YouSaid · the spoken record

Arianna Simpson

lines on the record: 48
first: 2018-04-24
most recent: 2018-04-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Would probably be my parents moving from Italy to the United States. I was 17 and I graduated early from high school and I said, okay, I'm off to America for college. See you later. Bye. And they were like, you literally can't even sign your own medical paperwork. What are you doing? And they decided to pretty much drop everything and move to the US to be with me for the first year and then decide to see how it went. And ultimately, I think that was very, very generous and selfless on their part. So that would probably be the winner.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always loved it, and I think, if anything, I'm glad that I'm no longer in school because that kind of forced my reading to go in a very specific direction. And I like to read pretty broadly. Ultimately, obviously, I spend a lot of time reading about crypto-related things, but then that also involves economics and math and all of these other areas. I think writing is definitely a great way to learn if you want to make sure that you understand the full details of something and kind of the way the whole system works. But I think in many cases, the benefit I get out of reading is just kind of making me aware of certain areas. And then if I need to revisit that for a particular use case or because I'm looking into it more deeply, then I can go and I know that exists. But I think in many cases, you know, I combine ideas that I got from like totally different functional areas. And that can actually be really helpful in just kind of generating creative thoughts and assimilating knowledge.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“0x, you can actually all of the applications that are using can kind of pool liquidity and therefore it becomes a lot easier for larger traders to be able to trade. So that's kind of the vision of where they're going. And to me, that's really exciting because ultimately it just enables more flows of capital in a way that benefits everybody.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. So Xerox is basically a protocol for building decentralized exchange applications, but also for various kinds of financial applications. And so they have kind of these functional building blocks, which a lot of relayers and other types of businesses that build on top of them can use. And so by doing that, every one of those relayers doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and create their order book and their matching engine and all that, but they can kind of customize the user experience and focus on other facets of the businesses that they're building. And so the other thing I think that's perhaps most exciting about what Xerox enables is just this shared liquidity pool. And so one of the issues is if you have a decentralized exchange and it's very small in terms of trading volume, you have liquidity issues. And so a big trader cannot trade with you or on you because they just don't have the depth of order books that these traders need. But if you're using the decentralized protocol,”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think ZeroX is something that I find really riveting in the sense that while I said that we're a ways away from having a majority of trading volume on decentralized exchanges, I think what 0X enables is this whole rich ecosystem of financial applications, which can be DEXs, but it can also be lending and all kinds of other things, to use the same base, and therefore I think that's really interesting because you're not reinventing the wheel from scratch every time. And I think that's a huge benefit to not wasting resources and developer time redoing the same thing.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Weird comments and stuff like that, like, oh, you don't look like you know anything about crypto. And I'm like, is that supposed to be a compliment? You know, stuff like that, but I haven't had anything like that happening quite a while. So I think hopefully the industry and tech in general are maturing a little bit, or at least people are checking themselves before they say these things, whether they're still biased is a whole nother story.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think ultimately the challenges I have are similar or mostly the same as what I would have if I were a man doing this thing. It's hard to raise a fund. It's hard to run a fund. It's hard to invest in great companies and all these things are difficult. The market's down 70%. Oh, that's hard. That has no tie to gender whatsoever. So I think that's definitely something to keep in mind and ultimately those are the most important things. From my perspective beyond that, There are tons of women doing really great work. And I think part of the issue is just visibility. And so I always, when people ask me, oh, you know, can you come speak at this thing, whether I can or cannot, I always try to recommend, you know, some other great women who I think can just by virtue of being visible help inspire others to come up and want to do the same kind of work. So yeah, I think there are great women in the space. Ultimately, we're not where we need to be, but I think we're generally moving in the right direction. And to be honest, I used to have some pretty bad experiences in terms of just like.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, a lot of times I'm like, okay, well, it seems like a bit of a stretch, but let's do it anyways, you know, and that applies to all kinds of things, whether it's speaking at a huge event or”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think my approach is generally to want to push myself and I make myself do things that I'm afraid of as a general rule of thumb. So when I was in my early 20s and decided to go wandering around Africa for a few months by myself, of course I was scared. But I made myself do it because I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing, but I thought it would push me to grow in some capacity. Honestly, every job that I've had or thing that I've started, I've had fewer years of experience than everybody else who was doing the thing. And for me, I think that's a good thing because I will work up to the level that surrounds me and hopefully be on that. And so I really try to make sure that I'm in an environment that's not boring. I tend to stall out and become apathetic if I'm not in an environment that's challenging. And so I like to always be doing things that I think are a little bit beyond my comfort zone. And I think, you know, this is particularly true for women. Study after study shows that, you know, women often say, oh, but I'm not qualified for this and kind of limit themselves.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think Scandinavia on a totally different plane is amazing in the sense that I think their social net is really strong. And I think that enables a degree of kind of freedom. Yeah, nobody, not nobody is super rich, but I think the extremes of poverty and wealth are very much more within a confined band than what you would see in the US and the fact that they're more progressive in terms of maternity leave and healthcare and all these sorts of things, I think, are important things to consider when we look at ourselves as a society and say, yes, I can become a billionaire probably with more ease in the United States than just about anywhere else that I could think to go. But anyways, most places, but I literally see people dying on the streets in San Francisco. And so that's kind of just a very thought-provoking consideration. And so I think going around Copenhagen and seeing their green communities and everyone biking and all that sort of thing, I think is.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pretty great. I think America, and particularly Silicon Valley, is pretty incredible because it allows for what I call the suspension of disbelief, which is really the idea that you can do anything and that a whole universe is possible in a way that doesn't currently exist anywhere. And for example, I look at things like Twitter, which I love. That would have never, ever in a million years been funded in Italy. Something like that is just too far out there. And there's too many reasons why it wouldn't work. And in the valley, you can really suspend disbelief and say, no, actually, like this might work. The idea of this digital currency, it seems like a pie in the sky kind of crazy idea. And so in Italy, something like that is very difficult to justify. And so you kind of get shot down before you can really get anywhere with it. And I know, you know, I could never be doing what I do if I were still living in Milan. And so as much as I love it, I think it's really important to be in an environment in which people are open to new ideas. And I think that's definitely more the case particularly.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I was born in Italy. My mom's Italian, my dad's American, and I spent the first 17 years of my life there. And so that has definitely influenced my thinking a lot. I think America is a great country. I'm super glad to live here. But I think oftentimes people, especially ones who haven't traveled broadly, tend to get a very America-centric view. And because it's such a big country, I think it's easy to have that happen. And so ultimately growing up in Italy and having swapped currencies between euros and dollars and spending time in Zimbabwe, all of these experiences have very much informed the way I think about cryptocurrencies and just kind of the world in general. So I think it's important to remember that your experience is not representative of everybody's and the fact that you have Venmo and therefore don't need feel the need to use cryptocurrencies doesn't mean that everybody has those options. And so I think traveling abroad, which I try to do as often as possible, is definitely a big important piece of how I try to live my life.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only one who figured this out. And I was like, well, honestly, a lot of it was just gut. I didn't feel right about it. And then I went and checked. So I think the processes have the feeling and they go and look into it.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, I think it's trust your feelings, check your feelings, and then try to validate externally. And if, for example, I've had instances in which I felt a certain way about someone and then I went and referenced checks extensively and realized, oh, maybe I was just off and then I'm totally open to changing my mind. So it's a little bit of both. If there's issues with trust, those are important and you should take action on those right away because ultimately if, for example, my process has been if something goes off on my internal radar about not trusting someone, then go and check into that. And I, for example, I had one instance in which a founder straight up lied about having worked at Coinbase. And I was like, I've known the Coinbase folks for years. Let me go check with them. And they had no recollection of this person. And then somebody else who was the co-founder of this person in question came to me like a year later and was like, oh, this person was a huge scammer. Like, how did you know? We talked to like 50 investors and you're”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, great question. I think for me, a lot of it is constantly checking when I have a feeling, I think, okay, and I do this in investing, I do this in all of my life. I think, okay, I have this feeling. Why do I have this feeling? Is this feeling rational? Is it justified? Is it based on the fact that somebody ran over my cat this morning and so I'm upset? Or actually, is this founder being rude? So I very much run myself through, I think, a pretty rigorous process of evaluating my own feelings about things. And then I also try to externally validate. So for example, there was one founder who was kind of a real jerk to me. And so I was like, okay, why is that? And so, or is it specific to me? Did he, you know, did I do something? And then I went around and asked a lot of other people and they were like, no, he's extremely condescending. And a lot of us don't like him. And he's raised a lot of money from a lot of people. You know, the outcome remains to be seen. But at that point, I was like, okay, you know, I'm not being hypersensitive. He's made a lot of people feel this way. And so that's not somebody that I want to be involved with regardless.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Percent of the outcome, and now I think that's probably closer to 80 or even higher. So, yeah, I spend a lot of time getting to know founders. And at this point, I think you start to develop an understanding of people when you meet enough of them. And I think a lot of that for me is at this point, it's reference checks and your gut. And I think gut is actually something that I think is widely misunderstood, but I think is very important. And if anything, I've learned to trust that more as I've gone through my career. I think we're actually a lot smarter than we think we are in terms of what we pick up on from people's micro expressions and how they make us feel. And, you know, if somebody is rude to me, they're probably not going to be great to their co-founders and their employees. And I've seen that play out in a lot of different instances. So even if somebody looks like they have the exact right pedigree, if something feels off, I won't invest.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a very founder centric investor. I think ultimately most of my best investments have been people bets, even if they weren't necessarily areas that I had set out to invest in. And ultimately, the founders are the single biggest determinant in my view of the outcome because the right founders will continue iterating until they find product market fit. And I think ultimately that applies to crypto and it applies to any other kind of business as well. And I think that idea has gotten a little bit left to the wayside in terms of crypto because everyone's very focused on, oh, I want to build a protocol that does X. And I'm like, okay, great, but do we need a protocol that does X? And so I think having somebody who is solid on the technical front, but who also really wants to understand whether what they're building is needed and wanted is pretty critical. When I started investing full-time a few years ago, I probably thought that founders accounted for, I don't know, let's say 60.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vector upon which you can differentiate yourself, or you really need to actually add value to the companies or do something like that. And so I think ultimately that's better for the entrepreneurs as well.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I love the fact that it gives people an option that's not going to traditional capital providers. I think, and obviously I say this as an investor, investors are not savants. They don't know always what the world needs. And in many cases, it's better to have a broader universe of people to be able to vote with their dollars on what should exist in the world. I was just reading the other day about Mark Benioff, and he said he couldn't raise a single venture dollar. And you're like, wow, that was a big pass on the part of a lot of investors. And so I think ultimately like having the option to get capital from more places is important. And it just can proliferate, I think, allow for a greater base of ideas to really proliferate, which I think is a positive development. How it impacts venture capital, I definitely don't think venture capital is going away anytime soon. I think what I hope it does is force venture capitalists to be better, because if money is widely available, then that's no longer the most important.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much more secure than what you might get if you had a single key. And so for consumers, I think ultimately that's the direction that we'll go. Yeah, I mean, I think honestly, the idea of managing your own keys is not for everyone, and it doesn't have to be. Most people don't manage their own bank. You know, they have a bank account which custodies their funds. But I think realistically, just the fact that it's possible to manage your own Ks and be your own bank I think is really important. And so it's not something that everybody needs to do, but is a meaningful shift.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's a great question. On the institutional side, I do think that they are going to probably use regulated third-party custodian. But actually, that's already the case in a lot of other kinds of asset classes. So kingdom trust, which has become known as kind of one of the leaders in the custody for crypto space and now was acquired by Bitco, they've been around for years doing all kinds of other custody. And so if you're an institutional investor, you don't necessarily want to custody your own gold or whatever else it is. And so I think crypto for those folks will actually probably trend in that direction. For a broader audience, I think hopefully the security is going to become better so that key management is no longer such a burden. So one of the reasons I joined Bitco in 2014 was the fact that I thought they were doing really great work in the realm of multi-sigs. So this idea of using multiple keys so you don't have a single point of failure. And so they have built product that I think is very good in that respect. It's usable, but it's also”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Traditional hedge fund traders are going to be okay with. And I think the other open question is really around compliance and regulation because if you're a random retail person, you can trade with somebody and probably nobody's going to come after you regardless. But if you are a highly regulated hedge fund, then obviously you have to know who you're trading with and have a little bit more information about your counterparty. And if you don't have that, you could end up in serious trouble. So I think it's going to be quite a while before we really see a majority of trading volume shift into decentralized exchanges.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think the idea of decentralized exchanges is really powerful because ultimately they can be censorship resistant, they can allow for anybody to trade, create a market for any particular currency that they've created without having to wait for a centralized exchange to kind of approve it or that sort of thing. But I've been really seeing an interesting gap between The technologists who have a very decentralized exchange centric view and the actual traders who work in the traditional hedge fund or finance world and where they see things. So right now, decentralized exchanges make up arguably less than 1% of overall trading volume.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great. So I don't necessarily want to settle everything back into Bitcoin. So I think there's a lot of reasons why that won't happen. So I don't, I'm not a Bitcoin maximalist in the sense that I don't think everything is going back to that. But I do think that at this point it has kind of this blue chip aura, which is funny because I very much remember the days where I was like, oh, it's only used for drugs, which clearly isn't the case. But yeah, so, you know, I think ultimately we will have a number of different currencies that are used for different purposes. Consolidation in the store value realm will probably be into, I don't know, I would say five max. And people may have regional preferences, but ultimately, again, if you can easily switch between Zcash and Bitcoin and back again, then that might be something that allows for a slightly larger universe of store value currencies to proliferate.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so if you were settling into Bitcoin, probably that would mean that you have all of this universe of transactions that would have to come back onto the Bitcoin blockchain. So that could be really intensive from just a transaction throughput perspective, which could be problematic. Also, Bitcoin's privacy is definitely not.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different, I think, approaches you. You could take that question. One thing, for example, is if you're trading on a decentralized exchange right now, a lot of them, they only allow you to trade ERC20 tokens, for example. But you could see very easily a world in which Bitcoin becomes tokenized as an ERC-20 token, and therefore your Bitcoin, for example, gets locked up on the existing chain, but you basically have a token that's representative of that Bitcoin that allows you to move more seamlessly. Or that's just one way in which you could do it. But if you could, let's say, trade directly from your ledger wallet into a decentralized exchange and back to your wallet without having to really have any high switching costs or pay much in the way of fees, that might be more interesting, especially if it allows you to kind of keep your currencies in the wallet without actually bringing them online and exposing yourself to any kind of security risk.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's going to be a winner take most. I mean, I think returns or value is going to be fairly concentrated. But I also think that one big open question that I think could dramatically influence the outcome of that question is how good we get at cross-chain swaps and how easy it is to switch between various cryptocurrencies. Because if we get it to the point where switching costs are effectively zero and there's no meaningful burden on the user to do that, then it may allow for a broader universe of cryptocurrencies to be widely used because it doesn't matter. I can move in and out seamlessly. Whereas if we continue to have challenges in that regard, it might lower velocity between coins, actually, and just force people to kind of take a position and perhaps hold it for longer periods of time.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is really to say, okay, I believe that this trend is going to be meaningful. Let's look at the projects within that category. Which ones do I think have, let's say, greater than a 20% or at least 10% probability of becoming the one or at least one of the top two or three players and make an allocation there? And so I think one of the differences in investing in cryptocurrency versus series A venture is that you can make multiple bets and you don't necessarily have to stake everything on one horse, which I think is honestly probably the right approach, at least considering where we are right now.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tend to think about most things probabilistically, so it's not necessarily something where I have to have 100% conviction that this is going to be the one. And I think that's dangerous in the sense that, you know, this is a very new field. And anyone who thinks they're too clevers is probably wrong. So I try not to do that. And so I evaluate things on their technical characteristics as well as a number of other vectors. Do I think a particular coin is going to be more subject to regulatory scrutiny? So for example, I think yes, privacy coins are as a general category probably more likely to be closely watched, if not worse, from regulatory authorities. And even within that, I think something like Monero is potentially more at risk because they have a non-traditional company structure and that sort of thing relative to, let's say, Zcash. So yeah, I mean, there's a number of things that I evaluate. But to be honest, I think the best approach, especially if we look at, well, really any category of these investments.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way I viewed is something, a token that is used for a specific function within a particular network. So you could use the token to vote on what you think is going to be an outcome in a decentralized prediction market or something like that. I think the challenge from an investment perspective in tokens like that is that in order to maintain a high token price, you'll probably have to have a certain level of inflows and if you don't maintain those at that level, then you'll see the price drop. And I may not really see a lot of value in holding a particular decentralized prediction market token as a store value. Why would I do that? I want to hold my wealth in something that is more widely used. And so, you know, I think that's where the utility token.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use cases in instances in which I think people will want to hold the token for the long term and use it as more of a general purpose money than anything else.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think there's a lot of use cases in which we might see that happen. And even on the highest levels of the stack. So, for example, if you look at something like a decentralized Airbnb, there's kind of this popular conception in the minds of some folks that Airbnb is a massive business, therefore a decentralized Airbnb could be very valuable, and the token could be something that appreciates significantly. Whereas I actually believe that that value is not you take Airbnb's $30 billion valuation and you divide it by the number of tokens. Because actually what happens is half of that value maybe stays in the pockets of the host and half of that value stays in the pocket of the traveler, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the token appreciates to that degree. And so that's actually why from an investment perspective, I'm much more bullish on things that are not necessarily utility tokens specific to a network used to perform a particular function, and more favorable towards security tokens, particularly monetary.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a question I think a lot about because I'm investing a lot in protocols, and so I certainly hope that some of the value is occurring there. I think for the first time we really have a way of financially aligning incentives so that protocol creators and maintainers have a direct way of benefiting from the software that may be open source that they've created. And I think that's hugely important and really a monumental shift that is widely unappreciated when people are like, oh, cryptocurrencies are so much speculation. And it's like, well, actually, things like this are really meaningful shifts and we're seeing them for the first time. So I think the FAT protocol thesis is definitely something that is in play right now. We'll see. I think some of the protocols have appreciated tremendously in value. You look at something like Ethereum that plays very nicely into that story. We'll see. I think a lot of the long-term token economics are still being figured out. And I don't mean to give a cop-out answer, but I think ultimately nobody knows. And that's what we're all trying to determine.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different approaches right now that people are taking to that, and I think you're exactly right. There definitely are trade-offs that have to be made to some extent at least between decentralization, security, and scalability. But if you look at something like our chain, for example, they are using a concurrent model whereby you can process transactions concurrently unless they're directly related to a transaction that happened previously. And so that allows for kind of these multiple lanes of transactions, if you will, to be happening at the same time. So there's a lot of different strategies that are being employed right now, and we're not quite certain what's going to work in the long term, but I think it's really important to have that kind of research lens because a lot of these are really hard problems that are being addressed for the first time.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The issue of scalability is a massive one because we all talk about this rich ecosystem of apps that everyone's using and smart contracts this and the other thing. But if you can't get a transaction through because the network is totally clogged up, then obviously that's not really functional. So I think scalability is going to be one of the biggest challenges for 2018 and into 2019 and potentially beyond. And so I'm looking at both layer one solutions, which may be smart contract platforms that were designed from the get-go to support a much higher throughput of transactions as well as layer two solutions, so things like Lightning Network and other kind of add-ons or modifications to existing chains that can help manage that volume. And I've mentioned this before in the context of CryptoKitties, the idea of, oh, hey, we've got people breeding cats on the blockchain and all of a sudden we can't get a real transaction through. And ultimately, people laugh at that as kind of a fad. But I think it's really indicative.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my lens is always very, very long term, 10, 20 years, because I think that's how long it takes to build meaningful change. And if you look at something like Bitcoin in particular, I was working at Facebook when I really fell down the rabbit hole or once I started doing more research and eventually decided to leave and join a Bitcoin company. And I remember feeling the sense of, oh my gosh, I've got to go do this right now because the world is going to be totally different in two years. And ultimately, it's five years later and things are slightly different and we're definitely moving in the direction I expected. it just takes a long time. And so I try to keep that horizon in mind when I'm investing. More specifically, I think we're very much still in the infrastructure days. So a lot of my investing is focused on that. I think until you have kind of the foundational pieces in place, it's hard to build on top of it. And we can't really have a rich ecosystem of companies or applications or decentralized use cases for consumers until we've laid the groundwork in a way that”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seeing it start to become a reality. So in Venezuela, people are mining Ethereum to actually pay their bills and moving their money into it whenever they can, obviously on ramps are still difficult, but in order to store their value in the best way possible. In Zimbabwe specifically, actually, last year was really fascinating to see because when they had their political coup, basically the price of Bitcoin on local exchanges was about twice what it was on other markets just because there was so much demand. And particularly in times of political instability or unrest, there is a strong interest in moving your money into something that is more stable. And everyone in the Western world complains, oh, Bitcoin's so volatile is not a good store of value, but obviously it depends what you're comparing it to. And in these countries that have seen massive hyperinflation, those currencies only go down. Bitcoin at least may be stable or may go up. So I think it's the best of imperfect alternatives right now.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was working at a startup in New York and got pretty burnt out and decided to go travel around Africa for a few months as one does and spend some time in Zimbabwe. And I was there kind of right after the worst of some of their hyperinflation. And at its peak, their currency was devaluing by about 50% on a daily basis. And so seeing their economy start to get back on its feet and hearing basically the horror stories of what the people had lived through and the fact that they had switched over to the US dollar to re-stabilize the economy really got me thinking about monetary policy. And so when I came back to the United States, a good friend of mine, Ryan Shea, who actually now runs Blockstack Labs, this was before he'd started any kind of crypto or decentralized businesses, though. It was like, oh, hey, have you read about Bitcoin? And I was like, no, what's that? And so he gave me the white paper and I was like, wow, this is the future. And so after that, I was pretty much hooked.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then allocate to a couple different fund managers who have different strategies and see how they do and then reallocate based on that.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think eventually it will become the fund managers won't be able to quote unquote get away with just beta. Right now, I think yes, realistically, because that's just where we are. And to be honest, a lot of the carry is deserved. I mean, these things are not easy. It's a lot of work operationally. It's a lot of work in a lot of different ways. And so I do think you get some points for doing all of that. But over time, as the market right now, these are still wildly inefficient markets that take like days to react to various pieces of news and everything is still super new. So obviously as the market matures, in 20 years, I don't expect that you will be able to just have a beta fund and that's fine unless it's more like an index fund fee model. So yeah, I think that will change over time. Honestly, what I think people should do is buy a bunch of perhaps Bitcoin and maybe one or two other things that they think have good long-term potential.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, on the institutional side, I think most folks that I've talked to, at least, are still trying to figure it out. So they're definitely interested. And at this point, they realize that there might be something going on here, but they are being cautious due to some degree regulatory considerations, but also just trying to figure out what is their strategy. So saying, okay, do we allocate to a number of crypto fund managers or do we have enough exposure via our VC portfolio, which in most cases is a small percentage of their total assets and cryptos of fraction of that? Or do they buy a bunch of Bitcoin and hold that directly? So most people that I've talked to are definitely spending a lot of time thinking and researching it, but not necessarily invested yet, which I think potentially could be a good thing in terms of investment outlook over the next couple years.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I actually think that given the current environment, especially now that prices have come down significantly, a lot of the publicly traded currencies, especially those in kind of the more monetary realms, are somewhat undervalued relative to a lot of the earlier stage stuff because I think realistically, it takes a lot for a currency, let's use Bitcoin as an example, to get to where Bitcoin has gotten. And so the likelihood that Bitcoin goes to zero, I think is dramatically lower than a lot of these new ICO projects in which the team is unproven or they've raised a ton of money, but they haven't actually proven that they can deliver on anything. And so team risk and market risk is definitely something that is real. And so you want to consider what are the network effects in a particular environment and what is the likelihood that ultimately this ceases to exist entirely, which I think is less likely in an environment in which there's a lot of people who are already stakeholders and who are interested in owning the asset or storing it.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vectors. And so trying to oversimplify it or overmath it isn't necessarily going to produce the best result, even though it might make you feel good about yourself.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Security best practices. So use a hardware wallet, for example. Don't use a multi sig wallet with a hardware wallet wherever you can. Obviously, it also depends on your investment style. So if you're a trader, then it's going to be a little bit more challenging for you to keep things on super, super lockdown and very deep cold storage because you need to be able to bring the coins online on a regular basis. But for most investors to whom that's not relevant, then you can put things away in a way that's most secure for them. So ultimately it depends really on how you need to trade. I think one of the challenges in this space investing also is just the fact that volatility and risk are not necessarily the same thing in my view of the world. And so something that is very volatile is not necessarily riskier than something else. And people try to quantify risk down to a number. And I think ultimately that's not necessarily the right approach because it's a very nuanced thing and it has a lot of different”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they very much want to protect consumers, which I think ultimately is a good thing. And so realistically, we're going to see more regulation in the space, which I think is ultimately a good thing as long as it's not so stringent that it really suffocates innovation. Beyond regulatory risk, I think a lot of it is also operational. And unfortunately, operational risk is something that is not, there's no like commensurate upside for taking it. So if you get hacked, whoops, there's no, you could get unhacked and somebody all of a sudden deposits a million dollars, you know, right? So there's no upside per unit of risk. But unfortunately, we as humans, I think, tend to be, oh, you know, overly optimistic in this category. No, it's fine. Nobody's going to hack me. And then, oops, there you go. And so I think operational risk is something that isn't necessarily considered. You don't have to worry about that if you're investing in public equities. And so it's a category of risk that a lot of investors are not as familiar.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so on the regulatory front, I think that's an area of risk in which you want to be thoughtful about the existing frameworks that we have and use those as like a jumping off point. So realistically, so many companies in the past year have taken the tech, oh, yes, well, we're not sure that we're offering a security and therefore we assume that regulatory rules for securities don't apply to us. And in reality, it's kind of more the opposite. So I think as an investor, you want to carefully consider, well, okay, what are the existing parameters? It's likely that what applies to cryptocurrencies is probably somewhat similar. And so, no, all of a sudden you're not going to be able to do an IPO that's completely unregulated and that's fine. That's a bit of, I think, a jump. And so thinking about it in a way that's cautious is probably the best way to go. From a regulatory perspective, I think a lot of these questions remain to be answered. I don't think regulators are out to get us.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To go down the rabbit hole. So if you start reading one thing and that requires you to go look into a different area, that's okay. You can use it as kind of a branching out. And again, I think knowledge is not like a linear map. It's much more of a tree that goes off in a bunch of different directions. And so if you can allow yourself to go down some of those branches, I think that's really helpful.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the first thing I would do is challenge the notion that it's too hard because I remember sitting again back when I was first digging into the space and I would have like 50 tabs open and I would be like three hours into it and reading about encryption algorithms. Yeah literally yeah and so I was like this is super weird why am I doing this? And then I kind of got myself out of the mindset that I needed to learn something for a specific immediate application. And if you approach it as more like, well, I know more now than I did before and view it as a continuum rather than like a yes, I know about it or no, I don't know about it, then I think that can really help reframe it. Because ultimately, you know, I talk to people who have been in the space for years, myself included, and you feel like, oh, there's so much more that you could always know. And so I think a lot of it is just being okay with not knowing everything and realizing that it's a perpetual journey. But more specifically, I would say just allow yourself.”
2018-04-24 · Invest Like the Best · Arianna Simpson – The Crypto Landscape - [Invest Like the Best, EP.84] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source