Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Jeremy Allaire

Transcript

Jeremy Allaire · The David Rubenstein Show

0:02
Speaker 1: One of the most successful IPOs in twenty twenty five
0:05
Speaker 1: was the IPO of Circle, a regulated stable coin network.
0:09
Speaker 2: The company was the brainschild of Jeremy A. Laire.
0:12
Speaker 1: I recently had a chance to sit down with Jeremylaire
0:14
Speaker 1: to talk about what a regulated stable coin network is
0:17
Speaker 1: and why it's the future of banking. The company is
0:20
Speaker 1: now has a market capitalization today of about what twenty
0:24
Speaker 1: somethings around there, twenty billion dollars. That's pretty good, and
0:27
Speaker 1: you own about ten percent of the company close to that,
0:29
Speaker 1: so you're a happy guy.
0:33
Speaker 3: I've been building the company for twelve and a half years.
0:36
Speaker 3: It's been a very long journey to build it, and
0:40
Speaker 3: a company that very few people believe could achieve what
0:44
Speaker 3: it has, so I feel great about what we've been
0:46
Speaker 3: able to build. What I would say, though, and it
0:48
Speaker 3: relates to the IPO as well, is what's motivating to
0:53
Speaker 3: me is that you know, we're actually an early stage company.
0:57
Speaker 3: This is super early in terms of what we envision
1:00
Speaker 3: in being possible and what we can build. And so
1:02
Speaker 3: while the numbers or this or that are are interesting
1:07
Speaker 3: or compelling for different reasons, what's exciting to me is
1:10
Speaker 3: that you know, by becoming a publicly held institution, the
1:15
Speaker 3: general public can participate in how we build this company
1:19
Speaker 3: over the long run. And you know, the law that
1:21
Speaker 3: even made what we do kind of enshrined in federal
1:24
Speaker 3: law and part of the global financialism just passed and
1:26
Speaker 3: it's not even in effect. So we're in the early
1:29
Speaker 3: days of this and so that's really motivating to me,
1:32
Speaker 3: is what we can accomplish.
1:33
Speaker 2: Still, what year did you start the company?
1:36
Speaker 4: In twenty thirteen and.
1:38
Speaker 2: Who gave you your initial capital?
1:41
Speaker 3: So our original investors were General Catalyst, Jim Bryer and
1:47
Speaker 3: Excel were the kind of founding.
1:50
Speaker 1: Investment they made on their money they did well well wow, okay,
1:55
Speaker 1: And to get the circle off the ground it took
1:59
Speaker 1: how much capital million?
2:00
Speaker 2: Fifteen to twenty.
2:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean in the first couple of years we
2:04
Speaker 3: raised around twenty five million dollars.
2:08
Speaker 2: And did people know what a stable coin was in
2:10
Speaker 2: those days?
2:10
Speaker 3: Well, there was no such thing as a stable coin then.
2:12
Speaker 3: But when we started the company, what we explained was
2:16
Speaker 3: this new technology cryptocurrency, blockchains, was going to make it
2:21
Speaker 3: possible to build a way to put dollars on the
2:25
Speaker 3: Internet in the same way that we have protocols for
2:28
Speaker 3: how information moves around, like the web protocols or email
2:31
Speaker 3: protocols or voice protocols.
2:34
Speaker 4: And all these things.
2:35
Speaker 3: There are going to be these new protocols for money
2:36
Speaker 3: on the Internet that will allow very safe forms of
2:40
Speaker 3: dollars to be operated that way. And that was the idea,
2:44
Speaker 3: and you couldn't do it. In twenty thirteen.
2:46
Speaker 1: What is a stable coin and what does Circle actually
2:49
Speaker 1: do with stable coins?
2:50
Speaker 3: We now have a law that defines what a stable
2:52
Speaker 3: coin is in the United States, so I'll use that definition, okay.
2:55
Speaker 3: A payment stable coin is a digital currency that is
3:00
Speaker 3: issued on the Internet on a blockchain that is backed
3:05
Speaker 3: completely one for one by high quality, safe liquid assets
3:13
Speaker 3: so US government treasury bills and cash, and by issuing
3:18
Speaker 3: it on these networks, it allows these digital dollars to
3:23
Speaker 3: be used on the Internet, just like we can use
3:25
Speaker 3: any form of data and information as well. So it
3:28
Speaker 3: is a form of digital currency dollars that is fully
3:31
Speaker 3: backed and held. And it's called a stable coin because
3:34
Speaker 3: of course, historically cryptocurrencies were not stable and volatile, and
3:39
Speaker 3: that's really where the name came from. And Circle we
3:43
Speaker 3: operate an Internet platform across a whole range of technologies.
3:47
Speaker 3: But the core franchise is we run the largest regulated
3:53
Speaker 3: stable coin network in the world for handling stable coins
3:56
Speaker 3: and storing and moving them all around the Internet.
3:58
Speaker 1: Well, why do I need a stable I've been using
4:00
Speaker 1: banks for years. What's wrong with my banks? If I
4:03
Speaker 1: want to send money to Istambule, I just tell the
4:07
Speaker 1: bank wire the money. What's wrong with that system?
4:09
Speaker 3: Well, if you talk to anyone who's trying to move
4:12
Speaker 3: money to Istumbul, it actually turns out it's very time consuming,
4:16
Speaker 3: very slow, there's a lot of barriers, there's tends to
4:19
Speaker 3: be excessive fees.
4:20
Speaker 4: Sometimes it gets lost.
4:23
Speaker 3: And in fact Turkey is a great example because in
4:26
Speaker 3: Turkey there's extraordinary demand for USDC and stable coins right
4:30
Speaker 3: now because in a place like Turkey, people want dollars.
4:36
Speaker 3: They don't want lira, they want digital dollars that they
4:39
Speaker 3: can just use from their mobile phones that they can
4:42
Speaker 3: just like you can make a peer to peer a
4:44
Speaker 3: phone call with someone, it doesn't cost you anything. People
4:47
Speaker 3: and businesses have figured out in Turkey, just as one example,
4:51
Speaker 3: that they can transact with each other directly without an intermediary,
4:55
Speaker 3: instantly with virtually no cost. And so it's actually becoming
5:00
Speaker 3: a substitute for banking. And in fact, the nice thing
5:03
Speaker 3: about stable coins, especially well regulated, well run stable coins,
5:07
Speaker 3: is they're very safe because they don't actually lend the
5:10
Speaker 3: money or take risk with the money. They just are
5:13
Speaker 3: holding it in these ultra safe instruments. So holders of
5:15
Speaker 3: these are saying, Wow, this is a super safe digital
5:18
Speaker 3: dollar that I can use, just like I can use
5:20
Speaker 3: WhatsApp or use like the Internet as a whole.
5:23
Speaker 1: Well, that's such a great idea. How come everybody isn't
5:25
Speaker 1: doing it? How come you don't have a thousand competitors.
5:27
Speaker 3: Well, historically there actually have been hundreds of companies that
5:30
Speaker 3: have launched stable coins, and hundreds of these have launched
5:34
Speaker 3: and are you know, as one of my colleagues says,
5:36
Speaker 3: stable and name only. And it's only very recently, just
5:41
Speaker 3: the past couple of years, that there been regulations on this.
5:45
Speaker 3: We've advocated for regulations from day one, but the regulations
5:49
Speaker 3: have come into effect, and in particular in the United States,
5:53
Speaker 3: but in Japan and Hong Kong and Europe and all
5:56
Speaker 3: over the world.
5:56
Speaker 4: There's regulations on this.
5:58
Speaker 3: But once you have that regnatory clarity, then there's sort
6:02
Speaker 3: of an open, free, competitive market, and so there are
6:05
Speaker 3: a lot more companies getting involved in this now, and
6:07
Speaker 3: so we're going to have we already have more competition,
6:10
Speaker 3: there's going to be a lot.
6:11
Speaker 1: More Ten years from today, will banks be around to
6:13
Speaker 1: wire money anywhere? Will your system take over what banks
6:17
Speaker 1: do today.
6:18
Speaker 3: Over a ten year period, software utilities that are built
6:23
Speaker 3: entirely on and open internet infrastructure on the public Internet
6:26
Speaker 3: with software are going to exist and likely be as
6:31
Speaker 3: large or larger than the biggest banks in the world.
6:33
Speaker 4: But those many of these banks.
6:35
Speaker 3: Will also figure out, hey, I can build on this
6:37
Speaker 3: technology too, just like media companies have made that move,
6:40
Speaker 3: or communications companies have gotten involved in the Internet as well.
6:43
Speaker 1: You went public last year, yes, right, and you're underwriters
6:47
Speaker 1: priced it at thirty one dollars.
6:49
Speaker 4: A share, right, that's right.
6:51
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, what was the
6:53
Speaker 2: stock price?
6:54
Speaker 4: It was around eighty dollars.
6:56
Speaker 1: And did you think maybe they had underpriced it and
6:59
Speaker 1: you left a lot of money on the table.
7:00
Speaker 3: When you're doing an IPO, as you know, you're trying
7:04
Speaker 3: to do a couple of things. You're trying to get
7:07
Speaker 3: as broad of a base of investors involved as you can,
7:10
Speaker 3: especially major investors.
7:12
Speaker 4: We did that.
7:12
Speaker 3: We had a deal that we actually started with the price,
7:17
Speaker 3: we upsized the price multiple times, and then we priced
7:20
Speaker 3: yet again above that. We increased the size of the
7:23
Speaker 3: deal significantly, so we grew the capacity of it all
7:27
Speaker 3: the way throughout that. So we had all of these
7:29
Speaker 3: things that were happening, and then the deal was twenty
7:32
Speaker 3: five times oversubscribed on roughly a billion, so twenty five
7:34
Speaker 3: billion dollars of demand, and so that we knew we
7:38
Speaker 3: had a great investor base, but it was really hard
7:42
Speaker 3: to know, you know, what that was going to do
7:45
Speaker 3: in the market. There hadn't been a lot of IPOs.
7:47
Speaker 3: In fact, we were like the first major IPO. The
7:50
Speaker 3: IPOs that had come hadn't been these spectacular things, so
7:53
Speaker 3: it was hard to know. There aren't many companies like this,
7:57
Speaker 3: and so I think, you know, they're ended up being
8:00
Speaker 3: a lot of individuals and family offices and others that
8:03
Speaker 3: wanted to own stock. And obviously that that performed very well.
8:07
Speaker 1: Now in the technology world, everybody the United States always says,
8:10
Speaker 1: we have to worry about the Chinese. The Chinese are
8:13
Speaker 1: going to take our technology, improve it, or do something different.
8:16
Speaker 1: Is there a Chinese company that's equivalent to.
8:19
Speaker 4: Circle, there's not.
8:21
Speaker 3: And in fact, what's interesting about this space is for
8:25
Speaker 3: those that are familiar with the kind of the early
8:28
Speaker 3: DNA of the Internet, the Internet has, you know, you know,
8:32
Speaker 3: kind of open accessible, permissionless, decentralized, open source like these
8:38
Speaker 3: are like the fabric of what's given the Internet so
8:41
Speaker 3: much of its of its strength. And in fact, those
8:45
Speaker 3: ideas are inherently come out of I would call the
8:48
Speaker 3: Liberal Enlightenment. They're they're Liberal Enlightenment ideals and they're expressed
8:52
Speaker 3: in technology and software and protocols, and I think that's
8:56
Speaker 3: that's intrinsic in blockchains as well.
8:58
Speaker 4: Those ideals are express there.
9:01
Speaker 3: And so if you're a society that is fundamentally built
9:05
Speaker 3: around centralization, total control, you know, et cetera, and where
9:11
Speaker 3: you know, privacy or freedom are not the highest ideals,
9:17
Speaker 3: you don't end up building things like this.
9:18
Speaker 1: Well, let's go back and talk about your background for
9:20
Speaker 1: a moment. Where were you born.
9:23
Speaker 3: I was born in Philadelphia in nineteen seventy one, giving.
9:26
Speaker 1: My age, okay, and then did your family move from there?
9:31
Speaker 4: We did.
9:31
Speaker 3: We moved when I was around eleven years old to
9:34
Speaker 3: a small town in Minnesota.
9:36
Speaker 4: We knowna Minnesota, Southeastern Minnesota.
9:38
Speaker 2: So you moved to Minnesota.
9:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you have a brother, my brother, Yes, I
9:42
Speaker 3: have a brother, Okay, and he's actually here too.
9:45
Speaker 2: Where is he?
9:46
Speaker 4: Oh?
9:46
Speaker 2: There he is?
9:47
Speaker 1: Okay, well I see he's got the same hairline you have, right, okay, okay,
9:54
Speaker 1: all right, So all you moved to Minnesota. And then
9:58
Speaker 1: were you a good student? And yeah, I think so.
10:01
Speaker 3: I was more interested in debate and modeling model United Nations?
10:05
Speaker 1: Right, So you did well in high school, I assume.
10:07
Speaker 1: And then where did you go to college?
10:09
Speaker 3: I went to McAllister College in the uncity water Mondale
10:13
Speaker 3: School Walter Mondale kofian on ye.
10:15
Speaker 1: CoFe on water Mondal On you Okay, you're more famous
10:18
Speaker 1: than those guys, now, okay, all right, So.
10:21
Speaker 2: After you graduated, what did you do?
10:24
Speaker 3: So when I graduated, it was nineteen ninety three, and
10:27
Speaker 3: I thought I would get a job in policy work
10:30
Speaker 3: because I did political science and philosophy and there wasn't
10:34
Speaker 3: really easily accessible policy work. But while I was in college,
10:38
Speaker 3: I had become really obsessed with the internet in pre
10:42
Speaker 3: commercial internet days, starting in like nineteen ninety got really
10:45
Speaker 3: excited about it, and shortly after graduating college.
10:48
Speaker 4: I just said, you know what, like this is going.
10:51
Speaker 3: To be the future, and I'm I'm an Internet consultant.
10:55
Speaker 3: When I decided I'm an internet.
10:56
Speaker 2: Consultant, what did your parents say?
10:57
Speaker 4: They said, I was My dad was very concerned. He's
11:02
Speaker 4: very concerned.
11:02
Speaker 1: In internet consultant. In nineteen ninety there wasn't much of internet.
11:06
Speaker 2: Was there.
11:07
Speaker 4: I mean there was Gopher?
11:09
Speaker 2: Okay, So you as a consult did you have any clients?
11:12
Speaker 3: I did, so I started, I started working with I
11:16
Speaker 3: got connected into marketing agencies, some like PC firms, others
11:23
Speaker 3: basically who wanted to And this was in nineteen ninety three.
11:27
Speaker 3: The very first web browser, the very first graphical web
11:30
Speaker 3: browser came out in nineteen ninety three, and I got
11:33
Speaker 3: really excited that wow, this is going to reshape how
11:36
Speaker 3: communications and media and software works. And so I just said,
11:41
Speaker 3: everyone needs to build on the web. And so I
11:43
Speaker 3: started creating web web stuff I did.
11:48
Speaker 4: They would pay me by the hour.
11:50
Speaker 2: The hour, yes, okay? And did you know Steve Case then?
11:53
Speaker 3: Or I of course knew Steve Case, but I didn't
11:55
Speaker 3: know him personally until much later when he invested in
11:59
Speaker 3: my next company.
12:00
Speaker 1: Really okay, so do you started a company, another company
12:04
Speaker 1: after the Internet consulting company.
12:06
Speaker 2: Yes, and what was that cleverly named?
12:08
Speaker 3: Well, so that was actually a name chosen by my
12:11
Speaker 3: brother called a Layer corporate.
12:12
Speaker 2: Layer conquestion, was it hard to get that name?
12:17
Speaker 4: I think we still have the domain in person.
12:19
Speaker 3: We bought it from Adobe, who ended up owning the
12:22
Speaker 3: company and its asset.
12:23
Speaker 4: Right.
12:23
Speaker 2: So you started a layer corporation or company. What did
12:25
Speaker 2: it do?
12:26
Speaker 4: So?
12:26
Speaker 3: A layer built some of the very first software products
12:30
Speaker 3: to create interactive applications on the web. So in nineteen
12:34
Speaker 3: ninety four nineteen ninety five, the idea was, hey, instead
12:38
Speaker 3: of building software that gets put on a personal computer,
12:41
Speaker 3: you could build software that is distributed through a web browser.
12:44
Speaker 3: And the first product, called cold Fusion, created a very
12:49
Speaker 3: simple way for someone who was not that technical to
12:52
Speaker 3: create software programs.
12:54
Speaker 2: And you ran on the web and it were you
12:56
Speaker 2: still living in.
12:56
Speaker 4: Minnesota, Yeah, in the twins.
12:59
Speaker 1: Anybody that probably wasn't the center of the internet world
13:02
Speaker 1: at the time.
13:02
Speaker 3: Well, our venture capital investors in fact, said you got
13:06
Speaker 3: to move.
13:07
Speaker 2: So did you actually move at some point?
13:09
Speaker 4: We did? Uh?
13:10
Speaker 3: And And as the story goes, uh uh. My brother
13:14
Speaker 3: and other colleagues were signing a lease in Silicon Valley
13:18
Speaker 3: in Menlo Park to move the company there because that
13:21
Speaker 3: was where the Internet was going to happen. But the
13:24
Speaker 3: venture capital firm, which was a startup VC at the time,
13:27
Speaker 3: Polaris Venture Partners, said, you know, all their all their
13:32
Speaker 3: kind of contacts were out on the East Coast and
13:34
Speaker 3: in the Boston area, and so we actually said, well,
13:37
Speaker 3: you know what, We'll go to Boston. We had East
13:39
Speaker 3: Coast heritage, as you know, some of the founders, my
13:42
Speaker 3: brother and I, and we thought, you know, building a company,
13:46
Speaker 3: a tech software company there was will sort of be
13:49
Speaker 3: easier than being crowded out.
13:51
Speaker 1: In Okay if you moved to Boston. Yes, how big
13:54
Speaker 1: did the company become?
13:56
Speaker 3: So that company grew to over one hundred million revenue,
13:59
Speaker 3: went public in early nineteen ninety nine.
14:02
Speaker 1: So when the Great Internet bubble burst occurred in ninety eight,
14:06
Speaker 1: ninety nine, two thousand, what happened to your company?
14:08
Speaker 3: We had a great franchise, meaning we had an incredibly
14:11
Speaker 3: loyal customer base, and over time, literally millions of developers
14:15
Speaker 3: used our software to build websites and applications. And we
14:19
Speaker 3: decided to merge with another internet software company called Macromedia
14:24
Speaker 3: that made some of the most popular tools for building
14:26
Speaker 3: the web and building content on the web. We merged
14:28
Speaker 3: the companies together, two public companies.
14:31
Speaker 1: And what was it then called a layer of Macromi
14:33
Speaker 1: that was just Macromedia perfectively.
14:35
Speaker 2: You gave up the Laranam Yes, okay? And how long
14:37
Speaker 2: did you stay at Macromedia?
14:39
Speaker 4: For about two years?
14:41
Speaker 2: Really okay? And then when you left, what did you
14:44
Speaker 2: do next?
14:45
Speaker 3: Well, So, while I was at Macromedia, I was the
14:47
Speaker 3: chief technology officer, and we released into the market technology
14:53
Speaker 3: called flash You many of you probably remember flash Player.
14:56
Speaker 4: You couldn't use the Internet that using flash Player, thank you?
15:00
Speaker 4: All right?
15:01
Speaker 3: We actually in two thousand and two put the best
15:04
Speaker 3: video technology that the Internet had ever seen into flash
15:08
Speaker 3: and within a year, every computer in the world, ninety
15:10
Speaker 3: eight percent of computers in the world could play back
15:11
Speaker 3: video more smoothly. And I got very excited about this,
15:15
Speaker 3: and I got excited that you know, there's going to
15:18
Speaker 3: be a video publishing revolution and that every person, every business,
15:21
Speaker 3: every media company could be transformed, and essentially television would
15:26
Speaker 3: move to the Internet.
15:27
Speaker 4: And so this was in two thousand and two. In
15:28
Speaker 4: two thousand and three, I left.
15:31
Speaker 3: And then went as an entrepreneur in residence at General Catalyst.
15:35
Speaker 2: Which is a venture capital firm venture.
15:37
Speaker 3: Capital firm in Cambridge at the time, and they were
15:41
Speaker 3: a startup VC really then and incubated this idea and
15:46
Speaker 3: then founded it officially in two thousand and four.
15:50
Speaker 2: That company was break Cove.
15:52
Speaker 3: Break Cove grew over the next half a decade. We
15:56
Speaker 3: had a successful IPO in twenty twelve, and the company
16:01
Speaker 3: powered many of the television and media streaming infrastructures for
16:06
Speaker 3: a lot of media companies, major brands and others.
16:08
Speaker 2: So we took two companies public. That's a lot. And
16:11
Speaker 2: so has bright Cove now been bought by somebody else here.
16:14
Speaker 4: It has been. It's a private equity firm.
16:17
Speaker 1: Took in private, okay, So after that company was bought
16:21
Speaker 1: or sold.
16:24
Speaker 3: I took break Republic in twenty early twenty twelve, and
16:27
Speaker 3: I got immersed in this whole technology of crypto later
16:31
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, and then I stepped down as CEO
16:35
Speaker 3: in the beginning of twenty thirteen, and then I started Circle.
16:40
Speaker 3: When I started the company, I told the early employees
16:44
Speaker 3: and the early board members and investors, this is like
16:46
Speaker 3: a ten to twenty year thing to accomplish what we
16:49
Speaker 3: think we can accomplish and now, and I look at
16:51
Speaker 3: where we are, where I look at where I see
16:54
Speaker 3: the progression of this technology and the future impact, and
16:57
Speaker 3: I'm like, there's another ten to twenty years here. So
17:00
Speaker 3: I'm trying to build a very long lasting institution, and
17:04
Speaker 3: I think it can be fundamental to changing not just
17:07
Speaker 3: the financial system, but the way the broader economic system works.
17:09
Speaker 1: People have accept the idea you can move value from
17:13
Speaker 1: one country to another very rapidly, maybe quicker than banks can.
17:16
Speaker 1: What is inning two and three? What are the next
17:18
Speaker 1: things you're going to do to build on this?
17:20
Speaker 3: The kind of first order of business is how do
17:22
Speaker 3: we establish sort of very safe forms of money, like
17:29
Speaker 3: what I call full reserve money, not fractional reserve money,
17:32
Speaker 3: so fully reserved forms.
17:33
Speaker 4: Of money on the Internet. We're getting there.
17:37
Speaker 3: And the idea behind this is this is general purpose,
17:40
Speaker 3: general architecture money. And as I like to say, USDC
17:44
Speaker 3: can be used to make a micro payment between two
17:47
Speaker 3: AI agents at in a fraction of a second, at
17:50
Speaker 3: a fraction of a cent, and it is being used
17:53
Speaker 3: that way, and it can also be used between two
17:56
Speaker 3: huge institutions to settle a billion dollar transaction and everything
17:59
Speaker 3: in between. And I think so we're just getting to
18:02
Speaker 3: that point and now enshrined in law that this can
18:05
Speaker 3: be utilized whether.
18:06
Speaker 4: It's in.
18:08
Speaker 3: Big heavy things like capital markets, or in lending or
18:11
Speaker 3: in payments.
18:12
Speaker 4: It can be used in all these different areas.
18:13
Speaker 1: So have a stable coin and make it stable, you
18:15
Speaker 1: need to have something behind it, which is let's say
18:18
Speaker 1: dollar reserves.
18:20
Speaker 4: That's right.
18:21
Speaker 2: So, now where do you get your dollars from?
18:23
Speaker 4: People give us their dollars.
18:25
Speaker 2: They give you dollars, yes, do you give them interest?
18:27
Speaker 2: Or what do you do?
18:28
Speaker 4: We do not pay interest?
18:29
Speaker 3: In fact, all around the world we're prohibited from paying interest.
18:33
Speaker 2: All right, So let me ask you.
18:35
Speaker 1: I want to know about the future, because the future
18:37
Speaker 1: is where I want to invest. So is artificial intelligence
18:41
Speaker 1: is going to be good for society? And are people
18:43
Speaker 1: going to lose their jobs or people going to get
18:45
Speaker 1: more jobs because of artificial intelligence.
18:47
Speaker 3: It's very likely in my view that artificial intelligence is
18:52
Speaker 3: going to pretty dramatically disrupt the labor market as we
18:57
Speaker 3: know it today, and it's going to uh, you know,
19:01
Speaker 3: I think there's huge numbers of human labor jobs that
19:07
Speaker 3: will be replaced by AI.
19:08
Speaker 2: Not private equity though never, never.
19:10
Speaker 4: Never, never, I do.
19:14
Speaker 3: I do think that there's going to be a huge,
19:17
Speaker 3: a huge amount of displacement from from AI and at
19:22
Speaker 3: the same time, and this is what you know, what
19:24
Speaker 3: I tell all my employees, we have a very aggressive
19:27
Speaker 3: AI adoption posture in our company. And what I've told
19:30
Speaker 3: you know every employee in the company is you want
19:34
Speaker 3: to become really good at using these tools. It's sort
19:37
Speaker 3: of like when personal computers came out, you could have
19:40
Speaker 3: chosen to learn how to use a spreadsheet or word
19:42
Speaker 3: process or when the Internet came out, you could have
19:44
Speaker 3: chosen to like decide to figure out all this stuff.
19:46
Speaker 3: Like these are choices that people make and in their
19:48
Speaker 3: careers they have to make these choices.
19:50
Speaker 4: Now, not everyone has.
19:51
Speaker 3: That opportunity, So I'm I'm obviously it's it's different because
19:55
Speaker 3: I'm I'm sort of shepherding this. But my view is
19:58
Speaker 3: that the capabilities that humans will have and do have
20:03
Speaker 3: already through the application of AI are extraordinary and will
20:08
Speaker 3: continue to be extraordinary, and so human capital and AI
20:12
Speaker 3: AI labor are going to work closely together, and it's
20:19
Speaker 3: that orchestration of that that is going to be some
20:21
Speaker 3: of the highest value labor that's out there.
20:23
Speaker 1: What about quantum computing is that the next wave of
20:26
Speaker 1: the future.
20:26
Speaker 2: Is that going to happen?
20:27
Speaker 3: All of the fundamental infrastructure that we run on is
20:30
Speaker 3: built on cryptography. Crypto is cryptography, and it's applied cryptography,
20:35
Speaker 3: and it uses cryptography for uh security uses cryptography for
20:40
Speaker 3: kind of kind of systems to prove data and other things.
20:44
Speaker 3: And so cryptography and the resilience of cryptography is a
20:48
Speaker 3: really critical thing. And so when people think about quantum,
20:51
Speaker 3: one of the first things they think about is breaking cryptography.
20:54
Speaker 3: And if you can break cryptography, then all bets are off, right.
20:57
Speaker 3: You can just pour into an energy grid, or you
21:00
Speaker 3: could take over banks, you could do whatever.
21:03
Speaker 4: And so.
21:05
Speaker 3: As we build our systems, we're studying what is you know,
21:10
Speaker 3: what is quantum cryptography going to look like? What is
21:13
Speaker 3: quantum resistant cryptography cryptography.
21:17
Speaker 4: Going to look like?
21:17
Speaker 3: And we're actively working on engineering and working in communities
21:21
Speaker 3: that are working on quantum resistant tech.
21:23
Speaker 4: Now, when people sort of say.
21:25
Speaker 3: Well, what's the time horizon on that, you hear a
21:28
Speaker 3: lot of different estimates on that. But I think we
21:31
Speaker 3: feel compelled that in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven.
21:36
Speaker 3: We need to have infrastructure that is quantum ready, if
21:41
Speaker 3: you will, from a security perspective. So I don't know
21:43
Speaker 3: what that means in terms of when it's available, Obviously,
21:47
Speaker 3: the implications are extraordinary in terms of this scale of
21:50
Speaker 3: compute and what it could be applied in. And I think,
21:53
Speaker 3: obviously when you think about quantum in coordination with other
21:56
Speaker 3: technology things that we have going on, it's.
21:58
Speaker 1: Pretty interesting techechnology. Well, so this example, I'm using what
22:02
Speaker 1: I call a last adopter. I'm still trying to use
22:05
Speaker 1: a BlackBerry, but then nobody else wants to use them.
22:07
Speaker 1: So what do you use for technology?
22:09
Speaker 2: You have?
22:10
Speaker 1: How many computers do you have? Do you have iPads?
22:13
Speaker 1: How many smartphones you use? And how often do you
22:16
Speaker 1: spend your how many hours a day do you spend
22:18
Speaker 1: looking at your screens?
22:19
Speaker 3: I use an iPhone, I use tablets, I use laptops,
22:24
Speaker 3: and I have a ride of those and some that
22:27
Speaker 3: I will use strictly for personal reasons and others.
22:30
Speaker 1: For it so work, you should be worried about people
22:32
Speaker 1: hacking you? So absolutely, so you have a pretty good
22:34
Speaker 1: anti hacking system.
22:36
Speaker 4: We have a lot of cybersecurity.
22:38
Speaker 1: What do you want most people to leave here tonight
22:40
Speaker 1: knowing about Circle.
22:42
Speaker 4: I would say a couple of things.
22:43
Speaker 3: I think the first is that we're still in the
22:46
Speaker 3: very early days of this technology. And while the aggregate
22:49
Speaker 3: numbers sound really big, there's you know, trillions of dollars
22:53
Speaker 3: of transactions and all this stuff, we're really really in
22:57
Speaker 3: the early days. And if you think about what Circle's
22:59
Speaker 3: trying to do, we are really We're not just our
23:02
Speaker 3: stable coin network. We're building a whole set of infrastructure,
23:06
Speaker 3: operating system, infrastructure platforms for developers, these monetary systems, and
23:13
Speaker 3: utilities to use all of this. And our view is
23:17
Speaker 3: that over the next ten years there are going to
23:20
Speaker 3: be just like we've had internet platform companies that came
23:23
Speaker 3: up for say communications, or for digital media, or for
23:27
Speaker 3: selling products and services, or for mobile handsets and other things,
23:31
Speaker 3: we believe that over the next ten years they are
23:34
Speaker 3: going to be very significant Internet financial platform companies that
23:38
Speaker 3: are major utilities for the way the financial and economic
23:42
Speaker 3: system work. And we hope to be one of those.
23:44
Speaker 3: We're working on that.
23:46
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
23:48
Speaker 1: can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
23:52
Speaker 1: wherever you listen