Is Bitcoin for real? In other words: do you think cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are as transformative an innovation as the Internet browser? That digital currencies can replace the dollar like Google replaced the encyclopedia?
Or do you think that Bitcoin is more like . . . Beanie babies? A bubble driven by overhyped mania that will burst as all bubbles do?
These are the questions I have been asking myself, perhaps like you, for the past few years with increasing urgency. Half the wealthy people I know argue that it’s a fad — one that is going to cost a lot of normal people a lot of pain. The other half insist it is the future of finance. And they are investing accordingly.
I am a person that until very recently did not have a credit card, so I will not pretend to be an expert on real currency, let alone cryptocurrency. I continue to swing back and forth between “This thing is like Pokemon!” to “Ok, I think I see how this thing can replace the money in my pocket.”
The reason I am extremely interested in this topic is that there are some profound political questions at its heart: Are centralized systems better than decentralized one? What areas of our public and private lives should the government have control over? What guardrails does freedom require?
In an effort to moot the very best arguments on both sides of this debate, I reached out to two brilliant investors: Balaji S. Srinivasan and Michael W. Green.
We’re starting with the bullish case for Bitcoin. And there is no one better to make that case than Balaji. (You’ll hear from Michael in a few hours.)
Balaji is the former chief technology officer of Coinbase, the cryptocurrency trading platform that went public to huge fanfare last month, and a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Balaji is the ultimate polymath,” Marc Andreessen told me. “He can actually do everything he describes — and he has, at his own biotech company and at Coinbase. He develops fully articulated theories of the future, supported by substantive grounding in science, engineering, philosophy and history the way normal people write shopping lists and thank you notes.”
You can read Balaji’s various theories at his new site, 1729.com. But I first encountered Balaji on Twitter, where I quickly discovered that he was as passionate about transhumanism (he’s a fan) as he was about The New York Times (not so much). Back in January 2020 he was warning about a mysterious virus from China months before the mainstream media started putting the public on notice. As one Silicon Valley founder put it: “‘Balaji was right’ might be the most terrifying phrase in the English language.”
The question is whether or not he is right about cryptocurrency.
Without further ado, here’s Balaji:
