00:03:58 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Armstrong
[00:03:58] S1: In addition to that, I I really wanna get into the advisor Yeah. Product. So you have an SEC registered AI agent adviser. How does that work? [00:04:10] S0: Yeah. Okay. So we, we knew that AI tools like need to be embedded right in the Coinbase app because people are asking their AI, like a lot of investment and financial questions right now, but they, the, the AI agent doesn't really have context about what's in your account and what your financial goals are. It can't actually take actions on your, on your behalf. So we launched this thing Coinbase advisor. It's built right into the Coinbase app and you can talk to it in plain English and it can do research, but it can also conduct trades, do tax loss harvesting strategies. Like it can do financial literacy or education. Okay. So then most people on the internet, you know, they, when they write something on X, they say, this is not investment advice. And we thought, you know, we're the most trusted brand in crypto. Why don't we do build this the right way and actually make it real investment advice? And, the advice you're getting now from it is, yeah, it is investment advice. We can actually say that. [00:04:58] S1: How are you tracking its performance?
00:04:58 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Armstrong
[00:04:58] S1: How are you tracking its performance? [00:05:01] S0: Well, so right now, we are collecting all of that data. One of the things that I'm excited to do over time is actually build a leading front like a frontier model for investing, right? So that a lot of like, the scaling laws apply anytime you're building one of these AI models, and we're collecting starting to collect a lot of that data now. Today, the human's in the loop on these investment recommendations it's making, so it'll, you know, it can research things, it can propose things that you might wanna do, but the human is hitting accept and deciding what to do, and then we can start to build that data set over time, which I think will be a real moat. [00:05:36] S1: I guess, like taking a step back, what is the broader vision of all these products and what are you, what is the goal you're building towards?
00:05:36 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Armstrong
[00:05:36] S1: I guess, like taking a step back, what is the broader vision of all these products and what are you, what is the goal you're building towards? [00:05:45] S0: Well, the mission of the company is to increase economic freedom in the world. And we believe that it's important for everybody to have access to good financial services, to have sovereignty of money, like to have sound money that can't be eroded via inflation, for people to raise money to start a company or to get a loan or to make payments all over the world. We wanna democratize access, bring down the fees, reduce the friction, and that's how we're gonna unlock a lot of prosperity in the economy and, frankly, like, for civilizational progress. There's a lot of good research out there on economic freedom and the different countries of the world, and the highest economic freedom countries, it's positively correlated with all kinds of things, not just higher GDP per capita. It's also correlated with higher happiness, better treatment of the environment. The poorest 1010% of people in those societies are much better off, and it actually is correlated with, believe it or not, like, reduced, corruption, reduced war, reduced infant mortality, like, kinds of things. And so we believe that economic freedom is a foundational necessity for all civilizational progress, and crypto is this unique technology which can actually update lots of financial services and create more economic freedom in the world.
00:05:45 · Brian Armstrong, Molly O'Shea
[00:05:45] S0: Well, the mission of the company is to increase economic freedom in the world. And we believe that it's important for everybody to have access to good financial services, to have sovereignty of money, like to have sound money that can't be eroded via inflation, for people to raise money to start a company or to get a loan or to make payments all over the world. We wanna democratize access, bring down the fees, reduce the friction, and that's how we're gonna unlock a lot of prosperity in the economy and, frankly, like, for civilizational progress. There's a lot of good research out there on economic freedom and the different countries of the world, and the highest economic freedom countries, it's positively correlated with all kinds of things, not just higher GDP per capita. It's also correlated with higher happiness, better treatment of the environment. The poorest 1010% of people in those societies are much better off, and it actually is correlated with, believe it or not, like, reduced, corruption, reduced war, reduced infant mortality, like, kinds of things. And so we believe that economic freedom is a foundational necessity for all civilizational progress, and crypto is this unique technology which can actually update lots of financial services and create more economic freedom in the world. [00:06:55] S1: Do you think the average American or average person thinks that they're economically free, and if not, why?
00:07:02 · Brian Armstrong
[00:07:02] S0: I think in The US, so it's it's a tale of two cities. Like, on the one hand, The US is one of the more economically free countries in the world. Like, people generally trust the dollar. They trust that, the government's not gonna just come take money out of their bank account without their permission. Part of what gave me the appreciation for this when I was first starting Coinbase is that I had actually spent a year living in Argentina, and I saw that country go through hyperinflation, and it was just basically a hundred year history of the government stealing wealth from people in various ways. And so you have to remember, if people have only spent time in The US, there's many countries in the world where we sort of take these things for granted in The US. That is not the normal state of the world for most people in the world, but even in The United States, I would say our financial system needs an update, a massive update, because if you survey Americans, something like 80, I think 83% of them say that the financial system is not currently working for them, and they say the fees are too high, overdraft fees, these kinds of and then they say there's delays, it's hard to move money, they say that there's unequal access. I mean, there's lots of people in The US who are unbanked or underbanked, right? And so even in The US, I'd say our financial system is, the legacy financial system is, it's slow, it's creaky, it's old. In many cases, it's built on code that was written in the nineties and COBOL and these kind of mainframe computers, and a lot of that stuff just hasn't been updated. So it's gonna bring enormous benefits all over the world. There's some people in the world who have like a hair on fire problem that their money could just be taken from them at any moment. And now suddenly with a smartphone, they can have access to good financial services. Also in The US, we're gonna see this unlock growth and prosperity.
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?