E77: Tech work culture, crypto regulation, stablecoins, $NFLX & more w/ Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

00:00:00.320 | Brian Armstrong, what's up, bro?

00:00:01.840 | What's up?

00:00:03.200 | How are you?

00:00:03.680 | Good to see you.

00:00:04.320 | It's good to see you as well.

00:00:05.840 | Yeah, Jason just pinged me yesterday and he's like,

00:00:08.000 | "Why don't you just come on as a guest randomly?" And I was like, "Okay, great. Let's do it."

00:00:11.680 | That's so good. I'm really excited to hear what J. Cal's intro is for you.

00:00:15.520 | Oh, man. Yeah, you guys keep getting watered-in on this.

00:00:18.560 | Hey, everybody. Welcome to Episode 77 of the All In Podcast, less than 30 days

00:00:40.720 | for the sold-out All In Summit. There's a waitlist, but

00:00:45.120 | sadly, I don't think we're going to get to anybody on the waitlist.

00:00:48.400 | And today we're here with David Sachs. We've got a great, great episode for you. I thought I bring a bestie guestie in, but not tell my bestie. So we'll see if they can figure out who's coming on the pod today. But let's get the intros over with. He's investing in SaaS at different stages coming off a Miami bender for the ages. Doing shots with R'Boy and Vanilla Ice. The Rain Man is back. He's twice as nice. David Sachs, everybody. How are you, sir? How was your adventures with Vanilla Ice?

00:01:16.920 | Good. I'm still here.

00:01:17.640 | You're still here. And so Vanilla Ice, that costs $1,600 to get him to show up.

00:01:22.700 | What does Vanilla Ice cost to show up for a party? That's about 10k. I think it's about 10 to 20k.

00:01:29.400 | No.

00:01:30.100 | A little bit more. Really?

00:01:31.980 | A little more.

00:01:32.640 | And did you go on stage and do Ice Ice Baby with him?

00:01:36.040 | I didn't, but there was some like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles type dancing around with him.

00:01:41.480 | Whatever. It was interesting.

00:01:42.880 | It was interesting.

00:01:43.620 | People liked it. It was fun. It was fun.

00:01:45.380 | Oh, very nice. Very nice.

00:01:46.920 | And you're still in Miami for whatever.

00:01:50.360 | Tech Week.

00:01:51.340 | Tech Week. Okay. So he won't eat your meat, but he'll take your MDMA. He's very interested in your DNA.

00:01:56.420 | When he's in the lab, he's in heaven. He hasn't been the same since that rave in 1997.

00:02:01.780 | The Lord of the Laboratory, the Sultan of Science, David Freeburg. How are you, sir?

00:02:06.240 | That was my favorite one. I like that one.

00:02:08.180 | Yeah, I'll have you do it. You peaked in 97.

00:02:11.560 | Yeah.

00:02:12.220 | At about 2am. You were peaking at about 2am.

00:02:15.020 | Did you say he doesn't want your meat?

00:02:16.820 | Yeah.

00:02:16.900 | He doesn't want your meat, but he wants your MDMA.

00:02:18.200 | Yes. He won't eat your meat, but he'll take your MDMA.

00:02:21.400 | Shout out to producer Nick, who really crushed it this week.

00:02:25.440 | Ah, his bank account.

00:02:26.840 | This one is too funny.

00:02:28.680 | It's hard to keep it together for these sometimes.

00:02:33.500 | His bank account would make a crown prince jealous. His knitwear collection is overzealous.

00:02:38.140 | When he's on CNBC, he makes a scene. The last time he did leg day was 2019.

00:02:43.360 | The supreme leader of SPACs, the dictator himself, Chamath Palani.

00:02:46.820 | hollyhock for Tia, I've been actually spending a lot of time

00:02:49.460 | working out on my legs. Really? I have been working on shoulders

00:02:52.860 | and chasts and my legs have always been diesel I will be

00:02:55.520 | doing a shirt off selfie this summer, Jakey. It looks like you

00:02:58.160 | have not bought new shirts since you lost all the weight. Because

00:03:01.200 | that shirt looks about five sides too big. I bought this one

00:03:04.140 | halfway through the weight loss. And now it's still too big. So I

00:03:08.180 | got another slimmer I got the slim fit. No, I got the normal

00:03:11.780 | fit. And then I got the slim fit from peak to now you've lost

00:03:14.940 | like 50 pounds 213 pounds is my peak like four years ago. And I

00:03:19.620 | was 167 168. Yeah, whatever that is 45 pounds. It's awesome.

00:03:25.180 | Something I feel incredible. I've started running again. And

00:03:27.900 | you know, I did 40 days of skiing this year. And I'm going

00:03:30.100 | to take up kite surfing. I think this summer, I want another

00:03:32.460 | sport to do you know, in the summers are the people around

00:03:35.440 | you annoyed at your increased energy levels? Yes, people who

00:03:38.700 | work for me are annoyed. I'm sleeping better. Everything's

00:03:41.580 | just going better. I highly recommend everybody, you know,

00:03:44.620 | just

00:03:44.920 | try to lose some weight. A lot of options out there for you.

00:03:48.140 | Including Munique. All right, we have a very special bestie

00:03:51.480 | guestie today. He's a lean mean crypto machine who sort of looks

00:03:55.300 | like Mr. Clean. If you need some tokens, you know who to call.

00:03:58.360 | Satoshi has his picture hanging on his wall. His NFT game is

00:04:02.360 | never lacking. If you talk about politics at work, you might send

00:04:06.080 | you packing the king of coins, the tycoon of tokens. Who is he?

00:04:09.400 | Brian Armstrong. Right? Armstrong. You guys got it. Brian

00:04:14.300 | Armstrong.

00:04:14.800 | He's with us. Hey, Brian, how are you?

00:04:16.960 | What's up, y'all?

00:04:18.040 | You could have gone vital Vitalik at the first part, but

00:04:21.880 | then we became Brian by the office part. Anyway, welcome to

00:04:25.460 | the show, Brian. We've obviously talked about you a whole bunch.

00:04:28.560 | And you've been on this week and startups. I think you know all

00:04:30.500 | the fellas here. But thanks for joining the pod. Thanks for

00:04:33.700 | having me. This is awesome. I listen to your show every week.

00:04:36.280 | Oh, thanks for that. So I guess you know, the the topic we all

00:04:40.600 | have talked about a whole bunch is

00:04:42.640 | work.

00:04:44.560 | And keeping people focused at work. You took a very bold step,

00:04:48.160 | which Toby a chop of I think followed. I just said, Listen,

00:04:51.580 | if you're coming to work, our mission is crypto. Can we stop

00:04:55.420 | talking about every other thing in the world and just stay

00:04:58.780 | focused on that? And I think that was maybe was that a year

00:05:02.200 | and a half ago? That you did that? Everybody wants to know

00:05:07.000 | how that worked out for the company. So maybe you could tell

00:05:10.000 | us what it was like to go through that. Because I mean,

00:05:12.940 | you were a target for a period of time. But you know, you were a target for a period of time.

00:05:13.660 | for for a period of time, we all thought, seems reasonable. And

00:05:18.420 | then how has that actually impacted day to day life for the

00:05:22.600 | people who decided to opt into working at a single focused

00:05:26.660 | Coinbase?

00:05:27.300 | Yeah, so I would say, you know, short term, it was quite a

00:05:29.520 | painful transition. I think it created a lot of consternation,

00:05:32.540 | there was, you know, some folks in the media decided to go call

00:05:35.700 | a bunch of people who'd left the company and, you know, write hit

00:05:38.160 | pieces and all that kind of thing. And frankly, you know,

00:05:40.600 | about 5% of the company opted into the exit packages package.

00:05:43.340 | So there was some teams that were shorthanded, a lot of

00:05:45.260 | people had to work extra time to fill in the gaps. But long term,

00:05:48.400 | I think it turned out to be an incredibly positive decision for

00:05:51.580 | the company. I do think there's a lot of companies in Silicon

00:05:53.980 | Valley right now, and probably elsewhere is that, you know, the

00:05:57.200 | CEOs and the management team almost feel like they're being

00:05:59.620 | held hostage by employees. And I feel for some of these

00:06:02.880 | organizations, you know, Sundar probably has an incredibly

00:06:05.420 | difficult job right now. We saw that, that video from Microsoft,

00:06:08.540 | I think last year with with Satya, and it kind of was with

00:06:11.740 | people talking about their hair color and stuff.

00:06:13.020 | And they don't feel like that they can really lean in and move

00:06:17.100 | the company in the direction they want. And they're fearful of

00:06:19.740 | kind of all these internal dynamics. So, you know, I think

00:06:23.580 | there's probably a better way to do it than what I did, which is

00:06:25.740 | if you're starting a company today, just make that clear up

00:06:28.140 | front, I didn't make it clear up front. And so the company

00:06:30.940 | culture started to diverge and drift. And I had to kind of

00:06:33.780 | realign it, which was which was a painful process. If I was

00:06:36.840 | doing it over again, I'd probably just set that as the

00:06:38.640 | expectation up front, and then there wouldn't be this, you

00:06:40.740 | know, public awkward realization.

00:06:42.700 | Realignment. But yeah, I think I'm really glad that I did it. I

00:06:46.060 | think Coinbase has been very productive since then. And we've

00:06:48.780 | been able to attract a lot of the best and brightest people

00:06:51.180 | from some of these other companies that are like, I don't

00:06:53.100 | want to be in those companies anymore. I want to work at a

00:06:54.780 | company where we just focus on the work and the mission,

00:06:56.620 | because that's actually important. So I'd say it's been

00:06:59.340 | positive.

00:06:59.900 | Brian, I've always talked about this as being like the

00:07:01.820 | difference between a hard culture and a soft culture where

00:07:04.860 | hard cultures are companies that really define what they do and

00:07:09.580 | what they don't do, and what they spend time on and what they

00:07:12.380 | don't spend time on. And sometimes what you don't spend

00:07:14.780 | time on can relate to product. Sometimes it can relate to

00:07:17.020 | things outside or externalities to the business. Do you think

00:07:20.060 | that that's become kind of a trend where, you know, soft

00:07:23.340 | culture in Silicon Valley is more about like appeasing a

00:07:27.660 | very fickle employee base and as a result, you kind of aren't as

00:07:32.220 | clear about what you're not going to talk about and are

00:07:33.900 | going to talk about and suddenly the troops rule the day and

00:07:36.540 | things get kind of sidetracked and productivity goes down. I

00:07:39.580 | mean, can you talk a little bit about what you've seen in

00:07:42.460 | you know, with other cultures around the valley and how that's

00:07:45.340 | kind of affecting work and what employees are choosing to go to

00:07:48.060 | and not go to?

00:07:48.940 | Yeah, so I think, you know, Ben Horowitz always talked about

00:07:51.980 | like wartime CEO, peacetime CEO, and frankly, you know, I'm kind

00:07:55.580 | of a conflict avoidant person, right? I never thought of myself

00:07:57.820 | as like wartime CEO, we're just like, we're all going in this

00:08:00.380 | direction. Let's go go go. You know, I never really thought of

00:08:02.940 | myself like that. But I think what I'm trying to do now is

00:08:05.820 | find the happy medium between these two. So you the company

00:08:09.340 | should have a really ambitious mission. And then I think, you

00:08:12.060 | as the CEO, you do have to say no to things which are off track

00:08:15.740 | from that you do have to part ways with people who are not

00:08:18.220 | helping raise the talent bar in the company. And so in some ways,

00:08:22.300 | you have to be I guess, hard in that sense. But I don't think

00:08:24.860 | it's, it's not like, you know, we're only here to make money.

00:08:28.380 | And it's like, it's bonus time, or you're out or whatever. It's

00:08:30.940 | like, we actually have a much softer culture than that, I

00:08:32.700 | think, in Silicon Valley, which is most of the missions of these

00:08:35.260 | companies are trying to do great humanitarian efforts. And

00:08:37.980 | they're trying to improve the biggest problems in the world.

00:08:40.620 | And so people sign up for those because they want to have a real

00:08:42.860 | impact. And you know, we take time to like, go for exec off

00:08:46.620 | sites, and we walk in nature. And we have like coaching, we do

00:08:49.980 | all this touchy feely stuff. So I think it's kind of a mix of

00:08:53.820 | both is the right balance. I don't think of myself as like,

00:08:56.780 | you know, a Wall Street hedge fund or like the most touchy

00:09:00.380 | feely culture you can imagine. Why do you think companies now

00:09:03.260 | have sort of veered into this place where they have to kind of

00:09:06.060 | appease these fringes on either side? How do you do? Did you spend

00:09:10.460 | time trying to figure out like, how did we evolve there from just

00:09:13.500 | being mission focused to having to deal with all this other

00:09:15.740 | stuff?

00:09:16.060 | Yeah, I mean, one theory I have on this is that in Silicon

00:09:18.620 | Valley, especially pre pandemic, we were all it was so

00:09:21.660 | competitive to get talent, right? You know, Google and

00:09:24.380 | Facebook, they were just kind of one upping each other on like

00:09:26.540 | higher and higher salaries. And so I know, as a CEO of a company

00:09:29.820 | that was rising at that time, I felt incredible scarcity, like I

00:09:33.020 | had people leave to get out who got better offers, and it was

00:09:35.820 | like a real issue. And so I was doing anything I could to

00:09:38.140 | retain people and keep them. And so

00:09:40.300 | if an employee said, Hey, I want, you know, another flavor

00:09:44.220 | of water in the kitchen or whatever, I was like, Okay,

00:09:46.220 | maybe we should do it. Right. But I think, you know, during the

00:09:48.860 | pandemic, we removed we moved to remote first as a culture, the

00:09:52.220 | talent, like the talent, we could get opened up by 100x

00:09:55.100 | people all over the world who are really hungry, and like,

00:09:57.260 | frankly, thankful for these jobs. And that actually changed

00:10:00.940 | the scarcity mindset a little bit to say, Hey, you know, if

00:10:04.140 | you don't want to be here, that's fine, we can we have

00:10:05.980 | other people we can go recruit and hire in who really are

00:10:08.300 | going to value it. That's probably just

00:10:10.140 | one piece of it. It's a much more complex issue than that. I

00:10:12.860 | think one other one other thing is that, you know, like Google

00:10:16.620 | and Facebook, I think kind of made this a common trend in the

00:10:19.580 | valley where companies would host these open mic q&a on

00:10:23.660 | every Friday or every two weeks or whatever. And it was almost

00:10:26.220 | like a town hall, it felt like a democracy, right. And in a

00:10:29.020 | democracy, like the leader, you know, works for the people,

00:10:32.220 | they're elected by the people. But what got very awkward was

00:10:35.980 | that these open mic q&a is it became, you know, this kind of

00:10:38.460 | like hostile thing of like, how can we

00:10:39.980 | make the person squirm? And let's ask them these difficult

00:10:42.700 | societal issue questions that aren't actually related to the

00:10:44.940 | company and what we're all building. And, you know, I think

00:10:47.340 | that was actually a mistake in Silicon Valley, we've since

00:10:50.300 | gotten rid of these open mic q&a is because it really encourages

00:10:53.500 | people, I'd say, when we were like 150 200 people, everyone

00:10:57.020 | was on the same page, everyone was asking good questions. Once

00:10:59.580 | we got to like 500 700 people, it started to feel like there

00:11:02.860 | was a little bit of an us versus them. And then, you know, the

00:11:05.980 | questions got very off track. And I realized at a certain

00:11:08.700 | point, this is not a democracy.

00:11:09.820 | I want everyone's input, I'm not going to rule like with an

00:11:13.420 | iron fist. But ultimately, you know, I'm the CEO, I need to help

00:11:17.180 | guide this company in one direction and force the hard

00:11:19.420 | decisions, not everyone's going to like them. So we're not going

00:11:22.140 | to allow people to do grandstanding open mic stuff,

00:11:24.220 | there's just a little bit of a risk for that, you know, 99% of

00:11:26.700 | people don't do it. But if one person does it, and it kind of

00:11:28.700 | creates this snowball effect. So we got rid of the open mics,

00:11:31.660 | people can still submit questions, but they're there,

00:11:34.700 | nobody else can see them, we read them ahead of the q&a. And

00:11:37.020 | if there's a good theme in the questions, we address it, but you can't like

00:11:39.660 | grandstand with an open mic,

00:11:41.100 | I saw this site, it was in Twitter, Nick, maybe you can

00:11:44.220 | find it. But it was like this general that had commanded all

00:11:46.940 | of these different battalions. And he was talking about what it

00:11:51.260 | was like in all the different theaters in which he's operated.

00:11:53.820 | And he basically said, you know, 80% of the men and women that

00:11:57.180 | serve for me were just absolutely incredible, you could

00:12:00.300 | always rely on them 100% of the time, they were 100% aligned.

00:12:04.620 | And then he said, there was 15% that was wishy washy. And

00:12:09.500 | what they were looking for was how you managed and dealt with

00:12:13.580 | the 5%. And the 5% of folks were always trying to push the

00:12:17.340 | boundaries and try to figure out where the escape valve was, or

00:12:20.940 | where the exception was, or you know, whether they would be

00:12:23.660 | grandstanding, or whether they tried to break a rule. And he

00:12:27.580 | said his entire energy was focused on keeping those folks

00:12:30.860 | extremely focused and on point or out. Because that was what

00:12:35.180 | solved for the 15%. Because the 80% would be fine. But if you

00:12:38.620 | didn't deal with the 5%, you would be in trouble. And so,

00:12:39.340 | you know, the 50% would be fine. But if you didn't deal with the

00:12:39.820 | 5%, the 15% would go crazy. And then the 80% would get dejected.

00:12:43.260 | And it just kind of the whole thing would rot. And it was a

00:12:46.140 | really interesting reminder that there's these people that come

00:12:48.780 | into these companies, almost with the desire to see these

00:12:52.060 | companies go sideways or just waste their time, which is

00:12:54.780 | completely counterintuitive, because you think you joined for

00:12:57.340 | the mission, but they don't all the time.

00:12:59.580 | And to be fair, you, I think, told people, listen, you, you

00:13:04.860 | could as a group of people off hours, create your own, you know,

00:13:09.180 | dinner party and talk about whatever topics you want. This is

00:13:12.860 | just when I'm paying you to come to work for those eight hours,

00:13:15.820 | you know, on the company servers, if you're using Slack

00:13:18.780 | or whatever, you know, communication platform you're

00:13:20.780 | using, let's just stay focused on getting the work done. So

00:13:24.060 | this could be a viable enterprise. But you were fine

00:13:27.740 | with people if they wanted to self organize and do that on

00:13:30.700 | their own time, correct? You weren't saying you can't have

00:13:33.100 | political beliefs, you can't care, not care about BLM or some

00:13:37.260 | right wing.

00:13:37.660 | That was one of the biggest

00:13:39.020 | sort of misnomers or miss.

00:13:41.900 | Yeah, exactly. Deliberate mischaracterizations about the

00:13:46.140 | policy is that it's somehow silence people, or prevented

00:13:49.420 | them from, you know, taking positions on issues or donating

00:13:53.100 | to causes they cared about the policy never said that it just

00:13:55.500 | said that while we're in the office together, on Coinbase

00:13:58.700 | time, we're going to engage in Coinbase his mission, and avoid

00:14:01.420 | fractious debates that divide us.

00:14:03.420 | Yeah, that's right.

00:14:05.580 | And there's a time for those debates and just might not

00:14:08.860 | I think a lot of this has to do with slack. I'd be totally

00:14:11.660 | honest. Yeah, when people are in a slack room, and they're

00:14:15.260 | frustrated, and people can have valid frustrations, like there

00:14:17.420 | are things in the world that are horrible. And yeah, you want to

00:14:19.580 | talk about it. And yeah, you build friendships at work, it's

00:14:21.820 | completely understandable that people would want to blow off

00:14:24.380 | steam. And, but just people have to look at slack is not an AOL

00:14:28.220 | chat room. It's not Reddit, it's not AOL chat, maybe you could

00:14:31.420 | talk a little bit about electronic communications. And

00:14:33.340 | then I think David has follow up.

00:14:34.460 | Yes, I agree with you slack, I think is an amazing tool, but it

00:14:38.140 | does start to

00:14:38.700 | turn into social media. Once you get more than I don't know,

00:14:41.340 | 500 people in a room or 1000 people, a lot of CEOs I've been

00:14:45.020 | talking to, we're all trying to figure this out, because we

00:14:47.020 | still think slack is a net positive to productivity, but it

00:14:49.980 | has a huge negative in terms of district, both distracting

00:14:53.020 | people with lots of things popping up all the time, but

00:14:55.100 | also these kind of social media flame wars that did emerge and

00:14:58.540 | mob like behavior. So some of the things I mean, we've been

00:15:01.100 | trying is, for instance, if we get any kind of a slack room

00:15:03.820 | that has say more than 500 or 1000 people will often try to

00:15:07.420 | limit it. So only you know,

00:15:08.540 | you can you have to be a VP or level nine and above can only

00:15:11.820 | post in there and otherwise, it's read only. So we're trying

00:15:14.940 | to, you know, Dunbar's numbers 150 people, right, you're trying

00:15:17.420 | to think who can you remember everyone's name and have some

00:15:19.660 | sort of group affinity with them. And any too much above

00:15:23.180 | Dunbar's number, we try to like cap it. So it's a read only

00:15:26.380 | chat room. But I think these tools need to keep evolving. And

00:15:28.940 | I hope some I know, there's a couple startups, you all might

00:15:31.020 | have funded some of them that are working on this.

00:15:33.420 | Yeah, there's an actual neat feature you can do in slack now,

00:15:36.380 | where like that level nine person can post,

00:15:38.380 | and everybody else can post in the thread, like you can reply

00:15:41.980 | to the thread, but the opening salvos and thread have to be

00:15:45.100 | started by somebody in that sort of group. So but that slack

00:15:48.060 | definitely needs to double down on this. I also think they put

00:15:50.940 | that random room in there. And you put the random room, it's

00:15:53.580 | like basically waving the flag, like, it's random, put stuff in

00:15:56.780 | there, I think you got to delete that if you're running, I tell

00:15:58.700 | all startups, delete the random room, and tell people do not

00:16:01.580 | post memes and jokes. David, you had a follow up.

00:16:03.500 | One thing I was gonna say is, so Brian, I agree with

00:16:05.500 | everything you said that the one place maybe where I

00:16:08.220 | would nitpick in a way that gives you a little more credit

00:16:11.260 | is you found a coinbase back in 2012. Right? Yeah. So if you

00:16:15.500 | had created this policy on day one, I don't think you or

00:16:18.780 | anybody could have predicted that these issues would arise

00:16:22.380 | the way they have. I remember 2012 is a year, I sold my

00:16:25.340 | company to Microsoft, we never had to deal with any of this

00:16:27.420 | stuff. And we were using, we didn't have slack back then we

00:16:29.580 | were using Yammer, very open culture, people could

00:16:31.660 | communicate on anything. We never had sort of hyper

00:16:36.140 | activist employees, the word

00:16:38.060 | woke didn't even exist yet. And it just wasn't an issue. So it

00:16:43.020 | would have required you, I think, to see ahead so many

00:16:45.660 | years. And I think what's happened is over the last

00:16:48.140 | several years, there's been this drift towards, you know,

00:16:51.420 | employee activism inside these companies. I don't think it's

00:16:54.460 | coming from both sides of the political spectrum, to be

00:16:56.860 | honest, I think it's coming from the sort of hyper woke employees

00:16:59.980 | and they engage in petitions and letter writing campaigns and

00:17:03.500 | threats of boycotts. And they sort of Hector and Mau Mau, the

00:17:07.900 | CEOs to basically give in to them. And we've seen it at Apple

00:17:11.100 | the way that the Apple was pressured to fire Antonio

00:17:13.500 | Garcia Martinez, and they gave in and now they have a letter

00:17:16.060 | writing campaign every month. And you just saw it in Florida.

00:17:19.660 | I think Bob was named to Bob Chapek. I don't think he's

00:17:23.740 | going to survive the year after what just happened at Disney.

00:17:26.700 | And it's because he gave in to the employees took sides

00:17:29.260 | against the you know, governor in Florida and the legislature,

00:17:32.700 | and they just ripped away Disney special privileges in

00:17:35.900 | Florida. You saw it at

00:17:37.740 | Netflix, where Ted Sarandos was sort of maumaued by these

00:17:42.300 | employees who want to cancel Dave Chappelle, he ultimately

00:17:44.860 | stuck by Chappelle, but only after groveling to these

00:17:48.220 | employees. And so I think we're seeing these issues did not

00:17:51.020 | exist even five years ago, I would say. And I think the

00:17:54.700 | reason why the Coinbase story is so relevant to a broader

00:17:59.260 | audience and what you did with your policy is so relevant is I

00:18:03.180 | just think every company is going to have to make a

00:18:04.700 | decision sooner or later or on where they stand.

00:18:07.580 | Do you give into these petitions, and mobs and boycotts?

00:18:11.500 | Do you allow unlimited activism inside the four walls of your

00:18:15.820 | company? Or do you take some sort of more neutral stance

00:18:19.100 | where you say, listen, we're all going to leave our politics to

00:18:21.820 | the door, so we can effectively work together on the company's

00:18:24.140 | mission. I think every company eventually is going to have to

00:18:27.500 | either be Coinbase or be Apple, you're gonna have to be

00:18:30.700 | Coinbase, or be Disney, you're either gonna have to give in to

00:18:33.820 | the mob and suffer the consequences, or you take the

00:18:37.420 | short term pain of doing what Brian did. And you basically

00:18:41.260 | realign everyone around the mission. And a year later,

00:18:43.740 | you're very happy with where you are.

00:18:45.020 | The good thing with Netflix and Disney, though, is that they're

00:18:47.980 | going to be very clear examples of the business impact of

00:18:52.300 | getting distracted. And I think that, you know, Brian took

00:18:55.900 | leadership. But the business impact, at least from the

00:18:58.780 | outside looking in was not really measurable. Obviously,

00:19:01.340 | he felt that the team felt that whatever they did, and that

00:19:03.820 | business is working. But it wasn't done as a public

00:19:07.260 | company pre and post. So the counterfactual is hard to

00:19:09.420 | measure. In the case of Disney and Netflix, it's really clear

00:19:12.700 | to measure, right? Meaning, in all of this confusion, Netflix

00:19:16.460 | has completely botched their business model. In all of this

00:19:19.740 | fighting now internally inside of Disney, not only are they

00:19:23.420 | going to lose essentially a fiefdom inside of Florida, but

00:19:25.980 | it's going to have repercussions with respect to taxes with

00:19:28.940 | respect to debt with respect to the quality of the service they

00:19:31.420 | can deploy. And that'll eventually flow through the

00:19:33.980 | business and that'll be measurable by investors. And I

00:19:36.060 | think David, you're right.

00:19:37.100 | I think probably what I think, which is a slighter, sort of

00:19:41.660 | more modified version of what you just said, is in the next

00:19:44.620 | few quarters, I think CEOs will actually be better equipped to

00:19:48.780 | numerically point to why taking Brian's path is the value

00:19:53.580 | creating path for shareholders and for stakeholders. And the

00:19:57.660 | cost of getting distracted, quote unquote, can be really

00:20:01.260 | expensive if you if you are a for profit company,

00:20:04.300 | Brian, you also have the option to run your

00:20:06.940 | company and say, you know what, we care about this issue a whole

00:20:09.580 | bunch, we really care about human rights here, we really

00:20:11.900 | care about communications and freedom of speech. And I'm going

00:20:15.900 | to run Twitter as a freedom of speech company. And everybody

00:20:19.740 | has to align behind that. So you believe in censoring, this is

00:20:22.620 | not the right company for you. If you believe in policing

00:20:24.780 | speech, or you're uncomfortable with uncomfortable speech, or

00:20:28.860 | speech that makes you feel uncomfortable, you don't have to

00:20:31.180 | work at Twitter. So it's not like you have to do what Brian

00:20:35.980 | didn't say, hey, we're just going to run Twitter. You don't

00:20:36.780 | have to do what Brian said. You don't have to do what Brian

00:20:37.740 | said. You don't have to do what Brian said. You don't have to do

00:20:38.220 | what Brian said. You don't have to do what Brian said. You don't

00:20:38.300 | have to do what Brian said. You don't have to do what Brian said.

00:20:38.460 | You have to make a decision and be intentional about it. I

00:20:40.220 | think it's the higher order bet.

00:20:41.180 | No, my I was just gonna say my only point is in the absence of

00:20:43.580 | intentionality, Jason, you'll slip into one realm or the

00:20:46.380 | other and not really know what you're trying to do. I agree

00:20:48.300 | with you. And my only point is that you'll be able to measure

00:20:51.260 | the impact of unintentionally slipping and sliding around.

00:20:54.540 | Yeah, versus picking a course and sticking to it.

00:20:56.780 | Let me ask you guys a question. If you're an individual, and you

00:21:01.340 | want to affect social change, where is the forum in the

00:21:05.260 | theater that you think you would go to first, you spend most of

00:21:08.700 | your time at work. And maybe you don't have as much free time to

00:21:13.500 | go march and protest in the streets. And if you did, no one

00:21:15.980 | would pay attention to you there anyway. So Saks, like, I know

00:21:19.660 | that you'll probably have a point of view on this. But like,

00:21:21.900 | if you're giving a 19 year old, who has a strong point of view

00:21:25.740 | or 25 year old who has a strong point of view about something

00:21:28.780 | that they want to see change in society, what are

00:21:31.180 | the things that you think are the right things to do? What's

00:21:33.180 | the right forum for them to have their protest and to make their

00:21:35.420 | voice heard?

00:21:35.980 | I think that companies are a great change agent. I think we

00:21:40.860 | all do being in Silicon Valley creating startups, we all

00:21:43.340 | believe that startups are a great way to change the world.

00:21:45.100 | Those startups have missions. Brian's company has a mission

00:21:48.060 | around crypto and expanding, democratizing access to the

00:21:52.300 | financial system based on crypto. Elon has a company that

00:21:55.660 | is accelerating the world towards sustainable transport

00:21:59.020 | and sustainable energy.

00:22:01.020 | And Elon wants to make where I quibble a little bit with what

00:22:02.380 | Jason said about free speech. I think Elon wants to make free

00:22:05.500 | speech restore its place back in Twitter's mission. So it's not

00:22:09.100 | like a separate thing. It's actually like should be very

00:22:11.420 | core to what they do. I think that there's a mission driven

00:22:15.420 | company out there for any young person who cares about that

00:22:20.460 | issue. Right. And if there's not, if there's not a for

00:22:23.100 | profit vehicle, there's a 501 you can go join a nonprofit

00:22:26.220 | company or start one. Exactly. So donate money to a cause you

00:22:30.860 | have the whole weekend you got me to write a blog post.

00:22:33.260 | What I don't think would work is when you have people who don't

00:22:36.460 | who aren't really mission driven, their mission is whatever the

00:22:39.180 | current thing is. And so they're just kind of like, oscillating

00:22:43.820 | from the the one the curve, you know, from one current thing to

00:22:47.100 | the next current thing. And every three months, there's an

00:22:49.420 | issue to shore that that you're they care about more than

00:22:51.980 | anything else in the world. Look, there's not going to be a

00:22:54.060 | company that can accommodate that sort of fickle activism.

00:22:57.740 | Brian, can I ask you a question? Are there any

00:23:00.700 | systems decentralized systems that kind of give individuals

00:23:04.780 | you know, that you've viewed interesting models that give

00:23:09.420 | people the ability to affect social change in a way that

00:23:13.020 | kind of historically may have been more of a hill to climb,

00:23:16.140 | where people can kind of aggregate resources and

00:23:18.220 | aggregate a voice in a way that can kind of affect outcomes? And

00:23:21.260 | do we think that that kind of becomes a mechanism for social

00:23:24.060 | change in the future? You may you make me think of

00:23:26.220 | dows and things like that. But I think a lot of that is kind

00:23:27.980 | of unproven, like dows are probably good ways to

00:23:30.540 | get new kind of governance systems in place for allocating

00:23:33.740 | capital, or maybe even managing a city or, or a society. But I

00:23:37.660 | can, you know, I kind of agree with David, I think the best way

00:23:39.900 | to affect change right now today is for young people is start a

00:23:43.180 | company or join a company. I think young people are sometimes

00:23:46.940 | a little enamored with like becoming an activist. But I

00:23:49.580 | think fundamentally, that's, you're sort of giving up your

00:23:52.220 | power by saying like, well, they have the power and I don't and

00:23:54.860 | so I'm going to speak truth to power. But I think you know,

00:23:57.820 | some there's context for that historically, whether that's a

00:24:00.380 | good or bad, or whether that may have been more true. But I

00:24:02.380 | think today, a lot of people, they have more power than they

00:24:04.380 | realize. And if you go start a company, which, by the way,

00:24:06.780 | companies are decentralized to you can have lots of little

00:24:08.780 | companies all over the world. They're not like, you know,

00:24:11.900 | monolithic, usually. And so if they start a company, they can

00:24:15.340 | have a good impact, I think, on the biggest issues out there.

00:24:18.140 | And I think over time as well, the way that you have real

00:24:21.580 | impact is that you prove yourself in the market of ideas

00:24:25.340 | to have a high reputation and to be really reliable. And that is

00:24:29.420 | not something that you can just overpower.

00:24:30.220 | You know, because you're 19 or 20, and you're really upset by

00:24:34.860 | something, at some point, you're going to have to really invest

00:24:37.420 | your time and dedicate yourself to something that you really,

00:24:40.540 | really care about. And then the world tends to move to the good

00:24:44.300 | ideas. So I think part of like, what we also need to remind

00:24:48.220 | folks is that this is like, if you want to make real

00:24:50.380 | sustainable change, it's hard. It doesn't matter in which area

00:24:54.300 | you pick, it is just really hard. But if it's really worth

00:24:57.260 | it, you should give your life to it. But what I

00:25:00.060 | think people push back on is the more superficial forms of

00:25:04.620 | just virtue signaling and saying, yeah, in this moment, I

00:25:08.060 | really want to pretend I care about something. But when push

00:25:10.300 | comes to shove, I'm not really willing to take the next step.

00:25:12.700 | I don't I think that most people find that very unreliable.

00:25:15.340 | Yeah, I think a good question to ask for somebody who purports to

00:25:18.620 | really care is like, what do you care about? That's not currently

00:25:21.020 | in the news. You know, that's not like the hot thing that

00:25:24.300 | everyone is basically obsessed with.

00:25:26.940 | Well, and then how are you changing it? And what is your plan to

00:25:29.900 | change it over the next decade or two? Like, you have it takes

00:25:34.140 | it takes many years to effectively create a startup, you

00:25:37.420 | know, five years, 10 years. And so if your issue du jour is

00:25:41.100 | whatever's in the news, you're not gonna create that kind of

00:25:43.100 | change. You know, I do think there are a lot of similarities

00:25:45.900 | between mission driven startups and political movements. You

00:25:48.700 | know, I wrote a blog post called your startup is a movement

00:25:51.020 | where I basically say that, you know, good marketing is about

00:25:54.860 | evangelism. It is everything in common with what good political

00:25:59.740 | leaders do. Basically, they critique the status quo, they

00:26:02.700 | tell you what the world likes looks like today, what the

00:26:05.020 | problem with that is, and where the world needs to get to what

00:26:08.780 | the solution is, and then how they're going to deliver that

00:26:10.940 | solution. So you can, I think, as the leader of a company, be

00:26:15.580 | very mission driven, you can bring about that change you want

00:26:19.580 | to see in the world, you just have to attach a business model

00:26:21.820 | to it. If you don't have a business model, you're just

00:26:23.740 | collecting donations.

00:26:24.940 | Let's build on that. Brian, what is the stated mission today of

00:26:28.380 | Coinbase?

00:26:28.860 | Yeah, our mission is to

00:26:29.580 | increase economic freedom in the world. And if people aren't

00:26:33.100 | familiar with that term, economic freedom is kind of an

00:26:35.100 | economics term like GDP, but it looks at the measures of

00:26:37.900 | different countries of the world. And it looks at factors

00:26:39.980 | like, are there property rights enforced? How stable is the

00:26:43.260 | currency? How easy is it to start a business? You know, is

00:26:46.220 | there a corruption and bribery prevalent and things like that.

00:26:48.700 | And what's really cool about economic freedom is that it

00:26:51.580 | basically countries with higher economic freedom, you know,

00:26:54.220 | like Singapore and the United States and Ireland, they tend

00:26:58.300 | to correlate with

00:26:59.420 | all kinds of things we want in society, not just better economic

00:27:02.620 | growth, but even higher self reported happiness of citizens,

00:27:05.740 | better treatment of the environment, better income for

00:27:07.660 | the lowest 10% in society,

00:27:09.900 | gender equality, all that stuff.

00:27:11.820 | Yeah, gender equality. And then yeah, countries with low

00:27:14.700 | economic freedom, you know, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, these

00:27:18.460 | are some of the lowest, they tend to have, you know, even

00:27:22.140 | things we don't want, like higher corruption, higher war,

00:27:24.940 | higher infant mortality. So it's basically when I read the

00:27:29.260 | Bitcoin white paper back in 2010, I had this thought

00:27:32.220 | eventually, that was like, maybe cryptocurrency is this unique

00:27:35.420 | moment in history, this unique technology that allows us to

00:27:37.980 | inject economic freedom into the countries all over the world,

00:27:40.460 | especially now that more and more people have a smartphone.

00:27:42.780 | And we can basically put good financial infrastructure, good

00:27:45.660 | property rights, you know, global trade, a stable currency

00:27:49.260 | into 200 countries all over the world as one small group,

00:27:53.180 | relatively small group of people, and hopefully it has all

00:27:55.100 | these positive downstream impacts. So that's the mission

00:27:57.340 | of Coinbase.

00:27:57.900 | When you look at the

00:27:59.100 | regulatory environment, it has been far from clear what's

00:28:03.980 | allowed here in the United States. In fact, you had a

00:28:07.180 | pretty strong Lee worded tweet storm back in September of 2021,

00:28:14.620 | some really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC race

00:28:16.940 | recently storytime, maybe you could talk a little bit about

00:28:19.260 | the SEC's approach to cryptocurrency versus

00:28:23.660 | securities, XRP comes to mind. And knowing your customers,

00:28:28.940 | you've obviously taken a very conservative approach to what

00:28:32.220 | tokens you put on the platform, and then you have competitors

00:28:35.820 | who are offshore who it's kind of Yolo, anything goes. What is

00:28:41.500 | the current administration doing right, wrong and what needs to

00:28:44.700 | happen here in the US to for us to be competitive in crypto,

00:28:48.860 | while still protecting citizens from, you know, being bag

00:28:52.860 | holders?

00:28:53.340 | Yeah, it's a big question. So, you know, as a startup, you're

00:28:56.780 | always trying to thread the needle here.

00:28:58.780 | You don't want to wait too long for clarity, because sometimes

00:29:01.900 | these things take 5-10 years, and so you'll just never launch

00:29:04.860 | a product. But if you're too aggressive, you can blow the

00:29:07.900 | place up. And so what we always did in the early days of

00:29:09.820 | Coinbase, as we said, we want to go do what we think is going

00:29:13.500 | to be required in the future, go get licenses, go do KYC, go do

00:29:17.580 | AML, anti money laundering. And so we tried to basically do the

00:29:21.340 | right thing, go and talk to these regulators practically.

00:29:23.980 | Now, the US has actually been pretty forward thinking on this,

00:29:26.780 | I'd say every year, we get more and more

00:29:28.620 | clarity. So Coinbase is now a very regulated financial service

00:29:31.980 | business, you know, I can go through the whole list, we have

00:29:34.540 | a license from the CFTC, a federal regulator, we acquired

00:29:37.420 | some broker dealer licenses, which the SEC regulates, we have

00:29:40.220 | money transmission licenses, we're a bit licensed in New York,

00:29:42.780 | etc, going, and that's just in the United States. So we're in

00:29:45.660 | many, many countries around the world. So how do we get more

00:29:49.260 | clarity? Well, one thing I'll just say is it's actually better

00:29:51.580 | for there to be lack of clarity than to be clarity that is

00:29:54.220 | punitive or bad. So it's good that there's

00:29:58.460 | a little bit of lack of clarity as long as it's not curtailing the industry,

00:30:01.900 | but would be even better is to have clarity that does provide that right balance of good consumer

00:30:06.540 | protection, you know, make sure that there's a fair level playing field for all the players.

00:30:12.140 | And then it allows innovation to flourish. And so what's good now is that in the US,

00:30:16.620 | you know, the Biden administration put out an executive order recently kind of asking all

00:30:20.300 | the different agencies and departments to come back with a clear plan. And they did

00:30:23.900 | recognize the potential innovation in crypto in that in that executive order, which I was really

00:30:28.780 | pleasantly surprised to see. So what's happening now is that there was a little bit of jockeying,

00:30:34.140 | I think there were the SEC said, Hey, these all look like securities to us. And I don't think

00:30:37.500 | that's quite true. You know, the CFTC is regulates commodities, while some cryptos are going to be

00:30:41.740 | commodities. I think here's, here's what I'm realizing is that crypto is going to be many

00:30:46.700 | different things. It's not just going to be one regulator doing it. So, you know, think about

00:30:51.500 | cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, that's pretty clearly a commodity or Ethereum, right? Like,

00:30:55.500 | many of these are a theory of commodities that probably should be regulated,

00:30:58.140 | by the commodities regulator, CFTC. Now, if people want to raise money for their company,

00:31:02.620 | a security token, that should be regulated as a security by the SEC, that'd be great to have

00:31:06.860 | more clarity on that. Let's have, we would love to keep working with the SEC to make that a well

00:31:11.980 | trodden path that any company can go raise money. And that's how it would get listed on an exchange

00:31:15.740 | like ours. And we could register as a broker dealer or whatever license is needed.

00:31:19.500 | Separately, there's also some cryptocurrencies that are going to be

00:31:23.580 | currencies like stable coins, and you know, maybe the Treasury should regulate those. And,

00:31:27.980 | finally, there's going to be cryptocurrencies that are none of the above their artwork or

00:31:32.540 | something that's probably shouldn't even be regulated. And so the US with various financial,

00:31:37.980 | you know, international bodies like G20, and FATF, and all these IMF are probably going to

00:31:43.660 | put some policy papers together, we're going to eventually end up with some kind of a test

00:31:47.580 | that says, is this cryptocurrency, a commodity, a security, a currency or something else like

00:31:52.300 | artwork, and then maybe and by the way, maybe five more things we haven't even thought of that

00:31:56.060 | will end up being in the future. What would you

00:31:57.820 | make the test for this is a utility token versus specul speculative

00:32:02.860 | security, because that seems to be the one that's really hard for people to figure out

00:32:09.180 | if 99% of people are buying a token on Coinbase, because they want to see it appreciate and they

00:32:15.580 | want to see it gain value, and only 1% are using it for the actual utility of it?

00:32:21.580 | Is it then a security? Is it by the percentage of people who use it? How, how would you as the

00:32:27.660 | the, you know, the leader in this industry, you know, actually define it? What's your definition?

00:32:33.180 | Yeah, so I think, look, I don't want to be presumptuous here, I think that we can,

00:32:37.820 | we can put some policy papers together, but I don't want to be, you know, it's the policymaker's

00:32:42.060 | job to come up with the policy. So I don't want to step on anyone's toes. But that being said,

00:32:46.220 | I think there's some existing case law out there, like, you know, the Howey test is something from

00:32:49.900 | a long time ago, we could probably build upon that. So the Howey test kind of says, you know,

00:32:54.060 | is this an investment in a common enterprise with an expectation of a certain amount of money?

00:32:57.500 | Is it an investment in a common enterprise? Well, if you're just giving the tokens away,

00:33:00.140 | I guess people aren't investing, right? Is it a common enterprise? Well, maybe if it's

00:33:03.980 | decentralized, and you don't actually control this entity, like you own, you know, less than

00:33:08.540 | a majority share or something, maybe then that's not a security, right? Or if there's not an

00:33:11.980 | expectation of profit, people are using it for something. So every startup right now in the space

00:33:16.220 | has basically had to hire a bunch of expensive lawyers to go tease apart these old, old rules

00:33:21.020 | that some of them were created in like the 1930s, you know, before the internet, you know,

00:33:24.540 | and they're like, you know, you're going to have to go and buy a lot of stuff. And then you're going

00:33:27.340 | to have to go buy a lot of stuff. And then you're going to have to go buy a lot of stuff. And then

00:33:27.900 | everything and try to understand where they're falling. And so I think, building upon that Howey

00:33:33.740 | test, but it could be something that includes a commodities definition, something or currency

00:33:37.820 | definition. You know, I think we should basically it's on us and the other crypto companies out

00:33:42.940 | there to go hire a really smart lawyer who has drafted legislation before and a bill,

00:33:48.380 | and actually get a draft of it out there. And then we can start to circulate it with

00:33:51.340 | various policymakers and get their feedback. And maybe they take it and run with it. Maybe

00:33:54.540 | they say, thanks, we have it, we've got it from here. But that's our next step.

00:33:57.180 | Freedberg, Sachs, Chamath, would you go with the Howey test? Or do you have thoughts on how to

00:34:04.300 | how the government here in the US should say this is a security? This is a utility token?

00:34:09.180 | I think what the EO did was basically kind of give people enough

00:34:14.380 | regulatory safety in the sense that something reasonable will probably happen in the

00:34:22.620 | reasonable future so that people could keep building and iterating. My big takeaway in the

00:34:27.020 | last sort of like nine months is that this thing is now too big to fail. And the government

00:34:32.060 | basically has to just find a reasonable framework to enable something because the all the real big

00:34:36.940 | issue Jason would be if they did something crazy. And now, you know, retail would just get

00:34:41.260 | completely smoked because I think they are the what do you think is reasonable? I think Congress

00:34:45.340 | has to basically pass a sensible set of legislations that clearly demarcate exactly what

00:34:49.580 | Brian said, this realm of stuff goes to the CFTC. This realm of stuff goes to the SEC. Now you guys

00:34:55.340 | go and implement.

00:34:56.860 | And if you have to do it, you have to do it. And if you have to do it, you have to do it. And if you

00:34:59.740 | have to do it, you have to do it. And if you have to do it, you have to do it. And if you have to do it,

00:35:01.740 | you have to do it. And if you have to do it, you have to do it. And if you have to do it, you have

00:35:02.540 | to do it. And if you have to do it, you have to do it. And if you have to do it, you have to do it.

00:35:03.980 | And so as a result, nothing will nothing reasonable will happen. So I think that's what has to happen.

00:35:09.020 | Congress has to get together and write something reasonable.

00:35:10.860 | Friedberg, you are building companies at the production board. Every year you build a couple

00:35:15.180 | companies, you have to go through securities law, you have to, you know, raise money from accredited

00:35:20.860 | investors, you do it in the traditional way. But you must be looking at crypto saying, well,

00:35:25.580 | I could launch Kana, Munique, whatever project and have a token associated with it and raise

00:35:30.380 | money and raise it globally or started down. What do you think is a reasonable way for people like

00:35:36.700 | yourself who are playing by the existing rules, to be able to embrace this new technology and these

00:35:43.580 | new platforms and paradigms? I think the government handle it?

00:35:47.500 | Well, some perspectives important, which is, you know,

00:35:50.700 | go back to kind of the 1920s in the United States, and there were pre 1920s, folks would go around

00:35:58.460 | and tell tall tales about interesting business ideas or business concepts or things that they

00:36:03.820 | were going to do with if they got a bunch of money from investors and investors gave them money.

00:36:07.500 | And they didn't actually deliver on what they said they were going to do. And they got swindled.

00:36:11.740 | And there was swindled story after swindled story that you can read about. And we saw this

00:36:16.060 | even with the ICO craze of a few years ago, right, where people tell a tall tale, you

00:36:20.540 | expect some value or some asset that you're kind of putting capital into that will pay off over

00:36:25.660 | time. And there's a swindle behind it. And that's really the origin of securities laws, in large

00:36:31.980 | part is to protect the individual from being swindled, to protect the storyteller that can take

00:36:37.100 | money away from people and figure out how to kind of rip them off and create a set of laws that the

00:36:43.100 | government can then enforce through the risk of imprisonment against doing those things.

00:36:47.740 | The challenge becomes when there's this

00:36:50.780 | more thoughtful way of running capital markets on the other side, and how do we actually resolve to

00:36:56.220 | some medium ground here, I'm not sure that you're going to have as quick of a resolution to say,

00:37:01.020 | well, let's go back to the old way where anyone can say anything to anyone they want.

00:37:04.940 | And anyone can put money into any project that they want. Because the role of the arbiter

00:37:09.740 | is to protect those from being taken advantage of if 85% of those projects are great. And 85% of the

00:37:15.580 | investors are intelligent and know what they're doing. It's the 15 it doesn't matter. It's the 15%

00:37:19.980 | that the government is here to protect. And that's the reason we have an institution called

00:37:25.900 | the government is to create systems of protection for those who are otherwise unable to protect

00:37:31.020 | themselves. Now a free market libertarian might say, we should have added, but the problem is we

00:37:37.020 | all have, we all feel as a group, at some point, a moral obligation to protect those who are

00:37:43.260 | unprotected. And that's why these systems emerge over time. And that's why these institutions

00:37:47.660 | exist. That's why the government exists. And it's why these systems are unprotected. And that's why

00:37:49.820 | these securities laws exist. And so it's difficult to assume that we can just go back to the kind of,

00:37:54.540 | you know, prototypical days of, you know, let me raise money for anything with any story without

00:38:01.660 | any regulation, and assume that it's going to work out well, because all it's going to take

00:38:05.660 | is a few of these stories before you have folks standing up in Congress saying this is

00:38:10.140 | unbelievable, we can't let this happen anymore. Let's go shut down the miners,

00:38:13.500 | let's go shut down the data centers, let's go after every asset we can.

00:38:16.540 | And by the way, they will because look at what just happened with Russia.

00:38:19.660 | The way that governments can kind of coalesce around digital systems now, and make significant

00:38:24.700 | change and block things from happening. I don't know if there is a world where we can assume that

00:38:29.580 | even with a free and open internet, that these systems can truly be decentralized, given the

00:38:34.540 | reach that governments have. And it is going to be in my mind, I've said this in the past, kind of

00:38:38.620 | the great tension of the 21st century socially, is the decentralized systems that really want to

00:38:43.900 | challenge what we believe to be a lot of overreach that's happening by governments against the

00:38:48.700 | governments' beliefs.

00:38:49.500 | And the way that we can do that is to build on what we believe to be the most important

00:38:54.540 | of the most important things that we can do to protect the people. So I think that's a very,

00:38:58.380 | very important thing, and I think that's a very important thing that I think we need to do.

00:39:00.700 | And I think that's a very important thing, and I think that's a very important thing, too.

00:39:03.020 | And it's a really important thing to think about. And I think that's a very important thing to think

00:39:05.500 | about. And I think that's a very important thing to think about. And I think that's a very important

00:39:07.740 | thing to think about. And I think that's a very important thing to think about. And I think that's

00:39:09.660 | a very important thing to think about. And I think that's a very important thing to think about.

00:39:10.700 | And I think that's a very important thing to think about. And I think that's a very important thing to think about.

00:39:11.340 | Something is legal doesn't make it make it a good investment, I guess, you know, you could have,

00:39:15.180 | you could have owned Netflix last week or something like that. And you guys might talk about

00:39:19.340 | that in a minute. But look, I think we all want to get rid of fraud, right? So if you commit fraud,

00:39:24.380 | meaning you lied to investors, then that's gonna be a crime, right? Like we I want to, I want to

00:39:31.180 | work with anybody in government to go put that make that stuff not happen. The danger is if we

00:39:35.500 | ever get into a place where we say, well, only wealthy people can now invest, because somehow

00:39:39.820 | there's an accredited investor test.

00:39:41.180 | That's inherently exclusionary. I don't I don't like the accredited investor laws.

00:39:44.220 | If we ever get into a place where the government is saying, you know, well, you have to,

00:39:48.220 | you have to have XYZ criteria and a person with this many years of experience on their resume,

00:39:52.220 | and then now we get into like the government sort of designed by committee to pick winners

00:39:56.460 | and losers. And that's, that's inherently flawed, because, you know, a lot of true breakthrough

00:40:01.340 | innovation, they look like bad ideas at the beginning, they're the kind of things that

00:40:04.620 | a government body would never invest in or put money into, right. So

00:40:08.140 | that's the inherent tension, we have to worry about what

00:40:11.020 | protecting people but not putting the government in the role of picking winners and losers.

00:40:14.300 | Sachs, you have any input on this sort of framework, you are investing traditionally in

00:40:20.220 | stocks, but you have also allocated some money to multi coin capital and other folks who are

00:40:25.020 | buying tokens. And then you have to distribute them and you have to deal with these downstream

00:40:28.860 | legal issues. How are you dealing with them? And then what do you think is a is a proper framework

00:40:33.420 | here in the US for protecting consumers while allowing innovation?

00:40:36.780 | I think the big picture framework that we have is correct, which is you kind of have this dichotomous

00:40:40.860 | economy between security tokens and utility tokens. So security tokens, basically, it's a

00:40:45.980 | token that's issued, that it's basically like a share of stock or a fractional ownership in some

00:40:53.100 | business doesn't really have a lot of functionality associated with it. That's kind of an end run

00:40:58.460 | around the securities laws, they should be treated like securities. On the other hand, though, there

00:41:02.700 | are a lot of tokens that are issued as part of creating a new kind of technology network. And those

00:41:10.700 | tokens have real functionality. And if you were to subject them to securities laws, and impose KYC

00:41:15.420 | and accreditation, you have to go through all these hoops, just to add one to your wallet, it would

00:41:19.260 | destroy the potential functionality created by these systems. So where there's real utility like

00:41:24.540 | that, I think the government should foster innovation by having a lighter hand, don't

00:41:29.820 | subject them to securities laws. And really what entrepreneurs need in the space are some

00:41:34.700 | safe harbors, some really clear lines around what would trip them up, and

00:41:40.540 | have them cross over from utility token and security token. So they know to avoid those

00:41:45.180 | things. So they can continue innovating on their core project.

00:41:48.140 | I think that's well said. I have three ideas, Brian, I want to run by you. Number one,

00:41:53.580 | a sophisticated test for investors in crypto and in startups. So just like you get a gun test, or

00:41:58.700 | a test for a driver's license, we come up with a way for people to become sophisticated, they take

00:42:04.220 | a simple test, maybe it's a, you know, whatever number of questions. And then second, maybe some

00:42:10.380 | of the things that they're going to be able to do is they're going to be able to do some

00:42:12.540 | things that they're not going to be able to do. And then third, maybe they're going to be able to

00:42:14.860 | do some things that they're not going to be able to do. And then fourth, maybe they're going to be

00:42:17.100 | able to do some things that they're not going to be able to do. And then fifth, maybe they're going

00:42:18.540 | to be able to do some things that they're not going to be able to do. And then sixth, maybe they're

00:42:20.620 | going to be able to do some things that they're not going to be able to do. And then seventh, maybe

00:42:22.620 | they're going to be able to do some things that they're not going to be able to do. And then

00:42:24.140 | eighth, maybe they're going to be able to do some things that they're not going to be able to do.

00:42:24.940 | And then you implement KYC and maybe throttle the numbers.

00:42:27.740 | Jason, those are some good ideas for when you're talking about the bucket of security tokens. If

00:42:31.980 | you want to start imposing those kinds of rules on utility tokens, you can't have a functioning

00:42:37.980 | network with like all these sort of friction.

00:42:40.860 | Hold on. But if then if the project gets scale, then you just have to file a little more have a

00:42:46.300 | little more KYC. And then finally, the founders of these projects, they can just launch them and

00:42:51.260 | disappear. They have no director like duty to the project. Do you think they're

00:42:57.580 | going to be able to do that?

00:42:58.780 | I think there needs to be something similar to directors in corporations. So just three

00:43:04.940 | ideas there that I've heard other people talk about, or I've been thinking about, right?

00:43:08.940 | Those are pretty good. I like those, actually. I mean, the nice thing about a driver's license

00:43:13.100 | test for financial literacy is that it doesn't measure how much money you have. So it would allow

00:43:17.820 | smart, you know, aspiring people who didn't start with a lot of money, like a lot of us to also be

00:43:24.220 | able to participate early on in these, which would be really great. Yeah, I think it's, you know,

00:43:27.420 | safe harbor or sandbox provision, I think is a really great idea as well. And lastly, yeah,

00:43:31.980 | I mean, if you were able to, I'm basically I think your three ideas are great. So those are good.

00:43:37.340 | I think that they're good for securities. But I mean, if you just want to buy gas on a blockchain

00:43:42.460 | to run your program, where you're a user of a application that's being run on a blockchain,

00:43:47.900 | you just want to buy a token for gas, do you really have to go through all these like KYC

00:43:52.300 | type hoops?

00:43:52.940 | Hopefully not, especially if it's a utility. I mean, self custodial wallets and dApps or decent

00:43:57.260 | centralized apps are this huge area of innovation that you know, you wouldn't want to like,

00:44:00.860 | imagine if the US government had said you need to come in and register to make a website or something

00:44:04.780 | like that, that would have been a terrible thing for innovation globally. So you have to remember

00:44:09.980 | to that a lot of this is going to flow to the country with the most permissive laws. So a lot

00:44:14.700 | of governments around the world, not the most permissive, but the most well structured that

00:44:18.700 | balances all the all the pros and cons. Maybe clear.

00:44:20.780 | Yeah. The thing that I would just add to this, though, is that there's a lot more than just AML

00:44:26.300 | and KYC guys.

00:44:27.100 | That has to happen for this to be a functioning ecosystem. We average, I think one hack a week in

00:44:33.820 | the crypto ecosystem, right? This beanstalk hack happened, what just a few days ago, that was

00:44:38.940 | almost $200 million. Last month, Axie Infinity, what was that almost $600 million. So there's a

00:44:44.860 | lot of stuff where in the in the normal securities world, like if you're a director of a company, and

00:44:52.460 | you don't have these adequate procedures, and Brian, you live this every day where there's like

00:44:55.820 | an audit committee, and there's some kind of a security committee, and there's some kind of a

00:44:56.940 | somebody that chairs audit that has to go and think about information security and blah, blah,

00:45:01.500 | blah, and all these disclosures have to happen. Insurance.

00:45:04.940 | But all these disclosures are really about actual work being done.

00:45:07.660 | If you don't do that work, and then you get hacked, you're actually liable, right? There's

00:45:12.460 | no version of this in a world where it is a little bit of the Wild West. So that stuff also has to

00:45:16.700 | exist. This is what I what I mean by I actually think Congress just needs to kind of like

00:45:21.100 | update the set of laws that actually allow the CFTC and the SEC to do their job to include this and say,

00:45:26.780 | now go and incrementally figure this out. Because even if you get the AML and KYC stuff, right,

00:45:32.380 | then there's all this other stuff where, you know, these folks that had their basically, you know,

00:45:36.460 | all this all this value deprived, who do they go to try to get the money back? You know, in the case

00:45:42.620 | of Axie, I mean, this is it's an incredible thing. But like, you know, they went to Andreessen, and

00:45:47.020 | they raised a new round, they're like, we're just gonna make everybody whole. But that's insane.

00:45:50.940 | Right? That's like not you can't expect that to happen with every single project,

00:45:54.620 | every single company, it's not going to be possible.

00:45:57.180 | Yeah. Well, I think a couple things will happen. I mean, in the in the custodial world of crypto,

00:46:01.580 | there'll be more regulation there already is, right? Like we have a New York Trust company

00:46:05.500 | that we get audited for various control environments and safety and things like that.

00:46:10.300 | But in the self custodial world, everyone is going to start to be in control of their own assets.

00:46:14.620 | And I think that, you know, the tools are getting better and better for that, like,

00:46:18.620 | you know, social recovery of keys, if you if you forget your password, and

00:46:22.540 | these kind of smart contract wallets. And so, you know, both are growing,

00:46:26.460 | and I think in the future, people may actually start to take more responsibilities for storing

00:46:30.700 | their own wealth if they want to choose to do that. And that'll allow them to kind of access

00:46:35.020 | a broader ecosystem of things. Let me ask a question, Brian,

00:46:38.380 | everybody seems to be very concerned about tether. You I don't believe participate in the tether

00:46:45.660 | ecosystem at Coinbase. Is that correct? Well, we're not participating directly, but we support

00:46:50.940 | as many assets as people want to use. And that is one of the ones that we've supported people to

00:46:55.100 | deposit and withdraw. And that's a big part of the reason why we're doing this. And we're doing it,

00:46:56.300 | we're doing it for the sake of the coinbase. And we're doing it for the sake of the coinbase.

00:46:57.580 | They've been banned in New York, they've had regulatory action in Canada,

00:47:03.180 | people are concerned about their attestations or lack of clarity on their commercial paper.

00:47:10.300 | What do you think of the stable coins getting very big?

00:47:14.780 | And maybe USDC seems to have it pretty tightly covered. But there's all these concerns and

00:47:21.020 | regulatory actions against tether. Is that a big nothing burger? Or does it concern you?

00:47:26.140 | That there's a lack of transparency into their holdings?

00:47:29.500 | Yeah, so I would say, you know, some of the early stable coin efforts definitely didn't have

00:47:35.740 | all their ducks in a row from a reputational point of view. You know, I'm not an I'm not an expert on

00:47:41.100 | tether. My understanding is that there have been some investigations and enforcement actions, which

00:47:45.020 | have required them to go in there and clean up some things. And, you know, our, our digital asset

00:47:50.860 | listing group kind of looked at a lot of this in depth and made that judgment call that where they

00:47:54.620 | were and where they are now. And so I think that's a big thing. And I think that's a big thing. And

00:47:55.980 | I think that's a big thing. And I think that's a big thing. And I think that's a big thing. But yeah,

00:47:57.500 | I do think that we're seeing the emergence of new groups like, you know, USD coin is one of those

00:48:03.020 | that I think has some better controls around it. And there's actually a bunch of stable coins now

00:48:07.980 | that are decentralized. You know, die and fracks and

00:48:12.220 | Explain what that is and why it's important.

00:48:13.980 | Well, so okay, so it really comes down to trust. I mean, you know, you can trust, you can decide to

00:48:21.180 | trust something like USDC that has kind of audit requirements and you know, a big four accounting

00:48:25.500 | firm coming in and saying, you know, I'm going to trust this. I'm going to trust this. I'm going to

00:48:25.820 | come in and look at it and things like that. Or you can look at smart contract code. And you know,

00:48:31.820 | thousands of people around the world can look at that. And there's an inherent bug bounty if you

00:48:34.700 | find an issue there. And if it hasn't been found, then you can start to think about trusting that.

00:48:39.260 | Now, I think stable coins like like die and others, they've been able to create these relatively

00:48:45.340 | complex systems that have sort of one asset, which is intended to be stable, but another one which is

00:48:50.700 | sort of the collateral. And you could imagine various black swan events where the peg would get

00:48:55.340 | broken and things like that. But it really hasn't happened yet in die. And it's shown a lot of

00:48:59.260 | resiliency, which I've been very impressed by. There's one actually one other type of coin,

00:49:04.700 | which I think is even maybe more interesting than just wrapping a fiat, like a dollar or a rupee or

00:49:10.940 | something like that. Because frankly, you know, the dollar is seeing a lot of inflation. You guys

00:49:14.300 | have talked about it many times on this show. So do you really want to have a stable stable coin

00:49:18.940 | that is inflating 8% a year? Exactly. There's some new coins coming out, which I've been really excited

00:49:24.940 | to see, which are I think, you know, biology calls them flat coins, but they're basically looking at

00:49:29.020 | the consumer price index. And they're trying to basically have flat purchasing power, and assume

00:49:35.740 | that the dollar and various fiat currencies around the world actually going to go through more

00:49:39.180 | inflation. That's a pretty cool idea. And you can do that in a creative way on a blockchain by having

00:49:43.660 | various oracles, which are these sources of truth. And if enough of them, you know, 51% of them tell

00:49:48.140 | you the CPI we think is this this year, it can kind of keep pace with CPI, which is a really

00:49:53.420 | cool innovation, I think. Thank you,

00:49:54.540 | thank you so much for Brian Armstrong for joining us for the first hour. And now we'll continue on

00:49:58.060 | with our Netflix discussion. Brian's fantastic. He was a very honest, he answered a lot of questions

00:50:02.780 | very honestly, and he's a super fan of the show. That business is a great business. That business

00:50:07.580 | will be a great business. He's thoughtful. We like somebody who's thoughtful. I really think

00:50:11.100 | that the challenge that Brian faced a year and a half ago, and the policy decision he faced

00:50:14.860 | is now being faced by every CEO across America. And that's the broad relevance is, you know,

00:50:20.220 | what are they going to do? Do you see this this quote by the McDonald's CEO, the

00:50:24.140 | former McDonald's CEO, Ed Renzi on Wednesday said companies have no business being in politics,

00:50:29.660 | and has launched a new advocacy coalition to fight woke corporate politics. He said corporations have

00:50:36.380 | no business being on the right or the left, because they represent everybody there and

00:50:40.700 | their sole job is to build equity for their investors.

00:50:43.820 | Wait, the people who make Filet-O-Fish are not going to chime in on Ukraine anymore.

00:50:48.060 | Yeah, but but think about that, because that actually is a pretty radical. It is a line in the sand.

00:50:53.740 | Yeah, he's standing on Brian shoulders. Let's be honest. I think, you know,

00:50:57.820 | the CEO of McDonald's. I mean, that's like a big, you know, traditional fortune 500 type

00:51:02.540 | corporation. And they're saying, like, we're not doing this anymore.

00:51:05.180 | Well, you know what, they were more than willing to do it if it scored them points,

00:51:08.380 | what they realized was it's going to be a never once you engage that you're never going to be

00:51:13.020 | able to disengage from it. All right, let's pivot over to Netflix. They reported a drop

00:51:17.420 | in net subscribers for the first time in 10 years, and the stock dropped 35%.

00:51:22.380 | 35%

00:51:22.780 | 35%

00:51:23.340 | 35% market cap from 155 billion to about 98 billion.

00:51:27.820 | According to Bloomberg, as of Wednesday, Netflix was the worst performing s&p 500 so far in 2022

00:51:34.860 | stock down 63% year to date, Ackman dumped his entire stake and booked a $430 million loss. And

00:51:45.180 | a large part of this was because they didn't hit their 2.5 million or so target increase in

00:51:52.220 | subscribers. And they didn't hit their 2.5 million or so target increase in subscribers, and they

00:51:53.180 | didn't hit their 2.5 million or so target increase in subscribers, and they, in fact, lost all 700,000

00:51:56.220 | Russian subscribers as part of boycotting Russia because of the Ukraine war.

00:52:04.780 | What do we think is happening here? Is this a bellwether Chamath for something more important

00:52:12.860 | going on? Or is this just Netflix not executing well?

00:52:17.180 | I think there are there's a macro thing and then there's a Netflix specific thing. The macro is,

00:52:18.700 | there's a macro thing and then there's a Netflix specific thing. The macro is,

00:52:18.780 | there's a macro thing and then there's a Netflix specific thing. The macro is,

00:52:18.860 | there's a macro thing and then there's a Netflix specific thing. The macro is,

00:52:19.080 | there's a macro thing and then there's a Netflix specific thing. The macro is,

00:52:23.560 | that we are learning the broad sweeping impact of Apple's privacy changes, in my opinion.

00:52:30.520 | You first saw it flow through into Facebook's earnings and basically them saying,

00:52:35.320 | "This is going to be really tough." You had Netflix, even if you add back the Russian

00:52:39.880 | subscribers, basically spend almost $600 million in the quarter on customer acquisition

00:52:44.360 | to effectively, they would have generated 500,000 subscribers net of churn.

00:52:48.920 | Right? Which was still about a million and a half under where they needed to be.

00:52:51.720 | The point is that I think Netflix in some ways was a little bit of a canary in the coal mine

00:52:57.320 | for the shrinking effectiveness of online advertising. I think that's why you then saw

00:53:07.160 | two days later, Facebook got taken to the woodshed in two days, was down, now it's down,

00:53:12.440 | I don't know, 15%, 20%. Google, I think has been down a lot today. It's just getting absolutely

00:53:17.960 | smoked relatively. I think it's down a lot today. It's just getting absolutely smoked relatively.

00:53:18.760 | I think it's down a lot today. It's just getting absolutely smoked relatively.

00:53:19.000 | The market. That's the macro issue, which is I think it's really hard for these ads to be as

00:53:25.480 | effective as they used to be. It's only going to get worse because Google has also said that they're

00:53:29.480 | going to implement a lot of the same versions of what Apple did inside of Android. Customer

00:53:33.560 | acquisition is going up. If you look at then all the companies that have to live and die

00:53:37.080 | on CAC, it's going to be an expensive road. That's the macro thing, I think,

00:53:43.960 | that not enough people are talking about. I think the micro thing inside of Netflix is that

00:53:49.480 | people churn out of a service when there isn't enough value. I think that's the most basic

00:53:57.480 | explanation of why so many people are leaving Netflix is that it's not that valuable. When

00:54:02.040 | you're spending $20 billion a year on content, but people more than ever are leaving the service,

00:54:07.960 | you have to inspect how much are you really spending in these areas and what is it actually

00:54:12.280 | creating in terms of library value? Disney+ I think has done a lot of work on that. I think

00:54:18.440 | Netflix has done an incredible job in a much shorter period of time. Apple, after only a few

00:54:24.680 | years, wins the first Oscar of any of the streamers, beating Netflix, even though they've

00:54:29.960 | been in there and spent a hundred- For Best Picture.

00:54:31.560 | For Best Picture. When you put all these things together, I think Netflix probably has lost a

00:54:36.680 | little bit of the script, but they're also suffering from a really macro headwind, which is

00:54:40.200 | the advertising business is broken. I would imagine that total subscribers to streaming

00:54:46.600 | services, and if you were to add up total subscription to streaming services, that would be a lot of money.

00:54:47.320 | I think if you add up total subscription service dollars, it's probably growing a lot.

00:54:50.600 | Oh, for sure. Netflix's relative share

00:54:53.160 | is going down because the quality of the competitors is improving so much.

00:54:57.480 | Even companies that are not able to deliver, like CNN shut down CNN+ this week

00:55:02.520 | after investing $300 million in trying to build out the service. Folks are putting serious dollars

00:55:08.440 | behind these projects, and so the competition is fierce, and they've got deep content libraries

00:55:13.800 | behind them. I personally think HBO Max is the best streaming service.

00:55:17.320 | Awesome. Followed by Disney+, followed by maybe a mix of Amazon, Netflix, and Prime.

00:55:26.600 | Netflix's relative value is going down because there's so much other content. When I'm thinking

00:55:33.160 | about what to watch, I'm looking at Disney+, I'm looking at HBO Max, and I'm like, "Hey, what should

00:55:38.440 | I watch tonight?" Then I look at Netflix. Netflix doesn't have a monopoly in content anymore.

00:55:43.480 | I'm looking at Disney+, and I'm like, "Hey, what should I watch tonight?" Then I look at Netflix.

00:55:44.600 | When I've got limited dollars, I personally look at this after we were texting about it.

00:55:48.520 | I subscribe to seven streaming services right now. If I didn't care as much about how much

00:55:54.200 | I was spending per month, I would probably cut three of them. Netflix would probably-

00:55:56.760 | Yeah, but it's under 100.

00:55:57.720 | Yeah. You're also then highlighting the second, I think, macro thing that is actually equally

00:56:03.880 | important, maybe even more important, which is the first rule of capitalism says that

00:56:08.920 | excess returns will always get competed away. Yeah.

00:56:11.400 | Yeah. Netflix had the run of the place where they were going to get a lot of money, but they were

00:56:11.400 | going to get a lot of money. Yeah.

00:56:11.480 | Yeah. Netflix had the run of the place where they were going to get a lot of money, but they were going

00:56:11.560 | to get a lot of money. Yeah.

00:56:11.640 | Yeah. So Netflix had the run of the place where they were an effective monopoly.

00:56:15.960 | Totally. Now, when everybody else woke up and got

00:56:18.280 | religion, they decided to invest and they've created some really compelling content. All of

00:56:23.400 | those returns will now get spread across seven or eight or nine competitors, which means that just

00:56:28.440 | by definition, mathematically, Netflix can't win the way that they used to.

00:56:32.440 | The network advantage in the streaming model is content and consumers. You have better content,

00:56:37.560 | you get more consumers, you get more money from consumers, you spend more on content.

00:56:41.560 | At some point, you get diminishing returns in that network model. And now we're seeing those

00:56:45.880 | diminishing returns hit Netflix. They haven't built advantages in search and discovery or in

00:56:51.160 | other or in social sharing or other features into the app or into the service that will give them

00:56:55.640 | more of a lock in value. Because all I'm doing is buying content is watching.

00:56:59.160 | There are also three times the price of Disney Plus and other services. So they're in the

00:57:05.320 | competition space, people are starting to look at and go, is this worth, you know, a Disney and an

00:57:10.520 | NBC? Or is this worth, you know, a Disney and an NBC? Or is this worth, you know, a Disney and an

00:57:10.520 | NBC? Or is this worth, you know, a Disney and an NBC? Or is this worth, you know, a Disney and an NBC?

00:57:11.080 | Right.

00:57:11.320 | Right. Right. Right. Right.

00:57:11.400 | Right. Or is this worth a Hulu and an NBC? Streaming service,

00:57:15.480 | Sax, you had something to add.

00:57:16.440 | Well, I mean, I agree with that, I would just add one factor to this, which is what Elon said,

00:57:21.640 | which is he said the woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable. I mean,

00:57:25.640 | the quality of the programming has gone down. I mean, Netflix used to be

00:57:29.560 | really good. I can't think of like a show now that I watch on Netflix. And I do watch

00:57:35.720 | HBO Max right now and Disney Plus, because they got some shows that I like. So I

00:57:41.160 | think somehow the programming people at Netflix have gotten out of touch.

00:57:45.400 | Yeah. Are they pandering to that audience, Sax, do you think? And, you know, similar to kind of

00:57:49.160 | how Disney ended up pandering? And do you think that there's broadly this kind of media problem

00:57:53.880 | of trying to pander to the wrong audience? I mean, they almost threw Chappelle off,

00:57:57.480 | who's the number by far the number one comic in, you know, in American comedy, and they absolutely

00:58:02.680 | would have thrown Chappelle off and done what a lot of those employees wanted. If they didn't have

00:58:07.560 | such a big deal with him, if he wasn't such a big deal.

00:58:09.560 | No, I think they held the line pretty,

00:58:10.920 | pretty, pretty.

00:58:12.040 | There's a lot of groveling. There's a lot of groveling.

00:58:14.520 | I mean, I think they reasonably heard the concerns of their employees and said,

00:58:18.440 | we reasonably disagree.

00:58:19.720 | Can I ask you guys a question?

00:58:20.680 | Yeah, but Jason, it showed it showed it but yes, but what I look, yes, maybe. But what I'm saying

00:58:27.400 | is that that episode revealed that the people are doing the programming and Netflix obviously,

00:58:32.600 | like they're not like I think they've lost touch with where most of the country is.

00:58:37.720 | I will give a shout out. I have not watched a series on Netflix.

00:58:40.680 | In probably a year.

00:58:42.040 | Oh, shark? No, no, no, but I will give a shout out to never have I ever which Mindy Kaling created.

00:58:48.840 | She's amazing. And that series is incredibly funny and poignant and cool and awesome. But

00:58:55.560 | outside of that series, I cannot think of a single reason why I would actually pay for Netflix.

00:59:00.920 | You guys let me ask you guys a question. So going back to because you know,

00:59:03.640 | there was the whole Disney panel HBO Max, however, oh my god, so good.

00:59:07.720 | The whole industry is suffering this problem. Do you remember the Oscars?

00:59:10.440 | We don't even watch it anymore.

00:59:11.880 | This is the question I have for you. Do you guys think that there's a difference

00:59:15.800 | culturally in the management of the media company? So let's go through them Warner Media, Disney,

00:59:22.760 | Netflix, Amazon. And do you think that that cultural difference may create an advantage

00:59:29.160 | and success? Do you think that Warner Media is operating HBO Max differently? Because they're

00:59:33.960 | culturally different? Yeah, they're culturally different. HBO has always been culturally different

00:59:38.440 | than for or tours.

00:59:40.200 | HBO has all

00:59:41.640 | HBO has sucked for years. They got a few good shows now. It's it's more like

00:59:45.960 | they've always been for tours. They always have gone to check out like a

00:59:49.160 | vision of the director, the vision of the writer and taken a lot of risk when you hear that HBO logo.

00:59:54.280 | I agree with Jason.

00:59:56.440 | I agree with you they have some really good shows right now. But until the last couple of years,

01:00:01.480 | it was like pretty dismal.

01:00:02.520 | Business but I mean, I to freebrook's point, you know that Netflix.

01:00:05.560 | I would say I would say Disney has Marvel and that's why they have Marvel and

01:00:09.960 | Star Wars. And that's and that's kept them extremely relevant.

01:00:12.520 | And Pixar.

01:00:12.920 | And Pixar.

01:00:13.400 | Well, yes, the IPG.

01:00:15.480 | I cannot tell you how much and the advantage Disney has is the rewatch ability of their content.

01:00:22.920 | I don't know how many times your kids have all watched Moana. My kids have watched. I've had to

01:00:27.640 | watch Moana 107 times already.

01:00:29.480 | Go ahead. Let's hear it. Let's start. Yeah.

01:00:31.320 | And and and the

01:00:33.800 | You're welcome.

01:00:34.520 | Yeah, you're welcome. And the and the Star Wars content as you guys know, you could rewatch Star

01:00:38.760 | Wars and Marvel. I mean, you know, you could watch Star Wars and Marvel. I mean, you could watch Star

01:00:39.720 | Wars and Marvel. I mean, like the content is very different on right Pixar movies too. You can watch

01:00:43.960 | 100 times over. That's very different content. HBO Max is thrilling and engaging and doesn't

01:00:49.640 | feel like it's pandering.

01:00:50.840 | HBO right now is operating at the next level. I mean,

01:00:53.640 | So many good shows.

01:00:54.280 | It for me,

01:00:55.240 | But Netflix was five years ago. So

01:00:57.560 | I understand but we're not talking about the past. We're talking about here today.

01:01:00.200 | Netflix went with these very big deals with big celebrity names. And you know,

01:01:05.480 | I think they just lost their uniqueness in terms of risk taking. So

01:01:09.480 | they went with Adam Sandler, no offense to Adam Sandler fans. And they're doing a lot of reality

01:01:15.080 | TV now. And if you look at Hulu, like dope sick, and then the dropout, if you look at Apple TV,

01:01:21.640 | Ted Lasso, we crashed. And then you look at HBO Max with just, you know, euphoria.

01:01:27.560 | Even I can actually

01:01:29.880 | Can you imagine euphoria?

01:01:31.160 | Euphoria is

01:01:31.960 | Netflix, it would never be on Netflix.

01:01:33.800 | It would never get made. It would never get made on that.

01:01:36.040 | That's the point, right?

01:01:36.680 | Yeah, they don't want to take risk. HBO is like for adults, they're like, oh, I'm going to do this.

01:01:39.240 | I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to

01:01:39.960 | do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this.

01:01:40.840 | And they're going to take risk. And Disney doesn't can't touch that. I think Hulu is a sleeper. I mean,

01:01:45.400 | Hulu is great. Have you guys watched the series called the great on Hulu?

01:01:49.320 | No, it's about Catherine the Great. It is incredible.

01:01:52.440 | I can't. I can't. I can't. So I'm watching severance right now. That's amazing. It's

01:01:58.760 | like really likes, you know, a family. I started paying for YouTube TV so that I could get streaming

01:02:03.640 | cable. Oh, yeah, I do. I do. That's my number one. My number one watch thing. It's YouTube TV because

01:02:09.000 | I don't do you have YouTube without ads? Yeah, you do YouTube. It's such a game. How do you do

01:02:14.760 | that? YouTube, YouTube, red or premium YouTube premium. It's called it's nine bucks a month.

01:02:19.640 | You can afford it. You see no ads on YouTube. Ask your assistant to ask her assistant to sign you up

01:02:25.400 | and you won't have to watch ads on YouTube. Are you functionally not able to use the internet now?

01:02:29.880 | I actually have people that do it for me. Do they type in your email password for you?

01:02:34.760 | Like, how does this work? And they're like, there's a person

01:02:38.760 | right there. Netflix button on the road. I can't get the mouse to work.

01:02:42.440 | He's got the VP of product from quest Ron, who lives in a little shack in the house next door

01:02:47.720 | who comes over and uses the remote for him. Yeah, thanks for tuning in everybody for the

01:02:52.280 | dictator himself, the Sultan of Science and David Sachs. We have a jam packed agenda.

01:02:58.040 | My god, the summit is going to be amazing. Let's just do a little recap here of what's happening.

01:03:02.840 | We've got some pretty great speakers, Ryan Peterson, Nate Silver, Claire, the nickel,

01:03:08.920 | Brad Gerstner, Palmer, Lucky's coming, Elon's coming, Keith, were boys coming, Joe Lonsdale,

01:03:15.640 | Tim Urban. But do you see a lot coming? Oh, is that what it says on the website? Yeah,

01:03:20.200 | he's on the website. Elon Musk is coming nice of PayPal. Antonio Gracias. I mean, we've got

01:03:26.760 | just an all star. You kind of buried there. And I think Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are coming.

01:03:32.680 | Yeah, that's gonna be amazing. And so it's gonna be really great. All right, everybody. We'll see

01:03:37.240 | you next time on the all in podcast. Bye bye.

01:03:41.080 | Let your winners ride.

01:03:43.720 | Rain Man David Sachs.

01:03:46.600 | And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

01:03:53.400 | Love you.

01:03:54.040 | I'm going all in.

01:03:55.080 | Let your winners ride.

01:03:57.080 | Besties are gone.

01:03:59.080 | That is my dog taking a notice. You're driving by.

01:04:07.000 | Oh, man. My avatars will meet me at.

01:04:12.680 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless.

01:04:16.840 | It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.

01:04:19.800 | Let your feet. Let your feet.

01:04:23.960 | We need to get.

01:04:26.840 | Merch is our back.

01:04:27.720 | I'm going all in.

E77: Tech work culture, crypto regulation, stablecoins, $NFLX & more w/ Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

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