Dustin Plantholt’s “Life’s Tough—You Can Be Tougher” Crypto podcast this week features Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, an American entrepreneur, investor, and U.S. Army veteran. Anthony is Co-Founder and Partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets—a multi-strategy investment firm focused on providing access to blockchain technology and digital assets for institutional clients and wealthy family offices.
This “Life’s Tough” episode releases on September 24th at 7 p.m. (EST), and thereafter available on all major podcast networks, under the Podcast Channel “Life’s Tough or Dustin Plantholt”.
Anthony graduated from Cardinal Gibbons High School and then attended Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where he received his Bachelor of Arts double majoring in economics and sociology. He served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant from March 2006 to August 2012. During his exemplary service—deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2008-2009)—he earned distinguished honors as The Distinguished Leader Graduate of the Warrior Leader Course and a Commandant’s List Graduate of Infantry Leadership School.
In January 2013, Pompliano founded Digaforce, a social media intelligence platform for demographic information based on unfiltered, social content. The company was acquired in December 2013 by Strategic Link Partners. His professional career continued to flourish with stints at Facebook in 2014 as Product Manager, leading the Growth Team for Facebook Pages advising the executive team on their social strategy and helping to launch numerous products like AMBER Alerts and Voter Registration, to later leading the business operations team working on growth and engagement at SnapChat.
Anthony’s foresight and shrewdness in identifying blockchain opportunities led others to follow his counsel—police officers and other state employees in Virginia’s Fairfax County will be looking forward to retirement with potential dividends from an unusual source: bitcoin. Earlier this year, two separate pension funds that collectively manage $5.1 billion in assets for the state’s police force and other employees have joined a $40 million investment in the Morgan Creek Blockchain Opportunities Fund, which in addition to backing some of the best-known startups in the space, plans to invest in cryptocurrency. The Morgan Creek Blockchain Opportunity Fund marks an unusual fusion of traditional venture capital flowing into crypto and a new breed of companies aiming to use cryptocurrency to prepare for retirement. To combat potential cryptocurrency fraud concerns—cautioned by the SEC—Pompliano worked with the pensions to answer questions they had about potential risks and how crypto investments differed from traditional assets. Going forward, he says the blockchain fund will continue to invest in cryptocurrencies and companies building infrastructures for a wide range of blockchain products, while pushing forward with the next stage of his project—raising a separate $500 million fund to invest in future tokens he expects will be created using blockchain to represent shares in everything from works of fine art to real estate. “Our venture fund can invest in the companies that are issuing tokens,” says Pompliano. “We can invest in the equity of the exchanges where those tokens are being traded. But the big fund will purchase the tokens themselves.”
Join Dustin and Anthony for an informative conversation on the emergent cryptocurrency landscape in today’s ever-changing economic climate.