Anthony Pompliano
An investor and founder of Professional Capital Management, Anthony Pompliano is active across public and private markets with stakes in more than 300 companies...
“The hardcore crypto ethos of these bearer assets that you control that no one could kind of take from you or do anything, it's changing. When a hack used to happen, it was kind of like, hey, either you got hacked or you didn't. In a pursuit of this safety net and instilling confidence, we're giving up a little bit of the crypto hardcore ethos.”
The Pomp Podcast · October 2026
Context
After Binance said it would cover user losses and stablecoin issuers froze stolen funds, he asks what that means for crypto's identity as an asset nobody can intervene in.
Transcript
…The rumors are that North Korea could be involved. I'm sure that AI cybersecurity concerns are going to be jacked up. Bitcoin sold off about 5% or so. And Binance is saying that they are going to backstop all losses by users on the platform. What's your general take away from a situation like this?
…heard from people in the last month are fears on quantum. And so I think when people kind of get into Binance and, well, what's going to happen with Quantum? It obviously is going to force people to take some risk off in the space for a period of time until we get the next catalyst on the upside.
Now, it is definitely spooky season. I have my Halloween sweater here, Dad Tax. Anyone knows? Kids are very proud of it. They're going to learn something this weekend. But the reason why I call it spooky season is because people are definitely worried about this stuff, right? And the cybersecurity. Now, I want to talk about this from two different angles. The first is, if this had happened 10 years ago in the crypto industry, Bitcoin would have sold off 20 to 40%, in my opinion. It sold off 5%. That actually seems in a weird way bullish that you could have a $6 billion hack. I saw somebody describe it online as the greatest robbery in human history. When has $6 billion ever been stolen before? And so that is the magnitude of this is almost gets like washed away. Like we forget how much money $6 billion is. Bitcoin only sold off 5%. That seems bullish. The second piece of it, though, is Binance steps in and says, We are going to backstop any losses to users. So, you immediately reinstill confidence in the platform. And in a weird way, it's a great marketing campaign because people start saying, Hey, this is why I want to use…
So, I'm going to go, I'm going to take what you said, but I'm going to take it a little bit of a different direction. So, when you make a joke or this is bullish, the reaction is there. So, let's put two things into context. Number one, we had Google down 13%. Okay. Google, much bigger than…
If the volatility on the downside related to a hack like this is so muted, are you worried about the upside volatility in a bull market being more muted as well?
No, because again, my primary thing from the bull side of this, nobody owns. It. And I mean, I can say this a million times over, but aside from, you know, the subscribers you have, some of the subscribers I have, institutional people and wealthy people are just not involved in the space. And…
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