00:08:42 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Armstrong
[00:08:42] S1: So I wanted to ask you about this. I've had several conversations, one with Max Levchin. We talked about socialism. He is not for that I at [00:08:52] S0: think he grew up in a socialist country. The people who grew up in socialist countries and immigrated are sometimes the most patriotic, so. [00:08:58] S1: Surprise. Yeah. So I talked to Max Levchin. I also talked to David Bazooki, so at Roblox, they created one of the first digital economies, and so between those two and then some other conversations I've had, I've been really curious of the research, of the historical references that the CEOs are using to build their companies. So for you, Argentina, are there any other kinds of instances that you've been learning from of other economies? If you did have to start one today, I'm assuming you are doing that here, but what would the main building blocks be?
00:09:34 · Brian Armstrong
[00:09:34] S0: Yeah. Okay. So I'm definitely a student and fan of free market capitalism. We believe that capitalism is a force for good in the world. To me, that's a fairly obvious thing. I'd say probably amongst the general population or college campuses, maybe that's a controversial view in this moment, but we're unapologetic about it. We believe capitalism is a good thing, and we want everybody to have a piece of it. Capitalism lifts everybody up. It doesn't create equal outcomes. I actually don't think you want that. You want high growth that lifts everyone up, And so, we very much believe that crypto is free market oriented, which can enable all these things, and we want to democratize access for everyone to participate, in capitalism. You know, some of the influences when I was, right, just founding Coinbase, You know, I had been reading a lot of, Milton Friedman. You know? There's, like, this great TV series from, I think, the eighties called free to free to choose. You can see it on YouTube where he goes through a bunch of interesting economics examples. You know? I'd been reading some Ayn Rand and things like that, just celebrating builders and people who can go move civilization forward. I think lots of people have been very clear on this. Those were some of the influences. And I think that America is one of the more free market capitalist countries in the world. It's not the most. It's I think it's in the top 11 or 12. You can actually go look at the rankings. Right? There's various organizations that publish rankings of the economic freedom of the world of different countries. So The US, it's the big it's the largest it's it's the I'd say it's the most free large economy, much more free than, say, China. Right? But there are maybe, a handful of countries above that have even a little more economic freedom. And I in my view, the more you lean in economic freedom, the more everyone benefits and America should do that as well.
00:11:16 · Molly O'Shea
[00:11:16] S1: So why do you think America and the newer generations are falling to socialism?
00:11:25 · Brian Armstrong
[00:11:25] S0: I think that every generation has to kinda learn this from first principles if they haven't been exposed to it. So, yeah, I when I talk to people who left, socialist countries, I mean, for them, it's like the most obvious thing in the world because they actually lived through it. Right? I think if you if you look at, like let's just think about some of the lower economic freedom countries. Right? North Korea, Cuba, formerly Venezuela. Right? Maybe that's changing now. These are not places where you would wanna go. Right? You know, people, in general, are much worse off, and they have worse outcomes across the board, whether you look at health care, education, or, GDP per capita or anything. So, you know, look, it's a nuanced debate. Think, you know, there's a whole argument about suicidal empathy. Right? If America's been so prosperous for so long, does it create some sense of guilt, and people now wanna give back or they wanna, you know, redistribute? So it's an interesting complex, societal phenomenon, but I've seen that if if, free market capitalism is kind of this contrarian idea. Right? If you look at it on the face, you'd say, Oh, well, it's unequal outcomes. That's not good. But it's the least bad outcome, is what someone might say, because if you take away that incentive and freedom for people to go build innovative things and try new ideas, you have a society that stagnates, and you have people who go into positions of power that are they become corrupted. Right? And and and so you need a free market to, like, root out bad ideas and celebrate good ideas for everyone to benefit.
00:13:01 · Molly O'Shea
[00:13:01] S1: Yeah. It was actually, like, it was so funny talking to Dave Mazzuki about this because, like, a little bit controversial, but, yeah, most of Roblox's users are very they're young. They're 25. But guess what? Everybody who makes a game on Roblox and the games that they play, and they've seen this over and over again, when you're building out a new game and, I don't know, the biggest use cases, they all come back to capitalism. It's like these kids are building and playing these games of being an entrepreneur. Mhmm. And they don't realize that, and then they're protesting, and then they're supporting socialism, which I think is the biggest paradox. But not to beat on that too much, I just, like, am always really surprised because it's like like, there's so much to do with, like, social media and everything, but then in the reality, it's like, no. They're they're actually just part of the economy, and it all comes back to capitalism. Mhmm. But in terms of Argentina, what are your plans? Mean, thank God Teal's blessing.
00:14:05 · Brian Armstrong
[00:14:05] S0: Well, okay, so Coinbase is expanding to different countries all over the world, and actually the Base app, which is our self custodial wallet, has an easier time spreading You can launch that in hundreds of countries around the world, because if you're not taking possession of customer funds, it's not treated as a regulated financial service business. So the base app is our way to get to all these countries around the world, and then we have 10 markets or so where we go really deep with our custodial regulated financial service But, yeah, a couple mean, maybe some interesting stories from Argentina. You know, I remember that people would, like, try to ride the bus, and they I guess the buses would only take these coins. Right? And because there was so much hyperinflation, you'd have to come with a fistful of these coins. And, actually, coins became in almost rare it was rare to get coins. So if you went to go spend with paper money and they owed you some coins and change, they'd be like, ah, I'll just give you an extra peso back or something because they didn't didn't wanna give up their coins. Right? I maybe, like, the more pernicious example is that I'd say in Argentine culture, like, this was at least my impression as an outsider coming in, I'd say people were quite pessimistic about the future. Peter Thiel had this great two by two diagram about, are you optimistic or pessimistic? Are you deterministic or nondeterministic about the future? People in Argentina of feel like it could all be gone tomorrow. The future is going to be worse. So just live every day like it's your last. Have great food and wine. Sell you know, spend your whole paycheck. You know, have have a nice dinner with your family, because that's been the history of the country is, like, periodically just their money gets eroded and taken away. And so what is the consequence of that? It's like everybody in society kind of just they don't plan long term to try to build something for the future because it could all be gone tomorrow. Right? So to do a ten, twenty year exercise to go build a world changing company like Coinbase or, you know, what Elon did with SpaceX, That's just not gonna happen in Argentina because, I don't know, maybe the next election, the government will just seize seize all of your assets. And, like, what was the point of even starting that project?