#14 - The Bitcoin Believer

**Arianna Simpson** (0:01)
I remember waking up every morning, terrified that I was going to make nothing of my life in terms of what I wanted to do, because I would get too complacent. I probably wouldn't have left as quickly as I did if I hadn't gotten really into Bitcoin.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:15)
Did you dip your toes in the water with like 100 bucks, or was it a thousand or 10,000, or what did you do?

**Arianna Simpson** (0:21)
I won't say the number, but it was 50 percent of the money I had in the world at the time.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:26)
So you cannonballed into the water.

**Arianna Simpson** (0:27)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:28)
The Bitcoin. Now what's the Bitcoin?

**Arianna Simpson** (0:30)
To what some are calling fool's gold. The value of each Bitcoin hit a new high. It's trading for about $130. $413.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:38)
More than $2,000. $9,700.

**Arianna Simpson** (0:41)
$11,000.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:42)
$19,500.

**Arianna Simpson** (0:43)
Honestly, it was just very clear to me that this was distinct from anything else I'd ever seen, and that if it worked, it was unlikely to go from $100 to $200 and kind of be done there. To me, it was like, this either goes fucking huge or it dies.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:03)
You said you listened to an episode or two?

**Arianna Simpson** (1:04)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:05)
What did you think?

**Arianna Simpson** (1:06)
Yeah, it was great. It was so funny because I just randomly came across it, and then you messaged me the next day or something. Within day, it was wild. No, I thought it was super interesting. I actually listened to the episode with Sam, and it's always interesting to hear people who just had some idea and then just built it up, and what they actually did in terms of steps. Because to your point, I think there's a ton of like, oh, then I did the thing. And it's like, yeah, but what things did you actually do? That's why even I was asking all these specific questions around the podcast. I'm just curious about steps. I'm very much a fan of the kind of entrepreneurial hustle. I have always taken the less paved road. And so I think it's always fascinating to see the stories of other people who have done that as well in totally different environments.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:50)
So I was looking at your Twitter beforehand because I'm like, the best way to do research is just to read someone's Twitter feed because they're posting all of their thoughts.
And so you can see how they think. And you had a tweet, which was good, which was like, I feel like in college, everybody should be required to take a test that makes you do a 20 second intro of yourself. This should be required. It's shockingly bad at just introducing themselves simply. So I'm going to put you to the test. You're going to have to do your 20 second intro here.
And no pressure. And let's see how it goes. So for the audience, who is Arianna Simpson?

**Arianna Simpson** (2:21)
Sure. Yeah. So my name is Arianna Simpson. I'm an early stage tech investor.
I've been involved in crypto for about six and a half years, which practically makes me a dinosaur. And prior to that, I worked at Facebook and a couple other tech startups. Yeah, I love investing. I think that's definitely what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. So I think that's like a pretty strong part of my identity at this point.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:40)
And did you think you were going to do investing? Like when you're growing up, you're in college, were you like, that's the path I want to go down? Or did you stumble into this path?

**Arianna Simpson** (2:47)
No, if you look back, you can kind of see the seeds of it at various points in time, but it was not obvious at all. My parents are teachers, now professors, have no interest in anything financial, but I always did. I just I like numbers. I like money. I thought it was interesting. And I like things that are quantifiable and specific. And that's just kind of how my brain works. And so I was always interested in kind of reading financial history books and things like that. And so that was kind of the impetus for it. But in terms of my academic trajectory, I studied international relations in Spanish and history and thought I was going to go work at the UN or for the State Department, and then realized I was probably not very well suited to bureaucracy, given my lack of patience in general. And so I kind of started thinking about technology, and it's kind of a bizarre story how I ended up there. But I got a grant from the National Science Foundation right as I was about to graduate from college and went to South Africa to do ecology research for a couple of months there.