Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - From Crypto to AI, There's a New American Energy Revival, Interviews with Asher Genoot & Sen McCormick | TRIGGERED Ep.261

00:06:30.000 Into all things AI, tech, and crypto with Bitcoin mining pioneer Aster Janute from American Bitcoin and HUD8.

00:06:39.000 We'll also then have Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick to talk about all the incredible things happening in the Keystone State and the recent AI energy summit there.

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00:08:35.000 Joining me now, CEO of HUT 8, co-founder and board member of American Bitcoin, Asher Janute.

00:08:42.000 Asher, how's it going, man?

00:08:43.000 It's going great.

00:08:44.000 Excited to be on.

00:08:46.000 Well, yeah, I got to, you know, full disclosure, I'm also involved in American Bitcoin, but we had a lot going on in the last week as it relates to crypto.

00:08:54.000 You obviously had the passage of the Genius Act.

00:08:57.000 But before we get into those things, maybe can you introduce yourself to the audience, lay out sort of your mission within the Bitcoin ecosystem and perhaps crypto in general, where this story starts for you and where's it going?

00:09:12.000 Thanks, Don.

00:09:12.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:09:14.000 So we started this business called US Bitcoin Corp back in 2020.

00:09:19.000 My co-founder was one of the earliest miners out there, started mining Bitcoin really back in 2014 and 15.

00:09:26.000 And the industry has grown and evolved.

00:09:28.000 And ultimately, what we fell in love with is Bitcoin feels like this new digital gold is what people call it.

00:09:36.000 But really what it's backed by is real large physical infrastructure.

00:09:40.000 And so where we found our niche and where we've really built our careers in this industry is we've connected real physical assets to the digital ecosystem, to the crypto ecosystem.

00:09:51.000 And so our data centers are the ones that are able to verify the blockchain and are able to create security around it.

00:09:57.000 So when people transact and transfer Bitcoin from point A to point B, they know that the ledger is secure and that our facilities are actually running that security around it to protect it.

00:10:08.000 And so we live in this intersection in between hard physical infrastructure and energy infrastructure and crypto, Bitcoin, and the whole digital ecosystem.

00:10:18.000 And so that I think was a big driver behind American Bitcoin spinning off of Hut Aid to really have two businesses that embody both of those at the full extent.

00:10:27.000 Yeah, I mean, talk about sort of that admission for American Bitcoin because it's not just sort of, it's not just custody of Bitcoin.

00:10:33.000 And it's not, you know, just so people sort of understand it.

00:10:36.000 Cause I think, you know, obviously you have the crypto bros that know all this stuff.

00:10:40.000 And then there's people that are just kind of figuring out like, what is this funny thing?

00:10:44.000 And can it just disappear?

00:10:45.000 Because there's so many misconceptions about it.

00:10:48.000 It's frankly so much more advanced than, you know, than conventional fiat, I guess, in many respects.

00:10:56.000 You know, talk about that a little bit from the American Bitcoin standpoint.

00:11:00.000 So Bitcoin is really the first and the oldest cryptocurrency and really brought blockchain into the center of conversation, right?

00:11:09.000 The idea is, Don, if I want to send you money and I want to send it to you on a Saturday, why do I have to go through an existing banking institution or go through payment rails?

00:11:18.000 Before, if you wanted to send a wire and ACH, outside of business hours, you're out of luck.

00:11:23.000 But now, I guess you have Zell, you have Vemmo, you have all these other kind of tools that allow you to function, but that doesn't cross countries.

00:11:30.000 When I go into Europe or when I go elsewhere, it's really hard to pay, right?

00:11:35.000 You have to go to an ATM, you have to pull cash out of it, pay a fee.

00:11:38.000 And so really what the blockchain allows for is you're removing the middleman.

00:11:41.000 What you're saying is, I own my wealth.

00:11:43.000 I own my dollars.

00:11:44.000 If I want to send it to someone else, I have the ability to send it how I want and when I want.

00:11:50.000 It'll be validated through a public ledger that basically records where money transfers from point A to point B. And you're not relying on a banking institution or a transfer agent in order to facilitate that.

00:12:04.000 And so that's why Bitcoin and the blockchain in general and cryptocurrencies, I think has been so transformative, right?

00:12:12.000 And we'll talk about, I'm sure, the genius bill and a little, the genius act in a little bit and what that means.

00:12:16.000 But for Bitcoin itself, you have that initial layer of the blockchain.

00:12:20.000 And then on top of it, you have this idea of digital gold.

00:12:23.000 And what do I mean by that?

00:12:25.000 When people buy gold, they're really hedging against the dollar, right?

00:12:29.000 They're saying, okay, if there's inflation or if we think prices are going to run, we have this scarce asset, which gold for kind of the history of humanity has been this thing people have viewed as kind of having a scarce supply.

00:12:41.000 And you say, you know what?

00:12:42.000 I'm going to put a percentage of my portfolio here with for kind of a de-hedge.

00:12:47.000 And then I'm going to put a percentage of my portfolio into equities and real estate and so forth.

00:12:51.000 But the problem with gold is you can go mine more and more of it, right?

00:12:55.000 This idea of kind of infinite supply or finance supply isn't necessarily there, where with Bitcoin, there's only ever 21 million Bitcoin that will ever be produced in existence.

00:13:06.000 And mining and Bitcoin mining is the thing that produces the Bitcoin.

00:13:11.000 So, what happens is we have these large data centers, and every time transactions happen, we're validating the ledger.

00:13:17.000 So, instead of a third-party bank that gets paid, we are creating the infrastructure to support the transactions that happen to make sure that there's no fraudulent transactions happening.

00:13:27.000 And so, ourselves, in addition to all the Bitcoin miners around the world.

00:13:31.000 And so, why Bitcoin is, I think, so valuable for the normal person and why my parents are interested in who've never kind of understood cryptocurrencies, friends, is because you have this thing that will only ever produce 21 million units of this coin.

00:13:47.000 And if you think about scarcity and supply and demand, you're not going to exceed and have inflation that kind of grows past that.

00:13:54.000 And so really people see it as an alternative to gold in a digital era.

00:13:58.000 People are not walking around carrying gold.

00:14:00.000 They're holding their ownership in gold via digital currency anyways, via whether it be a ledger on their brokerage account or whatever else it may be.

00:14:08.000 And so now you have this digital version of gold that allows you to own wealth and allows you to retain that.

00:14:15.000 So I think when people think about kind of the whole crypto ecosystem, the way they should think about it is Bitcoin is really a store of value.

00:14:22.000 It's an alternative to gold in the modern era.

00:14:25.000 And then you have the blockchain, which is what drives kind of all of cryptocurrency, which allows you to transact from point A to point B on different systems that allow you to do so.

00:14:35.000 You have Bitcoin, you have Ethereum, you have Solana.

00:14:37.000 And then you have stablecoins, where stablecoin says, you know what?

00:14:40.000 I don't want to take a bet on what this underlying coin is worth, right?

00:14:44.000 I don't know what Bitcoin is worth.

00:14:45.000 I don't know what Solana is worth.

00:14:46.000 I don't know what Ethereum is worth, but I know what a dollar is worth.

00:14:49.000 And I have trust in the value of a dollar.

00:14:51.000 And so how do I engage into this new digital world, but trust that the value of that dollar will hold?

00:14:58.000 And so that's kind of the value of the stablecoin and obviously a lot of the excitement around the world in what happened with the Genius Act this last wave.

00:15:07.000 Yes, I mean, you're one of the leaders when it comes to Bitcoin mining and AI data centers.

00:15:13.000 How exactly are you pioneering this use of energy?

00:15:18.000 And what is it?

00:15:20.000 Why does it matter?

00:15:22.000 We keep hearing about China's pulling another coal-fire power plant.

00:15:26.000 America's not doing these things. 0.99

00:15:28.000 Talk about the importance of energy as it relates to not just mining, but obviously also the development of AI.

00:15:35.000 Most definitely.

00:15:36.000 So at Honey, the vision and the mission statement that we have is how do we harness power to support the technologies of the future that drive humanity forward?

00:15:45.000 If you look back in the history of time, every new innovation we've ever had has increased our consumption of power.

00:15:51.000 And so I think this idea of let's consume less power, let's be more efficient is not real, right?

00:15:57.000 Because the more efficient you are, the more use cases you'll have for that power and the more you'll use on an absolute basis.

00:16:03.000 And so I think that is something that is really a mindset that needs to shift because in the US, I think there was so much focus historically on let's reduce our consumption of power.

00:16:14.000 Where you have places like China where they're building seven-seed nuclear plants, they're growing on generation.

00:16:19.000 And in the US, and we've seen this in this administration, there's been a new revival of power in the US, right?

00:16:27.000 With some of these executive orders.

00:16:29.000 You've seen a revival of let's build and have entrepreneurs build manufacturing, build the digital ecosystem in the US.

00:16:35.000 And so I think when we think about power, power, we believe, is kind of the fundamental driver behind pushing and empowering technologies forward.

00:16:44.000 So starting with Bitcoin, how do you go and you produce a Bitcoin?

00:16:48.000 Basically, what happens is there's this algorithm called SHA-256.

00:16:51.000 And what that algorithm does is it says, I'm going to validate every transaction in the Bitcoin ledger.

00:16:57.000 And I'm going to say, are these transactions accurate or are they inaccurate?

00:17:01.000 And so every kind of miner around the world verifies what the last ledger was, what the new ledger was, and creates a uniform consensus that this is what should exist.

00:17:11.000 And this is how we validate that there's no fraudulent transactions in the ecosystem.

00:17:14.000 In order to power that, we have massive data centers that we build and they consume power.

00:17:20.000 And they consume power.

00:17:21.000 And in return, we're creating a more safe environment for people to transact on the Bitcoin ledger, but we're also consuming power.

00:17:28.000 And I think that's a good thing, right?

00:17:30.000 Because by us consuming power, we're driving economics to the people who produce the power plants.

00:17:35.000 They're making money.

00:17:36.000 The utilities are making money.

00:17:37.000 In some areas, we're offsetting some of the bills for the local residents who are in those areas.

00:17:43.000 And so I think power fuels data centers that fuel Bitcoin compute and help power the reliability and trust in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

00:17:51.000 So I mean, it's definitely a different sort of energy philosophy than what you have today, which is like, do less, do nothing, don't do any of it.

00:17:58.000 And like, you know, it'll be fine.

00:18:00.000 I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

00:18:03.000 That's right.

00:18:03.000 And then, I mean, now you switch over to AI, which I think everyone has embraced, right?

00:18:07.000 With Bitcoin, we can talk about this in a little bit, which is, I mean, we were scrutinized for years, right?

00:18:12.000 This administration has really reinvigorated, I think, the entrepreneur who wants to build in the U.S., where before we were scared.

00:18:20.000 We would tiptoe into new areas and be like, should we invest in here?

00:18:22.000 We're investing hundreds of millions of dollars into neighborhoods and we're scared to even tell people because we don't want them to not like what we're building, right?

00:18:29.000 And so there was this kind of taboo around it.

00:18:32.000 And we can go into that.

00:18:34.000 But with AI, you have the same problem.

00:18:36.000 We need large-scale power to deliver compute at scale.

00:18:40.000 With compute at scale, we're able to now drive better AI models.

00:18:45.000 We're able to drive faster evolution of advancements of technology.

00:18:50.000 And we're able to do so faster than the rest of the world.

00:18:53.000 And so making sure we're able to have large-scale campuses that are able to produce large-scale data centers will help us stay at the forefront of technology.

00:19:02.000 And I think it's really, really important that the U.S. continues to be at that forefront, whether it be in technology with AI, whether it be in technology driving innovations around cryptocurrencies.

00:19:14.000 And that also drives to, I think, the fundamentals of how do you power these things.

00:19:19.000 AI, cryptocurrency, it sounds great.

00:19:21.000 It sounds like it's in the cloud.

00:19:22.000 It's all digital, but they're really powered by real hard physical assets.

00:19:27.000 They're powered by power plants, by data centers.

00:19:29.000 And that's why I think manufacturing in the US and not relying on other places on these raw materials because these things can only happen when you have the physical infrastructure to support them.

00:19:39.000 And so, here we have HUD8 that focuses on building the infrastructure that supports the digital world in Bitcoin and AI.

00:19:46.000 And now, with American Bitcoin, we're trying to create the purest accumulator of Bitcoin.

00:19:51.000 So people say, you know what?

00:19:52.000 I want exposure to Bitcoin.

00:19:54.000 I can either buy it or I can own an ETF, but I will only ever get, if I own one Bitcoin, I'll only ever get one Bitcoin return.

00:20:02.000 If Bitcoin goes from $100,000 to $200,000, I made $100,000.

00:20:06.000 The idea behind American Bitcoin is as we generate more Bitcoin through Bitcoin mining, being able to mine at a 50% discount in the market, being able to use different financing structures to accumulate more, instead of owning just one Bitcoin and gaining that appreciation, you might own 1.2 Bitcoin.

00:20:22.000 And so you get that $100,000 lift, and then you get an additional 0.2 that you would have otherwise not have.

00:20:26.000 And so there's this like dividend yield mechanism that we'd like to create through the operating business.

00:20:32.000 Yeah, talk about that a little bit more because it's sort of interesting.

00:20:34.000 Again, there's so many misnomers about how it now, but now as you've seen big banks start to adapt these things, you talked about stables a little bit, but obviously with American Bitcoin, it's Bitcoin focused.

00:20:47.000 Talk about that because whether it's yield or staking, these sorts of things that you could create availability of people don't necessarily understand that.

00:20:55.000 So it's not just holding gold, but you can actually hold gold that's earning an interest, not just going on the appreciation.

00:21:01.000 That's right.

00:21:01.000 And I think a good way to think about it is when you own, let's just say you own a ton of dollars.

00:21:08.000 People who have large amounts, they own tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars.

00:21:13.000 They're able to take that money, reinvest it, generate yield, and be able to grow the absolute basis that they have.

00:21:20.000 If you're smaller, you might say, you know what, I'm going to deposit my cash at the bank.

00:21:23.000 And as we all know, there's very, very low interest that you get.

00:21:25.000 The bank is now taking your money to go make money and you're kind of just stuck.

00:21:30.000 I think with American Bitcoin, it's the same idea.

00:21:33.000 People can either just hold their Bitcoin and they can just hold it and wait for the appreciation or they can invest and be a shareholder in American Bitcoin.

00:21:43.000 What we can do is have a large reserve of Bitcoin that we own.

00:21:46.000 And with that reserve, we can go and generate yield.

00:21:48.000 And how do we do that?

00:21:50.000 We go and we increase our yield by one, continuing to expand on the mining business.

00:21:54.000 And we structured the mining business in a way that was really thoughtful.

00:21:57.000 A lot of mining businesses, they have to invest in all this infrastructure.

00:22:00.000 They have to invest in all these people to run these data centers.

00:22:03.000 And because we spun American Bitcoin out of Hudaid, we said, you know what?

00:22:06.000 Let's leave all of that with Hudaid. 0.96

00:22:08.000 And every dollar we spend, we just buy the machines that generate Bitcoin.

00:22:11.000 And so the dollar has the maximum amount of yield and impact with the lowest amount of burn.

00:22:16.000 And so we have the most return on that investment.

00:22:19.000 Then we say, okay, we're in the process of going public with American Bitcoin, right?

00:22:24.000 And the idea is by going public, we have access to the capital markets.

00:22:28.000 We can grow at a faster pace.

00:22:29.000 We're able to democratize access to American Bitcoin so people can own it.

00:22:32.000 I know since we launched it, people reached out from all around saying, how do I get be a part of this?

00:22:37.000 How do I invest in this?

00:22:38.000 How do I become a shareholder?

00:22:39.000 And by going public, it allows us to do so.

00:22:41.000 And so with that, once we're public, because of the volatility of Bitcoin and mining, now we have access to being able to raise low-cost dollars, whether it be through the convertible note market, through the ATM market.

00:22:54.000 And we can say, you know what?

00:22:55.000 What if I borrowed dollars today for 0% interest for the next five years?

00:23:00.000 I put into Bitcoin.

00:23:01.000 Bitcoin on average has grown double digit K-gear growth over a period of time.

00:23:06.000 And so in those five years, you say, all right, I'm borrowing dollars for 0% interest.

00:23:10.000 And now I'm investing it into Bitcoin that has a double digit compounding growth in terms of value.

00:23:16.000 And at the end of that period of time, I pay those dollars back or they convert into equity.

00:23:20.000 And now I own more and more Bitcoin.

00:23:21.000 And so the idea here is we are creating the democratized Bitcoin bank where we are allowing people instead of just depositing their Bitcoin and saying, all right, now you can just hold it and you can sit on your Bitcoin.

00:23:34.000 You're a shareholder in the bank.

00:23:35.000 And we're able to now use our treasury, use our access to the capital markets and drive yield and continue to grow and grow that reserve.

00:23:42.000 And look, someone who's pioneered this is Michael Saylor, right?

00:23:46.000 Michael Strategy has been one of the top performing stocks over the last five years.

00:23:50.000 And they've really, really shown that this model works.

00:23:53.000 And I think we're excited because we're able to have that model in addition to having the Bitcoin mining business to bring those two worlds together.

00:24:02.000 And we talked a lot about this a little bit, but when we met you and we met your brother Eric Trump, we talked about how Michael Saylor was telling us, hey, you guys got to start running the strategy to accumulate Bitcoin.

00:24:14.000 Stop just mining.

00:24:15.000 Stop just creating data centers for AI.

00:24:18.000 Start accumulating.

00:24:18.000 And so American Bitcoin is really the influence of everything coming together to create one of, in our opinions, the best Bitcoin accumulators for people to have ownership into.

00:24:28.000 Well, we're super excited about it.

00:24:30.000 I'd like to get your thoughts sort of about the Genius Act.

00:24:33.000 My father recently signed it into law.

00:24:34.000 It was, you know, I guess last Friday.

00:24:38.000 It establishes sort of the regulatory framework, not just for Bitcoin, but for stablecoins and really the regulatory framework that all of crypto was sort of junching for.

00:24:50.000 What should we know about the bill, what it entails, what it does for the industry, et cetera?

00:24:58.000 So the analogy that we like to talk about internally is the Securities Act of 1933, right?

00:25:04.000 During that period of time, you had basically a crash in the stock market and regulators said, we need to come in, we need to regulate securities and we need to put structure around this ecosystem.

00:25:14.000 And what that in turn created and allowed for was one of the biggest booms.

00:25:19.000 If you think about it, the U.S. today is the leader in the capital markets, right?

00:25:22.000 It is the leader in the world.

00:25:23.000 When people want to list their companies, they come to the U.S. They come to the NASA, the New York Stock Exchange.

00:25:28.000 But the Securities Act of 1933 is really what created that framework for people to be able to build and to know what the rules and the regulations were.

00:25:37.000 If we think about cryptocurrencies, I think it's one of the only ecosystems that has actually asked for regulation.

00:25:44.000 We've asked for regulators to say, please, everyone wants less.

00:25:47.000 We just needed something.

00:25:48.000 We needed to do it.

00:25:49.000 We just needed to say, tell us what the rules are.

00:25:51.000 We'll navigate within those rules and we'll go build great businesses.

00:25:55.000 And I think what the Genius Act has done, and it's kind of the first of a series of these regulations, one of the first modern regulations that is put down for the crypto industry.

00:26:05.000 And it's created a very clear and easy way to understand this primarily around stable coins, right?

00:26:10.000 And what a stablecoin is, it says, all right, if I own one unit of this token, right now it's backed by the dollar and you have a one-for-one backing.

00:26:19.000 The problem historically with stable coins is people will say, okay, well, does this thing actually, is this thing actually worth a dollar?

00:26:25.000 Are people holding the dollar in a bank?

00:26:27.000 Are people using it?

00:26:28.000 What actually exists?

00:26:29.000 So now this regulation says, we'll give licenses out.

00:26:32.000 We'll make sure that we're regulating this industry.

00:26:35.000 And so now when you're buying these stable coins, you know that they get audited, that the money is actually there.

00:26:41.000 And so when you own a token, you know that behind that stable coin, you actually have a real dollar that backs it.

00:26:47.000 And I think that's really, really important because what I've seen is you have entrepreneurs that have really been driven internationally to go build in the crypto industry, right?

00:26:56.000 Because they're scared to build in America.

00:26:58.000 In the last administration, people were getting, were getting attacked.

00:27:03.000 The regulatory regime was coming after them and they were just saying, tell us how you want us to operate and we'll build business that framework.

00:27:09.000 I saw it.

00:27:10.000 I mean, with the guys from World Liberty, which is just stablecoin side of what we're working on in crypto, it was like that.

00:27:16.000 You could hire the finest lawyer in America and be like, this is what we want to do.

00:27:20.000 It's like, it probably works, but we don't actually know because there was nothing.

00:27:23.000 And so, I mean, you literally took five years, six years where you were sending people to other places that they knew they just weren't going to jail for doing that.

00:27:32.000 And again, it wasn't that they were trying to do something shady.

00:27:34.000 They just, there was nothing.

00:27:36.000 It's like, you know, again, lawfare.

00:27:38.000 You could have one of these guys decides, yep, we don't like that guy, but we like that guy.

00:27:42.000 They're doing the same thing, but it's different.

00:27:43.000 You're going to jail.

00:27:44.000 And it's wild.

00:27:45.000 And we don't want to offshore those kind of businesses.

00:27:48.000 We want that to be here because I think it's the future of finance.

00:27:50.000 And I think that is what's so key.

00:27:52.000 I mean, the U.S. is the financial engine of the world.

00:27:55.000 And the genius that is building on that framework of the modern equivalent of the Securities Act and being in ensuring that the U.S. is a place that entrepreneurs and people in this industry want to build.

00:28:06.000 And also the dominance of the dollar for hundreds of years to come, right?

00:28:09.000 Having the dollar backing these stable coins and really having that be the currency that's supporting a lot of these.

00:28:15.000 I think when we look back in history, this will be a really, really important and huge milestone in time and in history because people will see where was crypto really let go and how did it really start impacting the world and impacting financial systems, businesses.

00:28:32.000 And you'll see entrepreneurs.

00:28:34.000 I mean, look, when your dad signed the bill, you had some of the biggest leaders within the crypto segment in the White House behind him.

00:28:42.000 And you couldn't imagine that five years ago, right?

00:28:44.000 That wasn't even four years ago.

00:28:46.000 That wasn't even in kind of the mindset.

00:28:48.000 And so now I'm seeing more than ever my colleagues, entrepreneurs, people who are building internationally coming back to the U.S. and saying, you know what?

00:28:55.000 Let's build here because the U.S. will be the crypto capital of the world.

00:28:59.000 Yeah, watching those guys sort of all get behind this, it just, it makes so much sense.

00:29:03.000 And again, I think there's probably a lot of resistance because at least even in Congress and whatnot, because the banks and the traditional way of doing things, not so efficient, not so simple, not so quick.

00:29:14.000 A lot of people getting paid a lot to do things that blockchain is going to make obsolete.

00:29:18.000 I mean, it's a brave new world and that's probably scary for a lot of people.

00:29:22.000 And there are lobbyists who are paid really well to protect those industries that, again, could probably use a little bit of a shakeup.

00:29:28.000 I think that's definitely right.

00:29:30.000 I mean, I'm sure everyone has been in a situation where they have money in their bank account and they're trying to take money out of the ATM or they're trying to transfer something they can't do.

00:29:39.000 And you're like, what is going on?

00:29:40.000 This is my money.

00:29:41.000 Why can't I have access to it?

00:29:43.000 And this really unlocks financial freedom, right?

00:29:46.000 And I think this is not just for the crypto industry.

00:29:48.000 This is for the everyday person.

00:29:50.000 This is for everyone who wants control of their own wealth.

00:29:53.000 I know, Don, when we kind of got together and really formed American Bitcoin, you and your brother were saying that like a big part of you guys coming into the space and adopting the space was after the first administration where the debanking started to happen and you couldn't get access.

00:30:07.000 And it's crazy to think about that these should be service providers that first and foremost take care of the people that have their wealth in these institutions.

00:30:16.000 And they've become these massive powerhouses where people don't have control over their own access to their own wealth anymore.

00:30:22.000 Yeah.

00:30:23.000 No, it was wild.

00:30:24.000 It wasn't like we were all that innovative.

00:30:26.000 I mean, we were old school real estate guys, you know, again, doing some cool stuff, but not exactly, you know, a leading edge tech kind of business.

00:30:35.000 And then all of a sudden, you know, we get into politics, that, you know, switch gets turned off.

00:30:39.000 You can't do anything.

00:30:40.000 You can't get, you literally couldn't get a mortgage for a house.

00:30:43.000 Not that we didn't have the money in the bank to back it, but they just wouldn't lend to you.

00:30:46.000 So it's like, well, I want to just take advantage of at the time, 3% interest.

00:30:50.000 This made a lot of sense.

00:30:51.000 Didn't matter.

00:30:52.000 And so we adapted it really out of necessity.

00:30:55.000 But then once you actually get familiar, that's why it's like, you know, for some of the people who are just like, I don't understand this funny thing.

00:31:02.000 You know, once you actually get into it and you get a little vested or you buy a tiny fraction of a Bitcoin, you start paying attention to all these things and you figure out like, oh, once you get through the acronyms and the nonsense and everything like that, it's actually pretty simple to understand.

00:31:18.000 And once you get rid of that fear, it's easy to kind of get on board.

00:31:23.000 And so once we saw it and our eyes were open, I'm like, oh, my God, like this is going to make so many things, even in the old school world of stuff that we did simpler.

00:31:30.000 You know, when I think about real estate, I think about, you know, title insurance ending up on the blockchain.

00:31:34.000 Why am I paying points for something?

00:31:36.000 Like, I'm buying the house from this guy who's lived there for 20 years.

00:31:38.000 I have a feeling it's probably his house, but I'm paying points to figure that out.

00:31:41.000 Like that can be on the blockchain.

00:31:43.000 You could check it in two seconds for $0.

00:31:46.000 You know, there's just all of these middlemen and stuff that, I mean, I think this is going to make it obsolete.

00:31:51.000 Like AI is going to make a lot of things obsolete as well.

00:31:53.000 And you integrate AI with the blockchain and you unlock so much opportunity.

00:31:58.000 And I think that's the thing is, look, being in this industry, well, I'll be honest in College of Fame and Spade.

00:32:04.000 In any new industry, there are good actors and there are bad actors, right?

00:32:08.000 And so as you think through kind of crypto over the years, because there was no regulatory framework, you had people coming in trying to build great businesses and you had people coming in trying to make money quickly. 0.99

00:32:17.000 And so when someone gets burned, they go to the other extreme and say, this whole thing is bullshit. 0.90

00:32:20.000 This is not a real industry and so forth. 0.79

00:32:22.000 But when you look at the dot-com era back in the 90s, think about how many of those companies kind of came up overnight, disappeared because they didn't try to Create true value.

00:32:31.000 But today, the most valuable companies in the world were companies that were born in that era.

00:32:35.000 And so I think we're living through this same moment in time where you'll have some of the largest companies born now that in the future, when we look back, and you'll have all the noise of companies that don't drive value.

00:32:46.000 And I think that's where, as a consumer, like the Genius Act is one of the first steps into that regulatory framework of how do we make sure that people are building great businesses, that we can rely in good actors.

00:32:58.000 And then by doing so, we allow this industry to really get uncuffed and really grow and blossom.

00:33:05.000 And look, I'm so excited.

00:33:07.000 I couldn't, I think, be more thankful to kind of the U.S. and what it feels like today.

00:33:12.000 We're working on a project in Louisiana.

00:33:14.000 And I was out there and I was talking to people there.

00:33:16.000 And they're like, we feel like America's back again.

00:33:18.000 Like we're building again.

00:33:20.000 We're growing again.

00:33:21.000 We want to be energy dominant.

00:33:23.000 We want to be the frontier of these industries.

00:33:25.000 And I think as builders and as entrepreneurs, I mean, that's what the U.S. was built on.

00:33:31.000 And we're coming back to just the fundamental building blocks and foundation of what this country was built on.

00:33:36.000 Yeah.

00:33:37.000 I mean, it's great to see it.

00:33:39.000 And I mean, every day, I mean, I talk about it on the show all the time.

00:33:41.000 It's like, you know, here's another $10 billion from this company.

00:33:44.000 And like, why wasn't this already happening?

00:33:47.000 Like, it didn't seem like it was that hard to actually incentivize people to actually do things in the United States. 0.98

00:33:52.000 But like, when you're an idiot and you don't do anything and you don't, you've never built anything and you've only signed the back of a paycheck, never the front, it's like, I don't know, this guy told me to do it. 0.97

00:34:06.000 So it's amazing how quickly we could turn that around. 1.00

00:34:08.000 But talk a little bit.

00:34:10.000 You know, you sort of touched on it before, but American Bitcoin structure really allows for mining at low cost.

00:34:15.000 I think people who were looking at this stuff years ago remember when you could mine Bitcoin on a laptop.

00:34:21.000 And that ain't happening anymore.

00:34:22.000 I mean, you're basically using supercomputers.

00:34:25.000 So I'd love to actually hear you talk about the evolution of that.

00:34:28.000 But I know you've said before that it's not just about being the biggest, it's about being the most efficient.

00:34:34.000 You know, what are the key indicators and benchmarks to assess that when people are looking at doing this, if they're looking into getting crypto this way through American Bitcoin?

00:34:41.000 How do they figure that out?

00:34:43.000 So today, when we go and we mine Bitcoin, our cost of energy to mine a Bitcoin is under $40,000 of Bitcoin.

00:34:49.000 And so if you think about it, that's not too bad.

00:34:51.000 If Bitcoin right now is getting close to $120,000 a coin and we're being able to mine that at a cost of under $40,000, that's a pretty good margin, right?

00:35:00.000 And so how do we think about kind of the cost structure that goes into mining a Bitcoin?

00:35:04.000 First, you got to go build the data centers and you got to go buy the chips.

00:35:07.000 In the structure with American Bitcoin, Hade is building the data centers, not American Bitcoin.

00:35:12.000 So that money can be saved.

00:35:14.000 That money can go into buying more chips.

00:35:17.000 And then in terms of the team that operates it, Hade has like 250 people, right?

00:35:21.000 We have a big payroll.

00:35:22.000 We have to operate the facilities.

00:35:24.000 We have software teams, data science teams, et cetera.

00:35:26.000 American Bitcoin doesn't need that.

00:35:28.000 We provide a service agreement where American Bitcoin keeps light SGNA so it can toggle in and out based on need rather than just a fixed cost that has to burn every single month just keep the lights on.

00:35:38.000 And so from a Bitcoin perspective, then really our major cost is that cost of electricity, where are we able to consume electricity at a low cost relative to the price of Bitcoin?

00:35:48.000 And so we've been very, very good on controlling that.

00:35:50.000 And the way that we think about it is this.

00:35:52.000 If we spend money buying these supercomputers, if we bought Bitcoin instead, are we generating more Bitcoin by buying these supercomputers than having just bought Bitcoin itself?

00:36:02.000 And that's really the metric we hold ourselves to.

00:36:04.000 Because the better your supercomputers are, the newest generation, the better efficiency they are.

00:36:10.000 You can run at a higher energy cost because you have higher margins, because you're producing more Bitcoin for less computer power.

00:36:17.000 And so with that, why that's really important is I think sometimes people say, all right, which company has the lowest cost of energy or which company has the most amount of exahash, the most amount of Bitcoin that they're mining?

00:36:29.000 And sometimes these metrics are skewed because if you have a massive margin, I'd rather spend a bit more money on energy, be online a bit more and produce more Bitcoin, right?

00:36:38.000 Or if I'm producing a ton of Bitcoin and my average cost to produce Bitcoin all in with everything is $130,000, I'm really losing $10,000 mining that Bitcoin, not making a big margin.

00:36:48.000 And so when we think about it, scale matters, but being really, really efficient matters and making sure when we spend the dollars, we're actually driving a yield more so than buying Bitcoin itself.

00:36:59.000 And I think one way that allows us to do that is HUD8 now is kind of the low volatility energy infrastructure company.

00:37:06.000 So when we invest into a project, we think about it as a real estate investment.

00:37:10.000 We can look for a much longer term return.

00:37:12.000 We can have a lower year-on-year IRR because we're investing in infrastructure.

00:37:16.000 When we're investing in Bitcoin and supercomputers, we need a much faster rate of return because computers are coming out every single year and we need to make that payback better.

00:37:25.000 And so we've really separated and I think created one of the best balances in terms of cost of capital.

00:37:31.000 And so now American Bitcoin, I think, allows people to say, okay, I get the best of micro strategy in MetaPlanet where I can, the company will go and accumulate Bitcoin and tap into the capital markets.

00:37:41.000 But it also takes the best of the largest Bitcoin miner in the world by saying, I'm just going to go get the highest margin Bitcoin that we can mine without all of the other costs that go into this business because of the relationship with Hade.

00:37:55.000 And look, if American Bitcoin and Haraid, if Hade is one of the largest shareholders of American Bitcoin, right?

00:38:02.000 And so we're economically incentivized for American Bitcoin to do really, really well.

00:38:06.000 Without that synergy, other companies wouldn't create that type of structure because that wouldn't make as much sense.

00:38:11.000 And so that's where I'm really, really excited with American Bitcoin because I think what we've all built here is we've built this great business.

00:38:19.000 And look, it's been a fast period of time.

00:38:22.000 If we think about it, we launched American Bitcoin to the world April 1st.

00:38:25.000 I'm excited for us to share with them how much Bitcoin we've accumulated in a very short period of time before we go public.

00:38:31.000 And hopefully we're sprinkling towards getting this company public in the short while here.

00:38:37.000 And so I think.

00:38:38.000 Talk about the significance of that.

00:38:39.000 Again, going public, what is it as it relates to scalability, achieving everything you've been talking about?

00:38:46.000 What enables going public, what does that enable you guys to do that you couldn't do right now?

00:38:51.000 Right now, when we think about growing and raising capital, really the way we raise capital is we go to investors, they invest into the business.

00:38:58.000 And there's some information that Came out through our recent filing on a private capital raise that we just did as well.

00:39:04.000 But in the public markets, you have so much more access to different instruments.

00:39:09.000 And this goes back to my bank analogy.

00:39:11.000 As an individual, you don't have access to all these different yield generating opportunities.

00:39:17.000 But as a bank, you have way more optionality of where you can deploy that capital to derive a yield.

00:39:21.000 And so when you think about a company, when we're private versus when we're public in the public markets, we can look at the volatility of our stock and we can get 0% or 1% convertible note paper because they're able to say, I'm able to trade around your volatility.

00:39:36.000 So I'll give you really cheap capital.

00:39:37.000 As a private company, you never get that.

00:39:39.000 Your cost of a convert may be 8% to 10%, right?

00:39:42.000 And so you drive down that cost of capital.

00:39:44.000 And why that's important is when you have really low cost money and you're able to invest that into Bitcoin, which has been an appreciating asset over the tenure, one of the highest appreciating assets in the world during the life cycle of Bitcoin, now you have this really, really interesting mismatch.

00:40:00.000 You have TradFi and traditional finance giving you cheap dollars for you to deploy into Bitcoin that is an appreciating asset at a double digit appreciation with a longer tenure.

00:40:11.000 And so by going public, we are able to continue to build the great business we have today in mining Bitcoin at a low cost.

00:40:18.000 And now we're able to add this layer of this financial engineering that MicroStrategy has done so well.

00:40:24.000 I think what we're excited by is, look, they're over a $100 billion company.

00:40:28.000 When they started to accumulate Bitcoin, they're around $1 billion.

00:40:31.000 So they have 100X in terms of their market cap.

00:40:35.000 And right now, for them to go from 100 billion to $1 trillion, that's a big jump, right?

00:40:41.000 That's just a 10X.

00:40:42.000 For us to go from where we are to 100 billion, there's a lot of that ramp.

00:40:46.000 And look, I think kudos for Sailor for setting the track, for honestly convincing us all into the beautiful opportunity that's here.

00:40:56.000 And I think we brought kind of what we knew very well.

00:41:00.000 We brought the Bitcoin world together and you and your brother having really embodied and I think now being kind of spokespeople for this industry, creating this great business and this American business.

00:41:12.000 I think that was a key to American Bitcoin as well, right?

00:41:14.000 We didn't want to just be in a Bitcoin company.

00:41:16.000 We want to be a Bitcoin company that's built and based in America, hence the name American Bitcoin and really embodying this new digital era and this new currency that people can be a part of and can be owners of as well, not just customers of.

00:41:30.000 And so we want people to have access as a public company to own a part of the business and be a part of this journey with us.

00:41:36.000 So Asher, as people sort of start to, they're watching this, they're trying to wrap their head around the concept of things like mining, decentralized finance, blockchain.

00:41:49.000 How do you go about educating others about the importance of all of this?

00:41:55.000 I think that's a fundamental thing.

00:41:56.000 I mean, how do people take those first baby steps that they can sort of figure it out?

00:42:00.000 Because it was complicated for me at first, but then it's like, oh, then it just clicks, but you got to, where do you start?

00:42:08.000 I think that's a great question because it is really complicated, especially when you get into DeFi and now you're swapping and you're going into and you're having your wallets.

00:42:16.000 And so I think to start, people just just start accumulating some of their own coins, right?

00:42:21.000 The main coins today are stablecoins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana.

00:42:25.000 It's these coins that are really kind of standing the test of time.

00:42:29.000 I think stablecoins, the right ones are backed by US dollars.

00:42:33.000 So you have comfort there that you're really just saying, all right, instead of owning a dollar in the bank, I'm owning a dollar via stablecoin.

00:42:39.000 And now I'm a part of this ecosystem.

00:42:40.000 Yeah, and that stablecoin is backed by U.S. Treasuries.

00:42:43.000 It's what we're doing with World Liberty Finance.

00:42:44.000 That's, you know, the stablecoin side of, you know, the DeFi platform of what we're doing, which is the, you know, sort of, again, sort of the oil, the transactional stuff.

00:42:52.000 And then you have the gold on the Bitcoin side with American Bitcoin.

00:42:55.000 And it allows you to start getting involved into the ecosystem without actually taking risks on the underlying asset, right?

00:43:03.000 Because everyone is already taking exposure to US dollars.

00:43:05.000 You're saying, all right, I'm just holding a different form of this currency now.

00:43:08.000 And so I think that's a great way to start dabbling.

00:43:10.000 Then Bitcoin has stood the test of time.

00:43:12.000 Bitcoin has had an unbelievable appreciation cycle.

00:43:16.000 If anyone's bought and held Bitcoin, they haven't lost money, right?

00:43:19.000 And so Bitcoin is that store of gold is the first and I think the longest cryptocurrency out there.

00:43:26.000 Ethereum, people kind of put as like the, if Bitcoin's a digital gold, Ethereum is like the digital oil where you have transactions and things that are built on the Ethereum network.

00:43:35.000 And Solana has come in and has really built a great technology as well, where a lot of developers are building on top of that.

00:43:41.000 And Solana and Ethereum are competing right now.

00:43:43.000 And Solana has grown a ton as well.

00:43:45.000 And you have a lot of other coins as well and different projects and companies that people like to bet on.

00:43:49.000 So I would say start simple, start with the key main ones that you know.

00:43:54.000 And the reality is when Bitcoin goes up by 5%, everything else goes up by 20%.

00:44:00.000 But when Bitcoin goes down by 5%, everything else always also drops by 20%.

00:44:04.000 And so if you don't want to take that much risk and you don't want to gamble as much, go in with the more larger, trusted, stable coins.

00:44:12.000 So just understand how to interact with the ecosystem, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, where you have a little less volatility and you already have a lot of adoption to those coins.

00:44:21.000 And then you can start dabbling, right?

00:44:23.000 I'm sure you and I, when we have a friend tell us, oh, there's this interesting company or this early stage company, why don't you write a check?

00:44:29.000 That's what some of these coins are, right?

00:44:31.000 They're early venture checks and most of the time they don't work out.

00:44:34.000 And sometimes they do and you make a ton of money and it's great.

00:44:36.000 But I think people need to know what they're putting their money into.

00:44:39.000 Am I investing into a blue chip company that has a lot less volatility and is not going to drop and go to zero overnight?

00:44:45.000 Or am I investing into a startup that has a ton of upside, but could also disappear overnight as well?

00:44:50.000 And so I would say people should start dabbling.

00:44:53.000 And you can open a wallet on, I mean, there's Coinbase, there's Genesis, there's Anchorage, there's all these platforms that you can open a wallet onto, or you can buy just some with your ETF, right?

00:45:07.000 There's all these ETFs now.

00:45:08.000 And now you have companies like American Bitcoin going public.

00:45:11.000 You can own a little bit of American Bitcoin.

00:45:13.000 And so I think there's so many ways where through traditional finance, you can get exposure.

00:45:17.000 And then if you want to start getting a bit more into it, then you start owning the actual wallet.

00:45:22.000 You start owning the stablecoin or the cryptocurrency itself.

00:45:26.000 And then you can get into DeFi.

00:45:27.000 And then that world gets crazy once you get in there.

00:45:30.000 Yeah.

00:45:30.000 Very nice.

00:45:31.000 Well, Asher Janude, thank you very much, man.

00:45:33.000 Guys, keep an eye out.

00:45:35.000 As we progress with everything with American Bitcoin, we'll definitely keep you apprised.

00:45:38.000 But awesome work, man.

00:45:39.000 Thanks a lot.

00:45:40.000 Hopefully, just getting people to understand exactly what's going on because it's no question that it's the future.

00:45:46.000 And there's also no question in my mind that just because you're not in it right now doesn't mean you've missed out.

00:45:53.000 This just still feels like it's just the beginning to me.

00:45:56.000 Yeah.

00:45:56.000 And with American Bitcoin coming out, I mean, I think we are one of the most well-packed talent startups in the world and are at the very beginning.

00:46:05.000 And hopefully people will have an ability to be a shareholder with us and grow with us at the start of this journey as we come out and become a public company.

00:46:12.000 Awesome, man.

00:46:13.000 Asher, thanks a lot.

00:46:14.000 Look forward to talking to you soon.

00:46:16.000 Thanks, Tom.

00:46:18.000 And coming up, guys, we'll get into much more on all the energy investment going on in the great state of Pennsylvania with Senator Dave McCormick.

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00:47:39.000 Joining me now, Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick.

00:47:43.000 Dave, good to have you back, man.

00:47:44.000 Hey, Don.

00:47:44.000 How are you?

00:47:45.000 Thanks for having me.

00:47:46.000 I appreciate it.

00:47:47.000 Well, thanks for being back on the show.

00:47:48.000 You know, there was a huge AI, tech, and energy summit in Pennsylvania recently.

00:47:54.000 You were a big part of it.

00:47:56.000 You know, tell us about that.

00:47:57.000 I love seeing that as someone, again, who's spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania and nine years of school and a farm still currently.

00:48:05.000 Great to see this kind of innovation coming back to Pennsylvania, right?

00:48:08.000 I grew up.

00:48:09.000 It was an exciting day.

00:48:11.000 When President Trump won, he called me a week or two after and he said, what can I do to help?

00:48:18.000 He was in Pennsylvania about 15 times, Don, as you know.

00:48:18.000 You ran a great campaign.

00:48:22.000 You were with him a bunch of times.

00:48:23.000 So thanks for all you did there.

00:48:24.000 But I said, Mr. President, two things.

00:48:26.000 One, come to Pennsylvania for wrestling.

00:48:29.000 I want you to come for wrestling.

00:48:31.000 It's the heart of Pennsylvania.

00:48:32.000 I ran as somebody wrestled in high school and college.

00:48:35.000 He came to the national championships, which was incredible, as you know.

00:48:38.000 Second thing, I said, I want to have an energy and innovation conference in Pittsburgh.

00:48:43.000 In 2017, President Trump said, I'm more worried about serving the people of Pittsburgh than Paris.

00:48:49.000 And I said, here's the chance.

00:48:51.000 And the reason is that Pennsylvania is the crossroads of the energy revolution and the AI revolution.

00:48:58.000 And we're uniquely blessed.

00:48:59.000 We're number two energy producer in the country, number four natural gas reserves in the world, huge energy.

00:49:03.000 See, I don't think anyone really knows that other than, you know, but, you know, huge reserves.

00:49:09.000 Obviously, you have all the shale, you know, natural gas that's all over the state.

00:49:14.000 I mean, that's been incredible.

00:49:16.000 But people don't think of Pennsylvania that way.

00:49:18.000 I mean, a lot of sort of, frankly, a lot of sort of the ideology of my political background was going to, I went to boarding school.

00:49:25.000 So it was a great school, but it was in Potsdam PA, which was sort of this former industrial town.

00:49:32.000 And it was the home of Firestone Tires and Mrs. Smith's Pies.

00:49:35.000 And that was all gone.

00:49:37.000 That was shipped abroad by the time I got there.

00:49:39.000 So I sort of had my formative years, eighth grade through graduation of high school, in these towns where you could see just the ruins of what used to be incredible America.

00:49:50.000 And you see what so many politicians did at taking those American dreams and just shipping them to China.

00:49:56.000 I had the same experience.

00:49:57.000 I grew up not far from Pottsville.

00:49:59.000 I grew up in Bloomsburg.

00:50:01.000 When I was a kid in high school, the biggest employer in town was the McGee Carpet Mill.

00:50:06.000 2,000 employees.

00:50:07.000 Kids in my high school class went to public high school, worked in the mill.

00:50:10.000 Today it's 200.

00:50:12.000 And when you have an 8,000-person town, that just guts it.

00:50:16.000 So that energy, the shale revolution, the coal and the anthracite in the northeast, bituminous in the south, the nuclear power capability, that's a huge advantage.

00:50:27.000 But then the second thing is we got this incredible skilled workforce, welders, pipe fitters, steam fitters, electricians.

00:50:35.000 And in the AI world, you need to build these huge data centers.

00:50:39.000 You need skilled workers who can build them.

00:50:41.000 And it's all about speed.

00:50:42.000 And the third thing we've got is we got these great universities.

00:50:44.000 You went to one of them, Penn, but we got Carnegie Mellon.

00:50:46.000 It's probably the best university in the country for artificial intelligence.

00:50:50.000 So I made the pitch to your dad, to the president, hey, hey, listen, Pennsylvania is where the action's at.

00:50:58.000 And by the way, you and I both promised when we ran that we're going to bring opportunity to these working families.

00:51:03.000 This is what it's about.

00:51:04.000 So we create this summit.

00:51:05.000 Your dad's the main star, obviously.

00:51:08.000 And we invite 60 major CEOs, energy, investment, technology, invite the labor leaders, college presidents.

00:51:15.000 And we said, listen, we're going to have a roundtable with the president.

00:51:18.000 His cabinet came, Besant, Lutnick, Bergham, Wright, Lee Zeldon, David Sachs.

00:51:24.000 And we said, listen, if you want to be at the table, use this as a catalyst for the investment you're going to make.

00:51:30.000 And they committed, I think largely because of the energy dominance agenda, $92 billion of investment.

00:51:38.000 $92 billion.

00:51:39.000 I mean, for Pennsylvania, biggest announcement ever.

00:51:42.000 And so it was great in that way.

00:51:44.000 Two other brief points.

00:51:45.000 Second, you know, we had 100, because your dad's there, we had 150 media outlets.

00:51:52.000 So we got all these people, Bergham, Wright, Lutnick, all these CEOs telling the story of why Pennsylvania is at the crossroads of the energy revolution, the AI revolution.

00:52:01.000 Then finally, I said to the president, Hey, listen, Mr. President, look what's happening here: $92 billion, at least tens of thousands, probably 75,000 construction jobs, tens of thousands of permanent jobs.

00:52:15.000 This is what we promised.

00:52:17.000 These working families have real opportunity.

00:52:19.000 So it was a home run.

00:52:20.000 And, you know, just probably the best day I've had since I was in the Senate.

00:52:23.000 That and Mark Fogel coming home.

00:52:24.000 Those are my two best days.

00:52:26.000 Yeah, that was another big one.

00:52:27.000 But so, you know, Senator, talk about what's at stake here, right?

00:52:31.000 We've heard at times, you know, AI is a threat to jobs, but it honestly seems to me like maybe there's actually a lot more opportunity, right?

00:52:39.000 AI is not really a threat to the guy that's a welder and the construction guy.

00:52:42.000 It's probably more a threat to the, you know, the bureaucrats that are probably not voting our way.

00:52:48.000 But, you know, there has to also be a lot of sort of new sector jobs that are going to evolve from this technology.

00:52:55.000 You know, what does that mean for the working people of Pennsylvania?

00:52:58.000 Yeah.

00:52:59.000 You know, well, first of all, the stakes couldn't be higher in the threat the battle we're having with China.

00:53:05.000 I mean, if China wins the AI race, I mean, it affects global infrastructure, it affects data, it truly could risk our very way of life. 0.91

00:53:14.000 So the stakes couldn't be higher.

00:53:16.000 And as you said, so from a national security perspective, it couldn't be more important.

00:53:21.000 But from an economic perspective, this is happening.

00:53:23.000 So we can either resist it or embrace it.

00:53:26.000 And I think in Pennsylvania, we are embracing it because just as you said, this is much more opportunity for blue-collar workers than risk.

00:53:35.000 These data centers will create huge opportunity for these skilled labor.

00:53:40.000 I think you're right.

00:53:40.000 I think journalists, I think software developers, I think people that traditional white-collar jobs, highly educated, I think that is where you're going to see more turmoil and more change.

00:53:52.000 But I think this is the next industrial revolution as part of President Trump's reindustrialization of America strategy.

00:53:59.000 This is the key part of it.

00:54:01.000 It's next generation technology, these huge data centers and energy innovation.

00:54:06.000 You probably know this, but the prediction is that energy demand will triple in the next 15 years.

00:54:13.000 The only way to do that is drill, baby, drill, frac, nuclear.

00:54:18.000 One of the big announcements directly tied to the president's energy dominance strategy was Westinghouse announced they're going to build 10 new reactors beginning by 2030.

00:54:30.000 Meaning they go online by 2030 or are they starting online?

00:54:33.000 They're in production by 2030.

00:54:34.000 I mean, it takes a long time.

00:54:36.000 And what the CEO said at the summit with your dad at the table was, Mr. President, I wouldn't have done this except for the executive order that you put forward on nuclear power.

00:54:48.000 This is a total transformation.

00:54:51.000 So, Senator, when you drive through Western Pennsylvania and central Pennsylvania, do you see signs of an American revival?

00:54:59.000 For far too long, we've let sort of the globalists, the globalization destroy critical manufacturing.

00:55:06.000 I think of many companies like Pennsylvania House Furniture, which had all their jobs shipped overseas.

00:55:12.000 It feels like now we actually have an opportunity to really write a new chapter that's about growth, about righting these wrongs.

00:55:18.000 Every day I open up, here's another billion dollars into America from a company that's an American company theoretically, but was doing everything overseas.

00:55:25.000 But now they're, you know, whether it's tariff policy or otherwise, they're like, nope, now we're going to put that money here because it makes sense.

00:55:31.000 Yeah, I feel it.

00:55:32.000 I feel the energy.

00:55:33.000 I feel the investment.

00:55:35.000 I think there's a couple of things.

00:55:36.000 I think, number one, think of the economy as like a big aircraft carrier.

00:55:42.000 You've got a couple of big dials.

00:55:44.000 The first big dial was deregulation.

00:55:46.000 Every business that I met on the campaign trail, 500 stops in 24 alone, they basically said, listen, regulation is killing us.

00:55:53.000 So the deregulation agenda under the Trump administration is going to be the biggest deregulation push we've had since 1981 when Ronald Reagan came into office.

00:56:02.000 Number two, energy dominance.

00:56:04.000 I mean, we are embracing it, not only eliminating the subsidies on wind and solar, but doubling down on fossil fuels, whether it's coal or natural gas or oil and nuclear.

00:56:15.000 All of these things are pro-growth, pro-economy.

00:56:18.000 It reduces prices for consumers.

00:56:20.000 It also creates lots of jobs and economic activity.

00:56:24.000 Third thing is the Big Beautiful Bill.

00:56:26.000 You know, we have now made permanent the tax cuts, and they're not just individual tax cuts.

00:56:30.000 Every American, particularly working families, have a much better situation.

00:56:35.000 They've saved somewhere between $7,500 and $15,000 on taxes.

00:56:40.000 No tax on tips, no tax on overtime.

00:56:42.000 But more than that, you have accelerated depreciation for small businesses.

00:56:45.000 This helps create jobs.

00:56:47.000 So you have those three big things.

00:56:49.000 And then the fourth thing that's happening, I think, on tariffs, if you believe we have unfair treatment, which I believe, and you believe that the tariff strategy of the president reciprocity is going to ultimately end up in fair trade for America, we're now seeing that start to come to fruition, whether it's the deal with Vietnam or the deal that will ultimately come to be with Europe or Canada.

00:57:12.000 We're seeing, I think the markets are looking through that and seeing when the dust settles, it's going to be a fair trading.

00:57:17.000 That's all great for businesses.

00:57:19.000 And so I think you're starting to see the capital investment, the green sprouts that result from businesses believing that things are moving in the right direction.

00:57:30.000 I agree with you.

00:57:31.000 I mean, it's sort of amazing to see.

00:57:33.000 I wish we had been doing it for years.

00:57:35.000 It doesn't seem like it was all that hard to actually accomplish.

00:57:37.000 You just need a little bit of that resolve.

00:57:38.000 I mean, you know, when you talk about some of those things in the big, beautiful bill, I think one of the things I like to point out on this show, you know, it felt like for a long time, sort of the conventional sort of Republican dogma was, hey, corporate tax cuts, corporate tax cuts.

00:57:51.000 But I mean, one big beautiful bill, and I know my father spent sort of a lot of political capital making sure that a huge part of those tax cuts actually translates not to the corporate guys, but to the real workers of America.

00:58:06.000 Can you talk about that a little bit?

00:58:08.000 Because again, that was not traditional GOP dogma.

00:58:11.000 It wasn't about the little guy.

00:58:12.000 It was about doing for the corporations and the guys who have the lobbyists and they get their tax cuts and everyone else may get a benefit from that.

00:58:18.000 Probably not.

00:58:19.000 Maybe the shareholders do, but no one really else.

00:58:22.000 I thought that was such a big part of what we were fighting for.

00:58:24.000 And it was great to see guys like yourself actually, again, break away from sort of traditional Conservative dogma, which is all about corporations and actually make it all about the people.

00:58:34.000 Yeah, no, listen, President Trump felt that on the campaign trail.

00:58:39.000 He zeroed in on that.

00:58:40.000 And frankly, it was an education for me.

00:58:44.000 You go town to town, family to family, you hear this over and over again, and you realize how the economy had not been working for working families, particularly under Joe Biden, because prices went up by 20 plus percent and wages, real wages didn't keep up.

00:59:00.000 So you've got this squeeze that working class Pennsylvanians are feeling.

00:59:06.000 The median income in Pennsylvania is $52,000 a year, Don.

00:59:09.000 So this really matters.

00:59:11.000 And what the Big Beautiful Bill did, first of all, the 2017 tax cuts, I mean, regardless of all this nonsense that Democrats say, was highly, highly progressive.

00:59:20.000 By that, I mean most of the tax benefit, the reduction of taxes went to the lower part of the income.

00:59:28.000 And the people at the higher end of the income bracket got less of a tax cut.

00:59:33.000 So just as a general rule, the 2017 tax cuts helped working families.

00:59:38.000 But then on top of that, what the Big Beautiful bill did, it eliminated tax on tips. 0.88

00:59:43.000 It eliminated tax on overtimes.

00:59:45.000 It eliminated tax on Social Security for 88% of the recipients of Social Security.

00:59:52.000 But beyond that, what people are struggling with now is having kids.

00:59:57.000 So it has a child tax credit in it.

00:59:59.000 It doubles the child tax credit.

01:00:01.000 So if you're a family that makes $50,000 a year and you can't afford to have a kid, this gives you another $2,500 in your pocket.

01:00:08.000 It has a child care tax credit for families that have two working parents.

01:00:12.000 So this was designed to help people that are struggling to get by, that live paycheck to paycheck, have the opportunity that America has to offer.

01:00:21.000 Now, the last piece of the puzzle, which President Trump is hammering on right now, and I think appropriately, is interest rates, because a big part of the American dream is to be able to have a home and to be able to afford rent.

01:00:34.000 And rent's going crazy.

01:00:36.000 Rent's gone up by more than 11% last year in Pennsylvania alone.

01:00:41.000 House prices are more expensive because of interest rates.

01:00:44.000 So if we can get interest rates down, which I hope the Fed will do because it's clear that inflation is under control, that's going to round out the puzzle for working families.

01:00:55.000 And I think you're going to see a continued just explosion of opportunity for people across our country.

01:01:01.000 Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

01:01:03.000 I mean, for those who watching who may not know your background, I mean, you know, you ran some serious businesses on Wall Street.

01:01:09.000 I mean, this is what you did for a long period of time.

01:01:11.000 So, you know, you're not just one of these politicians talking about things.

01:01:14.000 You actually did this stuff in the real world at a, you know, pretty much the ultimate level.

01:01:19.000 It was interesting when I watched, you know, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, you know, he cut interest rates, what was it, 50 basis points right before the election when inflation was not under control, when it was rampant and egg prices were through the roof and everything was.

01:01:34.000 I mean, that to me, as a business guy myself, was about as politicized as you get.

01:01:42.000 And it was like, well, we got to control inflation.

01:01:43.000 That's number one.

01:01:44.000 That's the excuse they're using now.

01:01:45.000 It didn't stop them back in November or end of October, whenever that was, that they did that cut for no real fundamental reason.

01:01:53.000 Now we have the evidence, and not from Donald Trump, but from government agencies who are still probably fairly left-leaning.

01:02:01.000 Hey, inflation is actually under control.

01:02:03.000 It is not going up this way.

01:02:05.000 Food prices have come down.

01:02:06.000 Oil and gas prices have come down.

01:02:08.000 I mean, all of these things are demonstrably there.

01:02:10.000 And yet, there hasn't been that movement to do any kind of cutting, which to your point, I think, really benefits really everyone.

01:02:17.000 But certainly those people who are trying to start families and buying first homes.

01:02:21.000 And I look at what's going on in mortgage rates just for the stuff I'd be buying.

01:02:25.000 And then it's like, wow, that's wow.

01:02:27.000 It costs me twice as much as it did a couple of years ago or under my father's first term.

01:02:32.000 And yet for no real reason.

01:02:34.000 Yeah.

01:02:34.000 Well, listen, I think there's no doubt that the Fed risked becoming very politicized.

01:02:42.000 And I think it's not new for a president to be pushing the Fed to move rates.

01:02:48.000 But I think what's clear here is that the belief the Fed missed the inflation bubble.

01:02:54.000 They didn't raise interest rates quickly enough to keep it in check under Joe Biden.

01:02:58.000 And then they've been very slow to acknowledge that inflation is under control.

01:03:01.000 So I'm hoping we'll see a rate cut in July.

01:03:04.000 I agree with your dad.

01:03:05.000 Your dad just spoken out publicly in the last week or two.

01:03:08.000 I don't think it makes sense for him to remove Jerome Powell.

01:03:11.000 I mean, he hasn't said conclusively he's not going to do that.

01:03:13.000 I think the independence of the Fed is an important thing.

01:03:17.000 However, the president's going to have a chance to put his imprints on this pretty quickly because he's going to have a chance to pick a new Fed chair and two new Fed governors.

01:03:25.000 And listen, I think it's very appropriate to criticize the Fed for missing both ways.

01:03:31.000 It was too slow in raising rates to counter inflation under Joe Biden.

01:03:35.000 It's been too slow to acknowledge that inflation is under control under President Trump.

01:03:40.000 The first benefited the Biden administration.

01:03:42.000 The second is a negative for the Trump administration.

01:03:45.000 I'm hoping that gets corrected here in the next couple of weeks when the Fed has a chance to reduce rates.

01:03:50.000 So, Senator, we've also been talking a bit about the Genius Act on the show.

01:03:54.000 From your perspective in the Senate, what will it help to do to drive innovation?

01:04:01.000 Well, I think it's a really important step forward.

01:04:03.000 Just stepping back, I know you've been active in this area as well.

01:04:07.000 Crypto and blockchain are the next big wave of innovation.

01:04:10.000 This is incredibly important that America remain on the forefront of that to be at the center of financial markets.

01:04:18.000 If we don't, others will.

01:04:19.000 And you go to the Middle East or Europe and you see lots of innovation happening.

01:04:23.000 And blockchain essentially disintermediates the government.

01:04:26.000 It takes the financial institutions and the regulators out of it.

01:04:30.000 It's inherently conservative because it's for independence and freedom.

01:04:34.000 And so crypto is a great driver of that.

01:04:37.000 And Stablecoin, which is regulated and established through the Genius Act, is essentially a risk-free payment source because it's backed by the U.S. dollar.

01:04:53.000 But what it allows people to do is be able to transact in a way that is much more cost-effective and much more streamlined.

01:05:02.000 And crypto in general, despite what some of the critics have said, Elizabeth Warren and others, actually is a much clearer way to inform and guard against money laundering and other things because blockchain has a clear collection of all the transactions and actions.

01:05:19.000 It doesn't identify the end users, but it creates that track record.

01:05:23.000 If you're a prosecutor or the FBI, it allows you to follow the breadcrumb trail of where bad things may be happening.

01:05:31.000 The most important thing about it, in my mind, is that stablecoin is backed by the U.S. dollar.

01:05:35.000 I think most Americans don't understand the importance of America being the reserve currency.

01:05:42.000 Having reserve currency status gives us privilege around the world.

01:05:46.000 Everybody wants to hold dollars.

01:05:48.000 That's a great opportunity for us.

01:05:50.000 It keeps our prices low.

01:05:51.000 It keeps inflation in check.

01:05:52.000 It's a great source of economic strength.

01:05:55.000 Because digital payments are growing so rapidly and stablecoin will become the digital currency of use for many around the world.

01:06:06.000 That means that there's going to be even a greater demand for dollars.

01:06:09.000 And with that greater demand in dollars, that strengthens America's dollar and its position as a reserve currency of the world.

01:06:15.000 Yeah, and I think that's so fundamentally important.

01:06:17.000 You've seen sort of the attacks, whether it be from China or other actors around the world trying to basically knock sort of dollar hegemony, where dollar is the dominant currency out there.

01:06:28.000 They've been shying away from it.

01:06:29.000 They haven't been buying it the same way.

01:06:31.000 People are like, don't you think that crypto is a threat or stablecoins?

01:06:35.000 It's a threat to dollar hegemony.

01:06:37.000 And I think it's exactly the opposite.

01:06:40.000 I mean, when you look at these things being backed by U.S. treasuries, they're going to replace a lot of the big actors that were traditionally the buyers of these treasuries, which then enabled us to borrow and do some of the things that not always good.

01:06:54.000 Sometimes we borrow a little too much and funded billions of dollars for trans surgeries in Guatemala, whatever the hell we were doing.

01:07:01.000 So maybe not all of it was good, but I think it still allowed America to be a dominant player in the world.

01:07:06.000 I think these staples are going to be actually the ones bolstering that as other countries try to get away from that.

01:07:12.000 I think that's hugely important from a sort of macroeconomic perspective.

01:07:19.000 Couldn't agree more.

01:07:19.000 I think it's both a huge driver of innovation.

01:07:22.000 Pennsylvania alone, we have thousands of jobs that are tied to crypto.

01:07:25.000 It's a burgeoning industry.

01:07:27.000 And as you said, stable coins and then stable payments will be a growing source of dollar-denominated transactions, which is great for liquidity, great for opportunity, and great for the reserve, the hegemony of the U.S. dollar.

01:07:44.000 So last time we were on, we talked a little bit about your book, Who Believed in You.

01:07:50.000 It was also right after you were with my father at the NCAA Wrestling Championships that you mentioned in the beginning.

01:07:56.000 What was it about the wrestling culture in your state that helped shape the character of the people you represent?

01:08:03.000 Yeah, when your dad was coming to the Nationals, I wrote an article that day that actually got published in the Wall Street Journal.

01:08:12.000 And the title of it was, When I Watch Wrestling, I see America.

01:08:15.000 And I really do.

01:08:16.000 I see the best of America and the best of Pennsylvania because wrestling, you know, there's a new league being started, amateur wrestling, but wrestling is a combat sport.

01:08:29.000 It's basically you and the opponent under the spotlight, nowhere to hide.

01:08:35.000 When they say, you know, fatigue makes cowards of us all, there's nothing more exhausting than seven minutes on the mat with an opponent of strength and endurance and caliber.

01:08:45.000 And it's up to you.

01:08:47.000 And it's a test of will.

01:08:49.000 It's a test of skill.

01:08:50.000 It's a test of strength.

01:08:52.000 And it's more than anything else, a mental game.

01:08:55.000 And through that, you learn perseverance, dedication, hard work, grit, determination, toughness.

01:09:02.000 And, you know, the people of Pennsylvania have been at the forefront of America for 250 years, whether it's been the founding of the country or the Civil War, the arsenal of democracy during World War II.

01:09:13.000 Pennsylvania has proven itself always to be at the forefront of America's toughest fights and at the forefront of America's innovation.

01:09:21.000 And so I see that connection to this moment we're in where the future is unknown, but our leadership will depend on us being able to find that grid and hard work and determination that we see on the wrestling mat, we see in the steel mills, we see in these data centers.

01:09:39.000 Well, as someone who dabbled myself in my youth, I couldn't agree more.

01:09:43.000 I mean, incredible sport.

01:09:44.000 I mean, yeah, you know, no excuses, no team, just you.

01:09:49.000 And you figure out what you're made of.

01:09:50.000 I think it's really important and something we could all probably use a little bit of throughout our lives, especially our youth.

01:09:56.000 Yeah, no doubt about it.

01:09:58.000 I said during the campaign that, you know, in college, I always knew that if I could get into the third period within a point or two, that I'd persevere because the last two minutes is not about skill.

01:10:12.000 It's about heart.

01:10:13.000 It's about staying on offense.

01:10:15.000 It's about just summoning the will to win.

01:10:18.000 And, you know, this was sort of campaign commercials.

01:10:21.000 And I said this in front of your dad a number of times at rallies.

01:10:24.000 And my brother was a wrestler too.

01:10:26.000 He was a captain of the West Point team and I was the co-captain of the West Point team.

01:10:29.000 And I called him the next day after I won and I said, oh my God, that worked.

01:10:33.000 Exactly.

01:10:34.000 I found it somewhere.

01:10:35.000 I found it.

01:10:36.000 I still got it.

01:10:36.000 I still got it, baby.

01:10:39.000 Senator Dave McCormick of the great state of Pennsylvania, thank you very much.

01:10:42.000 Really appreciate it.

01:10:43.000 We'll continue covering this.

01:10:44.000 And just great work for America and the people of your state.

01:10:48.000 It's really awesome to see it happening.

01:10:50.000 Thanks for having me.

01:10:50.000 Thank you, Don.

01:10:53.000 Thanks a lot.

01:10:53.000 Well done, man.

01:10:54.000 Hey, thank you for having me.

01:10:56.000 This summit was unfucking believable.

01:10:59.000 And your dad was great.

01:11:01.000 And in a classic Trump move, he leans over to me at one point.

01:11:04.000 He goes, you got all the big guys.

01:11:05.000 You got all the big guys.

01:11:06.000 He goes, this is so big that Larry Fink doesn't get introduced and he doesn't get to talk.

01:11:13.000 Exactly.

01:11:14.000 I gave it.

01:11:15.000 It went from an A to an A plus.

01:11:17.000 A plus.

01:11:18.000 Well, hey, give my best to Dina. 0.54

01:11:18.000 Awesome, man. 0.54

01:11:20.000 I'll talk to you soon.

01:11:21.000 Talk to you soon, buddy.

01:11:22.000 See you all.

01:11:24.000 Guys, thanks so much for tuning in.

01:11:26.000 Remember to like, to share, to subscribe so you never miss one of these major episodes.

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Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - July 24, 2025

From Crypto to AI, There's a New American Energy Revival, Interviews with Asher Genoot & Sen McCormick | TRIGGERED Ep.261

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