The Journey To Win
The Journey To Win podcast showcases many peak-performers across different industries sharing their journey on what it took for them to win; the mindset, leadership and success secrets to winning big! This is a no bars held conversation with Brandon Thornhill and featured guests in business, health, professional sports, elite military operators, you’ll find inspiration and steps to help you win and perform at your peak! We primarily focus on 6 pillars of winning: Faith, Family, Fitness, Finance, Future Self and Fun.
The Journey To Win
Fund Launches, Crypto, and US Dollar Warfare with Bridger Pennington Episode 15
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Today's show takes a deep-dive into the essence of success with none other than Bridger Pennington, co-founder of the Ugly Unicorn and Fund Launch. He explores the concept of winning, not from a traditional perspective focused on wealth or personal achievements, but through the lens of family and relationship building. Bridger shares personal anecdotes from his journey, emphasizing the vital role teamwork plays in the pursuit of success.
As we shift gears, we delve into Bridger’s exciting foray into the world of business and investment funds. His insights into the world of private equity, hedge funds, venture capital, and real estate funds are incredibly enlightening, offering a rare glimpse into the world of the ultra-wealthy. From discussing the crucial lessons learned from his father to his experience launching the Ugly Unicorn Hedge Fund, Bridger’s tales are as captivating as they are insightful.
We round off our discussion by tackling the current state of the cryptocurrency market and the global economy at large. Bridger shares his thoughts on Bitcoin's market cap, the SEC's decisions, and the potential of a central bank digital currency. We also discuss the threats to the US dollar, trade, and US energy independence, providing a nuanced understanding of these complex issues. What will the future hold for the US economy, the role of Taiwan in global chip manufacturing, and the world of cryptocurrencies? Stay tuned to find out!
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Concept of Winning and Successful Family
Speaker 1Hey , welcome everybody to the Journey to Win podcast . I'm your host , brandon Thorne . I'm super excited to have Bridger Pennington with us today . Guys , as you guys know , we bring high quality people to you , guys that are winning , and every era of their life . We talk about faith , family , fitness , finance , becoming the best future , self and how to have the most fun in life . And really , guys , today I'm super excited to have Bridger on . Bridger is the co-founder and serves as a managing partner , general partner and interim chief compliance officer at the Ugly Unicorn . He is also co-founder of Fund Launch , which we're gonna talk about today , and he built and sold Blackbridge Capital . So , bridger , welcome to the Journey to Win , my friend .
Speaker 2Brandon good to be on , brother . This is gonna be fun . I'm excited to be on Awesome man .
Speaker 1First question I always ask everybody is what is winning to Bridger Pennington ?
Speaker 2You know what's funny ? Me and my wife talked about this last night . Crazy enough , it's funny . People define success and I'm in this space of fun . So I run a hedge fund right now . I helped 130 people launch funds last year . We have students that manage tens of billions of dollars . My dad runs a huge multi-billion dollar fund or did at least and anyways , a lot of money , a lot of people with money , a lot of people with a lot of empty success . And I'll just tell you a quick story , and this will iterate this answer . But so a couple weeks ago I was with my wife's family . We were at Pirates Cove in Nevada , which is this beautiful resort house thing in this . And my wife's family is amazing .
Speaker 2The grandpa grew up , had crazy background story , had like five dads grown up . His mom was a prostitute this cool rags dredge of story . He ends up getting baptized Remember the church . He's Christ . Saturday Saints Changes his life , goes to Vietnam in war , thinks he's gonna die , comes back . He then gets married . They have a kid and he slowly overcomes all these things and ends up being a lawyer , makes tons of money . They have five kids . Those kids have gone out and done incredible things , and then those , now the grandkids . I married one of his granddaughters and they're all incredible people . I mean truly incredible people . So we're all there at this big resort house thing and there's I don't know 50 people there , 60 people there , and now he's got great grandkids and they're all running around and I'm telling you , these are high quality . They're like people that are smart , they're making money , they're like graduating with all these cool things . Like they like super in shape family , like everyone's like fit and like has six packs . Like it's really cool . This family is incredible .
Speaker 2Anyways , this guy comes over to visit and he walks in . This guy's a multi-millionaire dude , made a ton of money and he walks in and he talks to my grandpa and we talked to him for a while , but at the end he goes . You've got something incredible here . He goes . I've made millions of dollars , I have some money . He goes . I think he has one child and they're kind of estranged a little bit . He's on his like third marriage . You know what I mean . One of those kind of guys . He lives in Vegas and nice guy , but he just goes .
Speaker 2You can't buy this . You can't buy this level of family , and me and my wife are talking about this I would call the ultimate win or the ultimate flex on life is having incredible kids and even grandkids that go out and do incredible things in the world on your first marriage or , if not your first , a second beautiful marriage or whatever marriage . It is , but an incredible marriage . You can't buy that . That takes 30 to 50 years to build . And the other thing is you can't build it alone . Even if you're the best , whatever person , you literally can't build it alone . You have to build it with someone else . It's the ultimate flex of life If you have an incredible family that's spiritual , all the things you just talked about , that's fit , that's doing incredible things in their community , that's serving , that has faith in God and all these cool things and it's compounded not just from you and your spouse but to your kids and to your grandkids . I mean that is the ultimate success and it's been fun .
Speaker 2I run a show and I love interviewing . I have a few guys that I've interviewed that have that as well . They run big funds and other cool stuff , but they have that . I'm like , wow , that's way cooler to me than a big helicopter or plane or a yacht or whatever . I'm like , dude , you've got posterity , which is pretty cool . So that's winning to me . I mean my wife , we set this goal last night . We're on this journey and we're like together on this , like we're a team . We got like 50 years to build this thing and we have this vision of what we want it to be , and it's pretty cool . How many kids do you have ? Just one , we have a two year old , so they're coming up on two . He's almost two . That's awesome .
Speaker 1We've been married about three and a half years , four years , okay , okay . Yeah , I mean , talk about duplicating . I mean , in order for him to have what he has , it's taken quite an amount of time for him to duplicate the leadership principles . I mean , you don't just build a successful family without having successful principles to be able to push down from generation to generation . So that's I've always loved that . I love that answer , and that's really the first time , by the way , someone has said an answer like that about generational family values , which is really cool . So love that man .
Speaker 2I just think it's a compounded sense of whatever you're doing . If you're good at this , will show me how your kids and grandkids are , because that's the compounded sense and things either break a lot of things will break at scale . If there's small errors in something , it will break at high velocity or high stress . And if you can have a family , that's a amount of scale , that's 50 years of scale , and if it doesn't break , then you've really built something solid .
Speaker 1Yeah , and .
Speaker 2I love that .
Speaker 1I love that you're coming from an influencer man because you have 80,000 followers on Instagram . You're around some top entrepreneurs constantly because I know the circle that you run around in and you know as well as I do that some of these people on Instagram they're winning in maybe their finances , but not all of them are winning and many of the other pillars that I talk about with faith , family , fitness , finance , future , self , fun , all that stuff . So it's very easy to win in one or two pillars . The question is is are they winning in all their pillars ? And your grandpa sounds like a legend , so that's cool .
Speaker 2Yeah , now it is funny that more I've got to meet and it's just cool to meet a lot of these influencer people , people that are big names , whatever . I know a lot of them and just met them and it's really interesting to just you go to their house or you're with them and you see their whole life and you're like huh , first off they're just normal people . That's the first thing . It's like these are just regular people . I was with Ed and my lad or at least he's like , this is normal dude Alex Ramosy . We've known each other for years . He's just a normal dude .
Speaker 2That's number one . They're just normal people . There's nothing that special . They just learned how to leverage media very well . Number two , though , is they all got problems . They actually and some of them , some have a lot of their life put together and some have only half their life put together , which is fine . They can teach you really good things about finance , but make sure to disseminate between their lessons on family or religion versus their lessons on finance or money . And sometimes you gotta draw a good line on , like this influencer . I'm only gonna really listen to him or her on fitness . I'm not gonna listen to him or her on how they've raised their kids . So I've had to make that distinction in my brain .
Speaker 1Yeah , I love that . So , before we dive into some of the other stuff that I wanna talk to you about with like finances and because I love what you , I love your message If you guys aren't following him on Instagram , you need to make sure you are . It's bridger , underscore Pennington . But you said learn to leverage the media . That was kind of the difference between some of these people . Like Grant Cardone talks about best known , he said something like best known beats best performer any day , because best known is the one who . Everybody , that's their brand , everybody knows them and it's not an exact quote . But how would you say people can learn to leverage the media better if they're looking to take the brand to the next level ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I think to even step back further . Robert Kiyosaki put this in one of his books , made it famous . But there's four different types of leverage in business . You can leverage capital , humans or employees can leverage technology . You can leverage media . Those are the only four types of leverage in business and I've thought about that a lot .
Speaker 2And when you think about leverage , a leverage allows one person to do a lot more than they could have by themselves . So if you leverage employees , if you have a hundred employees , you can do a lot more than you could by yourself . If you had media , you can reach and do a lot more than you could by yourself . If you have money , money can buy , by the way , so we teach people how to do funds . I'm like yo . If you can leverage finance or money , you can go buy up the other three . You can buy technology or build it . You can buy employees , if that sounds bad to say , but you can buy employees and you can buy media . And so if you can leverage capital that one degree of leverage you can essentially leverage the other three and your scale is infinite . The reason some businesses blow up like crazy and other ones kind of stall and die out .
Speaker 2But back to your question on media , leveraging media . I think it's something that I'm focusing on right now , the reason I don't need to run a podcast or a show or be on Instagram . I can just run my funds . But number one , I feel like it's actually . I'll say a few things . Number one it's just therapeutic for me . I actually like having a podcast to just dump my thoughts and my brain onto something . It's almost like a journal for me . It's also good for me .
Speaker 2Number two , though the compounding effect of having a personal brand is absolutely insane , and for years I thought , I thought I don't want to be one of those guys on Instagram or one of those people making content so dumb . Those people are idiots . But then , finally , I kept getting jealous . I was like man , it must be so easy for Logan Paul . He can just drop a drink called Prime and it hits $100 million in a month because he has media . And I'm like , and I for years I kept pointing the fingers like they're so lucky or whatever they have . And then I said you know what ? Why don't I just beat them ? Why don't I just use this tool that we all have and just get in with it ? And so now I take a certain flavor to social media . We talked about that , and I try to not be whatever . I don't want to be a certain type of person on social media and I want to have a . I want to build my brand . Every brand doesn't need to be the same . It doesn't need to mean you have to be a jerk or say outlandish things or buy a Lamborghini . It doesn't mean you have to do that . You can be yourself , just be yourself on your brand .
Speaker 2But we've gone out and leveraged . We're on a lot of social media ads . I think we've spent about $2.4 million in social media ads in the last two and a half years , something like that . That's between , essentially , google , youtube and Facebook and Instagram $2.5 million to have hundreds of millions of impressions , and so what it's done , though , is driven tons of revenue for our business , and we've done , I think , about $20 something million in revenue in the last three years in our business , pretty much from zero and for fun launch and you know , media has been massive and it's helped me to I don't know lever that tool , and I continue to lever that , and what happens is it's easier to do deals , it's easier to meet people , it's easier to find people and I'm like , and I'm still on this path .
Speaker 2I'm by no means a big influencer , I'm not even . I wouldn't even call myself an influencer , I would just call myself . I don't know myself online , but it's helped me in a lot of ways and I now encourage people . I'm like , if anybody I don't care who you are go start a podcast , go start a small account , whatever . It will benefit you so much and you're going to feel like an idiot for the first year , but post stuff that you would actually post . Don't try to act like you're someone . You're not . You know and be real about it . But it will . It will change your life .
Speaker 1Yeah , so true . When I went to launch this , you know I was pushing back against social media for the few you know past few years and finally I said you know what like I got to get I know way too many high quality people not to get this information out to people just to help them , especially during the crazy past couple years that we've had . And then Gary Vanerchuk he actually said something . He said you know , if you launch a podcast or if you launch , you know you start to do stuff on social media . He said what you're doing is if you can bring people to you like you , for example , or like Dan you know your partner , dan Young you become like the cool kid in school .
Speaker 1Right , he calls it the , like the elementary or the some sort of school , I don't know what . He calls it some sort of school mentality where if you throw a house , all the house party mentality , if you throw a house party at your house and you invite all the cool people and now you're the cool person . So the point of it is is they don't . They don't have to be the cool person , they just need to go out and invite the cool people to the party to come over on pot , on the podcast and hang out and bring value to their audience and and that's one thing that I've been able to leverage , you know , and the best thing about
Starting a Fund and Podcast Power
Speaker 1podcasts .
Speaker 2To you I'll say this is podcasts . You don't have stats on . It's the best thing ever If you're , if you're starting out from nothing like a YouTube channel . I can see how many subscribers , how many views you have on Instagram . I can see how many . Whatever you have on podcasts is completely blind . All I can see is number of episodes you've posted and total reviews . Like this podcast right here could get a million views an episode , or it could get 50 views an episode and I would have no idea . And it's the most beautiful thing for people starting out . I always have people start a podcast . It is so good and you don't have to do video whatever . It's really easy to start and it just gets you moving and it gets you meeting people like Brandon . It's just it's you just set it , set it best , but it's fantastic .
Speaker 1Yeah and all because I reached out to you . Go on my podcast now . You know we'll end up building a relationship and I'm sure we'll . We'll hang out in the future Like I've never actually met you in person , so it's cool that you know . Thanks for being on . Okay , so let's talk about your fun . You launched fun launch . Why did you do that ? And you know I have about a bunch of other questions I want to ask , but first let's talk about why did you launch fund launch .
Speaker 2Yeah . So let me take you back a little bit and cut me off on this story . If you want ask questions , whatever , but I'll take you back kind of my my background a little bit . So I grew up in Utah so I said Utah , pretty normal house , nothing special . I went to call , I went to , I did a two year LDS mission , which was awesome . I lived in Taiwan , spoke Chinese , came home , started a bunch of businesses . So I was super ambitious , like I'm going to make money and I'm going to get after this . So I started six businesses .
Speaker 2My first two years of college I started a Chinese tutoring business . I did an online marketing website building company . I wholesale two houses . I mean we did . I did like every business you could find on YouTube . I tried it out .
Speaker 2And finally my dad grabs me . He says Bridget , you're kind of like a chicken with your head cut off . Go meet with one of my business partners . This guy can really help you out . So I said , okay , cool , I'll go meet with whoever . So I went and met with this dude and , long story short , I drive to this guy's house . It's beautiful , gorgeous home , gated community . He lives in this mansion , it's got . He's got the cars , the basketball court , the everything . I knock on his big door and I'm like kind of nervous , like a butler's going to come and be gone peasant , you know , get out of here . And anyways he invites me in , this guy , and we sit down and we start to chat .
Speaker 2So I'm there with my dad's business partner in this beautiful home and I finally ask him like how did you get all of this ? Like how did you do this ? And he said , bridger , in my twenties I was a lot like you . He goes . I started a bunch of little businesses . I tried to make money and stuff and I may actually had decent success , but then he goes . Then I figured out the secrets of the ultra wealthy . He goes , the ultra wealthy families of the world getting to the fund space . They work in private equity , hedge funds , venture capital , real estate funds or they run their own family offices and they understand this game very well . And he goes . That's what we did I , he goes . A couple years ago we started a real estate fund and at the time they were managing over $8 billion billion of real estate . To put that in perspective , that's two times bigger than Grant Cardone's Cardone Capitalists today , and they're buying multi family prints the same asset class Today . That was like eight , nine years ago . Today they're over , I think , $45 billion . They're 10 times bigger than Cardone Capitalists . Today they're funds .
Speaker 2And I was blown away . I'm like , holy crap , like this is insane . And so I asked this guy can you , can I you know , can you mentor me , can I show up , can I be your intern , whatever ? And he said , bridger , go talk to your dad . Your dad knows way more about this than I do . And I said , no , you know my dad's kind of broke . We live in a , you know , normal house . My dad really did drive a crappy car with a dent in the door for his whole life . And I was like , no , I want to learn from you . And he goes Bridger , sorry to break it to you , but you're , me and your dad make about the same amount of money . And I was like , huh , come again . He's like , yeah , me and your dad are pretty much equal business partners . And I , dude , I , my chin , dropped to the floor and I left the dude's house , drove straight to my dad's house and I was like , dad , what the heck ? Like , what's going on ? Like , why haven't I been able to order you know a soul a soda , you know , at the dinner because it's too expensive , and yet you're managing billions of hours in these funds .
Speaker 2And anyways , long story short , my dad really was running these funds and and he started teaching me about how funds worked . And my dad , by the way , grew up in ghetto North Las Vegas . He really didn't have any . He graduated with Bs and Cs from a second tier university , didn't go to Ivy League , nothing like that but then ended up launching these funds with a bunch of partners and they did really , really well . And now he's since retired and he's worth all this money and all this cool stuff . And so , anyways , we sat down on the whiteboard and my dad started to teach me about funds and how they're put together and how they're built and all this kind of stuff .
Speaker 2And so , um , long story short , at 22 years old , I was at university and I said I'm going to start a fund and so I had this idea . I was working in college , I was at a uh , had an internship and I decided to pitch the owners of this company on this fund idea . They love the idea . It took him , my dad , he loved the idea . So we went out and we launched this little fund at 22 years old and I was like , okay , it's launched , but now it's a crap . Now I got to raise money .
Speaker 2If you know anything about funds you . What you do is you pool money together from investors and you go invest in a certain asset class . We have the asset class , I'll figure it out . But I have investors and I was like , shoot , who am I going to go pitch ? And I thought , aha , I'll go pitch my dad . Like my dad's obviously super rich , he doesn't spend his money . He'll probably love to invest with me . And so it was a late Sunday night .
Speaker 2I remember I went and met with my dad and his little home office and I said , dad , how would you like to be our first investor into our fund ? And my dad kind of smiled and laughed and , uh , he said , bridger , if I invest in your fund , I would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own . This will be a crutch that you'll never be able to recover from and this will be a disservice to you . And he said , no , he kicked me out and he said you got to go learn how to do this on your own . And so I went out kind of with my tail between my legs a little bit and I said , okay , I'm going to do this . So I went out , I talked to everybody I knew . I talked to former bosses , college professors , I mean anybody I knew and I raised a whopping $49,500 for my first little
Launching Investment Funds for Success
Speaker 2fund .
Speaker 2If you know anything about funds , that is like the smallest fund to ever launch . It was less than $50,000 , but it was enough to get started . We launched this little fund and doing these we're doing micro loans . They were like 2000 to $8,000 alone . They were really short term . We made a good percentage return . We made about a 64% return on our first group of investors , which was phenomenal . So small amount of money but good percentage return . We then closed that first little fund . We launched our second fund and we raised and deployed millions of dollars out of that second fund . It did very well . We ran that for about three and a half four years . Essentially , I ran . I only had one , one minority partner and it did phenomenal . We then had a competitor come and buy us as we sold that fund . That was BlackBridge . We sold . It was awesome .
Speaker 2And then during that time period we had a lot of people come ask me and my dad and , by the way , my brother is an investment funds attorney , so people started to ask us like how do you guys do funds ? Like how do you do this ? And so we started to make content online . I felt actually I really felt this obligation . Back to your question why did the fund launch come about ? I felt an obligation to the world to spread this information that I was lucky enough to have had a dad and a brother who were amazing at this industry . That taught me how to do it . Then I launched my own and I felt this obligation . I remember actually multiple times fraying and feeling like God telling me to push me into this business and finally we started with . We actually started with a podcast . That's how we started was a podcast called investment fund secrets . We did like 20 , 30 episodes and we built a little course that was like $47 and we built a bigger thing .
Speaker 2And then we now have like coaching groups and all this kind of stuff . We now have 60,000 students around the world that want to launch funds . We launched 130 funds last year . We have one student fund over a billion dollars . We have 12 student funds over $100 million in our group and , I think , 50 student funds over over 10 million dollars in our group . Just phenomenal , like how this thing has grown . We just threw an event in Miami who had 2000 people show up . We sold out . The event called fund launch live to help people come and learn about funds . It's been phenomenal .
Speaker 2And then during that time period I launched another fund , a hedge fund so , and we raised me and Dan Young who you mentioned are the ugly unicorn funds . It's a crypto based fund . It's a hedge fund . We raised $10 million , our initial launch . We launched that fund and it's done phenomenal . So I run that fund now and I run fund launch and this is how we do . So that was kind of the story it's been .
Speaker 2It's been really cool to help regular . I can go . I can talk for two hours about the type of people that join our group and funds these are just like the craziest funds you've ever heard of that join our group and we essentially teach them how to pool capital together to go buy up their competitor businesses or pool cap together , go buy car washes or pool cap together to go trade forex or crypto or equities . We help people pool cap together , go flip houses . We had a guy in our group that was flipping four houses a year . He we built him a fund . He flipped 72 houses the next year . This is kind of the people that we're working with now , which is just phenomenal . We have this anyways . It's been really cool . It's been a fun ride .
Speaker 1So let me ask you this First off , congratulations , that's awesome man , and so who should think about you , know , being able to start up a fund ? Like when you're teaching this , you're like , hey , this is the ideal person that should start a fund and this is the fund . Maybe right after that we go into what all funds do you recommend and why ?
Speaker 2So that first question yeah , who should consider this ? I tell people it's two groups successful investors and successful entrepreneurs , first off . So success if you're good at you know buying and selling real estate , if you're good at trading options , you should consider a fund , because all fun does is just straps onto your existing business model and that allows you to scale . So if you're trading in your basement options and you're trading $100,000 , we both on a fund . Now you're trading $100 million . Your margins are just exponential . So if you're trading with real estate , instead of buying and selling like duplexes or four plexes , you'd bolt on a fund . Now you can go buy a hundred plex or a 200 plex , a 200 unit apartment complex . You can go buy a skyscraper . That's how these . If you ever wonder , like man , who are the people buying these skyscrapers , who are the people buying these 300 unit apartment complexes ? It's almost exclusively funds that are buying them . That's the next game . There's a reason most successful people in the world of finance end up in a fund model and I can walk you through that whole thing . But that's the first group , is successful investors . The next are successful entrepreneurs . So if you run a restaurant and you're successful at running your restaurant .
Speaker 2We have people that come to us that want to scale and we help we bolt on a fund . We help them go buy out their competitors . So they'll go buy three or four or five restaurants that are competitors in the area and then they group them together . They have economies of scale , they have better systems , they can pay for other stuff . It's pretty cool . We have people that buy Amazon businesses that buy up car washes . I mentioned that earlier .
Speaker 2So if you're a successful business owner and want to scale with people that buy media companies we talked about media earlier we have some people that say like hey , I'm going to go buy influencers . Like they'll just go like hey , I want to buy your Instagram account for $20,000 . And they give them a check and they buy 100,000 followers my business , my business partners .
Speaker 2Little brother has done this on Twitter . He has purchased , I think the last year , about one and a half million followers on Twitter not bought followers , but through fake account or through accounts . So he'll go find an account with 200,000 followers on it and I'll say , hey , I'll buy it from you for $30,000 . And they're like cool . He says , hey , you keep running , I'll pay you a monthly salary , but I get to post my stuff and like kind of promote my products . So now he has reach to 1.2 million people through these kind of some of our meme accounts some of them are whatever accounts are posting and he can promote his business and brand like crazy as he's . You know , every third or fourth post is an ad from him . Just kind of cool , does that ?
Speaker 1make sense . Yeah , that's really . Yeah , that's really smart man . You know , I never even thought about doing anything like that , but that's actually pretty genius . I got a question , you know one of my friends . He sent me a quote , because I actually know a lot of people with with a lot of money , and that's one of my superpowers is that , you know , I can raise money pretty quickly and it's because I've been able to not , you know , keep a good reputation off investments that I get people into like usually they're good investments , right .
Speaker 1So one guy told me he said , brandon , you know , warren Buffett says never invest in a business . You cannot understand . And I said , yeah , there's , there's power in that and that's great , I said , but what he needs to be saying is that all you need to find is you need to find the , the guy who's in private equity , you need to find the guy that's in real estate . You need to find the guy that's in blockchain . You need to figure out and look for a trend of success with each individual person and make sure they have that track record . But , man , if they have the track record , you don't have to be the expert , you just find the experts and you invest with them , and so that's actually been something I've done , kind of what you're talking about . I find guys that launch these funds and I who have the track record and I invest money with them and , man , it's paid off .
Speaker 2Yeah , I love that . Yeah , and I love doing that . I'm an investor in multiple funds . I'm not a real estate expert . I don't claim to be , I'm not . I don't actually . I don't even want to learn it . I would much rather just go hire somebody who is in a real , who is a real estate expert , to go buy multifamily properties or commercial office space Great , as long as they're , they have audits and third party administrators and they do everything correctly . That sounds fantastic . You can eat , sleep and drink real estate all day and I can focus on my core business . It's a fantastic way to do it . I'm an investor in multiple funds . For that reason .
Speaker 1It's funny , I went and spent $45,000 on a real estate course and I started going through it and I was like , Nope , I'm going to make friends with these guys that I just bought this course from and I'm going to invest with them and that's what I did .
Speaker 1I started pumping money into them and you know , and investing with these guys , and so , anyways , it's , yeah , I'm the same way . So let me ask you about this . So how do you know ? You're talking about the different funds that are out there who should get into private equity ? Who should get into a hedge fund ? Who should get into ? You know , I know , obviously track record right , but if they're good at real estate , maybe they do . They launch a private equity company or like . What do you ? What are you ? What are you suggesting ?
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 2So
Types of Funds and Ugly Unicorn
Speaker 2let's get let's . We'll kind of clear up some definitions here . I think this is useful for people and it's funny . You probably know this .
Speaker 2The world of finance , in my opinion , is pretty simple . They just come up with very complex terms to describe things and I don't know the reason for this . Maybe it's to confuse people , I don't know . There's a bunch of theories on this , but the world of funds isn't that complex . It's actually pretty simple . But from the outside , looking in , it looks really complex . I don't even want to touch it . It sounds like so much regulation , so much stuff , like I don't even want to touch this , when in reality it's pretty much the same . So I'll just I'm going to explain funds the most basic sense , and then I'll explain all the .
Speaker 2You know what's the difference between a hedge fund and a private equity fund , a real estate fund , a debt fund , a venture capital fund , Like what are the differences of those funds ? And we've helped people launch all of those different types of funds . So , first off , all the fund is when I say the word fund , the most basic sense of fund is a pool of money and investors put money in that pool and then a fund manager can draw from that pool and go make investments . So like , take you back to the middle ages is like hey , me and Brandon are going to set up a black mill shop , we're going to make some cool swords , I don't know whatever . Hey , put some money together , we're going to go build this blacksmith shop and whenever it makes money we'll split the returns . We'll take some and the investors will take some . Like that's a fund , essentially in the most basic sense . So when you take that model you can get a little more technical . That's pretty much it . So then , bridger , what's the difference between a real estate fund , private equity , hedge fund , debt fund ? The only difference is what they invest into . They're all structured almost exactly the same . They really are . I've done the SC filings . All they're almost exactly the same . So the only difference is what they buy . So , for example , a real estate fund buys and sells real estate Ta da Like , pretty easy .
Speaker 2A private equity fund buys and sells private equity , meaning private ownership and businesses . So , for example , they'll buy . A great example is like Sycamore partners on Wall Street . Most people have never heard of this firm , but they own Aira , postal , nine West shoes staples . Last year they tried to buy Cole's department store , I think two years ago they were trying to buy a Victoria secret . Those are all owned by a private equity firm . They buy privately held companies . Okay , that's it . Now that's big private equity .
Speaker 2How people do small private equity where they buy up like car washes or competitive . That would be a private equity firm , a hedge fund , all it is . It's a pool of money . Instead of buying privately held businesses , they buy public businesses or public security . So stocks , they buy bonds , they do options , they do forex , they do crypto anything public is under a hedge fund . It's really not that complex . A debt fund what's a debt fund ? They issue debt , they issue loans like mortgages and they do like they lend . That's it , though . They're all structured almost exactly the same . So hopefully , if you didn't learn anything from this podcast , you can learn that , like that's the difference between hedge funds , private equity , real estate funds , debt funds . The only difference is just what they buy . They're almost all the same and they're not that complex . Hopefully , that's helpful .
Speaker 1Now that makes sense even to me , you know , because I work , I actually invest . I got a private equity friend that I that I invest with . But he does it's funny man he does a lot of different deals and he actually structures it pretty uniquely . So it actually helps me even understand what they're doing more . But let's , let's transition . So you guys have the ugly unicorn . How did you get involved with Dan Young ? What was that process like ? And then how did you guys want to come up with this , this ugly unicorn fund ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so ugly unicorn is a hedge fund , and so a hedge fund . We trade public things . So we actually trade crypto . So we do , we are . We are all in the cryptocurrency space .
Speaker 2I met Dan at a mastermind actually , we're both . We were like riding horses at this mastermind . We had a common friend invite us out . We became friends through it . Over about a course of a year we became friends and Dan is is phenomenal crypto .
Speaker 2He's probably modest at this , but he had the largest crypto mining facility in Utah in 2014 . He had a whole warehouse mining bitcoins and ethereums and doge coins and stuff . I'm sure he talked about that on his podcast . He's done very well in crypto . He's had a bunch of billionaire friends always asking him for advice on crypto . What should I buy , what should I not buy ? And Dan , they ask him Dan , can you just , can you just take our money ? Can you trade crypto for me ? And Dan's always like , no , I'm not going to do that . Like , just , I'll teach you , I don't want the liability of doing that . And finally we came together and I was like Dan , what if we just hit a font ? Like , essentially , keep doing what you're doing with crypto , but we'll just do it at a compounded rate . Instead of trading a million dollars , will trade 10 or 100 million or a billion dollars , and so that's what we've done . We build the ugly unicorn crypto fund and that's been actually phenomenal .
Speaker 2Our fund has done extremely well . We're all . We're not day traders . We don't try to be day traders . We we try to find very good positions . We do a lot of research on the currencies and coins we get into . We hold a basket of anywhere from 40 to 60 coins at a time and those coins will produce yield a lot of them so we stake them or do liquidity pools and do try pools as well , and where we can produce yield on those coins .
Speaker 2We can get deep into crypto if you want , but the whole goal is risk mitigation of this fund . The whole entire goal is crypto goes so up and then so down and people can . You can just lose your shorts . If we can mellow out the downside and then capitalizing the upside , we can perform very well . So Our fund has done really well , like , for example , last .
Speaker 2Last year , crypto fell about 70% . In 2022 I mean huge sell-off . Our fund fell about 17% , so we we really miss risk mitigated very well . Now this year , crypto has gone up and our fund , I think year-to-date were up like 30 something percent , right around 30% and but we're still in bitcoins rally beyond that . But we're still beating Bitcoin inception to date by like 10 or 15 percent because they fell .
Speaker 2Like if you lose 50% of your money , you have to get a hundred percent return to break even . A lot of people don't realize that if you lose 20% , you have to get like a 26 or 27 percent return to break even . It's usually the elevator down to the cliff down and then the stairs to slow climb back up , and so if we can mitigate the downside risk , we can do really well . So Dan and our team has put together a really great portfolio . It's really built for family offices and RAs and bigger groups that want to get into crypto . Dan has done security work for 30 years with NASA and Air Force all these different groups so we have really good security in our fund and anyways , that's our that's kind of a premise of the ugly unicorn fund .
Speaker 1The minimum to get in . That is a hundred K , though , or what's that ? What's the minimum ?
Speaker 2Yeah , minimum is a hundred thousand for this fund . I think actually we're raising that minimum to . It might be we . We only have so many per the SEC rules . We only have so many investor spots . So this fund we have 99 investor spots , I think . Currently we filled up between 70 and 80 spots and so as we have less and less spots , we kind of raise that minimum to quarter million , five hundred thousand million dollars . Sorry , but on paper it's a hundred thousand dollars minimum . Yeah .
Speaker 1Well , guys , listen , you know , if you're , if you're listening this and you're like all great , a hundred K to get in , there's no way I can get into this . Well , you know , just remember he's . He's given you guys a secrets on how you guys can go out there and Pull together money and find somebody you can do what they're doing and start your own fund . And so how , if they want to do that bridge , how do they do like where they go to be able to get access to your course , to go to teach this stuff to them , to launch a fund ?
Speaker 2Yeah , we actually a free gift for your audience . We have a hundred percent free course on funds . My goal is to help more people just learn this game . Whether you're gonna be an investor or you actually want to run a fund , you should understand how funds work , how the fee structures work and how because you can you'll get pitched funds . You're . You guys are all gonna be rich on this podcast by Listen to Brandon for the next few years . You guys are gonna get way rich and you need to learn .
Speaker 2If a fund manager comes and pitches you on a 8% prep and a 2% catch of an , a 20 split , and then a man like a hurdle fee , you know a waterfall and like what's a high water mark ? Like what are all these terms mean ? You need to be smart enough to understand . Ask the question so you don't get ripped off by somebody . And so we have a full free course on funds . If you go to fund launch calm , we can just go on there . It's 100% free . I think it's 15 videos , just basic , like really good overview of funds , what it is , and then and then you know .
Speaker 2My secret marketing technique is If you want to know , I just try to give a ton of value up front and hopefully one day , if you want to launch a fund , we actually help people launch funds all the time and it's we have to pay for that . Obviously , we have lawyers come in and we have people that build your pitch deck with you and like actually launch your fund . But my secret marketing strategy is we give a ton of stuff away for free and just help people like crazy and , first off , just more people understand funds , which is just a good thing for the world , and then , secondly , if you ever want to launch a fund , you can give us a call . So fun launch calm .
Speaker 1That's great . I'll make sure this is down in the comment section or in the description section there . Let's move on , though . So we got you know . You guys run . You guys are in the crypto space
Bitcoin
Speaker 1black rock . As you know , larry Fink said that Bitcoin is basically like digital gold . What's your opinion on Bitcoin ? What's the future ? Where are we at right now ? What do you think ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so we have . We are in a very interesting spot in cryptocurrency right now . We're filming this in middle of July 2023 , just so it's time stamped , I guess . But so the last few weeks , a couple . So let me take you back a little bit .
Speaker 2We had this huge run up in 2021 . People thought Bitcoin is going to a hundred thousand dollars . They asked you to something interesting . They up there , and the reason for that , by the way , is because the total market cap of crypto Is about today is about 1.2 trillion dollars . Now , that sounds like a lot , but it's really not . That is about half the size of Apple computers market cap . That's less than Amazon's market cap of their stocks or the entire like it's . It's essentially a you know , a large tech stock , the entire market of crypto . So 1.2 trillion . The market cap of gold is about 12 trillion . Crypto is 1.2 . So that's why people like that . When people say we're early in crypto , that's what they mean . As far as a market goes , it's still . We actually are , I think , very early in this space .
Speaker 2Now a lot of people are pointing to a Bitcoin at a hundred thousand dollars , 2021 because there were two gray scale ETFs that were coming out . One was a futures ETF and the other one was a spot buying ETF . Now , the significance of that is there's a lot of institutions that have said they want to buy Bitcoin , but they can't do it because they have mandates and charters from their board that say they cannot just go open up a coinbase account or something and go buy Bitcoin is too risky but they can buy ETFs . And so if there was a spot buying ETF meaning if for every dollar you put in there , they they instantly go buy a Bitcoin they could do that . And so these two ETFs were coming out . What was interesting is this the SEC approved the futures ETF and they didn't approve the spot buying ETF . So then what happened ? Crypto kind of went sideways is kind of weird . And then Bitcoin this is 2022 fell off and we had kind of went into this crypto winter . It's falling off like crazy , and now we're at right . As of today , I think we're at 30 , 31 thousand dollar Bitcoin , which actually is pretty phenomenal . And so then we sorry , we have 2022 , we have this crypto winter , we have Terra .
Speaker 2Luna blew up , ftx blew up , genesis global I could go on and on . I mean , there's probably 12 major Cryptocurrency companies that blew up . You then have the banking crisis . You had the three largest banks of crypto blow up Silvergate , signature and Silicon Valley Bank . Those those are . The majority of all crypto assets are held through those three banks . I say it's all blow up in the matter of weeks .
Speaker 2You can't get much worse news about crypto . Okay , I mean , I guess you could , but it's pretty bad . They say invest when there's blood in the streets . Right Now , this whole time , our fund has been buying up slowly . We actually saw a lot of these things . It's crazy enough . I have time stamp text from Dan saying , hey , I think Genesis is gonna blow up in the next seven days and then , lo and behold , it blows up like ten days later . And so we actually avoided a lot of these . We actually did very well . But what's interesting is , even with all that bad press , the lowest Bitcoin went was like 17,000 , hung around 20 . Right now it's at 30 , with all of that terrible press .
Speaker 2Now , during this time period and I can , we can go , I can talk for an hour about this you have some interesting things going on as well . You have the Fed now protocol announced . You guys should look this up , fed now . It was announced by the Fed in March , right during the big crisis . The Fed now protocol is essentially a . It feels like a big Venmo or cash app for wires . Instead of waiting for 24 hours for your wire to go through , you can send large wires instantly . You can send I believe it's gonna be $500,000 . We have somebody on the banks that are working on this 500,000 Are for an individual and up to five million dollars for institutions . You know , interesting that is , you can send wires instantly , which is essentially a lot of people point to the first iteration of a maybe a central bank digital currency . We're not sure . Additionally , last year they passed 54 billion dollar chips act , which I'm sure Dan might have talked about in this show . He's on the board . He's been on the board of Intel for 15 years . Intel is building these thousand acre sites in Ohio . There's another one in Phoenix and I believe there's one in the Northwest somewhere around Seattle . They're building this huge amount of infrastructure to build chips and Potentially build a ton of data centers , which a lot of people are pointing to potentially lays the groundwork for a central bank digital currency .
Speaker 2Anyways , I digress . There's a lot of stuff going on . The last few weeks things have very , very , been very interesting . The SEC went after Coinbase and went after Binance and essentially said you're , you have securities going on , and then , kind of on the reverse of that though , they allowed a 3x Leverage ETF to come out the SEC and then the SEC lost its case against Ripple . So XRP is a big cryptocurrency .
Speaker 2It's been in this essay . It's essentially a threat to the SWIFT system . It's been in Lawsuits for last four and a half five years . This kind of extended , I think , kind of an unconstitutional lawsuit in my opinion , but I digress . They then won the case . Crypto rallied like crazy . It's a that's a huge breakthrough for crypto . Deeming it was not a security , which also means all these things that Coinbase and and Binance were doing were also most likely not securities , to not speculate . Additionally , during that same this is the last few weeks Schwab , fidelity and Citadel some of the three of the largest players on planet Earth and finance announced there they have a new crypto exchange . They just announced that they've launched . Additionally , black rock , who's the largest asset manager on earth , just filed for a Bitcoin spot buying ETF . Fidelity separately filed additionally for a spot buying ETF . So what you're seeing is the smart money . Now , after all this stuff has been spread out the last three weeks . The smart money is starting to at least signal they want to move into crypto . Larry think you mentioned at the beginning has now come out . He again . This is Larry think .
Speaker 2By the way , black rock , black rock , friggin runs the world . I don't , people don't know this . Black rock is a private organization . The Fed Uses black rock to buy all their equities . The Fed , during COVID , hired black rock to go spend like I don't know , I can't remember like two and a half , three trillion dollars through black rock . So now they've essentially become an extension of the Fed . Additionally , black rock runs the Aladdin system . The Aladdin system is what does all of the major transactions all over the globe . I believe it's like eight to fifteen trillion dollars it does a year that go through their system that they they actually are the like , the market makers that help all the transactions happen when you buy and sell a stock or a bond or whatever . They help do all that so they can see Everything and potentially , if they wanted , to manipulate things . That's why people have a lot of problems with black rock . They think they are controlled too much . They sit on all the major boards are pretty much every company on earth . So anyways , I digress .
Speaker 2If that guy that runs black rock is saying Bitcoin's digital gold , we want to file an ETF , I mean that's major news , at least to me . Xrp ends our case . It feels like this is moving in a very interesting direction . Now , again , you got to make your own investments , not investment advice . Additionally , what we have kind of in the future , we have March of 2024 . So next year is the next Bitcoin having .
Speaker 2Historically , bitcoin runs on these different cycles . The Bitcoin having is usually what triggers the next bull market . The next scheduled having is around spring of 2024 , march , april of 2024 . Typically , at least historically , a good time to buy crypto is about six months before the having and there's usually a big dip . So let's just call it October of this year . If , if we're just following charts which , by the way , charts could be totally broken , they can totally change If you're watching just charts , you would . You would see October of this year . You'd see kind of a dip and that would be your best entry point to prepare for the next bull run and while crypto Potentially goes to a massive scale . Sorry , I just I just dove in like really deep there . You can ask questions , brand . If it's not interesting , we can go on , but I could talk about this for like two hours . Pretty interesting though .
Speaker 1No , no , I love it . I think it's great . I think you , you hit on a lot of stuff . I was actually gonna go in XRP and ask that question anyways , because you know , yeah , they just won the case , but technically they can still appeal , and so I think that that's what's holding a lot of investors back From really jumping in . But what's your opinion on that as far as the future of XRP ? All right , and again , this is just an opinion . This is not financial advice . Guys , you can do your own . Yeah , be a smart , intelligent investor and have some emotional maturity , but this is not financial advice . I .
Speaker 2I again at face-diving it's . I'm not gonna speculate on what's gonna happen . I don't know . I'll just play probabilities . I like praying probabilities . I think it is probable , and I said this for years , the XRP is gonna win their case . However , when will they win their case ? Even if they do appeal ? The SEC , in my opinion , has Did held them up and and
Threats to US Dollar and Trade
Speaker 2holds up anybody . By the way , that is a threat to the United States greatest export , the greatest export the United States is US dollars . Anything that threatens the dollar and the dollar's power that , like people , get well . I'll just give you a few examples .
Speaker 2Since the Bretton Woods agreement , after , after World War two , all , all countries came together and said the Bretton Woods agreement was the US will pay for and manage a military and Navy around the world to protect shipping lanes as long as other countries just trade with us . And , by the way , having a Navy is one of the most expensive things any country can have . It's like a luxury . The United States Navy is just insane . You can go through aircraft , carriers and all this stuff . It's just , it's insane . I'm sure , and you know better than anybody , brandon , it's insane , yeah . And so what we've done is we become the world's police and and what . And then the exchange of that . Oh , by the way , we'll pay for this , but you just have to use our currency . That's how the US dollar became the world reserve currency in a lot of sense , and so if you make large oil transactions around the world , you have to do it in US dollars .
Speaker 2There's been three people that I know of that have made large oil transactions in history without using US dollars . Number one is umar Kadavi from Libya . He made large oil transactions without using US dollars and , lo and behold , he kind of got killed by the US military . The next one was Saddam Hussein . He made large oil transactions without using US dollars and he kind of got killed by the US military . Not kind of he did . Third , vladimir Putin . He's the third one that's making large oil transactions not using US dollars , and we have the Nord Stream pipeline that's blown up .
Speaker 2We have a lot of , I think , the US you can probably talk about this more . It seems like they're fighting a pseudo war through Ukraine with Russia and you Know , pulled , and we even talked about this war , but pulled into this war in a very interesting way . But there's a . It's a big deal if you don't use US dollars . About a year and a half ago , saudi Arabia Said they were considering using UN so China's currency , un to trade large amounts oil . And President Biden actually got on Air Force one and flew to Saudi Arabia and met with them , which is pretty interesting for the sitting US president to fly to Saudi Arabia me with them . Now we don't know what they said , but what I , what I would assume you would say in that conversation was this you'd say hey , you know , president Saudi Arabia , you know how we United States , like we pay for 5,000 troops in Saudi Arabia and we park an aircraft carrier off your shores and we protect your shipping lanes , how can I go back to Congress and justify spending all this money to protect you from Iran and these other countries if you're not going to trade using our currency ? And Just explain to me how am I supposed to justify doing this ? Who else is gonna protect you ? And lo and behold , saudi Arabia reverse decision and they only use US dollars , at least as of today .
Speaker 2Last year we have super high inflation . Right , everyone talks about inflation . The US dollar rose in value . The US dollar hit 25 year highs last year . How does that happen ? How do you have record high inflation and you hit 25 year highs of a currency .
Speaker 2The Fed's number one job , in my opinion , is to protect the US dollar , and so , whether it's wars , whether it's things like , look at buying with the Keystone Pipeline buying came to office and he shut off the Keystone Pipeline and everyone at least me in my circle is like what an idiot . This guy's so dumb . Why would you turn us's energy independent ? Why would you shut off the Keystone Pipeline ? And people are like , oh , he's down
Energy Independence and the Global Economy
Speaker 2me today .
Speaker 2But wait , think about this in terms of oil . If we're energy independent and we have oil coming from Alberta through a Keystone pipeline , we don't need to buy oil from Saudi Arabia . Hence , saudi Arabia doesn't need to use US dollars , which creates demand for the greatest product ever produced , which is US dollars . We print trillions of them and guess what ? People work 80 hours a week , they lie , steal , chill , whatever for more US dollars . Why ? Because there's insatiable demand for US dollars . If we are energy independent , then Saudi Arabia says well , I'm just going to use UN and euros and bitcoins or whatever to sell and buy oil and , all of a sudden , demand for your product goes down . Anyways , if you play the world and watch world events and play it back to how does it affect oil and how does it affect US dollars . You typically come to a logical solution and so , anyways , you watch this happening over the last year and I guess it's called two years and you see where the dollar right now is falling a little bit . Bricks Nations just announced they're launching a gold backed currency .
Speaker 2In my opinion sorry , and I'll end with this , I'm talking way too far . You should have cut me off , like three minutes ago . No , no , no , this is great , keep going , just keep going . I just personally think again . It's my personal opinion . I think people talk about the US dollars dead or it's going away . I think the US would rather go to war like World War III than lose world reserve currency status . I look at the wars that have been fought and there's a lot of different reasons for wars and different , not even just wars , but trade embargoes , different . We had the trade war with China , all these different things . It always goes back to US dollars and we have the strongest , biggest , baddest military on earth and when someone doesn't use US dollars , it's a big deal . And so you look at what the Fed's doing , look at the Treasury's doing . Look at what Congress and the actual moves they're making and they start to make sense . In my brain it's like oh , we're making sure the dollar is strong , because that's our greatest export of all time .
Speaker 1Yeah , there's a lot that we can go down a whole rabbit hole on quite a bit of that stuff . And , man , you bring a whole different perspective actually . So you think the US is actually in a really powerful position right now .
Speaker 2I mean you can look at different aspects of powerful position , right ? Some people point to culture wars that are going on other things , but I mean I look at the US dollar versus other currencies yeah , you have the your . So the answer is the question is , let's talk about dollars in economics . For right now , man , people go the dollar's dead . The dollar's not this , really , I don't know . It just hit 25 year highs with record inflation . Like that just doesn't make sense In 2019 , we had $13 trillion around the world at zero or negative interest rates .
Speaker 2We had negative interest rates , which just don't make sense in economics . Okay , just does not make sense at all . You have the strongest , biggest , baddest military on earth with bases all over the world , and if countries don't want to play by our rules and play with our nations , they oftentimes will get trade embargoes on them , or , typically , economic warfare precedes physical warfare , and so you look at the economic warfare that the US is waging right now on China , for example . We banned this is last August , remember when Taiwan was heating up so we parked I believe we parked one aircraft carrier , then we parked two and I believe there was a third parked , which is insane , by the way Three aircraft carriers in one region of the earth , like ready to Like ? That's insane . You guys can probably talk about this more than me , but the entire world has , like we have 14 supercarriers . The entire world has like two or whatever , two or three . It's just insane .
Speaker 2Anyways , but during that time period , taiwan , we did this whole thing . They cooled off . We also banned all chip manufacturing . China . We said any citizen working in China had literally 24 hours to decide between their job and their citizenship . You had to leave China instantly or you were not a US citizen . If you were in the chip manufacturing space , it was 24 hours . They pulled everyone out . Any company had to pull out all chip manufacturing from China , which they believe is set China back about five to seven years . Because there's these super chips that Nvidia just came out with , that are incredible , that are for advanced weapons systems , advanced computers , all this stuff , and they can't make them . That's , by the way , why we protected Taiwan so hard . Taiwan produces like 30% of all chips in the world , and so what I , at least I read again , I don't you read something . What actually is happening is usually different , but what at least what I read is that they want to phase out . Maybe China will try to take Taiwan again in like 2027 , which gives us enough time . We passed the CHIPS Act to build chip manufacturing fab facilities in the United States to be chip independent . They call chips kind of the nuke oil , and so they really I mean really economically hurt China during with the CHIPS Act . I mean majorly .
Speaker 2Additionally , I was watching this thing online all these factories in China . They were in COVID lockdown until just a few months ago and they're coming back online like , okay , we're open for business . And guess what ? Apple has moved to India and Indonesia and Vietnam . And there was this . They were interviewing this factory worker and he was like hi wonder , it feels like Americans hate China , like there's no one ordering Our . We have no . Our factories are open , we have no orders .
Speaker 2And the thesis was well , I don't think Americans hate Chinese people . It's just that , first off , we've got big tariffs and trade embargoes , but also , secondly , you were closed for two and a half years or three years . We can't depend our supply chain on you if you're closed . For three years we went and found people in the Philippines . We went and found someone in Indonesia or Mexico and , sorry , china's right now their real estate market , too , is on the brink of collapse . You look at the it's it's . If you look at the economics coming out of China , it is just , it's horrible , it is insanely bad . I mean now people have been saying this , though for the last three or four years that they it's got a crack and break down . The state just keeps just funding what they're doing . They did the Belt and Road Initiative . They rent , lend over a trillion dollars that's not being paid back to all these third world countries . No one's making payments on it . So they essentially lost a trillion just lends it out . They have this real estate market that they're building these , these empty cities in China . They're . They have no orders now coming in . Their economy is is has actually shrunk by a huge percentage this last quarter , and it was , you can go .
Speaker 2They they over counted their census by a hundred million people . They came and adjusted their census . They said , oops , we over counted a hundred million people . Their age demographic Peter Zahem does this great chart where he looks at age demographics of Chinese people . They they're in like the US is in a bad spot because we had baby boomers and then people are having less kids now , and so you have this baby boomer , this older population that's weighing , weighing on the younger population . That makes sense . China is even worse .
Speaker 2China also had baby boomers but then they instilled the one child policy and you can't add more people to a generation Once someone's 30 years old . You can't just add more 30 year olds to a generation Like you just can't . It's just , it's physically impossible . So they have this huge baby boomer population . They have a small group that's like the working class age , and then those , those group , are encouraged to have more kids . Right now because they know this age population is so bad that the middle class worker , the middle age working class person , is stressed . They have to take care of their grandparents and they got to take care of their kids and just doesn't work . They're social care system is just and the U S is bad , but they're really bad .
Speaker 2And so , as I go on and on and on , peter Zaihan is a great resource on this . He goes through all the economics of China . He goes , for example sorry , I'm going to keep going China , if we went to war with China . He's like he actually gave a talk , peter Zaihan , to the U S armies , this big meeting they had , whatever , and it's recording . You can go watch it this year , a couple of years ago .
Speaker 2He goes if we got , if we got in war in China , china only has about a 30 to 45 day strategic oil reserve . They almost have no natural oil in China and they import about 80% of their oil from Saudi Arabia through barges and boats . He goes if we went to war with China , you would just park two aircraft carriers below the Indian Ocean or by Indonesia and all of a sudden there's no more oil in China . All their trucks , all their stuff shuts off in about a month they're draft . Right now they are drastically trying to build a pipeline from Russia over to China , but it's not done yet . They have very big oil dependence . They import about 80% of their calories , their food supply , they import a huge amount of food . They're very import dependent . And so if you went to war with China , I think and he goes , I think China knows this . That's why they haven't gone to war , because it would be very easy to just stop imports from China and they would starve and have no oil .
Speaker 2On the other hand , north America is the most blessed land ever . We have deep water ports on both oceans . We have a central deep water river system that has all of our grain in the center of our country . We have some of the largest oil fields on planet Earth . We just don't use them and it's like . I go on and on . But it's almost impossible to conquer North America and the United States and we have two allies we do . People talk about trading with China . 70% of our exports and imports are with Canada and Mexico , are in our own North America . The only import about it's about 24% , 23% of our goods from China . It's actually a relatively small , not it's still a good percentage , but it's not like it's half . We have way more trade with Mexico and Canada . So anyways .
Speaker 2I digress , but that's kind of my thought on China and world politics right now . I'll stop there , rand , I could go on for two hours , but I'll stop .
Speaker 1No , you know , I love it . I think it's all great information . It comes from a very different standpoint than what you're hearing from a lot of people on social media , on the media , and so I welcome it , man . I think it's great . So thanks for your insight and thanks for your time today . We're 57 minutes in . I'm sure I'd love to have you on again in the future and we can dive in even a little bit deeper . But again , thanks for time . Where can everybody find you at ? We got Instagram . Do you have a website ?
Speaker 2Yeah , if they want that free course , fundlaunchcom totally free , or you just find me online , bridger Pennington . We have YouTube videos , instagram , whatever . Just send me a DM
Discussion on High Finance and Economics
Speaker 2Like yo . I'd love to get your free course on funds or learn more about this . We just try to help more people understand this game of what's going on with high finance , at least economics . You could probably talk for my ear off on warfare and all that kind of stuff . I like to study , like economics and how we're money flows between all this stuff , and so if you guys want to learn more about that , just Bridger Pennington on YouTube or online wherever . So , brandon , thank you so much for having me on dude . What an awesome show and thing you're doing here . I love it .
Speaker 1Yeah , thank you , man . If you guys don't know , I literally just messaged him on Friday or Saturday and he's like yeah , let's do this . So I appreciate you , bridger . All right guys . Hey , listen . Comment in the section below Like this podcast . Make sure you guys share it in your stories . Get this word out there . Make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast . We do giveaways , as you guys know , so make sure you guys are following me on social media at the brand at Thornhill and Bridger . Thanks again , brother , and we will look forward to having you on again in the future .
Speaker 2We have to wait till it uploads and then .