Latest / Core Memory / Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the Evolving Future of Humans

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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the Evolving Future of Humans · Core Memory

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SPEAKER_00: The main thing for me is that,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: we want to use this as a tool to accelerate progress,
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SPEAKER_00: right?
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SPEAKER_00: So nature can be quite cruel.
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SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a little bit of a lottery.
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SPEAKER_00: When people,
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SPEAKER_00: children are born,
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they could end up having some really terrible disease that is
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no fault of their own.
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SPEAKER_00: It's actually like a form of genetic privilege,
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SPEAKER_00: if you will,
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SPEAKER_00: that some people are just born on third base,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: and some people have something that's really terrible and debilitating.
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SPEAKER_00: That shouldn't really be the case.
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SPEAKER_00: I think that in
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SPEAKER_00: 25 or 30 years,
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it could be actually inverted where if someone is having
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children without some of
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SPEAKER_00: these modern tools,
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it's kind of like the anti-vaxxers of today or it would be
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considered a little bit
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SPEAKER_00: Luddite or like risky or dangerous not to do it.
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SPEAKER_00: All right, friends, this is Ashley Vance with another episode of
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the core memory podcast the headline news here is that our
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guest today is brian
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SPEAKER_01: armstrong the co-founder and ceo of coinbase crypto god as it were um
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SPEAKER_01: The apology that follows is that I'm recording us on the road.
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SPEAKER_01: The sound, or at least this intro part, may be less than ideal.
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SPEAKER_01: And my bed is not made, as some of you who are watching may see.
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SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, the sound on the podcast is fantastic, as is Brian.
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SPEAKER_01: He usually gets peppered with crypto questions.
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And if you're into crypto,
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there's going to be some of that in there for you.
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SPEAKER_01: However,
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SPEAKER_01: will not lie.
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I took him in a very different direction than he's ever gone in
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an interview before,
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SPEAKER_01: which is that we talked science.
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SPEAKER_01: Brian has been funding all kinds of interesting side startups.
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SPEAKER_01: He tweets or Xs regularly about some pretty out there
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I appreciate that he is unapologetic in his views,
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which are sometimes controversial.
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You might remember Brian caught some strays for trying to more
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or less ban
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SPEAKER_01: political discussion at the office at Coinbase,
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SPEAKER_01: and some employees walked out of the company as a result.
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He's also been kind of fairly combative with the media and with regulators,
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letting his
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views out in the open and this rubs some people the wrong way i
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as ever appreciate
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people who are willing to express themselves live uh unusual
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slightly eccentric
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lives and and stand by what they're doing i think brian's
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really eloquent on his
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views they won't be for everyone but at least you can hear how
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he thinks and he was
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SPEAKER_01: very generous with his time and um
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you'll enjoy the show our continued quest to obliterate all
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other tech podcast is
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not complete so please do go to core memory youtube spotify
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apple wherever you like
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and uh give us some love so that we can achieve a rightful
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position at the top of
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SPEAKER_01: the podcast food chain and
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SPEAKER_01: My dulcet tones can be heard the world over.
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SPEAKER_01: With that, listen to someone other than me.
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SPEAKER_01: Come here, Brian, and enjoy.
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SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
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SPEAKER_02: Brian, hello, how are you?
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SPEAKER_02: Great.
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SPEAKER_02: You grew up in this area.
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SPEAKER_02: Do you have this Silicon Valley stuff in your blood?
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SPEAKER_02: I know both your parents were, one was an engineer, right?
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SPEAKER_02: And your mom worked for IBM, I think.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
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I grew up in San Jose,
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California,
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and really the dot-com boom was happening.
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SPEAKER_00: I graduated high school in 2001, right as it blew up.
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SPEAKER_00: But in high school, really, it was happening all around me.
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SPEAKER_00: So my mom worked at IBM.
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SPEAKER_00: We had early PCs in the home.
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My first job actually was building a website at a tech startup
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in someone's garage
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SPEAKER_00: in Silicon Valley.
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SPEAKER_00: And,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't know actually at that time that I was a kid,
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SPEAKER_00: so I didn't really understand.
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SPEAKER_00: I just thought this was normal.
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SPEAKER_00: But I didn't, you know, I went to school and other things I did in life.
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SPEAKER_00: And I realized actually how special it was only later.
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SPEAKER_00: And I eventually wanted to come back to Silicon Valley.
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SPEAKER_00: But as a kid, I was...
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SPEAKER_00: very drawn to computers.
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And I was like reading all about it in the tech press at that
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time and Wired magazine.
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And I was kind of enamored with these people like Mark and
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Theresa showing up on
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SPEAKER_00: the cover of magazines.
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SPEAKER_00: And,
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SPEAKER_00: um,
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SPEAKER_00: I loved computers as even as a young kid,
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SPEAKER_00: I was kind of shy,
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SPEAKER_00: nerdy,
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SPEAKER_00: introverted,
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SPEAKER_00: wasn't as good with people,
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SPEAKER_00: but I loved computers.
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SPEAKER_00: And, um,
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SPEAKER_00: So I would,
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SPEAKER_00: like,
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read the business section of the San Jose Mercury News every
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day and try to learn
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SPEAKER_00: what Apple and Microsoft and everybody were doing.
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And you were—did you already have—so you had a—that's what you
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aspired to?
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SPEAKER_02: Did you have a sense of what you were going to end up doing or,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: what you wanted to be,
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SPEAKER_00: I guess?
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I didn't actually know at that time what exactly I was going to
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end up doing with my career.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: So I was trying lots of things.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: I wasn't always that interested in schoolwork because on my free time,
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I'd be like building websites and installing Linux on computers
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and trying to learn
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SPEAKER_00: how to program.
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SPEAKER_00: And I knew that's something you could study in college,
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SPEAKER_00: but I didn't know I wanted to be a tech entrepreneur.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay.
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SPEAKER_02: And you and I, we flipped.
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I grew up in Houston and then came to Silicon Valley,
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but you end up going to school at Rice.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: And how did you find Texas?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: I liked it, actually, a lot.
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SPEAKER_00: So having grown up in the Bay Area and I,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: as a young man in high school,
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SPEAKER_00: I was like,
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I want to get away from my parents and go out there and explore
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the world.
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SPEAKER_00: And so I applied to a bunch of schools on the East Coast.
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I really wanted to go and get,
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go to MIT,
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but I couldn't,
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I didn't get accepted.
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And,
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but I did,
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I got into like,
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you know,
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Berkeley and Rice and a couple others.
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SPEAKER_00: And I, so I,
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SPEAKER_00: I went and visited Rice and they had a really good engineering school,
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SPEAKER_00: but it was also just very fun to be there.
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SPEAKER_00: And I actually ended up studying economics and computer science,
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SPEAKER_00: which later made sense as an intersection for Coinbase.
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But at the time,
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I didn't,
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of course,
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would have no idea that that's what I would end up doing.
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I guess it also had a little bit of like a libertarian
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economics flavor and...
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SPEAKER_02: James Baker... Texas is that mindset.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: There was a building on campus, the James Baker building.
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize it at the time,
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but I actually was learning about a little bit of free market
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economics and how
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SPEAKER_00: that might intersect with crypto down the road was interesting.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Houston has no zoning laws.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: You can just build any sort of thing anywhere you want just about, yeah.
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I love these experiments like that where almost every city in
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America has zoning laws.
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And if you ask the average person,
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like,
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of course you have to have zoning laws.
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SPEAKER_00: Somebody would build,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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a strip club next to an elementary school or something terrible
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like that.
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SPEAKER_00: In Houston, they don't have it.
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SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of all works out.
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And so it makes you question the premise of a lot of things of like,
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do we really need that?
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SPEAKER_00: What would happen if you deleted it?
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And of course,
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you can always re-add things if you delete too much,
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but Elon famously says.
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SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think a lot of these things you have to question.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, you went somewhere, I was hoping to go like a little bit earlier.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean, because you're talking about sort of these libertarian vibes.
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SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of like how you think of yourself today?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say I'm an independent.
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SPEAKER_00: I'd say I'm libertarian-ish.
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SPEAKER_00: I think crypto is deeply libertarian.
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SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think Silicon Valley is deeply libertarian.
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At least to me,
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the best parts of it are,
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you know,
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it also had a bit of a...
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SPEAKER_00: a socialist aspect that came in during certain periods,
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SPEAKER_00: which I think was not in the spirit of Silicon Valley,
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SPEAKER_00: at least the one that I liked.
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SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I remember there's kind of a calling card.
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Like a lot of people are not publicly public about their
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libertarian views,
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SPEAKER_00: which are very socially liberal,
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SPEAKER_00: fiscally conservative.
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SPEAKER_00: It's not even really that crazy.
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SPEAKER_00: It's kind of
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SPEAKER_00: a combination of left and right.
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SPEAKER_00: But they don't,
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SPEAKER_00: people don't come out and say it publicly,
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SPEAKER_00: but behind closed doors you'll actually,
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SPEAKER_00: there's a whole bunch of closeted libertarians running tech companies.
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Yeah,
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I mean,
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I would say that to me it's always felt like kind of the
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prevailing
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SPEAKER_02: One of the prevailing vibes.
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What I appreciate,
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I feel like,
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is you're quite open about some of these things.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: And there's a movie about you and Coinbase, Coin, like a documentary.
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SPEAKER_02: It's fantastic.
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SPEAKER_02: And I don't know.
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SPEAKER_02: You get presented as kind of being shy.
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SPEAKER_02: At least this was my takeaway.
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SPEAKER_02: When you were growing up, that you were kind of on the shyer side.
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SPEAKER_02: And I've always...
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SPEAKER_02: in your role as CEO of Collierbase,
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SPEAKER_02: I've always felt like you were,
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SPEAKER_02: it's not like you were like out there yelling and seeking attention,
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SPEAKER_02: but that when you are,
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SPEAKER_02: when you do care about something,
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SPEAKER_02: you seem willing to be outspoken about it.
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And so I was curious if that's like something that you
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developed over time,
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SPEAKER_02: if that feels comfortable to you,
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SPEAKER_02: or if it's not,
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SPEAKER_02: if it's like deeply uncomfortable.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I never really was somebody who sought out conflict.
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SPEAKER_00: I was never that outspoken.
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SPEAKER_00: I was more like someone who would listen and think and then speak later.
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SPEAKER_00: But I also have a little bit of autism.
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And one characteristic of people who are on the spectrum is
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that they're just very literal.
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SPEAKER_00: They just say what they think.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, this can sometimes get you in trouble and you'll offend somebody.
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SPEAKER_00: But it also is very helpful as an entrepreneur because you just...
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look at the world the way that it actually is and it can help
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you just see things
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SPEAKER_00: which are broken or opportunities or even inside a company,
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SPEAKER_00: sometimes people get caught up in like,
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SPEAKER_00: oh,
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we really want this to be true because our ego is on the line
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or we invested so
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SPEAKER_00: much money in it.
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SPEAKER_00: And sometimes if you can just look at something very objectively,
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SPEAKER_00: it's like,
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SPEAKER_00: oh no,
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SPEAKER_00: that thing's failing.
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SPEAKER_00: Then we need to make a change.
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SPEAKER_00: And it helps you sometimes get to the answer more quickly.
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SPEAKER_00: So there have been times where
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being a little on the spectrum,
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I saw something happening inside the company or in society.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, that doesn't seem right to me.
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SPEAKER_00: And I would just say it.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, I won't claim like complete ignorance.
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Like many of these things I spoke up,
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I knew that it would be controversial.
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SPEAKER_00: But I also just didn't really care.
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SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to say what I thought was true.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm okay with some controversy and people not liking me.
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SPEAKER_00: I just want to say what I think is true.
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SPEAKER_00: Have you always kind of felt like you were on the spectrum?
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SPEAKER_02: This is something you were thought about and were conscious of?
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SPEAKER_02: Or obviously it's gotten more, you know, people are more...
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SPEAKER_02: In tune with this to give it more attention in the last decade or so.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, now it's kind of a badge of honor.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't think it's... Yeah.
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By the way,
11:08
there's,
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of course,
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many people on different ranges of the spectrum.
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SPEAKER_00: It can be quite debilitating in some ways, too.
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But I think actually a large number of tech entrepreneurs are
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on the spectrum.
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SPEAKER_00: So, you know, Peter Thiel has a famous line about this.
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SPEAKER_00: It's like, that's actually a comment on society.
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SPEAKER_00: Like, why do...
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SPEAKER_00: why don't we have more people building companies?
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It's because society is so eager to belittle or make fun of
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people that don't succeed,
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and only the autists who don't perceive or care about it are
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the ones who can get
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SPEAKER_00: through that.
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SPEAKER_00: So it's more a commentary on society than it is on the autism.
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SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: I never really was like formally diagnosed early on,
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SPEAKER_00: but like later in life,
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SPEAKER_00: I took some tests and things like that.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh yeah, I check a lot of those boxes.
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SPEAKER_00: So I think we, yeah, it's funny.
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We might end up in a world at some point where parents are
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thinking about how to
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SPEAKER_00: have kids with the right amount of autism,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: as like a superpower.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: I've been doing this for a long time,
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SPEAKER_02: and it does seem like a superpower to some degree in a lot of cases.
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SPEAKER_02: Okay, and you were talking about parents possibly choosing babies.
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There's a tweet that I wanted to talk to you about because it's
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a bunch of stuff
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SPEAKER_02: that I'm really interested in.
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SPEAKER_02: My general premise here is that you're very comfortable talking about
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things that are kind of like sci-fi-y bordering sometimes on
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the controversial,
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SPEAKER_02: where science is heading.
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And I want to get into that with you because I feel like you're
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comfortable talking
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SPEAKER_02: about some of this stuff.
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SPEAKER_02: And I think there'll be people who listen to this
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SPEAKER_02: who my audience is probably pretty pro a lot of these things,
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but then there's a lot of people looking at stuff like where
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we're heading with IVF
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SPEAKER_02: and they don't like it,
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SPEAKER_02: you know?
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SPEAKER_02: And so anyway, this is a little bit of what I wanted to get into.
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SPEAKER_02: For you,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm kind of putting you in a spot where you obviously don't have to,
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SPEAKER_02: but like making a case for...
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I feel like we're heading to this sci-fi future moment quite
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quickly now.
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SPEAKER_02: And I'm curious to see how the rest of the world adapts to this.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm happy to talk about it.
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SPEAKER_00: And just as context,
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SPEAKER_00: too,
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the through line in the different companies I've started has
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been about trying to
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SPEAKER_00: accelerate civilizational progress and...
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: that can happen via economic freedom,
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SPEAKER_00: which with crypto,
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SPEAKER_00: I think we need that good foundation for society.
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Like people need to have property rights and like not have
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their money eroded and
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SPEAKER_00: be able to keep the upside of their labor.
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SPEAKER_00: That's how they're going to try to do more important things.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: With Research Hub,
13:49
SPEAKER_00: it's accelerating scientific research,
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SPEAKER_00: make it more like open source software.
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With New Limit,
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it's radically extending human health span so we can have more
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productive years.
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Like these are all things which are kind of holding back
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progress in my view.
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SPEAKER_00: And if you zoom out,
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think really all progress comes from technology in a way.
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: even if you go back to cave people,
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we were these small bands of tribes running around and somebody
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had to invent fire
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SPEAKER_00: and the wheel or even just having shoes on your feet.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are all technology, right?
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And today we sort of think of technology as the latest app on
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your phone or like a
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SPEAKER_00: brain machine interface or something.
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SPEAKER_00: And people are always like a little hesitant.
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SPEAKER_00: But eyeglasses are also technology.
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And I'm sure like the first people who started running around
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with pieces of glass
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SPEAKER_00: like on their nose or whatever looked pretty weird.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And it was like, you know, societally controversial.
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And it's actually amazing the number of things you go back and
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look at that were
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SPEAKER_00: controversial when they came out.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: There's a really good book on this.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: The name of it is escaping me.
14:49
But even like the bicycle when it first came out in America was
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very controversial
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SPEAKER_00: because people were like,
14:54
SPEAKER_00: oh,
14:54
SPEAKER_00: my gosh,
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SPEAKER_00: your kids could be anywhere around town.
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SPEAKER_00: It's going to drive licentious behavior.
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SPEAKER_00: Or when chess first came out,
15:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: people were like fixated at these boards for hours,
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SPEAKER_00: like in a trance looking at the pieces.
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SPEAKER_00: And they thought it was like.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, like devil worship.
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SPEAKER_00: People had all these kind of panics about every new wave of technology,
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SPEAKER_00: like even cars versus horses.
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SPEAKER_00: I think even books,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: when books first started to come out,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: it starts to change these oral traditions that we had.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
15:24
SPEAKER_00: there's just,
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SPEAKER_00: whenever you're trying to build something new in the world,
15:27
SPEAKER_00: you have to kind of,
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Of course,
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SPEAKER_00: every new thing is going to have a lot of skepticism from people,
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SPEAKER_00: but you have to try to disentangle,
15:33
SPEAKER_00: okay,
15:34
SPEAKER_00: but is it actually a good idea that will...
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SPEAKER_00: Is this kind of...
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People are going to have skepticism just like they've had
15:38
skepticism of all good ideas,
15:40
SPEAKER_00: or is this skeptical for a different reason,
15:42
SPEAKER_00: like it's actually a bad idea?
15:43
And that's contrarian but right is the sweet spot,
15:46
as Peter Thiel would say.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: All right.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: So this sets us up nicely for this tweet.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you called out four things in this tweet, all four of which...
15:55
SPEAKER_02: either currently writing about or attempting to write about.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: You talked about changes to IVF,
16:03
SPEAKER_02: really,
16:04
SPEAKER_02: making eggs from a skin or a blood cell,
16:08
SPEAKER_02: I assume kind of like any type of cell,
16:10
SPEAKER_02: really.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: And then...
16:13
SPEAKER_00: In vitro gametogenesis, that's called, yeah.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: And then this genetic testing,
16:16
SPEAKER_02: choosing an embryo,
16:19
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:19
SPEAKER_02: with certain kind of traits that you want to see,
16:22
SPEAKER_02: which we're doing now in many ways.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: Embryo editing.
16:27
And then my favorite,
16:28
which is artificial wombs,
16:29
which we'll spend some time on in a second.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, you put out this tweet.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: I saw the comments on this.
16:35
SPEAKER_02: Some people were pro,
16:37
SPEAKER_02: and then there were a whole lot that were like,
16:38
SPEAKER_02: they said,
16:39
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:39
SPEAKER_02: Gattaca was a dystopian horror movie.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: Did you miss that part?
16:46
SPEAKER_02: A mixed reaction.
16:46
I saw there's a company called Orchid that is doing some of
16:50
this IVF work.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: they had a big story in the New York Times.
16:54
They let you filter embryos for disease right now to try and
17:00
make sure one of your
17:02
SPEAKER_02: kids doesn't have a debilitating lifelong condition,
17:05
SPEAKER_02: which on the face of it,
17:07
SPEAKER_02: to me,
17:07
SPEAKER_02: it feels like just about anyone would want to do that same thing.
17:11
When the CEO tweeted out this New York Times piece,
17:14
there was a lot of people,
17:16
especially...
17:19
SPEAKER_02: I don't think I'm overgeneralizing.
17:20
People who tend to be quite religious were seen offended by
17:24
this technology.
17:26
But you clearly see us moving to an era where childbirth is
17:31
changing in a number of ways.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
17:34
and the one on the list you didn't mention probably was the
17:36
most controversial was
17:36
SPEAKER_00: embryo editing too.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: So I think all those technologies are advancing.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, this comes down to do we want to cure and treat disease?
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Do we want to give people more options to have children?
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Or do we want to condemn them to infertility, right?
17:55
And I think the Pew Research did a poll on this in America and
17:58
a bunch of other countries.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And
18:00
They asked people,
18:01
would you be okay with genetic editing to prevent disease?
18:04
SPEAKER_00: And like 80% of America said they'd be okay with that.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Only 20% was skeptical.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: In other countries,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: oh,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: then they also asked,
18:12
SPEAKER_00: would you be okay with genetic editing for enhancement,
18:14
SPEAKER_00: not just disease prevention?
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And only 20% of America or something, maybe 25, was okay with that.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: But if you looked at other countries like India,
18:22
SPEAKER_00: and I suspect China,
18:23
SPEAKER_00: although it was not in that study,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: it's probably like 80% are okay with it.
18:27
So it really is cultural dependent,
18:29
and there could be religious aspects to that.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Like in China,
18:32
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:33
SPEAKER_00: it's more...
18:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm not an expert on this,
18:35
but I think it's more of a Confucian-based society where they
18:38
believe life starts
18:39
SPEAKER_00: at birth,
18:40
SPEAKER_00: not at conception.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, it does tie back to some of those arguments.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: But the main thing for me is that,
18:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:46
SPEAKER_00: we want to use this as a tool to accelerate progress,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: right?
18:48
SPEAKER_00: So nature can be quite cruel.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a little bit of a lottery when people...
18:54
SPEAKER_00: children are born,
18:55
they could end up having some really terrible disease that is
18:58
no fault of their own.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: It's actually like a form of genetic privilege,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: if you will,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: that some people are just born on third base,
19:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:05
SPEAKER_00: and some people have something that's really terrible and debilitating.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: That shouldn't really be the case.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: I think that in
19:13
SPEAKER_00: 25 or 30 years,
19:13
it could be actually inverted where if someone is having
19:16
children without some of
19:17
SPEAKER_00: these modern tools,
19:18
SPEAKER_00: it's kind of like the anti-vaxxers of today,
19:20
or it would be considered a little bit Luddite or like risky or
19:23
dangerous not to do it.
19:26
And then there's a blurry line between disease prevention and
19:29
enhancement too,
19:30
right?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Like if you have a,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: some people have a genetic predisposition to have like low density,
19:34
SPEAKER_00: low bone density or something or osteoporosis.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: So is that a disease?
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Um,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: is having stronger bones also an enhancement might help you,
19:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
19:44
SPEAKER_00: lift heavier weights or just be more healthy.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: It's also an, so it's sort of a, it's a, it's a semantics thing.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Is that an enhancement or disease prevention?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: I think we just,
19:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:53
SPEAKER_00: any parent who we do,
19:55
we already do all of these things to try to make our children's
19:57
lives better off.
19:58
You know,
19:58
we try to get them good education and like feed them really
20:01
good nutrition and,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: they're already enhanced in many different ways, right?
20:06
Like anybody who's ever had their kid do their homework or
20:09
something is like
20:10
SPEAKER_00: enhancing them for the future.
20:12
And so this is just one more way that I think people will do
20:15
that in the future.
20:15
And it'll be controversial at first,
20:17
like IVF,
20:18
but it'll eventually become more common.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully the costs of it will come down.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: I'll say one more thing about Gattaca,
20:24
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
20:24
SPEAKER_00: since the tweet referenced that,
20:27
SPEAKER_00: and I called the combination of all those technologies,
20:29
SPEAKER_00: the Gattaca stack.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, Gattaca was a really good film.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: I think it's inspiring.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And it did have, it was portraying it as a, you know, dangerous thing.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: But I think it missed a couple of interesting points.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: You know,
20:43
one is that eventually we'll be able to make these genetic
20:46
edits in adult humans too,
20:47
SPEAKER_00: right?
20:48
It's not just like you'll be at birth decided you're the chosen
20:51
one or you're not.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: And it's actually like the technology to edit a DNA
20:57
SPEAKER_00: It's getting better and better in terms of like lower error rates.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: How many cells can you edit?
21:02
And there's lots of therapies already being developed that use
21:05
CRISPR and the base editing,
21:06
SPEAKER_00: prime editing that,
21:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:08
SPEAKER_00: they're going through clinical trials.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: So adults will be able to make these choices too, to some degree.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: That's a little farther off, but I think it's directionally correct.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:18
Yeah,
21:18
the last thing,
21:19
let's see,
21:19
I was going to say one other thing about Gattaca.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: What was it?
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
21:22
SPEAKER_00: in the film,
21:23
they sort of portray like the genetically enhanced person has
21:27
an accident and he
21:28
SPEAKER_00: becomes very depressed and,
21:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:29
but the unenhanced person is just so determined that he's able
21:32
to overcome it.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Now,
21:33
SPEAKER_00: that's an inspiring story,
21:34
SPEAKER_00: especially for non-genetically modified humans,
21:36
SPEAKER_00: which is their whole audience,
21:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:38
SPEAKER_00: but...
21:39
Who's to say,
21:40
like,
21:41
you know,
21:42
determination doesn't have a genetic component?
21:45
Like,
21:45
that could be something,
21:46
you know,
21:46
you could also add in if you wanted.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I think the real picture will be much more complicated.
21:51
And a lot of sci-fi is dystopian,
21:54
but you can take elements of it and leave others.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: So how do you see this playing out?
21:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if we can edit...
22:01
SPEAKER_02: The disease stuff, I totally am on board with.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: The enhancement stuff,
22:05
SPEAKER_02: the traits,
22:06
SPEAKER_02: things like that,
22:06
SPEAKER_02: it starts to get,
22:08
SPEAKER_02: I could see that getting weird fast.
22:11
SPEAKER_02: I don't even know if I'm asking you, are you pro or against?
22:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm more curious,
22:16
SPEAKER_02: whatever the number is,
22:17
SPEAKER_02: 50 years from now,
22:19
SPEAKER_02: whether it's an embryo or like you say,
22:21
SPEAKER_02: you're editing.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: Adults.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, adults.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: I mean, how do you see this playing out?
22:26
SPEAKER_02: How do you think it plays out?
22:29
SPEAKER_00: I actually think it's one of those things where it'll,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: people will have a lot of fear about it,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: but the actual change will be much less dramatic than people think.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: You know,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's already lots of people in the world smarter than me.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's people who can run much faster than me.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: We all live in this world already of,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: there's people who spike much higher on certain dimensions.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: And so it's not going to feel that different if it just starts to,
22:59
SPEAKER_00: everything starts to shift up a little bit.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: And you have to remember that we're talking about children here.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: So even if, let's say...
23:07
SPEAKER_00: You know,
23:07
SPEAKER_00: there's been,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I think,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: two genetically edited embryos by JK or Hu Jinkui,
23:13
SPEAKER_00: if I'm probably butchering his name,
23:14
SPEAKER_00: in China.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: But let's say that there was a thousand babies or something tomorrow.
23:19
I mean,
23:21
first of all,
23:21
they're babies,
23:22
so it'll take them 20 years to grow up.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: So nothing's going to happen for 20 years.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, it's 1,000 people out of 8 billion.
23:29
And so it's just not really going to feel different at all,
23:31
even if there were 1,000 of these.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: And the enhancements would probably be very minor too,
23:36
SPEAKER_00: especially for disease prevention,
23:38
SPEAKER_00: which is where this will all start off with.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: And just be clear,
23:41
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
23:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't really actually have any company I'm working on in this space.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: I just kind of find it intellectually interesting.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: But you would not feel a single change in society from that.
23:51
And so this is something that would take much longer than that
23:54
to happen and play out,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: like 50,
23:57
SPEAKER_00: 100 years.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: So I think if there's some sort of moral panic about it, it's...
24:01
SPEAKER_00: largely going to be unfounded, but that won't stop it from happening.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: But even if we go 50 or 100 years,
24:07
you don't think we start to push towards certain traits and
24:12
things get favored and
24:14
SPEAKER_02: fall in and out.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
24:17
SPEAKER_02: it's easy to run this in your head and see different scenarios,
24:20
SPEAKER_02: some of which are quite strange.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:23
Yeah,
24:23
well,
24:23
the thing is,
24:24
there's almost infinite variety in human preferences.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: So,
24:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:31
SPEAKER_00: if it was,
24:31
let's just imagine there was a button you could press and you
24:35
could look like,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or some,
24:37
SPEAKER_00: whatever.
24:40
It would very quickly become uncool to look like that because
24:44
everybody's looking like that.
24:45
So the fashions are trend in all kinds of,
24:49
there's infinite variety and remixing.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: People have a desire for uniqueness, right?
24:53
SPEAKER_00: People have a lot of pride in their own things that they care about.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And so I actually don't really see it reducing diversity.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: I think it would actually increase diversity.
25:03
in many dimensions um i mean there's you know maybe somebody
25:08
will have gills and
25:09
they can breathe their water like i don't know you can see have
25:12
cat eyes and see in
25:13
the dark or whatever like anything is possible if you really
25:16
take that to its
25:16
natural extension in in hundreds of years so it'll it's it's
25:20
actually more of like
25:21
right now biological evolution has happened via natural
25:24
selection which is
25:27
SPEAKER_00: actually a pretty crude algorithm.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of, can you survive long enough to replicate?
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And if so, those things, you see more of them.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: And if not,
25:34
so actually evolution doesn't really care about how happy you
25:37
are or whether you're depressed.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't care about how smart you are.
25:42
It doesn't care about how many fellow human beings you helped
25:44
or whatever.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just, did you survive long enough to replicate?
25:47
SPEAKER_00: So it's a pretty naive algorithm.
25:49
It takes tens or hundreds of thousands a year sometimes to
25:51
really make massive changes.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think that if this really,
25:54
if we're able to take control of our own biology in the next
25:57
century or something,
25:58
SPEAKER_00: you will essentially just see evolution accelerate.
26:02
And what it means to be human in thousands of years could be
26:05
very different.
26:05
But it's also going to be different for many other reasons,
26:07
like AI and merging with AI.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, the world's going to be different in many dimensions.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: That's just one of them.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: And like that,
26:15
SPEAKER_02: this idea that the world will be different,
26:19
SPEAKER_00: it strikes me,
26:19
SPEAKER_02: it just like excites you.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
26:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
26:23
I think some people are really afraid of change and they feel
26:27
like the world is
26:28
SPEAKER_00: moving too fast and it's like,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: they have to be re-skilled to get the next job.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think that makes sense to some degree.
26:36
But I also think all progress involves change and we should
26:41
actually in general be
26:42
SPEAKER_00: trying to accelerate progress.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:46
Yeah,
26:46
I mean,
26:46
our lives are immeasurably better off than they were 20 or 50
26:50
years ago.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: And do people always make these comments,
26:53
SPEAKER_00: which are true,
26:53
SPEAKER_00: about the average person today can afford antibiotics,
26:59
which doesn't matter if you were the king of England or the
27:01
wealthiest person in
27:02
SPEAKER_00: the world,
27:02
SPEAKER_00: you couldn't have gotten that 100 years ago.
27:05
So we're all immeasurably better off if we accelerate
27:09
technological progress.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: And it does require change, but I think it's worth it.
27:15
And you've always felt like this somewhere,
27:20
or this is a position you've come to over time?
27:25
SPEAKER_00: I think I've always felt that way in some sense.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: I was always just excited about the future.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Some people live in the past, you know, and they revere the past.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Some people live in the present.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Actually being present is a pretty good thing.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: For some reason, I was always excited about the future.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually not really sure what the origin of that is.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: But, yeah, I was always looking forward to something better.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen that?
27:49
The Chinese scientist that you mentioned,
27:50
have you seen his Twitter account?
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: He's like the...
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Kanye of biology or something.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: It's really bizarre.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And there's a parody account that's pretty funny too.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: But like that other account is not a parody.
28:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is him legit tweeting like that.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: His real account seems like a parody at times, but it's not.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And there's a parody that's even more extreme.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: I've only just come across this.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: He's kind of like embracing the supervillain role or something like that.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: I've never met him.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: But maybe he's on the spectrum too.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: But even too far or something, I don't know.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going on there.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, I will put it in the show notes.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: It is a fun account to follow.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe he did a bunch of ayahuasca or something.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: But something weird is going on there.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: On the artificial wombs.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: All right.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: So I've heard people...
28:43
so far working on this mostly i guess in stealth mode or in
28:47
secret to some degree
28:49
but there's there's a growing i i hear about some companies
28:52
that are for one it
28:56
could just be more straightforward an artificial womb you where
29:00
a child you know is
29:02
is brought up so that people don't have to do that and then
29:05
there's another part
29:06
SPEAKER_02: where it's kind of
29:08
SPEAKER_02: could be like a body that's growing organs, you know what I mean?
29:12
It doesn't,
29:13
hopefully it's not feeling anything,
29:14
doesn't have a head,
29:15
something like that.
29:16
SPEAKER_02: Do you,
29:19
SPEAKER_02: this is obviously something you're aware of,
29:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
29:22
SPEAKER_02: same kind of thing,
29:23
you just see this natural progression that we're heading
29:26
towards this type of technology.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
29:29
SPEAKER_00: well,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: first of all,
29:31
SPEAKER_00: I think it's an important,
29:32
SPEAKER_00: um,
29:33
SPEAKER_00: medical device to,
29:34
SPEAKER_00: for people to work on because,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: um,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: many women don't have the option of having children.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Um,
29:39
SPEAKER_00: even those who do,
29:41
SPEAKER_00: it can be risky,
29:42
SPEAKER_00: including death,
29:43
SPEAKER_00: um,
29:44
SPEAKER_00: and very debilitating and takes them out of the workforce.
29:48
And it's,
29:48
it's,
29:49
it's important for equality and like choice and all kinds of reasons.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Um,
29:55
SPEAKER_00: We also have a declining birth rate too, right?
29:56
SPEAKER_00: So fewer and fewer people are having children.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: That's its own issue.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: But I think the most interesting version of the artificial womb research,
30:05
SPEAKER_00: and again,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't actually have any project in this space or investment,
30:08
SPEAKER_00: but I think it's interesting.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: I hope more people will work on it.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: So there's kind of, you can approach it from two sides.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, one is that
30:18
An embryo in a lab,
30:20
I think people have been able to keep those alive longer.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I forget, maybe it's like eight or 12 weeks or something.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: It starts to go out from there.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: And then conversely,
30:30
SPEAKER_00: when babies are born prematurely,
30:32
SPEAKER_00: they can put them in these incubators and there's different technology.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually not an expert on this,
30:37
but the number of weeks that you can be born prematurely keeps
30:40
getting earlier and
30:41
SPEAKER_00: earlier and still have a live survival,
30:43
SPEAKER_00: right?
30:44
SPEAKER_00: And so in some ways, those things are getting closer and closer together.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: And then there's this gap in the middle between the two where the embryo,
30:52
SPEAKER_00: I think it needs to attach to the wall of the uterus.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: And this is where it gets
30:58
the vasculature that nourishes it and then it has a placenta
31:03
and all these kind of things,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: right?
31:04
SPEAKER_00: That part, nobody, as far as I know, has figured out.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: And,
31:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:09
SPEAKER_00: if they are able to figure that out,
31:11
SPEAKER_00: I think it would,
31:13
SPEAKER_00: eventually it'll get to,
31:15
SPEAKER_00: it'll start with animals and different things as it always does,
31:18
SPEAKER_00: but,
31:18
SPEAKER_00: in these studies,
31:19
but eventually you could get it to a place where it's actually
31:21
safer to do a birth
31:23
SPEAKER_00: that way than it is the natural way,
31:25
SPEAKER_00: so to speak.
31:26
So it doesn't mean it has to be perfect,
31:28
and it's kind of like self-driving cars.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not that they need to have zero accidents ever.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: They just need to be better than human drivers.
31:34
And this is sort of a similar thing that will progress over time,
31:38
I think.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: So when you say you're not invested...
31:41
SPEAKER_02: You know, startup that's pursuing this.
31:43
I just always notice,
31:44
man,
31:44
I mean,
31:44
we're going to talk about New Limit in a second.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: You're just so, you're really well-versed on science.
31:50
SPEAKER_02: This is just stuff you're interested in and you read about.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, you speak about it very fluently.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: It's like clearly a bit more than a hobby or something like that.
31:59
Yeah,
31:59
well,
31:59
compared to most scientists,
32:00
I don't feel like I'm fluent on it.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
32:06
SPEAKER_00: and by the way,
32:06
SPEAKER_00: if there is a great embryo editing or artificial womb company,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: I would be interested in talking to them.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: I know three.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: You should probably send them to me afterwards.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I have learned a lot by co-founding New Limit.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: And then I actually,
32:22
I hired a biology tutor when New Limit was first starting
32:24
because I felt so...
32:27
SPEAKER_00: you know, inarticulate.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And I actually didn't understand it from high school biology or whatever,
32:31
SPEAKER_00: enough of the concepts.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: So I tried reading some textbooks on biology to get up to speed,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: but it was,
32:36
SPEAKER_00: I found it very difficult to learn that way.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: if you occasionally need to look up a word of something you're reading,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: that's fine.
32:42
But if you read a sentence and it has like three to five words
32:45
that you don't understand,
32:46
SPEAKER_00: it's like impossible to get through that book.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
32:49
SPEAKER_00: actually I reached out to one of our,
32:51
SPEAKER_00: the SAB scientific advisory board members at New Limit
32:54
SPEAKER_00: who's this really famous scientist, Alex Marson.
32:57
And I was like,
32:58
do you have any grad students or postdocs who can tutor me?
33:00
So for about a year and a half on Sundays,
33:03
Sunday afternoons,
33:03
I would do like biology tutoring.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And that was a much more effective way to learn.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: To be clear,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm still not an expert,
33:09
SPEAKER_00: but I at least went from like a one out of 10 to like a three out of 10.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: I was able to be a little more conversant with the team.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Did you get homework?
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: Did you do it?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: Did you,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
33:26
SPEAKER_02: cause I know the Collison brothers,
33:28
SPEAKER_02: they've always,
33:28
SPEAKER_02: they've,
33:29
SPEAKER_02: as long as I've known them,
33:30
SPEAKER_02: they've had tutors and different subjects,
33:32
SPEAKER_02: but I,
33:33
SPEAKER_02: yeah.
33:33
SPEAKER_02: Had you heard about that or you just, no, I didn't know they used tutors.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Um,
33:37
SPEAKER_00: I borrowed that idea from somebody else,
33:38
SPEAKER_00: but I think if you can afford it,
33:41
SPEAKER_00: tutoring is a very effective way to get up to speed on something.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: And I know the Collison brothers, they're just avid.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: They devour books too.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: I listen to a lot of audio books, but I'm not as fast visually reading.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: I think they just visually devour books.
33:52
They they read a ton and then but then when I first started
33:55
interviewing them,
33:56
they would do a physicist for one year and then a lawyer and
33:59
then and then just
34:01
SPEAKER_02: grab people.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Polymaths.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:04
SPEAKER_02: It's those guys can speak about a lot of stuff.
34:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: OK.
34:10
And so New Limit is is a company that you're invested in and
34:16
we're going to have an
34:17
SPEAKER_02: episode on them either
34:21
SPEAKER_02: Before or after this podcast airs, I'm not sure at the moment.
34:24
But I'll try to explain it and then maybe you can fix whatever
34:29
I get wrong.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: But there was this discovery of these things called Yamanaka factors.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: It's these four.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: They're called Yamanaka factors.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: They're also called transcription factors.
34:42
These four are basically proteins that it turns out you can
34:46
take a skin cell.
34:48
SPEAKER_02: You can take a liver cell, brain cell.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: activate these four proteins on it,
34:53
SPEAKER_02: dial the cell all the way back to a stem cell state,
34:57
SPEAKER_02: this blank slate.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: And this is already fascinating right there,
35:02
SPEAKER_02: because before we're dealing with embryos and things like that,
35:06
SPEAKER_02: and now we're creating these stem cells in a lab.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: And then...
35:10
SPEAKER_02: I think it was Alex Ocampo,
35:12
SPEAKER_02: I believe,
35:12
who really started to show some of where this could be applied
35:16
to aging and longevity,
35:18
SPEAKER_02: that you don't maybe have to go all the way back.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: You can take your liver cell back to a younger liver cell state,
35:25
SPEAKER_02: but maintain that liver identity.
35:27
SPEAKER_02: And then New Limit, I think it's safe to say,
35:32
SPEAKER_02: We knew about these four proteins,
35:34
SPEAKER_02: these four factors,
35:35
SPEAKER_02: but you guys went on this hunt to see,
35:37
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:37
SPEAKER_02: we know there's possibly,
35:40
SPEAKER_02: well,
35:41
it's like an astronomical number of combinations that could
35:44
have these effects,
35:44
SPEAKER_02: right?
35:45
And so you've been on this hunt to try to find other
35:48
combinations of these
35:49
SPEAKER_02: transcription factors that might have interesting properties.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you said it better than I could.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: So that's great.
35:57
I mean,
35:58
yeah,
35:58
so the Yamanaka factors were really...
35:59
I mean,
35:59
he won the Nobel Prize for that.
36:01
It was a groundbreaking discovery that just these four proteins
36:05
could totally transform a cell.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Both the identity of the cell,
36:08
SPEAKER_00: it changed the type of cell,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: but it also changed the age of the cell back to this stem cell state.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: And it really proved that...
36:16
Aging is not some irreversible accumulation of damage that
36:19
happens because if we
36:21
can reprogram a cell back to an embryo and it creates a new
36:24
offspring and it has
36:25
SPEAKER_00: its whole healthy life ahead of it,
36:26
then obviously that cell didn't accumulate a bunch of
36:29
irreversible damage.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: It actually was reversible.
36:32
And so what we're doing at New Limit is we're actually trying
36:34
to do kind of half of
36:35
SPEAKER_00: what Yamanaka did.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to change the cell age without changing the cell type.
36:39
Changing the cell type turns out to be a little dangerous
36:41
because if you change it
36:43
SPEAKER_00: back to a stem cell in your body,
36:44
SPEAKER_00: it can grow a teratoma,
36:46
SPEAKER_00: these different tumors and things.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: So you actually don't want to change the type.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: You only want to change the cell age.
36:50
And when I say cell age,
36:51
I mean really restore function that the cell had when it was younger.
36:55
So we're doing that by searching the vast space of
36:59
transcription factors for novel sets.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to change, modify the Yamanaka factors.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: We're searching for totally novel sets.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: And as you pointed out, it's a massive search space.
37:08
So there's maybe like 2,000 different transcription factors in
37:12
the human cells.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: If you said,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: even if you were really smart,
37:16
SPEAKER_00: you pick 1,000 of them and discard the other half,
37:18
SPEAKER_00: and then you say,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: how many combinations of five or one through five are there of 1,000?
37:22
SPEAKER_00: It's roughly like 10 to the 16th.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: It's more...
37:25
It's more combinations than all the single cell sequencing
37:28
we've done on the planet combined.
37:30
So you're not going to be able to do a brute force,
37:32
exhaustive search of all those combinations.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: But what we can do is use machine learning to triangulate to the answer.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we started doing at New Limit.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: So we're searching the novel space of transcription factors,
37:44
see if we can reprogram these older cells to restore function
37:46
they had when they
37:47
SPEAKER_00: were younger.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: And we've now screened about 12,000 different combinations.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at our year-over-year progress, it's like...
37:54
SPEAKER_00: It's like an exponential, right?
37:55
And so we're kind of building like the gigafactory of
38:01
transcription screening.
38:04
One other framework I'll just leave you with is there's kind of
38:06
a spectrum of
38:07
SPEAKER_00: biotech companies from bioinsight driven to bio naive.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Bioinsight driven is saying, hey, we're smart biologists.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: We can read a bunch of papers.
38:15
We can do targeted experiments to try to understand really how
38:18
the biology works.
38:19
Bio naive is saying,
38:21
actually,
38:21
we don't understand how a lot of biology works.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: And maybe we don't need to.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: We just want to exhaustively search, try tons of experiments.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And if we find something that works,
38:29
SPEAKER_00: even if we have no idea how it works,
38:31
SPEAKER_00: it's more important that it works.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe retroactively we'll find out later how.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: And so on that spectrum, New Limit is a little more bio-naive driven.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: We're not like 100% there.
38:40
We do use literature insights to sometimes try to help get us
38:43
there faster.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: But we are OK trying thousands of different hypotheses.
38:49
hundreds of different experiments that don't work to discover
38:53
new things on the frontier.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: And it makes it a very exciting company.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: You guys just gave a progress update.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
38:58
SPEAKER_02: like you mentioned,
38:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
39:01
SPEAKER_02: the discovery process has been going well,
39:03
SPEAKER_02: but you're also,
39:04
SPEAKER_02: we're on the cusp of therapies possibly as well.
39:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
39:09
SPEAKER_02: Can you bring people up to speed on...
39:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
39:12
SPEAKER_00: well,
39:13
SPEAKER_00: when I first,
39:15
SPEAKER_00: I co-founded the company along with,
39:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:17
SPEAKER_00: Jacob Kimmel,
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Blake Byers,
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Greg Johnson,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: brilliant scientists who came together,
39:22
SPEAKER_00: because I didn't have that background,
39:23
SPEAKER_00: right?
39:24
SPEAKER_00: But I initially,
39:25
SPEAKER_00: when I was putting in money into this,
39:27
I initially thought this might be like five or six years of
39:29
just kind of basic research.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Turns out that part went faster than we thought,
39:33
and it already has started to generate exciting early results
39:36
in that we've
39:37
SPEAKER_00: actually successfully demonstrated reprogramming of a human cell.
39:41
We thought that would take much longer,
39:43
and that's really like a milestone in the field.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: So we've been able to take an older human liver cell, hepatocyte.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: We get these from aged donors, like in their 80s.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: And we also have a bunch of donors that are younger, like in their 20s.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: By the way,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: side little morbid fact,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: you might wonder where you're getting from the elderly people.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: People get biopsies of the liver and stuff.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Why are there 20 year olds, you know, donating their liver cells?
40:14
SPEAKER_00: It's unfortunately,
40:14
SPEAKER_00: I think it's largely from motorcycle accidents,
40:17
SPEAKER_00: young people who passed away anyway.
40:20
And so we have taken some of those older human cells and
40:24
actually reprogrammed them.
40:26
And they've now started to go through functional assays and
40:30
demonstrate that they
40:30
SPEAKER_00: are acting like the younger cells.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean that it's going to work in humans.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: We are doing it in human cells,
40:38
SPEAKER_00: but the—not to get too into details,
40:41
SPEAKER_00: but these are actually human cells that have been grafted into mice.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: They're—
40:45
When I was there,
40:46
I got to hold a mouse that had at least a partial human liver.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: I believe it's called like a xenograft model or something.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's kind of crazy.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: You can actually have like a mouse running around with a human liver.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you give it,
41:01
SPEAKER_00: like a high-fat diet or too much alcohol or whatever.
41:04
It has all the same things that happens in humans when you
41:07
drink too much.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, it's still early.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: I want to just caveat all of this.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: We haven't entered human clinical trials yet.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: We'll probably do that in 2027 or something.
41:19
So this is going to be a long time before this is going to be
41:21
commercially
41:22
SPEAKER_00: available to people,
41:23
SPEAKER_00: and it could still fail at many points along the way.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: So I want to set expectations here.
41:28
Just the fact that we're seeing these early results in the
41:30
field and having
41:31
successfully demonstrated a human cell being reprogrammed to
41:34
restore its youthful function,
41:36
SPEAKER_00: that's exciting.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: And it's caused us to really double down.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: How do you... This is a question.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: Same thing.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: I always have further calls than brothers.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: I mean...
41:46
SPEAKER_02: Coinbase, amazing company, very exciting space.
41:49
And then you've got this other company,
41:51
you know,
41:52
could make people live longer,
41:55
healthier.
41:55
How do you,
41:57
isn't there sometimes a part of you that's like,
41:59
oh,
41:59
I'm going to switch gears.
42:00
I'm going to go spend all my time at New Limit and this is
42:03
where I'm going to put my focus now.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: No, no, I really enjoy actually doing a plethora of things.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: And Coinbase is very much still my main job.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'm an investor in New Limit, board member.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm also helping them,
42:17
SPEAKER_00: like,
42:18
SPEAKER_00: 20% time here and there to try to help,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:20
SPEAKER_00: build the company.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: But...
42:23
SPEAKER_00: I find it very intellectually engaging to just work on a handful,
42:27
SPEAKER_00: a small handful of different things and learn,
42:29
take the best practices from one company and try to apply it to
42:32
the other.
42:32
It's a little bit like some CEOs are on the board of other
42:34
companies and they learn
42:35
SPEAKER_00: a lot from it.
42:36
I'm not on any other boards than like New Limit,
42:39
I guess the one I invested in Research Hub.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: But...
42:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's different because Coinbase is at scale now.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
42:50
SPEAKER_00: we have,
42:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to share the exact numbers,
42:55
SPEAKER_00: but we're a public company,
42:57
SPEAKER_00: but it's a massive company.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: We can apply big teams, lots of resources to really innovative things.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: New Limit is more of a startup, right?
43:05
SPEAKER_00: And so both are exciting.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that
43:08
SPEAKER_00: The people who are, we're living in this golden age of software, right?
43:11
SPEAKER_00: Like fortunes are being made in software in some cases.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And so it's really cool to see this next generation of entrepreneurs,
43:17
SPEAKER_00: and you mentioned some of the other ones,
43:18
that I think are taking some of the proceeds of the golden age
43:21
of software and
43:22
SPEAKER_00: moving it into the land of atoms.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Like atoms is more expensive to move than bits.
43:28
Some of the biggest problems to go solve in the world are in
43:30
the world of atoms.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's all the things you're probably doing your show on.
43:33
I think like if you had to pick the five most important trends,
43:37
to me it's like,
43:38
SPEAKER_00: You got AI,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: crypto is creating more economic freedom,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: got space,
43:43
SPEAKER_00: brain machine interfaces,
43:46
SPEAKER_00: maybe like fusion energy or something to get.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: And then I think it's longevity, right?
43:51
And how to take control of our biology and like accelerate
43:53
evolution essentially.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: So to me, those are the big ones.
43:57
There's already really good teams working on a lot of those
43:59
things I just mentioned,
44:00
SPEAKER_00: including Coinbase.
44:00
Like the longevity piece was the one I didn't see enough smart
44:04
people working on.
44:05
And so that's partly why I decided to take some of the,
44:07
this was after Coinbase went public.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: I took some of the proceeds of that and kind of like,
44:11
SPEAKER_00: okay,
44:12
SPEAKER_00: let's put it into the land of atoms and try something really hard,
44:14
SPEAKER_00: but that would be really impactful if it worked.
44:17
SPEAKER_02: Okay,
44:17
SPEAKER_02: I was going to ask you,
44:18
SPEAKER_02: if you look at someone like Sam Altman,
44:20
SPEAKER_02: I think he's got a bet in each one of the areas.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Sam's great at this.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, and then World is kind of his finance identity thing.
44:29
SPEAKER_02: Helion and a couple others.
44:30
SPEAKER_02: Energy.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: Retro for longevity.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: And then I'm forgetting one on our list somewhere in there.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: But has made... But you...
44:43
You haven't found other spots in all those areas that have
44:47
interested you enough
44:47
SPEAKER_02: where you just said it was kind of been there.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: Other people were doing that.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
44:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
44:52
a lot of it is you're trying to pick something that to spend
44:56
your time on where if
44:57
SPEAKER_00: you didn't do it,
44:58
SPEAKER_00: it wouldn't happen,
44:59
SPEAKER_00: or at least not anywhere near as fast.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: Like if there's already somebody doing a really great job on AI,
45:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't personally,
45:06
unless I feel like I have some much better idea that just has
45:09
to happen in the world,
45:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to like enter just to compete with them.
45:13
I'm looking for things that are under-invested in that I could
45:17
try to help
45:18
SPEAKER_00: accelerate and bring forward.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm just keeping an eye on time.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to do a couple crypto questions, but nothing massive.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: I was reading this...
45:29
new york times story this is from 2022 was not the most
45:33
flattering profile of
45:35
coinbase it presented you guys as having made a lot of big bets
45:39
that didn't pay off
45:40
um going through some financial struggles there was an amusing
45:44
part of this story i
45:46
thought though you know it says it's talking about your
45:49
competitors at the time sbf
45:51
SPEAKER_02: and and and binance and um
45:54
SPEAKER_02: It says, you know, its competitors appear to be faring better.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: Sam Baker and Freed,
45:59
SPEAKER_02: chief executive of FTX,
46:01
SPEAKER_02: said in an email that his financial results had been,
46:04
SPEAKER_02: quote,
46:05
SPEAKER_02: ballpark similar to last year.
46:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, as I was reading the story, I mean, this is 2022.
46:10
SPEAKER_02: The thing that stands out is that you did not go to jail.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for noticing that.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: Among these other guys.
46:19
SPEAKER_02: I've heard you talk about this a little bit, but I mean, there must be...
46:23
must be so bizarre to operate in just such a chaotic business
46:31
for this many years i
46:32
i think i signed up for coinbase super early um yeah i don't
46:36
know you seem very
46:37
chill like you're you're still together i would have thought
46:41
you'd you know it
46:42
SPEAKER_02: seems like a good way to to lose your to lose your head
46:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it's true.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, crypto has gone through lots of ups and downs.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: We've tried to be this responsible player in the room,
46:53
SPEAKER_00: have a long-term perspective,
46:54
SPEAKER_00: help mature the industry.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: I actually think one of the important things as an entrepreneur is,
46:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
47:01
SPEAKER_00: as a journalist,
47:02
SPEAKER_00: I think of you in a very different category than most journalists,
47:04
but I actually think it's important not to read a lot of press
47:08
about your company.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Um,
47:11
SPEAKER_00: because you kind of,
47:11
you really want to only read things from people who have your
47:15
best interest at heart.
47:16
Like if,
47:17
if my board member calls me like,
47:18
Brian,
47:18
you're really screwing this up.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: Like, I need you to give you some feedback.
47:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, I take that very seriously.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: Or if our customers are complaining or something,
47:25
SPEAKER_00: or if I call somebody like to ask them for advice,
47:28
SPEAKER_00: but
47:30
You know,
47:30
I actually never read that New York Times piece that you're quoting.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: So you were quoting things to me I didn't know about.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: Because I think you want to preserve your...
47:41
SPEAKER_00: your mental cycles for the day.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like the most scarce thing we all have is time.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: And if you just,
47:47
if there's something on your phone in the morning and it's like
47:50
some text message
47:51
SPEAKER_00: and it makes you angry and now like,
47:53
SPEAKER_00: it's just stealing energy from your concentration and your time.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to use my time and energy to focus on my priorities,
48:01
not somebody else's priorities or whatever game they're playing
48:05
to try to do their
48:05
SPEAKER_00: thing in the world.
48:06
So I actually really consciously try to tune out everything
48:09
that I think is not,
48:12
operating in good faith or trying to serve my interests or has
48:16
my interests at heart.
48:17
And you,
48:17
I mean,
48:19
you've caught some strays from the press,
48:22
you know,
48:23
over the years.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: I should have mentioned that, too.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: I think the reason that they were writing that hit piece,
48:28
SPEAKER_00: although I didn't read it,
48:29
was like we had put out the Mission First blog post and people
48:33
who worked at The
48:34
SPEAKER_00: New York Times subsequently told me that after we put that out,
48:36
SPEAKER_00: they...
48:38
spun up a little squad of people to like,
48:39
go write a bunch of hit pieces on this company.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: So it just didn't align with their worldview.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think, I actually don't think they're really journalists.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: I think they're more like political activists.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think it's not real journalism.
48:55
And like,
48:55
since all that happened,
48:56
I mean,
48:56
you famously said,
48:58
you know,
48:58
look,
49:00
SPEAKER_02: We just don't want to be doing a ton of politics inside of our company.
49:02
SPEAKER_02: We're going to do the company.
49:04
And if you have a problem with that,
49:06
you're welcome to go work somewhere else.
49:09
SPEAKER_02: And people covered a lot of this.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: We're, what, two, three, four years away from that now.
49:16
Has hindsight brought out any other thoughts on that experience
49:24
or how it played out?
49:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think in hindsight, it was a really good decision.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: It's definitely a lot of other CEOs called me to like thank me for that.
49:34
And many of them followed in other ways that were probably
49:37
received fewer arrows.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: So that was good for them.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: You know,
49:40
SPEAKER_00: it was hard to go through,
49:41
but it was because it happened because I was failing as a
49:44
leader to provide clarity
49:45
SPEAKER_00: about the kind of
49:47
SPEAKER_00: how we were going to work together and where we were going.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: I was kind of walking on eggshells.
49:50
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to deal with that at the time.
49:52
And so it taught me to be a better leader and just to not be conflict-averse.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: And you need to provide clarity to the organization.
50:01
And then people can choose if they want to be in that
50:03
organization or not.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: At the time,
50:05
SPEAKER_02: you were seen as like a radical and,
50:08
SPEAKER_02: like I said,
50:09
SPEAKER_02: caught quite a few strays for that.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: As the years...
50:13
SPEAKER_02: Even companies like Google,
50:17
SPEAKER_02: as far as I could tell,
50:18
kind of ended up much closer to your position and that this
50:22
became sort of like a
50:24
SPEAKER_02: vaguely accepted mainstream way to maybe run your company.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that's true.
50:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
50:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you've been asked this a ton.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: I have to apologize.
50:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't cover crypto a ton.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: That's fine.
50:39
SPEAKER_02: You know,
50:39
SPEAKER_02: as this new administration has come in,
50:41
SPEAKER_02: obviously we have like a crypto czar now and people who,
50:47
SPEAKER_02: like David Sachs,
50:47
SPEAKER_02: has been in this arena for many,
50:50
SPEAKER_02: many years and knows what's going on.
50:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
50:54
SPEAKER_02: What is your 50,000-foot view?
50:59
SPEAKER_02: Has this helped things trend in a direction you wanted to see or not?
51:04
Yeah,
51:04
I'd say this new administration has been markedly better than
51:08
the prior one on crypto.
51:10
And we have the most pro-crypto Congress now too,
51:12
which is very bipartisan,
51:14
by the way.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: Both on left and right, we have much more crypto champions.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: So it's been really good.
51:20
I mean,
51:21
first of all,
51:22
the SEC case against us got dropped,
51:24
which was bogus.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think we would have won it eventually anyway in the courts,
51:29
but it was nice just to have them admit that it was bogus and
51:33
just drop it with
51:34
SPEAKER_00: zero fines,
51:35
SPEAKER_00: zero changes to our business.
51:37
It was great to have the United States government come out and
51:39
say they want to
51:40
SPEAKER_00: actually buy and hold Bitcoin in the Bitcoin strategic reserve.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was incredible.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: In my wildest dreams,
51:47
SPEAKER_00: I imagined that might be possible 10 years ago,
51:49
SPEAKER_00: but to see it actually happen was really cool.
51:52
And then now we're on the cusp of getting legislation passed,
51:54
which will be the trifecta here.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: And stablecoin legislation has gotten passed in the Senate committee,
52:02
SPEAKER_00: the House committee,
52:02
and it's now going hopefully to the full Congress and then the
52:05
president's desk.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Same thing with market structure legislation,
52:09
SPEAKER_00: which helps clarify which of these assets are securities,
52:12
SPEAKER_00: commodities,
52:12
SPEAKER_00: payment tokens,
52:13
SPEAKER_00: or artwork,
52:14
SPEAKER_00: that was the big lack of clarity in the past.
52:16
So that legislation,
52:18
the president has said he wants to sign that by August.
52:20
SPEAKER_00: We'll see if that happens.
52:22
So with those two pieces of legislation,
52:25
I think the world looks very different.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: By the way,
52:29
SPEAKER_00: other democracies will go copy and emulate that to some degree,
52:33
but lots of institutional money will come in that was waiting
52:36
on the sidelines,
52:37
SPEAKER_00: kind of waiting to see when regulatory clarity would emerge.
52:40
SPEAKER_00: Lots of startups will now get built because there is regulatory clarity.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: In the past, they were worried about
52:45
SPEAKER_00: getting sued by the SEC.
52:47
And I think it'll ensure that America continues to be a
52:50
technology and a financial
52:51
SPEAKER_00: hub and leader by,
52:53
because crypto is really just a technology to update the
52:55
financial system and make
52:56
SPEAKER_00: it more efficient and fair and free.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll now get a chance to go do that.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: It'll greatly increase the TAM potential of Coinbase.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: And you ticked off a couple of these big items.
53:09
There were,
53:10
I put a thing on X,
53:11
you know,
53:11
questions to ask you and people were,
53:14
SPEAKER_02: What are the three specific things you would like to see?
53:18
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
53:20
SPEAKER_02: what you just laid out,
53:20
SPEAKER_02: does that really cover all your big-ticket items,
53:22
or do you think there's still one or two specific things you
53:26
would also like to see done?
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, those are the big ones, but...
53:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
53:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
53:31
SPEAKER_00: like any financial service company,
53:32
we're going to have lots of interaction with regulators and
53:35
Congress over time.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: You know,
53:36
SPEAKER_00: for instance,
53:38
SPEAKER_00: we'd love to actually begin to tokenize equities like,
53:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:42
SPEAKER_00: Nvidia and Tesla and other stocks that people are trading.
53:45
There's a bunch of reasons I think that's interesting we could
53:47
get into if you want.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: There's...
53:49
also like perpetual futures has some is something that outside
53:52
of the us has been
53:53
enormously successful in crypto it's it's a superior trading
53:56
product for a bunch of
53:57
reasons like people can get additional um leverage and anyway
54:01
but they actually
54:02
weren't approved in the united states i think if that could get
54:05
fixed that would be
54:05
a huge opportunity for the us so there's a handful um like
54:09
crypto payments now with
54:10
stable coins are getting really really good and so there's a
54:13
lot of things like
54:13
SPEAKER_00: that that could be
54:15
SPEAKER_00: We'll work with the government on.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
54:18
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it is like a weird feel.
54:21
I wrote a ton of stories in the early days when people were
54:24
just starting to do
54:25
SPEAKER_02: Bitcoin mining and everything.
54:26
SPEAKER_02: I was so into it.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: And then obviously, I'm not saying anything people don't know.
54:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like crypto's had such booms and busts.
54:33
SPEAKER_02: And then people kind of still, I think, roll their eyes.
54:35
SPEAKER_02: You know, some people roll their eyes when it's like, oh, crypto.
54:37
SPEAKER_02: I was like, I never even understand this.
54:39
SPEAKER_02: And it's never living up to everything I was told.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:46
SPEAKER_02: It sounds like you feel like if some of this legislation gets passed,
54:51
SPEAKER_02: then some of these more practical applications,
54:54
it starts to clear out these blocks that make this more of an
54:59
everyday type thing.
55:01
Yeah,
55:01
it'll clear out any remaining bad actors,
55:04
which hopefully there aren't too many more.
55:07
SPEAKER_00: And then I think for the average person,
55:10
SPEAKER_00: they'll end up using crypto in something that,
55:12
SPEAKER_00: it's not like that they love crypto just for crypto's sake,
55:15
SPEAKER_00: right?
55:15
SPEAKER_00: But hey,
55:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to send a payment to my friend or overseas or whatever,
55:19
SPEAKER_00: and it's like,
55:20
SPEAKER_00: oh,
55:20
SPEAKER_00: USDC is the cheapest,
55:21
SPEAKER_00: fastest way to do it.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: Or they have a diversified portfolio with their wealth manager,
55:27
SPEAKER_00: and it's like,
55:27
SPEAKER_00: ah,
55:28
one to 5% of that should probably be Bitcoin because it's not
55:31
correlated with the
55:32
SPEAKER_00: other asset classes.
55:34
And then there's a whole other set of kind of applications on
55:37
the frontier,
55:38
like prediction markets and things people are building where at
55:42
one point,
55:42
SPEAKER_00: like in the election,
55:43
SPEAKER_00: some of the prediction markets were the top apps in the app store.
55:46
So there's things that will go mainstream where I don't think
55:51
people will actually
55:51
SPEAKER_00: even really know they're using crypto underneath,
55:53
SPEAKER_00: but it's just the fastest,
55:54
SPEAKER_00: cheapest,
55:55
SPEAKER_00: best way to do something or to access some application.
55:58
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like using electricity.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: Like most people don't understand how electricity works,
56:01
SPEAKER_00: but they can turn on a light switch,
56:02
SPEAKER_00: so.
56:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was talking to the CEO, the Stripe Acquired Bridge, right?
56:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
56:08
SPEAKER_02: it was kind of like fascinating,
56:10
this idea of all the remittances that people do overseas to
56:14
send money to families
56:16
SPEAKER_02: and how complicated that process is.
56:19
But in the back end,
56:21
they're using these stable coins to facilitate this whole process.
56:25
SPEAKER_02: I was kind of curious what you made of that acquisition.
56:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, we know all the players and they're all great.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really good that Stripe is getting more into crypto,
56:35
SPEAKER_00: just like,
56:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
56:37
a block is getting more into crypto with Cash App and PayPal is
56:40
getting more into crypto.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Robinhood is getting more into crypto.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: Like really every fintech company is, which is great.
56:45
And then the traditional financial service companies are also
56:48
getting more into crypto.
56:50
SPEAKER_00: I think payments is going to be massive for crypto.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: You know,
56:55
SPEAKER_00: there was about $30 trillion of stablecoin volume last year,
56:58
SPEAKER_00: which was kind of an insane figure.
57:00
SPEAKER_00: It grew 3x year over year.
57:01
SPEAKER_00: So the growth rate is enormous.
57:04
SPEAKER_00: We're actively integrating payments into all of our products.
57:08
there's b2b cases like people paying vendors overseas and
57:13
paying contractors and
57:14
then payroll you know and then there's there's retail payments
57:17
like the remittance
57:18
SPEAKER_00: case you mentioned and um there's merchant payments um
57:24
SPEAKER_00: So there's going to be a lot of different categories for this.
57:27
SPEAKER_00: And we had a big goal for a while internally.
57:31
We said we need to get payments to be under one second and one
57:33
cent on chain.
57:36
SPEAKER_00: And the early blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, they call it layer one.
57:40
SPEAKER_00: they were this computer science breakthrough in that they were global,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: decentralized,
57:44
SPEAKER_00: permissionless,
57:46
SPEAKER_00: but they were kind of slow and expensive,
57:47
SPEAKER_00: right?
57:47
SPEAKER_00: Like a transaction on Bitcoin layer one, it took like an hour to confirm.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: It might cost you like $5 or $20, it depends on the time of day.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: And with these layer two solutions like Base coming online,
58:01
SPEAKER_00: which is built on top of Ethereum that we helped create,
58:05
SPEAKER_00: you know, it's now under one second, one cent anywhere in the world.
58:09
SPEAKER_00: And so it starts to look a lot more like a WhatsApp message or something.
58:12
I mean,
58:12
a WhatsApp message,
58:13
you can send it to anybody anywhere in the world.
58:15
It's not like you have to pay some FX fee at the border or like
58:18
wait three days and
58:19
SPEAKER_00: come in,
58:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:19
SPEAKER_00: as a bank holiday on the weekend,
58:21
SPEAKER_00: the messages don't work.
58:22
It's like money should move like a WhatsApp message instantly
58:25
anywhere in the world,
58:26
SPEAKER_00: less than one cent.
58:27
SPEAKER_00: It's actually far less than one cent now.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: It's probably less than a tenth of a cent.
58:31
And so what's possible in the economy if we get rid of all that friction?
58:35
SPEAKER_00: You know,
58:35
like sometimes I tell people this example where if you think
58:39
about messaging,
58:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:41
go back to like the 1800s when people had to mail letters and
58:45
by stagecoach and
58:46
SPEAKER_00: these kinds,
58:46
SPEAKER_00: and like how many letters did the average person a month send?
58:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was probably like one or something, right?
58:52
SPEAKER_00: Ben Franklin might've written a lot of letters,
58:54
but like the average person on the frontier wrote like one
58:57
letter a month or something.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: And then,
58:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
59:00
SPEAKER_00: things like email came around,
59:02
SPEAKER_00: and everyone was like,
59:02
SPEAKER_00: oh,
59:02
SPEAKER_00: well,
59:03
SPEAKER_00: email is going to disrupt paper mail.
59:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, it didn't, but people started to send a lot more emails.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: Text messaging came out.
59:09
SPEAKER_00: Remember when text messaging was $0.30 each?
59:11
SPEAKER_00: I do, yeah.
59:14
SPEAKER_02: I could stand for that to come back.
59:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's too many.
59:18
SPEAKER_00: But I think, what was the figure?
59:21
SPEAKER_00: I think when text messaging was $0.30, it peaked at...
59:25
SPEAKER_00: I want to say like a billion messages a day or something.
59:27
SPEAKER_00: Don't quote me on the exact number, but it was something like that.
59:30
And then the messaging apps like WhatsApp came along and they
59:33
took it down to free
59:34
SPEAKER_00: and text messaging got cheaper.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: And there's now like 130 billion messages a day or something like that.
59:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember the exact number,
59:41
but it went up like two orders of magnitude from a 30 cent text
59:45
message to a free message.
59:47
So what's going to happen in our economy when you take all that
59:52
friction out of payments?
59:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but it's going to be exciting.
59:56
I mean,
59:57
right now,
59:57
for instance,
59:58
people,
59:58
they have to wait two weeks to get their paycheck.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: Like, that doesn't make any sense.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: You should get your paycheck every day or hour or something, right?
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: Or,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: if you're on a freeway and like,
1:00:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: you want to pass the car,
1:00:11
your self-driving car wants to pass the other self-driving car
1:00:13
in front of you,
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: maybe you can do a microtransaction and,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: they'll pull over and you can go ahead and...
1:00:18
SPEAKER_00: or find like a little parking spot or whatever,
1:00:20
there's going to be microtransactions happening or macro
1:00:23
transactions happening all
1:00:24
SPEAKER_00: over the place.
1:00:25
It'll probably increase,
1:00:27
you know,
1:00:27
the number of transactions by a couple orders of magnitude.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_02: When there's like an idiot like me,
1:00:32
SPEAKER_02: you don't get tired of explaining this stuff over and over again.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: No, I think it's fascinating.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: I like talking about it.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:40
You know what I saw in the movie when you and Fred were in the
1:00:44
earliest days of Coinbase?
1:00:46
It looked like it was just like the two of you in a makeshift
1:00:49
office and you were
1:00:49
SPEAKER_02: in an Oxford shirt and a tie.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: This stood out to me.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_02: So you were playing the... Were you playing?
1:00:57
SPEAKER_02: You said what you were dressing up for the occasion.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: Like,
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:01:02
SPEAKER_00: already nobody was taking us seriously at that time,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: including investors.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: We were like doing our best to...
1:01:09
be presentable and bring legitimacy to the field so at that
1:01:12
time yeah we friend i
1:01:14
actually wore button-down shirts like every day we didn't wear
1:01:16
a tie every day but
1:01:18
um yeah and you know crypto is big enough now we're back to the
1:01:22
founder t-shirt but
1:01:23
um but yeah i mean i was not afraid to suit up and go talk to
1:01:29
regulators dc
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: whatever was needed
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know if this was,
1:01:33
SPEAKER_02: I know it was pre-Zoom,
1:01:35
so I didn't know if you were just getting pumped for the phone
1:01:38
calls you were
1:01:39
SPEAKER_02: making or something like that.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe you were meeting with regulators already.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, honestly, thank you so much for the time.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_02: It was awesome to get to talk to you.
1:01:51
And New Limit is,
1:01:53
in particular,
1:01:53
is like one of these companies that I'm...
1:01:56
SPEAKER_02: deeply,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_02: deeply fascinated by,
1:01:58
SPEAKER_02: I think there's,
1:01:58
SPEAKER_02: there's like a,
1:02:00
SPEAKER_02: I won't,
1:02:00
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to play my cards really.
1:02:01
I think there's a book book in,
1:02:03
in this,
1:02:03
this field of technology,
1:02:05
you know,
1:02:05
over time.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_02: And I'm so excited to see where it goes.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_00: So, um, thank you for saying that.
1:02:10
I,
1:02:11
it's the first interview I've done that spanned all the things
1:02:15
I'm working on.
1:02:16
And,
1:02:16
um,
1:02:17
and,
1:02:17
and,
1:02:18
and the first time I really talked to me about the biology
1:02:20
piece too.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_00: So that was really fun.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_00: And, um,
1:02:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hope more people kind of get inspired to go build the future.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_02: That's a great note to end on.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much, man.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_01: For Memory is hosted by me, Ashley Vance.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: Today's guest was Brian Armstrong.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_01: The show is produced by me and David Nicholson.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_01: Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sortland.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: And the show is edited by the auspicious John Sortland.