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I just talked to @reidhoffman about crypto.

Here's what he had to say...
If you don't know who Reid Hoffman is...

1. Creator of LinkedIn (sold for $20 billion+)
2. Early investor in Facebook & AirBnB
3. Wicked good settlers of catan player

He's a legend in silicon valley.

So I wanted to know. What does he think about crypto & web3?
Q: How did you first get into crypto?

In 2013 - BTC price jumped from $13 --> $1,100 (84x)

He asked his friend Wences (founder of @xapo) to walk him through it.

eg. what made bitcoin different from earlier digital cash attempts (e-good, eCash etc.)?

1 big thing "clicked"..
Bitcoin wasn't just an asset or currency.

It was a platform.

It reminded Reid of the early days of the web.

A new way of doing things (no central 3rd parties needed to transact) that was going to enable all kinds of new products, services & of course, other coins.
btw - this isn't his first rodeo.

In 1997, Reid was one of the first to see "social networks" would be big

His 1st try failed (SocialNet)
His 2nd try worked (@LinkedIn, $20 billion+)

he also saw a little startup out of boston called Facebook and helped invest the first $500k
Now about that "platform" thing..

Q: What are the crypto use cases you're most excited about?

Identity & Certification.

You can re-invent the Domain Name System (eg. DNS --> ENS)

Even for this interview, we asked him to submit a picture to prove it was him..
So he sent photoproof - a sign of him, holding a photo that said "Hi @MilkRoadDaily " and the date.

But instead, he could have simply signed it cryptographically.

LinkedIn does a lot with identity and certification. But with web3 there is potential for new protocols to do it
Q: You're a billionaire, you could be sipping a margarita looking at an island you own. Why are you playing around with NFTs?

R: I've been wanting to do something with NFTs for a while.

Ironically, the market slow down motivated him to finally do it

here's why..
After the dot-com bust, a lot of people said the internet was over.

It was just a fad.

"nobody was ever going to buy dog food online"

But in retrospect, that was actually a great time to be investing & building internet companies. That's where he thinks we are now for crypto
Here's how it went down.

1. He's on the board of OpenAI
2. He got beta access to DALL-E, the AI that creates Art

It lets someone with no art skills (like him) create stunning digital art in just a few minutes.

Each is an original.
You know the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words"?

Well his NFT experiment is the opposite.

He gave the AI "one word" and it created "a thousand pictures".

He picked his 11 favorite, and created an NFT collection.

NFT is technology that makes art provably scarce.
AI is creating ABUNDANCE of art (easy to generate loads and loads of originals)

NFTs re-introduce some SCARCITY into art (lets you own a specific piece of digital art).

All 11 pieces sold today in an auction on @MagicEden
Q: what does he think of DALL-E?

Ignoring DALL-E now is like ignoring blogging int he late 90s, or social media in 2004, or mobile in 2007, or figma in 2022.

It's an explosive tech.

Very quickly, these AI creation tools are going to become essential.
Q: What parts of crypto are you skeptical of? Maybe something that's hyped up?

He's been a real skeptic of play-to-earn games. Axie Infinity means well, but the economics simply don't work. He has yet to see a p2e system that's real & not an unintentional ponzi
btw this was funny.

we all know about linkedin, investing etc...but I asked him what his first job was:

He walked into the office of a game maker with a list of ideas for how to make Runescape better.

They hired him as a part time editor

He was 12 at the time. 🤣
Q: So if people could only remember ONE thing from our convo..what should it be?

Playing Dungeons and Dragons can lead to a successful life in tech investing 😅

Or that there are diamonds among the lumps of coal in web3. Have an active mind & be a predictive anthropologist!
personally, this was a bucket list item to meet Reid.

he doesn't know who the hell I am, but I've learned a ton from him over the years.

One big framework I've learned from him:

Don't use a long list of pros & cons for a decision. Blended reasons fail. Use 1 decisive reason.
if you like hearing interviews like this about crypto --> make sure you go sub to @MilkRoadDaily

it's free, and Steve Jobs said that reading our newsletter was "the key to Apple's business"

(..or something like that)
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