Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, obviously
Speaker 1: a lot going on in crypto, but I would say
Speaker 1: the two big things are, like, I guess the crypto winter,
Speaker 1: there's been some recovery, but obviously all the coin prices
Speaker 1: are way lower than they used to be. And then
Speaker 1: there's just everything going on on the regulatory side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a double whammy for the industry. And
Speaker 1: I guess it's hard. It's hard to determine causality when
Speaker 1: it comes to price and extra regulation coming in. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is not a great time for crypto. Well, I
Speaker 1: would say that the historical patterns would suggest the regulators
Speaker 1: like to come in after people have lost money. After
Speaker 1: people have lost money and scams, their investments go down.
Speaker 1: So it kind of makes sense that you see the
Speaker 1: uptick in regulation right after, just like the lines have
Speaker 1: been going down for a while, right, But it does
Speaker 1: prompt these big questions about should the regulators have been
Speaker 1: more proactive, should they have been doing things before people
Speaker 1: lost money? And then what should they do now? Anyway,
Speaker 1: we have the perfect guest to talk about this because
Speaker 1: we are going to be speaking with Brian Armstrong, CEO
Speaker 1: and co founder of coin Base right in the middle
Speaker 1: of all this, the pre eminent American crypto exchange. So, Brian,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on odd Lots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 1: We've actually asked other executives in the crypto space this
Speaker 1: question before, but I'd love to get your take on it.
Speaker 1: What is yield farming and where does the return of
Speaker 1: it come from? Well, I mean, yield farming has a
Speaker 1: little bit of a bad name, I think in this environment.
Speaker 1: There was obviously with the collapse of Tera, Luna and
Speaker 1: block Fi and some other firms like that. I think
Speaker 1: that's a very valid question to be asking, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I couldn't even answer it on their behalf.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: pieces of crypto that people are still excited about, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's lots of things we can build beyond that.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show quite a bit is this idea of crypto as
Speaker 1: kind of the ultimate momentum asset and when money is
Speaker 1: flowing in prices go up and everything is great. When
Speaker 1: money flows out, prices collapse quite quickly, which would seem
Speaker 1: to make the business of being a crypto exchange extremely cyclical.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that stood out from your
Speaker 1: most recent results you just reported relatively recently, you talked
Speaker 1: about how you want to be profitable through the cycle,
Speaker 1: through the upturns and the downturns. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about how you plan on doing that. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: historically most of our revenue has been from trading fees,
Speaker 1: which you're absolutely right, it is cyclical, and crypto has
Speaker 1: been a fairly volatile asset class goes up and down. Now,
Speaker 1: what we've done is we've started shifting more and more
Speaker 1: of our revenue to what we call subscription and services
Speaker 1: in our financials and our earnings calls. And basically what
Speaker 1: that means is things like usd coin, a stable coin
Speaker 1: that's been a nice growth mechanism for us, even in
Speaker 1: a down crypto market. Things like custody fees, fees that
Speaker 1: we earn on coin base card. People are you know,
Speaker 1: using it for spending in merchant commerce activity, So these
Speaker 1: things are I wouldn't say there's zero percent correlated with
Speaker 1: overall market in crypto, but there are certainly a lot
Speaker 1: less than trading fees, and that's allowing us to build
Speaker 1: a more predictable business. So we started in the industry
Speaker 1: also talk about the regulatory side, and that one whom
Speaker 1: you know will definitely talk a lot about that. But
Speaker 1: in particular, I think yesterday I saw that coin base
Speaker 1: you had some new program I think it was called
Speaker 1: the four thirty five program about you know, call your congressman,
Speaker 1: like let people know that you care about crypto policy.
Speaker 1: And of course like Uber sort of famously started the
Speaker 1: strategy like telling people on the app, like tell your
Speaker 1: local regulators you want to drive an Uber. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to ask this in the most like
Speaker 1: diplomatic way possible. And I have many friends who are
Speaker 1: into crypto, and I like many of them. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to crypto, do you want the type the
Speaker 1: type of person who would call their congressmen to tell
Speaker 1: them to do better crypto policy? Is that really the
Speaker 1: type of person that you want sort of being the
Speaker 1: voice of cryptoregulation. Well, I think the average person in crypto,
Speaker 1: and by the way, there's a lot of them, you know,
Speaker 1: one true one in five households now have used crypto,
Speaker 1: about fifty million Americans. This is a this is becoming
Speaker 1: a major constituent of you know, lobbying group and everything
Speaker 1: that's gonna have shape future elections. They want to you know,
Speaker 1: these average people. They may not have the exact solution
Speaker 1: for what the legislation should say around regulation of crypto,
Speaker 1: but they do know that they want elected representatives who
Speaker 1: are going to ensure that this industry comes within the
Speaker 1: regulatory perimeter, offers consumer protection, but also you know, allows
Speaker 1: this innovation to flourish so that it can we can
Speaker 1: update the financial system. You know, eighty percent of a
Speaker 1: Americans now believe that the financial system doesn't work for them.
Speaker 1: It's either too slow, it has too higher fees, it
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, nobody has equal access or not. Everyone
Speaker 1: has equal access to it. And it's not surprising that's
Speaker 1: the case. I mean, the technology behind the financial system
Speaker 1: is sometimes forty years old. It's written in cobalt, and
Speaker 1: these mainframe computers and the laws for it are sometimes
Speaker 1: one hundred years old. They were created before the Internet
Speaker 1: even existed, right, so it's time to update the financial system.
Speaker 1: We I think the average voter in America is now
Speaker 1: realizing that crypto is one of the great technologies that
Speaker 1: can help me update that and they want their elected
Speaker 1: representatives to bring that legislation and clarity to the US.
Speaker 1: Just on the political side. I mean, Joe and I
Speaker 1: kind of alluded to this in the intro, this idea
Speaker 1: that now that we have losses and we have big
Speaker 1: scandals in the industry, regulators seem to be becoming more
Speaker 1: active in the space. Can you talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about from your perspective, what is it like
Speaker 1: dealing with Washington now versus say, in twenty twenty or
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. Yeah, well, I would say compared to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, many more people that I meet with in
Speaker 1: Washington are actually pretty knowledgeable about crypto now. It's no
Speaker 1: longer a niche thing. Some of the conversations I had
Speaker 1: five years ago, you know, they were very basic. But
Speaker 1: most people that I speak with now actually have a
Speaker 1: reasonable understanding of crypto. They there. I think there's two camps.
Speaker 1: One camp is saying, hey, in the wake of FTX,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of being associated with crypto, and I'm just
Speaker 1: going to kind of wait and see what happens because
Speaker 1: it's too dicey to even go near it. The other
Speaker 1: half of the folks I speak with are saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, this is an opportunity. I'm actually I want
Speaker 1: to be one of the people who helps bring this
Speaker 1: within the regulatory perimeter. And and we can see how
Speaker 1: important that is now with the collapse of FTX, and
Speaker 1: so they're actually drafting legislation, they're trying to gather bipartisan
Speaker 1: support to get some clarity going. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: personally much more in favor of that ladder group. So
Speaker 1: actually I want to ask you, you know you talk
Speaker 1: about this impulse is like okay, in the wake of
Speaker 1: bring it inside the regulatory perimeter, And part of my
Speaker 1: question is like why because I look at FTX collapse
Speaker 1: and one of the biggest like sort of like crucial
Speaker 1: exchanges in the industry, and nothing bad happened after that.
Speaker 1: There was no fallout or no bailouts, It didn't have
Speaker 1: any spillover. So part of my thing is like, I
Speaker 1: don't want this in any perimeter because that seems to
Speaker 1: work pretty well in terms of the lessons of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight avoiding too big to fail. What about
Speaker 1: the argument that it's like from a sort of like
Speaker 1: structural like yeah, like financial contagion standpoint, regulators have done
Speaker 1: a pretty good, pretty good job not letting this volatile product,
Speaker 1: this volatile industry create problems for the financial system. Let
Speaker 1: it burns strategy. Yeah, well, you know, I would disagree
Speaker 1: with the idea that nothing bad happened. I mean, a
Speaker 1: lot of people lost money, that's absolutely And I'm glad
Speaker 1: you say that because I did not. You're right, people
Speaker 1: lost their like, yes, yeah, so there was certainly some
Speaker 1: activity there, and I think that's the kind of consumer
Speaker 1: protection we're talking about. I don't I don't think there
Speaker 1: should have been bailouts or anything like that. Nothing in
Speaker 1: crypto is too big to fail. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: antithetical to crypto frankly, to you know, have a bailout
Speaker 1: or something like that. If you the first bitcoin block
Speaker 1: that was mind right had a message in it about that,
Speaker 1: you know, Chancellor on the braink of bailout. So crypto
Speaker 1: was kind of founded almost a bitcoin was founded as
Speaker 1: a result of reaction to the two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: financial crisis. But I think those two ideas can come
Speaker 1: into unity. I mean, we can have and again I'm
Speaker 1: talking about for the centralized actors in crypto, you know,
Speaker 1: the custodian's exchanges, companies like coin base. It's pretty clear
Speaker 1: everybody generally, there's broad consensus those should be regulated. It
Speaker 1: applies some of the best practices and standards, so we
Speaker 1: don't have fraud and corruption and things, you know, wash
Speaker 1: trading or email issues. But the decentralized pieces of crypto
Speaker 1: that's different. I mean, we need to have decentralized protocols
Speaker 1: so that we can have a global, more global and
Speaker 1: fair and free financial system, and that piece. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think those are going to be regulated because
Speaker 1: there is no central authority for bitcoin or them. For instance,
Speaker 1: what should consumer protections look like in crypto? In your opinion,
Speaker 1: and especially you know, when I think of something like
Speaker 1: doge coin, you know, it's hard for me to come
Speaker 1: up with an economical use case for it, and so
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you can put all the disclosures that
Speaker 1: you want on there, but it seems highly likely that
Speaker 1: people will be losing money on that product at some
Speaker 1: point in time. Yeah, So again I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: the regulation and the customer protection probably should happen with
Speaker 1: the centralized actors, the custodian, the exchange, not necessarily dodge coin,
Speaker 1: which would be another decentralized coin, right, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think the exchanges and the firms that are
Speaker 1: being built around you know, custody or trading of things
Speaker 1: like that, they are going to have to have, um,
Speaker 1: some of these best practices from the traditional financial services world.
Speaker 1: So you know, let's have audited financials, let's make make
Speaker 1: sure customer funds are segregated from corporate funds, um, let's
Speaker 1: make sure that there's MLKYC programs and avoid avoiding wash trading,
Speaker 1: and yeah, appropriate disclosures are important as well. So those
Speaker 1: are all just kind of good general best best practices.
Speaker 1: But again it's focused on the centralized players as opposed
Speaker 1: to the decentralized pieces. It's interesting you make this distinction
Speaker 1: obviously between you know, there's sort of centralized players and
Speaker 1: then decentralized DeFi stuff. You're kind of becoming a hybrid,
Speaker 1: and you recently launched a layer to roll up to
Speaker 1: help scale ethereum. And I'm curious, as a regulated entity
Speaker 1: and one that has to abide by like finsend and
Speaker 1: anti money laundering laws, can you explain if the tension
Speaker 1: or is there any tension between I believe these sort
Speaker 1: of like a you know, roll up layer twos have
Speaker 1: some sort of centralized sequencer so that the transactions made
Speaker 1: out of them then get back to the main ethereum chain.
Speaker 1: Are you responsible for that and do you hate? How
Speaker 1: do you deal with that as an regulated entity? What
Speaker 1: if someone wanted to or try to launder money through
Speaker 1: this layer two are you facilitating that by putting those
Speaker 1: transactions onto the main ethereum chain. Yeah, so earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that the centralized players like coin base should
Speaker 1: be regulated and I and I was really referring to like,
Speaker 1: you know, our primary revenue stream today csodia in exchange.
Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right. We are embracing decentralization. At coin Base.
Speaker 1: We have a number of different products and legal entities
Speaker 1: and different ones working in various areas. So we did
Speaker 1: launch this really exciting thing, a layer two solution called
Speaker 1: Base and our goal with that is really to help
Speaker 1: provide more scalability and better usability for layer two solutions.
Speaker 1: So we want to get transactions and ethereum down to
Speaker 1: you a penny or less and help that scale to
Speaker 1: hopefully a billion or more people someday. I think I
Speaker 1: guess the core of your question was really around the
Speaker 1: responsibility from a centralized decentralized pease and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: so base is it has some centralized components today, but
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be more and more decentralized over
Speaker 1: time as as it grows, and so you know, I
Speaker 1: think we have responsibility in terms of you know, transaction
Speaker 1: monitoring things like that that we have to look at
Speaker 1: in the early days, but as it decentralizes, I think
Speaker 1: that again, the centralized actors are the ones that are
Speaker 1: probably going to have the most responsibility there to avoid
Speaker 1: money laundering issues and having transaction monitoring programs things like that.
Speaker 1: So speaking of responsibility, Um, you know, there are thousands
Speaker 1: I think of coins and tokens listed on coin base now,
Speaker 1: dred Okay, I didn't flip through all the pages, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot um And you guys say that you
Speaker 1: never actually list securities, but it feels like nowadays there's
Speaker 1: so much uncertainty over you know, you could wake up
Speaker 1: tomorrow and the SEC says this is a security or
Speaker 1: that's a security. I mean just a little while ago,
Speaker 1: for instance, they were um, I think there was an
Speaker 1: inforcement action on Kim Kardashian for unlawfully touting a crypto security.
Speaker 1: So how can you say with confidence that you don't
Speaker 1: list any securities when it feels like that's a very
Speaker 1: fluid thing at the moment. Yeah, So I think, look,
Speaker 1: the best thing for us and for the whole industry
Speaker 1: would be, here's a clear rule book. Everybody has to
Speaker 1: follow it, you know, and if the rules change, give
Speaker 1: us a new rulebook, we'll follow that one. Right. We've
Speaker 1: actually been requesting that, and we've we've filed a petition
Speaker 1: with the SEC on this. People can read it on
Speaker 1: their website, and we sort of enumerated, Look, these are
Speaker 1: the ways that the current securities laws don't really address
Speaker 1: some of these underlying questions in crypto, like if there
Speaker 1: is no common enterprise or centralized entity behind this thing,
Speaker 1: who who publishes the disclosures? You know, So there's there's
Speaker 1: questions like that. Now, what we've done in the absence
Speaker 1: of that clarity, which again would be the best case scenario,
Speaker 1: is that we have created our own internal process to
Speaker 1: review assets, and we developed something I think it has
Speaker 1: like seventy seventy two points in the legal analysis and
Speaker 1: kind of one area it looks at is securities law.
Speaker 1: It also looks at compliance risk, you know, cybersecurity risk,
Speaker 1: things like that. And we've evaluated probably roughly a thousand
Speaker 1: assets through this process, about eight hundred of them we
Speaker 1: have rejected and for various reasons, whether securities or compliance
Speaker 1: or cyber about you know, two hundred two and fifty
Speaker 1: or something like that, we've decided to list. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess the heart of your question is what happens
Speaker 1: if the sec comes out and says okay. So if
Speaker 1: they come out and they and they again we're asking,
Speaker 1: we're asking for more clear rules. Right, So if they
Speaker 1: come out and say, you know, we think this asset
Speaker 1: is a security, that's great. Okay, now we have clarity
Speaker 1: and assuming you know, it's not, if it meets the
Speaker 1: legal definition, it's not going too far. We would be
Speaker 1: happy to sort of update our process in our system
Speaker 1: based on that that new information. Now, ultimately, if they
Speaker 1: publish something and they say, well, we think all these
Speaker 1: assets are securities, well that's not really our understanding of
Speaker 1: the law. And the third party is an external council
Speaker 1: we've worked with, and so there is a line here
Speaker 1: where I think as an industry, and it's not just us,
Speaker 1: it's these asset issuers which are even more primarily affected.
Speaker 1: You know, they would have to say, okay, well, let's
Speaker 1: let a court decide that, because you know, we have
Speaker 1: to follow a rule of law. So does the sec right.
Speaker 1: And so if they put out, you know, their opinion
Speaker 1: about something, that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. It just
Speaker 1: means the court ultimately has to be the decider on that.
Speaker 1: Can you give an example not necessarily of a specific coin,
Speaker 1: but of something that you have seen in tokens that
Speaker 1: you've rejected that to your mind said no, we cannot
Speaker 1: list this because this is a characteristic of a security. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so there's a variety of I mean,
Speaker 1: there's many prongs of the Howie test, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to get into like an in
Speaker 1: depth legal analysis here, but you know we've never done
Speaker 1: a Howie Test episode, and so this could be it,
Speaker 1: but no, go ahead. Yeah, So you know there's multiple
Speaker 1: prongs there, right. I think you know, if if people
Speaker 1: are buying it primarily with this expectation of profit, and
Speaker 1: it's there's you know, there's a common enterprise and and
Speaker 1: and right. So, but if there's something in the like
Speaker 1: speaking in terms of patterns that you see within crypto
Speaker 1: projects that when you look at it's like, no, this team,
Speaker 1: like the type of things the teams do that would say,
Speaker 1: you know what, this token is not going to be
Speaker 1: kosher from coin base. Are there things that you see
Speaker 1: in the industry where you think teams are crossing that
Speaker 1: line into I don't know whether it's the common enterprise
Speaker 1: aspect that preclude them from at least your judgment being
Speaker 1: safe to list. Yeah, I mean so I'll give you
Speaker 1: a security example, but there's others in cyber security and others. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, look, if you're if you're legitimately just
Speaker 1: trying to raise money for your company or for some
Speaker 1: project like an apartment comment X or something like that,
Speaker 1: that is a security. That's the point of security's law.
Speaker 1: There has to be an investment of money into this thing,
Speaker 1: and for you know, in a common enterprise with an
Speaker 1: expectation of profit you know, based on the others. So
Speaker 1: that should exist, by the way, and we want that
Speaker 1: to exist in the world. Um, we've acquired a broker
Speaker 1: deal license. We were a stormant right now. We we'd
Speaker 1: like to activate it. We're working with the sec to
Speaker 1: hopefully make that happen. Crypto is a technology that could
Speaker 1: make you know, crypto securities could offer benefits and update
Speaker 1: the financial system and improve all kinds of things to
Speaker 1: you know, time to settlement and various things like that.
Speaker 1: So that's an example. Um, you know, if people are
Speaker 1: out there kind of really hyping these things like on
Speaker 1: YouTube and um and the tokenomicxer look sketchy and um,
Speaker 1: you know there's really low float and the insiders are
Speaker 1: selling it. These are all bad fact patterns and those
Speaker 1: are the things we try to avoid for consumer protection. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, there's other ways. There's other reasons we may
Speaker 1: reject assets too, I mean an initiation. Another example would
Speaker 1: be cybersecurity risk. So we often will um evaluate the
Speaker 1: smart contracts for you know, is there some exploit in
Speaker 1: this or there's an ability you know, if if the
Speaker 1: the acid issue is not even like a malicious thing
Speaker 1: but an accidental thing. If they lose the key, everyone's
Speaker 1: phones could be swept or something like that, that that's
Speaker 1: not secure enough right to meet our standards. So that
Speaker 1: those are examples. Is crypto shooting itself in the foot
Speaker 1: in some respects by like resisting the security designation, Like
Speaker 1: is that a tacit admission that maybe there isn't a
Speaker 1: reasonable expectation of profits here? Question? Yeah? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we want actually crypto securities to exist. So we're not
Speaker 1: saying none of these things are securities. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, is not true either. It's not that all
Speaker 1: of these are securities. Both of those are inaccurate statements.
Speaker 1: And I guess the thing I would say too, is
Speaker 1: that just an expectation of profit alone does not make
Speaker 1: something a security. It has to be meet every prong
Speaker 1: of the how he test is my understanding. So an example,
Speaker 1: you know, people might buy a Picasso painting hoping it
Speaker 1: goes up in value, or buy gold or something like that.
Speaker 1: So those aren't securities. So yeah, I mean basically, Bitcoin
Speaker 1: ethereum and the assets that we trade on our platform day,
Speaker 1: we believe our crypto commodity, and it's you know, people
Speaker 1: trade those. Some of them they want to go up
Speaker 1: in value, just like they buy gold. Other other times
Speaker 1: they're using it for various utility aspects. You know, this
Speaker 1: is sort of I want to get back to the
Speaker 1: regulatory question. But before I forget, can you talk for
Speaker 1: a second about how you view bitcoin specifically, because it
Speaker 1: feels like the crypto industry in many respects has moved
Speaker 1: on from Bitcoin. And I'm sure your mentions on Twitter
Speaker 1: are filled every day with angry, laser eyed people that
Speaker 1: think you hate bitcoin. But it is also true that
Speaker 1: you know you launched you launched an ethereum layer two.
Speaker 1: I don't know if do you have a light do
Speaker 1: you is there a coin based lightning note or we'd
Speaker 1: like to do more with lightning pleasure havin pro lightning
Speaker 1: so but haven't yet. Yeah, and you know there's all
Speaker 1: these issues with like funding for core bitcoin devs, like
Speaker 1: frustration that they don't get enough and can't maintain it.
Speaker 1: What is your view towards bitcoin? I mean, I love bitcoin.
Speaker 1: I honestly, I don't really understand why, Um, anybody might
Speaker 1: think the opposite. I'd kind of like dedicated people do, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not wrong that you, um, there is
Speaker 1: kind of all abused by bitcoin maxis at one time
Speaker 1: or another. I think that's unfortunate. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: how seriously to take that. I mean I do see
Speaker 1: people say this on Twitter sometimes but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's like a widely believed thing. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would sort of defy credulity, right. I mean I've kind
Speaker 1: of almost dedicated my life too like bitcoin and helping
Speaker 1: it grow. I mean literally I read the Bitcoin white
Speaker 1: paper and then decided to quit my job and found
Speaker 1: this company. Um. Now, of course the industry has evolved
Speaker 1: into many things, right, I mean, there's lots of new
Speaker 1: innovations coming out in crypto. But yeah, I'm very pro bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and I think, look, I think there's a very simple
Speaker 1: base case for for bitcoin, which is that it's the
Speaker 1: gold standard in the crypto economy. And I think that
Speaker 1: I'll probably always be true and it'll keep growing. Now
Speaker 1: if things like lightning continue to get traction, I think
Speaker 1: it could also become like a settlement layer. There's um,
Speaker 1: there's people now creating NFTs in bitcoin, and so it's evolving.
Speaker 1: I'm as as an operator of an exchange in custodian
Speaker 1: I try to just be agnostic. I don't. My job
Speaker 1: is to say, is not to tell our customers which
Speaker 1: coin they should use. It is to list and make
Speaker 1: available every coin that meets our standards, the legal tests.
Speaker 1: I discussed and then we need to be agnostics. I
Speaker 1: think some people, because I'm not pro one coin or another,
Speaker 1: they sort of take that as like you must hate
Speaker 1: this thing, But those are two different things. Just going
Speaker 1: back to the SEC for a second, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about how it does seem like SEC is sort
Speaker 1: of an enforcement mode and there's a chance that you
Speaker 1: wake up tomorrow and there's a bunch of new announcements.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you think the ultimate goal is for the SEC
Speaker 1: when it comes to crypto. Do they just want it
Speaker 1: to go away entirely? Or are they aiming for, you know,
Speaker 1: the industry to still exist but maybe in a different
Speaker 1: in a different way, or a JP Morgan in City
Speaker 1: instead of coin base. And yes, Unice law Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I always want to be hesitant to kind of
Speaker 1: speculate on the motives of people within the SEC. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we have a pretty good relationship with different
Speaker 1: people on staff and commissioners, and I guess the real
Speaker 1: answers I don't know. I suspect that there are different
Speaker 1: people with different views inside the SEC. I think it
Speaker 1: wouldn't surprise me if some people their view they actually
Speaker 1: just wanted to go away they wish this whole thing
Speaker 1: would go away. I think I don't think I would
Speaker 1: hope that that's not a majority of view. I know
Speaker 1: it's not the majority of view of Americans, and I
Speaker 1: don't see how would be in the interests of America
Speaker 1: or are you know, protecting consumers to wish it would
Speaker 1: go away, because clearly it's not. One in five households
Speaker 1: in the US are using this stuff and they're just
Speaker 1: going to use unregulated things off shore if if we
Speaker 1: don't get our act together in the US. So I
Speaker 1: think the majority view is more like, we know that
Speaker 1: this is going to exist, we just need to bring
Speaker 1: it within the regulatory perimeter. I wish that they were
Speaker 1: doing that by just again publishing a clear rule book
Speaker 1: and going through a rulemaking process with industry, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't happened as much to date. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if it needs to be more enforcement based and then
Speaker 1: some of this stuff gets figured out via case law,
Speaker 1: I mean that's okay too, it'll just take a little longer.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that regulatory response has so far
Speaker 1: been kind of disjointed. I think it's fair to say,
Speaker 1: like maybe disjointed or unclear. Was it a lack of
Speaker 1: resources or regulators just didn't understand the space. What was it?
Speaker 1: Maybe can clarify what do you mean disjointed? Well, I
Speaker 1: guess um, slow maybe and unclear? You know, to your
Speaker 1: point this idea that we go in and ask them
Speaker 1: questions and they don't give you answer, right, Oh man?
Speaker 1: I frankly I I you know, I'm spending a lot
Speaker 1: more time in DC. I'm trying to figure this out too.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I was a little naive coming in. I kind
Speaker 1: of assumed that, you know, when you're running a business,
Speaker 1: that the regulators just give you the rules and then
Speaker 1: you just follow them, and that would have been like
Speaker 1: how I assumed it would work. But it seems to
Speaker 1: be more complicated than that. Maybe it's like there's various
Speaker 1: political motivations. There's different factions within the government who have
Speaker 1: different goals. You know, people who've gotten legislation past, they've
Speaker 1: told me it's kind of like a small miracle. Whenever
Speaker 1: it happens, you have to kind of get the House
Speaker 1: and the Senate and the President all aligned and the
Speaker 1: you know, there has to be a real impetus for
Speaker 1: it to happen. I kind of believe this thing with
Speaker 1: FDx is maybe that impetus. Maybe this is our moment
Speaker 1: to finally get some clarity in the next year, at
Speaker 1: least give another regulatory question, though not about not SEC related.
Speaker 1: It seems like some banks are de banking crypto companies,
Speaker 1: but it does I do not get the impression that
Speaker 1: that is a risk for coin base. Do you perceive
Speaker 1: that to be a regulatory advantage for you, that smaller
Speaker 1: exchanges may have a harder time getting a banking partner
Speaker 1: in this environment? Well, look, I mean I'd hate to
Speaker 1: consider that to be an advantage. You know, we haven't
Speaker 1: had any issue with any of our bank partners. I
Speaker 1: do think that there's a there's a general moment in
Speaker 1: the wake of FTX where, you know, reasonably so bank
Speaker 1: regulators are asking tough questions and they're and they're basically
Speaker 1: coming in and saying, what are the liquidity risks if
Speaker 1: you're gonna take crypto deposits? Um? You know, is it
Speaker 1: is it okay to be making loans against those deposits?
Speaker 1: Or are they too risky? And um? I think those
Speaker 1: are totally fair questions to ask. So, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that we would have any kind of major crackdown
Speaker 1: and say, well, you can't bank crypto companies. I haven't.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard that from any anybody. And by the way,
Speaker 1: that that would be probably exceeding their authority because Congress
Speaker 1: has to make those kinds of decisions about what is
Speaker 1: allowed in the economy. Um. But if they're coming in
Speaker 1: and asking questions about liquidity, I think that's probably reasonable
Speaker 1: quick to follow up on that. Um, would you or
Speaker 1: have you put any lobbying or any of your DC
Speaker 1: effort towards guaranteeing or making sure that anyone provided you know,
Speaker 1: provided other basic checks that like that crypto can't be
Speaker 1: I guess discriminated again within the banking system. Is that
Speaker 1: an effort you've made it? Well, I'm certainly in our
Speaker 1: messaging and in our conversations with members of Congress and
Speaker 1: the Senate, we have made that point to them, which is,
Speaker 1: we want to just be treated on a level playing field. Right,
Speaker 1: don't unfairly penalize crypto versus traditional financial services. But um,
Speaker 1: you know you shouldn't like allow us to have a
Speaker 1: lighter weight system or anything like that either. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a balance. Um. You know, we've mentioned this a
Speaker 1: couple of times, But I'd be curious to get your
Speaker 1: take on what happened to FTX, Like when when you
Speaker 1: know that one week in November I think was shocking
Speaker 1: for a lot of people for very different reasons depending
Speaker 1: on who you are. But what was it like for
Speaker 1: you when when you saw, you know, it happens so
Speaker 1: quickly you had the Twitter exchanges and then you had
Speaker 1: a bankruptcy file I think filing within like seven or
Speaker 1: ten days. Yeah, I mean that that was a wild week. Um.
Speaker 1: I was actually in Japan at that time, meeting with
Speaker 1: our team there and talking with regulators and government folks
Speaker 1: in Japan, and I got a call from somebody who
Speaker 1: said it's bad, like we think FTX is going to
Speaker 1: go down in the next forty hours and Sam might
Speaker 1: go to jail. And I was like, okay, tell me
Speaker 1: more what happened. And I kind of started to piece
Speaker 1: it all together. You know. I had a chance to
Speaker 1: chat just briefly with Sam actually and cz during that
Speaker 1: whole thing, and I was just doom scrolling Twitter, I
Speaker 1: suppose like a lot of people, and I mean, really
Speaker 1: that's not true. I Mean the first thing that I
Speaker 1: really thought about was, Okay, what is our exposure any
Speaker 1: of this. So we immediately went and you know, underwrote
Speaker 1: any of our counterparties, including FTX itself, but any that
Speaker 1: might have secondary effects. And then we started to think about, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: this is actually quite validating of our strategy over the
Speaker 1: last ten years of being built in US, trying to
Speaker 1: embrace compliance, not trying to cut any corners. How can
Speaker 1: we make sure that people understand that coin base is
Speaker 1: it's not like FTX. And I basically thought about it
Speaker 1: as there's gonna be a it's gonna be a black
Speaker 1: eye for the industry, but this is ultimately coin stands
Speaker 1: to be a huge net beneficiary of this because it's
Speaker 1: going to bring an increased focus on compliance and trust,
Speaker 1: which is what we've been doing for the last ten years.
Speaker 1: I want to ask a little bit about you know,
Speaker 1: start the price crypto winter, and obviously there's been a
Speaker 1: bit of a bounce, but the bounce has basically just
Speaker 1: been like because the Nasdaq has bounced two and it
Speaker 1: looks many of these coins sort of looked pretty highly
Speaker 1: correlated to other risk assets, and for years I feel
Speaker 1: like there was this case to investors that they should
Speaker 1: buy crypto for two reasons. One it was this new
Speaker 1: uncorrelated asset class, and two, in the case of bitcoins specifically,
Speaker 1: it was really good as an inflation protection thing, and
Speaker 1: that league it just got, you know, the highest inflation
Speaker 1: in forty years, and bitcoin really hasn't gone anywhere. It's
Speaker 1: flat over the last several years, and the coins all
Speaker 1: seemed to buy and large at this point seemed to
Speaker 1: more or less be correlated with like the NASDAC or
Speaker 1: QQQ or whatever. What is the case and what do
Speaker 1: you feel about, like, so, what's the new case to
Speaker 1: be made? After people have seen narratives, these old narratives
Speaker 1: that the industry was pretty loud about making. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you I don't know, but many in the industry
Speaker 1: definitely were have not held up in terms of like
Speaker 1: the case for investing in it. Yeah, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of laughing a little bit, because, you know,
Speaker 1: crypto being has been roughly as volatile as the stock
Speaker 1: market recently. And I can tell you there's many years
Speaker 1: coin base where people would constantly ask me, it's so volatile,
Speaker 1: no one'll ever use it. And so now that it's
Speaker 1: just on part with volatility of the stock market. I'll
Speaker 1: take that as a slight win at least a step
Speaker 1: in the way testa shares to buy coffee either. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but anyway, well, okay, so obviously we have stable coins
Speaker 1: for commerce now, which which is a good piece of
Speaker 1: the puzzle. But let's go back to your question about
Speaker 1: in an inflation hedge. So you know, I think there
Speaker 1: certainly was this belief and I, frankly I shared this
Speaker 1: belief too, which was that crypto bitcoin specifically. Actually, this
Speaker 1: is where people hopefully the bitquin Maxie's kind of aligned
Speaker 1: with my thinking is that that that is sort of
Speaker 1: the new gold standard in the crypto economy, and it
Speaker 1: would be something that people flee to in times of uncertainty,
Speaker 1: with guaranteed scarcity and things like that. Just you know,
Speaker 1: similar to like real estate has a you can't make
Speaker 1: more of it, so at least the land part of it.
Speaker 1: So there is sort of a guaranteed scarcity component. It's
Speaker 1: a nice insulation hedge. Now. I think what happened is
Speaker 1: I was frankly surprised to see how quickly crypto came
Speaker 1: down in an environment of high inflation, where I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe the world is shifted, maybe we're ready now where
Speaker 1: this would be considered an inflation hedge. It turns out
Speaker 1: we were way too early for that. Now, I think,
Speaker 1: I guess my current updated thinking on that is that
Speaker 1: we still need Probably crypto is still too smaller percentage
Speaker 1: of the global economy to it's being treated more like
Speaker 1: a growth you know, asset or something as opposed to
Speaker 1: like a true like a gold standard or something. And
Speaker 1: so I mean we probably rely need the cryptoconomy to
Speaker 1: grow ten x, twenty x or something from here to
Speaker 1: start to have that sort of a role in the
Speaker 1: broader macro environment. You know, you mentioned stable coins there,
Speaker 1: and I just remembered once upon a time, I guess
Speaker 1: a few years ago we had Sam Bankman freed on
Speaker 1: and we asked him to explain to us what would
Speaker 1: happen if tether just suddenly collapsed? And I'd be curious
Speaker 1: to get your I guess in retrospect respect, we should
Speaker 1: have asked SPF what would happen if FTX actually collapsed?
Speaker 1: But in retrospect, can you talk to us about your
Speaker 1: impression of Tether's role in the crypto ecosystem? Um, well, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to sort of criticize anybody in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't really. You know, we've utilized Tether
Speaker 1: in various ways, is on our platform in different times.
Speaker 1: I know, they've been investigated by various parties and they
Speaker 1: reached settlements and they sort of had they got comfortable
Speaker 1: with various ways. You know. Look, our focus at this
Speaker 1: point has been on USD coin. We have a partnership
Speaker 1: with Circle on that, and I think that's been a
Speaker 1: that I feel very comfortable saying. I you know, I
Speaker 1: understand more about it, and it feels it's well backed,
Speaker 1: it's one to one backed, and it's audited and all
Speaker 1: these things. I just don't have as much information on Tether,
Speaker 1: but I don't have anything negative to say. Certainly they
Speaker 1: don't have no no beef with them, let me ask you.
Speaker 1: You know, look, obviously, after all this time and even
Speaker 1: well before the FTX, as you know, there's been there's
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of skepticism still to this day
Speaker 1: about crypto, and I think many people say, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not going to go away, but like it's
Speaker 1: still it's just speculations. People are just in it for
Speaker 1: the money and there's no real use case outside of
Speaker 1: maybe some niches, but like Web three isn't really a
Speaker 1: thing yet, and I'm curious, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: in crypto have done faint stastically well and you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, made an extraordinary amount of money despite
Speaker 1: the fact that buy and large, these coins aren't really
Speaker 1: used for much outside of making money. And there's not
Speaker 1: a you know, decentralized Facebook that exists. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a good reason why it would be nice
Speaker 1: to have one, because it's sort of scary to think about,
Speaker 1: like how much power is in the hands of Elon
Speaker 1: Musk or Mark Zuckerberg and all these people, but by
Speaker 1: and large, like nothing exists. Like when does that happen?
Speaker 1: Because there's like tons of money has been made, but
Speaker 1: when do we get like this sort of like okay,
Speaker 1: now there's a thing that's been delivered that people will
Speaker 1: use for non speculative purposes. Yeah, so I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll disagree a little bit with this idea that, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's all speculation, right. I think that was probably
Speaker 1: a fair thing to say five years ago or so.
Speaker 1: But and there's not going to be some moment where
Speaker 1: it all flips. It's it's a gradual thing. And so
Speaker 1: we've actually tracked this inside coin base. You know, what
Speaker 1: percent of our active customers are doing something other than
Speaker 1: trading with crypto and it's now over fifty percent. What's
Speaker 1: an example of that, like buying an NFT something other
Speaker 1: than trading. Yeah, that's an example, and there's lots of
Speaker 1: other examples. I'll kind of give you a framework for
Speaker 1: how I think about how it's evolved over time. But
Speaker 1: you know, obviously those people doing commerce, they're doing borrowing
Speaker 1: and lending, they're you know, earning money, they are doing
Speaker 1: things like staking. And here's how to think about it
Speaker 1: over time. Right, So, the first use case of crypto
Speaker 1: was really a new form of money or this new
Speaker 1: asset class that got created, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: activity early on was speculative. Although just I don't want
Speaker 1: to undersell that first point, because by having a new
Speaker 1: form of money that is global and decentralized and guaranteed
Speaker 1: to be scarce, that that is no small thing, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, we sort of take it for granted in
Speaker 1: the US that our currency is relatively stable, even though
Speaker 1: it inflates more recently. Most people in the world, that
Speaker 1: is a luxury. They do not have and it would
Speaker 1: be an incredib will benefit to humanity if only the
Speaker 1: only thing crypto ever did was have a form of
Speaker 1: sound money for the world that anybody could have as
Speaker 1: long as they have a smartphone. That that's a that
Speaker 1: is a game changer. Okay, so let's not undersell that.
Speaker 1: But beyond crypto being just a new form of money,
Speaker 1: it also became a new type of financial services, right defy.
Speaker 1: And we saw different ways for people to do borrowing
Speaker 1: and lending and you know, commerce payments and staking and
Speaker 1: various things like this, and so that that was all
Speaker 1: very good. Now the third realm is kind of what
Speaker 1: you touched on, is being you know about decentralized social
Speaker 1: and everything. We call it Web three. It's it's not
Speaker 1: only new type of money and new type of financial services,
Speaker 1: but a new application platform even things that have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with financial services. And you know, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: excited about, for instance, decentralized identity with EANs. That's a
Speaker 1: foundational component, so people's identity doesn't have to be sort
Speaker 1: of owned by a big tech company. Once you have
Speaker 1: decentralized identities, you can connect them in a social graph.
Speaker 1: You can make decentralized social networks. You can have public
Speaker 1: profile pages with badges and accreditation and know your badge,
Speaker 1: you know, accessing to buildings like proof of attendance, concert tickets,
Speaker 1: like all these kind of things, um new business models
Speaker 1: for you know, the music industry and like like YouTube, Spotify.
Speaker 1: You can imagine all these things being built in a
Speaker 1: new way. We can imagine them to. I guess the
Speaker 1: question is why why hasn't it happened yet? You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking It's been like a decade, more than a
Speaker 1: decade since the White Paper, So why why if this
Speaker 1: is such revolutionary technology and it's so much better than
Speaker 1: the way we've been doing things, why hasn't the adoption
Speaker 1: been quicker? Yeah? Well, I think one reason is, um,
Speaker 1: the scalability of the blockchains has been one thing that
Speaker 1: we could unlock that would help it move even faster.
Speaker 1: I think the usability needs to get a lot simpler, right.
Speaker 1: The average person doesn't really know what a private key is.
Speaker 1: They don't want to, you know, install Chrome extension to
Speaker 1: understand some thing like they It needs to be just
Speaker 1: simpler for the average person. And I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: look at the Internet as an example, right, I think
Speaker 1: like the very foundational pieces of the Internet might even
Speaker 1: go back to like the sixties or something. But you know,
Speaker 1: you started to see um tell net and like these
Speaker 1: very early you know types of things come together, like
Speaker 1: in the eighties, I think it was um so we
Speaker 1: think of the Internet as really happening from like the
Speaker 1: year two thousand or something like that. And that again
Speaker 1: that's by the way, you know, twenty three years now,
Speaker 1: but it took a lot of foundational work to happen
Speaker 1: before that. You know, broad scalability, broadband had to happen, right.
Speaker 1: Another thing another Internet at now, crypto as well. I
Speaker 1: mean people are working on hashcash and all those for
Speaker 1: decades in some case. I mean the prehistory of bigcoin
Speaker 1: just pretty long as well. Well those were like research papers,
Speaker 1: I mean they you know, tell net was like a
Speaker 1: real thing that had I don't know how many people,
Speaker 1: maybe a million people using it or something. But um
Speaker 1: or like that first you know, fiber that had to
Speaker 1: get laid in the ground and everything. But um yeah, look,
Speaker 1: I would love it to happen faster. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, Like the regulatory environment has not helped either.
Speaker 1: It's like there's a there's a fear in this in
Speaker 1: the United States that if you start a company in
Speaker 1: this space, like you're just going to be have a
Speaker 1: bunch of legal bills and you know, subpoenas in your
Speaker 1: inbox or whatever. So that's not helping either. But we
Speaker 1: can't blame it entirely on that. It's the technology needs
Speaker 1: to be more scalable, more usable, and it's all happening,
Speaker 1: it's just taking a while. And I want to ask
Speaker 1: I have one last question, and it's a coin Base
Speaker 1: specific question and is inspired by another guest that we've
Speaker 1: had on in the past, Jim Chanos, who has been critical.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's ever short coin Base, but
Speaker 1: he's certainly been critical the company. And he says two things.
Speaker 1: He's like, Hey, how is it that in like these
Speaker 1: most incredible some of the most incredible bull markets ever
Speaker 1: for crypto company hasn't been profitable. But also that so
Speaker 1: much of the revenue you do make is because of
Speaker 1: the huge gap between what institutional traders on coin base
Speaker 1: pro pay versus the commissions on regular coinbase. And it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy, or at least was, to switch back and forth.
Speaker 1: But maybe people didn't realize how much cheaper one could
Speaker 1: trade just by like a few clicks on the website
Speaker 1: to get over to the pro side, Like how much
Speaker 1: compression is there going to be? And have you know
Speaker 1: what do you say that to the argument that retail
Speaker 1: investors have sort of gotten a raw deal compared to
Speaker 1: the more more professional ones. Yeah, um, so I'm not
Speaker 1: sorry I caught the first part exactly, but I think
Speaker 1: I mean, is profitable during this csane bull market? Right,
Speaker 1: That's what I thought I heard you said. But in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one we were actually okay, very profitable. UM
Speaker 1: did about four billion dollars of EBNA in groups revenue
Speaker 1: SWY twenty two we were not okay because the market
Speaker 1: came down quite a lot, and we've made some really
Speaker 1: some cuts and adjustments to try to get to an
Speaker 1: environment where we can generate even a hopefully in any
Speaker 1: market environment. But I guess the core your question is
Speaker 1: really around feed compression. Yeah, yeah, um, okay. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a number of pieces to this. So the
Speaker 1: first is that it's true there are difference in pricing
Speaker 1: amongst our customers UM if they want to trade through
Speaker 1: more of a pro interfew base or a simple interface
Speaker 1: there's also a difference in pricing, of course, based on
Speaker 1: how much trading volume they do. There's tiers, there's tiers
Speaker 1: of that, and so I think what we've seen is
Speaker 1: there's a willingness for customers to pay basically for ease
Speaker 1: of use and simplicity and trust. And so I don't think,
Speaker 1: by the way, our fees are not really out of
Speaker 1: line with the rest of the market. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: sometimes there's firms that kind of advertise like zero fees
Speaker 1: or whatever, and you know they're payment order flow or
Speaker 1: there's like different things that you're paying a fee one
Speaker 1: way or another. It's sometimes not always obvious, right. One
Speaker 1: of the thing I'll mention is that we actually we
Speaker 1: actually launched something called coin Base one, which is like
Speaker 1: an Amazon Prime type subscription, and for customers who pay
Speaker 1: for that, I mean, they get a number of things
Speaker 1: like a million dollar acount protection and all these kind
Speaker 1: of things, but one of the things they get is
Speaker 1: you know, reduced fee trading basically, and that's something we're
Speaker 1: sensitive to as well for our power users. Basically, all right, Armstrong,
Speaker 1: CEO coin Basis, thank you so much for coming on avelots.
Speaker 1: We've wanted to have you for a long time. I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled we finally made it happen. Yeah, this is great.
Speaker 1: One of the best set of questions I've had in well, Tracy.
Speaker 1: That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad we were finally able to do it. And
Speaker 1: I guess kudos Bryan for coming on and answering our
Speaker 1: questions in the midst of a deep crypto winter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is interesting. There's just the myriad regulatory things right now,
Speaker 1: and I have to say I do have sympathy and
Speaker 1: I've heard it from other people in the industry, particularly
Speaker 1: with this idea, because it's one thing to like go
Speaker 1: to the SEC and laut and clear five rules around
Speaker 1: security is not getting any answers. But then you also
Speaker 1: hear entities in the industry and they're like, no, we
Speaker 1: didn't even want to launch until we were sure we'd
Speaker 1: be on the right side of the law. And then
Speaker 1: like they're still in like pre launch phase three years later,
Speaker 1: while other people have made you get punished for engage
Speaker 1: an whereas if you don't ask questions and just launch,
Speaker 1: sometimes that's better. Yeah, And then the only thing that
Speaker 1: you know they do go after things like the Kim
Speaker 1: Kardashian token, which was not that big, and so it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have some sympathy I feel like for
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs on this particular point within the industry. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think the lack of regulatory clarity is worth discussing.
Speaker 1: But the argument for why a regulator might want to
Speaker 1: do that is because well, if you start imposing all
Speaker 1: these rules or unveiling all these new rules, then you
Speaker 1: de facto legitimize it, And maybe maybe they don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, but you know, if they don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, then they should also maybe come out
Speaker 1: and say that because it isn't But like I said,
Speaker 1: and it is definitely true that a lot of people
Speaker 1: lost money, Like I do think there is perhaps in
Speaker 1: this view that we should take it more as a
Speaker 1: win that the collapse of FTX didn't have like a
Speaker 1: broader macro contagion, especially you know, given what we saw
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight when the collapse of what
Speaker 1: Shadow Banks then had this huge impact. And so like
Speaker 1: this idea of bringing it in the perimeter, like maybe
Speaker 1: there are some perimeters we want to keep it out of.
Speaker 1: I don't know, people are lost money, but at least
Speaker 1: the financial system to collapse. That's like the best we
Speaker 1: can hope for nowadays. It's not terrible, all right? Shall
Speaker 1: we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has
Speaker 1: been another episode of the Old Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe wi Isn't All. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guest Brian Armstrong. He's
Speaker 1: at Brian Underscore Armstrong. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at
Speaker 1: Kerman Arman and Dash Bennett at Dashbot. And check out
Speaker 1: all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts,
Speaker 1: and for more odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash odd Lots, where we post transcripts. Tracy my blog,
Speaker 1: and we have a newsletter comes out every Friday. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.