What the Pomp?
Bullish interview of PlanB gets Pomp's channel deleted from YouTube. What was so dangerous about it? The international banking industry is on watch.
Yesterday, I caught about 15 minutes of Anthony Pompliano’s interview live on YouTube. PlanB repeated his conviction that bitcoin’s price will reach at least $100,000 by year end and was contemplating the ethics behind disclosing a bearish bias at the end of the FOMO phase of this bull cycle. An hour later, I saw this:
I wasn’t shocked—deplatforming is all too common these days. Pomp got his channel reinstated after a few hours with no explanation as to why his channel was suddenly deleted. What’s the big deal?
Censorship of free speech
Political censorship by social media conglomerates is pervasive these days. The censorship comes from corporations, not directly from governments as we might be used to from history. And in this way, companies are allowed to protect their communities from language with which they do not agree. The social media giants all succumb to groupthink and are starting to hand out bans as if they were halloween candy.
This is why a temporary ban of Pomp’s channel was not at all surprising to me—surely something was said that upset somebody in some way. In fact, I tweeted something yesterday morning that sent some people into hysteria:
This was a four-word tweet meant to describe the direction of the Brazilian people, not to break news on legislation. I had just spoken to a close friend in Brazil who was asking how long it’s going to take until the Portuguese translation of Layered Money is released, and I was simply trying to communicate that the Brazilian people are starting to embrace bitcoin in such a way that bitcoin is becoming culturally embedded inside the country. The proposed regulatory framework for bitcoin in Brazil will catapult adoption to one of the highest rates in the world. But most of all, the Brazilian people fundamentally understand bitcoin because their country’s absence of currency stability.
Nevertheless, I was accused of spreading false rumors. If my Twitter account had been taken down for a day or two while I try to explain that I was trying to express a research-based optimism for bitcoin adoption by the Brazilian people, so be it. This is, unfortunately, the world we live in.
When I saw that Pomp’s channel had been removed because of an interview I had partially listened to and in which I heard nothing controversial or dangerous whatsoever, it struck me as an opportunity to issue a warning: the truth about bitcoin is highly dangerous to certain entities, and when misinformation fails, censorship takes hold.
The interview
It had to be something one of them said, so I listened to the interview in entirety. Nothing controversial was said about politics or the pandemic. No dangerous language was used whatsoever. But I knew that would be the case—Pomp and PlanB are both professionals. I was listening back for the specific sentence that could have brought on the ban: the golden truth nugget. Because we know that often times the deepest truth is the one that is the most dangerous.
To whom exactly were the comments dangerous, and why? In order to answer that, I’ll point out two moments of the interview in which PlanB outlines a future in which bitcoin endangers something in an extremely large way.
Pomp asks PlanB about when he believes the S2F model becomes obsolete in the future. PlanB mentions a few possible answers, but the one that caught my attention was when the dollar loses relevance as a denomination. Stepping into the shoes of powerful elite looking to censor dangerous language around the rise of bitcoin when listening back, this comment was the one that struck me as the deepest truth. If bitcoin continues on its path of global consensus, even if the United States doesn’t lose a single percentage point of its share of global GDP, the US dollar will denominate less of the world’s economic activity at the margin. In fact, I believe that the United States will be one of the main beneficiaries of the bitcoin era with its strong property rights, spirit of entrepreneurship, and technological prowess. Nevertheless, the US dollar—as a tool for international commerce because it’s the most entrenched monetary network—is guaranteed to surrender economic activity to bitcoin for the foreseeable future. Who does this narrative threaten? International banks that service the global US dollar business, not necessarily the US government.
Pomp asks PlanB about external factors that contribute to the bitcoin narrative, and PlanB mentions central bank money printing. He accurately points out that negative interest rates are becoming commonplace and were specifically influential in him finding bitcoin as an alternative to them. Negative interest rates are a very polite way of describing bank robbery by the banks themselves. They charge depositors to hold their money—a negative time value of money. Negative interest rates are the standard within the euro denomination today and are likely to be used as a monetary tool in the European Central Bank’s digital euro in the future. Who does this narrative threaten? Central banks and banks that rely on paying negative interest rates to, or taking money from, its customers in order to sustain their net interest margins.
An endangered species
Just as I was formulating a theory yesterday about why bitcoin will continue to be the recipient of censorship and misinformation tactics because it poses a danger to banks, CEO of JP Morgan Jamie Dimon thankfully graced us with stunning news: bitcoin is worthless. I’m glad he’s not my financial advisor.
These guys are absolutely terrified. Commercial banking is obsolete in an era when anybody can access first-layer money such as bitcoin without having to subordinate oneself to a commercial banking liability that pays either zero or negative interest. It’s just my theory, but things only get censored when they strike a nerve. Worthless? No, it’s actually worth double your company’s market capitalization, Jamie. People only hurl insults when they’re being defensive. The veil is off: we know who’s scared now.