E132: SEC goes after crypto giants, Sequoia splits, LIV/PGA, Messi's deal + LIVE Q&A!

So we don't have Brian Armstrong move his company to the Middle East or an island in the Caribbean, which is what he's going to do, I predict.

I unfortunately think that the SEC has by and large put the entire sector into mate. And so I think that what Jason said is largely right, which is that it's going to force these companies to preserve enterprise value to leave the United States and to jurisdictionally operate from a different place and to basically IP block and IP gate US residents from using their products and services.

The government led by Gensler is in a full assault on crypto. And the goal is basically to either destroy it in the US or drive it offshore.

So Apple is giving him rev share on their Apple TV League pass for MLS. That's nuts.

So I just think it has huge implications to all the professional sports leagues because these big stars should be asking their agents and their managers, how do I do a deal like Messi? I am the ultimate content creator in my league.

And labor is basically becoming the equity in the equation, and they are getting a piece of the business. Just like Silicon Valley.

And so what really is happening is the government is going to stop all US venture investing in China. That's what's going to happen in the coming months.

I think that it should be possible to do business with China without it being seen as either unpatriotic or immoral. However, there are strategic technologies that are just going to be, I think, it's too hard and too risky to be supporting China.

And so they're coming down hard, and they're going to go and systematically dismantle the largest actors, and they're going to go through the value chain. So I think the obvious place that they're looking now are the exchanges, they'll look at the custodial services, they will not approve any ETFs.

Their function is to protect investors. Investors lost a bunch of money. Therefore, they are going to retroactively inflict pain and hold people accountable for their mandate, which is to protect investors.

But as the retail market took their hits, the SEC has to step in and Congress steps in and everyone starts to say it's time to act, we should have acted sooner.

However, the case against Coinbase, they're alleging a completely different set of facts, which is effectively what Gensler and the SEC are saying is that it is not legal to operate a crypto exchange in the United States.

I've told this story before, but I pinged those guys and I was basically like, I just wanna meet the team that built the TPU. Long story short, a year later, I put them in business. And we've been building silicon for this moment for years.

So it's like all this stuff is going to happen where like all these classes of jobs are going to go away.

I'm assuming it's indefinite because the amount of work it takes to write a job requisition is more work in some cases than actually automating with AI or Ready, the job function, and so I think 20-person companies might double in size in the next two or three years, but still have 20 people.

So one is, I think there's a lot of AI fear porn out there right now. And I just think that like all these doomer scenarios are, they're not going to play out overnight.

Foundational models are getting disrupted every other week. They're being decreased in size, parameters are being reduced. They're being commoditized. You can run these things on M2 chips.

First Republic and others have now proclaimed that they're going to start charging a lot more service fees to hold your money and they're going to start taking a lot less risk. So we're already headed in that direction.

You're gonna invest in a company at a $500 million valuation and six weeks later, it's gonna be worth zero because someone opens source the exact same thing that you can now do for 100K.

Everything in the middle, I think what Friedberg said is true, which is today it looks like it's worth a couple of billion dollars, tomorrow's worth nothing. And so I think you have to be very careful.

Arguably it's more distribution, it's almost certainly more distribution than he got through Fox.

Daily Wire is the model. I mean, they have got well over a hundred million in revenue, I understand, and they have a massive subscription business. So there's a clear path there.

Then they tried this like very convoluted evergreen structure right before the market fell apart, where you could basically become a permanent capital vehicle. And as far as I can tell from the outside looking in, it just seems like a tax, a tax play for the GPs to not have to sell and realize capital gains.

Yeah, but I actually think retrenching is good because it simplifies things.

So I've used that as a way, a forcing function for me to try to prove that there's really these two barbells, it's a barbell, bookends. One is a silicon and one of these data providers. That's probably an investible thing that's defensible.

I do agree with Chamath's point. Data's the new oil. Whatever data set you have that you have that's unique is incredibly powerful in terms of defensibility and could help you to outpace one of the generic models.

So right now, the Biden people, the Trump people and the media all want Trump over DeSantis.

My base thesis right now is that the job freezes, the hiring freezes at all these companies is indefinite.

And all these Expedia examples that are plugins at GBT make no sense. They make no economic sense. Those companies should go to zero.