0:00Do you think the ability to control your own money is free [music] speech?
0:03Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, economic freedom is kind of like foundational to all freedoms because think about it.
0:08Let's say you in theory have freedom of speech, but someone can debank you or seize your assets. You're not going to be very willing to go actually exercise your right to free speech, right? But there seems to be a lot of fraud and waste. Um, which is just so it's like an unconstitutional asset seizure and then going to fraud. And that's where I start to get it. [music] It just doesn't feel right to me. It's against my values, I would I think it's bad for the state and for America. My worldview is that technology is a great way to improve the world and we should all try to go build companies. There's you think AI is going to cure cancer?
0:38Yeah, eventually. So, Coinbase [music] is great. We went public in 2021. I finally got some liquidity. Um, and I was thinking like, okay, how do we go help the next big problem, help fix the next big problem in the world? How do we actually like double expected lifespan?
0:49I mean, if you if you go back 100 years, people in the US, the average life expectancy, I think, was like 35 or something, and now we've more than doubled it. What's your favorite coin?
0:58[music] Well, Bitcoin is the original. I think that's that's great. And then, you know, things like USDC, like stable coins have been incredible. That's that's the top regulated stable coin in the world now that we we have a roll in. [music] Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast.
1:20We're excited to be in Washington DC today with Coinbase. How's it going?
1:25Great. Thanks for having What are you in Washington DC for?
1:27Well, the president is convening a group of people to get the Clarity Act over the finish line. And you know, there's we're meeting with the regulators, Chair Atkins and Chair Celig. They've been making a lot of good progress about publishing clear rules for crypto. And now we've got to get legislation passed to make it durable and cement it so that it can stand for many decades into the future and can't get changed by some future administration.
1:50You've been at this though a while. This isn't new. Yeah, we've been working on legislation for crypto for years at this point.
1:55So, what's the difference between the last administration, this administration, how close you actually think you are.
2:02Yeah. Well, I mean, if you go back to the 2024 campaign, the the president very astutely recognized that there were millions of Americans who felt disenfranchised by the that prior administration and their kind of attack on crypto. You know, Gary Gendler especially was a very unpopular figure.
2:17the bit the the president very famously at this Bitcoin conference on the campaign trail he said on day one I will fire Gary Gendzler and it was like the biggest applause line I think even he didn't expect it and he's he said it again and um you know he's lived up to his promise right promises made promises kept that whole line so in the first few weeks of him taking office he put out this executive order asking his administration to go create clear rules he then appointed uh Chair Atkins and Chair Seelig two of the most competent and pro-inovation regulators anywhere in the world and then of course the
2:47administration passed the Genius Act last year for stable coins. And so now we've got an opportunity to do the second piece of it with the Clarity Act and get that uh over the finish line.
2:56And you know, make no mistake, there there are people out there actively fighting against this. Uh there's uh entrenched incumbents who don't want competition for from crypto companies that would provide better financial services. And so some of them are actively lobbying against it, trying to kill it. Uh there's senators like Elizabeth Warren who are out there trying to kill it. So um there's not many things Elizabeth Warren likes, though. Uh, that's true. I mean, so anyway, that that's you're on the right side history maybe if she doesn't like it. I think she she wishes the government was running all financial services or something like that.
3:25So, if you break it down for the person who's like, "What even is crypto? I don't own crypto." Or, "I've tried to open crypto and then I got confused with the wallet and I clicked out and I was like, "No thanks."
3:34Yeah, that's where I am.
3:35Y So, if you start at the beginning and say what you guys are is like the bank for all cryptocurrencies, right?
3:42Something like that. We don't have a bank license, but you know, we're similar metaphorically. Yes. How do you decide what crypto is accepted versus not?
3:50Well, okay. So, you're right. By the way, a lot of people are still learning about crypto. And it started with Bitcoin, which is kind of like digital gold. Now, we see people using stable coins. I think in the future, people aren't even going to really know they're using crypto. It's just a faster, cheaper, more efficient financial way to access financial services. Whether you're doing payments or you're getting a a loan or Why is it faster?
4:11Well, because it's built on modern rails, right? like that the legacy or traditional financial system was really kind of invented around the 1970s. A lot of the mainframe computers, it's still being run on this like very outdated system and that's why you can't send money over the weekend and there's high fees to send a wire or the average.
4:28Do you think that like AI could solve some of their coding issues and bring Wells Fargo, Bank of America, some of the big banks up to a better standard instead of saying running on cobalt?
4:40Yeah. Well, AI is making every organization more efficient, including um the banks and the folks who run kind of that legacy infrastructure. So, I think that will help, but there's a lot of reasons why it's not moving fast that have nothing to do with like if it was purely a technology problem, I think it would get solved faster. In some ways, they're they like the inefficiency of it because they can charge high fees for it and it just it's hard for big established institutions to change unless they have new entrance coming in to create competition.
5:08So, what's a memecoin?
5:10Well, a memecoin is something I it's really got created um in part due to the lack of regulatory clarity in the US because you couldn't there was no clear pathway to say raise money for a company on chain like a true security and so people started trading these meme coins and it was really like um some people call it an attention market. It's like what are people interested in right now?
5:29Um, now there was a bit of an unsavory element to it in the sense that uh these groups of people, some of them would try to like pump these meme coins and dump them. And so like there was a I I would say there was aspects of it that were unsavory, but I think the idea of it is probably going to persist and there could be a next generation of memecoins.
5:47Like actually, you know, memes memes are great. Like that's kind of um the modern-day political cartoon, you know, going back to Benjamin Franklin um you know, join or die or like these famous political cartoons. A lot of ideas can just be like, you know, it takes a thousand words to explain it and no one reads it. But if you see a really funny meme on X or something like that, it an idea can go all the way around the world and really stick. So there might be some way that the next generation of memecoins taps into that.
6:12What happened to NFTTS and where have they gone?
6:15Well, NFTs are still here. I mean, I think people aren't trading as much like, you know, these board apes and things like that, but the idea of an NFT is actually broader than that. It's really any kind of um you know, Bitcoin we'd say is like a fungeable token, meaning any one Bitcoin's exchangeable for another one. They're they're identical. An NFT is like a unique digital item. So, the these could be used not just for artwork, but also for say like governments to issue um an ID or a license or a credential like a university diploma or something like
6:44that. Like these could all be So, it just be on your cell phone. Uh well yeah I think in the future people will have this um this identity that they control and it can have certifications and attestations attached to it which would be NFTTS underneath. People may not call it that but the the technology is pretty broad.
7:00What do you think the biggest mix misconception is people have about crypto?
7:05Um I think it's that you know they they think it's kind of uh for libertarians or anarchists or something like that.
7:13And that's like an outdated view. I mean, I think some of the early adopters of Bitcoin were like that, but crypto is now updating every aspect of the financial system. So, it's not just a Bitcoin thing. It is it's changing payments like we talked about with stable coins, making that efficient all over the world. Um, it's doing things like prediction markets, which help people figure out what's going to happen next. Uh, borrowing and lending, and even things like, uh, tokenization of real world assets like stocks are getting tokenized now. All kinds of different funds. Um, so it's really
7:43updating every aspect of the financial system and that's something I think people haven't fully realized yet. By the way, Agentic Finance is going to be a big thing too because AI agents need to do real-time small transactions all over the world. I think there's going to be more AI agents than humans in the world and so we need a new financial system for them. That that's a whole another thing that's going to be solved by crypto.
8:02Do you think that the AI agents will be nefarious in terms of taking someone's money or being abused by somebody if not properly regulated as well?
8:10Well, I think with any new technology, it can be used for good or for bad. Um, even going back to fire or, you know, something like that, uh, the invention of fire, discovery of fire. So, I think that, um, the good news is that roughly my mental model is like 99% of people are good, 1% of people are trying to do something bad as long as, um, regulation can help in certain inst instances. But I actually think free market competition is like sometimes the best regulator because it gives people choice about
8:38which one to go use and um assets accumulate to companies and products and services that are trying to do things that are good in the world and providing better products at lower prices. So anyway, I'm a favor of free market competition. Um regulation can sometimes help, but there's a danger in overdoing it cuz Daario over the weekend had said that, you know, they had tried the regulation route. now he wanted to do something with an executive order versus having say national legislation or state based legislation. You're pushing
9:06legislation for crypto. Where do you think AI should land and why do you think crypto should be regulated then if not AI?
9:12Yeah. So this is a great point because I think AI I think of it a little bit more like the internet like part of the reason um the biggest technology companies in the world have been created in the US which is a huge boon for American you know soft power around the world etc like you know Google and meta and all these companies is that the internet was largely unregulated right they allowed the market to go create these things and move fast I think AI should follow more of that model so far we've had lots of frontier labs competing and there's all these kind of
9:41hypothetical things people could come up with that are dangerous, but honestly, none of them h have happened yet. And so, I think it's a bad So, when Anthropic or Open AAI say that their model broke into the sandbox or escaped the sandbox and did this bad thing or mythos could be that scary, do you believe that?
9:58I think that they're those are accurate statements. I think, by the way, they're also a little self- serving because it's great marketing for their product. Um, but the reality is human beings do that too, right? are there are instances of human beings who try to do something nefarious within an organization. So, you know, just just because you say, "Oh, well, this um this AI model, it lied to me." I'm like, well, human beings lie sometimes, too, and the world didn't end. So, that to me is not like a good argument that we should just, you know, slow down all progress on AI. I think just to answer your prior question, crypto is in a little bit of a
10:28different situation because we're already dealing with 100 years of financial services regulation and the lack of clarity has really um held back progress and it actually got weaponized like in the prior administration. So I think in this case uh clear rules like with this clarity act coming up for a vote on September 15th, [snorts] it's almost going to like protect us from bad government um with clear rules. So I think that that's an important distinction.
10:52You started your career at Airbnb.
10:54Yeah. Well, going you can go back as far as you want, but I did work at Airbnb um yeah, around 2009 or so.
11:00How when you decided to start Coinbase in your 20s, what did you take from working at other startups and moving that into yours? And what was the decision when you're like this is going well or I seem to have made it, this idea works.
11:14Yeah. Well, you're right that um I think it was 2010 actually. So, I was an early employee at Airbnb. I had tried doing a startup previously, by the way, in college. And it was like I was in the education space tutoring. I would say it didn't go super well. It was kind of like a base hit. You know, I had a small exit from it, but it was not a success.
11:29And so I I joined Airbnb early on because I wanted to see what it was like to have a successful startup or be a part of it. I learned a lot from them. They had an incredible bar for talent.
11:38That was one thing is like, you know, if you're not a hell yes, you're a no on on a candidate. Um they really had a high bar for design and quality of software engineering and then this incredible culture that they had created. And so there was something it's actually oftenimes very powerful I think for people to get around you because if you just read about people on the internet sometimes you put them on a pedestal and you're like oh they're some genius and I could never do that.
12:00Working every day with these folks you realize they are very talented but they're made of the same stuff that you and I are made of and this is possible.
12:06This is doable. It kind of gave me a little bit of confidence. And so when the when I first read the Bitcoin white paper, I started to think about that and sort of nights and weekends started working on a prototype for what would eventually become Coinbase while I was at Airbnb. Um, and when I did leave to finally go do it, it I took some of those best practices and I think it helped to make Coinbase successful.
12:26Back in 2020, you had famously said to your employees, "We're not here to be a political company. We're here to just work."
12:32Do you think that was the right decision at the time?
12:34Absolutely. Yeah, I think in hindsight it was one of the best decisions I ever made as a CEO. And it was a very contrarian view at the time. Of course, we got lots of attacks for it.
12:42But yeah, in that in that zeitgeist that that moment, you know, with um George Floyd and all these kind of COVID where people weren't spending as much time together in person, this kind of um uh anger or like, you know, lack of unity like really bubbled up where it's hard to do in San Francisco though.
12:58Yeah. I mean, the culture of San Francisco can be a little odd at times. It has like the most innovative companies in the world and a huge like group of people who think communism is great. It's like it's a weird place. uh polycules, you know, all all kinds of stuff. Um, you know, but yeah, that that was the first time as CEO I felt like the employees had really like revolted.
13:17There was a walk out that happened and there was like lists of demands that were being sent to me and I I was very confused at first because I was like, well, the mission of our company is to increase economic freedom in the world.
13:27We're working on crypto stuff. Why are you asking me all these questions about gun violence or, you know, whatever, police brutality or something? I'm like, there's a lot of problems in the world, but we're trying to fix this one over here. So, maybe we should just focus on that one while we're at work. If you guys want to do stuff outside of work, great. You can have whatever views you want. Um, it was obviously the right call, but at the time, uh, it was very controversial. You know, we got lots of attack pieces written up on us by various traditional media companies and things and about 5% we offered an exit package like anybody's not aligned with this
13:57path going forward. Here's a nice exit package, you can leave. About 5% of the company left and then we were all aligned going forward after that. So, it was it was important. Do you think corporate America is too political?
14:08I think that if it's related to your mission, it's fine to be political. I think that there are another set of companies that frankly their mission is not that inspiring. Like they're just selling I don't want to make fun of anybody in particular, but you know, they're selling some piece of software that's just like boring or kind of like a utility. So they tried to engage their employee base on some broader issues outside of that mission. And it's tempting to do that, but then you get
14:36sucked into every debate is like, well, where do you land on Israel Palestine?
14:40Where do you land on, you know, and it's like just a distraction. So, I think it's better to make a company that truly has an important mission and just get people engaged on that. And then you don't have to sell this kind of like virtue signaling um luxury belief stuff on the side.
14:55What's something President Trump President Trump understands in relation to crypto that former presidents didn't or that other politicians just don't get?
15:03Well, yeah, you have to give him a lot of credit because uh during the 2024 campaign, he very astutely recognized there was a massive voter base of people who felt disenfranchised by that that prior administration. So like millions of crypto voters, people now realize and there was and by the way on the opposite side like who's the anti-crypto voter?
15:21Like nobody there's no anti-crypto voter. just it's like they have other things that they care about. Maybe maybe they don't like crypto, they don't care about it, but they don't vote on it.
15:29Whereas the people who are really into crypto, they're really into it and they were so mad that they felt like they were being attacked unfairly, unlawfully. And so, yeah, the president recognized that. And he he also recognized, by the way, it wasn't just like a good political um opportunity. He recognized that for the United States to be stay relevant as a financial and technology hub. We have to embrace this these new technologies and figure out a way to bring them within the US regulatory perimeter because if not it's all going to go offshore and then it's not like you can uninvent crypto at this
15:58point, right? Like someone is going to do it in the world. You can't just bury your head in the sands.
16:02Um so whether you like crypto or hate crypto, you got to put clear rules on the books so it can be built here in America. You were outspoken about the way Gary Gendler and the Biden administration treated crypto. Do you think they were trying to regulate you guys out of business trying to pretend crypto didn't exist?
16:18Yeah, I it wasn't just pretending we didn't exist. I think it was it was an active campaign to try to curtail or even kill the industry in the United States. I think that um you know I think folks like Elizabeth Warren believed that the government should run financial services. uh she had lots of influence with the financial regulators at that time um by you know basically applying soft pressure one might say extra judicial pressure because it was not illegal let's say for a bank to give a loan to an oil and gas company or a
16:47firearms company it was not illegal but Elizabeth Warren through extra judicial measures could go pressure the bank regulator to go in for their audit and and crypto was seen as a threat to that and so that's partly why um she didn't like it And you know, luckily cooler heads prevailed or at least we're on a better path now.
17:05Do you think the ability to control your own money is free speech?
17:09Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, economic freedom is kind of like foundational to all freedoms because think about it.
17:14Let's say you in theory have freedom of speech, but someone can debank you or seize your assets, you're not going to be very willing to go actually exercise your right to free speech, right? And that has happened with people um in various ca you know the famously like the Canadian truckers um got debanked and deplatformed that way. Many people including the president himself and his kids got debanked in the United States.
17:36You can't get debunked from crypto though, right?
17:38That's right. If you have um I'm asking this as like a genuine question.
17:41Yeah. Yeah. It's so if you have a self-custodial wallet, that is kind of the ultimate um sovereignty because literally if you can if you have a phone and internet connection anywhere in the world, you can get access to this and have assets in a way that is tr truly property rights like nobody can take it from you.
17:56What's your favorite coin?
17:58Well, Bitcoin is the original. I think that's that's great. And then, you know, things like USDC like stable coins have been incredible. That's that's the top regulated stable coin in the world now that we we have a role in.
18:08What's your favorite meme coin?
18:10Well, I love lots of memes. There's not like the problem is if I say one in particular, it's gonna be like, yeah, I Yeah, I mean, um, so I don't want to be seen as like pumping any of these in particular. But, uh, I do think it there's been a particular fascination with my dog for some reason, and I do think it's funny that, um, people create coins around that, and, uh, I'm not endorsing any of them, but, I think it's funny. So, what's the what's your favorite NFT that you've seen sell?
18:40Well, I actually just recently bought a Crypto Punk, if you know what that is. I don't. Okay. Well, the these are kind of like some of the most original um the early NFTts on the internet and they were basically uh like profile or identity like characters and there was 10,000 of them and they were given away for free. anybody could claim them. And now they trade anywhere from like $50,000 to $20 million each. And they're like anyway, they're kind of like these um they're kind of like the Mona Lisa of the digital art world if you want to
19:07make that analogy. Um so I think those are interesting.
19:10What do you do with the digital art?
19:12Like what do you do with it?
19:13Well, you can use it as your profile photo on the internet and how people feel some sort of affinity to it if it like represents like who they wish to be online. Got it. Yeah.
19:24Why do you think so many tech founders are leaving California? We've seen, you know, the billionaire tax. What are you personally doing? Have you worked to fight against it?
19:34Yeah, I mean, it's basic, it's the wealth tax, right? Um I think it's deeply unamerican to seize people's assets. It might be unconstitutional.
19:42Um you know, we all benefit from various things in the United States enormously and we should pay taxes. I don't have an issue with that. Um, I've paid tons of taxes on profits and and income, but after you've already paid your taxes, they want to come take another tax from you and seize your assets. That to me starts to feel like a third world country. That is a dangerous dangerous path to go down.
20:07And it it wouldn't if if I thought they were going toward good outcomes, especially like in California, I wouldn't be so opposed to it like if the if it was being well managed. But there seems to be a lot of fraud and waste um which is just so it's like an unconstitutional asset seizure and then going to fraud and that's where I start to get it it just doesn't feel right to me. It's against my values I would say.
20:29I think it's bad for the state and for America. Um so we're considering any all options basically at this point to be uh in terms of relocation. Roana had said for founders that he was going to take a percentage of you know say their assets were held in a stock instead of in cash that the government could take some of the their percentage of their equity as well.
20:52Yeah. I I mean you go down a very dangerous path with that. I mean just think for a minute about the way it's architected. Um so how do you even value all of these people's property? Right?
21:05Can you imagine some government bureaucrat coming in and you know, hey, how much is that uh that that necklace worth? How much is that lawn mower worth? I mean, these are matters of opinion and the way it's currently drafted, you have to basically have an auditor come in and value all these things. And if they get it wrong, they're criminally liable or or they're personally liable. So, every auditor is going to sandbag it and put in all this kind of buffer. It just you get into a this starts to feel very third world to have the government coming in and seizing your private property. I think
21:34it's um it'd be a terrible precedent.
21:37You know, the the political wins are such that in California this could genuinely pass though. I mean, I think there's probably people in my own family who might vote for it, right? [laughter] So, it just if you see something on the ballot that says, "Hey, should billionaires pay more tax?" Everyone's like, "Sure." But they don't think about um the second and third order consequences of that. And by the way, it's not just going to be billionaires.
21:55It's they're already talking about it going down to 50 million. And so if you're an illlquid tech founder, like people I think people have this misconception that um tech founders or or billionaires have like billions of dollars of cash just sitting around.
22:08Most of the people who are billionaires are on paper and all of their net worth is tied up in like a private company stock that's illquid. Um so you know you might raise $50 million for a company that now has a $2 billion valuation and on paper you're a billionaire but you have like $2,000 in your bank account. So you to pay this tax, you're going to be a forced seller of an illlquid asset.
22:30Like most of these founders are going to have to just move out of California and it'll it'll put a huge deficit on the state that is already overspending. So it does not bode well for California.
22:40You've made billions building a crypto company and then you decided to fight human aging.
22:45Why? And what's the what's your like hack that you found that works the best so far?
22:51Yeah. Okay. [snorts] So I mean just zooming out like my my worldview is that technology is a great way to improve the world and we should all try to go build companies. There's you think AI is going to cure cancer?
23:01Yeah. Eventually yeah um and AI is playing a huge role in this. These are all synergistic people are thinking about what is the biggest application of AI. The biggest one I can think of is how do we get more years more healthy years right and and actually cure aging at some level. Um, I think too many pe young people today are getting enamored with the idea of became becoming an activist and being taught that this is like a virtuous thing. It's actually very easy to be a critic and it makes you feel important and smart and you might go to some rallies with some people and make some friendships but you at the end of the day like you're not
23:30oppressed. Okay, you live in the greatest country in the world. You have all these freedoms and you could do something useful with your life and try to contribute and to be in the arena is hard. it's hard to go build something useful and can and help your fellow man or woman, right? [snorts] And so I have a lot more respect for people that actually go try to create something new in the world. And that's what I was trying to do was live that model myself.
23:51Okay. So, so Coinbase is great. We went public in 2021. I finally got some liquidity. Um, and I was thinking like, okay, how do we go help the next big problem, help fix the next big problem in the world? I hosted some dinners with friends and we were talking about all kinds of you know brain machine interfaces and space and fusion energy and um one of the biggest areas that I felt like was underfunded that there's good teams working on a lot of those things aging is something that people I didn't see good teams working on it I thought it was underfunded and we needed to come up with is there okay is there a way to
24:20actually tackle this because a lot of the people working on it doing were doing snake oil kind of it was like had a low reputation I would say longevity in general I mean there's there's things that everybody can do that are just like you know exercise and sleep. These turn out to be very effective. They're, you know, if there was a drug on the market called exercise, it would probably be the most effective long longevity drug out there. And the good news is it's free. You can you can go for a walk and you can sleep a little bit more. And everybody has access to these, you know, longevity drugs. But I was thinking,
24:49okay, how do we how do we actually like double expected lifespan? I mean if you if you go back a 100 years like people in the US the average life expectancy I think was like 35 or something and now we've more than doubled it. We did that by the way you know by discovering things like washing our hands with soap and um you know things like penicellin antibiotics like so the these things filtered water yeah I mean these things really actually doubled we doubled life expectancy okay over the last 100 years but recently it's kind of started to plateau and how
25:18do we get that next doubling the the best idea that we have and uh this is why I co-ounded this company new limit along with other folks um it's about this thing called uh cell reprogramming or epigenetic reprogramming And just the brief piece on that is that you know all of our cells lose function as we get older and they the genes that were on in a certain cell um some of them get flipped in the wrong way like a gene that should be on gets flipped off or vice versa and so we slowly lose this function in our cells. We've now shown
25:47and other labs have shown that you can reprogram cells to restore function they had when they were younger.
25:52Well, isn't that exactly what we saw today? I don't know if you've seen this, so sorry, but Reuters came out with a report that says Merc has a new vaccine for melanoma in which it's reprogramming [clears throat] through an mRNA vaccine your own cells to be able to fight melanoma and is showing pretty much it's a cure for a melanoma.
26:10Yeah, that's a great example. And if you look at all the major diseases that take us out um whether that's heart disease, cancer, cardiovascular, you know, diabetes, um mental health, these all are highly correlated with age. Okay? And it's sort of an obvious like when you're young, you we actually get like cancerous cells in our body all the time. Um and when you're young, your your body can recover from that and go kill off those cells. You get older and you know, your your cells lose a little bit of their function. And so it's not
26:39like I think a lot of healthcare today, we're trying to go cure an individual disease, but there's a root cause which is your cells losing function as you get older, which makes us much more susceptible to disease in the first place. So we're trying to solve the root problem of getting ourselves to act younger.
26:54But don't you think that's like a like PAS, all the microplastics, all of the chemicalization, diseases of civilization, you're talking about urbanization of our environment, like all of those things contribute.
27:06Yeah. Well, it's true. I mean, when we're younger, though, we can recover from those um insults to the body, right? And I think it's I I don't know if epigenetic reprogramming will cure like 100% of all aging. It could be a multiffactor problem, but we at least our hypothesis is that we believe it is a let's say a material factor or maybe even a predominant factor. Um we've and the exciting thing is this is with New Limit the the company. We we've actually demonstrated successful reprogramming of human cells. Um we've done it in mice
27:36now who have uh humanized livers and we are now getting ready for clinical trials in humans next year. So um there's going to be a whole set of drug candidates that come off of this pipeline we've built using AI by the way to test millions of hypotheses and we'll bring the top candidates into the clinic. Try five or 10 of those and hopefully at least one or two of them hit.
27:56When you talk about longevity though my brain immediately goes toward what we're seeing say in South Korea where they have the world's lowest birth rate. I think it's like 6 or 7 births per Yeah.
28:04woman and they're having the oldest population at the same time. So there's no one to take care of their seniors. There's no one doing a lot because you have an older population and no young people anymore. And we're on that trend here in the United States as well, right? The birth rate's decreasing every year. We haven't plateaued. It's still going down.
28:23So then if you're saying now we're going to live longer than ever, but we're not solving for the problem of having babies, then what? And so to me it's a multiaceted issue, not just longevity, but the fact that we don't have a birth rate that's sustaining population.
28:34Yeah, I'm right there with you, too. I think we we should raise the birth rate.
28:38And you know, sometimes when I talk about longevity, people people will say, "What? Aren't you worried about overpopulation?" I'm like, "No, the birth rate is declining." So I think it'd be great if um people lived twice as long and we should also fix the birth rate. I agree. The overpopulation argument that resulted in the one China pol one child policy in China is what's led to this declining birth rate. Many things but one of the China's biggest problems was that one child policy.
29:03Yeah, that was disastrous for them.
29:05Do you consider yourself maja?
29:07Uh I don't know. I don't know. I um I mean I'm certainly like pro health. Um do you want me to define it for you?
29:15Yeah, please. What what would that entail exactly?
29:17I would say like no seed oils.
29:19Are we eating whole foods?
29:21Are you avoiding plastics where possible? Are we cooking with stainless steel?
29:26Yeah. Actually, all those things. Yes.
29:29So, like I would consider that like do you avoid um highly processed food?
29:35So, that that's what I would consider maha.
29:37Yeah. Sure. I guess what's your healthiest take then?
29:40In my own personal life, I mean all of the So, I think there's like a there's a foundation of things that everybody should kind of get in place, right?
29:47which are, you know, it's it's exercise, it's nutrition, and it's sleep, and let's say mental health. Um, and then there's a bunch of stuff you can go do beyond that, but I think the foundation should be there in place first. So, you know, I I work out like in the mornings, like six days a week, do some stretching. I either do some cardio or some weightlifting. Um, and then I track my sleep and do all kinds of things, you know, that you can try to boost your
30:16scores on that and get enough get like seven and a half hours of sleep or so on average. Um, and then, you know, I think like the mental health part is important too because it we can all be caught up in like the day of just fight or flight and opening your phone in the morning and looking at all the scary messages coming in and crazy debates happening.
30:35And it's important. I in the morning I really try to take about an hour to not look at that stuff. Um I Do you have kids yet?
30:43Not yet. [laughter] Yeah.
30:45That'll be that'll be a whole other way of meditating I suppose in the morning. Uh but you know maybe not having your mind on work. Maybe there's like it's a different morning routine.
30:53Cheerios being thrown around or whatever, but at least you're not um caught up in the that's a different kind of meditation. But yeah, I think um people should get all those kind of foundational things in place. But then yeah, you can go further with it and like I get I get like a blood panel done every quarter and I just look at all the biomarkers and I always with my doctor I kind of tweak it a little bit and why I'm a little deficient on this or I you know want to improve this one.
31:17So a seven and a half hours the optimal sleep.
31:20It's person dependent. I mean actually one of the great things like you know it appears like President Trump um and other people have this short sleeper gene which I think is um underststudied.
31:30There's actually this is a fun story. I mean, do you know you know this the short sleeper gene? Like some people um genetically don't have to get as much sleep. It's not that they're just running around tired all the time. They can sleep 3 to four hours a night and apparently be totally fine. A lot of really high performing people have this.
31:44Arguably Elon may may have it. Um like Indra Newui who was the CEO of Pepsi had this. There's other people. But um I actually funded this study uh to see if you could induce the short sleeper gene into adult mice. Um because it's it's interesting to think like do you need to have this genetic thing from from birth and it changes the development of the brain? Um or as an adult, could you have some therapy that could give you that short sleeper um gene or phenotype? Uh
32:12because if it works in mice and we can induce it in adult mice, then I I think it'd be cool to fund some research to see if I I don't like I I would personally love to have that gene. I think it'd make me more efficient.
32:21I love sleeping. Why would I give that up? Well, it's it's fun and you can sleep whenever you want, but oftentimes I want I'm just [laughter] I'm excited to go build things. I just want to get more stuff done. So, what's a trendy bio hack you think is total [sighs] I mean, total is like a big statement. Um I mean, I've tried some of the peptide stuff. I think I think a lot of it is some of it may work. I mean, GLP1s are peptides also, by the way, so you don't want to paint with too broad of a GLP
32:49ones definitely work. I think some of the um stuff that's being done in compoundies is not that effective. Um and a lot of it's placebo. Like people, you know, if you get like some sore thing at the gym and then you take these and then like 3 weeks later you feel better.
33:03It might you might have felt better if you had just not done anything or just rested a little bit and not gone so hard at the gym. So it's a little hard to tell.
33:10Anyway, some most of those peptides that are done in compoundies haven't really I haven't seen like good evidence from a randomized control trial. What's the craziest longevity thing you've tried?
33:21Uh, let me think about the craziest. I mean, a lot of the stuff I do is pretty it's pretty standard. Like, you know, I take creatine.
33:31Um, do you think creatine works?
33:33Yeah, there's good evidence on that.
33:34Creat creatine works. Um, you know, I I like in my family there's high cholesterol and like some my grandparents passed away at like a relatively early age from heart disease. So, I've taken like there's statins are now like cheap and off patent everybody. It's kind of like good therapy. There's newer ones like um they're called like PCSK9 inhibitors and things like that. So, anyway, I my cholesterol is great.
33:59That was like a good one to finally get in there. Okay, I this is this is probably the craziest one I did. Um, I'm not even sure I would recommend this, but just to be clear, but okay.
34:09I banked some stem cells, which I believe there's a standard of care now. Um, which maybe your kids went through where I think they bank stem cells now like from the umbilical cord when I'm paying like 4K a year for my kids stem cells and I'm not sure ever going to use them. I have I have all my because when I just had a baby, I went into precipitous labor.
34:27I didn't know I was going to give birth that day. I didn't buy the stem cell kit that time. Yeah.
34:31And my husband was like, "You got to do it." And I was like, "Why? We already have three. why do I need four? And he's like, well, you don't want to let the fourth kid like not have it. That's rude. And I was like, great. So, my mom's like calling around to try to get this stem cell kit. We eventually get it. Don't worry, it's banked. But I'm like, why am I spending 4K a year for something I may never use for my kids stem cells, but don't worry, I have them all.
34:52Yeah. So, that when I think, you know, at least when I was born, that was not the standard of care. And so, um I don't know if these will be useful in the future or not, but I I'm just interested in health and longevity. So, I went to actually go bank my stem cells when I was like 35 or something like that. And you know, they actually, it sounds like awful. They have to like drill this little hole into your hipbone cuz the inside the bone marrow is where you get like Yeah.
35:18And um it was kind of pain. It was pretty painful actually. Uh but [laughter] anyway, I have um you know, the doctor warned me. He was like, "Hey, on a on a 1 to 10 scale, this is going to be like a seven." I was like, "Let's do it. I'm I'm And then you know you I was like it was rough but I did get my so now I have these stem cells banked.
35:38Is it going to be useful in the future to develop custom therapies or something? I I don't know but anyway I did that one that was a little out there.
35:44So where did you meet your wife?
35:46We were at this event in LA and uh yeah I just um was captivated kind of and I So I heard that her and her family came to United States after she was fleeing persecution.
35:57Well she fled uh her family fled communist China. Yeah. Wow.
36:01And so are is her family now here or they're still in China?
36:04No, they're all here. Yeah. And she's a citizen and everything. So yeah, she's in some ways she's actually more patriotic than I am because she's seen what the alternative is. A lot of Americans, I think, take what we have for granted. So yeah.
36:15Has their experience shaped the way you view freedom and democracy? And has it shaped, you know, how you guys view things together? I know that like when my husband and I talk about things, it often shapes my worldview.
36:26Sometimes I radicalize him more than he radicalizes me. But how does that work for you?
36:30Yeah, there's many times where um you know I think like especially in in the past like when the prior administration and we were having all these uh issues with um Gary Gendler and stuff and I would I would sometimes get be kind of critical of the United States. I'm like, "Well, yeah, this the government is doing this and that and that." And she was like, "You have no idea how lucky.
36:50Don't you dare say that, you know?" And she was like going and reading the federalist papers and like she's like, you know, understands all the founding father stories. And then she was like, "How dare you say that? Like you live in the best country in the world. Like, is it perfect?" No. But you at least can, she's like, "You don't understand how much of a gift it is that you as a private citizen can go publicly criticize the head of the SEC." You're like, "Do you realize you would be put in jail instantly in China for saying that?" Like, you don't, you know? So, anyway, she she definitely made me uh
37:21We're going to play our famous game now of would you rather.
37:24Okay. Would you rather have to explain Bitcoin to a 5-year-old or explain meme coins to Congress?
37:30[laughter] Either one sounds fine, honestly. I mean, uh I think explaining Bitcoin to a 5-year-old sounds more fun.
37:38How often do you explain Bitcoin on a daily basis?
37:42I I mean I used to do it all the time. Like one thing I realized is you know if you you might have been building something for 10 years but there's still a huge swath of people who are just getting comfortable with it. So you as a founder CEO you kind of have to get comfortable with like preaching to the choir on a regular basis and that's that's normal.
38:00Would you rather let AI manage your personal investments or let AI make all of your business decisions?
38:07I think AI agentic trading will become a bigger and bigger thing and we're experimenting with this at Coinbase like with Coinbase Advisor. I don't think it's quite I don't I'm not quite ready to hand over the reigns on all my investments, but you got to pick.
38:20I do use AI though frequently to um get input on business decisions. I think it's better there. So, I'd say the business decisions.
38:27Would you rather know exactly when you're going to die or exactly how you're going to die?
38:33Um I think when it doesn't matter so much how um if you know when I think it starts to create a lot of sense of urgency like you know Steve Jobs um was working on the iPhone on his deathbed like there you know arguably one of the people who worked on Bitcoin um who may be one of the Satoshi Nakamono is Hal Finny and he was on his deathbed. So there is something powerful about knowing like people say that you know live every day like it's your last and um it's a cliche but when it's really
39:02true it focuses the mind and you you do the thing that you've been putting off.
39:06Would you rather know exactly what Bitcoin will be worth 10 years from today or know the true identity of Sashio Nakamoto?
39:13Satoshi Nakamoto. Yeah. Um, I think the price of Bitcoin, I mean, I have a good sense of what it might be in 10 years, but I think first of all, the idea of Bitcoin stands on its own regardless of who invented it. Um, but there's a there's been some a good documentary that came out recently, um, arguing that it's, you know, likely was Hal Finny and Len Sassman. I I I tend to buy into that theory, but nobody will know for sure, and that's fine. What do
39:43you think of when the news got it wrong that they were like, "It's this guy. He's living in Argentina that got it wrong on me."
39:49No. Who? Wasn't this recently? And I'm not like big into like conspiracies, but they were like, "We know exactly who he is and where he's living."
39:56Oh, on Satoshi Nakamoto.
39:58Um I did briefly live in Argentina.
39:59That's what you're referring to. But um Oh, yeah. Most most of the Sorry, I said was the state good?
40:06Yeah, it was great. Um, I mean, yeah, most of the things that have been published on the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto are totally wrong. And we're clearly wrong. Um, so yeah, that's not out of the norm, I suppose.
40:20Would you rather be remembered for building Coinbase or for helping humans live longer?
40:25I think um Coinbase is the thing I've been working on the longest and it's economic freedom, I would say, is more like my life's mission. Um, but I think that I can utilize some of the skills and proceeds from that to go t I'd like to help create lots of different, you know, innovative companies on the frontier of technology. Um, and so I'd like to think that it's almost like um, you know, like like Jeff Bezos kind of built his wealth at Amazon, but he's
40:55helping put that into lots of good things for the world. So, or you know, Elon with PayPal or something like that.
41:00I think those those are good models to emulate. What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in?
41:06Well, there's some I don't have no idea if this is true or not, but I think it's really funny to think about whether Justin Trudeau is Fidel Castro's son. Um, like you have to admit that if you go look at the photos of his act of his supposed father and Fidel Castro, it's like it's pretty funny. So close.
41:24Yeah, it's pretty. So there's got to be some like DNA test or paternity test that could prove this. But um I don't know if Yeah. So that's one that's just kind of funny. I think that's out there.
41:35But maybe I don't know if this is a conspiracy theory, but maybe like a contrarian view is that I think like the common view is that philanthropy is like this noble cause and you know like Bill Gates after the DOJ thing, he's like I'm going to go rehabilitate my image and do philanth philanthropy. Um I guess I have sort of a contrarian view which is like a lot of charities and philanthropies are actually net negative on the world and they get captured um it's actually remarkably hard to find a foundation
42:04that has not gotten captured by ideology um and that's I think a lot of people by trying to do something good like maybe like criminal justice reform or something and then it turns out they just increased crime by like letting a bunch of people like all these kind of unintended consequences happen. So once in a while um you know when when you when you have a company go public you get all these financial adviserss around you and stuff like that and they're often for like various um tax reasons are like okay we should set up this foundation for you and so far I've just been like no I'm not going to do that
42:34because my fear is that it just gets captured by um some ideology that I lose control of it. Like if you look at like the Ford Foundation I think Henry Ford would be like turning over in his grave if he knew what they were up to. So, um, I try to just I have like a a DAFF, a donor advice fund, and I just try to put money toward things that I think are helping civilization advance. Um, but I'm not I don't think I'll I don't know.
42:58I don't want to say never, but I don't think at this moment I would ever create a foundation.
43:02What's the craziest thing you've ever spent money on?
43:07There's um there's this video game called Polytopia.
43:11Have you heard of it?
43:13Okay. It's pretty fun. It's kind of like the game Civiliza Civilization. Yeah.
43:17But it's on mobile. Um anyway, uh my wife and I kind of got into playing this game and it has a pretty small following. I think only like 50,000 people like globally play it. Um but uh we decided at some point um a lot of the tournaments they were people were playing were like for like €2 or like different. So, at some point I was like, maybe Coinbase should sponsor um the
43:45Polytopia Championship that happens once a year and we were kind of like fans of it. We were watching the top players and things like that. And um the first year I actually reached out to them and said, "Hey, do you want us to sponsor it?" And they initially said like, "No, we're not doing any sponsors.
43:59Like, it's very pure and you know, we don't have any corporate influence or whatever." But then the next year they came back like, "Actually, it would be nice to have some sponsors." So, I think we're we might still be finalizing the details, but I I think Coinbase is gonna sponsor the Polytopia World Championship, and I'm pretty psyched about that.
44:14It's a personal hobby.
44:16Yeah. [laughter] What's the first app you open in the morning?
44:20Well, the danger, the temptation is always to look at the messages, whether that's on Slack or any other tool that we might use. Um, and there's a temptation to go look at X, right? But I try actually not to do that because I think it can be a bad way to start the morning. And so what I try to do is while I'm stretching, exercising and stuff, I just try to listen to podcasts or audio books to kind of get my head right for the day. Try to learn something um something that's
44:47educational or like positive or helps me thinking think about how to build the world and build build the future.
44:54What's something you're hilariously bad at?
44:57Well, okay. Something I'm hilariously bad at. I think that um sometimes like reading social situations um because I I think I'm like somewhere on the autism spectrum where I I'm like I'm not like you know too far obviously but um one of the gifts of autism is actually you're somewhat oblivious to uh social norms. This can be this part of the reason why a lot of entrepreneurs
45:26I think have some a little bit of autism and they're they're willing to just go try things which people most people would be like no why that's like low status or it's it's weird or it's contrarian. Um like believe me starting a crypto company like in 2012 was pretty weird and like most of my friends were like I don't get this why this is weird.
45:44Why are you doing it? I didn't it certainly was not high status or anything like that. So there's sometimes a, you know, the positive aspect of it is I'm just willing to play with contrarian ideas in my head all the time and be like, "Oh, maybe we should try this, maybe we should try that." Now, the downside of it is that um sometimes like in a room um I could be completely oblivious where someone's like uh laughing at me and I'm like, I actually have no idea. I'm just going to talk keep talking to them regardless. So um it's a superpower and and a weakness.
46:13How would you explain Congress to somebody who's trying to get a bill passed?
46:17Well, um, by design, the founder, the founding fathers in all of their wisdom, um, made sure that it was difficult to get a bill passed, as it should be, right? I mean, if you wanted to make it simple and efficient, you'd have like a CEO kind of equivalent who is a single decision maker, but they created the balance of powers and the bicameal legislature and everything. And so you not only have to get a vote in the House, but also, you know, there's 100 kings and queens so so-called in the
46:46Senate. And so what does that mean? It's just complete like chaos and factions and collecting votes with, you know, different issues. But so it's so hard to get legislation passed, but that is by design.
47:00What's the best part of trying to get a bill passed?
47:04I mean, there's just so many big personalities in DC. Um, it's kind of fun and awesome to just like there's crazy people, there's brilliant people, like it's never boring. Um, and I don't know, someone somebody told me one time there's like there's more actors in DC than in LA or something like that. But, um, I think it's I think like I've made some true genuine relationships here that are just really fun and brilliant like smart people. And then there's like some completely crazy people too and kind of just have to roll with it. If
47:34you could host a dinner party with three people that are alive, who's sitting at the table and what are you eating?
47:39I just recently I was like reading more about um like Claude Shannon and um like Oenheimer and um John vonman and people like so these were just like brilliant engineers and who worked on projects historically. I think that would be a fun dinner um to get those folks together. That that's just kind of I think I think the Wright brothers are particularly interesting too. I've read their biography. Like, you have to remember at in the early 1900s or late
48:081800s, like flight was considered kind of a joke by most serious people. They're like, you know, man is never meant to fly. And like occasionally like these loony people would like jump off of a bridge with some like wings attached to their arms and they always crash and everyone would laugh at them.
48:24And it's like it's really underappreciated I think that these like two bicycle um store owners with a very limited budget. Like I think in modern I might get this wrong but in modern day dollars it was like they had maybe like a 10 or $20,000 budget from their personal savings. They didn't have any venture capital. They had competitors who were trying to build planes that were funded like 10 or 100x as much money. these two bicycle shop owners just by tinkering in um
48:52Kittyhawk, you know, with their own inventions uh managed to bring us into the aviation age. And then like the craziest thing about it is that you would have thought if somebody invented an airplane, everyone would be like, "Wow, that's super interesting." It for years they were going around like giving these demonstrations and nobody really cared. It was like shockingly, right?
49:11It's like the actually the military the war department or something at that time in the US said we believe there's no military application of the airplane. This was in like 1904 or something like that.
49:21The Wright brothers landed their um one of the planes on Fort Meyer on Summerall Field here for North Carolina.
49:27Yeah. As like a demonstration. Yeah.
49:30And then you know arguably just 40 years later it won it won World War II for the allies. Right. So the airplane. Anyway, it's amazing like to put to suspend disbelief and believe something. What if it was possible? Well, let's try it.
49:45That's incredibly important for people to do that. And then you have to be willing to be misunderstood and even vilified in certain cases when you first do something and the appre the full power of it won't be known for decades.
49:57Thank you so much for doing this.
49:59Thanks so much for watching this episode of the K Miller podcast. Don't forget we're live Tuesday nights 6 pm everywhere you get your podcast. See you next week.
