Mike Novogratz on Bitcoin, Macro Trading, Ayahuasca, Redemption, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show

Mike Novogratz traces his path from a middle-class military family and Princeton wrestling through making and losing multiple fortunes on Wall Street. He describes the public humiliation of resigning from Goldman Sachs, the rehab and recovery that followed, and how an Israeli general's insight reframed his trading as intuition rather than raw intelligence. Novogratz lays out his 2020 bull case for bitcoin as an emerging store of value newly legitimized by Paul Tudor Jones. He also discusses ayahuasca and destigmatizing mental health, learning to be gentler with himself, and his deep anger at the U.S. criminal justice and cash-bail system that drove his philanthropy.

• Novogratz reads from his Iowa commencement speech about resigning from Goldman Sachs at 33 as a partner and president, thinking his life was over after his first public humiliation.
  00:14:31
• A lawyer told him to write down who would be at his funeral at 80 and only worry what those people think, which helped him stop fearing his ex-partners.
  00:16:34
• Former Israeli PM and general Ehud Barak told him he was 'not very smart' but lucky, citing Napoleon's preference for lucky generals; the insight unlocked Novogratz's confidence in his own intuition.
  00:27:23
• After that breakthrough his hedge fund went from 300 million to 2 billion in six months and the joy returned to his work.
  00:28:24
• He predicts bitcoin will take out 10,000 dollars soon and end 2020 closer to 20,000, the old highs, recorded May 18, 2020 at roughly 9,600 dollars.
  00:38:49
• He got an eight-inch jaguar/puma tattoo down his forearm after transforming into a puma and crawling around the floor during his first ayahuasca ceremony in Costa Rica.
  00:52:18
• After making a breathtaking amount of money on ethereum, he bought himself a G550 jet and gave an equal amount to launch The Bail Project to offset the guilt.
  01:07:24

• 14 of the 44 U.S. presidents had wrestling in their background, including Lincoln, who wrestled town-to-town for money, and Teddy Roosevelt.
  00:13:29
• Fourteen months after rehab he ran the Marathon des Sables, six marathons in a row across the Sahara, where temperatures hit 130 degrees by day and froze at night.
  00:23:17
• Dr. Peter Attia reportedly eats six to seven servings of Magic Spoon cereal at a time with practically no blood sugar response.
  00:48:09
• Roughly half a million people sleep in jail every night solely because they can't afford bail, with average bail near 1,800 dollars while most arrested people lack 500 dollars.
  01:08:24
• People held in jail are seven times more likely to plead guilty, and 40 percent of prison deaths and rapes happen in the first 14 days.
  01:08:55
• Novogratz cites that 95 percent of women in prison have been raped, calling prison a 'trauma machine.'
  01:10:58
• The U.S. holds 2.3 million people in jail or prison; he argues it should be around 800,000, and notes U.S. sentences run three times longer than Germany's for the same crime.
  01:14:05
• His most-gifted book is 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator' (1932), based on speculator Jesse Livermore, which he calls the bible for traders and has given away about 40 copies.
  01:15:08
• On a personality test he scored 37 out of 40 as a rule-breaker.
  01:19:16

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