The Exchanges

Q Isn't that what the Clarity Act is for? Like, I read parts of it, but it seemed like you're not allowed to pass it on, and after this act you can.

A Yeah. So this is being carefully, has been carefully negotiated in the draft Clarity Act. Uh, the banks kind of made this concern out there in the world that, um, they didn't want any rewards to be paid on idle balances. So that made it into the latest draft of the Clarity Act. But as long as the customer is doing some sort of activity, like a payment or trading, then they would be eligible to get these rewards. So the customer can still, at least in the current draft, if it becomes law, Um, and it's currently allowed under the, the genius act, which already became law. Um, customers would get, you know, they could get the majority of these, uh, benefits from the underlying dollars held in short-term US treasuries. Um, so that's the current arrangement. And then you, you had asked about another three to four percent. I wasn't sure what, what that part was.

AI assessment note: “as long as the customer is doing some sort of activity... then they would be eligible”

Q So what are these being used for now? Say Bitcoin has become a store of value. Yeah. What is being built on top of proof of stake? Like, what's the real world use case today?

A Yeah. Well, another example would be, um, borrowing and lending. So, you know, in many places in the world, it's kind of difficult for people to get access to credit. Um, and in the, in these people call these like DeFi protocols, like decentralized finance. Um, these are all using smart contracts. So in this world, um, you can have a number of people who are, have money willing to lend and money they want to borrow. And you can have, um, an interest rate that gets generated, right? Um, you know, you had mentioned earlier, people on Coinbase can actually choose to lend their money out and earn these yields and things. That's using a DeFi protocol underneath. So some of these have reached maturity where, um, and it's, by the way, it's global, right? So anybody in the world can participate in this.

AI assessment note: “Well, another example would be, um, borrowing and lending.”

Q like you asked earlier about giving, if people live forever or for longer and they don't give, and if wage price inflation does not keep up with asset price inflation, like it does not even in America for the last 3040 years, What happens to income inequality? I've spoken a lot about this over the last week, because I've been there listening to lectures around this. What do you think?

A I mean, it's such a big question, right? I mean, I think one way to solve it is to make everybody a capital, a capitalist, right? So you're not just working for labor. How do you make it so everybody, even if you have relatively low income, you can put a little bit of money aside to own Own stocks or, you know, um, parts of other companies that can, that can grow, right? So there's something like four billion people in the world today who are unbrokered. They don't have any ability to buy equities. Um, and if you can democratize that, then everybody can become have a piece of it, right? Like here in the U S there's an experiment that's being done right now. These Trump accounts, you probably saw that. So Brad Gershner has been great on that and along with others. And Just getting every kid a thousand dollars of the S&P 500 at birth can make them have skin in the game, right? So I think that's...

AI assessment note: “I think one way to solve it is to make everybody a capitalist”

Q You can say something about her and then maybe we can play it. She told me about her three kids. We'll put up her picture when this part is playing. She was showing me the Jamie Dimon interview this morning. What was that?

A Well, um, yeah, so we are trying to advocate for our customers to have clear rules in America to have benefits from this new financial system, right? So that includes a whole variety of things, including what I shared earlier about, we want people to be able to earn more money on their money. Um, some of the banks are thrilled with this. They're actually doing integrations with us. We were doing stablecoin integrations with five of the 20 largest banks in the world. Um, Some of them are less happy about it. It's a little unclear to me why. I, there's the reason that sometimes the bank, it's not, it's actually not really the banks themselves. Usually it's the bank lobby, which a lot of industries have these lobbying groups in DC, which become more protectionist sometimes.

AI assessment note: “Usually it's the bank lobby, which a lot of industries have these lobbying groups”

Q And tell us a bit about health. I know you're passionate. How long is Brian going to live for? And what is one thing I can take, inject, eat, that will help? Just one thing.

A Well, okay, so yeah, broadly, I mean, I'm just interested in how you, how to use technology to improve the world, right? And, um, you know, getting some liquidity from Coinbase has allowed me to think about how to invest in other companies. And I actually think, you know, fortunes are being made in software and in crypto and everything. So it's, it's on all of us to think about how to put that capital into hard tech problems, which are sometimes more risky and Um, I was very inspired by, you know, what Elon did with his companies after PayPal and things like that. So anyway, I did co-found this biotech company in the longevity space and invested in it called New Limit, and they're doing something called epigenetic reprogramming to try to find new drugs that restore function your cells had when they were younger. The company's doing really well. The first drug trials will happen next year, um, and they've been doing a lot of cool stuff with AI to discover these new drug candidates and whatnot. So that's been Really fun. I invested in this company called Research Hub, which is trying to make scientific research more like open source software. So that company's been really exciting and gotten good traction. And, you know, recently I've invested in a couple of companies doing reproductive tech. So this is helping people, you know, everyone knows about like IVF and things, but there…

AI assessment note: “I did co-found this biotech company in the longevity space and invested in it”

Q If I were to start a business around, because I go back to like, people watching this want to start a business. If I were to start a business in mining today, by virtue of increased energy cost recently, what kind of IRR might I make? Say hardware being equal.

A Yeah. Well, it depends. Um, a lot of the successful Bitcoin mines are adjacent to, uh, power plants where there's certain times of day where they may have just excess capacity that would not get monetized. So you could almost think of the Bitcoin mine is like, um, it's like a floor on the price of electricity. So if it, if it ever dips low enough, then all that can be the, the energy can be banked in the Bitcoin that gets mined, if you, if you will. So it actually allows sometimes, um, it's a real benefit to people who are trying to underwrite the creation of new power plants, because they can say, all right, I know that there's a floor on the price of energy, and it helps them with their modeling. I should, I should mention though, because sometimes people have concerns about how much energy Bitcoin uses, and I know you're focused on climate, you mentioned, right? And, um, you know, Ethereum and other blockchains use a new system called proof of stake, which is actually 99.9% more energy efficient. And, uh, I could describe that algorithm too, if you want, but it's, uh, yeah.

AI assessment note: “I know you're focused on climate, you mentioned, right? And, um, you know, Ethereum”