builds a business as a caterer that she said made her a millionaire. And her whole shtick back then for this catering business was she goes, I'm going to make everything by scratch. And so Westport, Connecticut, we're about an hour and 10 minutes from New York City. At this time, people start realizing that she could actually operate on like 3 or 4 hours of sleep. And so she would go to like catering, the catering business, by the way, it's like That's like the hardest thing on earth. Like, you know, it's brutal. It's a really hard business to pull off. And so she was famous for going to the farmers markets in New York at 4 AM, getting all of her produce, and then going in the morning and baking all of her food. And so her famous saying as her catering business was basically, I make everything from scratch. And not only does she just make stuff from scratch, one time she saw this brochure that like was doing a recreation of like the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving. And there was like a basket of fruit that was like overflowing. And she was like, that's what I'm going to do. And so she was famous for creating these like charcuterie boards of like overflowing meats and fruits. And she says something that was actually really inspiring. She was like, I wanted to turn this into experience. And like, I wanted to make this like fruit board. She was like, it sounds trivial, but that was my art. And I was going to make like these baskets of fruit overflow with strawberries to show that this table is where like generosity, like, like, you know, like and abundance and all this stuff. And it's a massive hit. She builds this into a big business to the point where a few years in, she goes and she caters a, uh, I think it was like Penguin Publishing or something like that. Like one of these publishers' parties, she caters it. And it's a really big deal. You know, she's doing like the Met, uh, all these museum and art museums in New York. And this is a big deal that she's doing this catering company or this, uh, publishing company. And they start talking to her and they're like, Dude, you are amazing. Do you want to write a cookbook for us? And so she does. And it takes her like a few years, like 3 or 4 years, because she's super hands-on on writing this book. And they were like, hey, so we want you to do this cookbook. Just put in a bunch of recipes and some black and white photos. And she was a nobody. And she goes, not a chance. We're doing colored photos and we're actually going to do like 500 photos. And I just give me the budget. I'll go ahead and I'm going to like hire a photographer friend and we're going to go and like organize all these photos and take all these lavish photos at my house that I made, because we're going to make this like the Martha Stewart cookbook where at the time, typically it had just been recipes. She was like, no, we're going to add in about like my lifestyle. We're going to have these photos. One of the photos, this is like her kitchen. Look how lavish that is. Like, what do you see?

The most full kitchen I've ever seen. There's literally 9,000 pots and pans hanging up above her. And then she's surrounded. She's like, Her kitchen looks like a charcuterie board. It looks like an overflowing charcuterie board, but she's one of the, she's like a piece of salami in the middle.

And that's like the whole, her whole shtick. Uh, basically she, she says this, she's like, I'm going to sell perfection because she was, she was a perfectionist. She was actually a pain in the ass to work for.

And the first book was called Entertaining and it was about like entertaining guests basically.

Yeah. And like creating an atmosphere of like warmth and things like that. And it was a massive hit. It sold 650,000 copies. What do you think?

I feel like Nick Gray is the new Martha Stewart. I'm just going to put that out there. What Nick Gray is doing with the Two Hour Cocktail Party, I think he's just a, he's just a young Martha Stewart right now.

Yeah. Well, and she was like one of the early influencers because this was in the '80s. This is when like mass media is really becoming a thing. And it's a massive hit. And so like these women buy these books because it's not just about cooking, it's about like being better, being aspirational, like perfecting a craft. And she sold the shit out of this lifestyle, and it was her lifestyle. And she basically said in the documentary, she was like, I had visions early on of creating this Martha Stewart Media company all about me because I'm great. Like, I am what she— like, she's like, she was very confident about that.

Opening up the business plan, like, all right, Martha Stewart's Media company, it's about me. Next page. Because I'm great. Next page.

But she was, I mean, she was so like, there's a lot of bad stuff that has gone on. Like basically her husband cheats on her, she cheats on her husband. Her daughter's like, dude, she was a cold mom. People complain working for her. They're like, dude, she's just a fucking asshole. And she was like throughout the documentary, they get her on camera being rude to her employees. And so yeah, she's like a perfectionist and she, she, she was like, I'm not, I'm not sorry for that. I'm a perfectionist.

Wait, so fast forward through the business side. So she does the cookbook, cookbook's a hit, massive hit.

And eventually, uh, one thing leads to another where Kmart, which was just like Kmart today, back then it was like, you know, lower, lower status store. She partners with them to create like a line of bedding and people are like shocked. They're like, why would this upscale woman do this? And it turned out to be a great move. It was really cool. And then she partners with Time and she creates a series of magazines. And she's the editor of the magazine. It goes really well, but she's like, I want to own this son of a bitch. And so she raises $85 million and she buys the magazine and 3 or 4 years later takes it public. And I showed the financials of her business. It was basically, I think it was called Martha Stewart Omni Media. Basically, she buys the business and then like something like 3 years later takes it public. The, in year 3, it's doing $130 million a year in 1997, $130 million in revenue. And it's a behemoth of a business. So basically they've got the TV show, they have tons and tons of magazines. They have merchandising like the Kmart deal. It just crushes it and it goes public and she becomes the first ever self-made women's billionaire. In, in America and just annihilates it. But then something really bad happens.

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So basically she's worth like $400, $500, $600 million at this point. Uh, cause the stock was going up and down. Apparently she calls her stockbroker. She's like, hey, I want you to sell this one stock. So she sells this one stock and she made like $30 grand off of it. Turns out a lot of people think that it was insider trading. And so the DOJ like interviews her and figures out this whole thing. And does this massive investigation. Turns out the charges of, of, of insider trading are dropped. They're like, you did not insider trade.

However, so sorry, she sold her own stock or she sold—

sorry, just a different, just a, a stock, and only $30K.

So why was it a big deal anyway?

It was, so it was a big deal because we're just, uh, we're, we're basically— there was like Enron and a bunch of things like this were happening at the time, and the DOJ was like, any insider trading, any like corruption, we're going to go, we're going like really hard against all this. And so she like sells some stock, it's suspicious. Turns out that the, the CEO of this, of the company whose stock she sold, he was in fact corrupt. And they're like, but you knew him, what was going on? You knew that this drug wasn't going to pass, you sold the stock, whatever. The DOJ investigates her and they're like, you actually, that looks clean. It looks like you didn't know anything. However, when we interviewed you, you told us some small fact about how you were on a schedule to sell this stock. Turns out you weren't on a schedule. And so you lied to us. And so we are going to put you in federal penitentiary for 5 months for lying, not for insider trading, but for lying about this, like somewhat, ah, not that big of a deal fact. And so kind of bullshit, kind of not like she did lie, but like she got 5 months in the federal penitentiary and she's like 50 years old. And at the time when all this trial shit happened, that's when we realized that Martha Stewart She's, she's kind of bad. She's, she's, she's, she's, she's bad because there's all these stories where the, it comes out, she's a little rude. And so for example, her stockbroker has this assistant who would talk to Martha mostly. And like, there's examples of like, of the stockbroker's assistant being like, dude, she was the meanest person ever. For example, one time she called and I had to put her on hold and I go back to talk to her. She goes, hey, if you don't change that waiting music, that tacky waiting music by the next time I call, I'm going to have you fired and just hung up. Just like hung up. Like there's like repeatedly like a bunch of stories where she just didn't, she was not like very kind to people and that kind of swayed public opinion of her. She goes to jail for 5 months and it sucked. It sucked for her. It was not good. She gets out of jail and she ends up doing Justin Bieber's roast, which again changed public perception of her because at this point everyone was like, man, it's kind of fun seeing Martha Stewart. Kind of downfall because she was a perfect woman. Like, eff her. It's kind of nice. Like, it brings, brings me up to see this.

Yeah, I knew she wasn't so perfect.

Yeah, but she roasts Justin Bieber and she's just like hilarious. She talks about how she like, uh, uh, shanked bitches in prison and how she like made this shank with just like a piece of a pencil and some bubble gum. And you could do one too at home, I'll show you how. Like, it like kind of humanized her. It was pretty cool. But her getting arrested, it decimated the stock. So she was like, on the documentary, she was like, I think I would've been worth $10 billion, but when I got arrested, my stock went way down. We, they ended up selling the company for like $300 million. And it was kind of like the, it could have been like a great company, but it kind of wasn't. However, throughout this whole thing, this whole documentary, Martha like has shown time and time again. She's a bad, bad woman, like in, in, in all sense of the word, as in like she's brutal, she's smart, she's conniving.

Her stock is only going up in your books. That's all I'm hearing. All I'm hearing is that, let's just summarize. Good looking lady already off to a good start. Then goes from model to sales slash stockbroker. All right.

Amazing.

One interesting thing. That's cool. Two interesting things. You have my attention. Third interesting thing, self-made, first kind of major tradwife influencer, does the cookbooks, does it her way, is ruthless with the details, is a, has, has a no-nonsense attitude. She's a stickler. These are all, I mean, these are your safe words, dude. Like these are all the things that you enjoy. So this is really up your alley. Like, I mean, like, how do you feel about Martha Stewart right now? Cause it sounds like even when she's bad, it just made her more good in your books.

Sorta. I mean, she paid the price. So basically like her husband left her, her kids, like she's got a bad relationship with her children because of the way she behaved. And she basically, she's 83 now, by the way. I didn't realize how old she was. And like, she hasn't had a relationship since her husband and her broke up. So she paid the price. She, there's a cost to be the boss. Uh, you know, and she paid it, but she is in fact the boss. So I do have a lot of respect for her. And I also think that there's downsides. To achieve what she achieved. But I'm shocked you didn't know that. Did you know any of this? Like how she's like— not really.

I knew she had like a cookbook or was on TV and that she sold like stuff to women. Uh, that's kind of the extent of what I knew about Martha Stewart.

Dude, she's great. And so another big takeaway, and I'll wrap up here, is how big of a company you could start and have just off the back of one person. Like it was the Martha Stewart brand and she was like into that. Like a lot of people would be fearful of like having that burden, having that on your back of like literally 1,000+ employees and billions of dollars of, of value. And she was totally into it and she loved it. And I love those types of personalities.

Right. But it sounds like this company wasn't that good. And your numbers table here, uh, you know, by 2001, It says total revenue, $295 million, net income, $21 million, which is obviously, that's good. That's not nothing, but that's not a $10 billion company to make, you know, $21 million a year of net income. And then it says from 2003 to 2015, which is like 3 presidents, it says consecutive annual losses every year except for 1 year. So was this really a good business or was this actually just a lot of work for nothing?

No, it was good. I mean, you have to think of a few things. One, you know, it was making $300 million a year in revenue and a lot of it came from publishing and publishing means subscription magazines. So like, that's like pretty good. But then the internet came and just completely like obliterated that industry. I mean, that was like, magazines are probably like the worst industry to be in. So like, yeah, there's a lot of what-ifs and the timing was such that she got arrested and also like, you know, Amazon was created and the internet was created.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's a lot of like what-ifs, but I feel like if she was, I think she was like 30 years too early.

Like I think if she had the internet, she could have become a juggernaut. 'Cause it sounds like her talent and her ruthlessness, that combination was gonna serve her well. And it just, she needed the, she needed a better medium. If she could have just owned her own Instagram and TikTok channels and built everything off the back of that, you know, she, I think she would have been the number one sort of like women's or mom influencer. She arguably was that anyways of her era, but the market 100x'd.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and like, I think a lot of these like big celebrities, I think it was a little bit easier to be a big celebrity, uh, in the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s because there was less of them. Now anyone with a cell phone can become a celebrity in like 6 or 12 months. Um, so it's hard to say, but, but by the way, her businesses, her businesses still do like a billion a year in sales.

Okay. Gotcha. Uh, you have something in your notes here. Typical day of 60-year-old Martha Stewart.

Yeah. Read that.

It says she's 60, but she looks a decade younger. She's, she's been up since 4:30 AM. She answers her email at 5, takes a 3-mile walk with her trainer at 6. She tours her garden at 7. As when she tours her garden, she's thrilled to discover a duck and 13 ducklings in the swimming pool. By 7:30, she's whipping up corn gruel for visiting waterfowl. I don't even know what any of these words are.

Like an animal. An animal.

Building a wooden ramp to help them get in and out of the pool.

A duck.

Okay, she's doing all this stuff for a duck. Her TV crew arrives at 8, hair and makeup 8:30, and then she's shooting her TV segment by 9:00 AM.

Yeah, dude, she's crazy, dude.

I literally woke up like 19 minutes ago and, uh, I rolled outta bed and I put on this hat and then I started, I clicked play. I don't think, I don't think I'm built for this.

She's a machine. You know how like people say stories of like how Trump can only operate on 3 hours of sleep? That's like a real thing, by the way. There's like a, it's like a, I forget what the name of it. It's like a, a thing. She's another person that she's famous for only sleeping like 3 hours a night.

Perfect segue. Can I tell you what my best topic was that I wanted to talk to you about?

Yeah.

Ozempic for sleep. So there's a guy, uh, his blog is isaac.net, and he wrote this post about sleeplessness. And he basically says that there is a set of people that are famous who have the short sleeper genes, a set of genes for where, you know, about 4 to 5 hours a night is a full night's rest for them. And he says that, you know, Mozart, Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, Margaret Thatcher, Obama, and he's like, even my lab mate, this guy's a researcher. He's like, have this thing called short sleeper syndrome. And people thought that short sleeper syndrome would be you sleep less and maybe you're able to operate that way, but it's got to be bad for you. Sleep, we know, is sort of the best thing for you. It restores the brain and the body and all your function. And so these people must be dying younger and have more disease, right? And it's like, nope, actually they don't. These people just simply have the benefit without the cost. They sleep, you know, they need about 3 hours less sleep than the rest of us, but they, um, they don't pay the price in terms of, you know, the health consequences of that. And so he goes on this post and he basically outlines that we have—

who are these people, by the way, in this photo?

So he says, um, you know, my favorite family is this family called the Johnsons from Utah. And the Johnsons from Utah are a set of researchers, and I think a bunch of them have this short sleeper genetic makeup. And so they've been researching this for a while, and it's about, you know, 1% of people have this thing where you're— you don't need as much sleep, and it does not seem detrimental to your health or your productivity. And they've studied why is this, what is it, is it one gene, um, is it not? And they've basically like— there's four kind of like protein changes that they've noticed variations in the glutamate receptor, GRM1, blah, blah, blah. So there's these 4 things and then they've done some tests in mice and others where they do like knockouts. So they'll, they'll knock out one of the genes and then they'll see if it, you know, makes the mouse sleep less or sleep more. And they try to understand that.

Can you do that to a, like when you say knockout, does that mean like you're a living being or when they reproduce?

A living being.

You could, that's how the body works.

You could just like, I actually, I said that with So much confidence for somebody who has no idea, but I think that you could do that. I'm a bio major. You could check that. That's a fact, Jack. But I don't know if you could do, I don't know if this is done at the embryo or in the living thing. But point is they've tested this in mouse models. Mouse models don't always apply to human models. So there's some question there, but the, the researcher sort of points out actually, you know, usually when mouse model, when, when things that work in mice don't work in humans. It's because they tried it and it worked for the first time in mice, and then it takes a long time to even try it in humans, and maybe it won't work. He's like, in this case, we're observing it actually in humans, and then we went back to mice and tried to recreate that, um, those genetic mutations or those genetic changes. And so this is really exciting. So what he's talking about is like, in the same way that we found drugs like Ozempic, which could modify your appetite, it could change your, your need for food in a way that had all these downstream health benefits, right? You change your need for food, you reduce your need for food. Now you eat less, obesity goes down. They've seen that it, uh, you know, helps with things like addiction to alcohol. And there's like all these other like things that people are noticing with these. That's the Ozempic case. This guy's saying you could do the same with sleep. Like, if you—

and is this guy Isaac? Is he the researcher or is he just blogging on this?

He's a researcher who is blogging about this.

Wow. Got it.

And he's basically saying that like, potentially we could create something that does the same thing that how Ozempic reduced your need for food, that we could reduce your need for sleep in and make you mirror these people who have this already, where they don't suffer the consequences of less sleep. And he's like, you know, you do the math and you're like, if you're saving 3 or 4 hours a night of sleep, you basically it's like the world's best longevity trade. So what most people are trying to do with longevity is like, oh, if I'm living till 80, can I live till 90? If I'm living 90, can I live till 100, 100, 110? And they're trying to push off the, like, that last marginal decade of poor health where you can't walk as much, you can't see as well, you know, you're in pain, all that stuff. You're trying to push that back as far as you can. This would make it so that you actually just live better. Like, the days where you're healthy, you have more days, you're awake for more of the time, and it's the equivalent of an extra 10 years, but you get the 10 years not at the end. You get it sort of all along the way while you're in your best health of your life. And that would be the promise of this. And so how exciting is that? I feel like it's possible that somebody is going to make an Ozempic for sleep and it's going to allow us to, instead of needing 8 hours, I can sleep for 5 and feel just as good as I would on 8.

He says, uh, this is like adding 10 more years to your life, an 80-year lifespan, 8 hours a day of sleep compared to 80 years, 80 years with 4 hours of sleep. That's 10 years. Uh, this is amazing.

And on top of that, by the way, there's people who suffer from insomnia and narcolepsy and like, there's all these actual like sleep apnea. There's all these things that affect people's sleep. Um, maybe you could alleviate those along the way, right? Like if, you know, there's, there's thousands of Americans who have those problems, could you also improve those?

Okay. First of all, this is amazing. This is a great find. I'm reading his blog. His writing's really great. It doesn't write like a— this is why I was shocked that he's the researcher because he's, I think like there's like a quote where he goes, This is crazy.

Uh, like, they don't, they don't normally say things like that.

Yeah, they don't have personalities usually.

This has profound implications, by the way. He's 22 years old. He's a PhD student at MIT exploring brain simulations as an alternative path to beneficial AI. And in the past, he skipped out of high school in rural Austria to graduate early. In his gap year, he created a $1 million nonprofit and ran the most viral tech conference of the year that had Sam Altman and others come. He's self-taught Mandarin last year and did his undergrad at Berkeley in 2 years. Guy's a winner, doing well.

And he owns Isaac.net, like great domain name.

Isaac with a K.

This guy's great, man. Well, what I was going to say was, is this, I've never, I've heard of, you know, that gene a little bit. That you're discussing, but it's just funny that there's just some kid with a, well, a 22-year-old with a personal blog. And this is the first time that I've ever heard about this. Is this—

that's what I'm saying. It's fascinating.

But if he, if he's just talking about on his blog, is this like something that actually has, like, why is there not more press or, or press releases on this topic? Is it actually legit?

Now we just broke it, dude. This was the tipping point. You're going to see other people working on this. You're going to see people talking about this. There's going to be misinformation everywhere. It's going to be great.

This story is awesome just because I like Isaac and also I would like to do, I would like to not sleep. Would you rather be skinny like Ozempic and not eat less or be like chubbier or whatever?

If I could sleep only 5 hours instead of 8, I don't give a shit. I would be the fattest man on earth to do that. No, I'm just joking. But like, Uh, that is a, that is a way better superpower to need less sleep, to get back 3 hours of time every day.

That's debatable. I think that people will always prefer to be skinny over, uh, sleep, less sleep.

Uh, people are dumb. That's so dumb. If they, if they prefer to be skinny over like have an extra 3 hours of life every day.

If the average 25-year-old, if you're like, look hot or live to 90 versus 80, they're going to choose hot over sleep any day of the week.

Well, this is why we don't ask 25-year-olds questions. The brain is not fully formed yet.

This is a great find. His blog, uh, according to SimilarWeb, just shot up to 125,000, uh, visitors in October.

Who—

what did he— like, before it was nothing.

He published this in November, so that's kind of cool. The, uh, so Ben found this and he sent it to our friend. So our friend invested in a company that made a GLP-1 drug and that like sold for billions of dollars. And so he sent this to him because he's like, oh, you did that early Ozempic thing before Ozempic was like a known thing, like 7 years before he invested in this company that was going to work on that. And it paid off in a big way. So he sent it to him and that guy was like, I don't know how you found this. This is the best thing I've read all year. Like, I'm so excited about what you just sent me. And it was such a great example of Ben being Ben where Ben has on one side a really curated feed where he'll find interesting things like this. Like he'll be, he doesn't follow many people, but he'll be following a guy like this Isaac guy. And then he knows who to route the information to. And it's, he's like a, he's like FedEx. Like he doesn't touch the package. Like when I, when I get this, I immediately start doing research. I write notes, I go talk about it. I'm not passing it to somebody smarter. Ben's like, he's like a FedEx guy. The package comes off the conveyor belt. He grabs the box, tosses it in the truck, drives it to the address, drops it off. And doesn't ask any questions about what's inside. He just knows that's useful for you. I think this is useful for you. And he just does that all day. I had him like add me to all these group chats. Like he was always texting people, but I said, yo, just add me. I just want to be a part of these. So now I'm in probably like 60 group chats where it's me, Ben, and a mutual like acquaintance or friend. And he's just doing this all day. He's just routing packets to each other, to different people about, yeah, I think you're into this kind of thing.

That's ridiculous. How is he going to monetize it? Can he ever monetize this?

Yeah, dude, we monetize this phenomenally. This is the secret of Ben. He just tries to be useful and then he'll be like, hey, yeah. Remember that guy like you met a year ago who you then didn't talk to ever again? I'm like, yeah, I think so. I think I remember that guy. He was cool. He's like, yeah. So I've been texting him, you know, we text daily and he's got this new thing and it's taking off and like he wants us to invest. He's not letting anyone else in. And then we invest in it. It's incredible how this karma just comes back tenfold for Ben. And he never asks for anything. He never asks. It's amazing.

He texts me a fair bit, like, just like, saw this thing, you might like it. So I'm the recipient of some of these things, and I hate texting. Like, I hate being at my computer and constantly having to go back and forth with 10 different people, which is how a lot of people's computers look right now, where you're like, it's between Slack and messages, you're just like going back and forth with 15 or 20 people at all times. And you're like, what did I do all day today? I just like chatted. I just chit chatted. It takes, and so I don't like doing it. Do you fall into that trap like throughout the day where you're like, dude, I just like texted people all day?

Yeah, I like Slack because I like my projects that I'm working on, but I don't text much. I'm a very bad texter. And if anyone's out there who's texting me, I really apologize. I probably have not texted you back. So I'm prolifically bad at it. Ben is prolifically great at it. And that combination has really helped. The combination has really helped. And now people don't, they just bypass me altogether. They go to him and it hurts my feelings sometimes. I'm like, wait, I thought I was friends with this person, but now I understand why, because he's just a better person. He's a better texter. In fact, he was like, I need to make a shirt called I reply. He goes, because that's my thing, dude. I reply. And he was like, it's pretty easy. And I was like, you should write like the modern day How to Win Friends and Influence People because that's what he does. He wins friends and influences people with the most basic, the most basic of things. And I was like, you couldn't sell a, like the thing you do creates like tons of value, like tens of millions of dollars in value for us. You couldn't even teach people this because you would say what you do out loud and they'd be like, That was it. I showed up for the seminar for that. Um, that's basic. It's basic as hell. And, but that's what he does and it works.

That's insane. I think it's funny. I, uh, by the, by the way, Google Isaac Freeman, very good looking, young, stylish black dude. This guy's got it all. This guy's got it all. This guy's, if he just becomes an astronaut, he's basically the modern day James Bond.

Oh man. He's got like cool glasses and a jawline.

Fuck.

Yeah.

Game over. Um, you You said you had a bunch of exciting things you want to do.

By the way, you know, we don't judge a book by its cover. So like, you know, looks, looks do matter. Let's be clear. We try not to judge people by their looks first. But once we take a look at what you do, we then go take a look at how you look and it either is like a plus 100 or it's a minus 100. It's a huge multiplier on my opinion of you and how much I'm going to remember you afterwards. I will never forget this guy.

Yeah. Like if he were dorky looking, I'd be like, yeah, Makes sense.

Right.

Checks out. And then I see what he looks like and I'm like, aw, right? Like, uh, it's tough to be like looking at, by, by the way, most people when they have an avatar as their Twitter profile, it's because they're goofy looking and the avatar is better looking than that.

He's making me question everything. Like there's a reason I have a cartoon profile picture. All right. Look at me. If you're on YouTube, look at me. This is why I have a cartoon profile picture. Okay. That's the, that's the rule. It's like, uh, when someone quotes you revenue, they would have said profit if they had it, right? If somebody talks about users, they would have quoted revenue if they had it. Normally, if somebody's got the looks, they're going to put their face as the profile picture. This guy defies all convention.

I asked someone what the revenue was recently, and they were like, 8 figures if you include the.00. And I was like, that's pretty funny. It was, uh, That was pretty good. You want to do another thing? Yeah. All right.

I got some cool stuff.

Oh, you got to do this Polymarket whale. Okay.

Yeah, this is all right. So this is the Billy of the Week. Cue the music. A million dollars isn't cool.

You know what's cool? A billion dollars.

So you've heard the story, I think, but can I just explain a little bit of the detail here?

Amazing. I read about it a little bit. Do we even know who this person is?

Yeah. So the election was happening, what, 10 days ago or so? And the big news was sort of, I guess, like, there's a battle going on. There's Republicans versus Democrats. Great. There's Trump and Kamala.

Great.

They were supposed to be at that. But there was an undercard to the pay-per-view. And so who was the undercard? Okay. If Trump and Kamala are the main event, then I think the undercard, a lot of it was like mainstream media. Versus social media, right? You had like Twitter and blogs versus MSNBC and whatever. And they were, they were giving you different narratives, uh, right? And so, you know, Joe Trump and, uh, Vance go on Joe Rogan. Uh, Kamala goes on Saturday Night Live and, you know, The View or 60 Minutes or like, you know, these like traditional media. So that was one battle that was going on.

By the way, who would have thought, like, you've seen like Theo Vaughn. Swing the election, being like a needle mover. Insane, right?

I was saying this the other day. I think that going on Theo Vaughn needs to be part of the national standard for an election. Like, I need to know if my president's going to be a good hang or not. And I think Theo is the one who could save us there.

Yeah, that was insane.

So under that, then you have like the billionaire backers. You got Elon on one side, you got Mark Cuban on the other, and it's like they're going around, they're promoting, they're using their money and their voice to do it. What was the other battles? One of the other battles was polls. Versus crypto prediction markets. So the polls were telling a story at the time, pre-election, the polls were saying razor-thin margin, toss-up, these swing states too close to call. It's a 50-50 election right now. Like we don't, we, it is too hard to tell who's going to win. And the prediction markets, which were people betting money, were saying something different. They were saying 65-35, Trump going to win. And they're different things, right? A poll is, you know, you go out and you ask people who are you going to vote for? A prediction market is who's going to get the most votes. So they do tell different things, but the reality is still the same, which is that if the polls were accurate, that it was a 50-50 toss-up, it's going to be a razor-thin margin, then the betting markets shouldn't have such a big spread. There shouldn't be a big favorite versus a big underdog.

And what was the Polly market spread? I think it was like 75-25.

Uh, no, it was a little less about, it was about 63 Trump, but then it got to 65. And then like, as the election started, when the news was saying, you know, we're still, it's still too early. The, the odds were just jetting in Trump's direction. They, they were, they, they knew earlier than, than the, the, the exit polls or the, the news was willing to report about how much of a landslide this was going to be for Trump, which it was. Okay. So before it happened, there was a question of like, is the prediction market actually predictive? And there was some. Legitimate skepticism. So the pro side was, um, the betting market versus the poll market. The betting. Oh, it was just like, even just alone, should we be, should we care what Polly Market says?

And, um, on one hand, Polly Market being the platform where you could take bets.

Exactly. And so you, uh, the plus side would be to say, well, these are people betting their own money. So skin in the game. And so if you see a lot more action coming in on one side, that means the sort of the wisdom of the crowds and the actual free market believes the odds are this. And that might be better than just the polls where people say, they're just saying what they're going to vote for. And it's a small sample, but who knows, maybe they're lying. Maybe it's just too small of a sample to know. Maybe it's not indicative of, there's no skin in the game there. So on one hand, you said skin in the game. On the other hand, you would say Polymarket, never heard of it, banned in the US. So all the betting action was from international. So over $3 billion was bet on the election. None of this was Americans because you can't use Polymarket in America. Then it's also crypto holders, right? Because Polymarket is a crypto betting thing. So you're like, oh, maybe there's a bias. Crypto holders are more libertarian. Maybe they're going to go more right-leaning. And so it's what they want. And Trump is pro-crypto.

Yeah.

So it was like, maybe they're voting on what they wish for and not what it actually is. Okay. So there was some Question marks. Then there was one more, then the news came out and said, you know, we can't trust Polymarket because it's manipulated. Manipulated how? It's manipulated because a couple of whales are betting heavily on Trump and that's swinging the odds. So it's actually, this is not what the crowds think, it's really a couple of whales that are influencing this. And they saw that.

And you can see on Polymarket the size, like, can I see that? Oh, someone just put this million-dollar bet in.

I can go on Polymarket right now and look at the top 10 bettors and what they are bet on, how much volume they've bet this year, and how much their P&L is.

Are they up or down? So Theo4, I think, is the biggest one on the platform, and he has made a profit of $22 million this year.

Exactly. So that's, that was one, that's one user, but you can go user by user and you can see, oh, this guy's just betting on everything, or this guy's one huge bet or whatever, right? So you can go look at anybody, any, any bettor's P&L on, on Polymarket. So what they found was they were like, hey, there's a couple of bets here that were in the tens of millions on Trump. And actually it all came from the same guy. And what they were thinking was that there's 4 big accounts that bet $28 million. And actually it turns out now after the fact, the guy came out and said it, he had 11 accounts and he, he bet $40-something million and he, um, $40 or $50 million and he made, um, about $80 million of profit. Actually. Sorry, I don't know the exact bet amounts, but I know he made, he made $80 million profit in the end.

A French guy, I think.

A French guy. So they're like, who is this French whale? And the story behind it's pretty interesting because this guy was a trader. He's like in finance. He lived in the US at one point. Uh, but basically he's like, he's like, I'm trying to remain anonymous.

I'm trying to, by the way, how would on earth would a journalist find this person? That seems really hard. That's a great scoop.

So on Polymarket, you can see the bets. So you can go see, wow, there's a huge bet. Then you go look at the account, you try to figure out whose wallet is this. And because crypto is— there's a public ledger, you can actually trace back and try to find it. And there's a company called Chainalysis. Do you know Chainalysis?

Uh, I've heard of it just like as a headline.

They're basically the, the government goes to Chainalysis and says, we need to know who owns this wallet. And they can go and do the forensic analysis of every transaction that wallet's done and tries to figure out the root wallet and who owns that wallet. And so that's, and this is like a $10 billion company, Chainalysis.

We have to do a breakdown of this company. This sounds fun.

Yeah, they're, they're a fascinating company. And so they came out and they did this analysis and there's like this web of the accounts and like, so take a look at this.

Dude, this is like all the best stuff. Like crime and crypto stories are the best stories. And so like working at this company would be super exciting. Oh, I know, but you know what I mean?

Totally. So they come out and they say, all right, well, dude, how did you know? Why did you make such a massive bet? On Trump. And this is where the story gets really interesting. He says, he, he's like, I didn't trust the polls, but I trust polling. What do you mean? He goes, I commissioned my own polls. There's a French guy who commissioned polls in America to inform his own bet. And what he did was he paid a polling company and he said, I want you to go and I want you to ask them, but don't ask them who they vote, who they're gonna vote for.

Because that's what polls often ask. That is, uh, or what do traditional polls ask?

Are you likely to vote? If you're gonna vote, who, who are you likely to vote for? Are you certain of that?

You know, whatever.

So is there anything that's gonna change your mind?

Would you change your mind? Well, and I think they also ask who do you— I think they ask it in a weird way as well. I think they also ask who do you think your friend is gonna vote for?

No, that's not what this guy did.

Oh, okay.

So what this guy did was called the neighbor method. And what he says is he says, don't ask them who they're gonna vote for. I don't want to hear— they— people are indirect and people don't want to reveal their own preferences. But if you ask them a specific question, which is, who do you expect your neighbor to vote for? They will indirectly reveal their own preferences and what they believe is going to happen. And he believed that the neighbor method is a more predictive method. And when he did this, he commissioned this poll. He paid a pollster, paid a major US pollster to go do these polls for him. Uh, just like, you know, the DNC and the RNC, they'll pay pollsters to go run their independent polls that they're not reporting to the public. And he wanted him to measure this neighbor effect. And what he found was that the results were, quote, mind-blowing to the favor of Trump. It showed a Trump landslide. And so he thought, now this is mispriced. The media is telling you that this is 50/50, razor thin, but actually my polling is showing that actually this is going to be a major landslide for Trump. It's overwhelmingly in favor of Trump. So now the bet is mispriced. So he places this huge bet. On Trump. And it turns out he's correct. And his final quote was, you know, public opinion would have been better prepared if the latest polls had measured using the neighbor effect. And, um, he specifically didn't just bet on the overall victory. He bet on specific swing states where he thought this— people think this state is closer than it's actually going to be. It's going to be more in favor of Trump using this neighbor method, which is just insane. Um, and now of course the French—

this guy nailed it.

Like, it's just two words. Bonjour.

Yeah. Fucking A. First of all, what I respect about this is everything. Go. I don't respect everything about it. I don't love, I don't love gambling like this, but people who have conviction on something, like they do their own analysis and they're like, no, this is the answer. Even though all the quote smart people or everyone's the, the establishment is saying this, but I, I did my own research and then. That he did the big part, which is he bet $30 million or whatever of his own money. I think that is like, those types of people fascinate me because that takes so much conviction.

Yeah, exactly. This is, I mean, the guts that it, the brains and the guts, right? And that's kind of, I think the theme of the year is like, you see someone like Elon who basically swings the election, who catches a rocket out of, you know, catches a rocket with some chopsticks. You know, is working on self-driving cars, helped co-found OpenAI, which is changing the world. The guy's just, you know, like firing on all cylinders. And it's like, why? What is it? What is different about this guy? And it's the combination of the brain and the balls, right? Like, there are other people as smart as Elon Musk. There are other people who have, you know, the risk-taking guts as Elon Musk, but the combination is rare. And then you add on top of that the willingness to, you know, absolutely work to the bone as well. Right. And then you add on top of that, like sacrifice your own life. Yeah. So he's, you know, top 0.1% in like 5 things. And then it's like, oh, if you just multiply 0.1% times, you know, 5 times over and over again, you end up with like 1 in 10 billion, which is like, oh, that's actually the ratio. We do have one Elon out of the entire human population.

Dude, I thought it was impressive. I was like, Justin Timberlake, you can sing. Dance and act and you're funny. Like, you know what I mean? Superbad. Eli just really stepped it up.

Oh, that's a great call.

Um, is Polymarket going to sustain after this? Of course not, right?

Okay, so I've been a big Polymarket fan. I was using Polymarket before they banned it, like, you know, way back in the day.

You're also a little bit of a degen.

Yeah. But I think a lot of people are. Okay.

How much money have you—

First, by the way, you called this gambling. I don't believe that this is gambling. Betting.

Just by definition.

Well, like for example, you own stock. Do you believe that you're gambling when you buy a stock?

I guess.

What are you doing when you buy a stock? Right? Like on—

Yeah, you are. I guess you'd have to say that there's, it's not as binary, but there's levels. Or like there's, it's a scale. So, but yeah, you are just like if you buy cars, like you and I, it exists on a spectrum. Yes.

So, so like, you know, the, with a stock, the chair, the, you know, the, the old fashioned way of looking at it is I'm not buying, I'm not gambling. I'm buying a piece of ownership in a company that produces goods and for accountants, like, yeah. All right, cool. Nobody really in practice treats it like that. Meaning you're not sitting there like, you know, you're not sitting there waiting for dividends. You're not trying to own this piece of this company because you think it's going to exit at a later date when it's a public stock already, right? Like you're basically saying, I believe that the future earnings of this company are going to be X and that's why owning this is good because the share price is going to go up because their earnings are going to go up and they're maybe going to go up at a faster rate than the current price of the stock. Indicates. That's what you're supposed to buy, right? You're supposed to buy a stock that you think is going to appreciate over time. I think that Polymarket has the ability to do that in a bunch of interesting ways. So first, there are the other speculation/betting/gambling type of use cases. So speculating on prices of things, speculating on sports game, you know, sports outcomes of games, right? Like sports betting is obviously a huge deal. So there's those use cases. There is an interesting thing. So I'm guessing you didn't read Vitalik's blog recently about, uh, about this.

That's an accurate guess.

Vitalik, who's the creator of Ethereum, wrote a great blog post. Vitalik's one of my favorite entrepreneurs and thinkers on the planet.

So the blog post is called, I guess, From Prediction Markets into Finance.

Info Finance. So he's, uh, he, he's like, you know, I have written a lot and I've supported Polymarket, and many of you who know me might be surprised by this because Vitalik is sort of notoriously like not into the like crypto casino side of life. Like he's not price-based, he's not trying to get rich as like his primary motivation.

He's kind of like a prude.

He's a purist. And so like, it'd be like, why do you care so much about these like prediction markets? Just people gambling, who cares? And he's like, because I don't see it as that. I actually think that there's another category here that's overlooked, and it's called info, info finance, information finance. And he gives some examples. So he is like, Polymarket was two things at once. He goes, on one hand, it's a betting site for the few people that want to bet and gamble. But for the rest of us, we could look at how the gamblers are betting and that would, it, it's for them, it served as a news site. It was like, oh wow, Trump is doing better. Trump is improving in the same way that the polls are supposed to be part of the news. The prediction markets were actually better news information. So it was information finance. So he is like, that's the first level, which was Even if you're not participating in the betting, trying to make a buck, it is very useful that other people are doing that because it's another source of information. He's like, it should not be the only source of information, but it should be another one. He talks about the elections in Venezuela, how basically he was watching how people were protesting, how it was getting manipulated and blah, blah, blah. How Polymarket was actually a very useful source of information for him. In understanding what was going on in Venezuela from an informational point of view. All right. So that was one. Then he's like, okay, what's the other use case? He's like, so, um, imagine a company. So like, you know, I don't know if you saw like Chipotle or Starbucks, uh, like Starbucks just hired the Chipotle CEO. Did you see that?

Yeah. And he's, um, the headline is that he's working from home even though he's making everyone else go back to work, right?

Yeah. He's like private jetting in and out, but like this guy's kind of famous for like he trims the menu, he cuts costs, and he, like, he basically improves margins. That's what this guy's known for. And so the amazing thing was that guy, he's that, he's that guy. And so like, uh, he's him when it comes to public markets, because when he switched teams, they paid him a bunch of money. And I was like, wow, what a huge stock package for a CEO. It was like $100 million or whatever, whatever the number was. But the stock jumped like $20 billion or something. Like it was like a, I'm making up numbers here because I didn't plan to talk about this, but like the stock jumped in a disproportionate way based on just the news that this guy was coming over. And so like it was a great trade for them to overpay this guy, this talent, because it immediately improved the overall value of the company, just the news of him joining. And so Vitalik actually was like, just like there's today, we're looking at these as prediction markets. You could actually use this as a decision market, meaning a company or a group of people could set, could basically in the way that that guy Theo paid for a private poll to get information. You could actually set up a prediction market and set a decision market and say, should we hire this CEO? Or what will the share— not should we, what will the share price be in 6 months if we hire Brian Nichols? And if the share price expectation is really high, it tells you in advance without having to hire him yet. What the market reaction is going to be to making this decision. Does that make sense? And so you can actually create decision markets and it would be worth basically paying participants to go pick a side and make a bet in order to gather information that would help you make a better decision about what you're going to do. And so he's like, there's, um, you can actually improve judgment if you were to, if you were to make this decision. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. And he talks about, he goes through, you know, how this might affect, how info finance might affect all these other things. So for example, scientific peer review. So right now in science, you submit a paper and he, there's something called the replication crisis, which is that famous results that end up being, you know, go into books and in the news or whatever, then they can't be reproduced. That study can't be reproduced. It's like, is it even like the definition of good science is that it's a reproducible experiment. But that's not happening. And in fact, there's not really a big incentive to go reproduce these because the incentive is come out with a new finding. You get published, you get the glory, you get the funding for your lab, spending your resources to reproduce it, uh, uh, somebody else's science, somebody else's big news. It's not really a good use of time. And he talks about how prediction markets could actually create incentives for people to go and try to reproduce these studies because you could have people betting on if this is reproducible or not. And so you, you'll be able to profit off of knowing that this, this is going to be reproduced or not. So it's pretty interesting to see how that might be applied in all these other ways.

I haven't read this other than what you just told me and skimming it here. First of all, this is like an amazing blog post. I need to go read this. Second, if you go to his blog, if you go to like his other posts, he publishes like an in-depth post like every 3 days. How amazing is this that we have access to? A genius like this who just like shares his thoughts. And by the way, they're like, if you read just the headlines and then click the articles, they are not just like half-assed blog. These are like in-depth things that he's publishing a shit ton. How special of an era are, do we have where we can like go and just read his thoughts?

That you get access to this. Yeah. And the beautiful thing about his stuff, which is I think hard to, because you know, I was thinking about this with podcasts. It's amazing now that there's podcasts with, you know, like when we started this, I felt like there was a slight differentiator in the business podcast space because we were not just journalists, nor were we like never-haz-beens. We had like done it. We had started many companies or we're in the process and we'd, you know, sold companies. We had done real things. And so that was kind of like an interesting, oh, what if you actually had a podcast from entrepreneurs who were actually like more successful than the average podcast.

Let's say, I think you're looking for the term for us by us.

We fubooed it.

Yeah.

But now you have All In, you have, now you get to see billionaires, you know, doing this. Reid Hoffman has a podcast. You know, Zuck is going on podcasts. There's like, who doesn't have a podcast at this point? Right. Um, and I think that's really cool. And the same thing's happening in sports. Athlete, current athletes, past athletes now have sports podcasts. Whereas before the only sports podcasts you get was like, you know, hardcore fan in his, in his base, mom's basement, you know, ranting about his team or, you know, a journalist. And now you have this like this third thing. And the third thing is like somebody who's actually been there and done that, who gives their perspective. Not to say it's always better, but like, it's interesting that that's now another good one accessible to us. But the problem with something like, let's say All In or other podcasts like that is like you have to always parse the agenda. So it's like, wow, this guy's really, bearish on nuclear and really pro-solar, that you go look into Chamath's profile and it's like, oh wow, he's made like enormous bets on solar. And like, that's just, he's talking his book in a way. Right. And it's okay. It's okay to talk your book, but it's, you have to constantly do that, like underwriting yourself as a listener to be like, are they, you know, what's the bias here?

Yeah.

The beautiful thing about Vitalik is that the guy is such an uber nerd that like, you can actually take him at face value. And it's so nice to have somebody you could take at face value and other people might disagree. I don't care. I take him at face value. And I followed this guy for like, you know, 8 years straight now. And this guy's done nothing to make me think he's just trying to pump his bags. In fact, he actively does things against his bags, you know, not pumping Ethereum or talking about what, where it lacks or what's slow about it and, you know, underpromising what it's going to be. And I think that that is, that's great that we have access to this guy who is not trying to take something from us in the process.

That's a very good speech on this guy. I'm going to like, I don't even think you could subscribe to his blog. Like, I don't, there's not even an email form, dude. His blog, like, so he publishes on, all right, so listen, October 29th, October 26th, October 23rd, October 20th. He's been writing these posts a lot. And those posts that I just said, I just put them into a word counter. One of them was 6,000 words. Now, I don't know, like, I don't know how Bitcoin works.

The dramatic look you just gave me when you said that, like I was supposed to like, Audibly gasp.

Dude, that's so much work. I've written a lot of blog posts. A 6,000-word blog post would take me 40 hours probably. Right.

Dude, it's so much work.

When you, when you are this guy and you create Ethereum, is it one of the things where like you've created it and you can now walk away? Or does it like, is it like a house and you gotta like maintain it?

No, he's actively working on it. Like, I don't know. Is it like a thing where you're like, I mean, it's bigger than just him obviously, but like, yeah. He's, he's actively dedicated to like re-roof it every once in a while.

I don't know how these things work, like Ethereum. I don't know.

Like, did you just like— Ethereum was like a 10-year roadmap. And so he's just, it's not even like re-roofing it. It's like building a hotel one floor at a time and people are staying in the hotel, but you told them from the beginning, this is a 50-story hotel. And I haven't even built all those other things that we're going to need in order for this to work. Like there's no elevators yet. I know we're going to make elevators. For now, we take stairs. That's like the transaction fees and all that.

The reason I'm asking is how on earth is he writing this much stuff while doing like a full-time job?

Because Ethereum doesn't work like that. It's not like he's sitting there coding all day or managing people. Like, it's not a company. It's like a nonprofit foundation, open source project, of which he's like a steward and a champion. But he's not like, he doesn't have like 25 direct reports. You know what I mean?

Does he have a girlfriend or wife yet?

I'm not sure. I've seen a bunch of pictures, but it's so hard with him to tell what's a meme and what's like reality because he's like so memeable that like when Bitcoin, when Ethereum price goes down and then they post him pictures of him, they're like, goddammit, it's because he has a girlfriend.

By the way, is like, is his girlfriend just going to be like, which way is it going to go?

So it's November 13th, we're recording this exactly one month ago. I came on this podcast and I said, Sam, Can I give you my 1-minute case for Bitcoin? And you literally rolled your eyes and audibly groaned at me and said, haven't you already done that? Like, you, are you talking about why you like Bitcoin again? I just want to say the price is up 47% since I did that rant.

All right, well, are you, are you like, uh, that, are you, uh, like that French dude? Are you the French guy? Did you, you had, you, were you smart Or just, or were you smart and ballsy or just smart?

Go back and listen to it. It's in the episode called Did the Creator of Bitcoin Get Unmasked at the 30-minute mark, 30 minutes and 20 seconds.

No, I'm not debating if you said that. I'm saying, did you, uh, make the bet?

I'm saying, go listen to the case and say, did I get lucky or was I smart? Did I have some, did I have a reason?

No, that's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is, did you make the bet? Oh, of course.

What do you mean?

Well, what I'm saying is, did you just say it was going to be good or did you actually invest your own money into it?

Oh dude, I'm Polymarket, bro. I have skin in the game.

Does gambling on Polymarket mean you have Bitcoin?

Well, it's like Polymarket versus a poll. A poll is just saying what you're going to do. Polymarket is putting your money up saying what you think is going to actually happen. I put my money up and thought what I said, what I thought was going to happen. Yeah.

I mean, it's had a hell of a run. Um, almost as good as Palantir. Everything's fucking crazy right now though. Um, like everything, when I look at it, everything's a little too crazy. Everything's too crazy. Uh, like it, it wouldn't be, I don't know anything about anything. but it seems like it'd be a good time to make the opposite prediction. So yeah, you were right. It's just like, how long are you going to be right for right now? Everything is just like insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And of course these are like, you know, one month fluctuations are nothing, but I guess the thing I, the reason I thought it was bullish was because it was the same reason that the thing is pumping right now because there was a whole bunch of like big things, like for example, that the government was going to be pro-Bitcoin, which was always the biggest risk of Bitcoin, was like, oh, even if it's, even if you're right about the technology being better, the government will never allow this. And I was like, dude, the guy who's going to become president is saying not only will he allow it, he's bought and sold by the crypto donors now. And both, both sides are. And like, I don't know if you saw like the Congress and like the whatever House of Representatives, Senate, all that shit. There's like, There's like 140 pro-crypto people now, like in, in active government, which is like, you know, that number was, was zero, you know, 7 years ago. And I just felt like these things were not priced in properly. Now they're talking about a Bitcoin strategic reserve for the country itself. It's like these things, once you go in, it's almost impossible to unwind these things. And I just thought that when a top 2 or 3 risk gets de-risked, that should change your underwriting on the price. And I thought that that wasn't happening for some reason. The price was flat and people weren't paying attention. To that one fact.

What a world.

So in summary, I was right. Thank you.

You were, you were right. You, you absolutely were right. Everything is insane at the moment. I hope your prediction will be true for many, many, many more months and many more years, but it's definitely making me nervous at the moment. Everything is insane. Is that where we end?

That's where we end. It's been a fantastic podcast. To Martha Stewart, to Bitcoin, to the Polymarket Whale. That's called thank you for your service.

Hot, hot heat. The hot, hot heat was served. You're welcome. All right. That's it.

That's the pod.