Pivot - Peloton's Executive Shuffle, Peter Thiel's Meta Exit, and the Future of Fintech with Jeremy Allaire

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Listeners tell Kara and Scott why they're not watching the Olympics, and Elon's tweets draw SEC attention (again). Also, Amazon wants five star talent, and it's willing to pay. Friend of Pivot Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, drops by to discuss USDC, stablecoins, and the future of fintech. You can find Jeremy on Twitter at @jerallaire. Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'd like to talk to you about your car's extended warranty. We're doing product placement now. We're doing product placement. Two things, Scott Galloway. Please stop sending me that Adidas boobs tweet. Stop sending it to me or I'll report you to the gazpacho police. Yeah, would you like

some Nazi secret police with your grilled cheese sandwich? This is like, you know, there's so many good memes, I have to say. One was the gazpacho police are in cahoots with the anti-foe or the progressos. I forgot who did that one, but George Conway did. The progressos must be really going crazy for this. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.

Yeah, Adidas was not hacked. That was actually, they intended to do that? I guess, I don't know. Just boobs everywhere. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I guess they're just showing there's lots of boob types, which women, of course, already know. But thank you for the photo display.

I remember meeting with the CEO of Lululemon. Yeah. A really impressive guy who was the CEO of Sephora, Calvin. impressive guy who was the CEO of Sephora, Calvin, and he went on for 10 minutes talking about the relationship between fabrics and breasts. And we sat there and just kind of nodded our head for a while. I guess it's actually sports bras are actually quite complicated technology, which I did not know. Oh, yes.

Well, I'm wearing one right now and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. In any case, the joke we were making was about Marjorie Taylor Greene calling Gestapo, I think that's what she was going for, gazpacho. Everyone's having a good time on Twitter with it because she's an idiot. That said, you know, she's dangerous. She's still dangerous, as dumb as she might be. And all these malaprops, you know, Trump makes them all the time. It didn't matter. In any case, she's—

No, Nancy Pelosi asking people to things like stop stock trading and everything, it's very reminiscent of people— The gazpacho. Yeah, it's exactly—it's not a false analogy. There's a lot of historical parallels there. It's really truly not a lot of times that you can make a Nazi joke, I'll tell you that. But she manages to allow us to. In any case, that is an interesting story, the Congress doing that. We talked about that yesterday, which is interesting.

Who predicted that? I think someone listened to us. Well, you thought Pelosi wouldn't do it because she was a guinnet, But then she said, I'm going to go with my – going with the constituency. And you know what? She's leaving. So she can make money afterwards. She can make a lot of money. She's already –

They've already made – I would love to – quite frankly, I like this speaker. I love her fashion more than anything. I think that's very important. Yeah. Especially for the kind of one of the third most – the third in line to the president needs to look good. And she looks better than, we haven't had some great trust speakers, which is, I think, really upsetting. She does. But she's, I would like to see her husband's trades.

I think it's just insane that these people, Richard, Senator Burr, what's gone on here. I just can't, I just literally can't get over. I know him pretty well. He doesn't strike me as a cheater, but you're right. Well, that's the thing. They're not cheating. That's the problem. Right, yeah.

They're not cheating any more than Elon is moving to Texas. That seems like, I know, but it seems as if he did that, that would put him in the target zone. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You know, who knows. But nonetheless, I think you were correct in that you can't even help yourself in some ways. You know stuff and you know stuff, right? And you talk at home.

You think you're just being smart. Yeah. You find out a pandemic is about to break out the next day and you think, well, maybe I'll just take it. Sell a few stocks. Or you find out, oh, we're about to commit a billion dollars to Moderna. Yeah. Maybe I'll buy a few shares for my grandkids, my great, great, great, great grandkids, because I'm 140 years old and refused to leave.

Yeah. It's a different kind of insider trading. It's a weird, you know, sort of plain sight one. But in any case, it's probably the right thing to do. But then again, who's going to run for office, right? Only rich people or maybe not rich people. You know, it's really- No, here's the- I don't know, I'm just saying. This is the reality, and that is, unless you have insider information, there's probably no good reason, according to most of the finance academics, to stock pick. You're supposed to put your money in low-cost ETFs. There's a lot of studies showing that stock picking doesn't work.

Yeah, for most people, yeah. For them to say they want to engage in capitalism is just saying, no, they want to engage in insider trading because if they were to put their money in blind trust or put it in low cost ETFs with trading windows, that research shows they're not going to do any worse than the rest of us. So unless you're onto something, this is, if they can't pass this, they literally can't pass anything. They can't pass anything. We'll see.

We'll see. What I'm dying to see is if that one bullshit piece of legislation goes through that your penalty is confiscation of your salary. I'm telling you. I'm running for senator, dog 2022. I'm going to give all six years up, and I'm going to go to Washington with the sole purpose of starting a hedge fund, and I'm going to be transparent about it based on insider information. All right, okay, well, we'll enjoy that. Well, I'll enjoy you here in Washington. We'll hang out all the time.

I'm going to set up meetings with Lena Kahn to find out about FTC actions coming up, Jerome Powell to get his view on interest rates. I'm being obnoxious. Head of the Department of Defense. I told you, go watch that Eddie Murphy movie. Go watch the Eddie Murphy movie. I'd be awful, but I wouldn't be any more awful than anyone that's gone on. You need to have more civic feeling, integrity. I'm very civic-minded.

Yes, you are. Okay, today we'll talk about Peter Thiel stepping down from Facebook's board, Peloton shuffling its C-suite. We'll speak with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of the fintech company Circle, about what 2022 will bring for the world of cryptocurrency. Circle. Circle. Circle. Circle. Circle. Circle. Circle. That's it.

He used to have a video company, if you remember. I'm totally blanking on his video company, but I yelled at him once for a full hour about his shitty video company. This was back in the day when we were trying to get video up online. It wasn't shitty. It just was early.

Anyway, Amazon wants five-star talent and it's ready to pay top dollar. Everybody is sort of upping the ante. The company will raise its max base pay for corporate and tech workers from $160,000 to $350,000. Amazon says more increases will follow for, quote, most jobs globally. The Internal Post noted this past year has seen a particularly competitive labor market, you think. Late last year, Apple paid out a surprise bonus of up to $180,000 in an attempt to stop software engineers from leaving the big tech competitors. It's a huge amount of money on the bottom line. I guess they weren't paying people enough. And being at Amazon

isn't enough, correct? This is really interesting. If you think about it, wages are under incredible upward pressure right now, especially in the information economy. And the other thing, and I actually, in a weird way, it's sort of related to Teal leaving Facebook Sport, and that is these companies are, so you have Facebook whose stock has declined. So anyone who's joined, actually anyone who still has a lot of shares who they haven't or unvested or vested options, your equity compensation at Facebook or Amazon at kind of a mid-level to executive level, the majority of it, at least psychologically, is from the expected value of the increase in your equity award, right?

So there's a lot of people. There's probably several thousand people at Amazon or Facebook that have several million dollars in equity value that has invested. So they think, okay, I'd like to go to this cool little startup, but every month I continue to stay here, I make another 40, 60, 100, 200K in additional equity value. Then all of a sudden Facebook throws up on their earnings, and it goes from being worth $3 million to $400,000, or it goes from being worth $400,000 to zero. So all of a sudden, people start returning the calls of headhunters. And so typically what happens in a mature company is the compensation shifts from equity compensation to current compensation because a company, even like Amazon and Google that are doing really well, their stocks don't double. Well, their stocks

don't double for here. So if they go to a smaller startup that's doing really well, it's very conceivable that the equity value of their options could quintuple in the next three to four years. And so it just becomes a different dynamic. The other thing I find fascinating about Amazon, and I do think Amazon is the most visionary company and forward-thinking company of the last century, arguably. And look at what they did in the beginning, Kara. They kind of – no one has zigged when everyone else has zagged in terms of investments like Amazon. Amazon said, all right, let's take our biggest expenses. Let's look at fulfillment

and let's not only over-invest in it, but we're going to so massively over-invest in it because we have access to cheap capital that we'll be able to rent it out to other people. I was in e-commerce in the 90s and every e-commerce player did the same thing. We'd all go to the Kentucky-Ohio border and ask somebody, can you get our shit there within seven days for four bucks a box or three bucks? It was lowest common denominator. It was terrible service. They went the exact opposite way and overinvested. Then they overinvested in processing power. Then they overinvested in media. And now I'm not sure. I'd be curious to get your thoughts here. But I think

Amazon says as we move towards more software and services away from manufacturing, which is more about inventory, more about warehouses, and you're moving bits instead of moving atoms, I think they've said we're going to make a staggering overinvestment in human capital. I think they've said we have the cheap capital. I think they've seen it. Let's become like Netflix. As usual with a company, it's not Jeff Bezos here, but the people who he trained, they have an opportunity to get people and they'll do it. They've always spent, look, this is a company that's always spent for whatever their need is and has relied They've got the opportunity to do this, so why not? I just feel that this is sort of in their, and they need the people. This is a company that needs lots of people. They need everybody working for them. I think they're still going to face enormous challenges with unions, et cetera. The bigger they are, the harder they'll fall in that regard. And so, they've got to at least be having people questioning whether they need to be part of a

union, right? Like, well, they're kind of nice to me. What do I need this for? That kind of thing. Well, the unions are losing an answer. So far. So far. It doesn't mean they're going to. They lost a big one?

Yeah, they're coming back. That's not true. There's all kinds of activity, you know? So, I think that they're going to have to, not just the competitive labor market, but the union challenges and the ability of this, as we talked about, this reassessment of people to move anywhere they want right now. And so they want to lock this kind of thing in. I think it's just smart. It's smart on their part. It doesn't cost them that much. They look good. It helps in all kinds of ways. And they don't look like they're sort of

living off the backs of other people as quite as much, you know, which I think people think about quite a bit when they have things. Every time someone delivers, I'm like, what does that person make? What is, you know, and I, of course, don't do anything about it, but it still is in your mind about this company, how they treat their workers. I'm bullish on Amazon. I am too. I am too. I think they make the moves. Do you realize last year, in the last 12 months, they've hired more people than the population of Miami?

Yeah. Amazon hires more kids out of my class. 10% of my class will go to Amazon. I teach 280 kids. 30 will go to Seattle. And it's just hilarious. They come into my office hours. They never want to talk about strategy or brand strategy. They always want to talk about their job offers. And they'll say, I've got a job offer from McKinsey or Goldman or Sunbaker. I've got an offer from Amazon. I'm like, stop wasting my fucking time. You got plaid, pearl jam and bad coffee in your future. Everyone goes to Amazon.

Young people are insecure. So they always go to the brand. And Amazon right now has the best brand in terms of an employer. And they all, Amazon must get, I bet they get a 90% yield on their job offers. Maybe. I don't know. Almost everybody they make an offer to comes there. But who's going to struggle here? Who's really got to think about this? It's Facebook with their stock decline. Because all of a sudden, the perceived compensation of their employees has gone down a lot.

Everybody. And it depends on where you want to live. But Apple stock is not down. Apple stock is off 5% from the high. Yeah, well, it's kind of interesting a place to live. Anyway, we'll see what happens with there, but it's a smart move on their part. Tesla has been subpoenaed by the SEC over something Elon Musk tweeted again. Oh, hate to see it, Tara. Don't go on. Hate to see it.

All right, all right. Hate to see it. Keep it turd here, Scott. Elon polled his Twitter followers asking whether he should sell 10% of his shares. Regulators want to know if Tesla complied with the settlement agreement from 2019 that said Elon's tweets about the business would be vetted by a company lawyer. I think they're just testing the enforcement here, picking this particular one. They're not testing it, Cara. They're ignoring it.

No. He's waving his fat middle finger in the face of the most noble organization in the world, the U.S. government. What does he call it? He has a name for it. That's something, something. He has a funny name for the Securities and Exchange Commission. You know, this was a settlement that came after he tweeted that he was taking tests of private funding security. You mean market manipulation?

They're testing if he's, it's like sort of the consent decree, if they're doing what they said. So, we'll see. It was an odd tweet for sure. I was like, oh, no, the SEC's got to react. It takes them a while, though, I'll tell you that. I don't know if anything will happen, honestly. He knows. I'm not sure either, because let's be honest, billionaires play by different roles. Or he does, and he just dares them to do something. You know, dares them to do something is sort of his brand, speaking of brands. Good luck. You know, he'll go out there.

And sometimes he loses, like in the pedo trial, and sometimes he didn't lose that one. He didn't lose. He won in the pedo trial. He won that one. Right. I'm sorry. Sometimes he wins, like in the pedo trial. And he so far hasn't really lost that much, right?

He hasn't really lost anything. Well, for blade market manipulation, they find him, you know, like 0.1% of his net worth. But part of the agreement was, I mean, this is what he tweeted at me, that I was an insufferable numbskull, when I said, okay, this poll is bullshit. You've already filed to sell these shares. You're clearly planning to do it. Yeah. And you're not allowed. I mean, this, again, is the most blatant violation of when you have a penalty and they say, all right, you have to do community service or

we're sending you to prison. Most people do their community service. And so he's violating the conditions of his settlement. Guess what? Welcome to Trump tearing up all documents of the U.S. government. Do you really think they're going to get him on it? He just can do it. I don't like these rules.

I'm going to blow your stop sign. And there's no repercussions. So I don't like these rules. I'm going to blow your stop sign. So, and there's no repercussions. So, I don't know what to say. But what I don't get, I think everybody, and I don't like it, every company I've run, I have a board of directors, and they get in my face about stuff, and they put up guardrails. And you realize that greatness is in the agency of others. You get a good board. He clearly has absolutely no board. Because someone on the board would call

and say, Elon, how is this helping you or our shareholders? What are they going to do? Honestly, I think this shows that if you don't want to run the rules, you don't have to. You don't. Maybe for some people there's repercussions, but not this guy. So there you have it. I just don't think anything's going to happen. He doesn't like the stop signs where they are. There's a stop sign I don't like in D.C. I blow it all the time. And Amanda's always like, you just decided this. And I'm like.

You run a stop sign. It's not a stop sign. It's a light that I don't like. You're a rebel. I just don't like it. You're a rebel. It says you have to take a right. And I'm thinking it's stupid.

So, I always take a left. And I'm not going to say where it is. Just to, you're going to show a signal when you go the wrong way, regardless of where you're going? No, I don't like it. I don't agree with the government's decision on this light. So I just don't do it. Don't stand too close to your flame. You might get burnt.

People do it all the time in little ways. And this guy doesn't. He doesn't like the rule. And he thinks it's dumb. And so he does what he pleases. And so they either have to come down really hard, and then he makes them look stupid, which is like, it's just, he's going to win. If you break little rules like this, and there are little rules, they really are. They, you can, it just shows you there's nobody there.

Just like with Trump, he ripped up all the things Trump did one thing after the next. Everyone's like, he can't do that. And he did. And he got away with it. So, and worse. Sometimes I ripped a label off clothing that says do not remove. Oh, well, there you go. everyone's like he can't do that and he did and he got away with it so and sometimes i ripped it sometimes i ripped the label off clothing that says do not remove oh well there you go that's right i'm just saying it's just like there's no there's no repercussions and they're just proving

that you know they're just proving that uh speaking of no well repercussions no repercussions the canadian protesters are staying in the headlines the more there's not as many of them um there's there's a lot of like fact check they's not as many of them. There's been a lot of like fact check. They're not as big as people think they are, but nonetheless, it's effective. A small group of people can be very effective. Drivers and pickup trucks and cars blockaded the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor. I've been on this bridge. There are protests against COVID measures inspired by the Freedom Combine. It's occupied Ottawa for only two weeks. The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest international crossing in North America. Lots of trade goes across it. 27% of all U.S.-Canada trade, which is incredible,

one bridge. Let's fix that. It's a privately owned bridge. So, you know, it's just that they're, I think their imagery is not great because I think a lot of Canada's pissed now at them. Now they're just irritating pains in the necks. But, you know, it's growing, too. There's groups of people that like to make trouble. And, you know, this is how they do it in Canada instead of invading the capital, I guess. Well, actually, it's how they do it in France. I remember coming in from Charles de Gaulle, which I can't stand, which maybe next to Miami is the worst international airport in the world. I walked. I had to walk that one time.

A mile. You're right. It's crazy. And then trying to get into town. And someone said, oh, there was this trucker strike. And they parked at the exits, and it took us literally four hours to get to Paris. And then the farmers with the tractors. That happened to me. I got out of the cab and walked a mile to the airport.

I don't find this – I don't have a ton of sympathy. I'm not down with the good truckers in France or in Canada. My view is they should take pictures or just record who the truck started stopping and go confiscate 10% of them. Problem over. Sorry, boss, our truck now. I guess. I think this is a form of like economic hostage taking. I really think it's – It is a thorny problem for governments.

I'll tell you that. Like how do you do this right without causing a melee? Well, it's striking. It's striking at the economy when you're – it's striking at the economy when it – just because you can strike at a place that's weakest. Yeah. I mean, there's collective bargaining. I would bet Canada has stronger pro-labor laws than we do. But I'm like, you know, take pictures, show up, confiscate 10% of their trucks.

Word will get around. They'll stop. Once you have a little bit of attention, they're – Get off my lawn! They're high on their own supply here will get around. They'll stop. You know, once you have a little bit of attention, they're- Get off my lawn! They're high on their own supply here, and they just, it works. And what they're doing, though, of course, is the violence and the Nazi symbolism and just crude behavior. I don't know.

I just, I don't think- There's Nazi symbolism? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the whole thing. Yeah, they've got, like, there's all kinds of things. Oh, my God. Who do they think they are? Gazpacho? There's Gazpacho. They're drinking a lot of Gazpacho up there. Anyway, we'll see. We'll

see where it goes. But I think the government has a real thorny problem to deal with them. They got to come down hard and a lot. Anyway, let's go to some listener mail. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. This week, our listener mail inbox is full of reasons why you're not watching the Olympics. Lots of you said time zones were the issue. One person even said

it's because you can't gamble on figure skating. We also heard a lot of opinions like this one from Gabe in California. That's good. Gabe in California. That's good. Play the tape from Gabe. The problem is, how do you watch it?

I tried hard during the Summer Olympics to find a good option. The Peacock app is a joke. The curated content is terrible. So it needs innovation, desperately. I would love to become obsessed with the Olympics again, but I can't find it anywhere that I watch entertainment. And that's the fundamental problem. That's interesting. That's the fundamental problem. I watch entertainment. And that's the fundamental problem. That's interesting.

That's the fundamental problem. I don't know if that's the case. I think it's that our nation is all split up. We go off to our little streaming things. We used to all be part of a little town and we'd all gather around for the Olympics. And now we got other options. I just, there were no options before. I think it's that we're not a collective anymore as a group of people.

We like what we like. We'll watch what we watch. But I haven't used the app, so I don't know. What do you think? Well, I think you're both right in the sense that consumer behavior is really powerful. Remember, only a few Olympics ago, it was sort of 2, 4, and 7. Not only got a lot of viewership passively, you put on the evening news with Tom Brokaw or whatever, but channel four, NBC, was right there and so present for you. Whereas one,

you now have 400 channels, and not even 400 channels, but technically your options are 4,000 actually, because everything's streaming and on demand. Yeah. And then you have so many other things pulling your attention. And also, to have to get to a channel and run through hoops, the individual is absolutely right. It's not easy. It used to be super easy to watch the Olympics. Now you have to actually think about it and maybe download an app or subscribe to Peacock.

And then you run past something on Netflix or whatever. I don't think we're a collective anymore. It's incredible that NBC paid more than $7 billion for the rights. Incredible, yeah. I wonder who will buy them next, 2032. You know, time zones, people have, times have been easier. It's probably going to be that Matt Damon back crypto thing. Be bold!

Time zones are always the issue. I don't think that's as big a deal. I don't know. And maybe they are. But they haven't seemed to be. I don't recall being like you watch it the next day. And also, that is actually true in terms of you know what happened, right? You can read what happened.

And before, you didn't quite know what happened if the newspaper wasn't there. Things have changed. Things have changed. And people don't want to watch them in a big group. And it's a smaller group of people. And there was nothing on but now there is.

So Gabe from California's message came in on our new phone line. You can leave us a voicemail at 855-51-PIVOT or as always drop us a line

at nymag.com slash pivot but leave us a voice message. We like our new thing and leave us nice messages. We like say hi to Scott or you you know, he needs the love.

You think? You think? You think? Anyway, it's an interesting topic. I was watching the Olympics for two seconds yesterday. And then I went to Netflix or HBO. I don't remember. I watched the Gilded Age.

That's HBO. It's not very good. I'm watching. Oh, really? I'm watching Euphoria. I and freaking out about having kids. Oh, yeah. Don't watch that. I don't watch that.

My kids watch it, but I don't watch it. By the way, I was just looking up on TV, Kara. In order to get viewership up, the Olympic Committee, and it's happening tonight, has introduced a new sport, a new game. They have pinball. And by the way, I'm betting on that deaf, dumb, and blind kid. That's good. That's good Olympic humor. Oh, my goodness. In any case, let's get on to our first big story. Peter Thiel is leaving the Meta Board. He reportedly wants to focus on electing Trump-aligned

Republicans in the midterms. Two of his protégés are currently running for the Senate, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. I think Blake worked for him. Thiel has donated $10 million to political action committees backing each candidate. He's donated to a candidate challenging Liz Cheney in Wyoming. He was very active in the Trump administration, obviously, in Wyoming. He was very active in the Trump administration, obviously, and I think a lot of people blame him for Facebook's bear hug or blame or compliment him, depending on who you are. And so he's always been sort of a controversial board member when he sued Gawker. That was a moment where they had to say something about it, saying he's a private citizen doing that.

So what do you think about this? I don't know a lot of why he left. Honestly, I haven't really called around or anything like that. Maybe he just was tired of it or whatever. I'm not sure. Very close to Mark Zuckerberg, very big influence on Mark Zuckerberg, for sure. Made a fortune, both of them together at Facebook, was one of the first people who believed in Mark Zuckerberg, for sure. He also had investments in lots of things, Clearview AI. He was an investor in Palantir that had some beefs with Facebook back and forth. He's a really interesting person. He obviously put a lot of his meta stock in a Roth IRA, which means that if he cashes out in 2027, he gets the money tax-free, et cetera.

So what do you think, Scott? Peter Thiel is quite a character. Yeah, I think this is what it is. I don't know if there's a backstory here, but he's been on the Facebook board over a decade. I think he invested a half a million dollars in a valuation of like six million. He's made tens of billions from Facebook. And Yeah, he was. That is true. knows what he wants and doesn't really, you know, it's like, okay, I'm here to please me, full stop. But he's going to get very politically active. And he doesn't, he's probably just, what has he not accomplished? But what he does is he joins the list of the most impressive people in America. And that is the most impressive people in America have left the Facebook board. But unlike Peter Thiel, they usually leave after a year when they realize that Mark Zuckerberg is insincere about cleaning up Facebook. I mean, Erskine Bowles, Susan Desmond

Hellman, Ken Chennault, all went on this board, looked around. Don Graham. Don Graham. All went on this board, looked around and said, okay, I can help. I can figure this out. These people always have big egos. I can coach this young man. He probably seems sincere about wanting to do the right thing. And then they go, okay, this guy's full of shit and doesn't care. I'm out of here. I mean, these folks have all left so much money on the table. All right, but Thiel wasn't this person.

Thiel is a great admirer of Mark Zuckerberg. He's been there for 15 years or something. And a very big influence on the stuff that many people think are problematic. You know, he's been a big influence, especially the lean towards Trump. Yeah, but it strikes me that this is what it is. He wants to be very involved. He doesn't need the headache. He's got the money.

He's literally Koch-lite, isn't Koch brothers-lite. He's going to be probably the most dominant political force of 2022 with his money. Very strategic, very smart. I mean, he's probably the biggest threat to Representative Cheney right now because he's clearly not, I mean, there were so many, think about it, think about the societal norms and pushback and you become a pariah. He's basically a billionaire that got pissed off at a media company and put them out of business. That has a lot of very unusual, you know, uncomfortable notes to it. He doesn't care. He doesn't care.

He's like, I can. I can put a media company out of business that wrote things that I didn't like. Yeah, he definitely has some opinions. He has some opinions. He's definitely, you're right, Koch brothers behind the scenes, but sort of in front of the scene. People know he's there. He's not super quiet about where he goes. I think he wants to be, you know, the powerful, most powerful person on the Republican side, for sure. He also continues to invest. He's in Rumble,

which just offered Joe Rogan $100 million to leave Spotify and join its service, which that's exactly what I would do if I was Rumble. You know, he's got a lot of detractors. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo tweeted, Peter Thiel is leaving the Facebook board, says he wants to spend more time with fascism, which was not very nice. But, you know, J.D. Vance is a fucking clown, as far as I can tell. I heard he loves gazpacho. Gazpacho. You know, he's a shitster, is what I would call him. I used to talk to him a little bit more, but I haven't talked to him a long, long, long time. He's a shitster. That's his whole thing, is he wants, he doesn't like the way society is.

He rails against elites, even though he's gone to a lot of elite institutions and has sort of moves in those circles. and has, you know, sort of moves in those circles. He sort of backs, like, the common man kind of thing, even though he's not a common man. So you're right, it's sort of Koch. He has ideas about this government and what it should be or not be, you know, and it's not quite burn it all down, but it's not, you know, he's not pleased with the way our government is and what it's doing.

And he's got ideas about society and liberals and all kinds of things. And it's all over the map, interestingly enough, has invested all over the place. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it hasn't. But certainly that one bet he made on Facebook was a good one. And it has paid off. I think I'm like most people. I'd like to do edibles with him and Angela Lansbury and just see what happens. See how it plays out. Just see what work goes.

Anyway, I think it's probably he may have thought this is enough with the Facebook. I don't need this anymore. Done. I've done my work. Capital D done. I've done my work. I've moved along. And so when Peter Thiel got in, it was like nothing.

You know, back in the day in max, he's made a fortune. Like, he's made a complete fortune. No, he's made the GDP of Columbia. I mean, that's one of the greatest venture investments of all time. But he's done a lot of strange stuff. He's not afraid to fail either. He did a hedge fund for a while. The idea I really wasn't a big fan of was he was giving people $100,000 to drop out of college.

And this is from a guy who had undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford. And it's like, well, it worked pretty well for you, boss. And then there was some reports about that didn't work out that well for those kids. But he's definitely, you know, you got to give it to him. He's kind of his own dude. He is. I'd love to sit and talk with him again. Okay, Scott, let's to give it to him. He's kind of his own dude. He is. I'd love to sit and talk with him again. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, Peloton is spinning, and we'll speak with Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire about USD Coin. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore.

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and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back. Peloton CEO is out, so are 2,800 employees. John Foley announced he'll move into the role of executive chairman. I suspect he's not out. He's still around. Barry McCarthy, a former CFO at Spotify, will take over as Peloton CEO, a very well-regarded executive. I know him a little bit because he worked at Spotify. He worked at Netflix, I believe. Meanwhile, the company is laying off 28% of its workforce, or as I said, 2,800 people. Not to worry. They will not, laid off employees will get one free year of Peloton. Oh, wow. In an earnings report, Peloton says it lost almost $440 million last quarter. So what prompted this? This guy didn't have to. He controls a majority of shares. Maybe he said,

I'm getting out of the way here. I'm putting in a professional to shake things up. It surged 25% after news of this shakeup, for example. And Amazon and Nike are supposedly looking at it. This surprised me. And I think it probably indicates that things are even worse than we think. Because for the CEO, and insiders control the company here. And I would have thought optically, and I think he would have said, look, just give me – let me get out of this and then I'll declare victory and leave. Let me get out of this really ugly part of the company's history. And the fact that they and he decided, no, you're out, means it may even be worse than we think in terms of supply chain and operations and overexpansion.

So when I saw this, I was shocked because a small group of people control the company. Lots of people. And what this says is it is really bad. Either the numbers that they're seeing in the supply chain problems or customer acquisition or churn, whatever it might be, it is really ugly. Because usually, if the company is what I would have thought on the board, they would say, okay, we need, I would have thought with someone who's the founder, they would want to stabilize things and say, okay, just write the ship, get it stable, and then move, and then you'll announce that you're going to chairman. So to make this change right now under the auspices of an activist

and all the shit that's going on, it really says. And all I have to do, the investors and— He's still executive chairman. He controls the majority of Peloton's shares. He's out of the limelight. I don't know. We'll see. The activists want him out of that, too.

The activists have no power here. They'll declare victory. I'm just saying they want him out as executive chairman, too. It must be really, things must be really bad. I don't know. This particular executive, let me read you a comment from someone. I met him, you know, you always meet the CEO and not the CFO. CFOs are critically important. He's smart. He focuses on the fundamentals. He understands LCV well and knows how to generate it. He's no nonsense, has high standards, is demanding in a rational and

reasonable way, but never ducks individual responsibility, is self-deprecating in a way that I think indicates a pretty healthy relationship with himself. So kind of, this was, I called 10 people. They all love this guy. He sounds like us if we were nothing like us. I called 10 people. They all love this guy. He sounds like us if we were nothing like us. In any case, he's got a lot to do.

He looks like a whiskey commercial. He's very handsome. He looks like, I drink Ballantyne. He does look like a whiskey guy. I think he's a no-nonsense kind of guy and he wants to be a CEO and here he is.

So he's got a lot to deal with. Laid-off employees reportedly crashed an online all-hands meeting where the new CEO was introduced and left angry comments, of course. Who knew the death of Mr. Big could cause all this? I can't believe they offered this as part of severance a year of Peloton. Question is, is it a pandemic stock destined to die or not? And that's, I have to say, I think the users love this product.

So, it's a great product. I love it. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Jeremy Allaire is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Circle, the digital payments company behind the USD coin. That's a digital stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. Last year, Circle announced plans to go public via SPAC and perhaps more ambitiously. Its intention to become a, quote, full reserve national commercial bank. I've known Jeremy for a long time. I was just joking with him. He had a company called Brightco that we used. It's a video, early, early video company that we used on All Things D. And I would call and yell at him all the time because it didn't work. But I apologize now because I realize how difficult it was.

Apologies accepted. Okay. I remember how stressful that was when you were going live with video at the event. Yeah. It was like a major new thing. Yeah, it was. Yes, totally. And actually, Walt and I wanted you to build something where we would talk to each other

and yell at each other, and we couldn't do it. And now, of course, I have Scott here. In any case, one of the other things is Jeremy was one of the first people to talk. You have built that. You have built that. FYI, you have built that. I know that. I get it. In any case, he was also one of the first people to talk to me about blockchain. Him and Wences Casares were the very first people, as I recall. And he was very, he moved to that very quickly. And we had a conversation in 2017 of what is blockchain and other things and you just you just put out a you put in newspapers or a thing called

print and things like that so can you talk a little bit about what yes what you're why you did that explain what you just did yeah absolutely i mean so i mean there's like this big question that is kind of running around mostly in was, but certainly on Wall Street and in other financial capitals, which is, you know, there's sort of this perception that there's now a kind of digital currency space race. China is building, you know, the ECNY. It's coming out of the Olympics. And everyone's, you know, to some degree is kind of freaking out saying, you know, where's the U.S. on this? And, you know, you've had a kind of a Federal Reserve that's been doing some research, publishing some white papers. And, you know, I think the question is sort of how can the United States lead in this space? And, you know, our view,

lead in this space. And, you know, our view, and we have a lot of conviction around this, is that the U.S. is actually already winning this so-called digital currency space race because dollar digital currencies that are built on the public internet, that are built on an open model that is reflective of the kind of nature of the internet itself kind of open permissionless interoperable built on standards free market competition that builds on that that has given birth to this extraordinary extraordinary very high growth um very dynamic industry and it's not without risk there's lots of issues so no one's saying like there shouldn't be regulation or anything like that. And as you noted, right, we're sort of, as we say, all roads lead to the Fed, we believe we ought to come under federal government supervision. But I think the argument that we wanted to make, and in some ways, we took over

like homepages, and yes, we put stuff in print in a number of publications and throughout DC, is the answer here is not let's start a big government R&D project that's going to take three to five years and itself introduces some pretty dramatic and potentially high-risk privacy concerns, market competitive concerns, technology obsolescence concerns, et cetera, but get behind what's actually winning and embrace a model that is, in fact, what has made the West largely successful in being the leader in technology innovation on the internet. So that's sort of the argument we want to make. But isn't it right? I mean, you're sort of saying, sort of like

Facebook is doing, please regulate us, but don't regulate us too much. I mean, you're sort of saying, sort of like Facebook is doing, please regulate us, but don't regulate us too much. I mean, you revealed last year under investigation by the SEC, we had Gary Gensler on last year talking about this. Isn't it appropriate, especially in financial areas for the government to do this? You're essentially saying they're going too slow in that they could muck up the works, which was sort of early internet people talked about this. As you know, you were around. Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, there's a few things. I mean, like we have, we've sought out regulations since 2013 when I started this. We became the most regulated company in crypto. We got, we begged for licenses. We went after, you know, trying to do that because we understood that if

you're sitting between the existing financial system and this new crazy world of the open internet, you know, of money and blockchains, like there's a lot of risk, there's a lot of issues, there's fraud, there's consumer protection, there's money laundering, there's all this stuff. So we've sought that out. And now as this has gotten really big, I mean, USDC grew 10,000% in the last two years, 1,000% last year. We've issued about 10 billion new in circulation just the last 30 days. It's getting quite large and it's only going to get bigger. And this is now something where we believe that this ought to sit under a federal supervision model. All of this fintech stuff, as you know, has basically been born out

of what I call the fintech laboratories of the United States, which are the states. Money transmission, all the payments companies, they're all more lightly regulated at a state level. Our view is that this kind of infrastructure, this is what we call market infrastructure for dollars on the internet, is potentially systemically scaled. It's potentially has this enormous reach. So we just, we just think we need to be thoughtful about what those regulations are. It's, it's a square peg, round hole question, right? If you just take the existing, you know, payment system and try and apply that to this, you're not going to, you're not going to get all the same benefits that come from an infrastructure like this. So you just need to get all the same benefits that come from an infrastructure

like this. So you just need to be thoughtful. And that's in some ways what Treasury has said, let's have Congress act, let's define new statutes that are specific to this whole area. Scott? Nice to meet you, Jeremy. Can you, I feel as a crypto is like interest rates and that as we all pretend we sort of understand what's going on or the relationship of the economy. Can you explain what a stable coin is and why the primary points of differentiation? I assume you think there's value versus a typical cryptocurrency. And also, I'd love to just understand Circle's business model.

Yeah, sure. So the term stable coin, I'm not a huge fan of the term, but it is what we have. That's what people are calling these things. And when we refer to USDC, we describe it as a dollar digital currency. We don't say it's a stablecoin, but everyone calls this a stablecoin. We don't say it's a stable coin, but everyone calls this a stable coin. But fundamentally, the problem that we set out to solve and or the opportunity that we saw was that if you could take what we think of as traditional money, which is actually basically the liabilities of a central bank or the liabilities of the U.S. Treasury, you know, Treasury bonds and central bank money. And you could express that in a digital currency form. So, you know, essentially give it the characteristics and capabilities of what we think of as a

cryptocurrency, which is a digital cash-like instrument that can transact instantly anywhere on the internet. It's open and interoperable like instantly anywhere on the internet. It's open and interoperable like other protocols on the internet. It can move, you know, with extremely low cost. So you give it all, you kind of give it these internet superpowers, as I like to call it, you give it those capabilities. But you are, you're backing it by and you're basing it on the fiat currency. And really, for us, that means essentially like cash and short-term US government treasury. So everyone understands, oh, this is like cash. And you give it the characteristics of the internet. And then

once you have that, you have an extraordinary ability to use those dollars on the Internet. And so that's essentially the problem that we set out to solve. Those coins on the Internet. So why is that different than a PayPal or Venmo for the regular person? Well, this is like, yeah, you'll appreciate this. This is like, what's the difference between Internet, email, or the web and AOL? Yeah. Well, one is based on open interoperable standards. Anyone can connect to it. It's

totally open and global and lots of developers can build around it. Another one's a walled garden. And what's the walled garden look like? So it's a walled garden metaphor. And I think the history of like payment systems and digital payment systems is essentially a bunch of walled gardens. But, you know, stablecoins answer the answer the question of everyone should be able to instantly interact and exchange value no matter what digital wallet you use, no matter what financial service you use. You should have that same level of reach and interoperability that the internet gives you. And that's what stablecoins provide. And we see that in the ad that we took out.

We talked about the hundreds of different digital wallets that support USDC, $2.4 trillion in transactions on the internet last year with it. And this is just the start, right? I think this can ultimately be orders of magnitude larger than the sort of first generation of digital payment systems on the internet. Don't stablecoins sort of bifurcate utility from speculation? And that is, I want the transmissibility, I want the divisibility, I want the open standards of a cryptocurrency, but I don't want to pay, buy and pay in Solano because it could go down 20% in the next 24 hours. Totally. Yeah. I mean, like we use dollars because they're relatively speaking price stable. I mean, the we, we use dollars because they're relatively speaking price stable. I mean, the Fed's mandate is to attempt to achieve price stability, right? And right now it's 7%,

uh, inflation, but like more or less two, three, 4% people can then use it as a unit of account. It's, it's, it's useful. People don't buy and sell goods and services using commodities because it's insane. And so you can trade commodities, that's important, and you can speculate on commodities, but you can't really use them as a medium of exchange efficiently. What's the use case though? Because the use case I keep thinking of is remittance payments across borders where you get rid of the incredibly onerous fees. So it's an incredible tax cut on people sending money home. I think if it is someone who wants out of the Argentinian peso and there's currency controls, we can circumvent them by. But what is the primary breakdown,

the three or four biggest use cases of a stable coin? Yeah, sure. So I jokingly like to say, when people ask what's the use case of USDC, I'm sort of like, what's the use case for a dollar? Well, there's a lot. And so literally, you might use it to make a micropayment for a piece of scarce digital intellectual property, aka an NFT. At one end. At the other end, you might have someone who's using it to bilaterally settle a huge trade for $500 million and everything in between. Now, I think— And not subject to FINRA or Cirificius and all the other, if you send money, if you wire money overseas right now, it's like you're trying

to get a mortgage. It gets held up, it gets examined. Yeah. It is really challenging and this is a vexing problem, of course, and digital currency solves a big part of the problem. There's some incremental things that I think still need to be solved. But yeah, I mean, the concept of just a cross-border payment is kind of insane when you step back and think about it. It is indeed. Right? Like, when's the last time you sent a cross-border email or had a cross-border web browsing session? It just doesn't make any sense. And I think we're on the cusp, and people who use digital currency are already living in the future.

They're living in a world where, you know, it doesn't matter. I'm on the internet. I have a piece of software on my device and I'm just exchanging value peer to peer with anyone else. No intermediary. It's fast. It's cheap. It's secure. It's private. Like people are living in the future with that. And regulators are catching up. But coming back to your question, like, what are the use cases? They're evolving really rapidly. So, you know, stable coins were born out of the need for, this is where the name came from, the need for people to get out of an instable price volatile thing like Bitcoin and into a price stable thing like a dollar. And so they're created for what I call the crypto capital markets. They were created to sort of be the liquid dollar that could move at the speed of blockchains

because everyone who was trading was moving at the speed of blockchains and sit there. That's evolved. So now, interestingly, to the other examples that you've given, we've seen this incredible growth. And it's interesting to see since the start of COVID, you can actually chart the growth of stablecoins. It's been incredible.

And there's global demand. And the global demand is from people who want to hold digital dollars in a secure way. And correlating to that has been this extraordinary growth in what's called DeFi. And correlating to that has been this extraordinary growth in what's called DeFi. And so, you know, USDC, for example, plays a huge role in DeFi. And DeFi provides people with a way to store their dollars securely and then earn interest on them. And so the blockchains have given birth to essentially open interest rate markets. And these are interest rate markets. And these are interest

rate markets that any individual in the world can participate in. You literally can connect your wallet. You can effectively lend your USDC and earn a passive yield. So you're mimicking the world as it was. How do you relate then, you just mentioned Bitcoin, what analogy would you have them to your excellent AOL example, for example? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, if each of these kind of digital currencies are like open internet protocols, you know. Bitcoin is a really powerful open internet protocol. And I think it has, I think, very compelling attributes as a secure store of value. And I mean, people say this all the time,

it's digital gold, et cetera. But I think that's quite accurate. So the concept here is simply that from a long-term perspective, governments around the world are really, including the United States, are massively in debt, are issuing a lot of money to continually refinance that debt, and are fiscally irresponsible. And that's everywhere. And in some places, it's horrible. And that means that those fiat currencies have a structural problem. And so from a long-term perspective, a non-government, non-sovereign, secure, tamper-resistant, scarce, well-defined monetary policy store value is actually quite compelling,

but you're not going to use it to buy cookies and milk and pay rent. And so there's this interplay between an open Internet of Value exchange that's built on the biggest reserve currencies of the world, which we think will be massive and be used massively, and these store of value currencies, which are frankly savings instruments more than anything else. So gold is the thing you're using.

And I think gold's the wrong analogy because I think gold is such a relic and it has no utility. I mean, jewelry is interesting, but it doesn't have actual utility in the same way that Bitcoin brings the monetary effectiveness of gold, but to a digital asset that can actually move at the speed of the internet. You can't carry gold around is your point.

You can't carry gold around. I just want to jump in here because right before you got to the interesting stuff, Kara interrupted you. And I want to assure you that she never does that. She never does that. I've never seen Kara interrupt anyone. want to assure you that she never does that. She never does that. But you were about to get to what the yield is on your USDC. What is potentially the yield you can get? And answer a fundamental question I've always had, and I don't understand. How can that yield be so much greater than the yield a bank gives you on cash stored in a certificate of deposit. Yeah. So the best way to think about this is, you know, there are capital markets and,

you know, banks participate in capital markets. They, you know, give out a bunch of loans, they package that loan up, they sell that as a thing to a capital market. And then there's hedge funds or whoever else buying up those loans. And the banks are maybe making 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, whatever they're making on those loans. And they make a spread of like 3%. That's sort of like the model. Now, when you put money in a checking account, they're not really paying you anything. Now, when you put money in a checking account, they're not really paying you anything. And so that's a source of, quote unquote, deposits for them that then they use, and then they create money, they make new money, and then they loan it of developers have basically built protocols that are themselves borrowing and lending markets. So the market to borrow and lend is a piece of software that's on the public internet. It's a public protocol. It's not a company. So anyone that wants to borrow and lend from each other does that through the protocol

itself that's running on a virtual machine and a smart contract on one of these networks. And that's what makes them decentralized. So it's this protocol that's out there. And then individuals, whether it's an individual or a household or a firm or whoever, can take their stable coins or other digital assets and lend them to the protocol. And then there's people on the other side of it who will borrow it.

And these protocols, the well-known are like Aave and Compound. These are some of the bigger ones that are out there. Essentially, have created these capital markets in software on the internet. And the reality is, and all the risk management and how the collateralization and liquidation and all the stuff that goes on for these markets, it's open and transparent because it's all open source. Everything is public and transparent.

And everything that's happening in that market is real-time auditable because it's on a blockchain. So everyone can see the risk and what's happening. So first of all, it's just an extraordinary innovation and breakthrough. But secondly, the borrowers of capital are willing to pay a high interest rate, essentially. So if the borrowers of capital are willing to pay, let's just say it's 6% for dollars on these markets, and then the protocol itself generates

income for the protocol, and then people who, you know, participate in it, generate a piece of the fee. Then there's a piece that's then passed along to the, to the lender. And so that's basically it. You're, you don't have a bank as an intermediary as,

as one of my, you just killed the bank. Yeah. I mean, it's like self, self-driving, self-driving banks is the concept. It's kind of scary actually.

Yeah, it is. Don't use that one. I would not use that metaphor. So I have one last question. So there was a lot of friction between your sector and U.S. regulators with, I guess, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, SEC Chair Gary Gensler, as I said, wanted to tighten regulations of stable coins. And Gensler called it the Wild West in his testimony. So one thing you said is that it's critical. Let me read you a quote.

You said, I think it would be great if there was a clear set of rules in the banking system in the United States around crypto asset lending that doesn't really exist. We see it as a really important product here with a lot of growth. So what is the one thing you need the government to do right now in terms of bringing this, not calling it the Wild West, which is okay, but to make it not that, to make it not that, I guess. Yeah. To their liking, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I'm focused on and we are focused on is, and by the way, this is like very aligned with what, say, the U.S. Treasury Department is proposing. And there was just testimony to Congress last week from the Undersecretary

Nellie Lange. She's going to the Senate next week. And there are a lot of people in Congress who are now working on legislation. So we'll see if Congress can do something, but they, any money laundering requirements, controls, et cetera. We're going to define a charter for that. You got to register with the U.S. Treasury Department. You're going to be supervised by the U.S. Treasury Department, and in some cases, supervised by the Fed as well, depending on the full scope of your activity, and define that. So that's what's needed. And that's basically what the White House has said they'd like to see, some version of that. And then it's like devil in the detail stuff. There's a lot of things that could go too far or too little. But that's the essence. And then I think the other thing is, essentially, we need some definitions of these things so that accountants, just good old-fashioned accountants, know what the hell these are.

And they can treat them like cash and cash equivalents so that corporations and financial institutions and households know that they're dealing in dollars, essentially. That this is something that they can account for in the right way. Because right now, it's amorphous. What the heck is this? And so you need some definitions, and then you need this kind of U.S. Treasury supervision. And you need to do that at a national level, basically. Yeah, which they have not done. All right, Scott, last question. Quickly, business model, and how do you establish any sort of sustainable advantage as a USDC or a stablecoin? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so on the business model, so we sort of operate a couple of key businesses here. The first is what we call our stablecoin market infrastructure. That's a mouthful for what we do with USDC, but we have ambitions to do other currencies beyond the dollar, but that market infrastructure. So we operate that, we scale that, we support that, we support the whole ecosystem that builds on it. And then we monetize it through the reserves. So the reserves are basically growing,

there's 52 billion in circulation, and there's an interest rate environment. And so we monetize through those reserves. So that's one big piece. And that's quite significant if you look at what the interest rate environment. And so we monetize through those reserves. So that's one big piece. And that's quite significant if you look at what the interest rate environment is and where it's going and how fast this is growing. That's pretty significant. So similar to a traditional bank, you have money, you're a custodian, you loan it out at a higher interest rate. We don't loan it out. We do not loan it out. We are full reserve. You facilitate. They facilitate the loan.

Yeah. And that's the second piece, which is basically once people are living in digital currency instead of in legacy dollars and legacy banking system, we provide a whole suite of essentially like accounts for businesses that want to transact in this, use it in their payment systems, integrate it into their own applications. We provide ways for people to lend it and borrow it and the like. And so that's purely in the digital currency itself. It's not in the legacy banking system. So we're sort of conducting these new commercial finance activities on top of blockchains and using the digital currency itself. And so that we have, it's what we call our transaction services and our treasury services. And it looks a little bit like a commercial bank. And so that's a second piece. And that's something that we monetize is growing fairly quickly. In terms of your last question, and like, how do we think about competitive advantage or doing this? You know, I, as you know, like,

I come at this from the angle of like internet platforms and technology platforms. And I look at this as how are we building a kind of open platform for dollars and money on the internet? It's about developer adoption. It's about scaling the ecosystem that uses this, making it as widely accessible as possible. And it's a network effects business. I mean, basically, I mean, the more people who plug into the protocol, the more utility it has, the more demand there is to use it.

And the more people who have the format, it's sort of like, why did MP3 win? Well, because everyone put it in devices and it worked. The more people who have the format, and the more people who hold that, the more utility value it has. And so it has really strong network effects. And so I think that is the core. It's like an internet platform. Developers, applications,

integrations, distribution. And that's how we maintain the competitive advantage that I think we have right now. All right. Jeremy, sounds exciting. You're going to help me find my Bitcoin someday? You know, I did buy some back then when you told me to. He's one of the two people who told me to buy. I lost it, Jeremy. I don't know where it is. No, no, no. You're not like that guy who's in the dumpster in England.

Remember, he's got 500. I'm that guy. I don't have 500. I think I bought 10 up on your advice and the advice of Wenceslas Casares. I don't have it, Jeremy. We could have a pretty good time in Vegas with that jungle dog. We could, we could, we could.

But again, Jeremy was one of the earliest person who told us, and again, I apologize for yelling at that video, but it didn't work. In any case, Jeremy, thank you. Good luck. And this is a really important issue. This is critical instead of figuring out how these financial instruments are going to work

for regular people and also throughout our economy. It's very exciting. It's still a very exciting arena. Anyway, thank you, Jeremy. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Kara. Thanks, Scott. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca.

Okay, Scott, predictions. Go ahead, make a prediction, obviously. We didn't expect the Peloton guy. We'll see. Well, first off, go Rams. Let me just say that. Not a prediction. Obviously, we didn't expect the Peloton guy. Well, first off, Go Rams. Let me just say that. Not a prediction, but Go Rams. Is that a football team? No, it's an off-off-Broadway play that we're going to together. Oh, okay. Good to know. So anyways, my prediction is Coachella is doing something interesting. They're selling 10 tokens

or NFTs or what are they? I think they call it a token that gives you lifetime access to the music festival. So far, the highest bid, 75 grand. But this is the beginning. That's the tip of the iceberg. You're going to see in 2022 what I call Lux Coins emerge. And that is organizations

that try to monetize the scarcity value of access. And it'll be interesting things. If I were Chanel or Hermes, I would issue 10,000 coins access to all Hermes products anytime with a stylist. And it'd be such incredible signaling and the perfect gift for every guy's fourth wife. I think they could raise billions overnight. I think Stanford or a university could issue a coin that says, okay- How do you account for that in terms of accounting of the cost, like things you owe later?

Just be putting my accountant hat on. Okay. How do you account for that in terms of accounting of the cost, like things you owe later? I don't know. Just be putting my accountant hat on. Yeah, but you'd get the cash up front. I mean, you might not be able to recognize the accounting revenue, but you would raise billions of dollars overnight, get rid of these stupid development departments, get rid of the admissions department. What about, I'll give you another one, a Langone, a Cedars, or a Jackson, or a coin, and that is cradle-to-grave healthcare, no insurance. Say you're a parent, what do you leave your kids in your will? You leave them a stable coin for their family that says cradle-to-grave. Anyone with your last name gets great healthcare at Cedars or Langone for the rest of their life.

They could raise billions. So the scarcity, monetizing, they'll use technology, they'll have a technology overhang, but there's just so many things you could do to get upfront payments around scarcity value from universities to hospitals, to healthcare, to aspirational events. Burning Man could issue a coin and say

that whoever owns this coin for the rest of their life gets to be in the best art or whatever it is. We'll see how many they'd sell with those. Yeah, the best yurt. Yurt? Is it yurt? Yurt? They have to provide the yurt.

I think I'm going to go to Burning Man this year. I've never said. You know, this feels, it could be like that island. What was the island? I can't even remember it anymore that everybody, fire festival. Oh, my God. I love that. This feels fire festival to me, but okay, sure.

Jesus Christ. Don't even use the terms fire festival when our Pivot Miami conference kicks off in 72 hours. Don't even say that. Yes, we will have bologna sandwiches for you all. Speaking of which, I will see you soon, Scott. Oh, we almost had Emily Ratajkowski. That would have felt very fire-ish. No, no.

She was like one of the models promoting Fyre Festival. Was she? No. No? Is that misinformation? I'm looking it up because I have to fact check you in real time. Okay, all right. Here's the deal.

You're correct. You seem so disappointed. There was a post about the Fyre Festival. Okay. Yeah, I know probably a little too much about Emily Ratajkowski. I'm saying that. Anyway, we'll be back on Tuesday for more from Miami. I will be with Scott in person in Miami.

And we'll both be wearing our Miami clothes. We'll have such a good time. The weather will be warm. Anyway, Scott, I'm looking forward to seeing you in person. Yeah, likewise. It's going to be fun. And please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Silverio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.