The Past Present & Future of Cryptocurrency | Coinbase Co-Founder Fred Ehrsam

**Rob Reid** (0:09)
Welcome to The After On Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reid. And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders and scientists. Take a little time and stretch out, because these talks are unhurried and meant to bring you to a top percentile understanding of something important.
So, whether you're into start-ups or ideas, a techie or a lit major, take your time, engage your mind, and you'll be glad you did it. Especially this week, when we'll be talking to Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. And this conversation feels very well-timed. Why? You'd have to be living in some kind of a news blackout, not to have heard chatter about cryptocurrencies recently. The granddaddy of all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, has appreciated roughly 2,000 percent over the past 12 months, and the total value of all the Bitcoin in existence is closing in on $300 billion.
That makes it more valuable than roughly 490 of the companies in the Fortune 500, and way more valuable than any of the banks that were deemed too big to fail during the financial crisis. So what in the world is going on here? As with all large markets, nobody fully knows. But my interviewee, Fred Ehrsam, knows this area better than almost anyone. In 2012, Fred co-founded a company called Coinbase. He and I will discuss it in detail in a moment, but the cliff notes are that Coinbase is by far the world's largest consumer-friendly service for storing and trading cryptocurrencies, although its users also include many large non-consumers as well. Fred and I worked really hard together, thinking through and structuring conversation that could serve as a robust introduction to cryptocurrencies for beginners who know nothing about them, while also really firing the neurons of experts who'd like to know what folks like Fred think about where this is all heading. Will AIs start running on the blockchain?
Could a full-fledged Uber, Lyft or Airbnb competitor run as a cloud-based smart contract? How would the emergence of Ethereum stand in a certain line of historic events that stretches back before the Bronze Age? I'm really pleased to say that those of you who don't yet know what a blockchain or a smart contract are should be able to follow this entire conversation clear through to its complex and rather mind-bending conclusions just by listening carefully, although probably not on 2x speed.
In fact, even if you only have the vaguest concept of cryptocurrencies, I think by listening to this, you could find yourself at or near a top percentile understanding of them by the time we're done. Now, regular listeners will know that going from vague familiarity to top percentile understanding is a common goal of my episodes, of which this is the 17th. Other topics we've tackled include the mad world of drones, consumer, commercial and military. That was episode nine. Augmented reality, that was the very first episode. What I call, for lack of a better term, networked words. That was a conversation with Ev Williams, who co-founded Twitter and now runs Medium. Other guests have included Chris Anderson, who runs the TED Conference, legendary tech industry observer and participant Tim O'Reilly, and the outspoken and ever controversial Sam Harris. And our topics have included synthetic biology, super AI risk, and Fermi's paradox, which is the strangely baffling question of why we haven't detected any signs of extraterrestrial life despite all our fancy equipment and our very high interest in finding it. Anyway, if you enjoy this conversation, I'll hope you'll check out a few other episodes. You can find them all at afteron.com. When you get there, just click on the tab that's labeled Podcast Surprise, Surprise. Or you could just type After On into your favorite podcasting app.
I also hope some of you will consider checking out the novel that gave rise to this series. It's called Wait For It After On, right? Set in present-day San Francisco, it's the tale of a rather diabolical social media company, which, contrary to the interests of anyone associated with it, attains consciousness. I wrote it, Random House published it in August. And though it's in some ways a rather playful book, it also takes a very serious look at many of the issues explored in this series, including the issues explored in all of its first eight episodes. Now, before we get started, a quick word for you stone cold cryptocurrency experts. This is the first time I've said anything like this in an episode, but you may want to jump ahead about 30 minutes or so to skip the basics that you probably already know, because Fred is extremely generous and patient in his baseline explanations for the non-expert listeners, which I'm really grateful for. So thank you again, Fred. Although experts, I will say, I thought I knew the stuff in that first half hour cold myself, but was exposed to a lot of intriguing nuances by talking it through with Fred. So you might want to listen to it anyway. Next, a quick apology to those of you who are interested in Radical Life Extension. I indicated this would be the topic of this week's episode, but cryptocurrency has so exploded in the headlines just over the last several days that I decided to slot this episode in for reasons of immense topicality. And yes, it took a Herculean act of self-control for me to say topicality right there instead of currency, because I do love me a pun. Anyway, Life Extension fans will all have to stave off our own mortality just a little bit longer to give that topic the treatment it deserves here. Soon, I promise.