The Future of Crypto | Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase | Ep. 21

1. 0:00 – 0:26

   Intro

   1. BABrian Armstrong0:00

      people shouldn't, like, seek out a specific moment to do something super contrarian. But if you're in a position of leadership, it will care-- occasionally become necessary for you to do something really difficult, which will piss off some large group of people, but it's the right thing to do-

   2. JAJack Altman0:14

      Yeah

   3. BABrian Armstrong0:14

      ... for the company. And so these moments present themselves to you, and, and when I, when I did it, I had no idea I would be talking about it five years later. [upbeat music]

   4. JAJack Altman0:21

      Brian, thank you so much for doing this with me. I am extremely excited for this.

   5. BABrian Armstrong0:25

      Yeah, thanks for having

2. 0:26 – 4:20

   Becoming the everything chain

   1. BABrian Armstrong0:26

      me.

   2. JAJack Altman0:26

      So last week, you posted on X that Coinbase is becoming the everything exchange, and you basically said all assets are basically inevitably going to be on chain. I want to start by asking, why is that inevitable?

   3. BABrian Armstrong0:38

      Well, the short answer is that it's faster, cheaper, and more global, right? And so if you just zoom out, I mean, crypto, we think of as a technology to update the financial system broadly. It's happening with payments, it's happening with trading, it's happening with borrowing and lending, uh, even some non-financial use cases, which we can talk about later if you want. But we do think trading is all going to come on chain, all these different asset classes. And, you know, I'll give you a couple examples. Like, today, people have been trading crypto for a long time. Um, what if we could trade stocks that were tokenized and brought on chain? Well, that would allow you to-- anybody in any country of the world to have access to these US assets and securities, which there's high demand for, but only usually, like, rich people in some of these countries, like in Argentina, to get a US brokerage account or something, you have to be kind of wealthy. So it sort of democratizes access to, from international point of view. Um, it also allows twenty-four-seven trading, which, you know, the traditional financial system has been slowly getting there, but they haven't gotten all the way there. Uh, fractions of shares. Um, you can launch new types of order books, like there's these perpetual futures order books, which are very popular in crypto, but you could bring that to traditional securities. And I think eventually you'll see even more novel stuff that we haven't really explored yet. But the way that voting happens and governance, um, can all happen on chain, you know, you could even create novel types of structures where, like, let's say, you only want long-term holders of your stock to be voters, so you don't have someone buy, buy a few shares and turn into an activist or something. You could say, "All right, you need to have held these shares for more than a year to actually vote in the next governance vote," or something like that, to incentivise long-term holders. So yeah, it's... Crypto can make all these things more efficient, so I think eventually we'll get every asset class coming on chain. Not just stocks, but also, you know, prediction markets, commodities, like the way startups raise money. All capital formation could be a lot more efficient on chain.

   4. JAJack Altman2:23

      Is it something that people will choose to be able to put on chain, or you think it will be something that everything's on chain, regardless of what sort of the proprietor of the asset wants?

   5. BABrian Armstrong2:33

      Well, we want to do this in collaboration with companies. Like, I don't think it's a good idea to, like, start making these derivatives without the company's permission, et cetera, et cetera. So there will be certain companies that opt into this, and they're on the frontier, and they want to raise money this way. And then I think eventually it'll just be so-- such a well-trodden path that it'll be a more efficient way to do it. Like, why wouldn't you open up, open up your next fundraise to, to raise on chain from these accredited investors and various things? So yeah, eventually it'll, it'll become the majority.

   6. JAJack Altman2:59

      Do you think more of this is, um, to do with technology or, like, a cultural behavioural norms thing that, you know, is per-- you know, the reason that it's not already happening widespread for those kind of assets?

   7. BABrian Armstrong3:11

      Well, the tech wasn't ready. The regulatory environment wasn't ready. Um, I mean, we just now are, like, having really good conversations with this new SEC. There's a crypto task force, and I think there's a couple paths where this could now come to fruition. We're also trying to get this Clarity Act passed in the US. Um, you-- people might have heard that we just got this GENIUS Act passed for stablecoins.

   8. JAJack Altman3:29

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BABrian Armstrong3:30

      There's another one, um, being debated in the Senate called Clarity and, in the House, um, which is around market structure, which would help people raise money with crypto securities. So if that gets passed... So part of it's the regulatory environment needed to be ready, and then the tech needed to be ready as well. I mean, you-- some of your listeners may have kind of heard about the ICO boom that happened a little while back. So that was an early precursor, I think, and it was largely happening outside of the regulatory perimeter.

   10. JAJack Altman3:52

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BABrian Armstrong3:52

       Probably some good and bad parts of that. Um, but this new one, if it happens, uh, it will be bigger, more efficient, more well-regulated. Like, as an example, if you are registering a, a crypto security to raise money for a company, you know, under US law, currently, you can only raise money from accredited investors. We have ways now you can determine that, of someone's accredited investor status on chain. Um, you know, i-n- internationally, you could have a broader group of people investing.

   12. JAJack Altman4:18

       Mm-hmm.

   13. BABrian Armstrong4:18

       So these are the kinds of things that are starting to now get

3. 4:20 – 5:33

   Story behind the GENIUS Act

   1. BABrian Armstrong4:20

      solved.

   2. JAJack Altman4:20

      What was the story with the GENIUS Act? Like, what, what does that mean for stablecoins, crypto in general? Like, what was kind of the-- what was the, like, double-click on that?

   3. BABrian Armstrong4:27

      Yeah, well, it, it basically clarifies that, um, you know, a dollar-backed stablecoin has to have one hundred percent of the reserves in US dollars in a bank account, or it can be in short-term treasuries. So they, they very explicitly said what types of assets the backing can be in. And then they also had sort of some good basic hygiene things around, you know, passing an audit once in a while-

   4. JAJack Altman4:45

      Mm-hmm

   5. BABrian Armstrong4:45

      ... and these kinds of things, right? So... And, and they said what type of entity you needed to be. You don't have to be a bank. You can be a trust company. There, there's a couple other clear, clear rules like that. But the big thing it did was more symbolic. It was saying, "This is allowed, and it's encouraged in the United States to be, to be built." Because in the past, the lack of clarity really got weaponised against the industry, where, um, you know, primarily Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler were really kind of attacking the industry unlawfully, in my view, kind of saying, "Well, there's no clear legislation. It's all Wild West and, you know, people are gonna lose all their money." And so, um, they really tried to, like, just file lawsuits against, against everybody they could find to try to shut it down. So now that there's a clear federal law on the books, there can't be some fus- future activist who comes and tries to kill it. Uh, you can actually now just comply with the law [chuckles] and build your company.

4. 5:33 – 10:45

   Working with regulators

   1. JAJack Altman5:33

      Yeah. Speaking of, like, regulators and lawmakers, it seems like any sufficiently large, I guess, particularly consumer company, you know, you, Airbnb, Uber, OpenAI, Meta, et cetera, like, eventually you need to also work with regulators and, and the law, and I'm curious what you've learned over your years of doing that. Like, what have been like the important things you've taken away about how to, like, work with those bodies over time?

   2. BABrian Armstrong5:59

      ... Yeah, so I would actually say early on as an entrepreneur, I was kind of a little naive on this topic. So I sort of had a very simple mental model, which was: We're just gonna follow the law, and then I don't have to engage with anybody-

   3. JAJack Altman6:09

      Mm

   4. BABrian Armstrong6:09

      ... from the government, right? To me, that was a distraction from building our products and talking to customers, and, you know, all the stuff I really felt like- And that's what most startups should be doing, right? But as you get bigger, inevitably, every company intersects with government, right? Because a lot of the areas of the law are just not clear, right? And now you're in a world where, okay, we're on the frontier that's undefined. How do we actually help shape that policy to make sure it doesn't... And there's kind of like that old saying, you know, even if you're not interested in government, government's interested in you.

   5. JAJack Altman6:36

      Yeah, I mean, particularly-

   6. BABrian Armstrong6:36

      Yeah

   7. JAJack Altman6:36

      ... when you're doing something new, and so it's like, you know, the companies that are big are often started because they, you know, they did something new, and the government's trying to figure it out.

   8. BABrian Armstrong6:45

      Yeah.

   9. JAJack Altman6:45

      Yeah.

   10. BABrian Armstrong6:46

       And, and, like, a lot- like, self-driving cars or all these things, like, you're pushing on the frontier where it, there's no clear... Society still hasn't figured it out in our democracy, right? And so you'll- what'll, what'll usually happen in the, that lack of clarity stage is you need to go and build something and get it out there. You can't sit around waiting for clarity, or by then it'll be too late. So you have to kind of do something in the absence of clarity that you think is responsible, is what would be required if a law eventually comes on the books. So you can't just be completely, like, you know, flying under the radar, doing bad things, but you also can't sit around and wait for the, the law to be clear because it's, that can take a decade, right? So every startup has to kind of balance this and, and push on that frontier and do the right thing in the absence of clarity, while eventually building a policy team and shaping the laws that are getting built. And I'll, I'll just tell you a quick story about that, which is like, you know, I'd say about five or six years ago, I started going to DC at the encouragement of my board. They were like: "Okay, well, you're about... Yeah, [chuckles] it's time."

   11. JAJack Altman7:40

       Yeah.

   12. BABrian Armstrong7:41

       Um, and so every quarter or so, I'd fly over there. I'd meet with a bunch of people. We hired some policy team members, and, you know, I'd try to be an educational resource. This was, like, a phrase that was thrown around, right?

   13. JAJack Altman7:50

       Mm.

   14. BABrian Armstrong7:50

       And, um, members of Congress would ask me these questions. You know, they're in their 70s or whatever. Sometimes their staff or their children would have the Coinbase app, but they didn't really know what, what we were doing.

   15. JAJack Altman7:58

       Mm-hmm.

   16. BABrian Armstrong7:58

       They'd ask us funny questions sometimes like, "Oh, so you're the CEO of Bitcoin," or, you know, um, like-

   17. JAJack Altman8:04

       Yeah

   18. BABrian Armstrong8:04

       ... "This is all some video game you're, you're creating, right?" Or, you know, they'd ask some, some... But, you know, others were like, really starting to get it, and but nothing really ever happened. I, I remember after like three or four years of doing this, I remember thinking: You know, why the inaction? I didn't realise at the time that Congress actually rarely acts. It's, it's sort of a feature of our government-

   19. JAJack Altman8:21

       It is a feature, yeah

   20. BABrian Armstrong8:21

       ... with the checks and balances, right? Um, especially in a bipartisan way now, increasingly, it doesn't, it doesn't take, take that much action. So what we eventually had to do was actually, I would say, accumulate political power and influence, which sounds a little-

   21. JAJack Altman8:34

       Mm

   22. BABrian Armstrong8:34

       ... Machiavellian, but what we did was we actually got our... We had, you know, fifty million people who had used crypto in the United States. There were still some very, like, hostile members of Congress and, and, not, not a lot, like, the majority actually were for it. They just didn't want to stick their neck out.

   23. JAJack Altman8:46

       Mm.

   24. BABrian Armstrong8:46

       But there was a couple that were really hostile, and so what we did was we, we got organised. We helped the crypto industry come together in the, into this grassroots movement called StandWithCrypto.org, which we helped fund, created scorecards for every politician, like how pro or anti-crypto they were, and we eventually got, like, millions of voters to raise their hand and say they wanted to elect pro-crypto candidates. So using your app was actually, like, a key step, and then we also donated to this super PAC called Fairshake, which, you know, for better or worse, our elections matter in, in terms of, like, money in the US, and, you know, democracies can debate that. We also spun up this thing, like a policy institute, that, like, puts out these white papers and research reports that kind of feed into the supply chain of how DC thinks about things. So it wasn't until we got all these things really organised, and in this last election, like, some people got elected or d- got fired, essentially, for, you know-

   25. JAJack Altman9:33

       Yeah

   26. BABrian Armstrong9:33

       ... voted out of office for not being pro-crypto. It wasn't until that happened that the rest of DC, I think, said: "Okay, this is an issue Americans care about," and we started to get people elected who represented the constituents.

   27. JAJack Altman9:44

       Yeah. I mean, I got- it's, it's been a while since there was a major financial regulation, right? Like it was Dodd-Frank was the last one, like-

   28. BABrian Armstrong9:51

       Yeah

   29. JAJack Altman9:51

       ... fifteen years ago. W- so w- w- how much of what made this come together now was your experience that it was pressure from, you know, companies versus, you know, constituencies or just, like, buy-in from the politicians themselves? Like, what do you think were the factors that got action?

   30. BABrian Armstrong10:09

       I think that DC kind of realised that there is a crypto voter out there, and that happened in really this last election in November.
5. 10:45 – 17:10

   The future of crypto and the government

   1. BABrian Armstrong10:45

      function.

   2. JAJack Altman10:46

      Maybe at a one higher-

   3. BABrian Armstrong10:47

      Mm

   4. JAJack Altman10:47

      ... abstraction about... So that's like individual politicians and, you know, their sort of relationship to crypto.

   5. BABrian Armstrong10:53

      Mm.

   6. JAJack Altman10:53

      There's also whole governments and their relation to crypto, and obviously, you know, there's like a, a checkered past is probably too strong, but, like, the government and crypto hasn't, like, always gotten along, and now obviously it's, you know, changing a little bit. Like, sovereigns are, like, having strategic Bitcoin reserves at, like, all the major, in all the major countries, and, um, obviously, that relationship is changing. Um, maybe, uh, just a sort of foundational question I have is, is there a sense in which Bitcoin is, like, a threat to, like, governments? Is it a boost and a help to governments? Like, how do you think... What, what do you think is, like, the, the truth behind what the relationship will play out like?

   7. BABrian Armstrong11:32

      Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a, it's, it's a nuanced answer because crypto is about fundamentally creating more economic freedom for people, and in many cases, that is in collaboration with the government, [clears throat] and sometimes it's in tension with the government. I'd say if you look at most countries around the world, the people really want-... Bitcoin and crypto, if I were to speak just generally. And some parts of the government love it, and some parts are skeptical of it, 'cause it's- it can be a shift of power, or it can be an unbundling of the state power to issue, ha- have a monopoly on issuing currency, right? So in some ways, um, I'll give you an example where it's, like, unequivocally good for the United States as an example, would be we now have a digital dollar, you know, USDC, other stablecoins. This is allowing the US reserve currency to perpetuate into the future, be used all over- these countries all over the world. It's creating incredible demand for US Treasuries, as an example, and fast, cheap global payments with dollars. Great. Okay. Now, Bitcoin is interesting because I think of Bitcoin as a check and balance on deficit spending, 'cause it's kind of like a new gold standard-

   8. JAJack Altman12:35

      Mm.

   9. BABrian Armstrong12:35

      -a digital gold standard. And so we have... Democracies actually broadly right now are having a lot of challenges with how to deal with deficits and inflation, and w- you know, where, where, where are they tethered to reality? Like, fiat currencies kind of used to be more pegged to these hard commodities. They're un- they're, they're disconnected from that now, and so where is the discipline gonna come from to actually balance the budget and not inflate away everyone's wealth, right? Which hurts, by the way, the poorest people in society the most. Um, and so if inflation and deficits get too out of control, I think people are gonna flee to Bitcoin in a time of uncertainty.

   10. JAJack Altman13:06

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BABrian Armstrong13:07

       Um, if deficit spending is under control, people will continue to use fiat currencies. And so actually, I think B- Bitcoin is a great way to sort of extend Western civilization, if you will. [chuckles]

   12. JAJack Altman13:17

       Ba- basically, its existence is like saying, "Hey, don't inflate too much, or people are gonna run to Bitcoin."

   13. BABrian Armstrong13:22

       Yeah, exactly. And to me, that's a great thing, because I want the United States to exist and to flourish and to be a leader in the world, and if the US can't get its deficit spending under control, and it's gonna lose the reserve currency status, I hope that doesn't happen, but if it does, I'd rather people go to Bitcoin than to the Chinese yuan.

   14. JAJack Altman13:40

       Right, where the purchasing power of the Bitcoin, they believe, will go up, and so if you're an individual, you're like: Well, it's time to move over.

   15. BABrian Armstrong13:45

       Yeah.

   16. JAJack Altman13:47

       I guess, um, you mentioned the unbundling. The- there is this dynamic where, like, the US dollar has, like, you know, I guess, I guess the military behind it ultimately is sort of what you would describe or some, some version of that. Um, and then if, you know, we have Bitcoin or, you know, crypto in general as, like, this currency people are using, and it's not backed in that exact same way or, you know, uh, what changes? Like, what's the impact of that decoupling from, I guess, the state and, you know, on some level, the military?

   17. BABrian Armstrong14:16

       Yeah. Yeah, so people have lots of philosophical debates about what is underpinning US currency. You know, is it because you can pay your taxes in it? Is it because it's backed by the full faith and credit of the United States? But what- you know, what does that mean? It's not really actually backed by gold anymore. Nixon took us off that standard in nineteen seventy-one, famously saying it was a temporary measure. This is during the Vietnam War. Um, and I... You could make an argue it's backed by the, the dollar or, uh, sorry, the military, but they don't, uh, necessarily go around, you know, collecting dollars at gunpoint or [chuckles] something like that.

   18. JAJack Altman14:44

       Yeah.

   19. BABrian Armstrong14:44

       So it's a little bit hypothetical. I mean, I think what ul- what ultimately happens if... Let's say the world moved to, like, a, a transnational currency like Bitcoin, um, that was not tied to one country. I actually think it would be very good for the world in a way because it would create this- it would create a, a new kind of, like, a new gold standard. And, um, you know, people's wealth couldn't be inflated away. It couldn't be abused by, you know, certain people with, like, their fingers on the dial. So it would be totally decentralised. There wouldn't be-

   20. JAJack Altman15:11

       Yeah

   21. BABrian Armstrong15:11

       ... one country or company who could really manipulate it. And to me, this is, like, a foundational principle around economics called, you know, in economic freedom. You get, like, property rights, sound money, free trade. Some of these things are under- a lot of people believe, it's, it- there's economists who debate this, that those are kind of foundational to societal progress because if you, if you, if you believe that, you know, your wealth could be eroded tomorrow or your, the government could kind of seize your stuff out of your bank or something, people just don't invest as much in the long term, right? Now, that, that might sound a little far-fetched to people who've only grown up in the US, but there's a lot of... I mean, I spent a year living in Argentina. They went through a hundred years of kind of crazy hyperinflation and theft. You know, at one point, ten years ago or so, like, in Cyprus, the government just decided to, like, take half the money out of everyone's bank account to try to pay off their debt. So if you don't have basic property rights, which we take sort of for granted in the US, and you don't have sound money that can't be, like, eroded away, it's hard to actually have a functioning economy where people try to do good things and keep the upside of their labour.

   22. JAJack Altman16:09

       Is there, like, um... Is there- i- is it a good thing if one day in the very far future, everybody was, in the world was on one currency? Like, theoretically, in your mind, is that, like, a healthy, positive, good thing? Is there any- or is there some reason that other than that it was historically how we got here for there to be hundreds of currencies?

   23. BABrian Armstrong16:29

       Well, there, there would be a benefit in terms of interoperability, like, if everyone was running on one global standard. It's kind of like the internet really just runs on TCP/IP as, like, a global standard. You know, I also don't hate it if it's a couple standards. It's like a lot of industries start off super fragmented, and they kind of come down to, you know, iOS and Android or, like, DHL and FedEx and UPS or whatever, Coke and Pepsi. So it's, it's okay to sometimes to have a little competition too because anything that becomes that big can become ossified or slow or captured.

   24. JAJack Altman16:56

       Yeah.

   25. BABrian Armstrong16:56

       So you actually want maybe, like, two or three or something.

   26. JAJack Altman16:58

       But, like, if you were redrawing it from scratch, you wouldn't make hundreds.

   27. BABrian Armstrong17:01

       Yeah.

   28. JAJack Altman17:01

       Yeah.

   29. BABrian Armstrong17:01

       Yeah.

   30. JAJack Altman17:02

       And-
6. 17:10 – 23:03

   When to jump to the hot new thing

   1. JAJack Altman17:11

      I wanna go back to, like, y- the early days, uh, of Coinbase and not about, um, you know, how you came up with the idea or anything like that. But, um, as you were building, you know, in two thousand, you know, the early two thousand tens, I think it was, like, crypto was very, very early. Then there came a part of that decade where it was, like, extremely, you know, hyped and excited, and a lot of people were kind of losing their minds and jumping in, and, um, and then that kind of has transitioned into new waves, and now there's AI in these things, and, um, you've obviously stayed really steady through it. And one of my questions for you is: What's, what's driving you in these ups and downs to either, you know, turn your attention towards new things or to say, "You know what? I'm not gonna get caught into the FOMO of what's around me?"

   2. BABrian Armstrong17:58

      ... Yeah, I mean, uh, crypto kind of went through an extreme version of this, but I think every tech company has variations of it, and, and choices to make about when to jump into the hot new thing or when to stick through a downturn. I mean, one lesson that I internalized from this is you don't want to be jumping to the hot new thing every time something runs up. Um, I mean, like, this is sort of a- the analogy would be, like, the shopping cart or, um, you know, the checkout at the grocery store, where that one looks a little better, and that one looks better, and you [chuckles] you know, you're losing time in switching costs. And what I've seen is, like, the companies that do the best, they actually are started typically by people who, who did it when it was- when it wasn't cool. You know, they started in the trenches, um, where nobody thought it was interesting. Their friends maybe thought they were wasting their time, and then, when it did hit an inflection point, they were well-positioned to ride that wave up. So I think Coinbase is an example of that, you know, OpenAI is a good example of that. They, they started when it wasn't cool. Like, if you're-- once the thing is off to the races, and you're, like, the fourteenth company who comes in, I think it's a lot harder to differentiate, and then, when things go on the downturn, people bail, and it's, like, the exact wrong time. I-- You should do the inverse. Like, if it, if, if it's- if something's riding up a, you know, irra- irrational exuberance wave, I'd almost, like, go to something else, and if it's in the trenches, and you think it's cool, I would- that's when I would make the contrarian bet. So I mean, there were, there were definitely awkward moments along the way for Coinbase, where, you know, suddenly we'd be on fire. Like, investors would be competing to get in. I'd be getting invited to all these fancy conferences. I remember, you know, then in the downturns, I'd sometimes get uninvited to these cool parties and [chuckles] fancy conferences. And then, you know, I remember one reporter at a, at a conference asked me one time, like, "Now that crypto's over, like, what are you gonna do next?" You know, they asked-

   3. JAJack Altman19:34

      What are you talking about? [laughing]

   4. BABrian Armstrong19:35

      [laughing] I was like, "Yeah, I don't, I don't think it is over," but, you know, it was an awkward question on stage.

   5. JAJack Altman19:39

      That's good.

   6. BABrian Armstrong19:40

      So I, I... Yeah, I think we always say internally, "It's never as good as it seems, never as bad as it seems." Like, if you... And we had board meetings, I think, where people said, "Should we just pivot into, like, building software for banks and stuff like that?" And I remember, at one point, I was, I was like, "If we're gonna do that, we should just shut down the company and give the money back," 'cause, like, I didn't sign up to do that, right? I don't want to spend the next ten years building software for banks. We're trying to build an open financial system, and so people later credited me of having, like, incredible foresight that it would go back up, and really it was just me being stubborn, like I just didn't want to work on bank software.

   7. JAJack Altman20:11

      Yeah.

   8. BABrian Armstrong20:11

      Right? So, uh, yeah, I don't know.

   9. JAJack Altman20:14

      Has that changed the type of people that you've needed to hire, given that you just know you're gonna go through cycles in a way that most companies don't?

   10. BABrian Armstrong20:20

       Totally. Yeah, I mean, it's the classic mercenary, missionary thing, but there were certain cycles of when crypto was not hot, uh, two or three years in, and, you know, we had twenty-five, thirty percent of the, the company attrit. Um, and, uh, some people sold their stock in secondary markets and all these kind of things. So there was times where, yeah, I remember I was feeling like it was tough to just get up in front of the company every day as CEO, not every day, but at least once a week or something-

   11. JAJack Altman20:46

       Yeah

   12. BABrian Armstrong20:46

       ... and, like, put on a good face. And I realised, at a certain point, you know, people don't want me to be fake. They can sense the authenti- the lack of authenticity.

   13. JAJack Altman20:53

       Mm-hmm.

   14. BABrian Armstrong20:54

       And so, you know, great leaders are also vulnerable, right? And so it's okay to go up there and be like, [inhales] "I feel like I'm, I'm frustrated. I'm pissed off. Like, this, this is not working. Like, we're not where we wanted to be. I think, like, let's all get our heads together," and, uh, rally them to be part of the solution with you, right? Like, "How can we, how can we use this as an opportunity right now? Like, in the- when things are down, we can use it to build. We don't have to focus on scaling as much. Um, we can try new innovative ideas. We have fewer, fewer competitors." Um, so there's always something you can do. You can also just buy crypto when it's down, you know?

   15. JAJack Altman21:25

       Mm-hmm.

   16. BABrian Armstrong21:26

       When it's- when things are rocking up, you can sell, s- i- issue more shares.

   17. JAJack Altman21:29

       Yeah.

   18. BABrian Armstrong21:29

       When it's down, you can buy. So there's always an opportunity, whether things are up or down, and you have to not give a shit too much what other people think. There's a real, there's a real art to that over time, of, like, not being afraid of upsetting people, not being afraid of doing something that looks stupid. Um, this is probably, probably why some people on the spectrum are more likely to be entrepreneurs or it's, it's over-represented is because I think they just have a little bit lack of that, like, social awareness or cohesion or something, where they just care a little bit less about what other people think.

   19. JAJack Altman21:57

       Yep. Is there any inverse psychology management you have to do for yourself or the company when things are, like, running hot?

   20. BABrian Armstrong22:03

       Yeah.

   21. JAJack Altman22:03

       Like, obviously, when things are bad, you know, what you just described makes sense, but, like, when you're like, "This is a little hot right now," do you have... Is there the other side of it?

   22. BABrian Armstrong22:11

       Absolutely, yeah. I mean, like, in twenty twenty-one, post-IPO, things were just ripping. We had a line out- line around the block of, like, everybody coming: "Can you build this product?" And we have- we can't- we couldn't even onboard all the customers. There were so many coming in, and so we just hired like crazy. I think we grew head count, like, two point six x in a year. We later had to, like, unfortunately, reduce head count because we overhired, right? It really hur- it harmed the culture to grow that fast. Like, there was no clear decision-making. We couldn't... The quality bar went down. Our, our actually speed of execution went down a lot. So there's certainly times where we've got i- irrationally exuberant, too, and there's times where we, we made offers to companies to buy them, where I look and think, "Thank God they, they declined our offer-

   23. JAJack Altman22:50

       Mm

   24. BABrian Armstrong22:50

       ... because, like, you know, that was, like, a peak bubble-type price, right?" So yeah, it's fascinating to have gone through a couple of these cycles, and I think it builds character. You know?

   25. JAJack Altman23:00

       Yeah.

   26. BABrian Armstrong23:00

       It builds... It helps your decision-making to think a little more

7. 23:03 – 29:59

   Choosing what frontiers to prioritize

   1. BABrian Armstrong23:03

      long term.

   2. JAJack Altman23:03

      When you look around at other technologies that, um, are on the frontier, which I obviously know that's what, you know, you're excited by, based on some of the other work you've done, how do you choose which other frontiers to dedicate some of your time and energy to, given that, you know, it's scarce, and you can't work on everything?

   3. BABrian Armstrong23:20

      One framework to look at it is, like, what would be the big meta problems to solve, right? If this worked, it would automatically solve a whole other category of problems, right? Um, like, AI is one of those, you know, bio, uh, like, longevity-

   4. JAJack Altman23:32

      Mm-hmm

   5. BABrian Armstrong23:32

      ... is one of those. If you can fix longevity, it fix, like, it fixes a whole bunch of other diseases with whole... You know, um, if you can fix fusion energy like that, that does that, right? If you fix brain-machine interfaces, it, like, it- a whole bunch of other problems just go away, which we can talk about. But the other thing, the other lens to look at it, I think, is what, what would not happen unless you worked on it, right? Because there's already really great teams working on a lot of these things. So you have to sort of say, "Okay, what are one of the, the really big trends over the next ten or twenty years that could really change humanity for the better?" And there's not-- There's something unique I could contribute to it. Like, if there's already great teams, or you don't have an, and don't, you know, have an undifferentiated me-too product that comes out, like, that's, that's a waste of time, right? Um, so th- those two criteria are how I think about it.

   6. JAJack Altman24:15

      ... um, one of the choices that you sort of spent, have been, you know, deciding was fitting that Venn diagram was, you know, the work with New Limit and longevity. What was sort of the- or actually, I should ask, was there a piece of science you learned about or some information that clicked for you, where you said, you know, "I, I believe there's real work that can be done here?" Because, you know, some, some bit of science got unlocked, or some- something was happening that convinced you that it was worth, like, a real slug of time from you.

   7. BABrian Armstrong24:41

      So there's a couple trends that were happening, and it... Basically, the way this started was I kind of, with a couple of friends I reached out to, and I was like: Hey, let's host a dinner with the smartest biotech scientists and CEOs we could find, and just sort of go around the table and ask them, like, "What's the most exciting thing on the frontier you think is being underfunded," right? So that, hosted a couple dinners like that, and, and one of the topics that came out was this epigenetic reprogramming concept, and g- by going down the rabbit hole, I realised, um, it had high potential, and there were a couple trends that maybe is sort of why now it made sense. Like, one is that the cost of single, single-cell sequencing is just falling, kind of like Moore's law, right? Where you can now get a full readout of the state of a cell for, like, five cents, and it used to be, like, five hundred dollars, and it's just gets- getting cheaper and cheaper. So you can run these, like, mass scale screens, where you don't even- you can test, like, millions of hypotheses now for a reasonable budget.

   8. JAJack Altman25:27

      Mm.

   9. BABrian Armstrong25:27

      Whereas before, some smart scientist had to understand the actual biology and sort of say, "I believe if we do X and Y, like, this will work," and now we can kinda say more of like a bio-naive approach. Like, we don't... What if we don't really know how any of this works, but let's just test a million things, and if we find something that does work, maybe retroactively we'll figure out how, but it's okay if we don't know how-

   10. JAJack Altman25:45

       Mm

   11. BABrian Armstrong25:45

       ... up front. The other one was, of course, AI, right? And it's like, with AI and machine learning, you're getting much better at doing, ah, testing these hypotheses in silico, one, one would call it. So those two trends made this concept of epigenetic reprogramming, I think, tractable for the first time, and just briefly, like, what New Limit is doing, right, is they're searching the space of, uh, transcription factors that could reprogram. They're called transcription factors, just proteins you put in these cells, but it can reprogram cells to restore function they had when they were younger, and there's novel therapies we believe that can get developed out of that. So, um, that's a little bit about why now w- we think it could be tractable. Um, I'll tell you one other funny thing, which is the biggest hesitancy I had about I... When I was thinking about longevity, this feels like a massive opportunity. You know, it's, like, trillion-dollar drugs, like these GLP-1s. Like, why wouldn't... You know, this, this feels like it would benefit everyone on the planet, potentially wipe out a bunch of disease, like, the root cause of it. The one thing I kept thinking about was, like, you know, if a- if, if we're gonna get to brain upload and AI, um, does human b- does human healthcare even matter?

   12. JAJack Altman26:46

       Mm.

   13. BABrian Armstrong26:46

       Like, over the long term, I'm talking about. 'Cause any of these companies will take 10, 20, 30 years to, like, really start to pay off, and so, um, you know, ultimately, what I came down to is I think brain machine interfaces and up- brain upload and all is ultimately gonna be a massive thing, and it may, it may actually make some of this less relevant for humans. But there's still gonna be, like, eight billion or so humans running around on the planet that are gonna wanna, um, preserve their body-

   14. JAJack Altman27:10

       Yeah

   15. BABrian Armstrong27:10

       ... and their biology. So that I think, yeah, I, I think it's still worth doing.

   16. JAJack Altman27:13

       I guess we also don't know for sure that the brain upload's gonna work, and so-

   17. BABrian Armstrong27:15

       Yeah

   18. JAJack Altman27:16

       ... at least as a consolation prize, we can be longer living and healthier.

   19. BABrian Armstrong27:19

       Yeah, it, it buys us... E- even if all New Limit ever did was it bought us 30 years to, to get-

   20. JAJack Altman27:24

       Thirty years would be great

   21. BABrian Armstrong27:24

       ... to get to the merge or something, that would be worth it.

   22. JAJack Altman27:27

       For New Limit, do you think most of the therapies that are, you know, that you guys are sort of thinking through and that seem like they could be on the horizon, is most of it to do with life extension or, like, health span extension? Or, I mean, I guess those go hand in hand to some extent, but, like, when you are having these conversations, are you more thinking about, you know, how do we make people healthy into their 80s, or is it more like we gotta get people living to, you know, 120?

   23. BABrian Armstrong27:50

       Health span is kind of like a, a, a more socially acceptable way to describe it. 'Cause sometimes when you say longevity, people imagine, like, being kept alive on a ventilator-

   24. JAJack Altman27:58

       Uh-huh

   25. BABrian Armstrong27:58

       ... d- in, like, some decrepit state-

   26. JAJack Altman28:00

       Yeah, yeah

   27. BABrian Armstrong28:00

       ... and they're like: That sounds terrible! Like, just pull the plug, right? Uh, they don't, they don't wanna do that.

   28. JAJack Altman28:04

       Yeah.

   29. BABrian Armstrong28:04

       But, yeah, what we are t- it, so it clarifies to people we are talking about living more healthy years.

   30. JAJack Altman28:07

       More healthy years, yeah.
8. 29:59 – 34:48

   Brain-computer interface tech

   1. BABrian Armstrong29:59

      but that's the thesis.

   2. JAJack Altman29:59

      Yeah, and it's just interesting to know what you're thinking about. Uh, on, on the, um, on the other, on the brain-computer interface side-... um, I know it's not the sort of quite the same level of involvement, but, you know, you backed company Nudge, which is really cool.

   3. BABrian Armstrong30:11

      Yeah.

   4. JAJack Altman30:11

      And, um, yeah, w- I guess what's the sort of state of play with, you know, BCIs, and, like, what's possible, you know, in the short term? Like, what, what do you think is sort of, like, coming down the pipe with, with that technology?

   5. BABrian Armstrong30:23

      Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase with me back in two thousand and twelve. Amazing guy. So anyway, he started this really cool brain machine interface company called Nudge, um, which is using focused ultrasound, so it's non-invasive. You don't have to get, like, a hole drilled in your head, right?

   6. JAJack Altman30:35

      Mm. That's good.

   7. BABrian Armstrong30:35

      Yeah. [chuckles] And, uh, n- it's, uh, lowers the barrier to entry, one might say.

   8. JAJack Altman30:40

      Yeah.

   9. BABrian Armstrong30:40

      Um, and so, you know, I-- what-- the sort of early indications and things that they're going after are similar to, um, like, there's people actually who get these deep brain, uh, probes, and s- and for, like, you know, um, like, these diseases they have with their movement and, like, depression and stuff.

   10. JAJack Altman30:57

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BABrian Armstrong30:58

       So the early indication, I think, would be people who have a really high med- unmet medical need, right? It's like they're-- they have chronic pain, they have depression. Um, and you could actually focus an area of your brain with this ultrasound kind of helmet you're wearing, or baseball cap. Eventually, it might look a little cooler. Um, or it might help you sleep if you have, uh, insomnia, like... So there's a lot of kind of medical issues there. Now, over time, I think it'll evolve where you can get read and write out of it. Um, and so w- if you can start to read brain state and then write to it, you have a way to connect your brain to a computer and get connected to the internet, right, like Neuralink and these other ones. And now you start to get a much bir- bigger idea on the table, because if over time, your consciousness or your thinking or, you know, can expand, where some portion of it's happening within your brain, you know—and by the way, your brain is already a few- it's like a reptilian brain with a mam- mammalian brain and a neocortex on top-

   12. JAJack Altman31:49

       Yeah

   13. BABrian Armstrong31:49

       ... which only humans have. So it's already, like, three layers to the brain.

   14. JAJack Altman31:52

       A couple spheres. Yeah.

   15. BABrian Armstrong31:52

       The fourth layer would be, all right, let's connect your neocortex to the internet and a bunch of other people, and you can start to... Like, the percentage of your brain power that's happening in the cloud, I think will grow over time, right? Like, you know, we, even today, we are connected to the internet by our thumbs on a keyboard or, like, a, on a screen visually with input, or we can talk to an AI agent. But if you have a higher bandwidth connection between those things, more of, more of your thinking over time will happen in the cloud. And so what I think is gonna be interesting is this is how you get to upload or-

   16. JAJack Altman32:25

       Mm-hmm

   17. BABrian Armstrong32:25

       ... or the merge-

   18. JAJack Altman32:26

       Yeah

   19. BABrian Armstrong32:27

       ... with AI, right? Is like, if, you know, let's say that you, you know, how you are today, if you had, like, a, I don't know, your arm got cut off in an accident or something, but you still feel like you, right?

   20. JAJack Altman32:37

       Yeah.

   21. BABrian Armstrong32:37

       Like you're still-- And so imagine if you kind of had, um, rough- you have, like, two hemispheres of your brain. What if you had, like, four or sixteen or thirty-two of them, and now there's a bunch running in the cloud with these AI, you know, kind of like an AI agent or some kind of AGI thing?

   22. JAJack Altman32:52

       Yeah.

   23. BABrian Armstrong32:52

       And if, if one day your, your human brain got too old, maybe the longevity drugs ran out or whatever, and that one turned off, but you still had-

   24. JAJack Altman33:00

       But you're still mostly you're there.

   25. BABrian Armstrong33:01

       Yeah! You're still-- you have continuity of self. You'll still feel like you, and you'll be fully uploaded.

   26. JAJack Altman33:05

       It's a good explanation 'cause I mean, like, you know, I, I mean, probably like a lot of people, like, the Merge sounds great. Would love to merge into, like, a bionic brain. But, you know, the way I had always thought about it is there's this upload moment where you upload the brain to a computer-

   27. BABrian Armstrong33:17

       Yeah

   28. JAJack Altman33:17

       ... and now you've basically forked, and I'm not getting to enjoy that fork of me's experience. What you're basically saying is there's this slow augmentation, you know, grains of rice thing, and eventually you kind of can't see the difference, and then maybe if a little bit fades out, like, I'm still mostly there somehow.

   29. BABrian Armstrong33:31

       Yeah, 'cause you're right. Some people think it might be, like, um, destructive upload, right? Where your brain is, as you're on your deathbed, your brain will get des- destroyed-

   30. JAJack Altman33:40

       Yeah
9. 34:48 – 43:52

   Inside the mind of a contrarian

   1. JAJack Altman34:48

      to Mars. [chuckles] Okay, I want to talk about sort of some of the contrarian things that you've done and said over the years, and not, uh... I'll talk about them, but my question will just be about sort of what's going on for you and sort of what others could learn from it. Um, you sort of, um, at the height of sort of political tension several years ago, you basically said, "Hey, we're not talking about politics here." Um, that at the time was like, you know, a, a controversial thing to say. Who knows how many people were quietly thinking it at the time, but, like, nobody was saying it, and, and you sort of had the courage to, and it was risky, and then, you know, a lot of people then agreed with you. You know, there's other things you've done, like, you know, suing the SEC. You know, that's got to be, you know, scary to do that with somebody that you're also, you know, collaborating with, and they're powerful and all these things. And so less about those sort of decisions themselves, but more about what was giving you the courage or ability to do that. How did you feel as you were doing those things? I'm just curious to learn about, like, the inner game you had going on during that and what might be learnable for others.

   2. BABrian Armstrong35:52

      It's-- Yeah, so I'll try to draw some lessons from it. I mean, the short answer is, during those times, I felt quite scared, you know, to be honest. Especially, like, the apolitical one. I knew that that was gonna hurt a lot of people. It would be very controversial.... it was gonna cause some percentage of employees to quit. We didn't really know how many were gonna take the exit package. There were some debates amongst the exec team. Some people begged me not to do it. Uh, they- some people told me it would destroy the company. Um, and we- some people had fears that, like, half the company would quit, and I remember, you know, like, there was kind of a, a moment where someone said, "If we put this out, and 50% of the employees go on walkout, like, kind of protest, um, what are you gonna do?" And I said, "I'm gonna fire every single one of them."

   3. JAJack Altman36:35

      Hmm.

   4. BABrian Armstrong36:35

      And that was, like, a really awkward moment in the meeting, but I had really committed at that point, and I was like... 'Cause a walkout had happened previously. That's kind of what kicked this whole thing off, and I realized the company was not aligned, and so at that point, I was like, "This job is just not fun." Like, I, I- either I need to leave as CEO, or they need to leave because we're not on the same page, and, um, you know, I... It was my fault as a leader I hadn't created clarity, right? And so when I was finally ready to do it, and I was like... And people said, "What if they don't buy in?" I was like, "They need to go," right? Um, I, I... The, I watched, I watched a couple of, like, speeches actually in the run-up to that, which gave me a little bit of, like, confidence. I was... You know, there's a great speech that Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore, actually gave. People can Google it and find out, and it's, um, I think if you Google Lee Kuan Yew, uh, iron, iron, iron in his veins or something like that, he was giving a speech. Uh, there was, like, these, uh, air traffic controllers or something were kind of striking, um, and holding the company- the country hostage, and he basically went in there to negotiate with them, and he said, um, "I will rebuild the entire thing from the ground up because rather than let you destroy it," right? And he said, "If you all quit tomorrow, I will- that's okay. I, like, I will do that." Um, and he, as a founder, he had the moral authority to do that, 'cause he was like, "I've done it once before. I'll do it again," right? Um, and he said that, "Whoever rules Singapore must have, you know, iron in their veins to, like, have this sort of strength." So it was, like, a very-

   5. JAJack Altman38:02

      Hmm

   6. BABrian Armstrong38:02

      ... compelling speech. Ronald Reagan actually gave another one, um, which I might be mixing. I forget if it was the air traffic controller. I think it was with Ronald Reagan, not with Lee Kuan Yew. He, he, he was dealing with another strike. Um, but Lee, you know, Ronald Reagan actually gave a speech where he went in front of the White House lawn, and he said, um, "Anybody who doesn't show up for work on Monday is terminated. End of message," and then he left, and it was, like, kind of a m- a mic drop moment. So I was... People, you know, were sending me clips of this as-

   7. JAJack Altman38:28

      Mm-hmm

   8. BABrian Armstrong38:28

      ... building up the courage to do it, but I remember getting in front of the company, and, um, my voice was, like, quiv- you know, was-

   9. JAJack Altman38:35

      Yeah, I'm sure

   10. BABrian Armstrong38:36

       ... cracking, and my leg was shaking, and, like, I, I almost couldn't get through it, like, presenting it to the company, but ultimately, it turned out to be one of the best things we ever did. So I don't, I don't know if there's, like, a great lesson in there. You can draw, um, a little bit of inspiration from historical figures and other people who've gone before, but ultimately, getting out- get- building the comfort to do this takes you getting out of your comfort zone over and over again.

   11. JAJack Altman38:59

       Were there any people in your life that, like, were helping you get there? Is this something that you had done through childhood? Like, what, what, what do you think was, uh, able to get you through that? 'Cause I think other people have had sort of dreams of doing maybe not that exact- maybe that exact thing but maybe other things, and a lot of people just, like, can't do something that scary and that risky.

   12. BABrian Armstrong39:21

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JAJack Altman39:21

       And so I'm basically, you know, I'm wondering, is that always... Has that been innate to you? Is it something that you somehow learned? Is it people in your life that somehow gave you courage to do that kind of thing?

   14. BABrian Armstrong39:31

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JAJack Altman39:32

       'Cause, I mean, I re-

   16. BABrian Armstrong39:32

       Yeah

   17. JAJack Altman39:32

       ... you know, I was a, you know, CEO but at the same time going through a lot of that. Bunch of my other CEO, zero of my- zero of my other CEO friends moved like... I mean, it was on- you know, it was a... Nobody did it.

   18. BABrian Armstrong39:41

       Well, in the one hand, I say, I, I think my hand was forced in a way because we did have the walkout, um, that preceded that, uh, that based on my answer to a question at a town hall. So in, in some ways, that is the catalyst for it. Otherwise, I would've probably just been walking on eggshells like everybody else. Um-

   19. JAJack Altman39:58

       You felt like if you didn't do it, it was just gonna fall... You know, it was just gonna become too much of a mess or something?

   20. BABrian Armstrong40:03

       Um, well, initially, yeah, people would sometimes raise this, and I didn't know how to answer it, so I would just kind of waffle and, like, just try to move past, but it, it came to a breaking point when the co- when a handful of, like, 300 employees did a walkout in, in protest of something I had said, and that's where I started to really feel like, "I don't want to come into work anymore-

   21. JAJack Altman40:19

       Mm

   22. BABrian Armstrong40:19

       ... if this is..." So it was literally either I had to go, or they had to go. That, that-

   23. JAJack Altman40:22

       Yeah

   24. BABrian Armstrong40:23

       ... that put me to the breaking point, and then I'd also say there's, there could be a psychological aspect to this of just disagreeableness, right? Like, um, I don't think I'm the most disagreeable person I know. Um, and, uh, it's not like I was seeking it out either. In fact, the opposite. I was, like, desperately trying to avoid it. Um, so I think, you know, people shouldn't, like, seek out a specific moment to do something super contrarian, but if you're in a position of leadership, it will occo- occasionally become necessary for you to do something really difficult, which will piss off some large group of people, but it's the right thing to do-

   25. JAJack Altman40:57

       Yeah

   26. BABrian Armstrong40:57

       ... for the company. And so these moments present themselves to you, and, and when I, when I did it, I had no idea I would be talking about it five years later. I thought it was just, you know, you do hard things every week as CEO.

   27. JAJack Altman41:06

       You thought it was gonna be to do with your own company-

   28. BABrian Armstrong41:08

       Yeah

   29. JAJack Altman41:08

       ... but you didn't see it rippling through the whole industry like that.

   30. BABrian Armstrong41:10

       Yeah, it's very unpredictable which of these things will go viral-
10. 43:52 – 46:35

    Creating a sustainable lifestyle

    1. JAJack Altman43:52

       Do you feel like, um, there's, ah, something that you've, uh, learned as you've gone through, like, these stages where you've, like, enjoyed it more as time has gone on? 'Cause it does seem to me, just talking to you, that you've, like, settled into some version of it that you appear to really enjoy, or, um, is it still always like... You know, this year are there things that you, like, can't talk about yet that are also really hard and you're like, "Oh, God?" [chuckles]

    2. BABrian Armstrong44:16

       Well, y- one just mental shift that I made early on, after a few years in the company, we were working, like, 12-hour days, seven days a week, and I realized at a certain point, I've got to make this sustainable to be able to do it for many decades and really ha- accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish, and so I did a few things. I mean, I, I started to focus more on getting enough sleep, exercise, nutrition, kind of the basic things. Um, I tried to find a little bit of time every week to wind down in the evening, you know, like, whether it's reading a book or, like, sauna or trying to meditate. I've tried different things over time. Um, you know, I got an executive coach at various points, which was really like a therapist, to be honest.

    3. JAJack Altman44:54

       Yeah.

    4. BABrian Armstrong44:54

       Um, that helped, and I, I needed to run it at a marathon pace, not a s- not an all-out sprint. 'Cause you c- you can do all-out sprint for a little while, but you will burn out. I've seen founders like, you know, do v- get into very unhealthy states, like, in s- one case, actually literally, uh, you know, like, they got addicted to prescription meds-

    5. JAJack Altman45:14

       Yeah

    6. BABrian Armstrong45:14

       ... and, like, all kinds of stuff you've probably seen, too. So I realized I wanted to make it sustainable. And then I also, I, I scheduled one week every quarter where I would take it off, right?

    7. JAJack Altman45:23

       Mm-hmm.

    8. BABrian Armstrong45:23

       I'd either... I'd be, do, like, a learning week, or I'd be at some conference, or I would go on a trip with my significant other, and that helped make it more sustainable. I think when I look at it now, it's not that it's, like, easy. There's still always hard things, but I've tried to, um... I do find it deeply fulfilling. It's not always fun. It's work.

    9. JAJack Altman45:43

       Yeah.

    10. BABrian Armstrong45:43

        Right? If you want to do something meaningful in the world, which to me ultimately gives me fulfillment, it's not always gonna be fun. It's gonna be- it's gonna-- sometimes it's really gonna suck, actually. Um, it's gonna be awful.

    11. JAJack Altman45:54

        Yeah, it's like type two fun or whatever that thing is-

    12. BABrian Armstrong45:56

        [chuckles]

    13. JAJack Altman45:56

        ... where it's like the type of fun that it's like fun in retrospect more than it's fun in the moment.

    14. BABrian Armstrong46:01

        Yes, yes. So that's how I've, you know... And there's moments to even today where I'm just, sometimes I'm like: Goddamn, why am I doing this? You know [chuckles] like-

    15. JAJack Altman46:09

        Yeah

    16. BABrian Armstrong46:09

        ... this, this is, like, awful. And then, you know, go to bed-

    17. JAJack Altman46:13

        Yeah

    18. BABrian Armstrong46:13

        ... think it over, come back the next week, and solve the problem, and it, and you're like, "Okay, I'm making progress towards something that feels good and important," and, you know, I think I would be-- if I wasn't working on something challenging, I'd probably be, like, a very tough person to be around at home, so. [chuckles]

    19. JAJack Altman46:26

        Well, it's certainly very amazing. Um, I'm gonna let you go. Thanks a bunch for your time. I really appreciate you doing this with me.

    20. BABrian Armstrong46:31

        Likewise. Thank you. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 46:35