Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Emily Chang, and this is Bloomberg Studio
Speaker 1: One Point Oh, where I speak with the biggest influencers
Speaker 1: and technology and media and talk to them about their
Speaker 1: vision for what's coming next. Today we are going deep
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole of the cryptocurrency slash decentralized network
Speaker 1: still taking shape, that is Ethereum. He was born in Russia,
Speaker 1: emigrated to Canada with his parents at the age of six,
Speaker 1: and had already mastered multiple languages, mathematics, and engineering by
Speaker 1: the time he got to high school. At age seventeen,
Speaker 1: his father introduced him to bitcoin. He couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: buy it, so he wrote about it instead, and while
Speaker 1: he found bitcoin fascinating, he felt like he had an
Speaker 1: even better idea in metallic Butteran wrote the original white
Speaker 1: paper that conceived ethereum not just a digital currency, but
Speaker 1: an entire network built on the blockchain. It's now worth
Speaker 1: more than three hundred billion dollars and the biggest believers
Speaker 1: claim it will send the rest of the cryptocurrency market
Speaker 1: into the ether. Joining me on this edition of Boomberg
Speaker 1: Studio at One Point Oh, the inventor of Ethereum metallic Peuterin.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Ethereum, but I want to
Speaker 1: start first with how you got here. You were born
Speaker 1: in Russia, you emigrated to Canada with your parents when
Speaker 1: you were just six years old, and you started learning
Speaker 1: about bitcoin from your father. What is it about bitcoin
Speaker 1: that hooked you both? Bitcoin is really interesting because of
Speaker 1: how interdiscipline are it is. I was very interested in
Speaker 1: math and computer programming and cryptography and technology. I am
Speaker 1: was also very interested in economics and kind of politics
Speaker 1: and philosophy. And bitcoin just happens to be this interesting
Speaker 1: fusion of all of these things, right and at the
Speaker 1: same time, Like it's not just a piece of code
Speaker 1: that that's there for fun. It's not even just an app,
Speaker 1: like it's uh, something that's really intended to have a
Speaker 1: very big and meaningful impact on how the world works um.
Speaker 1: And so I think just having both of those aspects
Speaker 1: together definitely made a bitcoin very interesting to both me
Speaker 1: and my dad. As I understand it, you didn't have
Speaker 1: enough money to mind, so you wrote about it instead,
Speaker 1: and in you wrote the original white paper that became
Speaker 1: the basis for Ethereum. What was it that sparked that
Speaker 1: original vision? So I joined the bitcoin space in early
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, and I wrote the that Ethereum
Speaker 1: white paper at the end of two thousand and thirteen,
Speaker 1: if that was the time when things first blew up
Speaker 1: in and uh, it was clear that this was something
Speaker 1: that's significance, right. Well, I remember going to the Bitcoin
Speaker 1: conference in San Jose, which had about a thousands people
Speaker 1: in it, and that was when I realized that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't just a bunch of weirdo school only exist
Speaker 1: on the internet, Like this is real. Elder's people trying
Speaker 1: to actually do things. There's people building businesses, a lot
Speaker 1: of which are actually pretty successful. What started happening then
Speaker 1: with people started thinking, well we have bitcoin? What next? Right?
Speaker 1: So what else can you do with the blockchains? Like
Speaker 1: what would bitcoin two point o or cryptocurrency two point
Speaker 1: oh look like? As I understand it, it's it wants
Speaker 1: to be a whole new operating system like a new
Speaker 1: Apple iOS, which with a ton of apps built on
Speaker 1: top of the blockchain. And the simplest terms, what is
Speaker 1: ethereum and how is it different from bitcoin? So bitcoin
Speaker 1: is a blockchain that's designed for one application, right, which
Speaker 1: is maintaining and letting people use bitcoin the currency, Ethereum
Speaker 1: is a general purpose blockchain. So instead of being a
Speaker 1: blockchain that's designed for one application, Ethereum is a blockchain
Speaker 1: that supports a built in a programming language, and whatever
Speaker 1: blockchain application you wants to build, you can just write
Speaker 1: the logic of that application in the programming language, upload
Speaker 1: that program to the chain in and this becomes what
Speaker 1: we call a smart contract, and anyone can then interact
Speaker 1: with your application, and the blockchain interprets the rules of
Speaker 1: your application for you. So, instead of being something that's
Speaker 1: designed to do one thing, is designed to open up
Speaker 1: space for creativity to like basically let people do whatever
Speaker 1: the thing that they want to do on top of it.
Speaker 1: So is the idea then that the next Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter would not be owned by Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: but be built on the blockchain and owned by everyone.
Speaker 1: There are multiple projects already trying to do that, and
Speaker 1: lots of them are based on Ethereum. So yes, So
Speaker 1: then is ethereum a threat to established centralized companies and
Speaker 1: social networks like Facebook, like Twitter, like Google. I think
Speaker 1: it can be a threat, but it can also be
Speaker 1: an opportunity, Like I think even Jack Dorsey himself, right,
Speaker 1: he has the sub project it's called The Boys Guy,
Speaker 1: which is trying to figure out how it Twitter can
Speaker 1: and incorporate decentralized elements. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: these projects wants to actually do this right because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of them are realizing that being are
Speaker 1: kind of centralized focus of power and having control and
Speaker 1: of so much of everyone's data and all of these things.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not just an asset, it can also
Speaker 1: be a liability as well. Now we still don't know
Speaker 1: who Satoshi Nakamoto is, whether that's even a single person
Speaker 1: or a group of people. What is it like to
Speaker 1: be a known and visible figure behind such a popular technology.
Speaker 1: I mean there's definitely times when I want to be
Speaker 1: less visible um, but I guess that comes with the
Speaker 1: with the territory. Why do you want to be less visible?
Speaker 1: I mean one of the other Ethereum co founders, Anthony Delrio,
Speaker 1: recently announced he's quitting crypto because of safety concerns. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that part of your concern as well? I mean
Speaker 1: it's not so much physical safety per se as just
Speaker 1: like I want to take the ability to also, you know,
Speaker 1: have a life and not just have like random people
Speaker 1: running up and saying, are you the metallic bouderin um?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I geah. There's definitely times when I
Speaker 1: find such things annoying, and so I don't know. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm likely to keep wearing my mask in lots of
Speaker 1: places in it. And that has nothing to do with COVID.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of debate early on about what
Speaker 1: Ethereum could be, would be, should be for profit, nonprofit? Nonprofit?
Speaker 1: One out, and I know that that was really important
Speaker 1: to you. Why did you want Ethereum to be a
Speaker 1: nonprofit and how did you come to that decision. It
Speaker 1: was just a very importance to me that, like, this
Speaker 1: is a technology that decentralized infrastructure that's meant to be
Speaker 1: not controlled and not owns by anyone, and it's a
Speaker 1: platform that's for the world. And so for that platform
Speaker 1: to be connected to a company that had a very
Speaker 1: small number of shareholders, I think is something that could
Speaker 1: really centralize the ecosystem. And so something that I thought
Speaker 1: would be very was a very unhealthy and one it's
Speaker 1: to really avoid now. N f teas in particular have
Speaker 1: really helped bring new users into the crypto tent. We
Speaker 1: saw you at Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunas's kitchen table
Speaker 1: Let's Ethereum, So Ethereum is a general purpose of watching.
Speaker 1: You also were not happy about Kim Kardashian getting involved,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious where do you draw the line when
Speaker 1: it comes to celebrity endorsement. The thing that I was
Speaker 1: unhappy with about Kim Kardashian was that she basically like
Speaker 1: shields something like Etherium Max. That was I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd call it a borderline scam. Right. It seems like
Speaker 1: this project so that's basically just like at best, a
Speaker 1: pure money grab that's not really providing much of value.
Speaker 1: This is my conversation with the co founder of Ethereum,
Speaker 1: Vitalic Buterin up next. Now that Ethereum has blown up,
Speaker 1: how does it get past the growing pains to truly
Speaker 1: become the world's computer And what are buterans concerns about
Speaker 1: scams and cyber attacks in the crypto space. I'm Emily Chang,
Speaker 1: this is Bloomberg Studio. At one point out stay with us.
Speaker 1: Ethereum has had some growing pains, whether it is high
Speaker 1: transaction costs, traffic jams, front running. Why do these problems exist?
Speaker 1: This is the scalability problem. Everyone's been talking about the
Speaker 1: scalability problem for at least five years now, and and
Speaker 1: in basically it's like a simple supply and demand problem,
Speaker 1: right like, if the number of people who want the
Speaker 1: cent transactions goes up, but the amount of space for
Speaker 1: transactions on chain doesn't go up, then all of these
Speaker 1: people who want the cent transactions are bidding against each other,
Speaker 1: and only the ones that are willing to pay a
Speaker 1: really high amounts can actually get in. The Only way
Speaker 1: to solve this is to just improve the technology to
Speaker 1: increase the number of transactions that the system can process.
Speaker 1: And it's why we're doing We've been doing just all
Speaker 1: kinds of incremental improvements to the blockchain clients and the
Speaker 1: protocol and the code. Over the last five years. ETHEREM
Speaker 1: scalability has increased by about a factor of five since
Speaker 1: so the project started. And then there are some problems
Speaker 1: that are not like just just scaling problems per se,
Speaker 1: But there's still technology problems, right like, there are problems
Speaker 1: that have to do with the facts that like, this
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem has blown up and gotten big fairly quickly,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of aspects of it where people are
Speaker 1: still true to know their states, like what is the
Speaker 1: correct way and what is the safest way to do
Speaker 1: these things, like, for example, the state of just security
Speaker 1: auditing for blocking protocols like it. It has gotten much
Speaker 1: better since the dal hack back in right, but you know,
Speaker 1: at the same time challenges continue to exist, and that's
Speaker 1: normal in any space when you know you have I
Speaker 1: guess that usage growing faster and then the technology catches up.
Speaker 1: Can you contrast proof of stake with proof of work?
Speaker 1: Why do you think that's so much better? The reason
Speaker 1: why blockchains need to have a proof of something, right
Speaker 1: is because like these are decentralized systems. So for example,
Speaker 1: and proof of work, like the system actually measures how
Speaker 1: much computing power is being put into blook and so
Speaker 1: in order for an attacker to take over the network,
Speaker 1: they actually have to have more computing power than the
Speaker 1: rest of the network combines. Right, Like, so you can't
Speaker 1: just spin up a billion virtual machions on one computer.
Speaker 1: But the probably is that it requires a huge number
Speaker 1: of computers to be constantly running seven So it works,
Speaker 1: but it's very expensive. Proof of steak it works differently right,
Speaker 1: So proof of steak works by instead using coins as
Speaker 1: the economic resource. So if you have coins inside of
Speaker 1: the system, then you just sign messages with those coins,
Speaker 1: and for an attack or to take over, they have
Speaker 1: to basically have like more coins than the rest of
Speaker 1: the network put together. So it does the same thing,
Speaker 1: but it avoids the need to have these computers running
Speaker 1: seven and that's where the efficiency comes from. You're planning
Speaker 1: major upgrades meantime, and East two point oh is well underway.
Speaker 1: What will that accomplish? What problems will it solve? So
Speaker 1: I think what people call eath two point oh as
Speaker 1: UH has two big parts, right, One big part is
Speaker 1: the switch the proof of steak. So after a full
Speaker 1: transition to proof of steak UM, there will not be
Speaker 1: more any more mining ethereums energy a consumption will go
Speaker 1: down from by like a factor of more than one thousands,
Speaker 1: so it will go from being a big problem to
Speaker 1: basically not a problem at all UM and the channel
Speaker 1: become more secure, more secure, it will become more efficient.
Speaker 1: So after that, the next major milestone is what's called
Speaker 1: the merge um, which is when basically the proof of
Speaker 1: work chain it just stops running and all of the
Speaker 1: applications on the proof of work chain get moved over
Speaker 1: to the proof of state chain and continue running inside
Speaker 1: of the proof stake chain from there. Now, while you're
Speaker 1: working on all of this, Ethereum has developed an unseemly
Speaker 1: reputation as a fertile ground for scams. And I wonder
Speaker 1: how concerned you are about a crackdown like we saw
Speaker 1: with I c o S. What are the longer term consequences.
Speaker 1: There's definitely going to be a crackdowns on things happening
Speaker 1: on blockchains, just like there's crackdowns on things happening on
Speaker 1: the Internet. I do think that the state of the industry,
Speaker 1: in the state of things is improving, But if you
Speaker 1: just compare it to the way that the space was
Speaker 1: like five or eight years ago, right, like remember um
Speaker 1: Mount Cox just like collapsed and half a billion dollars disappeared.
Speaker 1: Like basically, I think we still don't know where most
Speaker 1: of it iss and like things do continue to happen
Speaker 1: from time to time. But just like as a fraction
Speaker 1: of the scale of the space, I do think that
Speaker 1: it keeps getting smaller and smaller. One big consequence, of course,
Speaker 1: is that mining is moving out of China, which I
Speaker 1: mean there's a there's definitely a silver lining there in
Speaker 1: terms of decentralization and that you don't have as much
Speaker 1: hash power located in one country anymore. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, the mining farms there were
Speaker 1: you know, real companies with real employees and real people.
Speaker 1: Some a degree of regulatory action is happening, but it's
Speaker 1: not looking like, you know, anything close to um. You know,
Speaker 1: at the level of like say, what people feared ten
Speaker 1: years ago, there's concerns about Russia being behind a spate
Speaker 1: of cyber attacks and cryptocurrency being used as a tool
Speaker 1: of extortion. How do you think about the intersection of
Speaker 1: crypto and cyber warfare? To me, I think that this
Speaker 1: is a temporary phase. Like I think what's happened is
Speaker 1: that just like even like the Internet as a whole,
Speaker 1: it grew a huge amount over the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: and for most of that twenty years, people just did
Speaker 1: not take security seriously. It's even the wrong thing to
Speaker 1: be doing, to be trying to blame attackers. Ultimately, the
Speaker 1: things that's at fault is the fact that there are
Speaker 1: these excellent tools within cryptography and like within you know,
Speaker 1: the technology behind cryptocurrency itself that allow you to be
Speaker 1: much more secure against these kinds of things. And I
Speaker 1: mean my personal hope is that people like at least
Speaker 1: see like the level of attacks that are happening now
Speaker 1: as a wake up call and that we get a
Speaker 1: massive effort to just improve the level of security is
Speaker 1: just across every industry and across the world. Because if
Speaker 1: if that doesn't happen right like, then you know, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not even ransomware attackers or that are going
Speaker 1: to be a problem. Like, it's at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever the first like full scale cyber war happens, if
Speaker 1: people are not prepared, it's something that could end up,
Speaker 1: you know, being really being something really bad for the world.
Speaker 1: You're listening to my conversation with Vitalic Brant, co founder
Speaker 1: of Ethereum, coming up with flocks of new users coming
Speaker 1: into the crypto universe, legacy companies like Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: or paying attention well does butter and think about big
Speaker 1: text crypto efforts including Square, Jack Dorsey and Defy. I'm
Speaker 1: Emily Chang. This is Bloombrook Studio. At one point, Oh,
Speaker 1: stay with us. Right now, it is mostly finance apps
Speaker 1: that are built on Ethereum aside from n f t s,
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering what is the killer app for ethereum
Speaker 1: that could lead to widespread adoption, much like email was
Speaker 1: for the Internet. I think there's a few candidates. UM,
Speaker 1: so defy is obviously one of them. UM. I think
Speaker 1: that like blockchain based financial things have always been attractive
Speaker 1: because like the traditional financial system just sucks more than
Speaker 1: traditional centralized tech. Right, Like if I send to an
Speaker 1: email to um, you know, someone in Guatemala, then they're
Speaker 1: going to receive it in one second. With with finance,
Speaker 1: you can't even say that. A lot of people in
Speaker 1: companies even today just to use grupt the currency to
Speaker 1: send money internationally outside of finance. Yeah, think one interesting
Speaker 1: area that I where I think blockchains might go. Here.
Speaker 1: You notice some that in order to access your assets
Speaker 1: in ethereum, he needs to have an account. We're getting
Speaker 1: to the point where there's a lot of work that's
Speaker 1: been done on making these accounts very secure, and so
Speaker 1: instead of just being accounts that hold money like these
Speaker 1: these turned into like fully fully blown profiles, right, and
Speaker 1: once you have profiles and you can start doing decentralized
Speaker 1: social media. On top of that, the social and financial
Speaker 1: things that you that you can do with that given
Speaker 1: working together, um is something that I think could be
Speaker 1: really big. Now, whether Bitcoin, ethereum or the blockchain really
Speaker 1: are changing the world seems to be an ongoing debate.
Speaker 1: Is crypto the future or is it a fad? I
Speaker 1: think it's the future that contains fads, much like the
Speaker 1: Internet was the future in the Internet contained fads um.
Speaker 1: You know, there's definitely specific kinds of applications that do
Speaker 1: get overhyped from time to time, like um I, c
Speaker 1: O s back in and then there is certain kinds
Speaker 1: of DeFi right now. But at the same time there's
Speaker 1: other de hy projects that really are valuable. There's a
Speaker 1: combination of both, right adds figuring out which is which is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's something that's difficult to see ahead of time
Speaker 1: and it's something that you know, we as an ecosystem
Speaker 1: we're going to find out. So the crypto skeptics, many
Speaker 1: people that you know are admired in the financial world,
Speaker 1: Jamie Diamond, Warren Buffett, Are they just wrong? A lot
Speaker 1: of them have definitely been just the wrong already, right
Speaker 1: like they expected even back in twenty thirteen to fifteen,
Speaker 1: at least some of them to see blockchains that were
Speaker 1: currency fail and go down to zero and price just
Speaker 1: not get any more interested completely. And even today they've
Speaker 1: already been far more successful than any of them expected.
Speaker 1: So I can see how people in a traditional finance
Speaker 1: or at least some of them, can be inclines to
Speaker 1: kind of not see the value of blockchain based finance immediately,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of people even in traditional banks
Speaker 1: that see the value that blockchains provide and have been
Speaker 1: trying to come up with things and work with them.
Speaker 1: One of them is Jack Dorsey. Jack Dorsey recently announced
Speaker 1: Square is creating a new business focused on decentralized financial
Speaker 1: services based on bitcoin using bitcoin. What have you learned
Speaker 1: about Jack Dorsey's plans. Does it seem like he's building
Speaker 1: something that sounds a lot like ethereum. I'm skeptical about these,
Speaker 1: uh decentralized finance on top of bitcoins projects, So basically
Speaker 1: because like the difference between bitcoin and ethereum, right, this
Speaker 1: is a is um that on ethereum, there's like native
Speaker 1: functionality that allows you to essentially directly put either ether
Speaker 1: or etherorium based assets into these smart contracts into these
Speaker 1: walk boxes, when where there's then arbitrary conditions of any
Speaker 1: kinds that can then govern how those assets get released.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin does not have that functionality to the same extent.
Speaker 1: Like Jack is basically going to have to essentially create
Speaker 1: his own system that enforces those rules and then on
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin alway, or the bitcoins will just have to
Speaker 1: be owned by probably a multi sigual it controlled by
Speaker 1: either Jack or just or the participants in the system.
Speaker 1: It looks similar, but it'll end up being something with
Speaker 1: a much weaker trust model, right Like, I really think that,
Speaker 1: like this is the whole reason why Ethereum started as
Speaker 1: an independent system in the first place. Right Like, there's
Speaker 1: there's technical limits to your ability to a kind of
Speaker 1: graft new functionality onto a system that's not powerful enough
Speaker 1: to support that new functionality. Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is also
Speaker 1: making some big moves behind the metaverse. And you know,
Speaker 1: what do you make of them waiting into this decentralized world.
Speaker 1: Could they replicate some of the same problems that we
Speaker 1: see in Facebook and Twitter today? I think Marcus clearly
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what the next stage after the
Speaker 1: Internet is and like actually get into it and created um.
Speaker 1: But you know, before the rest of the I get
Speaker 1: the world goes in some different direction, and Facebook is
Speaker 1: sort of you know, left in the dust and begins
Speaker 1: becomes one of these kind of previous generation old world companies. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, we we've seen Facebook try to get
Speaker 1: into the crypto space with Libra though, and I think
Speaker 1: in you know, in the end, like Libra did end
Speaker 1: up being possibly the wrong approach because like the problem
Speaker 1: that someone like Facebook has, right is that a lot
Speaker 1: of people mistrust them and so building their own platform,
Speaker 1: Like I know, I know, they tried really hard to
Speaker 1: create something that's a consortium with all these different industry participants,
Speaker 1: but at the same like even that was not enough, right,
Speaker 1: and there's just a huge amount of mistrust of them.
Speaker 1: But with the metaverse, I guess the thing that happens
Speaker 1: during the pandemic is that we've basically very quickly switched
Speaker 1: from a world where the physical world was people's kind
Speaker 1: of primary center of experience and the Internet was this
Speaker 1: new add on to a world where the internet really
Speaker 1: is a center of people's experiences. And so we basically
Speaker 1: are spending most of our time in a virtual world,
Speaker 1: And the question is just like what level of quality
Speaker 1: does that virtual world have so ethereum in five years
Speaker 1: and ten years, where is it? I mean hopefully running
Speaker 1: the metaverse, but I guess we'll see how it goes.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of people out there, a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are trying to understand cryptocurrency, who are
Speaker 1: placing their bets. What's your prediction for Bitcoin? Does it
Speaker 1: replace the dollar doesn't exist in in fifty years or
Speaker 1: is it something else? And then similarly, what's your prediction
Speaker 1: for etherory m Because a lot of investors are choosing
Speaker 1: to hold both or one or the other. I think
Speaker 1: replacing that olver completely is unlikely just because like there's
Speaker 1: things that the dolver provides, like price stability for example,
Speaker 1: that Bitcoin is I'm not going to provide, Like I
Speaker 1: think even in a theoretical world where the US dollar collapses,
Speaker 1: like even then, I think Bitcoin is not going to
Speaker 1: be able to provide the level of stability that users
Speaker 1: and businesses expects to be able to set prices in um.
Speaker 1: And in that kind of world, look, we we would
Speaker 1: need something else, like like it could be decentralized stable coins,
Speaker 1: it could be something us but we'll see it um so.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think curbtocurrency can still
Speaker 1: have a very powerful and important role alongside existing currencies.
Speaker 1: Ethereum seems to have this reputation of being a community
Speaker 1: of creative engineering types who like rainbows and cats and
Speaker 1: mythical creatures. I know you have some fun t shirts yourself.
Speaker 1: Is that a fair depiction of the community. The community
Speaker 1: is a diverse place, and um, you know, it has
Speaker 1: many different kinds of people, and you know, you definitely has.
Speaker 1: It's it's fair share of cat people and and dog
Speaker 1: people in unicorn people as well. And I think that's awesome,
Speaker 1: and I think it's uh, I mean, it's really healthy
Speaker 1: to yess and not take yourself it's too seriously. And
Speaker 1: that's definitely something that the the Ethereum community strives to do.
Speaker 1: You know, remember that U the world is supposed to
Speaker 1: be a place to have fun too, all right, talent
Speaker 1: Peter and inventor of Ethereum, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. I learned so much. I appreciate you taking
Speaker 1: the time to talk to us and talk to people
Speaker 1: around the world about what you're working on and how
Speaker 1: important it could be. Thank you Bloomberg Studio. A One
Speaker 1: Point was produced and edited by Kevin Hines and Lauren Ellis.
Speaker 1: Our managing editor is Daniel Culbertson, with production assistance from
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Speaker 1: your host and executive producer. This is Bloomberg