Relentless
01:26:59 · Brian Armstrong
[01:26:59] S0: Well, okay. So we have the things that we're excited about right now, like, let's say next three, four years, and I'll try to touch on, like, the big long term picture. So there's a few things we're focused on right now. One is the everything exchange. So every asset class is coming on chain, and it's gonna be stocks and commodities and crypto and prediction markets and FX, and everything is now gonna trade, like, 20 fourseven globally, democratized access. And I think that's the future of all trading and value exchange. Okay. Then we're seeing stablecoin payments just take off in a massive way. That's the second big use case for crypto, so we're making a bunch of investments there. And now you can send money instantly anywhere in the world for, like, less than one second, right, anywhere in the world. So that's powerful, and we're going to see AI agents start to do a lot of machine to machine payments and, like, a bunch of cool stuff's happening there. And then we're seeing that... We're like, more of crypto in the financial services is is moving on chain into these, like, decentralized protocols, like decentralized exchanges, DeFi, and that's a big... With our self custodial wallets, like, these allow us to operate in more emerging markets. Like, how do we get a billion people on chain? I think we're gonna have to be self custodial wallet. This is, our base app and what we're doing with base chain. And so those are, like, our three big priorities right now. And I think long term, you know, the mission of the company is really about increasing economic freedom in the world. So how could we actually, like, bend the curve on economic freedom in a bunch of these countries? Because everybody has a smartphone now. They have access to the Internet. Now they have access to sound money, global payment system. They can invest in assets, get access to, like, high quality investment assets. They can get a loan. They can do capital formation to start a business in a way that's much more efficient. I think ultimately, like, we're kind of unbundling money from the state, if you will. And I think there could actually be eventually, communities, cities, societies, countries.
01:28:55 · Brian Armstrong
Like, this is kind of the network state idea where actually governance might get updated, where I think there could be physical territories, different places in the world that are pro freedom, special economic zones, if you will, things like Prospera, which we're an investor in, that are actually like the governance from a voting point of view is done on chain. Land rights is all carved up and tokenized. So title exchange and all these things are more efficient, mortgages. And the entire economy kind of runs on blockchain. And I think that would be a cool longer term vision of like, I hope we get to make, like, a crypto city or some special economic zones in The US that would really unlock innovation. It's not just for crypto, by the way. I actually think we want these sandboxes of innovation for lots of things, like in biotech, like, do we run accelerated clinical trials, Operation Warp Speed, like, do it all the time? How do we have a special economic zone to develop nuclear power or fusion energy in a way that doesn't get blocked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or a place where you can just build data centers unfettered? You don't have to follow a federal law, but within that sandbox, you can do much faster iteration or drone deliveries. Should be a bunch of these special economic zones. They worked really well in Shenzhen and China and Dubai and Singapore and Hong Kong. The US should have a number of these. That would be fun to really work on. And and can you imagine, like, dropping into some kind of, like... It would be like a weird... Like a Tokyo in, you know, the... A hundred years from now. Like, it'd feel like
01:30:23 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:30:23] S1: Like cyberpunk. [01:30:24] S0: Yeah. It would feel like a very different culture. Like, Burning Man meets, like, Tokyo or something. And you could drop in there and and feel what it's like to be in a city or in a society that really is not encumbered by so much [01:30:36] S1: red tape. If you look at zipline, they had... They they kind of took the same model where you can imagine Africa is like a special economic zone where suddenly you're able to fly the drones without the FAA worrying about it too much. Yeah. And they did exactly what you're kind of describing except for over there where they basically just gathered a bunch of flight time and data. I think they had like 50,000,000 flight time miles or flight miles before they even went and did their first flight in The US commercially. Yeah. And FAA just basically went over there, looked at their data. Kenya, I think, was like laughing at them because they were like, this clearly works, and we're... We've been using it for the last ten years, and what are you guys doing? And then they came back, and suddenly they're operating. I think they've got their, like, third major hub just turning on now. But I think that's kind of like countries is kind of the special economic zones right now. [01:31:22] S0: You're right. I mean, well, Zip Line is an amazing company, and you're right. Like, it's kind of... I mean, it's great that Rwanda, like, allowed them to be that special economic zone. Rwanda is kind of like the Singapore of Africa. [01:31:33] S1: Not Kenya.
01:31:33 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:31:33] S1: Not Kenya. [01:31:35] S0: Yeah. Rwanda. Well, they might be they might be in Kenya too. But, anyway, these social economic zones have been very helpful, and it's a shame that they had to, like, leave The US to do that. I mean, we should have those in The US as well. [01:31:47] S1: This is something that I've never heard someone in crypto talk about. I've never heard you talk about it. The Silk Road 2013. [01:31:54] S0: Mhmm. [01:31:55] S1: What was it like operating a crypto company as that was getting raided and, like, shut down?
01:32:01 · Brian Armstrong
[01:32:01] S0: You know, at that time, we we were always trying to make crypto more legitimate. Right? And unfortunately, like, crypto did attract a variety of people that were doing scams and different things. Mt. Gox had blown up. You know, that that was like a setback for about a year. It really put a chilling effect on the industry. But we knew that the technology had a lot of potential, and this was like a blip on the radar, and so we just wanted to power through it. So I... At that time in San Francisco, I remember, there were people telling me about how they were using Silk Road. And actually, one of the security guys on our team, he actually, like, he sold some, like, brownies on Silk Road just to, like, test it out because we wanted to understand it. And people kept messaging him like, are these, like, magic brownies? And he's like, no. They're just regular brownies. Like, do you want them or not? You know? My mother's recipe. Yeah. Exactly. And so we... He was trying to just, learn about it because we thought this could be a better way to do all kinds of commerce on the Internet. So they were selling mostly illegal drugs, but we wanted to understand it a little bit better. So employees were testing it in a legal way. But I remember seeing the news come out that Ross Ulbricht had gotten caught, and he was sitting there right in San Francisco. Like, he was at, I guess, like a public library, when he got caught, and it was like... You know, it was like right down the street from where I live or something like that. Right? So in a way, was like, wow, San Francisco really is the center of innovation, I guess, in all ways, at least at that time. Now I think it's decentralized a bit. But part of me was also like, man, I I get where he's coming from, like, as, you know, kind of like a libertarian minded thing. It's like, you know, do you own your own body? Like, yes. Okay. Should you be able to put anything you want in your own body? I guess. Like, I I get the libertarian argument, but he also... You know, we live in a society of laws, and he was, like, very clearly, Blake, breaking the law. So there was all these claims. The story just got weirder and weirder. Right? Because it was, like, claims of this assassination marketplace, which is very unclear if that ever really happened. I don't think it did.
01:33:57 · Ty Morse
[01:33:57] S1: It's a good story.