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MICHAEL GREEN: I'm a
Silicon Valley native.
I actually grew up
here when it was still
called Santa Clara Valley.
And had a front row
seat to the early,
you know, home
computer environment.
I wouldn't even call it
the PC movement, right,
where you had Trash 80s
and Vic 20s and Sinclair 4K
machines, et cetera.
And before that,
even the hobbyists,
so Steve Jobs and the Steve
Wozniaks of the world.
And it was similar, in
a lot of ways, right?
Where you couldn't actually
do anything with these things,
but it was participatory
in that the technology
was rude enough and open enough
that lots of different people
could do stuff.
JOHN BURBANK: Right.
MICHAEL GREEN: Now,
paradoxically, that also
gave me a front row seat
to when all that crashed
in kind of '84, '85,
'86, right, which
occurred alongside the
introduction of the IBM PC,
which, you know, most of
the world looks at that
as if that was the
nascent founding
and that's where the
PC revolution started.
But ironically, that was where
a wave broke and crashed,
as well, right?
There were lots of competing
technologies and lots
of competing ideas that
suddenly were ossified.
And it was like this
is the standard,
and this is how it goes.
Do you see--
JOHN BURBANK: Think
how much riskier
it was to invest
in stuff back then.
MICHAEL GREEN: --it
was extraordinarily,
it was extraordinarily risky.
And many of the
early, you know--
again, people forget Intel is
obviously a challenge today,
but like, you know, it
was roughly the time
where Intel lost the memory
market to the Japanese.
That was the real loss there.
And everybody was
convinced Fujitsu
was going to dominate the
multi processor in the future.
It didn't work out
quite that way,
but, you know, it was
much, much riskier.
Very similar.
Huge interest and, within the
community that I grew up in,
a huge bubble that was created.
But then it crashed
on a standardization.
Is there anything
out there that you
see in crypto that's similar
to that standardization
moment, where people suddenly
say, aha, this is actually
the useful variant?
I mean, it could be Ethereum.
That would effectively make
Vitalik the king of the world.
JOHN BURBANK: Well,
there seems to be there's
the store of value,
you know, use
case, which is Bitcoin
and a few others.
That is as old a
problem as anything.
And gold has served
a purpose there.
There's payments.
And there's a few
different competing.
And that's farther behind,
but that is a real benefit
because we pay-- there's
a lot of friction
in payments in our society.
MICHAEL GREEN: Absolutely.
JOHN BURBANK: It really feels
incredibly expensive to have
a Visa transaction.
And then there's
the smart contracts,
you know, the technology, what
technology will things run on.
And there's growing
competition there.
What's so different,
like, I have a hard time
dismissing the store of value.
So I think there's
a reason Bitcoin
was the first thing that
was done and has been safe,
I guess, a safe bet.
And I think it's still
early, and there's
a lot of lessons in
the tech world of what
ends up winning, right?
It's like where do
the developers go.
And a lot of people
are making bets
on where to put their
attention and time.
You know, who adopts,
who gets market adoption.
And it's so early there.
And then later
applications, I mean,
it still feels like
it's really early.
But as I said, I think because
these things are liquid,
and price changes is
comprehensible to everyone
in the world, and it
changes, potentially changes
their behavior of where
they're going to put time
and what they're
going to change,
I have a view that it's
going to accelerate
the market, the
transfer of knowledge
to what is actually
winning formulas
and will lead to other
magnificent results that, say,
Ethereum--
Ethereum is probably the
spectacular single investment
that I've seen in my life.
And I didn't get a whole
lot of it in my portfolio.
Had I actually just
started a year earlier,
you know, in this
universe, I could
have had a much greater return.
But I'm just saying
in asset class,
this is a platform shift,
right, that will grow with time.
And it's hard to understand.
And it's not--
I don't have to understand
it, but I'm trying to--
I'm learning what
the properties are
and what are the
potential ramifications,
and then what are
the effects of it,
right, as it changes
other things,
and what is the
effect of blockchain.
But I'm looking at
it in the context
of this is just one sector,
one tech breakthrough that's
changing one area.
And it's really early.
And the same could be said
of autonomous driving,
you know, in autos,
and the same could
be said of genomics in health
care, which is, you know,
actually the most
incredible, right?
I mean, knowing
your personal genome
and being treated about
that is just mind-boggling,
and that it can be delivered
to you for less than $100,
you know?
Like, a negligible
amount of money.
Like, that's incredible.
But the health care system
is not ready to do that.
And so my pattern recognition
is that we're just
on legacy platforms.
We're waiting.
And I think the culture
is ready to change.
And so let's just use
crypto as it's in finance,
yes, it is in and of
itself, but it's also
representative and
the most accessible
of all the new technology
platforms for consumers.
And it's happening, and it's
accessible around the world
at the same time.
I think Asians
are a culture that
are taking to it much better or
faster than we are in the West.
But I'm ready for big changes in
security tokens, for instance.
But I don't need to be precise.
You know?
With the duration,
you don't need
to be as precise as you do in
managing low-vol public market
funds.
I do think this
is the big trend.
I'm looking for something
that is bigger than this.
Maybe I'll be wrong.
Maybe it's going to take longer
for these shifts to happen.
But as I put in the
time, I just think
this is representative
of a bigger perception
change around the world.
And now I think the
risk is not doing.
Like, the corporate risk
is not adopting and getting
closer to this.
Like, take blockchain.
That's my perception.
And regulatory, much as China
has stopped it temporarily,
the risk is you ban it and then
your human capital, you know,
goes and builds systems in other
places, other jurisdictions.
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