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?
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.