Virtual Dinner party hosted by @FeliciaHorowitz ft @naval @brian_armstrong @FEhrsam @cdixon @katie_haun @KevinChou on @joinClubhouse right now discussing #btc and crypto

Cartheu Jordan and Jeremiah Tolbert recount their first crypto experiences mining and buying #btc and Ethereum. Jeremiah credits @FEhrsam for first setting him up with a @coinbase account and getting him into crypto.

. @FEhrsam: It continues to amaze me how when the seed of the idea of crypto is planted in people's heads, how far that can end up taking you.

. @FEhrsam: Most people don't get to encounter a new type of money in their lifetime. Buying and holding is enough for most people. But there's also an entire frontier of innovation happening.

. @bhorowitz: We're completely at the beginning of crypto. There is plenty of time to still get in. We're moving the entire financial system, all of social media, all our services to decentralized alternatives.

. @katie_haun : What is #DeFi?

@FEhrsam: It's the future financial system being built up on top of crypto. If crypto has created a new digital money, crypto is a new crypto-based financial system built on top.

. @FEhrsam: DeFi is small today but in 30 years, will it be the financial system we all transact on? That's the question.

. @marilynfbooker: What are the risks around crypto? If something were to happen to my #btc who do I call?

@FeliciaHorowitz: It's like the Internet, who owns the Internet?

. @naval: These are bearer assets like cash, if you lose it it's on you. But you can deposit with qualified custodians like @Coinbase. It's not full-proof obviously. What you're doing is exiting the centralized financial system and all the negatives and benefits of it.

@naval: BTC is better than gold in almost every single way. If BTC were to reach gold's market cap, each coin will be worth $500k.

The reason why it's worth less is because the user's capability to hold these funds securely is still not there.

. @naval: The beauty of crypto is that it's permissionlessly programmable. People are coming up with highly innovative things on top of this from multi-sig wallets to time locks that allow us to do new things with money we've never been able to do before.

. @naval: If all you wanted to do was speculate and hedge against the US Dollar, there are safe ways to do this. You can buy a @Grayscale index or store your crypto in hardware wallets.

. @brian_armstrong: Crypto gives people choices. This gives you a sense of empowerment but that means you have to be responsible for that.

. @naval: This is not just about making money or hedging inflation. We have figured out how to govern networks without human rulers. This means we can solve any human coordination problem from social networks to energy grids.

. @FABNEWYORK: I'm concerned about @JanetYellen's negative stance towards crypto, what can we do about that?

. @katie_haun: Crypto actually helps us prosecute crime. With the blockchain, we have an auditable trail to track down money laundering or financial crimes.

. @suna_said: I thought it was somewhat of a relief that @JanetYellen's comments were around traceability because there are so many companies like @chainalysis that help us do this.

. @suna_said: I speak with family offices and large institutions all the time and the narrative has changed from "what is this" to "how much should I buy."

@suna_said: How do we educate people so that these headlines from people like @JanetYellen don't alarm people?

@katie_haun: There's an entire narrative of crypto that hasn't been told which is how crypto can create economic freedom. When @brian_armstrong started

. @brian_armstrong: Economic freedom is a composite metric that positively correlates with things in society that we want like better income in the poorest 10% of people in society, increased societal happiness etc.

. @brian_armstrong: When I first read the #btc white paper, I immediately thought this was a technology that could enable economic freedom. It allows people to own their own money, today it allows people to take out loans to start businesses.

. @brian_armstrong: There are two contingents of regulators – one end is extremely optimistic about crypto and have even left government to work in crypto. The other contingent is solely looking at the 1% of bad actors who are using crypto for illicit activity.

. @brian_armstrong: crypto is no worse than the dollar in terms of illict activity.

. @terrycrews: I think crypto is the future.

. @terrycrews: I was first convinced when I was at a convention in Milan and I had fees I needed to pay, more than I could withdraw from an ATM. I had a bank wire me funds and showed up with all my paperwork and the bank manager turned me down because I was black.

. @terrycrews: At that point, I knew the existing financial system wasn't for me.

. @terrycrews: Bitcoin doesn't know I'm black.

. @terrycrews: Question for @brian_armstrong how does @coinbase decide what assets and stable coins gets added to Coinbase?

. @brian_armstrong: Our goal is to be the @amazon of crypto. We want to hold all the legitimate assets. We have an entire team dedicated to deciding what assets to list. As long as the asset isn't a scam or an illegal security, we'll list it.

@FeliciaHorowitz: Cartheu, what advice would you tell people who didn't go to @Stanford about crypto?

Cartheu: Unlike your existing bank, crypto is decentralized. That means no middle man or bank, you have complete control over your money.

Switching topics to @rally_io founded by @KevinChou, former founder of @kabam.

. @KevinChou: The vision behind @rally_io: how do we make crypto unbelievably easy for anyone to get into crypto in a no-code way. Just like how @wordpressdotcom made it incredibly easy for anyone to make a website, @rally_io will enable anyone to create their own cryptocurrency.

. @KevinChou: @rally_io will bring the next 100 million people into crypto.

. @itsTanyaSam: I think @rally_io will allow creators to generate a token that enables them to monetize their communities and then recirculate that token in those communities for more engagement and value distribution within the community.

. @KevinChou: If we look at how hard crypto is to use today, it reminds me of video games back in the 90s. There's a lot of opportunities to decrease that barrier to entry. Crypto enables these communities.

. @FEhrsam: for people riding the frontier of crypto, people are asking what's the next big thing in crypto? Initially, it was bitcoin, a few years ago it was DeFi, and I think for 2021 it's NFTs which is a fancy way of saying artists and creators selling their work on crypto.

. @FEhrsam: People like @3LAU are already selling their work and collectibles via crypto on platforms like @niftygateway and made a good amount of income https://niftygateway.com/collections/ssx3lau

@naval: There's no better way to get started into crypto than to read the original Bitcoin whitepaper. It may take you a few times to get through it but it's the fundamentals https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf 

. @naval: These platforms are just "creator aggregators". That tax creators.

@naval: We have a chance to liberate creators from platforms. This was the original promise of the Internet. Can we run media platforms where creators are in charge? That means all the revenues will flow to the creators directly without middlemen taking cuts like Twitter or IG.

. @cdixon: What's fascinating about @SubstackInc is that it's a new business model for people to write. People who were making pennies on the dollar before are now making tons of money writing on Substack. That's because there's no intermediary taking a tax.

. @cdixon: Direct creator monetization will be one of the most important things to happen on the Internet in the next decade.

. @cdixon: There's a broad trend of creators being able to sell things directly to their audience. Things like @rally_io and @nba_topshot by @dapperlabs are enabling this next wave.

. @suna_said: There are trillions of dollars of fees intermediaries take from retail investors. With things like IPOs, banks take 20%...even with SPACs a tremendous amount of value is taken from the retail investor.

. @brian_armstrong: Regulation often kills innovation. Whenever something bad happens, our knee-jerk reaction is to add regulation when in reality this regulation kills startups that create competition to actually decrease these fees and make things more equitable.

. @FABNEWYORK: what are your thoughts on the recent volatility and price swings in #btc ?

@FEhrsam: It's inevitable that when a new money comes into existence, you'll see volatility.

. @naval: Money is the bubble that never pops. We have all these things trying to be money but once we agree that something is money, it never pops. It's impossible to create that money without the bubble coming along the way.

. @naval: Whenever bitcoin survives a hack or event, bitcoin and other cryptos gain in value because it just became stronger (antifragile).

. @naval: @ethereum allows us to run legal contracts in code through things called smart contracts.

. @naval: Bitcoin enables permissionless property. Ethereum enables permissionless programmability.

. @naval: Bitcoin is a crazy idea: because we can't agree on who owns what money, let's each keep a copy of that ledger that we sync, and now we all know who owns what money.

. @naval: Ethereum is the even crazier idea that we can't agree upon which computation was run properly, and you need to run computations to solve hard problems.

. @naval: A contract is an agreement between parties to restrain our future behaviors to a smaller set of options as specified in a contract. It's a piece of legal code.

. @naval: Ethereum is the idea of moving this legal code into a smart contract, where we write it in code and move it on to the blockchain where it's enforced through math where each of us runs a copy of the adjudicating code on our computers.

. @naval: Anyone can write smart contracts that run on the blockchain and resolve what would otherwise be financial disputes that would need judges and guns to resolve.

. @naval: Instead of needing courts and Wall Street, we can use @ethereum to rebuild all of Wall Street where it's accessible to everyone and open 24/7, 365.

. @naval: Everything you see on Wall Street times 10 will eventually live on the @ethereum blockchain and will perform significantly better. Instead of paying giant fees to hedge funds sitting in NY, you'll pay slivers to automatic code running on the blockchain.

Question arises on the digital currency in China.

. @naval: The entire point of cryptocurrencies is you can replace rulers with markets. Chinawill never allow a free market so their digital currency is dead on arrival. This is not a cryptocurrency, this is a digital currency.

. @naval: All crypto is digital currency, but not all digital currencies are crypto.

. @naval: The winning cryptocurrency, the winning reserve currency will be the one that is the most decentralized.

. @naval: Today the winning currency on the planet is the US Dollar. It's backed by aircraft carriers, guns, the US economy and political system.

. @naval: The US Dollar is how the empire of the US extracts tribute from the rest of the world. When we print dollars, 70% of the inflation cost is borne by the rest of the world because they hold 70% of dollars. Over time, I think people will begin to resent this.

. @naval: The world is looking for a better alternative. They don't know what that is yet, bitcoin may emergy as a viable contender but in order to do that, it must remain fully decentralized.

. @naval: You can measure the decentralization of a cryptocurrency on several axes including where the devs are, what the policies are on-chain, where the believers are, where the miners are, and how anonymous it is.

. @naval: Bitcoin wins on every decentralization axis except for 2:
1. Permissionless programmability which it chooses to give up to Ethereum because if something is programmable, it is hackable. You don't want your gold to break.

2. Privacy: It's completely trackable.

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