The Breakdown - What the Economy Will Look Like 6 Months From Now, Feat. Ryan Selkis

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

As week (one million, it seems) of the COVID-19 lockdown plods on, many are wondering what the economy will look like on the other side. Ryan Selkis is the CEO and founder of Messari. He was one of the earliest voices in crypto to sound the alarm on the potential impact of COVID-19 not only on the health system but on the economy.  In this episode of The Breakdown, Ryan joins @NLW to discuss: Why the markets right now represent an economic and psychological relief rally What it takes to reopen the economy  Why voluntary, privacy preserving contact tracing is part of the solution Why crypto has performed largely as Ryan expected    

Welcome back to The Breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, with your host, NLW. The Breakdown is distributed by CoinDesk. Welcome back to The Breakdown. It is Wednesday, April 15th, and today I am joined by Ryan Selkis from Masari. First, a little context for this conversation. Last week, I spent a lot of the week and had a lot of my... guests basically trying to argue that there is no normal to go back to after this coronavirus crisis ends. I think that's because in part the health issue is not just going to abate even if we get it

under control. Getting it under control is going to involve some serious changes to our habits in terms of masks, in terms of social distancing norms, in terms of temperature checks in key buildings, in terms of contact tracing, all of these things which make our day-to-day lives look fundamentally different. But also economically, there are so many things that are unlikely to just spring back to normal. On the most base level, some businesses that have been out of work and out of business will go permanently out of business because they just couldn't deal with this challenge, even with government stimulus. You also have more structural issues like changes to the way people work that won't easily shift. So there are all these second and third order effects that

basically means that there is no normal to go back to. Now, over the last week, I've sensed this kind of resignation and fatigue even a little bit with thinking about coronavirus as people accept that there is just this new normal and they're a little unmoored as they look to the future because they're not sure what their lives are going to look like next. Now, certainly we hope that people can get back to work healthily and safely as soon as possible. But even on the other side, what are our lives going to look like? So what I want to do over the coming weeks is start to shift gears with some of my conversations that are related to the larger global trends, larger macro economy, to understanding what the world of the future, now that this COVID crisis has happened,

what that world looks like. And so I wanted to start that with someone who was very early on in the crypto community of kind of going all in, frankly, on their coverage and emphasis on the coronavirus as a potentially hugely destabilizing force. Ryan Selkis is the CEO of Masari, which is a transparency platform. It is a data aggregator in the context of on-chain FX. And it is a content platform in a way, almost just by virtue of the audience that they built through their newsletter, through their podcast, unqualified opinions. and Ryan started sounding the signal and the alarm on coronavirus really early, as did other members of his team. And so now that it's been, you know, a couple months since that started, we started to see shifts in how it's shaped at the crypto industry.

Ryan is joining me to talk about those future-looking topics. So we talk about why the market rally right now is something of a relief rally, and we're also in a psychological relief rally as we grapple with what this new normal might be. We talk about the second order effects both positive in terms of new opportunity, but also negative that are concerning Ryan. We talk about how the crypto industry, in terms of asset prices, in terms of venture financing, in terms of all these different dimensions, has or hasn't surprised Ryan in its response to this crisis. We talk about privacy and contact tracing. We talk about big structural changes that are unlikely to go away. So I think it's a really great primer, a really great start to be thinking about what the world looks like six months out, nine months out,

12 months out, five years out, and how what we're experiencing right now is accelerating that. And most of all, how what we do right now can actually shape that. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Now, as always, long interviews are edited very, very lightly. So knowing that, let's dive in. All right, we are back with Mr. Ryan Selkis. Ryan, how you doing, buddy? Mr. To you, I appreciate that. That's far too kind. I'm doing well. I'm in the Citadel in an undisclosed location, which basically means on the East Coast, but not in the

epicenter of New York. And I've been rather enjoying having 50% of my calls zoom bombed by my either one-year-old or three-year-old. So if you hear anyone in the background, it's because they've broken in to my lair. And everybody typically loves it. So I just don't even care anymore because I just invite them on camera and, you know, they're a hit. And people enjoy looking at them more than they enjoy looking at me. So it works. It's so funny.

I posted the video from the BBC from like, I don't know, probably four years ago now, five years ago where the guy's doing this very formal looking interview and the kid rushes in. And then the second kid toddles in and their like little bouncy chair or whatever. And then the mom risen tries to get everyone out. It turns out that guy was just from the future. Like, that's all it was. Yeah, and we've seen a couple episodes since then.

I like the one, I can't remember if it's CNN or the blonde anchor that had her little kid come over and start playing with the microphone. Did you see that one? No, I missed this one. From just like last week. And she's like, hey, mommy's on TV. Please don't play with that. But it was like a pandemic redux of the classic clip. But I don't think that anyone can top that other one with the mom.

just scrambling in on like all fours trying to drag them out. I mean, just the heroic effort to get those kids out. That was incredible. So listen, you know, we were talking about doing this. Like obviously you and I have been talking about this, the context that we're living in for a long time. You were one of the early canaries in the crypto community who really decided to kind of put some of your reputation at stake to go all in on really talking. about this as the important context for not just the crypto industry, but the economy at large. And I feel like, we were just talking about this, I feel like there's been this interesting

transition over the last week, week and a half, where just the natural fatigue of this thing has set in in some ways, where, you know, the first couple weeks were crazy and wild and scary, but exciting in this strange way, and just because of everything was upended in a way that, you know, we couldn't possibly imagine. And people were still getting. fired up about trying to understand the response and what the right decisions were. Now we've been in it for a long time and people are just settling into this frustration and thinking about how we get out of it and thinking about what comes next. And I wonder where is your head right now in terms of the, I guess, you know, feel free to take this in any direction, either where we are structurally

from from dealing with this crisis, getting back to work, or in terms of the, the, the, the way that the market and the economy is understanding it and if they're doing that correctly. I think we're in a relief rally right now. And I'm not just talking about the stock market. I think it is really related to people's psyches. And when I say that, I'm thinking maybe, hopefully, the worst is over for this first wave of the health crisis. You started to see hospitalizations dip. Cities like New York look like they're at or past peak in terms of acuity. You already saw, you know, 2,300 on the S&P. So what does that, you know, mean? Is that at the bottom? Some of the big banks are saying that's the bottom. So in terms of people's portfolios,

they're feeling a little bit more confident. You've got the stimulus program that has been passed and out the door. You know, the payroll protection program is going to be. be a bit of a mess probably gets expanded so that more small businesses can take advantage. Regardless, you have massive unemployment benefits extension. And in fact, some people are going to make more money being unemployed now than they were previously when they were gainfully employed because the federal package plus state is ultimately going to come in at north of what some of these folks might expect from their paycheck. But all these things are in the three to six month variety in terms of relief. And that's with respect to health outcomes. That's with

respect to economic relief. And it's really with respect to just social relief as well. And most people, I don't think, are capable of internalizing the quasi permanence that we could have in terms of social distancing, what that means for day-to-day life, different. large swaths of the economy and, you know, just how different the future of work, of play, of politics is going to be impacted by something like this that just reset and, you know, shocked so many supply and demand curves one way or the other. And so when you talk about, you know, what comes next, what you're really talking about is just the incredible number of second order and third order effects that you have to think about

and ultimately how you're going to position yourself, your company, your family, and just have a sea change in attitudes, expectations for what the next couple of years are going to be. You know, the best case scenario is we find a vaccine for this thing or that it kind of gradually dissipates and we gradually get to herd immunity. but I think most people are an agreement that herd immunity would be very, very expensive in terms of lives lost. A vaccine is not a foregone conclusion because coronaviruses are notoriously difficult to solve this. Now that the reason to be optimistic is because, you know, you've got the whole world working on one problem, and it's so profound in terms of its mass, you know, societal-wide impact that maybe people will solve it this time around or come up with treatment options at work.

But you also don't know if there's going to be different strains of this thing. You don't know if it's going to be easier for people to get reinfected. You don't know what the long-term health effects are and whether some of these asymptomatic cases ultimately lead to more acute problems going forward, what the long-term impact is on your lungs and what that means for mortality and all these just unknown unknowns and unknown unknowns that are, you know, continuing to play out. And so, you know, I spend, you know, most of my non-crypto, non-day-to-day time, not thinking about the health crisis anymore, but just how the world is permanently different. The concept of a V-shaped recovery is, I think, incredibly naive. And the concept of things going, quote, unquote, back to normal, I also believe is incredibly naive. So what does that mean?

And how do we make the most of this? How do we invest around it? And come up with a smooth, graceful transition wherever we can, but not try to kid ourselves that we're going to go back in time and things will ever be as they were back in January. So this is an interesting point in an interesting area of nuance. I think, unsurprisingly, given that it's a public debate, but the lack of nuance has been one of the most frustrating things for me, particularly as it relates to actual, like, we have debated everything we can about getting back to work and restarting the economy, except how to do it, right?

We've talked about when. We've talked about who gets to do it now. That's the big kerfuffle versus just how, and the immense number of steps it takes to actually do it, right? And this is obviously not everyone, but on a broad policy level. And I think that an interesting bit of nuance coming from what you just said is acknowledging that there is not. No, quote-unquote, returning to normal doesn't mean necessarily a blank set of scary things. It just means acknowledging certain realities and figuring out new ways to operate within those contexts. And I think that that's a really important conversation for people to have so that when they think about they're not being a normal, they can actually try to take advantage of those normals.

Basically, accept what they can't control or can't change, fight what needs to be fought, and maybe. actually adapt in a way that's positive outcome for them to things that could be opportunities. I'm interested in what you think about the conversation happening now around contact tracing as one of the important parts of bringing the economy back online. This is obviously something that for folks in the crypto community who are particularly sensitive to civil liberties issues, privacy issues, self-sovereignty, it's a real point of conversation. And it hasn't had It hasn't actually been a universal. We shouldn't do anything like that.

It's actually been a kind of a more complex conversation. So I wanted to get your take on what you're thinking about and seeing in that dimension. You know, I think Preston Byrne had a terrific post that captured a lot of my thinking as well. And I'm just pulling it up right now. I'm a libertarian and I'm going to download Apple and Google's anti-COVID contact tracing app. And he kind of lays out his reasoning why. You know, in a crisis, no one's a libertarian, I guess, is like one pithy way to think about this. And I think I and many others that are concerned about the surveillance state, about the decline in individualism and self-sovereignty, the excesses of, you know, the Leviathan.

I think, you know, there's there's also a pragmatic streak in most people as well, right, even that have this political ideology. So if you think about, you know, if you want to go back to farming on your own estate and you want to move to Montana and, you know, you want to be introverted and live like the Unabomber and never rely on anybody else in society ever, then, yes, you can be. radically self-sovereign and not abide by the rules that everybody else in our state, our communities, our countries, whatever level you're thinking about, are going to abide by. And I think if this thing is as deadly and is as destructive and it is as economically dangerous as it has proven to be, then some of the rules around surveillance and contact tracing kind of go out the window. Now, how do you prevent that from becoming permanent, right? So really what you're talking about is how do you reset the defaults so that you can truly have privacy for 99.9% of cases,

and in some cases, maybe even more privacy than you had before. But for that 0.01% that basically you need to be online and submit to contract tracing, maybe anonymize or otherwise with respect to containing this virus, there is no other option. I mean, there is. It's hurt immunity. And that could be, you know, three million dead Americans or, you know, a couple million or could be worse. And on top of that, you could have pretty extreme consequences long-term for people's health. I mentioned you don't know what the long-term ramifications are on the lungs.

You don't know what the long-term ramifications are with that many deaths and that many severe health consequences on the labor market either. So it's not like if everybody went back to work and we just took this robotic approach to, you know what? The economy is the only thing that matters. Fuck everybody. It's too weak. This is a good Darwinian exercise. Let's just get back to normal. Even if you did that, there are still many, so many repercussions to that line of thinking that it would just be catastrophically bad. So you have to agree that maybe the only option that we have is being smart about where there are red zones versus green zones, how people actually self-identify or self-quarantine, and what programs need to be put in place, both technologically and socially to make sure that this just does. doesn't cause social revolution in and of itself. If you tell people, you know, you're not allowed to go to work and you need to, you know, basically wear this ankle bracelet. And by the way,

we're not going to give you enough support. So you're just going to gradually bleed out, lose all of your savings and we're going to bail out all of the airlines and Carnival Cruise line. Then people are going to say, you know what, fuck you. I'm going to buy a gun and I'm going to actually revolts. And I'm not exaggerating here. I mean, if those are the options that you're giving otherwise young, healthy people. Hey, for the good of everybody, you basically need to learn to code or otherwise take a vow of poverty and just do this for the good of the U.S., and by the way, all of the money is going to trickle down, we promise. Or you need to actually get real about what some of the other alternatives are to be a little bit more strategic. I tend to think that what is going on

on in the West Coast right now and what's going on in New York with these state alliances is probably the best path forward, and it's going to be one of the most exciting experiments to see how it plays out. Because I think most people at this point, regardless of your politics, look at what the federal response has been, and all they see is failure. FDA, CDC, obviously the administration, but Congress isn't off the hook either. And the more power you can put into state and local communities to solve the reopen and how, the better. I agree. So let's actually talk about a couple of the unintended positive consequences of this. So going back to where we started with contact tracing in Preston's essay, a couple of his key points are, one is around the volunteerism of it

in the sense that he might feel differently about this if it was mandated all of a sudden. But Google and Facebook have been very aggressive with their posturing at least that they will not allow this to become mandatory. So much, though, in fact, that strategiary yesterday was all about how this was laying bare, something that we all had a sense of. But the fact that these tech companies that are of a size and scale that they do actually operate in a semi-autonomous political space, right? Not entirely, but they do have a certain amount of power that they can throw around. And this is an example of that. I think that this idea of volunteerism in this context is actually pretty profound.

So, you know, Preston is saying that it's a, this is obviously a key part of a kind of a libertarian ethos is that people when given the right information will do the right thing in some ways. And another couple of data points on this. One, we've seen people actually comply with these orders to stay at home so far, right? And, you know, in some places these are being enforced by fines and things like that. But we haven't seen any sort of martial law, right? Cuomo, I feel like, especially during the first few weeks, is aggressively trying to get people to do this voluntarily, right, and make it feel that they were not prisoners in their home. CDC came out with a study that says something like 90% of people are complying, right? Like, people are actually doing this right thing voluntarily, even though it's difficult from an outcome perspective.

And so I think that one of the ways that that levels up is that maybe we can have a different relationship, with asking people to do things by explaining the real issues, right? You know, I think part of people's frustration with the guidance around the masks is that rather than just saying, like, yes, masks are going to help, but we really need the N95s for our health care workers. We had this, you know, two to three month period of lying about it, right? And it's, you know, Ben Hunt is called this the noble lie, where, who's ever in power uses a lie that they think is okay

because it buys them more time to solve the problem and then gets to the other side of it and hasn't solved the problem. So I think that there's this interesting thing happening. And I think that the state alliance piece of this may be another interesting dimension where you actually, you're seeing kind of two very different trends happening at the same time. One, all of the inputs for greater dependency and reliance on the federal government are being put in place. While at the same time, you're seeing this mass wave of kind of agency, whether it be in individual community levels all the way up to your point to these kind of state alliance levels,

which is a really interesting and perhaps unexpected outcome of this. Following from that, though, one thing that I did want to come back to, or one point that you made had to do with this question of the question of the health outcomes versus economic outcomes. There was a very sort of, you know, to some people, clickbait report in the Business Insider, CEO of a major pork factory talking about how there could be a major food crisis supply chain issue in America because these factories are shut down. And they were talking about how their factories weren't shut down just because, or one of the factories wasn't shut down just because of state-mandatedness.

It was shut down because something like 293 workers had tested positive for COVID. And so I think this gets to your point about why there can be. no binary, just turn the economy back on, is that a plant can't work if half of the people all of a sudden get the actual coronavirus three weeks later. I guess one thing I'm wondering, and maybe you haven't spent any time with this, but have you spent any time looking at the return of Asian economies and seeing actually how productive their economies are? How much is China actually is China actually back online in terms of manufacturing? Because you have to think that they're dealing with the same thing in terms of factories

and plants and processes and all this sort of stuff. Well, it certainly seems like they're picking up again in terms of how quickly, you know, I've basically only seen the same anecdotal evidence. To a certain extent, I don't know how much it matters, right? Because the much bigger issue is, you know, what's happening from the consumption side of things in the U.S. and in Europe. And there's going to be this ebb and flow between east and west in terms of demand and how quickly production ramps back up.

I just don't see this kind of magically getting better within the next six months, even, you know, year, 18 months. There's probably a permanent shock to some of these different markets in micro. I think in the, you know, in the U.S., the shortages are, probably to be expected because of those supply and demand shocks. Same thing, you know, kind of worldwide. But I don't think we're going to have like a wholesale food shortage. I don't think we're going to have a wholesale, you know, commodities or, you know,

tech and material shortage, at least in the kind of near and medium term, because there's so much international desire to get back to work and get the supply chains greased again. that, you know, you don't have to worry about like the trade war like you did even a few months ago. I think on the surface, it would seem more risky that you're going to have like a cold war between the U.S. and China. But people are, if they don't already, slowly realizing that both countries need each other, you know, now more than ever just from a supply chain redundancy standpoint and from an economic restart standpoint. So regardless of whether everybody in America blamed the Chinese for the outbreak of this virus and how out of control it when or everybody in China, you know, blame the Americans for scapegoating them and, you know, labeling them the kind of scourge of the world right now. But, you know, to a certain extent, it doesn't matter. You can't just turn on a dime and rebuild all that capacity in the U.S.

You know, or anywhere internationally. And you wouldn't necessarily want to because the shocks are just too great. So I think the good news for those are in New York and California, so much of the digital economy remains okay, right? You're going to have certain consumption that is permanently decimated or certain industries that take a significant. and medium-term hit. But it doesn't change the need for STEM, new software, new automation, if anything like all of those shifts have been accelerated. And the much bigger issue is just, okay, what happens if everything goes to Amazon, everything goes to drone delivery, we have autonomous cars, we have autonomous trucks, and, you know, software continues to eat the world.

but maybe there's a five to 10-year acceleration. And then that starts to happen in financial services, right? So this is the goal of crypto. What if our timeline got moved forward by five years, 10 years, what does that mean to banks, physical bank branches and all the retail locations and workers that that employs? So, you know, all this has really done is accelerate trends that were already in motion and, you know, set them and fast forward and to much, you know, more of an extreme

level than we've seen. So that's a great segue to another question that I wanted to ask you about. How has the impact on the crypto industry or the response of cryptos been compared to what you would have expected? And that could be in terms of asset performance. That could be in terms of industry trends like M&A and fundraising. But anything that's either confirmed suspicions or surprised you vis-a-vis this industry. Nothing has surprised me so far. My co-founder, Dan McArdle, wrote in July of 2018, a thread about how Bitcoin will perform and what the narrative will be when there is the next financial crisis and next recession. And the whole premise was Bitcoin is not a safe haven. It's not an inversely correlated asset where people will flock to it.

it in times of distress, and it will ultimately act no differently than gold did during the 08 crisis. When there's a flight to liquidity, all correlations go to one, and that is going to include Bitcoin as a risk asset, just like it did with gold. Long term, if people are concerned about currency weakness, emerging market currency crises or failures, if they're worried about the destruction and debasement of the dollar or other existing reserves, that's when the digital gold and gold narrative plays out. And ultimately, this has to be a cycle in which, you know, Bitcoin does well. As Bitcoin goes, so goes the rest of the industry in terms of asset performance.

And asset performance leads to investment around the rest of the industry, which trickles down into VC, trickles down into defy experiments, it trickles down into all the other layer one applications and protocols that are being built. And then I would argue it also trickles down to a certain extent to, stablecoin infrastructure because any service provider that is tailor made for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto asset support is being repurposed to support stable coins. You look at, you know, Anchorage and Bison trails and all the exchanges and how they're thinking about supporting these dollar pegged or, you know, relatively stable assets. And they're, you know,

It's basically all the same rails and all the same infrastructure getting built out. So I think nothing has surprised me in terms of asset performance. Nothing is surprised me in terms of venture funding because it's kind of like, you know, the time for nice to haves is over and the time for need to haves is here. And it's in some respects, good for crypto and the entrepreneurs within. that we've already lived through two depressions, at least I have, right? You know, 2015 was a depression. 2018 was a depression in terms of, you know, asset prices and the fundraising environment and just, you know, general attitudes towards crypto. And literally, you know,

our markets went down 80 to 85 percent in both those down drafts. So, you know, from a crypto standpoint, this is not a huge deal, what's happened. And now that the, you know, governments worldwide have stepped in and basically is that we're going to do whatever it takes to prop up asset markets and prop up economies and make sure that, you know, people are getting paid and fed. And, you know, we're basically just footing the bill today for, you know, maybe at tomorrow's expense, but who cares? We're solving the here and now problem. I think if Bitcoin doesn't rally, if people don't see the benefit of other Web 3 applications, of privacy applications, of moving outside and building a parallel financial system of parallel internet and information economy, then the jury's out whether we ever actually

hit escape velocity because the conditions are perfect or should be. be perfect to get people excited about, you know, the decentralization of everything. And in particular, the decentralization of money if they're thinking about how to protect their assets in a future inflationary environment. One of the most interesting things, I think your point about rebuilding infrastructure to handle stable coins, is really interesting because one of the more fascinating things that's happened is despite the potential that we're creating future inflationary conditions for the dollar right now because the dollar is the world's one true safe haven asset and everyone is

trying to get in and everyone is concerned about their dollar denominated nets and everything. One impact of that is that you've seen a huge influx of capital into dollar denominated stable coins, right? That's been one of the hallmarks of this. And I think what's interesting about that is that is actually an early indicator of your point of people moving into the space because of. of a need, right? It's not even just theoretical for the future. It's that if you are in an emerging market where you're having a very hard time getting access to actual U.S. dollars,

and there's this thing that allows you to get dollar exposure effectively, even if it's not exactly the same, that would be a really desirable alternative, and that's what we're seeing, which I think is kind of at least one early indicator that we may, that the crypto economy is doing something that it's supposed to, even if it's not the highly ideological, Everyone moves to Bitcoin because they're worried about fiatta basement, right? So one of the things that you mentioned earlier and something that we've been talking a lot about here is second order effects. And I think, you know, we've talked about some second order effects that might be positive, some that are negative, and some that the jury's out. So I wonder if maybe we kind of wrap up with just, you know, what are the second order effects that you're most nervous about?

what are the second order effects that you're most excited about or you think have the most opportunity either for you, your team, or just kind of us as a society more broadly? And what are the second order effects where you're curious but you're watching? Because you're just not sure what to make of them yet. Second order effects I'm most worried about has to do with the, this is probably third order effects. I'm using that term loosely, I guess. Yeah, so second order effect is we have 30 million unemployed and they don't have a clear path to go back to work and there's state-by-state discrepancies.

So you have a very hostile dynamic between the states that currently comprise about 40% of the U.S. economy, the seven northeastern states around New York that are forming a coalition to reopen the Western Seaboard Pacifica. And then, you know, everywhere in between, you know, maybe we'll further balkanize similarly. And in a scenario like that where the attitudes are very different and there could be setups for conflicts in terms of the economic restart and, you know, teams just going off their own different directions, I think you've got, you know, real threats to the very, you know, fabric of the U.S. That's order of magnitude more concerning in Europe. And it's because you have different governments, different fiscal situations at all the member states. And ultimately, the only thing that's tying it together right now is some loose cooperation via the IMF and the European Central Bank and some of the nations that are contributing in Brussels.

So it's not a foregone conclusion that the euro stays intact and the EU stays intact. And it's not even a foregone conclusion that the U.S. stays intact, at least in its current form, the longer this plays out. And I think that, you know, that degree of unrest gets accelerated and more and more pronounced as these different regions grapple with unemployment in particular. That's the spark. and it doesn't help to have, you know, an absence of leadership at a federal level. It only kind of exacerbates this trend and, you know, makes it more likely that we could have a negative outcome. So I think that's, you know, I mean, that's the biggest one that I think you could think of. The associated with that, it's emerging market currency collapses.

and which dominoes might be the first to fall, if any, and what ripple effects does that have on global supply chains, on geopolitics, and ultimately on the next most vulnerable currencies. So you could see a scenario where there are some emerging market crises and currency crises, and then people start asking the question, well, what about the euro? And after a little bit longer, you know, the U.S. gets up to $10 trillion in debt, or sorry, $10 trillion in terms of Fed balance sheet assets and $30 trillion in long-term debt. At some point, you know, people start asking, well, U.S. is pretty dysfunctional.

Europe's pretty dysfunctional. China is not that much better, but at least they're funding us through their Belt and Road initiative and giving us more relief than we're getting from the West. So maybe we should start thinking about this digital one. Those are, I think the just geopolitics on a European and U.S. standpoint and then currency crises internationally have to be the biggest things that everybody is thinking about if you're in crypto and you've been thinking about the money-like elements of Bitcoin for years as part of your investment Theses.

I think, you know, in a less important but still, you know, extremely new standpoint, what does this mean for the future of work and the future of cities? I tend to think that cities are going to be just fine. People have short memories. If you are young and single and. looking to, you know, be part of a vibrant community and have all the benefits that, that, you know, you and I know have enjoyed, you know, living in major cities, you're still going to go there. I think the labor force dynamic probably changes and this probably

accelerates some people that are in their 30s and 40s, their move out of cities and into the burbs because they're going to be able to, you know, they're not going to be as many requirements on, you know, quote-unquote, knowledge economy workers and finance and tech and wherever actually tethering themselves to a chair in an office. And instead, you know, you can make the argument where that's going to be healthy and it could bring down, you know, commercial real estate prices, you know, rents in general in the cities because those with more disposable incomes that are higher up the earning power food chain, just one after the other start to say, fuck this, man.

I'll come to the city once a week or I'll come to the city. you know, for a week a month or whatever, but I'm going to relocate my family here because there's a yard, there's a community, I've got my own space. We're going to be in this for a long time. And, you know, there's really no upside of being in a city if you're under lockdown. And if this is a new normal, then, you know, what's the point? I've got, I've got, just personally speaking, I've got two little kids. We left for a three-month rental in another state so that we had a yard, so that we had, had the ability to, you know, go run around outside and not just be cooped up in an apartment. I don't think that goes back to normal.

I think, you know, my wife and I, we're not living in a palace right now. This is just, you know, a friend of our families, you know, three-bedroom little cottage. But it's enough for us to say, you know, look at what we would spend in New York. Look at what we would spend in the suburbs of New York. why are we doing this if I can engage a team remotely or if I can contribute to my team remotely? And I just, I don't see that going away. You've basically forcibly trained people on how to work remotely. And the concept of going back to an open office space for so many people is just maddening, right?

So I think that third trends is just, you know, what happens to the future of work and how does everybody virtualize. Yep, absolutely. I mean, you know, preaching to the choir here is, you know, we kind of live this life permanently. And it was driven by, you know, I think, I've said this before, I think that 20, which cities you decide to spend your 20s in will have a more outsized impact on your career than college. You know, I think it already is happening, but I think that especially now. And so I don't think it's necessarily that people will just start in suburbs or rural.

And I actually think that, by the way, like rural, you know, just outside the band of city's real estate pricing is where people will find themselves like two, two hours away from wherever the key city they want to be near is. And I think it will reshape things for people who are deciding to do the family thing. Let me let me let me just one thing on that. I do think that crypto changes that pretty significantly. If you think about how people. build their brands and where they live. You know, Vitalik is a nomad. Vlad is, you know, who knows where he is.

You know, Zucco is in Colorado. You know, Andreas is all over the world. You've got a ton of people that have kind of risen up the ranks, you know, just by being online and putting out good ideas. So it's much less important about where you are. I mean, you yourself are not in a major city any longer. And you haven't been since you first got into the industry, right? So I can go down kind of the quote unquote influencer list.

And for as many people as there are in SF and New York and Berlin, there's, you know, just as many, you know, pretty high profile contributors that are either digital nomads or that live in North Carolina or Florida or. somewhere in kind of the Midwest or the mountain valley, I don't think as important in this industry. And I think pretty soon that's going to be true in general for larger and larger spots of the tech financial services and entertainment communities. completely agree. I do think that part of what makes crypto so interesting in that front is that it's, you know, arguably the first technology industry that grew up everywhere all at once, right? It didn't have one geographic locust that raced out ahead. It really kind of was distributed from the get-go. All right, right. I've kept you for a while. Last question. What is your biggest cause for optimism right now? I think crisis brings opportunity. that old Rahm Emanuel quote, never let a crisis go to waste.

Some of the institutions, not some, I would say almost all of our institutions are rotten. They've been corroded over the course of decades. And every once in a while, you need a forest fire to just burn through. and the transition is painful. The reason for optimism is recognizing how awful the situation might be and how challenging the time period might be is kind of step one. Step two is, you know, what are you going to do about it? And what do you build to help accelerate that transition and make it as painless as possible, or at least as tolerable as possible during the painful period so that on the other side,

maybe it's 10 years, 15 years, but the result is a much better form of society than what we've been living with for the last 10 years. I mean, you know, things are bad right now, but January, they were pretty shit for a lot of people, too. It's not like, you know, globally there was this kind of kumbaya moments. And in the West, you know, this has been bubbling up for years. It's why we got Trump. It's why we almost got Bernie as a nominee. It's why you have so many kind of far-right nationalist leaders that are rising up and this kind of tension between borderline fascism and borderline communism in so many countries. It is this haves versus have-nots environments that I think gets thrown into fast forward. And that probably creates a series

of crises. It's probably painful, dangerous, you know, scary for for a couple of years. But if, if, you know, leaders can actually step up in tech, in, you know, kind of a new wave of politics, then, you know, there's a fighting chance that what comes out the other side of this is fairer. It's more beautiful. It's more sustainable than what we had otherwise. And you don't get opportunities like that unless there are deep crises that precede them, unfortunately. I couldn't agree more. Well, listen, Ryan, thank you so much for hanging out today. And I guess actual last question, just because I know there's a ton going on. What should we be looking out for from Masari for the next

couple months? Mainnet events, mainnet dot events. We're doing a fully virtual summit, June 1st through 3rd. I believe that you're going to be participating. We've talked to. I know, I know you're interested and we just got to kind of square away the details, but we've got over 100 speakers. You know, my name is down for anything you need me for. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's why I love you, man. It's easy.

Well, it's going to be, I think it's going to be the biggest virtual events of the year. We're kind of going all out on it for those that don't remember. I used to run Coin Desk in the consensus conferences. So I've wanted to do a large-scale event for a while. Our team has a zillion ideas for how to pull this off. starting with the fact that this entire conference is split session. So there's going to be a main stage and unconference and individual breakout sessions going on concurrently from the hours of 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day. The main programming is split between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

East Coast time and then 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. east coast time. So that we're able to loop in as many time zones as possible. Now, the only group of folks that get a little bit shorted is the Europeans that are going to have to either deal with kind of middle of the night hours for the evening sessions, but otherwise, you know, we're able to pull in people from Asia, from both coasts in the U.S., and for the most part from Europe during the lion's share of time that this is going to be open, and we've more or less solved the time zone issue. So how do you get creative about networking, about happy hours, about Expo, you know, all these things that mimic the live event experience, we are very, very excited for this event. And really, if you want to see everything else that

Ms.R. is working on, you should plan on bookmarking June 1st through 3rd for the main net. And we're going to be featuring a lot of our work there. But most importantly, the work that the rest of the industry is doing to accelerate ourselves five years in the future, given some of these shifts. that we've seen as a result of the coronavirus. Oh, and last, but certainly not least 50% of the profits are going to relief efforts. So it should be a no-brainer for people to join, put it on their calendars, make sure that they can get as close to live events without actually traveling as possible, and then be hopefully a part of the solution as well.

This is one of those areas where I think we're going to see a ton of innovation, forced innovation and experimentation, right? Necessity is the mother-weigh. creativity in this case for sure. Ryan, thanks for hanging out. I'm sure we'll be talking more soon. Awesome. Thanks, man. Ryan kind of said it all, but I just want to briefly reinforce this point at moments of transition or moments of opportunity. I said that last week on my episode on Friday, and I really, really believe that's the case. This is not to be glib about the challenges that people face, but these really are the most opportune moments to have high leverage to make major shifts,

both on a personal level, but also on a structural society level, I can almost guarantee that some of the next wave of huge world-shaping companies, projects, organizations, networks will be formed in the cauldron of this very challenging time. So hopefully that gives something for us all to think about and to participate in as we're going through it. But as always, guys, I appreciate you listening and spending some of your quarantine time with me. So until tomorrow, stay safe and take care of each other. Peace, guys.