Charles Payne on Building Wealth From Poverty, Stocks vs. Bitcoin, & Being an 'Unbreakable' Investor

Welcome back to the show. Joining me this week is Fox Business anchor, host of the *Making Money* show, and the Best Dressed Man on daytime television, Charles Payne. Thanks so much for joining me.

It's nice to flip the script here.

Thank you. It's… I know, right? I’m a little nervous. Take it easy on me. Okay, I know you want to get a few zings in there, but I get to ask you the questions now.

Um, no, I… I had the chance to read your new book, *Unbreakable Investor*. Super interesting. I loved how you talked about your family backstory and how they achieved the American dream. So actually, I really want to start right there, Charles, with a little bit of your origin story because it was really inspiring. You talked about your grandparents and the foundation that they built, the farm that they owned, and sort of how you ended up in the financial world. So can you share a little bit of that? Because I want to spend the first 10 minutes of the show just talking about your background; it’s really fascinating.

Thanks so much, Natalie. Um, you know, uh, it’s… it’s interesting because, um, I grew up the first half of my childhood as an army brat. Right? We moved every year. We lived everywhere. I mean, I was born in New York, then we went to Pittsburgh, then Texas, then Germany, then back to Pittsburgh, then to Japan, back to Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia. And, uh, in Virginia, one day, you know, it’s just a beautiful Fort Lee, Virginia, beautiful army base, you know, two-story house, great staircase, like *The Brady Bunch* staircase. You know, we had all the extra rooms, we had a den, uh, you know, it was just really… just almost an amazing life, too… almost too good to be true. Um, and but it was also sort of this… it was a bubble, you know what I mean? Uh, particularly in the late 60s, early 70s, with all the turmoil that was going on in America at that particular time, we were kind of shielded from all of it, if you will. Uh, you know, just… just an idyllic lifestyle for a little kid, you know, go outside, play all day, uh, ride your bikes, you know, you go wherever, you know what I mean? We just go exploring every day, come home and, uh, make a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and go back out. You know, I did have chores. My father used to make me cut the grass, which is a lot of grass, with the hand mower, right? Not with the engine, because he was an army guy, but it was a beautiful life. And then one day I came home from school and my mom said, “Well, we’re leaving.” And so, you know, my parents are having trouble, and my mother… it was me, my mom, and my two younger brothers. So we got on a bus, uh, from there and we went to Harlem. Now, this is the early 70s when it was still probably the… the most dangerous, poorest, uh, neighborhood in America. And we… we left with nothing. I mean, it was just… you know, just… we just got up and left. And she had a friend who was living there, like a childhood friend, who was living in Harlem at the time. And the culture shock was just mindboggling. I got to tell you, it was so… so mindboggling to go from that manicured, uh, organized life, uh, to one that was just completely hectic. Just… I remember taking a train for the first time, and you got to remember like in the… in the early 70s, they were still using trains from the 1950s, right? So they had those real big iron, like rambling down the… the track, you know, and oh my goodness! And I… and you know… so we took this first subway train; it was… it was amazing, right? Yeah. Coming out the subway station, all of these buildings, all of this… all of these people, you know, that part was absolutely amazing. The first thing that struck me was the music; it was everywhere, coming out of windows, coming out of cars, coming out of boom boxes. And I’m like… stuff… I was like, okay, stuff I never really heard before, right? Like, “Oh snap! What? Who is that?” Because, you know, I was like digging Elton John, right? *Philadelphia Freedom*, right? That’s my man. But when I heard Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, I’m like, “Who is that?” You know, it was so amazing. We walked down the street, that was 145th Street and St. Nick, walked down the street, then we turned down to the street we were going to stay, and I saw girls double dutching jump rope for the first time. I’d never seen that, you know. And again, the energy was just… I’d never seen anything like that. Uh, took an elevator up to the… to the apartment, that I thought was cool as hell. There was a strange smell in it; I later learned was pee, but initially, you know, I was just like, “This thing is really… like to live in an elevator,” you know? I don’t know if I’d ever even been on an elevator to that point in my life. Uh, but all four of us lived in a room inside of this apartment. And, you know, of course, we had to deal with the flip side of all of this, the other positive stuff, right? And that was the real tough stuff: the poverty and the violence. Those are the two things that was just one hell of a one-two punch. I mean, it was really, really, really tough. Um, I never ever seen anything like it on both sides… both sides of the equation… except when I would go visit my grandparents… not… not the violence part, but the poverty part. And this is where, you know, as I became a man and the older I got, the more actually ashamed I was of myself for not appreciating what my grandparents were pulling off there. Uh, you know, because when I went down there, it’s… was like… no electricity, you know, no running water. Like, “Golly,” you know, my… looked at my grandfather like, you know… he ate with his hands. My grandmother with the stove… it was just like… I just… I… I didn’t want to go down… like, you know, my mom’s like, “We’re gonna go down South,” and I was like… I was always sort of like, “Nah, no.” But it’s… of course, as you become an adult and as you become a parent yourself and you start to… see what it’s all about, I started to really admire them a lot and appreciate what they did. And there was always this story in the family about how they got the farm. And I… I tell you, I was… I was trying to run down this… this… this contract. And finally… I mean, my… and the publishers are like, “Listen, you know, let’s go. We’re ready. You say you’re waiting one more… one or two more things.” I got it on July 4th. That’s how I spent my July 4th. I finally got it from a cousin who had it: the contract for the farm, the deed, right? Right. And I finished the book, but I cried that whole day. I mean, what they gave up to get that farm was just… um… it was just amazing. You know, it’s… I have a copy of it inside the book. And this is in 1952, and just the stuff that comes along with it, like the… the… you know, the… the… they became a target also, you know… like most people didn’t own a farm down there, let alone a Black family, you know. So, you know, the Night Riders and the Klan gave them a hard time. Uh, it was really tough. And it’s just… owning a farm’s hard, right? But they… they wanted it, and they… they… they saved up and they worked their ass off for so many years, and they gave up… you know, the… the… the horses… and they… they have the names of the horses, right? Yeah. They gave up their farming equipment. So recently I was asking my aunt, “Well, how did they, you know, manage?” And she said, “My grandfather would find old tools, fix them up, go into the woods or the forest and find, you know, tree branches, make handles, and…” you know… and the reason why it’s so important in this book is when I hear people describe how hard it is these days, particularly Millennials… well, our parents had it easier, our grandparents had it easier. You know, you have to put things in perspective. You’re not being able to pay, uh, you know, your Uber bill is not the same… it’s just not the same. And I… and I urge everyone to invest because everyone should be investing; it’s an amazing opportunity, and everyone can, with certain sacrifices. They made an enormous sacrifice so that they can control their own destiny, they can grow their own food, and they had a roof over their head that no one else controlled. And… and… and that was an important thing for them.

It was really moving reading that part, the fact that your grandma was on the deed, which was rare at the time too, being a woman. And you’re right, it’s just… it’s the idea of sacrifice that people do things so that not even just themselves have a better life in the future, but so their kids and their descendants, their children’s children. Um, and sometimes they give up a lot and they risk their lives, and… and that is the American dream. So… so tell me a little bit about how you ended up in the financial world because you… you told these really interesting stories about in Harlem how people would play the lottery and they would spend so much money to just win like a couple hundred bucks, and you saw all this power and potential in the stock market. And… and so that’s an incredible story, too.

Well, the illegal numbers, which is like almost every city or town now has a lottery, but you know, we called it the numbers, and, uh, it was… it was amazing. It was everywhere, like… I think in my block we had… we had a… we… you go and actually play the numbers, you fill out these slips, and usually it’s a three-digit number. Throughout the day… I… I think the… the idea was that they… they got the number from the racing results down at Aqueduct. Uh, that’s what I was told back in the day. And so throughout the day you had these three numbers, they would come out one, and then a couple hours later another one would come out, and a couple hours later another one would come out, and you would bet before that what number would come out. And of course, if you got all three numbers, I think you won at the time, like for a dollar you won 700 bucks, which was absolutely amazing. And, uh, one time my mom hit for the 700, and I’ll never forget when I came in the house, I came in with a friend, and she gave us both $20. And so my friend went home. I asked my mom, I said, “Why’d you give him $20? I’m your son.” And she’s like, “No, you have to share. You have to share when you get these kind of things.” So, you know, she… she… she taught me everything about sharing and being, you know, like that. So… so the numbers were everywhere on my block. On the corner there was a number hole, around the corner the pizza shop also doubled as a number hole, around that corner another corner there was a big one; it was operating in plain sight. Like, you go in there, they had the booth and everything. By the way, it was illegal, but they operated in plain sight. And, uh, you know, you go… I was really good… oh my goodness! And people would always ask me, “Hey, Charles, what do you like?” Hey, Charles, what do you like?” All these adults, right? I was really good at picking numbers. Um, but like anybody, I knew… I wanted… listen, we were poor… poor for the first time, we were poor, Natalie. Like, I… I never a single day of my life thought about money, not once… not once. And now here we are… all four of us were in a room. And then after about a couple of months we got our own apartment, just in time for winter. We had no heat or hot water that winter. And so my mom is struggling, and I’m the oldest, so I go out, you know, I’m cleaning windows, I get paper towels and Windex, I’m cleaning windows of stop signs and red lights, I’m shoveling snow, I got a job in a bodega, and I’m doing, you know… I get my money, I give it to my mom, and, uh, you know, which I… which is what I did, you know, even when I joined the Air Force, I would give her about almost like 80, 90% of my check; I would send it home to my mom. And, um… I said, “I got to find a better way,” you know. And then, of course, like everyone, you equate wealth with the stock market. I mean, everyone does that. Um, and so I started reading a *Wall Street Journal*. And back then it was so hard because it was nothing but lines and numbers… lines and numbers. I mean, it’s just like page after page and lines and numbers. And it took me a while, but I started to kind of pick it up. And then when I was 14, I told my mom, I said, “I’m going to work on Wall Street.” And then when I was 17, I bought my first mutual fund, and she had to co-sign because I wasn’t old enough. I joined the Air Force, and when I was 18 years old, I opened my first stock account.

Dane… Water… and I bought my first stock. What was that first stock? It was MCI. Now MCI was… let me tell you why I fell in love with it: the guy who ran the company was a maverick; he was taking on the world’s largest corporation at the time, AT&T. How was he going to take him on? He was piggybacking off of rooftop antennas. Like, we don’t have them anymore, people… young folks won’t know, but before cable and satellite, we had antennas on houses. This guy was piggybacking off of those to take on the largest corporation in the world. I said, “Hell yeah, I’m going with this dude!”

Well, yeah, you talk in the book about how you should buy what you know and buy what you actually invest in in your daily life, right? So if you’re wearing Nike, maybe you want to purchase Nike stock because we’re all already in the stock market. And so let’s… we can talk about the stock market a little bit, obviously… you know, my preferred investment, so we can get to it. Because don’t worry, guys, he has a little section about Bitcoin, just a couple… a couple pages. Um, but you know, you said investing in the stock market is the best chance you have to change the direction of your life and the trajectory of your family’s financial well-being. The stock market delivered me from a life of poverty to the life I live today. Now I would replace this with… with Bitcoin, but… but a lot of people obviously have made a lot of wealth in the stock market. So can you talk a little bit about why you see this as such an important part of… of being the architect of your… of your future and building wealth? Is investing in companies… and you… you go into like index funds and option trading and derivatives… why was it so important for you to… to talk about investing in the stock market?

It’s important because I want everyone to get a piece of the action, and you know… and it’s not just investing in the stock market; that’s just my forte. I think people have to find a way to make their money work for them, you know. Now some people do it through real estate, some through it through other kind of things. Listen, I’ve got small investments in gold, I’ve got small investments… I have real estate, right? I have, um… collectibles. I’ve got… I’ve got a Biggie Smalls doll. I swear I’m going to sell for $100,000, right? So I got all this kind of stuff, right? And I have Bitcoin. And I have Bitcoin, and I’m almost break even, all right? So… so no, actually, I’m a little ahead now. I’m a couple grand up, but anyway… I just want people… I just… you know… I just… let me tell you something. I remember one time… um… we used to go to the laundromat, right? And we used to take turns; it was my turn, and I was there, you know… you’d be there… like… because it was three boys, right? So you’d go there and you’d be… I’d be there like four or five hours. And, uh, one night we were eating dinner, and I wasn’t eating much, and my mom… she said, “What’s wrong?” And I… and I told her about the guy… a guy who was working in the laundromat, you know, cleaning up, mopping, sweeping, and there was a raggedy doll, all busted up, someone ripped this doll up, and he would picked it up and he looked at it and he was putting it back together. And he looked at me with a smile on his face. He says, “I can’t wait to give this to my daughter.” Oh, and even though we were as poor as he was, I felt so bad in my heart that this man had to find a discarded, ripped-up doll to give to his daughter. I don’t… I don’t like seeing people being poor, you know? I just… I just don’t think you necessarily have to be poor in the wealthiest nation in the world. Doesn’t mean we’re all going to get rich, but I think with the right amount of sacrifice and the right amount of investing, we can change the trajectory for our future generations. And that’s why it’s so important to me.

Well, you know, you talked about how you became a stockbroker in your 20s, and it really did make me think about, um, my education growing up and how you’re not taught this in school. You’re not taught that you have to invest and how to do it properly. And so, I mean, don’t you think it’s sad that when you say you have to put your money to work, isn’t the underlying question, “Well, why isn’t our money good enough?” Is there something wrong with our money that we have to go chasing yield and… and looking at something like the stock market, figuring out all these companies? I mean, one of the pieces of advice you give in the book is learn everything about the company, right? The founders… listen to their conference calls… the average person who’s working as maybe an accountant or a hairstylist or an interior decorator… they don’t have time to research all these companies…

Full job… they have the time… the key word I said is sacrifice. They have the time. You know how many people do fantasy football? That’s… no… millions of Americans do fantasy football. Those hairstylists, those dentists, those people you just described, and they spend the same exact amount of time on fantasy football that they could spend… I’m not saying it’s not a lot of time… it’s every three months a company comes out with the earnings, right? So that’s your… that’s your scorecard to read about a company, to learn about the founders. I go to the website, I push in IBM, I go to “About Us,” I go to “History.” I mean, it really is not hard. It sounds hard, it sounds intimidating, but we can find the time. Now, if we choose to spend that on leisure, fine, you know? If we choose to have this YOLO society and you only live… you know… you only live once, fear of missing out… fine. But I can tell you right now, the… the FOMO that’s driving our economy these days is from people 65 and older who put money in the stock market; they’re the ones taking the trips, they’re the ones keeping this economy up. Everyone else ran out of money already. So, you know, if I can just convince people that life is long and FOMO can be just as great at post-50 as it is at 22, 23, because that’s when you want to start these things, right? The younger you are, the better off you’re going to be… then that would be part of the journey. So I do believe that people have the time; it’s allocating that time. Because listen, one binge-watching… how many people binge-watched *Game of Thrones*? It’s great… it’s great… it’s a great show, but could I used that time to found two or three companies that I would invest in so that maybe I could build my own dynasty in real life, not fantasy?

Well, that’s true. You bring up good points. So… so why do you think it’s not happening more? Why do you think the wealth is so concentrated with, say, the Boomers rather than with Gen Z and Millennials who are the most tech-savvy and who have Robinhood on their phones and who maybe should be taking an interest because they’re the ones that need to create wealth the most?

Yeah, it’s a great question. Uh, there’s several factors, right? First and foremost, the financial industry, particularly, you know, the stock market, but financial industry in general, have… have spent the last 100 years telling the American public, “It’s too tough, it’s too hard for you. Yeah, let us do it for you,” right? Right. “Give us your money for a small fee; we will do it for you.” And it’s so nuts to me, like, you know, people who know the hip stuff, like… two years before Wall Street even… it comes on their radar, have to give their money to someone to buy this, you know, whatever the stock… it’s just so nuts. But it’s… it’s worked; it’s been effective, right? People… they call individual investors the “dumb money.” So you keep ramming that down our throats and down our head… to your point, they don’t teach you about it. So here you have something you’ve never been taught about, and then on the other hand, the overarching memes that you’re too dumb to grasp it, but you should be a part of it. “Joe, tell you what, give me all your money, and I’ll try to get you four or five percent, maybe in a good year six or seven percent.” Now, watch an earning season… any Wall Street firm that says they only make 7% that quarter trading the stocks… gone down. So they want… so much more for themselves, they offer you so little. And like… like, you know, they just hurt us in there because if we’re intimidated, we’re intimidated at it, and we’ve been told we can’t do it, and no one ever taught us how to do it. Those things work against us. And then someone says, “Okay, I want to take a shot.” That’s the first mistake; they’re taking a shot. They’re gonna buy one stock and see how it works, and there’s usually some stock they did no research on; it’s usually a tip, right? They don’t know what the company does, they know nothing about it… stuff that they can learn in 20 minutes… they know nothing about it. They do it… stock may go up, great, you know? Then they become unreal… I’ve seen people in stocks up 100%… uh… I don’t know… I’m gonna let it ride up, you know? They don’t take profits on the way up; they always take the loss on the way down. And a lot of times they go, “Not for me. I’ll never do it again.” And that’s the problem.

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Natalie.

Yeah, it’s really interesting, the psychology of… of investing in the stock market. And one of the things that, um, you talk about in your book is also the fact that very few companies make up most of the gains. And when you mentioned earlier that six to 7% appreciation over the course of the year, annualized, that’s actually just keeping up with inflation, isn’t it? So how… I’m gonna put on my stock market hat for a second, okay? And I’m going to ask you… I mean, how… how do you invest in a time where… look at the index funds; it’s like seven companies that make up all the gains. Why not just… I guess invest in those, although for some people they… they look like they’re too expensive or like they missed the… the curve. Um… so how… how do you advise people to invest when stocks feel so risky and lopsided to favor just a few?

Well, that… you’re talking about the stock market, um… average indices like the S&P 500, which is… which is the companies that are the biggest companies by market cap, you know, the valuation… have the most influence. Ironically, in a Dow Jones, it’s this share price, which is even dumber. Um… so the problem with that is… listen, if I… I don’t discourage people from what they call passive investing. If you just want to put money in the S&P as opposed to not doing anything… great. But there are opportunities within the market, like even in the last month, the… the small-cap stocks are up like 10%, and the so-called Magnificent Seven, they’re at 1%. So, you know, the thing is also… this is a long-term endeavor. So these things that happen, you know… there’s always… there’s always going to be a handful of stocks that are… be dominant in the S&P 500 because they have these large market caps and they… and they’re more influential. You can have 10 stocks up, the rest of the stocks going to be down, and you can look at the end of the day on the news and says, “Oh, the market was unchanged today.” Yeah, well, 90% of these stocks are down, but the inverse can happen, too. There have been… there have been times the… the market’s been down, like 2022, you could have made a ton of money in the oil stocks, a ton of money. So I just think it’s better to find individual opportunities for the big… big returns. Uh, make your portfolio your own, you know? Just create your own fund via your own portfolio as opposed to… because when you have these funds… a lot of these funds what they’ll do is they have the three best semiconductor stocks, they’ll also have the three worst semiconductor stocks. And so they had this sort of thing ideal for balance to mitigate losses, but when you’re investing that way, you also mitigate gains. And I’m going for grand slams; not… not every idea has to be a grand slam, but overall… my overall performance… and by the way, one trick that, um, people should be aware of is that, you know, for the year… you know, this whole… because we’re near the end of the year, you’re going to hear, “How did it do last year?” This is not a game of Monopoly; this is not a basketball season. We don’t go back to go at the… in January 1, right? So let me tell you how… why it’s a trick and how Wall Street has created this… this trick. Let’s say you’re a firm, you recommend XYZ, uh, in… in… in 2022, let’s say February 2022, it’s $100, and it goes to 20 bucks at the beginning of 2023, then it goes to 40… what’s their literature going to say? Going to 2024, “XYZ was up 100% last year for us!” Yeah, but you’re still getting your ass crushed, right? So that’s the… that’s the… people have to understand it’s linear; it doesn’t stop on January 1; it’s linear. So it’s… what’s working in one particular year really is inconsequential. I mean, I… I played the game to a degree, but I let people know, “Do not let that… be your form of investing.” Now, there’s some tax-loss things that play a role in this and other things, but for the most part, be aware of these sort of gimmicky kind of things.

Well, you talk also about the idea of “bend, don’t break,” and you really have to be flexible. You actually don’t recommend necessarily holding something for the long term. I guess you have to figure out how to… when to sell it. And it’s funny because we’re actually talking on the 10-year anniversary of the meme “hodl,” because Bitcoin… you just buy and you’re supposed to hold; you don’t sell that thing. So why is it important for people to bend, not break, and maybe know when to sell? I’m assuming it’s because you’re telling people to really do research on the companies and… and take profits occasionally?

Occasionally. Uh, since 1926 to the end of last year, 26,000 publicly traded companies, the net gain for the stock market came from 900 names. Uh… so… it’s crazy. Yeah… companies… companies reach a point where they usually peak, right? I mean, you know, some of the great monopolies in American history… Sears, for instance… Sears was… Sears was bigger at one point than… than Amazon and Walmart put together. Yep. I mean, everyone did everything from these… Sears… you could buy a house from a Sears catalog. It was the number one company in the world, and then it wasn’t… you know… not long ago… I can remember it… just… companies get to a point where you have the creative destruction, and other companies start to chip away at them. And yep. And so again, I’m looking at the rate… the rate of growth slows down, the profit margins start to shrink; they’re… they’re pretty good indicators out there, um… that… that a company is slowing down. And you have to… to make the assessment, “Okay, do I still want to be in the stock or do I want to reallocate those… those funds to an up-and-comer?” You know? So it’s… it’s again… it’s… it’s not a job, but you have to do some work.

Well, going back to the index fund and the idea that a lot of them are going up like six… 6% annually, isn’t that just tracking the rate that the money supply is growing? So you have to try to figure out how to get like 10% or higher yields because I know that we talk about CPI, but that’s not the real number. Charles, you’re one of the few anchors, I think, who knows and shares this with your audience that we’re sort of being bamboozled and being told that inflation’s one thing when the reality is something completely different. I mean, and even talking about CPI… look at the grocery bill from a household in 1990 versus today; that’s supposed to track some of the consumer, uh… basket of goods items, and yet it’s up 250%. I mean, wages are not up 250%, right? If it was normalized for a normal rate of inflation, it would have been up only 48% in that time period, right? So… other things they do… other tricky things they’ll do is they’ll substitute, for instance, like a… like… let’s say meat, you know? Those substitutes were… before it would have been like a… a pork shoulder, and now is like, you know… like a lesser cut of meat. I mean, they do some really… right? They… they do some really tricky things with these… with the government data. Uh, and people know it’s not real, but your earlier point and this also relates back to a question I asked… earlier… why you have to invest, and that is again because the dollar keeps losing its value, right? I mean, it’s purchasing power… inflation is always there; it’s always eroding our purchasing power. And the only way to keep… stay ahead of it is to… is to outpace it. Uh, and it’s… it’s a tough one to outpace, particularly now because, you know, we got 32 trillion, soon to be 33 trillion in government debt. Uh, we can already… already see like one of the ironic things for next year that I’ve never seen before: one of the biggest things that’s going to move markets next year… bond auctions. Yeah, this is crazy because if the Fed’s not buying bonds and China went from 1.4… to 800… 1.4 trillion to 8800 million, and Japan’s stopped… stopped buying them, there’s no major deep-pocketed buyers. So now they have to lure these institutions in, and these institutions are going to demand higher yields, and it… and it’s… it’s just nuts because it… it… it becomes a loop… a deadly loop. And so yeah, you must do something with your money, otherwise it just erodes. You know what? If you’re not going to do anything, then hell yeah, YOLO your life away because you might as well spend it now because next week it’ll be worth less. But if you want to have a great life throughout the whole thing, particularly… let me tell you, you don’t want to get old in America without any cash. I’m letting you know right now, okay

So anyway, I go on CNBC. I do pretty good, and I'm going on more and more and more. There's a guy working over there named Neil Kabuto. So Neil Kabuto leaves CNBC for this new upstart called Fox. Now, at the time, I thought he was out of his mind. I'm like, this dude is nuts. How the hell did he leave CNBC? I mean, godly, this dude is nuts. Um, you know, every time you go in a bar, CNBC, you know, like forget about ESPN, CNBC; everyone was investing. It was hot. Okay, yeah.

So one day, I get a phone call. Yeah, Neil wants you to come on the show. I'm like, oh, that Fox thing. Oh, okay. Like, Natalie, I think you've been in the building, right? So the escalator down, that was where the state studio was at the time. Okay, and I'm in the studio; the lighting is bad. The table, I think, had three legs; I'm holding one of them up with my knee. I'm like, damn, what kind of rinky-dink is this? And I'm looking at Neil like, I love you, my man, but you—I'm thinking he made a big mistake. Obviously, he didn't; it was an amazing, brilliant move on his part.

So I started coming to Fox. I was still doing CNBC. There was another stand-alone channel called CNN FN. Occasionally, I would do Bloomberg. Eventually, someone pulled me to the side over at Fox and says, "Hey, we'd like you to be a contributor, and we'll pay you a certain amount of money per appearance." It wasn't all the money in the world, but it was like 350 bucks, something like that, 400 bucks. I was like, okay, sure. And then, not long after that, I was doing one of my hits, and one of the producers, she said, "Hey, you know, I want you to hear something." So she played a recording of me. It was me; I was calling in. You can hear I was sick as a dog, and I was saying, "I'm sick as a dog, but I'm still going to make it." She was like, "You know, in addition to what you know, that's another reason we wanted to make you a contributor because you're so reliable, and we know you're going to show up." So that's how I ended up here. And I love that. Yeah, and I, you know, Natalie, I just cringe. I just don't like to diss people, but I just cringe when I hear stuff being said on financial media. Oh God, please just peel back the onion a little bit, please. Don't go with the headline, please. I mean, a jobs report is usually 25 pages long. Please don't go with the headline, and please don't start regurgitating this crap. "It was a great jobs report." Oh, well, why? A percentage of it was the lowest paying jobs out there. Why are we saying it was great? I mean, the work week shrank; it didn't expand. I mean, oh God, why? And I hear these people; I hear people asking, "Why is that happening, Charles?" They're not doing the work; they don't do the work; they don't do the work. You know, it's just—and a lot of them, I don't know that they know how to do the work, to be quite frank with you. It's a different skill set. If you go to school for journalism, you go to school for journalism; it's not the same as knowing markets. And it's certainly not the same as rolling up your sleeves and saying, "Hey, let me take a real look at this."

There's no show on like my show; there really isn't. I mean, every single day I deeply delve into everything, but in a way that I'm trying not to intimidate anyone; in fact, the exact opposite: I'm trying to invite them in and learn how to do this every single day. I'm so proud of it because you look at every show on every financial channel; you won't see anything like what I'm doing. Well, that's why the show is doing so well. And I know a lot of people are just really captured by your personality and how you tell the truth. You seem very, very authentic and also passionate about helping people create and then preserve their wealth.

What has it been like for you to see media change in the way that it has? And now that we're in the face of this technology change, which you talk about towards the end of your book, we're seeing AI surface, and we're seeing things like Bitcoin, digital currency—a way to preserve wealth totally separated from the state and from the powers that be. Where do you think all of this is going? Well, I think there's going to be some sort of massive showdown, right? Because we know that—I mean, I just can't see governments giving up on what they can do with fiat currency, right? Their printing machines, their printing presses, and their control over society. I mean, I just can't see them giving that up. And I think what they're going to do initially is try the sort of carrot approach: "Hey, check us out; we've got this central bank digital currency thing. And by the way, we need to put some ring posts around this crypto environment. You see all these scamsters out there; we want to protect you." I you know, so they're going to be—it's sort of going to be the—the thing, I think, though, is that people are going to reject it. Then I fear—what I fear is that then it's time to take out—first you have the carrot, and then the stick. Then I fear that the next move would be, "Well, you're going to have to use it." And I just—again, this is one of my main concerns—is that I think governments and people—people are going to have to rise up. After all, they represent us, not vice versa, although they always forget it, and we let—and we do—we allow them to get away with things that they should not get away with. So I see a major confrontation somewhere down the road as governments feel like this is slipping away from them. Think about the mandates, for instance. Canada's going through with a mandate that all cars have to be EVs, new cars by 2035. So they're taking away choice, and by the way, in the process, they're destroying everything. So many things. America's along the same glide path. So listen, I've always been excited about Bitcoin. I learned about it a long time ago. Obviously, I wish I'd pounced on it; I did not. I was concerned about the structure, like this secret formula thing. But I want to see it prevail, and I think ultimately it will. As far as the fourth Industrial Revolution, it's extraordinarily exciting. In the book, I kind of talk about the potential for a roaring 2020s, and the parallels already are so eerie; it's mind-boggling. The key we're missing is we need a pro-business president. That was the key. First you had Harding, and then Coolidge. That's what we need.

Well, you know, Charles, I loved that you brought up Warren Harding. Saifedean talks about it in *The Bitcoin Standard*, too, how it was the first time where, instead of intervening and just stimulating the economy, actually the president and the administration said, "No, we're going to be hands-off; we're going to let the medicine do its work." And we did enter higher unemployment, and we faced recession, but it was short. It was like we contracted all of it, and we allowed the market to function. One thing I want to ask you before turning the focus a little bit more to Bitcoin for just a second, I want to ask you about capitalism because you have seen the ins and outs of Wall Street, and today Main Street sees Wall Street as why capitalism is bad. That's why a lot of people are voting the way that they are because they say that the free market has created this incredible wealth concentration, and it's capitalism on steroids, almost. Why are they wrong? Why do you know—and how do you explain to people that we don't have free markets in capitalism? If anything, we have crony capitalism.

Right. Right. Well, you just took the answer right out of my mouth. I mean, it's—and it's so interesting because that's—we've had these politicians on both sides, right, Republican and Democrat, who've been able to convince voters to vote against their own self-interest for decades. You know, it's—and Republicans, you know, these elite Republicans somehow were able to convince folks in Middle America to send their jobs off overseas so that they can get cheap plastic crap in Walmart. Like, that was the trade-off, right? And instead, you have these hollowed-out cities and towns with no hope. And what replaces that hope is addiction to drugs, high suicide rates. Of course, Democratic elected leaders have watered down the education for their constituents and again told them, "You can't do it. No one's ever pulled themselves up by the bootstraps." They say, by the way, "It's physically impossible." So how about we just do it all? Enshrine us with all the power, and we'll take care of you. We'll give you more food stamps; we'll give you public housing; we'll give you a good trade-off, but you don't have to worry about it. So they both—have had this country vote against their own self-interest. In the meantime, there's been one group that's made all the money, right? And that's the political donors. That's the political donors. And yet, people—the way capitalism should be, and the way it has been—is there's a reason people should be upset. There's a reason people should be frustrated and angered and pissed off. And I think now people are getting really antsy because they see BlackRock and these firms buying up all the houses, buying up trailer parks, and jacking up the price. It irritates them. So there's got to be a—there's got to be somewhere where everything we do is not based on making a bottom line of corporations fatter. It's just—it's not. You know, I'm a—I think I'm a capitalist, but I also think that the system has to survive, and we're getting close to a pitchfork moment where everyone says, "No," because if we—if we scare people off and we anger people too much, they're going to go for something else, something that sounds attractive, something that sounds fair. They're going to go for socialism or something like that, and it's only a matter of time. So I think greed is fine, but I also like a level playing field.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you're a great basketball player and you think you can win 10, 15, 20 championships, fantastic, right? But if you—there's a different set of rules for your team than the other team, then that's not fantastic. Well, I'm glad you use that analogy because you're right. I mean, we don't care that the sports players are making millions of dollars because they play by a set of rules; no one can change those rules. No one has a special advantage except for those—who have merit. Except Brady; they have a little bit—a little bit of favoritism for Brady, but I won't go down that road too much. It's time for another quick break to hear these messages from my partners. I'm excited to share that I'm an advisor for the Orange Pill app. If you haven't downloaded this app yet, you're missing out on connecting with Bitcoiners in your area. The Orange Pill app is focused on building the social layer for Bitcoin and helping create opportunities for in-person connections and community building. You create a profile, and you'll see lots of familiar faces, and then you can search for Bitcoiners and Bitcoin events based on your location. I'm geotagged in my home base, St. Louis, and I'm excited that Orange Pill app has allowed me to meet new people in my city. Come join us. Use my referral code in the show notes and start connecting today. Next up, I want to take a moment to recommend an outstanding recent book in the Bitcoin space: *Bitcoin Evangelism* by Brian Deit. I've had the chance to have Brian on the show, and this is really the ultimate tool for orange-pilling your friends, your family, your coworkers, and it will make you a more effective messenger for Bitcoin. We all have that story of how we disregarded Bitcoin the first time we heard about it because either the arguments weren't compelling enough or maybe they weren't framed in a way that we could easily grasp them. Think of something like "trustless" or "immutability." These are concepts that now we understand as Bitcoiners, but how do you explain them simply to someone totally new in the space? Well, *Bitcoin Evangelism* will help you do that. It will allow you to become a Bitcoin evangelist so that we orange-pill millions of new Bitcoiners in the new year. Head to the link in my show notes to buy the book today.

But you know, you speak to this idea of the manipulation that underlies our current markets and how for so long they artificially lowered interest rates, and they skewed the price signals in the entire market. We've talked about it on your show, and there is this lack of hope. A lot of people have lost hope; a lot of people have lost trust in the institutions that obviously gave birth to Bitcoin. That is sort of the ethos of Bitcoin—that we shouldn't have to trust these central banks that keep letting us down. So I'm curious, Charles, when did you first learn about Bitcoin? I know you said you regret not buying it sooner. Um, and what do you think about it? Because so many people, especially Millennials, Gen Z, they see hope in it. They feel left out of the system in terms of being able to purchase a house when they, you know, graduate and get their first job, but they see that they can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin, and it gives them hope for the future.

Boy, oh boy. I know it was over 10 years ago. Wow. In this building—my office was on a different floor years ago—two offices now was John Stagliano. You know John Stagliano, sort of anti-government kind of guy, you know, libertarian, and you know, he was into Bitcoin early, and his staff was as well. I remember there's one young lady; she used to come by every day, "Oh, you going to buy some Bitcoin?" Like, ah. And so they would give me like literature and stuff on it, and I've read about it, and I tell you, the only thing—I love all the aspects of it, right? I really do. I just—and the blockchain, and you know, and I—how revolutionary it could be, and I think it's just—it's just amazing. The potential—the one thing I could never get over was this foolproof plan, this software plan that was written where only X amount of Bitcoin would ever be mined or, you know, developed. And like, every day I'm seeing headlines, "Well, this was hacked; that was hacked." Why can't someone change those rules? Why can't someone go in there with this software, whatever it was, and just change it to one day make it a 100 million? Change the dynamics of it because the supply dynamics of it plays a big role. What if that was interrupted? So that was my main concern for a long time. And 10 years ago, it probably could have been—it could have been attacked like that. Yeah. So that was my main concern, so I didn't do any—I didn't buy any. And it's so crazy because when my son was in 11th grade or 10th grade, we were talking about this for my own company, and I was like, "You think I should take Bitcoin as payment?" He's like, "Hell yeah!" I wish I'd listened to him. Oh, no, you didn't. Oh, man. Well, so where do you see it going? I mean, I know that you'll be covering on your show probably the imminent passing of the spot Bitcoin ETF.

Yeah, yeah, that we're going to do. I mean, obviously the anticipation's been there already for that, but you know—I don't know. But I think—I think it's got that potential. I mean, listen, I don't think like a million is out of the question. I mean, I really don't, from what I understand and what I know. My only concern is, will governments around the world allow it to happen? That's my biggest concern right now. I think the potential is there for it to be as revolutionary as people say it will be. I just don't know if governments will let it happen. I don't know how they'll stop it, but I just don't know if they would—see that kind of power. I just can't see them voluntarily doing it.

Give me one reason that stocks are better than Bitcoin and one reason why Bitcoin is better than stocks. Well, I think stocks can be better than Bitcoin because you own a great company. You own a place where people are going in every single day. You're part of a real positive system; this is capitalism. So you own a company where thousands and thousands of people go, they work, they create something that's of value, and at the same time, they're being rewarded, and they put their kids through college, and they buy a house. You're part of the American dream ecosystem. You just don't own a stock. If you believe in owning a company, then you're part of something that's really absolutely phenomenal. And you know, I just saw something two weeks ago—I'm going to have a town hall next month—I'll be using like an—in the UK, I think only 15% of the public owns stock, something like that. It's something that Americans have embraced, but I think if you embrace it even more—if you think about just part of this—this is a system; it's not just about you getting riches; you're supporting a system that is the foundation of America. It's a foundation—you need capital to have new businesses; you need capital to ultimately build new schools; you need capital to send kids to college. And it's an integral part of that. So that's one of the reasons I love it. I don't—I promote owning individual companies more so than the stock market per se.

I would say Bitcoin is—is better, or potentially better, because it could potentially go to a million, but also it has this ability to revolutionize—what has become an overbearing—these, you know, government intervention, government interference. And I'm so fearful again of the government trying to usurp the momentum of a Bitcoin and a crypto movement with these digital currencies that are going to—that could—we see in China how that kind of stuff is being used, right? You couple that with your social—you know, your good citizen score, you know, and you know, it's just—it's frightening. It's absolutely frightening what could happen. It could liberate this nation in so many ways, and I see it great for poor nations. I really see it like so amazing. You see what they're doing in El Salvador; you see the election in Argentina. I see it as a way of getting out of the grips of the World Bank and the IMF, which are just scams. I mean, you know, they make the mafia blush. I mean, it's like, "Oh, damn, you're doing that to them. Wow. You know, we never even thought about that." So it—it's got universal potential to change the world and lift so many boats that really are in a hopeless situation right now.

Well, I love that response. I obviously agree. And you mentioned earlier in the show about how stocks—individual companies don't always last; sometimes they hit that point of creative destruction; someone else takes over. And so you really have to know how to time that and to know when to exit if a company is going to be replaced. And that is one of the risks that you sort of—get to avoid with Bitcoin because Bitcoin has no CEO that could be replaced; it is no company where you have to worry about, "Will it exist 100 years from now?" And that's something I actually learned from Michael Saylor, who you've had on the show before. It'd be fun to have you guys have a debate of stocks versus Bitcoin.

I don't know. I wouldn't debate because I don't—I don't know that—you know, right now for someone out there, if Bitcoin has one of those years where it's down 50%, and that's the year someone's retiring or the year they were supposed to pay someone's college tuition, it's a tough one. Short-term, yeah, I—I've had Michael on the show a dozen times; I love him. We've had great conversations. I don't believe that it should be either/or right now, to be quite frank. I think you should have some—both—have exposure to both of them at this moment. And as Bitcoin really starts to get over some of these near-term hurdles, you can always add to it.

Well, as we start to wrap up, Charles, I want to hear a little bit more of just your words of wisdom for those out there who don't really believe in the American dream anymore. They're seeing how politicized and divided everyone is. And one thing I really respect about you and your show is you don't dive too deep in the politics; you actually keep it on the facts, and you speak about things in a way that no matter what your politics are, you can say, "Hey, I agree with that; I agree that's true," or, "Maybe things should change." Can you talk a little bit about the American dream? How do we achieve it today?

You know, it's interesting because you asked about media; what happened to media? And I don't think I truly answered that, and I think that's the problem. I think it's become too politicized. It is so tough now. Oh my goodness, it is so hard to get just—you know, news always had some—you know, whoever the writer was, whether you read a newspaper or saw news—even Walter Cronkite, probably—who's considered the most trusted man in the history of media—probably had a little bit of his own personal thoughts woven into the story, but this is so much different. This is sort of like animosity, and it's just anger. It's a complete war—media is going to—a war on the other side, whoever that might be, of the ideological divide. And it's not enough to have a simple debate; you have to crush the other side, and that's destroying our nation. Confidence in all of our major institutions has eroded to the point where you just wonder what keeps this country together. We were talking about government data; one of the big problems with most of that government data—the surveys—no one even bothers to answer them, right? So you get a report that only 39% of the businesses even bothered to fill it out. Like, I mean, we're—it's between apathy and anger; that's the main thing motivating our nation these days, and no nation can survive that long-term. In the meantime, I understand why people have lost hope. I think it's important that people understand history—where we came from as a nation—not just the story of my grandparents, but everyone's grandparents and everyone's great-great-grandparents. Yeah, it might have seemed easier, like, "Oh, well, a house cost this much in 1980." Yeah, but the mortgage was 18%, right? So things—given—and the—I mean, there's just this "woe is me" thing; it's just got to go. This "woe is me" thing—we—it's got to go. Everyone is a victim; we're never going to say everything's going to be perfect. There's always going to be the "-isms"—there's always going to be cronyism, nepotism, racism, sexism; it's always going to be the "-isms." We do our best to mitigate them, crunch them down so that they're really a non-factor or less of a factor than any—a year ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago. It's all incumbent upon the person themselves, you know, and I can tell you, I've lived all over the world; I've been all over the world as a businessman. And I've had the honor of serving in the military myself, and I can just tell you, there's no place like America. And the only way we're going to—but we're not ordained, right? We weren't hit with a magic wand to say we're going to always stay on top. We—the founders crafted the Constitution, and the foundation of it all is freedom. And then, on top of that, how do we become the number one country so quickly? This upstart nation surpassed all of these other countries that were in front of us. It's just that American spirit. So I'm trying to find some more answers to how do we keep it going. I'm trying to be a Pied Piper for the American dream because we have to blow a few things up—like the entire education system, the media system. I think, though, these avenues—like social media and these sort of things that are unregulated to the degree—I think, you know, you can take some positives out of that. And just—I think it's got to be grassroots, really, really grassroots. But things like—like your—like this—what we're doing right now—this has to supersede the evening news, particularly like, you know, from places where you know—you already know what the story is; you already know their angle on that story; it never ever changes, and that's not smart, and it's not fair for the American public. And by the way, we're entering an election season; all you're going to hear about is how—how crummy we are as a nation, how bad we are. We've got issues; there's no doubt about that, but we need to remember who we are and who we can be.

Well said. And to put a bow on what we talked about at the very beginning—the idea of sacrificing for future generations—I know you're a father; it means a lot to you to create a better life for your children and their children. So why do you have hope? I'm assuming you have hope; you seem like you have hope; you dress like you have hope. So why do you have hope that we'll get there?

I'm a rose-colored glasses kind of guy, you know. I mean, listen, I just told you my grandparents had a house with no running water; you had to get the wash tub to come inside and bathe; you had to use the outhouse; they had no electricity. And look where I am. I mean, that's just an amazing thing; it's so amazing. And it can keep happening over and over again. So I'm always going to have hope; I'm not going to lose that hope. And believe me, I've had a lot of times when I was pushed to the brink of saying, "You know what? This place is BS; this is BS," or "This will never change." But if you look at it—if you really look at where we are, how far we've come in such a short period of time as a nation—is something to be celebrated, not scorned upon, and it's something to incentivize us in the future.

Well, and you quoted it in your book: "We are the architects of our future." Thank you so much, Charles. I hope everyone reads this book, *Unbreakable Investor*. I'll link it in the show notes. And I'm going to close it out with a question for the Bitcoiners: When is Fox Business going to remove the screen that has Bitcoin with like all these other tokens and just have it be the Bitcoin price, or maybe with other better stores of value than the tokens?

I'll talk to graphics, but I can tell you right now, they're tough. It's Bitcoin, not crypto, Charles. You know, it's different. I'll talk to someone here, but I gotta tell you, I'm more—I'm fighting my fights on a daily basis. Okay, you guys got to get in line; I'm telling you.

Well, Charles, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's always such a pleasure, and I'm so, so, so grateful because you're fantastic as a host. And thank you for having so many of the Bitcoiners on your show as well. We really, really appreciate you, and we can't wait for you to have an *Unbreakable Bitcoin* book coming out. That's next. Thanks, Charles. See you later. Thank you. Thank you so much for checking out the video version of my show. Remember, this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only; nothing constitutes as official investment advice, and you should always do your own research. Please reach out if you have guest suggestions or any feedback; my email is Natalie@talkingbitcoin.com, and I'll see you next time.