. 41 min read

貨幣とビットコインの歴史 – プリーティ・カシレディ

In this episode of Cryptonews Podcast, Matt Zahab interviews Preethi Kasireddy - an entrepreneur, software engineer, writer, blockchain enthusiast and teacher who worked at a16z, Coinbase, and Goldman Sachs. They discuss crypto capital, history of money, Bitcoin, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and much more.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
0:43 Living in Florida
1:36 Crypto capitals
5:41 Balaji
6:17 Journey into crypto
14:46 Working at Coinbase
18:39 Preethi's crypto course
22:33 History of money
30:09 Dogecoin
31:10 Bitcoin to 100k?
32:59 CBDCs
36:51 Using Bitcoin for regular transactions
38:32 NFTs
40:26 Crypto in India
44:40 Outro

The episode premiered on April 21, 2021.

Listen on other platforms here or explore the latest episodes of the Cryptonews podcast here.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This episode is brought to you by CoinPoker.

CoinPoker is a revolutionary blockchain technology-based platform that was developed by an ambitious team of poker lovers.

CoinPoker uses USDT as the main in-game currency and CHP as in-game fuel, offering all benefits of the crypto world alongside. CoinPoker also features instant and secure transactions using USDT, ETH, BTC or CHP tokens and no KYC .

CoinPoker users get huge promotions, as they give away thousands in fiat value each week. CHP is the currency of the CoinPoker economy providing players with exclusive benefits and supports future developments delivered to the CoinPoker community.

Play some hands, collect wins, and cash out in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or CHP!
 

Episode transcript:

Matt Zahab: 0:08

Folks, today's guest is a queen in the crypto verse after graduating from the University of Southern California, she worked at big companies like Goldman Sachs and Andreessen Horowitz. She left a16z to learn how to code and was later hired at Coinbase. Ever heard of them? Present day. She's a software engineer and blockchain enthusiast, a true woman of the people who also offers a free intro to crypto course. I'm pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast Preethi Kasireddy. Preethi, welcome to the show.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 0:41

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Matt Zahab:

 0:43

We're very excited to have you here as well. I understand you're in beautiful Palm Beach, Florida. How's that treating?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 0:50

Yeah. It's great so far. Can't complain. We've moved from California. So things here a lot more open, which is nice. And so far that people are really, really nice. So I'm excited to see what else Florida has to offer.

Matt Zahab:

 1:09

Have you have you been in Florida in the July and August summer month yet?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 1:14

No. Yeah. So I have no idea what to expect.

Matt Zahab:

 1:19

I'm currently in Jupiter. And as a Canadian from Toronto it has been just incredible being here for a couple months. So grateful to not be in Canada where locked down is pretty bananas right now. It's more communist than anything else but that is a story for another day. Building on the Florida topic, before we get into an intro, Preethi, I'm sure you've seen all of the venture capitalists and big time companies moving from San Fran over to Miami and to Austin, sort of the exodus of the West Coast or to the east coast. What do you think about that?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 1:53

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. So I think what is happening now is that the late stages of the Exodus are starting to become a lot more evident to normal people. So I kind of started to see this happening starting back in like 2015 2016. So it's not new. So but now, because of the pandemic, I think it sort of made people reevaluate everything in their lives, including where they live, and what they want to do. And so a big part of that is that there, people are leaving from cities or leaving places that they otherwise were staying at for a long time because now it's like, they have no choice but to deal with all of the issues that they never really dealt with, because now they had time. So I think the exodus is just showing that this is all just pent up demand. And now they have a place to come, which is Florida. And I think a lot of people are choosing Florida, or at least were choosing Florida because of how, honestly very, like proactive the mayor was on Twitter. And I think we don't really see much of that happening across the country. We don't see our leaders really doing that much. But he did something very radical and very different by going on Twitter and being very proactive. So then he brought some early talent to Florida like Keith reavoice, and so forth. And then that continued to create a flywheel effect, where more and more people just started to come because they started to see that it was, there was energy there, there's optimism there. And I think if you go to San Francisco, like it's not nearly as optimistic anymore, it was in like, 2012 timeframe. But now I think there's a lot of pessimism around it. So I think that you're starting to see the flywheel effect go off by people coming to Miami. And then only time will tell whether this is going to create something real and lasting or whether it's sort of like, you know, just a little bit of hype. But I think like because of the quality of the talent that's coming and the optimism, there's a huge chance that there's something real that will happen here.

Matt Zahab:

 4:08

Miami becoming one of the crypto capitals of the world is definitely very exciting and much needed for the United States of America or just North America as a whole.But what Mayor Suarez has done with his Twitter campaign, like he has literally made a fool of every other major city mayor like in the planet, like no one is doing this. And he's created a playbook that no one else has. And it's so cool to see. Do you have any other hot takes on which cities in the states would be the next ones to follow?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 4:38

Yeah, it's interesting. I thought like Austin would blow up and I think it saw what Miami is seeing today. But I think it kind of mellowed out over the last couple of months. You don't really hear as much about Austin anymore. I mean, Elon musk and Joe Rogan, all of them moved out there, but that's another city to watch. Personally, I'm not as excited about Austin just beacuse its not my, this is not my vibe, I guess. Miami just is more interesting to me and even I think Balaji, who's super anti-US now, he's actually, he was saying that he's also excited about Miami. And so there's a lot to be said about that. Besides that, like, I don't really know, if I'm as excited about any other city in the US to be totally honest.

Matt Zahab:

 5:27

Wyoming?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 5:28

I think like, maybe. I think a lot of the energy, the most exciting energies happening outside of the US, you know, in places like Asia, like Singapore, India, and stuff like that.

Matt Zahab:

 5:41

So I'd love to get into and we'll get into this later on about Singapore, India and other countries that are really making news in the crypto space. Butyou brought up Balaji. Have you listened to his recent podcast on the Tim Ferriss show?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 5:54

Yeah, I listen to it. It was great. It kind of really summed up his whole worldview of how he thinks about things. And it was really, really helpful.

Matt Zahab:

 6:03

He is. I'd love to, I'd love to to spend one day in his head to see what's going on and to see what bounces around out there. One smart cookie.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 6:14

Yeah, he's very well read.

Matt Zahab:

 6:17

He certainly is. Let's jump right into you. Now, you have an extremely interesting past. And you made one career move that is absolutely crazy. It's bananas. Quitting one of the most prestigious venture capital firms, if not the most prestigious in the whole world, a16z. Could you tell our audience a little bit about your past how you graduated from uni, got a job at Goldman Sachs, then went on to a16z and left? That would be really cool.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 6:47

Sure. I was in engineering college and like most college graduates, I had no idea what that even meant, or what I would be doing after college, but I just I enjoyed math and physics so I pursued engineering. And I was also a business minor, because I felt like I didn't want to spend all my time around nerdy engineers. I felt like I needed to be around like, normal business people. So through that I met, I took a finance course, and I liked it and then I met a bunch of investment bankers, or at least like interns. And so long story short, I sort of fell into that investment banking, recruiting crowd. And I just really loved the energy of the students that were doing that because they were just like, so much more proactive and, and hustling compared to engineers. I think engineers in college tend to have a chip on their shoulders, because they know they're smart and they know that an engineering degree is valuable, and that they'll get a job, they don't really have to work hard for it. Besides is working hard in school. Whereas business, it's a lot more competitive. And so people are really hustling. So I really liked that hustle culture. And so I kind of got sucked into that crowd and ended up doing the whole investment banking recruiting process of going to like these meetups, etc. Eventually, I started interviewing, and I got a job at Goldman, I got an internship. And that's what brought me up to Silicon Valley. And I did the three month internship, and then they gave me the full time offer. So that's what, after college, I came to Silicon Valley to do investment banking at Goldman. I absolutely loved it, because I loved and hated it. So I loved it in the sense that Goldman is like the number one firm for like training. So they do a really, really good job of training their employees. And so it just taught me how to be a good employee, like, you know, like how to, you know, be professional with emails, and how to work fast and just a lot of be punctual, like all these things that really matter in a workplace. But what I didn't like is, I actually I didn't love the work per se. It wasn't something I was passionate about because I was an engineer by heart and like, banking is something totally outside of that. And so I sort of knew that and I was looking at people like, you know, three, five years ahead of me, and there was nothing about their jobs that excited me. And I was like, okay, if I'm not excited by what these people are, what this is leading up to like, what's the point of spending time here? So I left after my first year and I didn't know what I want to do. But I started to, a few friends told me that venture capital could be a good thing to do after banking. So I started to look into that. And I honestly got the job at A16Z through a cold email. So I had sent a cold email to someone at the firm and they answer they decided to they did have a coffee meeting with me. So two months later, that coffee meeting finally got scheduled. And then after that meeting, I just got accelerated through the recruiting process. And then another two months later, I got an offer.

Matt Zahab:

 10:09

Sorry to interrupt you tell me a little bit about that email, like, that's got to go to the cold email Hall of Fame. Like, what did you write to get their attention there?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 10:17

I don't even remember what was in that email. It was, I was just very, like, honest. And I, you know, I came from Goldman to that had some kind of credential there. And I was just honest about who I am and like, what I'm looking for. Right. And yeah, so he responded, and I was like, wow, like, that's awesome. So, yeah. And I think like, because I spent a lot of time recruiting for investment banks. Like I had to, like, that was a big thing. And like I wrote so many cold emails back then, in college, because I was like, reaching out to like every investment banker, I could just to get like, a informational meeting with them to understand what they do. And like, all that stuff. So I just got really good at cold emails. I sent like hundreds of them in college. So yeah, it was another cold email. I still send them once in a while, like, I don't mind reaching out to people cold. I think if you're just very honest and authentic about it, people will answer. Nice. So yeah, then got the job at Goldman, sorry, a16z. And originally, I was on the growth team and then I want to move to the venture side. So I, you know, proved myself and then ended up moving to the venture side and that was like, so fun. I got to work with people like Chris Dixon and Marc Andreessen. And I saw the Coinbase deal happening while I was there, I didn't work on it, but I saw sort of their why they're investing. And so that was my first like, even like, I guess, like exposure to crypto when I heard about Coinbase, and what they're doing. And at the same time, Balaji had joined the firm as well. And he was like, he basically got everyone in the firm to like, he wanted everyone to, you know, check out the register thing. Yeah. And a lot of people like just didn't get it. But Mark and Chris were like, super like, on board with it. I personally didn't fully understand either. And then probably a year after that was when I finally clicked for me of why crypto matters.

Matt Zahab:

 12:27

And walk me through the process like how, I'm sure you talked to your parents, your loved ones, close friends and family, your network like did, was anyone on board for you leaving a place like a16z?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 12:39

Totally h nest, like I don't really ma e decisions by telling other peo le. It was just a decision made for myself because, y u know, when I was in a16z, I wa meeting entreprene rs every day having conversati ns with them. And I just felt ike I wanted to be, I felt like hat I was young and had it all energy. But I felt like if I ad that, then why wasn't I on the other side of the table do ng what they're doing? Why was the one listening? Righ ? It was so cool to see all thes people like going and build ng their these companies that hey dreamed of, rather than jus listening to that. So I was ike, I want to be on that side of the table. I want to be the uilder. And I felt like the o e skill set I was missing was learning how to code. Because i you've been in Silicon Valley ver, you know that most peopl have a bias towards technic l co founders or technical found rs. Because if you're building a tech company, how the heck co ld you not know the technology? Right? You need to. Even if you re not coding day to day, I thin just knowing how the tech works is important. And I felt like th re was that like bottleneck th re where even when I was analyzi g companies, right at a16z, I f lt like that was, I wish I was ike Oh, I wish I knew how to code because it would it would elp me understand this co pany better. Right? So I just f lt like if I want to go buil my own company, I need that kill set. And yeah, I knew tha , you know, if I want to come back and be an investor, I can always be an investor. You know, people are investors late into t eir careers, but you know, lear ing how to code. I think th t was a perfect time for me t probably go do that. Because you know, once you start a fa ily, for example, or have o her responsibilities, like doin something like that, it's j st like way harder,

Matt Zahab:

 14:29

Yeah you're toast.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 14:31

So I was able to like just go all in and like, jump into it and like spend the next six months, just only learning how to code like 12 hours a day just learning how to code. And yeah, so that's why I left.

Matt Zahab:

 14:46

And then you learned how to code and you've got a job at Coinbase. Now, it's crazy how things come full circle in life. You were in those Coinbase meetings back at a16z. And then you got a chance to work for them.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 15:01

Working at Coinbase was like looking at any other company. The only difference was they're building a crypto app. So I was doing react programming at the time, if you know what react is I wasn't actually building on the blockchain, right? So I was just building widgets using react, but it was for a crypto company. Coinbase, at the end of the day is a centralized company. Right. And so a lot of the stuff that I was doing was very much react oriented. So I was learning JavaScript, and, you know, Ruby on Rails and stuff like that, but I was not learning any crypto while I was there.

Matt Zahab:

 15:39

Right. And did you ever get a chance to speak with Brian or any of the other founding members of the team?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 15:45

Yeah, of course. Um, I interviewed with Brian, I interviewed with Fred. And so I was there when you know, both of them were there and when Dan was there, and they didn't pause, then who was one of the best, like one of the key original engineers? So yeah, like a lot of the original, Olaf was also still there back then. So a lot of the original people were there, Linda, Nick.

Matt Zahab:

 16:10

OGs?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 16:11

Yeah, the OGs were all there. So it was it was an interesting time, for sure. So it's interesting to see all of them dispersed and do their own things.

Matt Zahab:

 16:19

And did you ever think Coinbase would pop off like it did?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 16:23

Um, in terms of like, the public, in the public markets?

Matt Zahab:

 16:26

Yeah, like just becoming $100 billion Corporation.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 16:29

I mean, like, I think at the time I was, at the time, probably, I wouldn't have thought that just because when I joined, like people, no one was paying attention to crypto and I left before 2017. So I was only there for like, eight months. Like I said, I was working on react stuff and I felt like, I felt like I wanted to learn. If I was going to work in crypto, I want to work on crypto stuff. And I felt like, I don't know. I just like I felt like, you know, I could do the same work at any centralized company. And so I, you know, and I get impatient sometimes, like I sometimes I don't wait things out. But I was like, at the time was like, I think I want to check out this whole crypto world thing. So I left. And after I left was when 2017 happened. And so when I left if you had asked me like, do you think Coinbase would would get as big as it is today? I probably would have said no. Actually, I take that back. I think like what's interesting about Coinbase is like they always had a really, really interesting culture. And really, what I liked about Brian was that he's very focused, I think is the right word. He's very focused, and he listens. He doesn't always act on everything that everyone tells them. But he does listen. And I think that's super important for a company in crypto where there's so many new things to do all the time. And so you have to like stay on top of the game. But you also need to focus. I think he always had this like ability to focus and they also were really, really good at hiring. And so talent was like, talent filtering was also like, they had a really high bar. So like, it's one of those things where like, I would have expected them to be successful, I just wouldn't have guessed that they'd be as big they are as they are today.

Matt Zahab:

 18:39

Right. It also helps when you're I don't know if they were first to market but definitely the most prominent at the time, and that name and clout helped them carry that momentum to present day. But speaking of present day, do you have a crypto course that you've chose to release via email, it focuses on the history of money and crypto as a whole. Every couple days, I get a fresh email from your course right in my inbox, I absolutely love it. I drag it down to my read later folder and it's one of the few emails that I actually read fully which is just crazy because I understand crypto and many people understand crypto but have such little understanding of why it's become so prominent and the history behind it and you need to be familiar with the history of money and monetary policy and your course literally nails that right on the head. A little bit about the titles and mind you this goes in chronological order and today I got lesson number 18 which was titled The Great moderation dot dot dot and also why does Yellen hate on Bitcoin? I love this. She's become a bit of a character and I know the crypto verse absolutely hates her. When I picture Yellen I just picture her waking up in the morning grabbing a nice, you know, big ceramic ball and she probably just pours a bunch of like, you know, nails, nuts, bolts, and a couple splashes of all milk in the bowl, and just thinks like, Who am I gonna go after today? Like, what kind of ruckus am I gonna cause? We'll get to Yellen later, but tell me a bit more about the course. And why did you choose to release it via email of all of the format's that you could have chosen?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 20:22

Yeah, that's a good question. So I kind of launched it, you know, towards the end of 2020, when everyone was, you know, dealing with their own stuff, I guess. And I just, I needed to, I had took a break from crypto for a few months. And I was like, I always knew that I want to do crypto education, it was something I've been wanting to do since 2018. I just never had the time because I was building my own company. And I just couldn't dedicate the time to do crypt education. So since I took time off, and I was coming back into crypto again, I was like, okay, like, I'm gonna do this prep education stuff. And, like, I really evaluated doing video pretty seriously. But the reality is, like producing video content just, the threshold for that is a lot higher. And I realized that even if I want to produce video content, I have to know what I want to say. And the best way to kind of know what you want to say is to write it. So like, why don't I just like write it first. And then have like, all the content, and then I can sort of if I want to later produce the video. So I was like, let me just keep this easy. Because I didn't want to like commit to this like giant video course. Because that's just like overwhelming, right? So I was like, let's take baby steps. And let's start with the written stuff. And then I'll layer on video. So I did the first entire part in all text. And I'm naturally pretty good at writing. So I just kind of leverage that skill set to do it in text and email. But now I'm at a phase where sort of, you know, I've finished writing the Bitcoin section, and then I'm now figuring out like, okay, so what comes next? Because I think like, the parts that I think are better served in text format are sort of done. And now I think, is a good time to get into like the video stuff. So yeah, there's no right. There's no honestly like, I wish I had a like, a better, like, or a more compelling reason for why email besides it was just simpler and easier to get up and running, versus trying to do something that's like super full fledged,

Matt Zahab:

 22:33

Well you can fully read a book with this. Like that the emails are not short, every one is a good you know, depending on the email, it's like anywhere between a four to you know, almost some of them like 15 minute read, depending on how quick your reader you are. And I know this could literally take a you know, this could be a Dan Carlin history podcast, if we went through the whole thing, but could you give just a very quick like, you know, two to five minute spiel on the history of money, the means of transaction from the Stone Age like you started, and just just sort of on to 2021 Bitcoin? sparknotes? I know, that's almost an impossible question. But if you could give that a whirl, that'd be great.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 23:10

I will try. So, I think the way I started the course was that money, you know, many people don't fully understand how money got started, what money is, it's not even a question we were ever taught to think about. We just use money to buy things, but we never think about, like, why, where did this come from? How did this whole concept of using money start from? So a big part of understanding that is understanding sort of how in historic times people used to exchange value. And so historically, there were many, many forms of money. Money was not just paper money, it started from things like shells and beads and things like that, where people used collectibles, to basically exchange value. So if you had, you know, us, you know, cow cattle that I needed, you know, for food, I can exchange my beads that you can use this jewelry for that cow. So people sort of used collectibles and such things as currency for a long time. And then, as you know, human civilizations sort of like became more and more as it progressed, that that form of money started to take on different things. And, you know, gold was another one, right? So like precious metals started to become even more popular form of money, because they were better than just beads and shells because precious metals can actually be easily more easily transported. They're just more universally recognized. You know, if you might like this bead but another person might not but gold, like everyone can sort of like gold, right? So it was just more universally accepted and had better properties of money. So yeah, we started to move collectibles to precious metals and then eventually paper money was invented and you know, there's still debates about when this first happened, some say something had happened in China for something India, still pretty unclear. But regardless, it happened. And that kind of spawned a whole new generation of how we think about money. And that's when the first banks were created and this idea that we have like promissory notes, and we can exchange these, we don't have to carry around all this gold with us, we can just kind of like put the gold in it inside of a locker and we can denote that gold in a promissory note, and we just exchange these notes. And so it was just a much easier form of money. And that allowed for much, much quicker and faster and smaller transactions, because we're not, again, carrying around these gold or beads anymore, we're just carrying around money. And so that takes us through, you know, until basically, before Bitcoin, we continue to use paper money in just different ways. Now, we have much more sophisticated banking systems that actually manage the paper money, but it's still just paper money. And, you know, there was a period in the US history where that paper money used to be backed by gold, like I said, but then we completely decided to move off the gold standard, and we just became purely fiat currency. And Fiat means is not backed by anything, it's just backed by the government, basically. So we went from gold backed paper currency to just like paper currency backed by the government. And so that's where we are today. And these people call the cyperpunks have been watching what the bankers have been doing with the fiat currency and how, you know, they don't really have the best interest of the people in mind as much as we think they do, in the sense that they just, they do a lot of bad things behind the scenes. And, for example, you started to see how the modern banking system completely failed us in 2008. All of that kind of came to the surface. And most people had no idea that this was happening in the banking industry. And so these people called the cypherpunks, were super passionate about this problem, they felt like money should be something that the people owned or not the government, they felt like we needed to go back to the times when you know, people were trading things like beads and stuff with each other. Because that's like completely controlled by the people, the government doesn't control of that source of money. And so the cypherpunks kind of went to work. And there was many, many attempts of trying to build a digital currency that's decentralized on the internet. There's a e-gold and a bunch of other attempts, none of them really worked. And so finally, in 2008, when Satoshi published the paper, it was sort of a culmination of all of these efforts that came before it. And he kind of took all the lessons learned from these different attempts to build a digital and decentralized currency and built Bitcoin. So Bitcoin kind of, as they say, stand on the shoulder of giants, in the sense that it's not... it's very innovative, but it's innovative only because it has like all these predecessors that it can get its architecture from basically.

Matt Zahab:

 28:20

And that right there is why you should subscribe to the email course that was awesome. Thank you. That could be university course right there in that little five minute spiel, the email course is that on steroids and goes into depth and covers all the little details. And again, coming from someone who knows crypto but had very little understanding of the nitty gritty in regards to the history. That's exactly what you're gonna get. So thank you again for that. That was awesome. This episode is brought to you by our dear friends at oinPoker, the world's premier crypto poker platform. CoinPoker is a revolutionary blockchain technology based platform that was developed by an ambitious team of poker players. CoinPoker uses USDT stable coin, as the main in game currency and $CHP as endgame fuel, offering all benefits of the crypto world alongside coin poker also features instant and secure transactions using USDT Ethereum Bitcoin, or $CHP tokens and no KYC you heard that right no KYC. CoinPoker users get huge promotions as they give away 1000s and fit each week. $CHP is the currency of the CoinPoker economy, providing players with exclusive benefits and supports future developments delivered to the CoinPoker community. My favorite part about CoinPoker is the mobile app. When I'm on the go, I whip out my phone and play a couple hands of Texas Hold'em or bet on sports. They have an amazing sports book, really clean spreads, very clean UX, and an overall great time. If you'd like to check them out. Go to CoinPoker.com and give them a try. I'd love to jump into a couple more of the present day topics. We are recording on 420 is international, grab some Rolling Papers, grab some flowers spin one up and blaze a day and it is now also international Dogecoin day. Have you seen that?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 30:26

No.

Matt Zahab:

 30:28

I guess the the Doge community has has mandated that 420 is also Dogecoin day and they're trying to pump it up today more so than ever. What's your take on this bananas, Doge Bull run as of the last few weeks?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 30:42

I mean, a lot of people in my community have been asked me like, how does this make any sense? Like there's no, like rational reason for why Dogecoin should be taking off. And you know, there's no utility for Dogecoin. But the reality is, like 99% of the tokens that exist in the crypto market are speculative. One, so a lot of them are just purely just big on space on speculation. With Dogecoin it's not even speculation as much as much as like just like meme. It's like, it shows you the power of of mimetic marketing, right. Like Elon Musk goes on Twitter and hypes up Dogecoin. And because of the imagery of this Doge is very powerful on people's minds and it captured value as a result. So it just shows you like there's no like objective or like, analytical way that you can think about this besides just it's just the power of memes.

Matt Zahab:

 31:42

I completely agree. I've gotten hammered from friends and family the last couple of weeks, I had some close family members reach out literally right before this massive massive Bull Run and be like, should I buy Doge? And I said the exact same thing. I was like, there's no utility, it's a nonsensical coin. It has no value. It's a piece of trash and what happens a couple days after I say that it goes to the moon, there's no yeah, there's nothing you can do about it. Moving forward to Bitcoin, though, before we jump into it hot takes. When will it hit 100k?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 32:15

Oh I think that will happen., undoubtedly, I would say. If I had to guess I think sometime in late 22/23.

Matt Zahab:

 32:30

You're not a 2021 laser eyes 100k believer?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 32:34

Yeah, I don't think we're gonna see a little bit of a production happening towards the end of this year. I just I think it'll happen. This is my total speculation. But I think we'll see a correction sometime. I just, I have a har time seeing this. But I'm als honestly, a terrible predictor So please don't take my word fo it. Yeah, I'm not going t predictions

Matt Zahab:

 32:59

And you think I know we talked about Janet Yellen earlier, the nail gun Do you think she has anything to do with this? If she wanted to? Does she have the power to literally just put her foot down and be like, you know what, we're gonna gas bitcoin, we're gonna create a cbdc and make her own party of it?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 33:13

She, I definitely think that she will, I think a CBC is definitely gonna happen in almost every country in the world. It's just a matter of when. And I think they're going to use that as a way to compete with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Because, as we all know, Bitcoin does pose a competitive threat to fiat currencies and governments manage. And so but I think like cbdcs offer a completely different value prop than what Bitcoin offers. And I think people often assume that cbcs will kill Bitcoin, but I think that's completely the opposite of what will happen. I think cbdcs will actually only empower Bitcoin, because cbdcs will be centrally managed, right? They're managed by the government controlled by the government. So that only gives more incentive for people to hold on to something that's purely managed by the people, which is Bitcoin. And so I think, even if CBDCs become a thing, that's actually a very powerful narrative for Bitcoin. And plus, like Bitcoin has to admit that it's just not a good... Originally, you know, Satoshi envisioned Bitcoin to be a payment mechanism, right? If you read the white paper, he specifically says like this is going to be a global payment system. Clearly Bitcoin is not a good payment system, and I don't think it will be any, will be that in the near term at all, and I think cbdcs can serve as that thing, in a more decentralized way while Bitcoin continues to serve as like digital gold. So yeah, I think she will want to CBDC and it'll be interesting to see.

Matt Zahab:

 33:19

Why don't you think Bitcoin makes a good payment system?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 34:34

Its not scalable, it's not cheap. And so like, you can't really, you know, like, if you read the original white paper, right, he talks about how we want a system where you can send like micro payments. And you know, it has to be cheap and fast and allow for commerce on the internet to be a lot more flexible and agile and all that. But like Bitcoin, like A like, it's just a really bad medium of exchange, because the fees are high and and it's just slow. And the transaction throughput is very, very small, because there's only a block every 10 minutes and so if you've kind of watched how Bitcoin has evolved, even when Bitcoin was first founded, it was thought of like as as payment mechanism, right? It was like digital payments on the internet, which is something that PayPal tried to build, but never happened. But then once people tried to realize that this is not a good payment system, the narrative shifted to okay, this is going to be a digital gold. And I think that when the narrative shifted to digital gold was when Bitcoin I think found its product market fit, because for a long time people doubted like what the hell is Bitcoin actually useful for? It's not a good payment system. And so like, what is the point of this thing? And when it when it kind of came out and said, like we are digital gold, that's when it clicked for people like, okay, that makes a lot more sense. And that's when it had product market fit. So narratives really, really matter in crypto, it's like, I would say most of crypto is sort of this like mimetic narrative marketing of like what can we, what kind of analogies and things that can be used to what kind of narratives can we use to convince people that this is a better form of money?

Matt Zahab:

 36:51

Well said, I also find it. And again, I could be looking at this with a completely wrong lens. But I've also envisioned a time where you go to, I don't know, you go to Chipotle and snag a burrito bowl and you pay in Bitcoin? And it's like, this burrito bowl causes 0.0000012 Bitcoin. And it's just like, that's just that's hard on the mind to, to sort of grasp you know what I mean?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 37:13

Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of that, too. I think like, at some point that gets easier, because you can always, there's always ways to denominate it and like, you know, cents and the bitcoins version of cents and so forth. I think that, like, the bigger problem is just that it's too slow. And like, you know, we've always known that Bitcoin, the throughput for Bitcoin is just like a way to slow for any kind of serious payments. So I think, like, the other big thing is like, you know, once the mining rewards are done, at some point in 2140, right, there's not going to be new block rewards. So at that point, all of the fees for transacting on the chain will have to come from transaction fees. So the only incentive for miners to do that will come from, are going to com from transaction fees, whi h means transaction fees hav to go higher up to com ensate for that. So if the e's higher transaction fees, peo le are going to transact les on the base layer. So then the 're going to only use the blo kchain for specific types of tra sactions, and then they're goi g to probably use it just to hod . And so again, like that digi al gold narrative, that's when I think it really started to m ke sense of like, what this coul actually be useful for.

Matt Zahab:

 38:32

Gotcha. Preethi this has been incredible. Couple of quick questions, and then we will take off. NFTs is such a hot topic right now. And I know you've written a bit about them and have touched on them a couple times. Are we going to see a Preethi NFT where the you know, the the winner or the top bidder of the NFT gets an hour of your time and an hour to learn about crypto every month or something like that. Is that ever gonna happen?

Preethi Kasireddy:

 38:59

That's an interesting, I never thought about that. That's actually a good idea. Yeah, NFTs are interesting. I think what you're seeing happening now is like, it almost feels like in the 2017 era, when ICOs were taking off, and like everything had to have a token. I think you're starting to see the same thing with NFTs and NFTs are a little bit more interesting in that, I think there's a lot of potential NFTs. I just don't believe, I do believe a lot of people will lose money in this round because there's a lot of things that are being priced way too high that in the long run just will not have a value or a price. But I think the way that the NFT market will evolve is there'll be like a few things that are really, really useful to use NFTs for and the rest of the use cases that are being experimented with today we'll kind of realize like, we don't really want that or need that. Same thing with ICOs, right. Like everything had a token. And at some point, people started to realize, like, hey, we don't need a token for literally everything. And there's some projects that are that have a lot of value, because their token is actually valuable. And then other projects will you're like, this doesn't get a token

Matt Zahab:

 40:26

Yeah, yeah. Last question. And this one could again, be a podcast, just by itself. Crpto in India, I know, the recent ban and everything else, you are very bullish on India, as well as Balaji. And both of you brought up some incredible points in regards to that. I could have my numbers wrong. But I believe in the last three to four years, there were 700 or 800 million Indians who just got online, and now have access to internet. Crazy economy, very smart people, very hard working people. And with COVID, now reflecting the global economy aspect, and now that companies can hire from anywhere around the world, that bodes extremely well for India, and India can have some massive crypto successes in the future. And I'd love to hear where you stand on that.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 41:12

Yeah, I'm very, very bullish about India, in general. And then, especially crypto in India. So the number is actually like 400 millions. So what happened was India, most of Indians couldn't afford the internet, you know, five years ago, and then a company called Jio came into India and offered free wireless internet for anyone in India. So as long as you had a mobile phone, and you can get a SIM card, you can get free internet. They did that for I think a year or so. And that brought like millions and millions of people online. And then at some point, they started charging for the internet, just trivial amounts, because they need to make money at some point. And but like by that time, the Indians were addicted to their phones, and YouTube and all that stuff was really blowing up. And so as a result, like all of those Indians that came online for free ended up staying on the internet. So we have basically 400 million new Indians online. And they're consuming so much content on YouTube, and Facebook and Twitter and all these social networks. And if you actually do the number crunching, you'll see that Indians represent a majority of almost every social network, whether it's YouTube, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram. And so if you wonder why sometimes you'll see a lot of Indians in comments is because they actually represent a majority of these networks in a big way. And so now, what you're seeing in India - India is where US was probably in, like, 2008 timeframe. 2009. And that was like, you know, the peak of, that was when US was just trying to peak right? Like it was, it was going and Facebook was trying to take off, like Instagram was just getting found and all these things were taking off. So I think you're going to see the next decade really be promising for India in a big way. Because all of the pieces are coming together. They have the internet, they have really, really strong leadership and they just have a bunch of like the the foundational things that they need to really take off. And then crypto specifically. So like I went to India in 2016 and I was kind of disappointed by the crypto scene in India, because it was a lot of like, you know, like hype and just like, when you see Silicon Valley crypto, you can see like something that's like just pure speculation and hype. You're like, oh, these people just don't get it. And then I went back in 2020 and I was like, shocked at how much they've sort of...No, actually sorry, I went in 2018 and then I went back in 2020. And even within those two years, I was just shocked at like, how savvy and smart the crypto entrepreneurs have gotten, like, they were actually building like really cool things and their level of knowledge was on par with the people I was talking to in Silicon Valley. That's when I knew that like something radical had happened in India, where all of these people just learned about crypto somehow and are building like really cool things. And so I made a prediction that in the next, you know, five years, we'll just see a lot of interesting things come out of India.

Matt Zahab:

 44:15

I was in Chennai at the end of 2018. And I even saw like Bitcoin posters and Bitcoin billboards in Chennai, and you know, going to local restaurants and stuff. The few English speaking people that were there, well everyone spoke English, but the people who could speak really good English, they would they would ask us about Bitcoin and crypto and I was like, what this is bananas just just such a cool place. Then again, this could be a whole podcast episode in itself but Preethi this has been incredible. Thank you so much for jumping on. Before you go please tell our guests where they can find you online and and how they can snag your email course.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 44:52

Sure. So I have a website called Preethiksireddy.com and you can find my course link directly there. Or you can go on my Twitter and my pinned tweet. And my Twitter handle is I am underscore Preethi. And I have my pined tweet there with the course link so just follow me there or check out my website.

Matt Zahab:

 45:13

Thanks again for coming on. This has been a blast. I learned a lot i'm sure our guests have to. Thank you so much and hopefully we will have you on again soon.

Preethi Kasireddy:

 45:20

Awesome. Thanks so much.