The Tim Ferriss Show - #499: Katie Haun on the Dark Web, Gangs, Investigating Bitcoin, and The New Magic of "Nifties" (NFTs)

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Starting point is 00:04:14 I don't know how we arrived at 39%, but 39% off. It's a lot. Their best-selling Lion's Mane coffee bundles. To claim this deal, you must go to foursigmatic.com slash Tim. This offer is only for you and is not available on their regular website. Go to foursigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com slash Tim to get yourself some awesome and delicious mushroom coffee. Full discount is applied at checkout. Optimal minimum. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? is applied at checkout. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm going to skip my usual preamble. You guys have heard it before,

Starting point is 00:05:14 and I'm going to get straight to this guest because we are going to run out of time before we run out of material. My guest today is Catherine, that's with an RYN, commonly known as Katie Haun, H-A-U-N, on Twitter at Katie, K-A-T-I-E underscore Haun, H-A-U-N. She is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, she spent a decade as a federal prosecutor focusing on fraud, cyber, and corporate crime alongside agencies including the SEC, FBI, and Treasury. She created the government's first cryptocurrency task force and led investigations into the Amount Gox hack, we might talk about what that is, and the corrupt agents on the Silk Road task force. I have quite a few questions about that.

Starting point is 00:05:55 While with the US Department of Justice, Katie prosecuted RICO murders, we'll define that, organized crime, public corruption, gangs, and money laundering. So lots of good guys, in other words. She also held senior policy positions at Justice Department headquarters in both the National Security Division and Attorney General's Office, where her portfolio included antitrust, tax, and national security. While in the private sector, Katie has testified before both the House and Senate on the intersection of technology and regulation. Katie serves on the boards of Coinbase and HackerOne and has invested in and advised tech companies from seed to series E stage. She teaches a

Starting point is 00:06:30 management course at Stanford Business School and previously taught cybercrime at Stanford Law School. Katie clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and is an honors graduate of Stanford Law School. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Katie, welcome to the show. Tim, thanks for member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Katie, welcome to the show. Tim, thanks for having me. Great to be here. I am so excited to chat for so many reasons. And I thought I would just set the tone for people listening with a few lines from our mutual friend Naval Ravikant, who is certainly a crowd and listener favorite here on the podcast. I emailed Naval to ask if there might be any questions or subjects that would be interesting

Starting point is 00:07:16 to explore with Katie. And of course, indicating that I would do my own homework. And he replied with the following. I asked him if I could give attribution. And he said, yes, you can cite me. So here's what he said. This was his very concise response. Quote, she has a concealed carry, grew up in Cairo, can't set foot in Russia, dealt with a lot of violent criminals, et cetera, but she's also a suburban mom with kids and runs the number one hard charging VC fund in crypto. She's quite the character. If I'm down to one phone call, instead of calling my lawyer, I'm calling Katie.

Starting point is 00:07:51 So on top of that, you seem to be the child whisperer from another mutual friend, Suna. And she talked about how incredible you are with children. So we are going to run out of material, I think, very easily. And I want to start, if it's okay with you, with the Silk Road. So the Silk Road is of great interest to me for a lot of reasons. And principal among those is the fact that I used to work many days a week out of Glen Park Library in San Francisco. And so for those who don't know, the founder of the Silk Road, who used the handle Dread Pirate Roberts, of course, an allusion to the character from The Princess Bride, was apprehended in Glen Park Library on a day I happened just not to be there. So the fact of the matter is-

Starting point is 00:08:47 Oh, not to be there. Not to be there. I was not there. I was not there. But it makes me assume that I must have been sitting right next to this guy many, many, many times. So for those who don't know, just as an introduction, could you explain what the Silk Road was? So if you weren't at Glen Park that day, Tim, that means you missed the lover's quarrel that the FBI staged in order to nab DPR's computer. I don't know if you read that story. I did. I did. I did. And actually, Nick Bilton, who ended up writing an entire book about this, was also just a few blocks away, lived in the neighborhood. So let's move into this.

Starting point is 00:09:24 And you can also explain the, well, maybe the Silk Road and then the lover's quarrel, why that was in any way tactically important. So the Silk Road, as many of your listeners probably already know, but for those who don't, is a darknet site. And it's a site that you can buy anything from fake passports or that you could buy anything from fake passports to heroin you could buy anything from fake passports to heroin to fentanyl to drugs and just all kinds of contraband, right? I was actually not involved in the investigation into Rosselbrook and DPR. A lot of people think, oh, you ran the Silk Road case. I was actually involved in what I'll call the twist of the Silk Road case. I was involved

Starting point is 00:10:03 in some of the agents who were investigating DPR and Rossel the twist of the Silk Road case. I was involved in some of the agents who were investigating DPR and Russell Brookton, the Silk Road. I ended up having to prosecute them. So let me back up before we get to that. And that, by the way, that started with a tip that someone in the government was up to no good and moving cryptocurrency. But before I get into that, that twist piece, just to answer your earlier question about the Silk Road. So there was this, as you mentioned, DPR and the government, the US government for years was trying to find out who is DPR? Where is he or she located? Are they in the US? Are they elsewhere? And how are they running the Silk Road? And so they spent a

Starting point is 00:10:41 number of years trying to find out. And one of the kind of secret weapons that the US government had was an undercover federal agent who I'll call Knob. And Knob is one of the people I ended up prosecuting. But this undercover federal agent befriended the mastermind of the Silk Road, DPR. One second. So usually if someone has a placeholder pseudonym, it's like Jane, John Doe, where is Knob coming from? And is that with an N or a KN? Yeah, it's with an N. It's N-O-B. But if you think Knob is a kind of crazy handle, the personas that Knob invented to actually then extort the mastermind of the Silk Road were French maid and death from above. So we can get into that in a moment. So Knob is just the tip of the iceberg, Tim. All right. Sorry to interrupt. Please continue. Well, where were we? So we were at the Silk Road. The government's trying to figure out who's the mastermind. And it has a couple different task forces on that job. One, as I mentioned, is outside of Washington, D.C. That's where Knob and others are befriending DPR and getting little clues into, you know, who or where is this person?

Starting point is 00:11:51 How do they do that? They do that by having Knob, who's an undercover federal agent, befriend online DPR, Ross Ulbricht. And so for about two years, Knob and DPR are communicating almost daily. And they become actually friends. If you read the chats, their messages on the Silk Road website, which the government leader sees, they become kind of, you know, they engage in friendly banter back and forth. What did you eat today? Oh, what are you doing? Are you working out?

Starting point is 00:12:19 And the reason for that, Tim, is those kind of little clues inform the government, well, where is this person at? Like, are they online during hours in the middle of the day? What kind of workouts are they doing? Are they hiking the hills? What are they eating? Are they eating salmon? You know, where is that found, right? So just little clues over two years really can help a government investigation.

Starting point is 00:12:40 So Knob was getting these clues by befriending Ross Ulbricht. And Knob's cover story was that he had connections to the criminal underworld in Latin America because he was a drug cartel leader. And his in to Ross Ulbricht was, hey, I want to buy your business, your Silk Road. I like this business. So that's how the two started communicating. And somewhere along the way, Knob went bad. Knob became a double agent playing both sides and extorting Ross Ulbricht for hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time of Bitcoin, which today would be hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin, or of dollars in Bitcoin, but also selling Ross Ulbricht secrets into the government's own investigation using that

Starting point is 00:13:26 death from above moniker. That's just incredible. My understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that one of the key elements of this story in apprehending DPR was also the fact, and I want you to fact check this, understanding that this wasn't where you kind of entered the scene, but it's that he used, he made a bit of a rookie mistake and he used the same handle. I think it was something like Altoid or something like that in multiple locations with his email address that ultimately allowed agents and law enforcement to triangulate. At least that, that seems to have been a piece of the puzzle. I might be misremembering that. But when you became involved, what were the key elements that allowed you to figure out what was going on and then prosecute effectively?

Starting point is 00:14:18 So again, I didn't prosecute Ross, but I remember that case well, because as you note, Tim, he was apprehended in San Francisco. So I actually remember when he came into the federal building at the Justice Department that day. And you are right that there were some mistakes. He was pretty good at obfuscating, but there were some mistakes. And I think there's a New York Times article on this, that the IRS agent on the case Gary Alford was kind of just on the open web found a reference to his real name on Google somehow. So I think your memory is correct. But of course, like you say, it's a bigger piece of a puzzle. I mean, it was a multi-year investigation. It involves search warrants from what I understand all over the world and a number of different pieces of the puzzle. But one

Starting point is 00:15:00 piece indeed was what you said, which is the kind of rookie mistake of leaving a few digital breadcrumbs in the form of his real name that ultimately led to his apprehension. And I should have been more specific. By prosecution, what I meant was in reference to the two federal agents, one of which being Knob. Because in this twist, as I understand it, part Mm-hmm. the tracking of these digital breadcrumbs. Yeah. Could you speak to that? So actually, I'll go a step further and I'll say in law, we have this concept called but for. But for this, this wouldn't have happened. And I can tell you that but for the blockchain, we would not have caught... By the way, you said knob.

Starting point is 00:15:57 There are actually two federal agents. We'll get into that in a second because it turned out there was another rogue federal agent doing all kinds of other things who was on that Silk Road task force. And but for the blockchain, we would not have caught these two corrupt agents. And I say that if I sound like I say that with certainty, it's because I'm certain of it. We would not have caught them otherwise.

Starting point is 00:16:20 And in fact, the only reason that we were able to investigate and follow the flow of funds was because of the blockchain technology. And without it, we wouldn't have been able to bring these two individuals to justice. In fact, they'd still be today federal agents. I'm quite sure of that. And moreover, they'd probably have over a billion dollars worth of criminal proceeds in the form of Bitcoin, given how the price has gone up. Yeah, they would have been highly resource-rich and enabled, sort of questionable characters. I mean, wow, what an alternative universe that would have been. In this case, if we could pause for a moment, you seem to have a superpower of getting in front of an audience, and this has certainly shown up in previous profiles of you, CNBC and elsewhere, getting in front of an audience

Starting point is 00:17:13 of people who come from all walks of life, such as the members of a jury, and getting them to understand a topic they might have not heard of before, or that might be very complicated, possibly complicated. Could you explain for people who have heard the term blockchain but really don't know what it refers to, what the blockchain is? Well, there are numerous blockchains, but let's just use the example of the Bitcoin blockchain. And it's essentially, Tim, what it is, a massive ledger that keeps track of kind of who owns what. And instead of some central entity keeping track, it's instead done by what are called nodes all over the world. And these nodes, in the case of the Bitcoin blockchain, are called miners. And the best way to think of them in my mind is think of miners like the workers who are performing

Starting point is 00:17:56 computing work to secure the system that keeps track of this ownership. So it's kind of this decentralized, not centrally controlled, big, huge ledger that keeps track of who owns what. Does that paint a picture for you? And it's also the key things about the blockchain is it's immutable. No one can change it. And that turned out to be really important in the case we're talking about because these agents, while I was investigating them, were agents the whole time. So they were hot on my trail. They could look and see what I was learning. They could peek in our investigation. In other words, the government wasn't able to terminate them just because we thought there was some

Starting point is 00:18:34 nefarious conduct afoot. And so the blockchain was actually really necessary because in several instances, they were actually able to get banks and financial entities to destroy records to cover up evidence of their crime. They also forged subpoenas and forged court orders and the like, I think burn bags. And because of flashing the badge, hey, this is an undercover operation, bank so-and-so, delete those records. And not surprisingly, the banks complied. Here's a federal agent with a subpoena saying, delete these records. It's a sensitive undercover operation. So the blockchain was really critical because it was decentralized and immutable, meaning it can't be changed. We were able to follow the trail. And that's why I say, but for the blockchain,

Starting point is 00:19:22 we wouldn't have been able to bring this case or this indictment. In fact, I mentioned Knob, but I didn't mention the other agent. The crazy thing is they weren't even working together. But another agent on that task force, who is a secret service agent on detail to the NSA, who was one of the US government's experts in encryption technology, it turns out he had stolen, Tim, 25,000 Bitcoin from Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road, which today, that would be worth just over a billion dollars. And he had staged, by the way, he had made it look like the Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht's right-hand man, who was, by the way, a grandfather in Utah, if you can believe that, the right hand of the Silk Road, he had staged the whole thing to make

Starting point is 00:20:10 it look like that individual had stolen the 25,000 Bitcoin. So Ross Ulbricht says, you know, what is my right-hand man doing stealing 25,000 Bitcoin from my side? I know it's him. I've got to take care of this. And who does he turn to to do the taking care of? Knob, the other undercover federal agent who he's befriended over two years. So the details are quite crazy, but I will tell you again that without that blockchain technology, we wouldn't have been able to get the records. Because in the case of the Secret Service agent, one of the things he did was he transferred those 25,000 bitcoins to an exchange called Mt. Gox, which was a Japanese exchange that had gone belly up. Well, we went over to get the Mt. Gox records, and they didn't have any.

Starting point is 00:20:56 The exchange had kind of gone under. And Mark Karpeles, I remember meeting with Mark Karpeles in Japan, and Mark Karpeles said, you know, those records we don't have. And by the way, you guys did a seizure, you guys being the US government, did a seizure warrant for Mt. Gox. Not only were we hacked, the feds seized it. Well, guess who was the affiant on the seizure warrant? It was none other than our Secret Service agent who had stolen the 25,000 Bitcoin. I mean, really, it is just built for screenplay, this entire story. Now, it seems like, if I'm getting my facts straight, that there is one other but for possibly, and that is the tip. Could you speak, I don't know how much of this is public record at this point, but who did it come from? Or what was the tip? How much did you have to go on? I'll tell you what is public record. And if listeners want, you can go read. There's a 97, I think, or 90-page criminal complaint that lays out all of the facts of this story online. You can just go Google it, Silk Road Agents. It's out of San Francisco. But what happened was I was

Starting point is 00:21:58 sitting in my office in San Francisco on another crypto investigation. And one of the lawyers, who used to be an investigative journalist, pulls me aside and said, can I talk to you about something else? And I said, what? And he said, you know, you've got, I think you've got a mole or someone up to no good, you know, on your payroll.

Starting point is 00:22:18 They're moving cryptocurrency. And I thought, oh, here sounds like a real conspiracy theory, which of course I was in San Francisco. I hear a lot of them, right? About how the government is bad. And, you know, I thought, oh, here sounds like a real conspiracy theory, which of course, I was in San Francisco. I hear a lot of them, right, about how the government is bad. And, you know, I thought, okay, this poor agent, I've got to go clear this person's name because here's this, you know, lawyer, former journalist spreading rumors. And I thought probably he's moving Bitcoin. It's probably, you know, a poorly backstopped undercover operation. So I actually, that was the tip I got. And I actually was really started to look into it more to clear the name and just, you

Starting point is 00:22:53 know, then I thought, oh, that this information was correct. But I did look into it. Like I said, I got a couple agents and it's not a popular thing to go to agents and say, I want to investigate some other agents, right? I bet not. Not a crowd pleaser. No, but I got a couple agents who knew a thing or two about the blockchain and we hopped on Wallet Explorer and started looking at some flow of funds and saw, wow, this is a lot of cryptocurrency moving around. And then what flipped in my mind, Tim, was the moment where I saw emails that this individual had sent to crypto exchanges saying, please delete these records.

Starting point is 00:23:32 And I thought, now, if this is undercover and you're in the government, you don't want to delete evidence. You want to preserve evidence. So that's how I knew something was amiss. But we only got a tip about one agent. And of course, that one agent, once we kind of solved who'd done it, and we knew he was extorting Ross Ulbricht in the Silk Road, and we knew he was selling information in the government's case, we thought, oh, that's probably who stole the 25,000 Bitcoin as well. So we were just thinking, that's who did it. It wasn't the Silk Road administrator. But in fact, I remember on Christmas Eve getting a call from one of those agents, and he said, Katie, I don't think it's him. The patterns, the movement of money, the kind of services that they were using to obfuscate, they're not the same person. The MO is different, and we've got someone else who stole that Bitcoin. And so then we launched kind of a separate investigation, Tim, into who stole a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin. A billion now.

Starting point is 00:24:34 Yeah. If I could pause for a definition, please. Sure. What exactly is a federal prosecutor? Oh, a federal prosecutor is, so a lot of people have heard of district attorneys or DAs, right? Mm-hmm. So a lot of people have heard of district attorneys or DAs, right? That is a local prosecutor. A federal prosecutor is another name for it as assistant U.S. attorney. And a federal prosecutor takes those kind of crimes that cross state lines or that are of a certain kind of subject matter that the federal government has deemed are also federal crimes. Now, a lot of things could be both. You could have certain crimes that could be prosecuted at the state level,

Starting point is 00:25:12 or they could be prosecuted at the federal level. And then you have other crimes that could only be done by one or the other. So my job as a federal prosecutor was to kind of investigate and bring to justice where crimes had occurred. Now, another important part of the job of being a prosecutor is knowing when not to bring a case where even though the facts support a charge, because what I always say is the government wasn't hurting for business. Unfortunately, there are a lot more criminals than there are resources to prosecute. And so one of the things as a prosecutor that you really want to do is look for what are the worst of the worst? Where are you going to get the most bang for the buck here? What is your theory of punishment? Is it deterrence? Is it punishment? Why are we doing this? And so you really need to look for the most important cases. And by important, I don't mean high profile. I mean important for justice to be served.

Starting point is 00:26:01 I would imagine, I mean, this is me knowing nothing about this, but also important possibly as a setting of precedent or otherwise acting as a domino that knocks over or helps to possibly knock over other dominoes. Andreessen Horowitz website, a16z.com. And this is the hiring announcement by Ben Horowitz, certainly of the namesake, Andreessen Horowitz. Ben has been on the podcast as well. So has Mark, for that matter. And I want to read just a portion of this letter. There's a lot to it, including some Nicki Minaj lyrics for people who want to see the Chun-Li lyrics. I'm not going to read those, but here it is. Quote, as I learned more about her career, I was even more impressed. She stood up to murderous motorcycle gangs and cartels, shut down organized crime, nailed RICO murderers, again, that acronym that I wanted to find, uncovered the largest money laundering and cybercrime rings, and stopped white collar crime and public corruption. Through it all,

Starting point is 00:27:03 her prosecutorial record, not a word I read every day, was whatever and zero. She never lost a case, not once, not ever. Okay. So bookmark Rika, we're going to come back to it. Okay. What, and I'm going to pull a couple of possible answers to my forthcoming question off the table. So the working harder or preparing harder, I understand that you do both, meaning you work and focus very intensely and you've had a reputation for that for a long time. But what do you think you have done differently or how have you approached things differently that has helped you to have this record? Well, that's a great question.

Starting point is 00:27:43 If it's easier to kind of swap places, how would your friends who really know you and have seen you over the years, how would they explain it? If that's easier to answer? Well, let me take a stab at both and I will put a pin in Rico. We'll come back to that. I mean, one of the jobs I had as a federal prosecutor is going to before a grand jury, right? That's a secret jury presenting evidence and seeking an indictment.

Starting point is 00:28:03 Another kind of job of a prosecutor is meeting with the witnesses in a case and trying to maybe get them to flip, bringing, you know, evidence to bear, developing evidence. It's also working with agents and it's to get agents motivated in some cases to go, you know, work nights and weekends to go chase the lead, for example. The other thing that you do as a prosecutor is you go to court, just like you see on TV, you know, law and order, like the prosecutor stands up and, you know, makes arguments to the judge. If it's a judicial argument or if it's a trial, makes an argument to the jury. So that's a little bit about the job of a prosecutor. I think one of the things, as I think about it, that I did differently was, well, first of all, I just had an amazing mentor at the Justice Department. So put a pin in that and we'll come back to him in a minute. But one of the things I did differently is just, I think it's

Starting point is 00:28:54 really important to, obviously, you want to make sure that you're charging the right case and, you know, you have all your evidence. Because even though 95% of federal cases plead guilty, at least in those days they did, some go to trial. And Tim, you never know which ones are going to go to trial or which ones are going to plead guilty. The ones you think, oh, they'll take a plea, they surprise you. The ones you think will go to trial surprise you and take the first plea. Like, you just never know. And so one thing I always did is I thought to myself, I have to prepare this case as if it's going to go to trial and I have to convince a jury. And how am I going to convince that jury that this is the right case to bring, that it's righteous

Starting point is 00:29:34 and that the law was violated. And that what I'm asking for is frankly a no brainer. One of the things I did was I developed something called, well, I didn't develop the concept of a reverse proffer, but I'll tell you about what I did. That is, sometimes you just felt like maybe there's something lost in translation. Like, maybe this defendant doesn't understand the evidence I have against them. Who knows? Like, maybe their lawyer's telling them, maybe they're not telling them, maybe they're telling them, but the defendant doesn't really trust their lawyer. And so I did something called a reverse proffer, which is I said, with the, you know, permission of defense counsel and defendant, I said, hey, would you let that defendant come into my office? Marshals. And if they did, marshals, can you bring the defendant to the office? If the defendant was in custody, they'd come, you know, shackled.

Starting point is 00:30:24 If they were out of custody, they'd just show up in street clothes with their lawyer. And I would sit them down in the conference room at my office, and I would give them a little snapshot of, here is a kind of flavor or sampling of the evidence I have against you that a jury is going to hear, and here's how I'm going to present it. And I want you to be aware, like, with this evidence staring you down the face, do you want to go to trial or not? And I think a lot of times seeing what would be presented and seeing, oh, they do have all of these witnesses who will say X, Y, and Z, cause the defendants in some cases to say, no, I want to change the circumstances here. I want to

Starting point is 00:31:05 like stop the bleeding, so to speak. Because obviously if you go to trial, the sentences tend to be longer. The judge pronounces, always the judge pronounces the sentences. But when you're in a trial setting, you often get a lot longer than if you take an earlier guilty plea. So reverse proffer was one thing. I think another thing that comes to mind is just being able to develop a rapport, not just with the defendants or defense counsel, but with the witnesses. You know, witnesses are some of the most important evidence that you can have in an investigation. And in a number of cases I was doing, particularly gang cases, why is some witness or some member of the gang, like, why are they going to trust you, a government prosecutor? What can you

Starting point is 00:31:45 do to build that trust and to really talk to them in a way that is relatable? And I think that was something that I spent a lot of time trying to develop is putting myself, and I can never put myself in the shoes of some of the folks that I encountered, but trying as best I could to think, what's motivating them? What might they be scared of? What's holding them back from wanting to cooperate with us? And through doing some of those things, I think we were successful in being able to flip some key witnesses. So that could contribute to it. But I would be remiss if I didn't say that I had just an amazing mentor. he was actually my boss at the Justice Department. And he was an incredible prosecutor and just watching him, that also, I think, accounted for a lot of it. And also, I had incredible case agents and FBI agents and everything. So I can't really take credit for all the verdict records. There's a lot that goes into it. Yeah, I would imagine. It's a team effort. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show.

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Starting point is 00:33:30 qualified candidates. You can manage job posts and contact candidates on the familiar LinkedIn.com website where functions are streamlined into one simple screen. And now you can do all of this from your mobile device, no matter where the day takes you. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com slash Tim. Again, that's linkedin.com slash Tim to post a job for free. Terms and conditions do apply. If we take a closer look at this mentor what were some of the things if different from those you've just mentioned that stand out as making him an excellent prosecutor so or an unusually good prosecutor well i think the key thing is he did not care i mean i'm not suggesting

Starting point is 00:34:20 prosecutors most career prosecutors are not thinking of their next job. So just to be clear on that, but really with him and his, his name is Will Frenson. You know, I've worked with a lot of amazing mentors, Tim, in my career, Justice Kennedy, the attorney general, tech CEOs, and folks in VC. But this guy is not a household name. His name is Will Frenson. And I think one of the things that comes to mind when I think of Will is he just didn't care about anything other than just in that moment doing the right thing and doing justice. And he didn't care about what his next job was going to be. He didn't care about the consequences. He didn't really even care. I'm not endorsing this necessarily, but he, I remember

Starting point is 00:35:01 some judges, I remember being in court once where a judge said, you know, Mr. Frenson, why do you shake your head at me like that? Like I'm stupid. You know, no judge would I think there was a newspaper article that described Will's prosecutorial swagger. But in my case, one of the things he did that made him an amazing leader was he, first of all, threw me into the deep end. But he also had my back when I needed it. And he recognized when I was ready to lead. You know, in fact, I did a biker murder case involving the Mongols and the Hells Angels, and it went to trial. That was one of the ones that I thought for sure would plead guilty and instead went to trial, and it lasted two plus months. And Will became my second chair. He became my deputy, even though he was my boss, and it was a high-profile murder case. He sat second chair during that case. But I think he also had my back. And when I tell you he doesn't really care about his next job,

Starting point is 00:36:02 can I share a story involving Google? Sure. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, well, so there was a murder case we were doing, a different one than the one I just mentioned. It was a gas station robbery gone wrong. Hard to keep track. Yeah. I'm just kidding.

Starting point is 00:36:17 You do have a lot of murders. Yeah, it was a really sad circumstance of a guy who was shot over $250 while he was working a second job at night. And actually, we had some amazing evidence that we knew was in the defendant's Google mailbox. It was like Google voice records and stuff. And so we got a search warrant, which is different than a subpoena. We had to go to the court. We had to go to a judge, prove probable cause, and get a search warrant. And Google just simply put it in the line and basically told us to get in line. And we'll get to it when we get to

Starting point is 00:36:49 it. And we said, you know, this is a court order. This is now unsealed, so I can say this publicly. At this time, it was sealed. We said, this is a court order. It's a murder case. You know, we need these records. And they basically told us, we're Google. We'll get to it when we can get to it. And, you know, Will said, you know, that's just BS. I mean, we go around expecting mom and pop stores all the time to comply with search warrants or people, right? Ordinary citizens. Like, why should Google get a pass?

Starting point is 00:37:14 And I said, you're right. That's BS. Like, let's write a motion to the judge to have them held in contempt. We'll give them a fair chance to comply first. But if they don't, like, let's go to the court. They should comply with the same rule everyone else has to. And we gave them several chances, and we said, we're going to go to court, and they basically ignored us. And, you know, we are Google. We will crush you. We went to court. We got them held in contempt of federal court if they didn't produce these records.

Starting point is 00:37:38 What ended up happening, and this was all under seal at the time, was, I won't name names, but someone at Google high up called the political appointee who was running our office at the time and basically suggested that we should get this undone. And, you know, we were in the jurisdiction of Google, you know, we're in the Northern District of California. And Will and I were both like, no, why should we do that? Like, they didn't, this is a murder case where the victim's family is relying on us to, you know, bring the best case and the best case involves those records. And we're not going to just stand back because it's Google, you know, calling up and suggesting we undo this motion. So we stuck to it.

Starting point is 00:38:15 And that was a case where Will and another boss might have said, you know, let's kind of figure out a way to broker a great settlement here and make this go away. And he said, I don't care who they are. He really just didn't care. So he was fearless and also he was egoless. Like I said, he let me often, when he knew I was ready to lead, he would let me first chair a case. So that really stands out to me. Fearless and egoless is a formidable combination, right? Rare. Very rare. Rare, and I do not want to fight that person on anything. That's going to be very difficult. Now, you mentioned fearless, and you also mentioned Hell's Angels, Mongols. This might

Starting point is 00:39:00 be a good place to define Rico. I don't know if that's related to racketeering. It is. See, you got it that's related to racketeering. It is. See, you got it right there. Racketeering. It's the racketeering and organized corrupt, I think, institutions. Or racketeering and corrupt organizations. And it's basically a federal statute where it just creates a class of crimes that are more serious if you've done certain predicate crimes. So for example, it often involves cases involving conspiracies, and then you allege several predicate acts. So

Starting point is 00:39:30 in furtherance of the conspiracy, maybe there was some, you know, gun trafficking, maybe there was money laundering, maybe there was fraud. And so I did a number of RICO. There's also, I'm not going to bore you with acronyms, but there's a VICAR. Those are kind of this class of cases, again, where you're talking about a corrupt organization. That's the CO in RICO, R-I-C-O. And what it means is basically an organized criminal enterprise. And you have to prove they were organized. You have to prove they were serving a common goal. You have to prove they did certain things in furtherance of that organization or conspiracy is basically what RICO is. Does that also help you to prosecute people who are in leadership positions who don't necessarily, for instance, carry out a hit or murder themselves, but they issue the order for that hit? Does RICO play a, or the, I suppose, I'm not sure if laws is the right way to put it, but does that assist you in any way in prosecuting, thinking about these larger groups, Hells Angels, Mongols, you mentioned MS-13, for instance? Yeah, it's definitely a tool in a prosecutor or an agent's toolkit to kind of wrap up an organization.

Starting point is 00:40:45 Like you said, if otherwise the individual might not have been on the hook for actually like a murder, maybe they just commissioned it, for example. Now there are other laws that you can do, Tim. You don't only need RICO, there are conspiracy laws, but RICO is just kind of another tool that one might use. And it also enables you at trial to get in what are known as, like I just mentioned, predicate acts. So, you know, at the Hells Angels and the Mongols trial, we included predicate acts like there's, I don't know if you remember the Laughlin River Run riot and a series of other murders and a whole host of other criminal conduct that then the jury heard. And we think, you know, that not

Starting point is 00:41:25 we, but the Congress who passed the law, because of course, prosecutors don't make the law. They just enforce law. And so Congress passed this law saying that the jury would be able to hear all of these different kind of predicate acts. Now, standing up to Google is, or a company like Google, a tech company with incredible power, wide reach, shows a level of fearlessness with respect to, I suppose, many aspects of life, including possible, maybe, maybe not, career advancement, career options later, who knows, like Nuestra Familia, one of the world's largest prison gangs, and other groups that are associated with intense violence, how have you thought about personal safety? what is the self-talk been so that you can operate effectively in a job that entails what I would imagine to have some degree of personal risk? And that's a meandering question, but I'd love to at least open the door to just hearing your thoughts on that, because I don't know if I would have the courage to do it, quite frankly. I think you you know, you might if you see some of the victim's families, and you might if you kind of saw some of the witnesses that were intimidated, or some of the consequences if you didn't. I mean, I completely hear what you're saying,

Starting point is 00:42:55 Tim, and I don't, you know, dismiss it because it's certainly something that I've thought about. But I also knew that in those moments, there was something really wrong going on and someone had to step in and do something about it, you know, and it wasn't just me. It was, like I said, a lot of really brave men and women, law enforcement personnel and other prosecutors, and by the way, judges and even juries, you know, jury, there are plenty of instances of jury intimidation, but, you know, it's critical for our system to work because obviously we can't just be running amok with no laws and violence. I think in the case of Nuestra Familia, you mentioned a prison gang. This is an entire world people don't realize. I mean, and you think, oh, they're in

Starting point is 00:43:36 prison. So therefore then they're locked up. But the truth of the matter is, and there's actually a great 60 Minutes episode on this. It's called Operation Black Widow, by the way, running criminal enterprises from prison is pretty common. You know, there's a whole system that goes into taxing criminal activity on the outside in exchange for protection on the inside. And the people who are running these gangs, frankly, a lot of them could be running businesses, I sometimes think. If circumstances were different, they're hustlers, they're dedicated, you know, they have a lot of passion. I'm not trying to make it sound glamorous at all because it is criminal. I'm just saying that they're very organized. They have a whole system for getting messages outside. I remember once a judge said to me, what do you mean that defendant is, you know, under the influence of whatever drug it was? They're in prison. And I thought, oh, your honor, like it's so naive to

Starting point is 00:44:28 think that they're not able to get contraband in prison. They're running the prison sometimes. And so this case you mentioned, Nuestra Familia, was a really large gang. It was, you know, they affiliate on the outside with the Norteños on the street. And then, like I said, there's a whole tax system. Some of the street gangs will pay into tax, essentially, into inside the carnales inside so that if they ever get hooked up and put in prison, then they're protected within prison. But one thing I think that you might think, oh, these dangerous— When you say large, just could you give us an idea of what large means? Well, they're worldwide. I mean, you know, like in the case of MS-13 or Nuestra Familia, I mean, it's not just in the U.S., but they're certainly in every city.

Starting point is 00:45:15 I mean, you're talking about thousands and thousands, if not tens of thousands of individuals affiliated with these. But I prosecuted Nuestra Familia. I indicted that case. This was before that Silk Road case. This is in my violent crime days still. And you talk about being scared. I mean, the truth of the matter is a lot of the defendants that went and we extradited many from all over the country. And these were the kind of carnallis. These were the big chiefs. These weren't like the street level gangs. These guys had all been in. So the carnales are the leaders.

Starting point is 00:45:46 Yes. Within. And I think we indicted over a dozen. Most ended up pleading guilty. Some did go to trial. But, you know, you think, oh, well, those are going to be the scariest of the scary. But, you know, again, like I told you earlier, it's really a human thing. And different people, even if they're in a really violent prison gang, react differently to things. Now, a lot of, and I think a lot of the listeners, also myself, I would include myself and probably you in this, like we think, oh, it'd be the worst thing in the world to go to prison.

Starting point is 00:46:17 Like, we don't want to go to prison. The interesting thing is a lot of the people involved in these prison gangs don't necessarily think that way, Tim. It's like, it's not really a threat to say, I'm going to put you in prison. That's kind of like where they shine sometimes. And so talk about trying to deter criminal activity against that backdrop. But I think because of that, a lot of those individuals sometimes think this is the cost of doing business. Like I'm going to get, you know, hooked up. It's part of the game. Part of the game. So it's not a personal thing.

Starting point is 00:46:48 And the thing I try to always do is to just treat the defendants with respect, treat all the subjects with respect and not make it personal. And we ended up flipping a kind of key witness in that case, a guy who is now in the witness protection program. So I won't say too much about him but he did end up testifying so I can I can tell you that because it's all public record he was a Nuestra Familia enforcer and he was a hulking huge guy with tattoos who came in and out of my office for weeks and as we tried to flip him and he eventually came around to testify but you know most of them I mean it's kind of violates think, an oath to the gang that you would never testify. That is the worst thing you could do in the gang's eyes. these cases would be the scariest. Is there a moment or a case or an incident, if you're willing to share, where you were actually scared, rightly or wrongly? You know, I don't really want to get into it because I call it OPSEC, Tim. Let's just say

Starting point is 00:47:57 I've taken measures and I won't really say much more than that. You know, you mentioned I have a CCW. It's not because I'm a gun nut or I'm passionate about guns. It's just because, you know, you want to make sure you can always protect yourself. And I've taken other measures as well. And I obviously I'm job was to actually, as cheesy or cliche as it sounds, pursue justice. And what kind of message would that send if I just walked off the case or walked away? And certainly, a lot of people I worked with felt that way too. It wasn't just me bringing these cases. There are a whole lot of other people. That in some way reflects, well, it certainly reflects, I think, deep aspects of your personality, but also just a few chapters in the wild, varied life of Katie Hahn. And so I'd like to switch gears in a sense and ask you when you first heard about Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:49:02 It was right after that Mongols biker murder trial I told you about with the Hells Angels ended and that had been a couple months. And you know, after that, I had just really done a lot of violent crime cases over the course of a decade. And I remember thinking, I'm ready to switch to something else. Like maybe I'll leave. I didn't really know what I would do, but maybe I'll do something else. And my boss came to me and said, you know, let's have you put some of these investigative skills you've brought to use against criminal enterprises to technology and cybercrime. And I said, OK, great. You know, we're here in the Northern District of California. Seems like sensible to do some cybercrime.

Starting point is 00:49:41 And he said, well, here's what we want you to do. We want you to investigate Bitcoin. And, you know, Bitcoin is this kind of criminal technology and we need to kind of stop it, basically. And I remember, and so that was around 2012. And I remember going home and talking to my husband who knew way more about Bitcoin than I did. I had not heard of it at all. That was the first time I ever heard of it was 2012. So I was, I feel like I was kind of late to the party. I mean, it was the Satoshi white paper was in 2008. This is four years later and I'd never heard of it. And my husband told me, you might want to, you know, learn what it is

Starting point is 00:50:19 before you go around talking about how you're going to prosecute it because it sounds a little foolish. And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, look at this wiki page and tell me if you think, you know, you could prosecute it after. And the more I learned about it, I pretty quickly realized that it would be like saying, I'm going to prosecute cash or I'm going to prosecute, you know, the internet or something like that. Like it's not, it's not possible, number one, and it's also not desirable. But what instead ended up happening was prosecuting some of the nefarious uses of cryptocurrency. Just like we prosecuted, like I said, like I prosecuted a 25 count indictment for mortgage fraud conspiracy,

Starting point is 00:50:56 you know, and they used cash and they used wires. So too here were some cases like we talked about Mt. Gox, we talked about the Silk Road twist, there was also the BTCE case. There, there was criminal use of cryptocurrency. So we prosecuted some nefarious use cases of it. And in the course of that, I ended up starting to get to know some of the early players in the crypto space, Tim. I also started realizing more and more what I had kind of realized early on, which is this doesn't seem all criminal. It seems like there are actually a lot of people trying to build some really important products and services that can be used for good. And so that was kind of how I frankly got into the space early days. Now, I was in the government. I always joke like I bought Bitcoin earlier than anyone I know. Unfortunately, it was undercover in the government, so I never kept any. and I, of course, never bought any when I was in the government, which is probably a shame because I don't need to tell you what the price was back then. Okay. And feel free, we can always edit later, right? But I'm curious, when you got to know some of the earlier players in crypto, I mean, I did read one quote that I thought was fantastic

Starting point is 00:52:06 from, I mean, we can mention him by name, of course, but he said he was terrified of you. And this was Zuko Wilcox, I'll mention his name, which makes sense. I mean, it does make sense on a bunch of levels, but how many of those early contacts do you think played nice because they, in their mind, had the sort of maxim of keep your friends close and your enemies closer or through other motivation or for other reasons, right? You are very good at developing rapport, but I have to imagine that a lot of these people were hesitant or tentative or had some misgivings about engaging. I'd love to just hear you speak to that, if anything comes to mind. Well, that's the first I thought of it, but it's an interesting way to think about it,

Starting point is 00:52:57 but keep your enemies close. I think what ended up happening though, because I did establish the government's first crypto task force back in those days, which was comprised of a bunch of different agencies. I think what ended up happening, it might've started out that way, Tim, and I can certainly appreciate why now being in the space, it's like, I now encounter people all the time. They're like, Oh, we don't want to talk to the government. And, you know, I think that's just born of, they don't really know that there are a lot of people in the government and not everyone thinks the same thing in the government, right? It's made up of hundreds of thousands of people and some people big organization right right um and then once you actually start making the connections and

Starting point is 00:53:34 meeting people they realize you know you're not so bad like it doesn't seem like you want to you know close every like we thought that you just wanted to close down everything you know it turns out that maybe you just want to keep bad actors off X, Y, or Z platform. And, you know, it turns out we want that too, right? A great example of this is, you know, Coinbase. And, you know, I'm on the board of directors of Coinbase now. Fast forward several years. You know, Coinbase did a great job of this in the early days.

Starting point is 00:53:57 Like, I don't think it was about keeping me an enemy away. I think it was more about it's not good for their business to have criminal activity on the platform. Sure. I mean, they don't, you know, it's not like they're cozying up to the government either, but I think it's, you know, every kind of pragmatic and good business leader thinks, why would you want a bunch of nefarious activity on your platform? Especially if you're trying to build a business to kind of change the world. So I think you might be right though in the early days, but fundamentally after they saw some of be right, though, in the early days, but fundamentally, after they saw some of the bridge building that we in the government in those early days started trying to do, and we did things like we hosted a summit where we, you know, it was invite only, but we invited some of the early folks in the space. I did this with a number of different

Starting point is 00:54:37 agencies. And then the agencies would come in and talk about what their equities were. And I think that kind of two-way street and dialogue is really important because what you want is you want, you know, you mentioned Zuko. I want Zuko to hear, you know, what are some of the consequences of privacy coins? And I want people in the government to hear what are some of the real benefits of privacy coins? And I think it's really important. Totally. And I should say, very, very, very smart guy. I mean, very, very, very, very smart guy. I mean, very, very, very, very smart. Absolutely. I remember meeting him, actually. I remember exactly what you're talking about, because I remember meeting him and I've kept in touch with him since that time. But, you know, I even remember Bitstamp, which was an early crypto exchange, which was in Slovenia. They

Starting point is 00:55:17 featured in our Silk Road twist case we talked about earlier. And I remember I needed their cooperation for some records. And I remember them needed their cooperation for some records. And I remember them thinking, oh, this U.S. prosecutors are coming. We think it's a trap, you know. And the State Department told me, you can't violate the sovereignty of Slovenia. We can't have you meet on Slovenian ground unless this, this, and this are followed. And I said, what? I'm going to lose the evidence. The guys are willing to meet with me now. And they said, well, we did just seize a yacht in a DEA case off the coast of Croatia. Maybe we could arrange the meeting there in international waters. I said, okay, if they didn't think I was coming to, if we convinced them I was not coming to trap them,

Starting point is 00:55:55 if I suggest a DEA seize yacht to meet on, I'm pretty damn sure they're going to cancel the meeting. Just casually drop that one in. Just meet me offshore, guys. I'm really not trying to set you up. But anyway, long story short, we ended up meeting in Slovenia. I hope we didn't violate any sovereignty or anything there, but we ended up meeting and that was early days. And I think they ended up seeing what we were trying to do and realizing it was actually good for the space and ended up providing us with the records we needed. Amazing. And it's not just Bitstamp or Coinbase. I think a lot of companies, especially over the last several years, have tried to proactively engage with regulators.

Starting point is 00:56:40 But I've also, like I said, I think just as important is that government also for its part, keep in touch with the crypto industry. And why do I say that? One key reason is because this technology is changing so fast. And I think like when I talked to my old government colleagues, they're like, God, we just kind of finally had mastered Bitcoin. And then we have ETH. And now we have these other, you know, dozen. And now, of course, we have over a thousand crypto assets. It's really hard for government employees with kind of the training available to keep up with this technology. Frankly, it's not just government employees. more open dialogues. And of course, if crypto projects feel like the government's just kind of out to shut them down, they're not going to be willing to provide that two-way street. So I think it's really win-win to have these conversations. I don't want to be naive or Pollyanna-ish about it. I'm not saying like one, the crypto industry and the government should team

Starting point is 00:57:43 up and, you up and spend every day together. Nothing like that. But I do think this kind of ongoing dialogue is really important. Yeah, I agree. Also, because we're not the only country developing blockchain-based technologies and cryptocurrencies. I mean, just like artificial intelligence. So it's important to have an informed global perspective and geopolitical perspective when thinking about a lot of these things. Just for context, for people who are interested, Zuko is the, I think he is still CEO of the electric coin company, ECC, which is a for-profit company leading the development of what is known as Zcash,

Starting point is 00:58:22 for those people who want to look into that. Now, on the pro, let's just focus on crypto and not blockchain explicitly for a second. But on the pro-crypto, let's say pro-BTC, Bitcoin side, you have true believers who can sometimes paint with broad strokes and miss a lot of nuance and details. Then on the anti-crypto side, you find similar kind of militant anti-crypto people who have somewhat maybe naive or simplistic arguments, right? My understanding is that it was in Mexico City of all places that you debated Paul Krugman. Is that right? Yes, that's right.

Starting point is 00:59:06 Who publicly said that you give the best thesis for crypto he had heard. Now, he's notoriously anti-crypto. What was it about your argument that he found compelling, if you remember? Well, I don't want to say he said I was compelling. He just said I had the best defense, but I don't want to get some angry tweet. I don't want to get some angry tweet from Paul Krugman saying, I never said I was compelling, Katie. Right, right. He's like, I said it was the best of the worst. Yes, exactly. But to the extent that he said, all right, this is some of the better material I've heard. What was it?

Starting point is 00:59:45 Well, I think one thing was, and I'm not, let's just even back, take a step back and zoom out because I've encountered many people who are skeptical, like Paul, not just Paul Krugman, but as you can imagine, many, many people. And I think one thing I always emphasize is this is not just about currency. Well, first of all, it's not just about Bitcoin and speculation. And it's also not even just about currency. There's this whole world to crypto. And that's one of the reasons I've stayed in crypto is it really is so interesting to me in that it brings together so many different elements, Tim, but also as you just referenced, geopolitics, finance, and certainly law and policy. I mean, I could go on and on. And now even art. We'll talk later, I hope, about NFTs or non-fungible tokens. But really, there are so many things that crypto touches. And so one of the things I tried to do with Paul Krugman and with others

Starting point is 01:00:41 is to illustrate the good because so much of what I hear is, oh, it's for money laundering, it's bad. And I think that's a really ill-informed view. Like I said, without cryptocurrency, we would not have solved some of our cases without that blockchain technology. One of the things I try to do is focus on here are a lot of the good things happening with crypto. And I think, gosh, we don't have time. I could go on and on for so long telling you about some of the good stuff going on. So I did try to focus him and others away from just thinking it's only about money and it's only about speculation because to me, it's about so much more. NFTs. NFTs. Oh, gosh, we're going straight. We're diving deep.

Starting point is 01:01:21 You said let's talk about them. So let's talk about them. Let's do it. Okay. Well, talk about them. Let's do it. Okay. Well, yeah. Yeah. Walk us through it. Okay. Well, first of all, I hate calling them by acronyms, but, and I did it myself. I know.

Starting point is 01:01:32 So I'm guilty, but NFTs, let me just break it down what that is, because I think one of the problems today in crypto is it feels so inaccessible to people. They tell me, I don't understand it. I can't like wrap my head around it. And I said, you know, okay, if I can't like wrap my head around it. And I said, you know, okay, if I can learn it, you can learn it. And part of it is just, I think the industry needs to do an even better job. And we've already improved as an industry, but we still have work to do on being able to speak plain English in terms that normal people can understand. You know, it's just like, there's all this fancy crypto babble and that's true, not just in crypto,

Starting point is 01:02:03 by the way, that, that was certainly true in law and in government. Like each area or industry has its words, right, that make it feel inaccessible to people. And I try to break that down. I did it in law, too. It's like, you know, you use all these Latin terms in law. Like, what does that actually mean? So NFT is like that. And NFT stands for non-fungible token. And it's basically

Starting point is 01:02:27 fancy crypto babble that just means it's a special kind of token. And by special, I mean unique. Because, you know, of course, fungible means not unique. And this is a non-fungible token. So it's a unique token that lives on a blockchain that tracks something unique like art or a collectible. But it's different from the usual kinds of tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum, because like I said, an NFT is not fungible. It's unique. It's one of a kind. So it could represent, you know, an image, a piece of music, a video. And in fact, Tim, it's actually kind of serendipitous. We're talking about NFTs. First of all, the space is, as you know, very active right now. But I actually just acquired an NFT, my first one. And then someone also gave me an NFT. So I now actually own two digital works of art that are unique on the blockchain that can't be replicated that if I ever wanted to, I could sell. They're just like regular art, but they're digital and they're unique. And that's one of the things crypto does because people say, well, wait, can't you copy it? Whatever. With cryptographic

Starting point is 01:03:36 principles, you have digital scarcity. So whereas you could previously copy a photograph, this is digitally scarce. You can enforce digital scarcity. And that's a really big idea to get your head around. In Spain, he created it and minted it. The really cool thing here is he gets a cut if I sell it to you. So the content creator, the artist, instead of going to a bunch of middlemen, actually gets a cut of all future transactions. And I think that's really cool. Could you just walk us through a use case? Because even for me, sometimes I have difficulty envisioning this in some concrete respect, right? So what does it look like to give someone an NFT, right? Do you actually see the image it's associated with?

Starting point is 01:04:41 Or is it just something on a hardware wallet that you then later do something with? I'd love to just have you give us an example. Sure. So it's both. So you can display it. And in fact, there's a whole kind of industry that I suspect will grow up. And by the way, one of the interesting things is we know what the use cases are today. What I think is very interesting is we have no idea what the use cases are going to be tomorrow. Just like when the iPhone came out, who knew that the camera and GPS in your pocket would spawn things like Uber or ride sharing and gig economy. I mean, I don't know what later use cases there might be with NFTs. I know that right now there's actually a company, I think it's in

Starting point is 01:05:21 Florida where you sell NFT or digital art frames. So you can certainly display it. But like you said, you could also put it on a hardware wallet. The point is, it's yours. It's like a bear instrument, but it's digital. And I think so much of our lives today are moving from the offline physical world to the online world. Like think about how much time we all spend online now and connected. Doesn't it make sense that goods would also start to move online, right? Like, and you might say, well, what do you mean? And I would tell you, well, you used to have books like the held in your hand, but now there are digital books. You used to have cassette tapes, but now we have Spotify and streaming and stuff. So I think that art and collectibles and other kinds of pieces of content

Starting point is 01:06:06 are going to follow a similar trajectory. But to answer your question about making it more practical, do you follow sports? I don't personally follow a lot of sports, but do you follow sports like NBA? Minimally, but I am aware of, I don't know if this is utilizing the same technology, but a company, I think it's based, might be based in France called Serare or SoRare, I don't know how it's pronounced. Oh, right. Yep. SoRare. Which is like it's limited edition collectibles, like football, meaning football in the European sense, cards and so on. But I don't, let's pretend that I follow sports because a lot of people listening do.

Starting point is 01:06:50 Okay. Yeah. So rare. You gave an example of one. Another one that's in our portfolio that's been in the news a lot lately, so full disclosure, we're investors, is Dapper Labs. And through a partnership Dapper has done with the NBA, they've created this thing called NBA Top Shots. This is kind of like a big going on right now. It's like I said, in the news a lot. A LeBron James video highlight just sold for $70,000. You could buy the Steph Curry three-pointer, you know, if you wanted to spend just over $25,000. Think of it as like a digital sports collectibles. So an NBA top shot basically captures a moment from a big game and it creates this unique

Starting point is 01:07:21 virtual asset that has limited supply. And so it can increase in value. And I think the best way to think of it, Tim, is think of it like how people used to collect rare collectible. And then you can trade them in all kinds of ways that are really neat. So like I say, who knows what is next? I just think that's another example of an NFT that people, including many of your listeners, might have heard about with this NBA Top Shots. And I don't know what sports could be next, but presumably if they're in the NBA, you can imagine there are all kinds of collectibles that one could put on this. You mentioned rightly that it's impossible to predict the range of future applications and use cases for these technologies in the early days, right? I mean, it would be like trying to envision some type of immersive virtual reality when you were first on like AOL dial up and technologies. It would just be so far beyond the scope of imagination for most people,

Starting point is 01:08:34 for all people really on some level, since these things can emerge over time. What do you expect some of the probable or possible developments might be in crypto or blockchain over the next three to five years? And obviously, this isn't couched as advice of any type. Oh, no. Our lawyers won't let us do that, right, Tim? We're not giving any advice. No advice. Informational entertainment purposes only. But as someone who's immersed in this day in, day out, and really at the bleeding edge, right, you're going to see things at the edges first. What are some of the kind of events or developments that you would be unsurprised to see in the next handful of years? Well, I think the two that come to top of mind for me, one is just mobile payments.

Starting point is 01:09:25 And we have a company in our portfolio. So again, full disclosure, I'm not trying to plug, I'm just trying to give you an illustrative example. And it's called Celo. And they've built their own blockchain. And they just launched... That's C-E-L-O? C-E-L-O. Yep. And they just launched an app on top called Valora. And the best way I can describe this is Venmo for the developing world, or basically Venmo for the rest of the world also. It's basically a way to exchange value that's pegged to the dollar. Okay, so it's not pegged to other volatile assets. It uses an innovation called stablecoins, which we can put a pin in if you want and come back to.

Starting point is 01:10:02 So the important thing is it doesn't, the value stays the same of this particular cryptocurrency. And you don't need a bank account to use it because it's a cryptocurrency. It's distributed and decentralized, so it doesn't rely on a central authority. And all you need is a mobile phone. And why this is really powerful is because, you know, for us sitting here in the U.S., you know, most of the U.S. is banked, although there's a lot of people who are underbanked. But for 3 billion people in the world and probably more than that, they're unbanked and they have smartphones. And transferring value is like a kind of basic human need, right? Everyone needs to transfer value. Like no matter who you are, you need to transfer value at some point to get something, right? Maybe it's

Starting point is 01:10:50 to get food or shelter or whatever. You need to transfer value no matter where you are. Well, it's really hard, it turns out, for people who don't have bank accounts to get access to basic financial products and services like money transfer. So what do they have to do? A lot of them, they have to go pay platforms. I'm not going to name names, but certain incumbents. And those incumbents take a lot of fees. And so with like a Venmo for the world, if you can imagine it, on your phone with your cell phone number. In fact, Tim, if you want after the show, I can send you a couple dollars just so you can see how quick and instant it is. But here's the difference, because you might tell me, because people do, well, who cares?

Starting point is 01:11:33 That's just like Venmo. I have that. No, here's the difference. Venmo is a digital IOU. This would be like, it's basically replacing you, Tim, flying from Austin to me here in California and handing me cash. That's the only way we know we have the bearer instrument, right? That no one can ever disrupt or screw with. And this is how something like mobile payments in the crypto context, so like Celo works, is I'm actually, when I send you Celo, I am transferring you the bits and bytes. I'm

Starting point is 01:12:04 transferring you the bearer instrument. And there's no central authority that can freeze your account or shut it down. You actually have basically what's like cash once you get it. And again, here in the US, we have Venmo, we have PayPal, we have bank accounts. I think a lot of people in the world don't have those things. And so we forget often here in our bubble that these products and services are really important to a lot of people in the world and are really societally beneficial. I think of it kind of like long distance. Remember, I think we're around the same age, but like, you remember how you used to have to pay a long distance bill? Like if you called anywhere? Well, now you have FaceTime or VoIP and all these things

Starting point is 01:12:46 disrupted that. So now it's free. And that was really beneficial for consumers. I think that's going to happen also with mobile payments where instead of paying, you know, sometimes 20% in remittance fees. And by the way, 20%, I've actually seen some cross-border payments cost even 30%. And they're also slow. Anyone who's ever sent an international wire knows that takes a really long time. They're also, you know, you have to pay tremendous fees. The poorest and the people who can least afford them bear the brunt of those fees.

Starting point is 01:13:19 In my long-distance example, we were all paying the same long-distance rates. That's not true with the underbanked and unbanked. So I think mobile payments is one area that we're very excited about at Andreessen Horowitz for crypto. And it's not just Celo. There are lots of other projects that are doing that as well. And then the other one I would mention is because I think it's important for content creators. And now we have, you're running your own podcast. But as we have more and more content creators creating content and influencers, one of our portfolio projects is called Rally. And it allows creators and influencers to create and issue their own branded currency. And the unique thing here is that... I know I can already see your Timcoin.

Starting point is 01:14:05 Timcoin. Timmy tokens. Timmy tokens. I want to buy some of those. I'm betting on that one, Tim. It's not investment advice. I'll trade you some Timmy tokens for your nifties. I really hope people are referring to NFTs as nifties. I think they might. but Bradley, this allows TimCoin, it can allow people to connect directly with their fans. And you have a lot of fans and a lot of listeners already, but imagine a content creator just getting started.

Starting point is 01:14:34 This enables fans who discover that content creator early on to share in the economic upside of that content creator in a way that's really cool. And then they're economically incentivized to kind of spread the word, if you will. But the bottom line is it gives this content creator in a way that's really cool. And then they're economically incentivized to kind of spread the word, if you will. But the bottom line is it gives this content creator and the fan the ability to share in the upside instead of just giving a lot of upside to intermediaries. So I think that's another area that we're starting to see and that we're going to continue to see

Starting point is 01:15:01 in the time range you gave me, because you gave me, I think, three to five years. So mobile payments, content creators, that's what I'd say. Thank you. I would love to also ask you to comment on the next three to five years from a different perspective, and that is the government slash regulatory perspective. So these technologies in some cases are poorly understood, not just within government, but certainly across the board. I mean, there's so many misconceptions. There are good uses, well, let's just call them benevolent uses, malevolent uses, and sort of gray area uses, just as there would be with any instrument. of cash, for instance. And I think that the volatility also involved with many aspects of cryptocurrency are both incredibly attractive and alluring, but also incredibly terrifying, not only to those participants who are in the game, so to speak, but those who are the rulemakers.

Starting point is 01:16:01 Yep. And I would love to know what you would not be surprised to see on that front what i would not be surprised to see okay i'm trying to and that's an awkward question but like or what you think might likely happen i'm not asking you to be nostradamus but you've just been both you've been on so many different sides of this that you seem like a great person to ask, like what kind of like announcements would you not be surprised to see where you're like, yep, could have seen that coming. Yep. Well, I think you're going to start seeing more and more countries creating their own versions of their own cryptocurrency pegged to their currency.

Starting point is 01:16:41 So I would not be surprised to see that. I think, you know, look, I think there is some thought on the part of some in government that, you know, oh, crypto, it's the wild west. They don't want any regulations. They don't want any laws. I think that's not true. I think most in the crypto space, what is not wanted is regulatory uncertainty. They don't mind regulation. They just want to know what are the rules so that I know how to follow them because that's much easier than like, we have no idea what rules apply to us and therefore we have to like be, like you just said, Nostradamus.

Starting point is 01:17:13 They just want more regulatory certainty. Tell us what the rules are so we can follow them. And I think the risk is that the US starts to offshore and chill this technology if they continue along the path with kind of regulating by speech. And by the way, it's not even speeches. Sometimes I hear, oh, you know, so-and-so said this, and did you hear what the Treasury Secretary said?

Starting point is 01:17:35 And then you go actually, that's the media reporting the speech, right? It's like you go read the actual speech and it doesn't say that. The problem is that's what crypto entrepreneurs in the U.S. are hearing. And it is, I do think, starting to offshore. We run the risk of offshoring or chilling some of this activity. I mean, if you think about what regulators care about, they care about things like consumer protection. They care about money laundering. They care about national security. And so do I. I mean, I dedicated, you know, 12 years to being in national security and, you know, against money laundering and consumer protection. I devoted a large part of my career to it. But I do think that misses the forest for

Starting point is 01:18:16 the trees. Because to me, Tim, the bigger national security threat, or consumer protection threat, for that matter, is offshoring all of this activity. And let me tell you why. I mean, we already know that China has developed a digital version of its cryptocurrency, and it wants to export that to South America, to Africa. And so that's problematic if we have China starting to control, starting to threaten. And this is going far. I don't mean to suggest that we're going to have the US dollar being upset as the global reserve currency overnight, but you could see play this out a couple of decades, this happens. So that's a terrible national security threat. Also consumer protection. If consumers can't have access to certain products and services

Starting point is 01:19:00 in the U.S. that they want, U.S. consumers, guess what? With an internet connection now and certain kinds of VPNs, they can just go to overseas platforms. And those are not as good, I think, by and large, at providing consumer protection. So I just hate to see this activity kind of just moving offshore. And I think we really need to be careful because I'm starting to see the beginning of it happening already. And I'm trying to, of course, work to do whatever I can to make sure regulators understand how powerful this is and how powerful it is to the economy and to national security and not to lose this opportunity. I mean, can you imagine, Tim, if in the early days of the internet, like we had said, the internet's bad, we shouldn't have this, you know?

Starting point is 01:19:45 And then think of all the entrepreneurs who moved to the US to build kind of companies and services we now have. That was like a huge benefit to the US economy that they came here. And it was a huge benefit that we weren't passing laws or, you know, giving speeches saying that it's bad, but they wanted to stay here and build those companies. Right. Equally paramount to those people who were US nationals who developed the technology, right? If they feel like they can better develop it or humans are humans, let's face it also, if they can more directly profit in building a company outside of the US with technology that for some reason

Starting point is 01:20:26 has been foreboding or hamstrung in such a way to be less financially feasible in the US, then you're going to drive offshoring. We see that certainly with different types of taxation and so on related to royalties and how different countries treat things very differently. And you just see the flow of operations and headquarters of companies. You see that in the United States, certainly. Particularly now, right? With work from home, with COVID, with people realizing, oh, you can have teams remotely now. Yeah. I polled my audience at one point on the question of whether or not a developing country, and I sort of made an trillion bill that I was gifted from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe from, I think, 2008. I can't recall exactly. And the comments were really interesting.

Starting point is 01:21:36 I'm very fortunate to have some really bright followers and also a very global audience. So people spoke to the, there were Venezuelans talking about huge underground crypto economy that already exists in Venezuela, but that, you know, taxes might be paid in the sort of state run currency, but that all, let's just call it peer to peer or other transactions would begin to take place in crypto. It was very interesting to see the range of responses related to that. Do you have any wagers or guesses as to if you had to characterize the type of country or the country that would embrace digital currencies in a very powerful way? Do you have any thoughts on where that might land? Yeah. Do you mean the people or the government? Like, cause I think that's different. I think

Starting point is 01:22:29 the populace. Oh, interesting. Well, the populace, I think it's what you've mentioned. You, you mentioned Venezuela and Zimbabwe and of course any economy where there's been hyperinflation, people are searching for an alternative. I mean, um, I know exactly the, the trillion Brazilian dollar note you're talking about. I mean, I've seen them before. And Venezuela, you know, I've actually seen videos, you can pull this up on YouTube, people literally burn bags of cash because there has no value. And it takes up too much room. I mean, it's just, it's really tragic. So I think any, for the populace, any economy where there's hyperinflation, I think we're going to see that. And then in terms of for governments, I mean, you see some small, I think the smaller, you know, nimble governments will

Starting point is 01:23:12 probably possibly beat us to the punch, us being the US, and I'll come back to that. But, you know, you talk about digitally first governments, like think about Estonia or some of the, you know. Yeah, Estonia, I'm very interested in following. They have to be thinking very deeply and tracking this very closely. Yeah, well, and I think it's also like an industry, you know, like Delaware is like the haven for corporate law in the US.

Starting point is 01:23:34 You know, every like companies at Delaware, you know, what, to me, I wonder like, what jurisdiction is going to attract a lot of, frankly, economic development by being, you know, welcome and open to this. I think that'll be interesting. I'm curious to ask you, your listeners, what surprised you most in the response? You mentioned Venezuela. That's not a surprise. Zimbabwe. Was there anyone, Tim, that stood out that surprised you? Well, I think that, surprise, I mean, I think the response that came in multiple times that I wanted to reflect on, and I should say also, I am not by any stretch of the imagination, I do not consider myself a cryptocurrency nor blockchain expert in any respect. I mean, that would just be laughable if I were to sit down at a group dinner with anyone

Starting point is 01:24:25 who is actually on the computer side of this, who understands these things in detail, like a Vitalik or there's a long, long list, right? Now that having been said, I am a student of currency and the concept of money, right? Just the origins of money. I remember reading a book called, I believe it was The Biography of a Dollar, which was written a long time ago. And then I found really, really to be a helpful one-on-one education on the emergence of money and the decoupling or unpegging of the US dollar from the gold standard and so on. The response that came up multiple times that I thought was worth contemplating on some level was in effect, Tim, you're asking the wrong question. And so I'm looking at one here,

Starting point is 01:25:13 respectfully, I think that perhaps your question is off point. Reserve currencies held by central banks or other monetary authorities as part of Forex reserves. The whole point of Bitcoin is to eliminate the central bank, eliminate fractional reserve banking, eliminate reserves altogether to remove and also the separation of, as you said, the populist use of capital and currency from state-mandated policies around money and also control of supply of money. And the idea, I think, that those could be very different things is sort of, to me, still a pretty novel idea because we're like, okay, we all use dollars in the US and I just paid for lunch with cash that I got out of an ATM, which is very old fashioned.

Starting point is 01:26:14 Did you really? I know, I know. And very old fashioned and kind of silly also in the days of COVID, but had some cash. And so the idea that what the government talks about as money and the money I use day to day for my common transactions being different is still pretty unusual an idea to me. And that's as someone who spends a reasonable amount of time thinking about cryptocurrency. Right. Well, you probably have though, like, I mean, at some level, certain companies become so omnipresent. Like for me, it's Amazon, for example, you know, and they give you kind of credit and it's not Amazon dollars, but it's, you know, you never

Starting point is 01:26:55 get the credit back on your credit card and you think, who cares? It's on the Amazon platform. I'm going to use that currency again. I mean, is that a currency? I think that's interesting. I think just going back to your question is, you know, one thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is, will the U.S. government kind of embrace some of the properties of cryptocurrency and create a U.S. dollar that is a cryptocurrency? And I think, you know, if you hear Jerome Powell or others talk about it, I think they say they're several years away. And I just wonder if that is too late. I think it is, frankly.

Starting point is 01:27:30 And one thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is you could imagine a private cryptocurrency that's pegged to the dollar. You could also imagine a public cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar. One of the things that the U.S. did well, I think, in the days of the internet, and the internet, the U.S. government had a head start because they helped develop it. They're much more behind on crypto, I think. One thing I spend time thinking about is, would there ever be some kind of private-public partnership? You know, if they said, okay, wow, China's really developed this, or, you know, maybe the European Central Bank, or whatever, name your central bank of choice. We've really got to get with this. And we have some really smart people in the private sector and private companies. And

Starting point is 01:28:10 these problems of distributed computing are hard problems to solve. I mean, I'm on the board, as you might know, of Diem. I know Facebook and many other council members have devoted legions of top engineers to kind of building that blockchain. It's not easy. And so do we think we have that already resident at, you know, the Fed or something? I really think the one idea is to have a private public partnership. But then as you point out, there are other decentralized systems that are working already, like Bitcoin. I mean, Bitcoin is volatile, but now you also have stable coins and you have wrapped Bitcoin. I don't want to talk too much because like you said, crypto is like religion at some point. You have like maximalists. I'm a crypto maximalist. I'm not a particular asset maximalist. What is going to have a good go-to-market first? And I think fundamentally, what's going to start getting used first and early adopted? Because, and obviously already Bitcoin is the grandfather at being developed in 2008,

Starting point is 01:29:12 but who will get enough market share earliest? Because there's real network effects, right? And so if the US government develops a digital crypto dollar in, you know, whatever, I'm making up a year here, 2028, has it already been overtaken? That's some of what I think about. It's a serious question, a huge opportunity, and a gigantic threat from a geopolitical perspective, right? I mean, it seems kind of like hard to overstate how big that is in the game of risk that is played around the globe. It's just gigantic. Another question that comes to my mind, I don't have an answer to this, but is what factors or

Starting point is 01:29:56 events would lead to a decrease in Bitcoin volatility to the extent that larger institutional investors like pension funds and endow or gold-like equivalent begin to get shifted to Bitcoin because it doesn't take percentage-wise a very large shift to start to have a tremendous impact on Bitcoin. I just don't know what those events are. I don't know if you have any thoughts. Yeah. Well, my first thought when you said 20% shift, I thought that's child's play, Tim. 20% volatility is nothing. Yeah. I was actually thinking about some of the recent events with hedge funds and GME and all that. Oh, right, right, right. Of course. Well, I think, look, here's what I think about Bitcoin. I think it's still early days. Although it was 2008, it's been around since 2008. It is still early days. And I think we're going to see adoption in waves. And again, this is not a price prediction, no investment advice,

Starting point is 01:31:24 et cetera, et cetera. I know I'll have all those disclosures, but I do think that we'll see waves of it. And we're still in the early days, but you are starting to see, I mean, you saw, I'm sure, Elon Musk's tweet about, or I guess it wasn't his tweet, but it was the S1, the Tesla file that says they're putting some of their treasury into Bitcoin. And it's not just that, right? Microstrategy. And there are a couple other companies I know that are looking at that. And I think those are kind of early examples of companies putting small portions of treasury into it. And I think we'll see another wave, I suspect, where more and more companies do that down the road. I don't know when that would be.

Starting point is 01:32:00 You know, we could even see at some point a wave where certain governments might put a small fraction. I'm not talking about a lot. I'm talking about a very small fraction. You pointed out just like they do with gold. And so I think, yes, that would obviously, one would think offset volatility, but who knows? As you know, Bitcoin has been a hugely volatile asset, you know, which is why we have stable coins. And I'm not knocking Bitcoin at all. I'm obviously a fan of Bitcoin. And we've disclosed before we have a sizable portion of our fund in Bitcoin. So we are Bitcoin fans. But I would just be completely speculating if I said I would know what would happen to the volatility. I think the best thing I could say would be that I think we are in waves and we will continue to see waves of, you know, we see some early adopters of institutions now, some early adopters of companies. And I think in the next wave, we'll see more.

Starting point is 01:32:56 And then there will be another wave. So let's come back to you. And I know we have a little bit of time left, hopefully. And I'm looking at a bullet here in front of me that I would like to explore. And here's how it reads, or paraphrasing it. You've spent lots of time saying no to things that your peers thought were must-do to pursue other paths people around you thought were the wrong move. What of those was actually the most challenging? I want to try to humanize you a little bit for folks, because I think that it's like Wonder Woman and the bracelets with the kiss and the old carry with the crypto ninja skills. I sort of paint a picture of one of those decisions if it exists

Starting point is 01:33:48 i don't i'm not asking for fiction here but if you have said no to a lot of things that people thought you should do maybe even insisted that you needed to do to take the path less traveled has there been an example where you're like where it was difficult or you did it and you're like where it was difficult or where you did it and you're like god that this might be a terrible fucking mistake many times many times um i don't only have one example of that i i sadly or happily have several um let me think what comes top of mind i mean i'll tell you one from personal because you said you want to humanize me which which I appreciate. Thank you. You're welcome. You know, there was a time, and this is actually a personal thing. I have other professional ones, which we can talk about if you want. But, well, I actually have one top of mind professional one.

Starting point is 01:34:34 Okay. Personal one. You know, I was engaged many, many years ago. I was engaged to someone. And, you know, I don't think he was excited to be engaged to me, and I don't think I was very excited to be engaged to him. And fortunately, we mutually made the decision that we were not going to get married. It was pretty early on in the engagement, but we had been living together, and it felt like the right thing to do on paper. You know, everyone around you is saying, oh, how perfect. But I think both of us in our heart of hearts knew that would be a bad

Starting point is 01:35:05 mistake. And so telling our families and friends that, there's a sense of almost shame. It was embarrassing. But we both realized it wasn't right for either of us. And so that felt a bit like a failure at the time. Not a bit. It felt like a big failure at the time. And oh, by the way, talk about humanizing me. I had to be a bridesmaid in one of my best college friends' weddings about a month and a half after that happened. And I just remember being there and just it was like kind of really not a great feeling, right? My own wedding's been called off.

Starting point is 01:35:38 And again, it was mutual. But I actually took the opportunity to move back to California. This was when I was in D.C. I moved back to California. And, you know, right after I moved here, I actually met my future husband, like, super serendipitously. And we, this month, have our 10-year wedding anniversary. And so, you know, that was something that felt like, wow. And even in the move here, I i was like wow i maybe this was the

Starting point is 01:36:05 wrong call you know maybe i'm gonna just like end up alone forever which would have been okay too but you do question it that's a personal one yes that maybe we should scratch that one no that that checks the box that's great i uh i mean you're welcome to scratch it but i think this is this is paints a fuller picture right we're adding we're adding some some earth tones and adding adding a little sun a sunrise to the painting i think it's good well there's a professional one too there are a couple yeah um if you want if you want me to tell you about that i mean of course of course obviously you know i had walked away from different opportunities in law like along the way but i was still always within the realm of law right i was oh should i go be at this law firm Cravath where I have an offer? No,

Starting point is 01:36:48 I'm going to pursue my passion and go to DC and be a prosecutor. And, you know, and I also had been doing a clerkship on the Ninth Circuit when I was told, if you want to stay another year, maybe it would increase your chances to go to the Supreme Court, which for a lawyer and a young postgraduate law student was like a big deal. And I said, you know, it's not, no, it's not worth it to me. Like I want to do other things in life. I don't want to do that for another year. You know, people thought that was a mistake and maybe I did at the time too. By the way, I ended up clerking on the Supreme Court anyway, but I didn't know it at the time. And then I think the most profound one, though, was I really kind of left entirely a career where I had, you know, in the law done things that I had really invested a lot of myself and time into, whether it was being a prosecutor in the Justice Department, clerking on Supreme Court.

Starting point is 01:37:36 You know, I had firmly kind of established my legal career and I completely left that and pivoted. And, you know, when I was doing that, it was actually to join the board of Coinbase. And when I did that, I remember people around me, particularly those of my friends who were lawyers or from DC were like, what are you doing? Like, are you, you could go be a partner in this or that firm and you're going to join the board of a crypto company. I mean, you have liability and crypto and that's so crazy. You know, I didn't really look back after I joined. I just jumped in and did it. But I do feel like a lot of people have told me in my life, you know, this is your one shot. Like you can't do that because this is better for your career. And I've

Starting point is 01:38:18 definitely been someone who cares, although it might not sound like it from our conversation because we've talked mostly professional stuff. I care very much about living along the way. And, you know, I grew up overseas. One of my great passions is spending time in other cultures and with other people and with my family and friends. And I don't really want to sacrifice that just for work. Let's, we're going to, we're going to talk about two, at least two aspects of that. And one is the coin-based decision. So I would like to sort of turn this into a movie for a second. And I would love to hear you tell the story of making that decision. Because I can't imagine you walked in, you met them, you're like, sweet. Yeah, I'm going to totally pivot. And that's that. And you walked out and I made a phone call and that

Starting point is 01:39:06 was it. I doubt it unfolded that way. So please, please tell us the story of how you made that decision. Not at all. Actually, I remember when I first met Brian Armstrong, who's the founder of Coinbase. And I won't talk much about Coinbase because that company is now in a quiet period, as you know. So I won't talk about the company, but I can certainly talk about the circumstances of my affiliating with the company. And I remember meeting Brian and by the way, Fred Ursham, who I don't know if you've met him, but Yeah, very, very, very, very smart guy. Yeah. And Brian. And I remember telling Brian, you know, he was telling me about Coinbase and I said, oh, I know about Coinbase, Brian, you know, I've been to your office. And he said, this was by the

Starting point is 01:39:44 way, when I was still in the government, he said, what? And I said, oh, I know about Coinbase, Brian. You know, I've been to your office. And he said, this was, by the way, when I was still in the government. He said, what? And I said, oh, yeah, I've been with the FBI to your office before. You didn't know that? He's like, no, I didn't know that. It was a friendly visit. It was a friendly visit. It was an informational gathering visit.

Starting point is 01:39:57 Coinbase hadn't done anything wrong. It was just, you know, part of that. I talked about it. You're laughing, but it's genuine. It was part of that two-way. That is a great way to get undivided attention. Oh, it was a friendly visit by the FBI. Oh, well, in that case, I'm totally relaxed.

Starting point is 01:40:17 Yeah. Well, this was fortunately for Brian. It had happened years before, right? Right, right, right. Anyhow, I said, Brian, I already know about Coinbase. In fact, you know, I told you about some of the bridge building we were doing and some of the summits we were putting together, Coinbase and not Brian himself, but like someone from Coinbase, just like many early crypto players would come to those, you know, numerous crypto representatives,

Starting point is 01:40:42 call them from the industry would come and meet with some of the government folks. I won't say who because I don't know if I have their permission, but the bottom line is a lot of different folks in the crypto industry. It wasn't just Coinbase. So I kind of knew the company already through that work while I was at the government, but I definitely never thought I would be working in the crypto industry or in venture capital, by the way. I guess I thought I would probably have gone to be a judge or a partner in a firm, or I didn't honestly know what I would do, but something in law, right? And remember when I joined the crypto industry, it wasn't the cool or fashionable thing to do. It was like, I think I joined in what we call the crypto winter. And people thought I was just really crazy that I was giving all this, you know, law stuff up. But back to the story of Brian, he, you know, he said, you know, I really

Starting point is 01:41:32 think that you ought to consider partnering with us somehow. And I said, well, you know, I work in the government, so I can't partner with you. Which what he meant is, do you want to come and work here? And I thought, you know, that's a really interesting idea. I had never thought about working full-time for a crypto company, believe it or not. And instead, I said, you know, I really want to work with a few different companies. You know, I've never been in tech and I would like to work with a few different companies. And Brian, and I'm forever grateful he had this kind of innovative thinking, said, well, then why don't you join our board of directors? Which is, again, something I'd never thought of. And I did jump at that chance. Now, it was a little bit interesting timing because I was actually under consideration for some high-level government posts at the time, which I won't go into, other than to say that I had to withdraw from those in order to serve on the Coinbase board. And so to serve, just for my clarification, to serve on the board, right? Serving on the board

Starting point is 01:42:32 consumes time and energy, but it's not a full-time job. So the, but you to be able to take that board position would have to sort of recuse yourself from government employment. Is that how it works? Separation of church and state? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I had already actually, by that point, I had left the government, just to clarify, I had already left the government when I was having this conversation with Brian, but I was thinking of going back in as a high-level appointee. And in fact, I was already going through an FBI background check and interviewing with all kinds of senatorial committees. And so I was already out of the government,

Starting point is 01:43:13 but I could not go back into the government as a political appointee or otherwise or a judge and also be on the Coinbase board, of course. Like you said, strict separation of church and state, which is definitely, we want to keep it that way. So when I took that Coinbase board, of course. Like you said, strict separation of church and state, which is definitely, we want to keep it that way. So when I took that Coinbase board, I was really saying goodbye, I think, to a career in the government. And I did make that decision. I did make it actually pretty quickly by the time I made it, which is something I do. I can obsess and waste a lot of mental energy on small little decisions, Tim, that aren't that consequential, which is a big weakness of mine. But on big, huge life decisions, I'm pretty quick and I made it and there it is, over four years later, I'm still on that board.

Starting point is 01:43:58 What was it that made it a fast yes and not a fast no? Wow, that's a great question. I think in life, someone told me this once, and I can't remember who, but it has always stuck with me. And they told me this a long time ago. In life, there is either hell yes or there's no. And if it's not hell yes, it's no. Is that a cliche thing? I had never heard that. No, that's actually something I believe that was started by Derek Sivers. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, entrepreneur who founded a company called CD Baby. And one of his rules in his life is hell yes or no.

Starting point is 01:44:36 Yeah. And it felt like hell yes. I hope that was the right decision. I think it was. And from there... Again, I'm not speculating. I think you'll do, I think that's going to prove to be a pretty good decision possibly, uh, on a bunch of levels. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been certainly, you know, I really, one of the things I've always done is follow my passion, follow my gut and then do stuff that interests me. And by that measure, a hundred percent, it was the right decision. And, um right decision. And it's also given me a great flexibility now. And then, by the way, that's how I met Mark and Ben. You mentioned they've been on your podcast.

Starting point is 01:45:11 I actually met Mark and Ben, the founders of my firm now, where I'm now working full-time, through my work on the Coinbase board. So it was one decision, but then it led to other decisions. So who knows how that's changed my career trajectory. That's it. I wanted to explore. The other is family or specifically kids. And the reason I bring up kids, so we're not going to talk, we can talk about your family, certainly, but I want to talk about the family

Starting point is 01:45:53 of one of our mutual friends, her girls, who one of which, one of whom, the grammarians out there will teach me which way it is, is I think 10 or younger younger who wanted to be an actress and now wants to be a prosecutor thanks to you and she the mother has told me that she would trade everything that she has for the influence that you have had on her girls, and girl in this case, and that you are just remarkable with children and that they gravitate to you. Why is that? God. I don't know. Can you have a talk with my own kids? Because they don't

Starting point is 01:46:41 gravitate toward me. They tune me out, Tim. I thought crypto would be cool to them, but mom is not cool. So if you want to have a word with them, that would be appreciated. God, I'm not going to be of any help. I'm not a child whisperer to my own kids. I think one of the reasons is I grew up with a mom who always told me, you can do, of course you can do anything you set your mind to. Of course you can. And, you know, I don't know that that was true, but the fact is I believed her. And I thought, well, she says it is. It's my mom. And she, you know, as a young girl or a young woman,

Starting point is 01:47:19 of course you believe what your mom tells you, at least to a certain age. And I think there's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that someone was believing in you like that, that yeah, you could do anything you set your mind to. It might take small little chunks, which we can talk about. Like I set goals, but then I, you know, if they're audacious, I'm not going to achieve them just easily, right? You break them down into small bite-sized chunks. But I think with kids, and I've seen this just even in teaching, you know, I've taught over the years and I have several students,

Starting point is 01:47:48 I've seen this with young people and with even younger kids, is that really making them feel like they could do anything and that really what they need to do is find what they're passionate about. And that is exciting and that makes you really want to work hard. But also, I've always thought, as I said, you really want to live along the way and find. And that's why I think it's so important to find your kind of, sounds cliche, but your calling in life for work. And I think when I talk about kind of stories or jobs, I just must have, you know, I did it out of a passion or a mission or, you know, some purpose. And I would hope that comes through. It's funny you say that it was a girl because the amazing thing about being a parent, and I know just from listening to your

Starting point is 01:48:35 podcast, you know, in the past that you've said you don't have, you don't yet have children. But the amazing thing about being a parent is that every once in a while, they just say stuff that completely bowls you over. And someone asked my son, who's in elementary school, someone asked my son a couple of years ago, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And Tim, he said, well, it's kind of crazy because what I want to be is a girl's job. And he said, well, what's that? And he said, what's that and he said either an fbi agent or a prosecutor that's amazing wow and i don't know if it was just the kind of story and it's not just the stories it's just like i think he or other kids i hope see that i've been passionate about my work and it's you know

Starting point is 01:49:22 but as you know from this podcast and your listeners now, you have to find balance in life and it can't be all work and no play, but better when it's work that you actually really enjoy and that feels fun. I would love to know how being passionate manifests itself. Like what is the passion that your son observes? How does he see or feel your passion that then leads him to gravitate or even say like FBI agent, right? Or this other friend's daughter who's now saying prosecutor, what is it that they feel in you? Because I can guarantee you, there are plenty of investors I know who, if they sat at a dinner and a kid was present, the kid would tune them out completely, would have,

Starting point is 01:50:05 if anything, the desire to do whatever that person, the opposite of whatever that person does. It would not resonate. The person nor the content would resonate at all. And so I'm wondering what it is that sort of enchants these kids in a sense, right? What is the passion that gets, how does it manifest? Well, one thing I learned, and I think this is not really from being a prosecutor. I think this just dates back to how I grew up, which I don't know if you know this,

Starting point is 01:50:37 but I grew up moving kind of every couple years at most, like the longest I stayed anywhere, I think was three years. And from places ranging from, you know, Utah to Texas to then like Cairo, Egypt and overseas in Europe and the Middle East and Africa. And what that meant was like, I was always the new kid in school and you had to make kind of fast friends if you wanted to have any. And you had to really adapt to your surroundings and find some kind of common ground that you could connect with people about, right? I mean, the people that you're meeting in, you know, Utah are very different than the people you're meeting in Zamalek or downtown Cairo, as you might imagine.

Starting point is 01:51:16 Particularly when you're a young person, like the young friends you're making, they have different interests. And so I think one thing is just I'm used to being around people. And that's also true, by the way, from prosecuting and being around witnesses and confidential human sources and informants and then switching to venture and being around tech folks and crypto people too. They're their own class. So I'm just used to being around a really wide variety of very different people and wanting to find a way that connects with those people because I want to have relationships with fundamentally each one of those kind of

Starting point is 01:51:50 communities I just described or constituents that I just described. And of course, children are part of that, right? And you've got to find some common ground and things that interest them. And it's not about creating a persona or being phony. It's about being completely authentic, but in a way they can relate to, you know? And it's also about, I think, my ability to explain stuff. Maybe your listeners will disagree. Maybe I haven't explained anything clearly on this podcast, Tim. But like explaining things clearly in a way people can understand. And what I mean by that is, you know, when I had to go in front of juries, we had to

Starting point is 01:52:24 talk about all kinds of complicated concepts. But you need to break them down in a way that 12 different people on that jury can all get, no matter their background, no matter their education, no matter their training, no matter what field they're in. And I think the same is true with kids. You know, what are they going, can you explain things in a way that teaches them anything, in a way that excites them? I think if the answer there is yes, then the rest comes a little, I won't say it's natural, but it's much easier for them to be interested in the conversation if you can make it on a level they understand. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Makes me think about one of my favorite books, surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman, about the physicist Richard Feynman. He talks a lot about his father who was incredibly gifted in that respect. And of course, Richard Feynman later went on to become famous for many things, including his ability to reduce complexity in the world of physics to a simple demonstration, perhaps with an apple and a

Starting point is 01:53:26 pencil in front of a class. And just maybe one or two last questions for you for this round. Sure. And the next one, I'll make book-related since I mentioned a book. Oh, okay. Are there any particular books that stand out in your mind or come to mind that you have reread many times or reread at all or gifted often to other people? Not that I've reread many times. I guess it's hard to answer the question because I kind of think of it as through the filters of life experience. Like, where were you in your life with the time you read that book, right? Like,

Starting point is 01:54:04 where were you at that moment? Have you you read that book, right? Like, where were you at that moment? Have you seen that TED Talk, by the way, the remembering self versus the experiencing self? It's really good. I haven't, but I imagine there's quite a difference between the two. Yeah, well, and this is kind of what I'm getting at is like, was it the book that was so good? Or was it like the surroundings where you were when you read it? Or was it, you know, the stage in your life? It was like, oh my God, I'm feeling the most fit I've ever felt and I feel great. So it's viewed through

Starting point is 01:54:28 the lens of that. But I would say with all those caveats, and I haven't read it many times, but a couple that come to mind, one is Memoirs of a Geisha. I loved that book. I don't know if you've read it. I always found it fascinating. I haven't read it, but I know a lot about it. The first few drafts were completed and thrown out by the author who started afresh until he got the version that you read, which is just mind-boggling to imagine. Yeah, Memories of a Geisha. I never knew that, but the reason I loved it so much is I read that book, and I can't believe it was written by a man because you are convinced as you're reading it, it's written by the geisha.

Starting point is 01:55:10 Why I just have such a great memory of reading that book is I read it while I was studying overseas in a language school and I was studying by myself. And so I'd go to dinner every night alone and, you know, you feel awkward at the restaurant by yourself or, you know, you could. And so I would always have a book with me. And I remember reading that memoirs of a Geisha book while I was learning the language. So that stands out. But the other one that I really love is Palace Walk, which is, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's written by a Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz.

Starting point is 01:55:34 And it's set in the turn of the century, or maybe it's 1920s Cairo, Egypt. And it just reminds me of Cairo, which is a place I kind of grew up as a kid. And so a lot of powerful memories of the city. Obviously, it was set in a different stage, time frame, but that's one that I love. Palace Walk, and that's fiction? Yeah, it's fiction by Naguib Mahfouz, who I think was the first Arab Nobel laureate. He's certainly a Nobel laureate. So those are some. Obviously, there are a lot related to my old kinds of work, which I love, even though I shouldn't. But it was

Starting point is 01:56:10 like The Killing of Pablo Escobar, or The Hunting of Pablo Escobar, I think it's called. That's by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down. Yeah. Under and Alone is a good read, by the way, Tim, if you want some more true crime. Under and Alone, what's that about? Yeah, it's a bestselling New York Times book. It's actually, remember I told you about the Hells Angels Mongols case I did? Well, the agent went deep cover for three years, and there's a lot of quandaries they confront when they're deep cover, right? Living among these criminal enterprises, they have to fit in. So like, what happens when they're asked to violate the law? And they can happens when they're asked to violate

Starting point is 01:56:45 the law and they can't because they're federal agents you know and how do they pass that lie detector test and it's the story of one agent's journey of living undercover deep cover um a double life really and rising up to the top of that gang and that's a true story so it's interesting wow god that just seems it's how i'll check it out. I mean, it just seems like such an easy way to identify who is a possible plant, right? You just ask everyone to do X, Y, or Z, and then whoever doesn't do it, you're like, all right, well, just to be on the safe side, we're going to take care of you. Well, they give lie detector tests. And that came out during that trial I did is how did you pass the lie detector test? And the jurors were on the edge of their seats to figure out how on earth the agent that we had embedded passed this lie detector test

Starting point is 01:57:35 because they do administer them. So that's a good read. And actually, I have gifted that. I have gifted that book. It's a quick beach read. Or if you're not a beach guy, it's a quick read, whatever you might do with your leisure time. It's a quick tequila on the yard read. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:57:53 Under and Alone. Amazing. Well, Katie, it's been so fun to spend time with you, Katie Hahn, at Katie underscore Hahn on Twitter. And you're doing a lot of exciting things and uh have many new chapters ahead of you i'm sure uh is there anything you would like to talk about or any comments you'd like to make questions you'd like to post things you'd like to ask of my audience anything at all that you'd like to add before we bring this round one to a close? I mean, I guess the only thing I would ask your audience is just take a moment to explore crypto. It's not really a plug for an industry I'm involved with. That's not why I'm saying it.

Starting point is 01:58:35 It's just mostly because there's so much written about the headlines. And I'd love to encourage your listeners to just explore a little bit more and realize it's really not all just about one asset or speculation. There's a lot of exciting things happening in this space. And the ask I would have of them is also if they're not, and I know there are a lot of techies and people very sophisticated in technology and technical among your listeners, Tim. But if they're not, not to get intimidated by it or think they can't figure it out. I had recently a female CEO who has in times 100 most influential people. I won't say her name, but I will say very successful across multiple dimensions, personally, professionally. And she told me, I need a PhD to figure this stuff out. And I just can't. So I'm just not going to do it. And I told her, look, there is no PhD to be had in crypto. And if there were, it would be outdated the year after it was granted because the space changes so fast. So just like don't get, don't let yourself, intimidated is not the right word, but don't let yourself just think, oh, it's too complex. I don't want to go dive deep in it. You don't need to dive deep in it. Just go learn

Starting point is 01:59:45 something about it that you didn't know. And I'd just ask that of your listeners. How would you suggest, because there are some great resources, there are a lot of terrible resources, there are a lot of scams masquerading or fly-by-night operations masquerading as how-to content sources. How would you suggest or how might you suggest someone learn more as you're describing? I mean, we have up on our website, which is, I believe it's a16z.com. We have what we have called a crypto cannon. And even that is what I'm saying, proof's in the pudding is out of date already because we posted it, I don't know when. And now, you know, there's all this stuff that's changed in the space. So we need to go update it. But we do have this Crypto Cannon up that you

Starting point is 02:00:29 can learn more on our website. I also think just getting a few folks who know what they're talking about in the space and following their writings on things like Medium. I mean, one other thing is, and I wasn't intending to plug a portfolio company here, but Clubhouse, you might have heard, which is an Andreessen Horowitz investment. I've noticed that on Clubhouse, there are a number of sessions online every day happening on crypto. And it's a great way to just listen in while you're doing something like, I don't know, doing the laundry or you're drying your hair or you're doing something else that you don't need to be fully present in that experience. Hop on and put your AirPods in and listen because I keep seeing all

Starting point is 02:01:05 these sessions on, are we going to call them Tim nifties on NFTs, um, on, on DeFi, by the way, we didn't even talk about DeFi, but on DeFi, it's like daily, there's daily sessions on all of these things. And you can just listen in and hear what people are talking about. And it's kind of a great way to separate like wheat from the Jaff. I know it's, I think Clubhouse is still invite only, but I, I, I think that will soon change. And, um, I know a number of your listeners are probably already on it, but our website has the Crypto Cannon. Um, and then there, I've just seen a number of great medium posts, honestly. Um, our, by the way, our, our Canon, our Crypto Cannon pulls not, not just us. I just us i mean we pull um some of the people we've already talked about on here their writings on so it's not just andreessen horwitz and it's

Starting point is 02:01:51 not even just necessarily our portfolio companies we kind of search for the content and put it on our website ourselves as well yeah you guys uh a16z have put together a lot of really good content we'll link to those in the show notes for people at tim.blog.com. You'll be able to find it really easily. We'll link over to that. I hope that nifties, if they're not already called nifties, become nifties. I'd be very excited about that. We'll call them that. Yeah, nifties. For all your future keynotes, nifties. And there are also, as you mentioned, there are some very, at least I would consider, very bright people who make an effort to explain some of the core concepts within blockchain and certainly comment on Bitcoin. Naval Ravikant, our mutual friend, is one of them. He has interviewed on my podcast and this podcast, Nick Szabo, S-Z-A-B-O, also incredibly, incredibly sharp. And that episode is also a

Starting point is 02:02:56 decent place to start. It's a great place to start. Actually, can I tell you, that episode was the first episode I ever listened to and it was a while ago that that's an old episode if i remember it was a few years a few years ago yeah well actually that's how i learned about smart contracts and i remember nick talking about a vending machine and i just thought now i can visualize a vending machine okay that makes sense to me um so nival that episode is a must listen. Thanks for listening. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. We had a blast. That was a few years ago. And the intent of that episode was to have a conversation that would be evergreen, that would have some lasting power.

Starting point is 02:03:36 Because like you said, if you're covering the latest and greatest developments, you're going to be obsolesced very quickly. I mean, within weeks or months, you will probably have said something that needs revision. But we really started with basic, the fundamental concepts, smart contracts, what a ledger might look like, what analogies are helpful, currency itself. Forget about cryptocurrency, discussing currency and what that represents, helpful, currency itself, forget about cryptocurrency, discussing currency and what that represents, how it's evolved, and different applications. So I'll put that in the show notes for folks as well. Is there anything else, Katie, that you'd like to say or ask or

Starting point is 02:04:17 point people towards before we adjourn? No. Thank you so much, Tim, for having me on. This has been great. And thanks to your listeners. Yeah. I really appreciate you taking all the time. I know you have a lot on your plate and certainly you have a lot of exciting things going on. So I appreciate you carving the space in your schedule to do this. And to everyone listening, all the resources, everything that was mentioned from the very beginning all the way to Palace Walk and the Nick Szabo-Navalrovka episode we'll link to in the show notes. Also point to the Andreessen Horowitz resources at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. You can just search Katie, K-A-T-I-E, and this episode will pop right up. And until next

Starting point is 02:05:02 time, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend and five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

Starting point is 02:05:47 And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, which is part of my morning routine,

Starting point is 02:06:12 also part of my afternoon routine. Routine saves me. So there are a number of ways that I use Four Sigmatic. In the mornings, I regularly start with their mushroom coffee instead of regular coffee. And it doesn't taste like mushroom. Let me explain this. First of all, zero sugar, zero calories, half the caffeine of regular coffee. It's easy on my stomach, tastes amazing, and all you have to do is add hot water. I use travel packets. I've been to probably a dozen countries with various products from Four Sigmatic, and their mushroom coffee is top of the list. That's number one. I travel with it. I recommend it. I give it to my employees. I give it to house guests. So if you're one of the 60% of Americans or more who drink coffee daily,

Starting point is 02:07:00 consider switching it up. This stuff is amazing. That's part one. That is the cognitive enhancement side, easy on the system side, energizing side. The next is actually their chaga tea, which tastes delicious. It is decaf, completely decaf, and some may recognize chaga. It is nicknamed the king of the mushrooms. It is excellent for immune system support. So needless to say, I'm focused on that right now myself. And so I will often have that in the afternoons. They make all sorts of different mushroom blends. If you are doing exercises, I am on a daily basis to keep myself sane.

Starting point is 02:07:39 Cordyceps, excellent for endurance. They have a whole slew of options that you can check out. Every single batch is third-party lab tested for heavy metals, allergens, all the bad stuff to make sure that what gets into your hands is what you want to put in your mouth. And they always offer a 100% money-back guarantee. So you can try it risk-free. Why not? I've worked out an exclusive offer with Four Sigmatic on their best-selling Lion's Mane coffee. I literally have a mug full of it in front of me right now. And this is just for you, my dear podcast listeners. Receive up to 39% off. I don't know how we arrived at 39%, but 39% off. It's a lot. Their best-selling

Starting point is 02:08:15 Lion's Mane coffee bundles. To claim this deal, you must go to foursigmatic.com slash Tim. This offer is only for you and is not available on their regular website. Go to foursigmatic.com to get yourself some awesome and delicious mushroom coffee. Full discount is applied at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My God, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep,

Starting point is 02:08:50 and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades, tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseum, but now I am falling asleep in record time faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by 8Sleep.

Starting point is 02:09:12 It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced but most user-friendly solution on the market. I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and 8sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So I used it and here we are. Add the Pod Pro cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side,

Starting point is 02:10:00 which is exactly what we're doing. Now for me, and for many people, the result, eight sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster, reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40% and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery. So you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And now my dear listeners, that's you guys. You can get $250 off of the Pod Pro cover. That's a lot. Simply go to 8sleep.com slash Tim or use code Tim. That's 8, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com slash Tim, or use coupon code Tim, T-I-M, 8sleep.com slash Tim for $200 off your Pod Pro cover.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #499: Katie Haun on the Dark Web, Gangs, Investigating Bitcoin, and The New Magic of "Nifties" (NFTs)

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #499: Katie Haun on the Dark Web, Gangs, Investigating Bitcoin, and The New Magic of "Nifties" (NFTs)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.