Full transcript: Tim Draper on London Real
2:46 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Tim Draper, the venture capital investor, entrepreneur and spokesperson for all things bitcoin, blockchain and decentralized finance. You are the founder of Draper Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the Draper Venture Network and recognized as one of the most prominent technology investors in the last 30 years, in companies like Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, Coinbase, Robinhood, SpaceX, Tezos and more.
3:09 You are a leading advocate for bitcoin and cryptocurrency, making your first moves back in 2014 when you purchased 50,000 bitcoin that had been seized from the Silk Road. Since then you’ve invested in over 50 cryptocurrency companies and are ranked in the top 100 most powerful people in finance by Worth Magazine, top 10 on the Forbes Midas list and top 20 most influential people in crypto. You have said that bitcoin will hit 250,000 by next year and believe that both women and retail investors will be the key to the next bull market.
3:39 Brian Rose: Tim, welcome to London Real.
3:41 Tim Draper: Terrific. Oh my gosh, what a great intro. Thank you so much, Brian. This is, it’s wonderful to be on your show.
3:48 Brian Rose: It’s great to have you here, and perfect timing, probably, because I guess we can talk about this, this sell-off today across the markets and bitcoin. I think this did below 23,000, and it’s probably around there for now. You know, you’ve been in this game for quite a while, Tim. You’ve had them for almost 10 years. You know bitcoin and crypto.
4:09 What goes through your mind as an investor, as a crypto advocate, as a bitcoiner, when you see markets correct like this? What’s the first thing that you think?
4:24 Tim Draper: How much can I buy? The opportunity is vast because I still look at bitcoin as it’s just better currency, and eventually better currency will win a better products eventually went out and the fiat currencies are tied to governments and banks, and there’s a lot of friction there and then there are some politics that will print too much fiat here or too little there or whatever.
5:00 Bitcoin is just, there are only 21 million of them, so they’re going to be a great hedge against inflation, and they have a great system of transparency. It’s global, it’s open. There are so many great things to it, and I believe that once the women start, and they are starting, it used to be one in 14 bitcoin wallets were owned by a woman, and now it’s one in six, and I think it’s going to be, you know, at parity very soon, because women control about 80 of retail spending, and when a retailer realizes that they can get a two to four percent discount by just taking bitcoin, they’re going to be encouraging all their customers to use bitcoin.
5:56 And that, I think, will be the key turning point where at first it’s like we have early adopters, and they’re kind of in here, and they’re speculators, and there’s some other people that are participating in this new bitcoin ecosystem. But the masses are going to be coming in very soon, and once they do, it’ll be all at once, and think of when you can buy your food, your clothing and your shelter, all in bitcoin. There would be no reason to hold on to fiat currency because it’s just not as good.
6:34 It’s tied to some political force. It has to go through the banks. Bitcoin’s much more friction, much less friction and it’s, so it’s, and it’s global, so it’s sort of, this is an exciting time. And I knew this was going to go through fits and starts, as it matures, as it becomes more centrally used and centrally available around the world. I’m very excited about what’s going on with bitcoin, and I do look at these machinations, and this is, I mean, yeah, we had, it looks like we’re having the equivalent of a 1929 collapse today, but we’ve got better technology in bitcoin, so I’m a big believer.
7:32 I’ve continued to buy bitcoin over the years and have felt that at one point there will be sort of a run on the dollar, or certainly there have been runs on the peso, in the Nigerian naira, but there will be runs on the dollar where people are running away from the dollar and moving into bitcoin. So, very exciting times. I know there will be other challenges for bitcoin or along the way, but it’s just better currency, and things that are better for the long term for the consumer usually do win out in the end.
8:16 But in the meantime, you’re going to see, you know, central banks getting a little nervous, government’s getting a little nervous, big government’s getting nervous. Little governments look at this as an opportunity, right? Very interesting. I mean, it’s geopolitical. This is a big deal.
8:33 Brian Rose: And in the meantime, most people, a lot of people live in their fiat currencies, and so when they have an asset like bitcoin that’s come off, you know, 10 or 20 or 30, how, how should they emotionally react to that? You know, when it’s sometimes harder to see a long-term perspective.
8:54 Tim Draper: Well, I think what they should, look, the way they should look at their bitcoin is that it’s sort of a bet on the future, and there will be a time when I mean, there will be sort of a time when people don’t want their fiat currencies anymore, and that will be the time where you’ve got to feel like, good, I’ve got some bitcoin.
9:19 And so that’s the way I would look at it. Yeah, I wouldn’t think of it as something you would buy your food, your clothing and your shelter with today. But it won’t be long before you do. Although when I was buying a house, they knew who was buying it from them, and they asked me for bitcoin, and when I was donating money, they knew who I was, and they wanted bitcoin. They didn’t want dollars.
9:46 So, you know, Stanford University was asking me to donate money in bitcoin, and they didn’t want dollars, right? I was saying no, I’m not giving away my bitcoin.
9:58 Brian Rose: And short term, do you expect we’re still going to have maybe more sell-offs, the price, or more volatility? And do you still stand by your prediction of a quarter million dollar bitcoin by next year?
10:13 Tim Draper: Oh, absolutely.
10:14 It feels like that is happening. It sort of started with El Salvador and OpenNode making it very easy for retailers to accept bitcoin, and Cryptio allowing people and businesses to do perfect audits with Cryptio, and they, so all the accounting is done. So yes, this is, and that’ll be sort of the beginning and I think it’s just up from there. So this is, yeah, we’re going to see, so a lot of volatility. You might see another jump down.
10:54 You might see a lot of different things happen. And a lot of people got leveraged up in bitcoin, and they’re the ones who are kind of forced to sell down in a time like this. And that’s kind of the nature of DeFi. People can get kind of a little too far over their skis, right? And 10x for a price increase is realistic for something like bitcoin by next year.
11:27 Brian Rose: I mean, even we see a lot of technology adoption. Obviously, we see it’s better tech and you’ve got a history of examining tech, and I think a lot of people believe it’ll happen in the next 10 years, but you still think it’ll happen even sooner.
11:43 Tim Draper: Yeah, I mean, for me it’s been like more than 100 x. So I think 10x is well, at 10x it’s going to be bouncing up and down, and up and down for a long time, and I think if you are a holder, somebody who holds on for dear life, because you like the future that it’s going to bring you, like this trust and freedom that comes with bitcoin.
12:06 I’m wearing a bitcoin tie, and on the other side it says freedom and trust, that comes from a currency that is open and global and transparent. That’s, there’s a lot of trust there. You’re going to, you’re going to be holding on, knowing that at some point in the future, and my prediction was early next, end of this year or early next year, that you’re going to see a steep climb in the price, and that will, and on a day like today doesn’t feel like it’s really going to happen, but if you take a long view, you say, oh yeah, yeah, it probably will.
12:50 Right, there probably won’t be, you know, trust and freedom are so important. Trust, think of governments. Singapore went from the poorest to the richest country just when Lee Kuan Yew came in there and built trust, one brick at a time, into Singapore. It was one of the least trusted countries, and now it’s probably the most trusted country and they used to be one of the poorest, now they’re one of the richest. And then freedom is so important because there’s no freedom in North Korea, and there’s a lot of freedom in South Korea, and that freedom, and that decentralized government has made it so that, 70 years in, the average South Korean is now 460 times as rich as the average North Korean, and they’re now four inches taller.
13:46 The average South Korean’s four inches taller than the average North Korean. And that’s nutrition or whatever, but it’s clear that centralized control doesn’t work. I mean, Putin is screwing things up, you know. One guy decides he’s going to go to war with a country and all those people get affected. Or in China, President Xi decides he’s going to lock everybody down and he destroys his entire supply chain.
14:15 I mean, these guys, they should have decentralized decision making, right?
14:20 Brian Rose: And what’s the state of freedom and trust in the United States right now. Where are we? Because you come from a long line of venture capital investors, where I think those free capital markets allowed you to make some incredible, build some incredible technology. Now we see places like Crypto.com and FTX.
14:41 Brian Rose: I mean, they’re not even based in America now, and you’re seeing, maybe for the first time, and maybe you can tell me this, in technology history for the past 50, 70 years, maybe innovation happening abroad more so than the US?
14:58 Tim Draper: Yeah, when I met with the team from El Salvador that works with the president there, I was jealous. I was thinking, oh my gosh, you guys are going to be so far ahead of us in all of these technologies around bitcoin. You’ve already got the retail spending happening.
15:17 You’ve already got people paying taxes in bitcoin. You’ve already built accounting systems around bitcoin. You’re way ahead of us, and that made me feel like we really need to decentralize in the US. We really need, we have a, we have a problem there. Somehow the government has become all powerful and almighty.
15:45 And people say, oh well, we need better politicians, but it turns out the bureaucrats really run the country. Politicians really don’t have much power, and the bureaucrats are just growing like the blob. You know, it just keeps growing, and the bureaucrats just decide, hey, this is what we’re going to do, and we are at their mercy. I mean, there is no natural predator to the FDA. There’s no, unless Congress actually does something there or eliminates it, or whatever, the SEC, any of these three-letter words, are all government entities that are slowing progress, and it’s because they’re centralized.
16:39 And so this bitcoin sort of alerted me to the idea that decentralized everything is better. You can’t make good decisions in a centralized way, not knowing how other people are going to respond to it. And that decentralization is very important for the US, and we better wake up. You know, I mean, it was all centralized in San Francisco, and it quadrupled the homeless. You know, you’ve just got to watch out.
17:16 You need, you need, you need a democracy. You need the people to decide and the government to work for the people. That makes a big difference. If the people start working for the government, you’ve got centralized control, and you start making really bad decisions. I think Peter Thiel recently called it the gerontocracy when he was at the bitcoin conference, where it was a bunch of old people making these decisions.
17:42 Brian Rose: And I know you’ve said that kind of back in the heyday with you, Bill Clinton, with the internet, was kind of like, let’s let it go, let’s let people develop on it. Do you think it’s getting better? I mean, I think it was Scaramucci that recently said the next presidential candidate will maybe run on a pro-crypto platform because politicians are starting to see that it’s a great way to get the public on board. Do you think we will move to a better regulatory environment soon?
18:10 Tim Draper: I think we better. I think we’ve got, you know, Mayor Suarez down in Florida has really embraced it. The mayor of New York, the new mayor of New York, has also embraced it. I think it’s it is a generational thing. A lot of older people have this feeling, and I can say this because I’m old, they have this feeling like, we like it the way it is.
18:40 We really don’t want to change anything. And then the younger generation says, hey, this dollar thing, this isn’t my Oldsmobile, this is yours. And we’ve got a much better currency and we’re going to use it. And so I know younger people would much rather have, what is it, 23, they would much rather have one bitcoin than 23,000 today. Older people would rather have the 23,000, and that is a that is a generational shift that’s happening.
19:16 And you know, as we older people die off and the younger people come and start running the country, you’re going to see a very pro-crypto environment, but I’m hoping it comes soon, because in the meantime, El Salvador, Central African Republic, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland are all leading, you know, jumping ahead of the US in this field. And this is kind of, this would be, this is sort of like being early in the internet, and the US really benefited from Bill Clinton’s hands-off approach to the internet.
19:58 Brian Rose: Is this gonna be bigger?
20:00 Tim Draper: Oh yeah, it’s gonna be much bigger. How much bigger? This affects, because the internet, internet effects affected communications, information, gaming, entertainment, taxis, hotels. Those are all pretty big industries, but these are the biggest industries in the world: it’s banking, it’s finance, it’s insurance, it’s government. Those are the industries that are going to be affected by bitcoin and the blockchain.
20:30 So we’re gonna, this is gonna be a bigger transformation, and you can tell it’s making the powers that be nervous. It’s making, in fact, the world was doing so well while the geographic borders were falling, and then the political powers decided they wanted to centralize again because they were feeling they were losing their power. And so I think they’ve made a lot of mistakes recently. Hopefully they’re not irreparable, but yeah, hopefully we’ll have a new team that comes in in the next I don’t know, when’s the next election?
21:14 A couple years. Yeah, I’m hoping we get a whole new sweep of people who are looking, who are younger, more flexible of mind, and are willing to embrace this new technology and do great things with it. There is a US-centric thought that the dollar has been really good for us, because it’s prevalent around the world. It’s in a lot of countries. But what they’re missing is the next, the last 30 years have really been driven by the internet.
21:51 The next 30 years are going to be driven by bitcoin, and if you miss that because you’re trying to control everybody and everything, you’re making a huge mistake for your country. And that’s a lot of people, 300 million people in the US.
22:06 Brian Rose: Yeah, and once the thing, what I find showing about YouTube is that you’re a big fan of bitcoin, but you’re also a fan of decentralized finance and NFTs, and you love all of it. Can you talk about that? Because I’m guessing some of the bitcoin maximalists disagree with you on that.
22:23 How come you are so open-minded?
22:25 Tim Draper: Well, I’m always looking for what’s next. That’s my job. I’m a venture capitalist, and I’m always looking for what’s next, and I’ve seen many cycles of different technologies that were really exciting at one point, and then new things came along. So I like, I like all the various technologies that are happening out there.
22:46 I do believe that this bear market is better for bitcoin than for any of the other currencies, because there will be, they call it a rush to quality, but the way I look at it is that the way I look at Microsoft, where Microsoft was the operating system for all of the software companies, and then all these software companies were developed on it, clip art and whatever else, and then Microsoft sort of usurped the spreadsheet, the word processor, the database and the PowerPoint, and they brought them all into the operating system, so they were able to win bigger there. And I think the same thing’s going to happen with bitcoin. I think bitcoin will be the, they will take on the smart contracts, the NFTs, the DeFi.
23:41 It’ll all, like, it’ll be this flight to quality. And even a day like today, where everybody’s down, bitcoin’s down less than the rest of these smaller less important cryptocurrencies. And so for a time, I suspect that bitcoin will be dominant, but there will be others that come up. I mean, Microsoft was big, but there were plenty of other winners that came out of the dot com crash, right? This is that kind of a time.
24:16 Brian Rose: And as a venture capitalist, I have a bunch of people that watch this show and in my Academy that are always looking at early stage companies. And you know, like you said, what’s going to be next here in the blockchain space? How do you look at that? I know you’ve always said you’re trying to look five or ten years ahead, which in crypto time is like 100 years ahead, I guess. But how would you explain what goes on in your brain when it comes to investing in the blockchain space, and what kind of advice do you give to people?
24:45 Tim Draper: Boy, inside my brain, you probably don’t want to go there. What’s it like in there? Well, the way I look at it is, I say, what is better for the consumer, and when I meet a new entrepreneur, I think, what if this works? What if they are successful with what their vision is? How big can it get?
25:10 And sometimes I think, you know, this could get bigger than even the entrepreneur believes, and that’s kind of what I’m looking for. I’m saying, five to ten years from now, if this is successful, how great would that be? And bitcoin, if this is successful, which it looks like it is, how great will that be? And it will be great, because it’ll give our humanity an anthropological leap forward, because borders will mean less and less, nationalism will become more like a competitive governance, where they’re competing for us, and they’re accountable to whoever they work for, as they should be, rather than sort of telling us all what to do and having us all just walk along like automatons.
26:16 So I’m always looking for that big change, and bitcoin seems to be bringing that change. The internet was a big breakthrough because we could communicate across borders for free. That was a big breakthrough. And that allowed all these countries to realize that their borders were not that important. All of a sudden they realized with bitcoin that they have to pull those borders back up, because they’re worried about their own central control over currency, because all of a sudden bitcoin is the currency for the world, and they’re going, wait a second.
27:02 You know, this is the way we’ve been controlling our people, is through our currency. And you’ve got this currency for the world. What are you thinking? And so then they put up borders and barriers and trade wars and all that stuff, and that makes no sense for the long haul. But for, you know, the aggrandizement of certain politicians, it seemed to work for them.
27:29 And so, you know, Putin and she, I mean, she shut down all bitcoin, and he had 40 of the mining capacity in China, and he shut it down. I mean, the guy clearly doesn’t have much economic sense, but he was so paranoid and wanted to control his people so much that he just disassembled an industry. And now he’s disassembling their supply chain. I mean, the guy is, you know, brilliant politically, but boy, he is not too smart economically. Right?
28:05 Brian Rose: So it goes back to freedom and trust. That’s how you’re really going to get the most prosperity. You see China with a version, Putin with a version, and now America with a version two. They all have something to aspire to. In your mind, it needs to be more free, and there’s to be more trust, and then we were built on freedom.
28:24 Tim Draper: I mean, we were built on the, America was built on freedom. China, when they became free for that 40-year period, they went from being, I don’t know, economically they’re almost, they’re number two now, and they were maybe number eight before, and the quality of life there has gone way up. All these things happened that were, they went way up. And then she came in and decided that he wanted to control everybody and didn’t trust anybody, and took away all their freedoms, and he’s wondering why entrepreneurship has stopped dead in its tracks there.
29:05 Right? And in the US, we’ve got the same. We’ve got to fight about it. It’s an ongoing battle. But what’s weird is each political party takes on, you know, some things that are more freedom and some things that are more central control, and there doesn’t seem to be a political party that’s working for trust and freedom, and that’s the one that needs to flourish, because our two political parties are getting so far apart.
29:39 They’re just doing, I mean, if you say something kind of outrageous in your politics, you get notoriety, and so they do a lot of that. And then once somebody in your party says something outrageous, you’ve got to support it. I mean, it makes no sense. Anyway, we’ve got to do something about our duopoly in the political spectrum in the US. But just hopefully we’ll get a great charismatic leader who’s a real believer in crypto, and they do, they start, and freedom and trust, and they trust the people.
30:19 It’s amazing. I mean, I’m in the business of handing money out for stock, and that’s a big trust thing going both ways. It’s big trust, and it’s a great business, and so we set them free. We say, you know, we don’t do milestones-based funding. We just say, here, go for it, and so we’re not hovering over them like a helicopter mom.
30:51 We’re just sort of handing out the money and saying, go be free, go do what you had planned to do, and most of them, the vast majority, go do everything they can to be successful, but also to live up to that trust. Trust is a big deal. And if I were running a big company, I would do the same. I would say, look, I don’t know all the little intricacies of all the employees. I’ve got a hundred thousand employees or something.
31:26 I don’t know what they’re all doing or thinking, or how they’re, I don’t know, how the dock worker, you know, is loading the boxes on. I’d rather he figure out the best way to load the boxes on. And so decentralization of decision making is really important. Yeah.
31:45 Brian Rose: What keeps you awake at night these days, Tim?
31:48 Like what’s the big thing on your mind when it comes to maybe your funds, your investments, or just things geopolitically?
31:57 Tim Draper: Oh, I sleep pretty well. The world does get better. It always seems to get better. I mean, there are these times, there are dark times.
32:06 The press sells fear, so everybody is very fearful who follows the press, but the world does get better, and that fearfulness actually encourages entrepreneurs to act, and that drives their thinking, so they look at fear as an opportunity. Other people look at fear as fear, and fear, according to Frank Herbert and Dune, is the mind killer. You don’t want fear. At a time like this, crypto’s way down there. There’s a tendency to be fearful.
32:45 It’s the odd, but you really need to think the opposite way. You should have been fearful when everybody and their mother was, you know, day trading and crypto, but instead you should be more opportunistic during a time where the world is fearful. So it’s, you know, a little contrarian, but fear really does. It’s weird. People like watching the news so they can get that little fear rush, and it’s hard to tell them that they are selling you fear so that you are more fearful and you won’t take risks in your life, and you won’t try things, and you’ll have difficulty being successful.
33:34 The people who are super successful, they, whenever they see the news or any input, they think, well, where’d that come from? Who was it? What’s their angle? Why do they care? Ask a lot of questions before you accept as gospel, you know, whatever they call science, or whatever they call, you know, the mask mandate, or whatever it was.
34:03 It’s pretty interesting to see that it didn’t matter which state it was, whether they had a mask mandate or not. The virus spread exactly along the same lines no matter what state it was, and across the board, it’s, you know, 70 percent of us have had the virus. Kind of interesting, because when it’s centrally controlled like that, there is a tendency to put a quick band-aid on it, and that’s often the wrong decision. The right decision sometimes is to do nothing, or to trust the people, or to encourage people to do as they, as they think is right for them.
34:51 And everybody benefits from that freedom. We saw that many states that just cut the power back of decisions to the people and said, go ahead, you make the best decision, the most prudent decision.
35:02 Brian Rose: I wanted to ask you quickly about technology, networks, Web 2.0 and freedom, because you know, a couple years ago when that was all kicking off, we came kind of head to head with YouTube with some banning and censorship, and recently we’ve seen Elon Musk go in and potentially buy Twitter, which started off almost as a free speech platform and turned into maybe a controlled speech platform.
35:24 Just curious what you think about some of our Web 2.0 tech platforms and their take on freedom. And do you think Elon’s move is a move forward, or is it ultimately going to be a Web 3.0 solution that solves this?
35:39 Tim Draper: Well, Elon has great vision, and he tries a lot of interesting things, and I think he saw what I saw, which was Jack Dorsey is a free speech guy. I’ve met with him, and he is he believes in free speech. He worked on Twitter, made it as free speech as possible, and then I guess he just got surrounded by people who all felt like they needed to control the narrative, and it lost that free speech, and they just decided, we’re going to only allow people on Twitter that think this way and not allow that minority opinion to exist.
36:16 But you need that minority opinion to get a better decision overall. You need everybody to sort of fight it out and negotiate and debate until something even better happens. And that’s what free speech is all about. Well, Elon saw that and Twitter going the wrong way, and he thought, well, you know, I’ve got a bunch of money, I can buy Twitter, and so I’ll buy it and make it free speech again for the world. That I don’t know whether it’ll come through or not.
36:49 I don’t, if that’s a part of a negotiation, but I do know that if, in the typical scenario, a startup comes and fills that gap, and we’ve seen Unstoppable Domains come in and say, hey, you can buy, you know, brian.crypto and put whatever you want on it. So it’s free speech, and we have no control over it, so we can’t stop you. So you go ahead and say whatever you want to say, put it out there. You’ll put your identity on there. You can trade your crypto on there, and you can sell product on there.
37:33 You can do whatever you want to do, and that will probably take over this social media world eventually, whether it’s Unstoppable or some other company. I think free speech will win out, and it’ll start with a minority who’s been muted by whoever those people at Facebook are, who think they know better than we do how we how to run our lives. It’ll probably have a crypto component to it as well, which would ensure that freedom of speech, because the money is not centrally controlled as well, because that’s ultimately how they stop your freedom.
38:12 Brian Rose: Yeah. Yep, money is a big part of it, and now we have money that encourages freedom. It’s everywhere. Yeah, free money everybody. What’s next for you?
38:24 Because you talked about starting a fund in bitcoin that would then make, make investments in bitcoin, pay employees in bitcoin, pay dividends, pay taxes in bitcoin. Is this something you think will happen in the next few years, as far as something you want to do?
38:47 Tim Draper: Sure, yeah, I want to do it. But there’s way too many regulations, and what’s weird is it would pay higher taxes. It would be a bigger deal for the US if they allowed somebody to create a sub-ledger that was like a walled garden of a bitcoin fund, where everybody pays everybody in bitcoin all the way down the line, and we keep track through smart contracts for our LPs.
39:19 So the goal is, raise money in bitcoin, invest it in bitcoin, have the companies pay their employees and suppliers in bitcoin, and have all the taxes automatically calculated in bitcoin, so zero accounting fees, except maybe paying a crypto SaaS product. That is something that could be really good for a country, and I could create that fund in El Salvador today, and so all of a sudden El Salvador has another five-year lead. So you start piling up five-year leads, and then you project out 40 years, and El Salvador’s one of the richest countries in the world from one of the poorest, and the rich countries become more, they drop in value.
40:19 The largest countries are the ones that don’t want things to change much, because they’ve kind of been able to bully people, and the smaller countries want things to change, and we’re going to see a reversal of fortune if if the US doesn’t wake up.
40:34 Brian Rose: Yeah. I just want to quickly get your thoughts on NFTs, because you’ve said that you know the future is potentially NFTs, as in owning your identity, owning your medical history. You see a lot of positives on putting a lot of things on the blockchain.
40:49 Just your take on NFTs, what they are now, what they could be in the future. Yeah.
40:57 Tim Draper: NFTs are, the way I look at them, they are bespoke, so they are like one-of-ones, and they are, you cannot, they’re immutable, they can’t be changed, so that is really valuable in a lot of different industries. And the first one that really jumped into it was the art world, where they said, oh my gosh, you mean I can sell a painting and still own some value in it, so that when it gets resold, I get some money.
41:34 And I can also sell a bunch of prints of it, and that can take, you know, and they can be limited prints, and they can promote the value of that one painting. There are so many things that you can do in art, and then people took on the idea of, like, Bored Apes, where you can own your specific Bored Ape, and it can take on a personality. You can apply personality to it. It can end up being a movie or a comic or whatever, and it can have its own way of operating, and it is still immutable.
42:21 And then anything you own, your title, property, does this. They can put your real estate title on the blockchain, and that won’t change, and ultimately you’ll have all titles on the blockchain, entitled to real estate, but it could be title to anything, and there will be no discussion of who owns what property, and there won’t be any need for title insurance because it will be on the blockchain. So there are some industries that are going to be really, really heavily affected by NFTs.
43:06 So I’m very excited about what could be coming, and what entrepreneurs are going to come up with to take advantage of that technology.
43:13 Brian Rose: I love it, Tim, because, couple final questions. Like, 10 years from now, what does our world look like? If everything’s moving forward with blockchain and bitcoin, is it going to be a completely different version of reality than the one we’re in right now? Will it be a metaverse, and one of all sorts of freedom and trust, or does it really depend on the decisions we make in the next few years?
43:34 Tim Draper: Well, you know, I travel around the world, and I’ve seen 80 countries or something and done business in about 70. And what I’ve learned is that while the US was living very high and very large for many years relative to other countries because of their trust and freedom, other countries have caught up. Almost anywhere I go, a Starbucks looks the same, a McDonald’s looks the same, housing looks the same, electricity looks the same, hotels look the same. All these things look the same, that the quality of life in most places is pretty similar, and if that’s the case, then it won’t be too tough to imagine a world where particularly if you’re seeing the poorest countries come up and embrace bitcoin, and they will rise, and the richest countries are nervous about it, and they will fall, or fall relatively.
44:46 They’ll stay where they are. If you see that, then geographic borders become almost irrelevant, and so that’s 10 years out, 20 years out. I think there are going to be people, young kids, who look at their grandparents and say, what, you know, what was this building or what was this wall between these two people? What was it for? And they said, well, just keep people in or keep people out.
45:15 And they just say, oh, that was so stupid. Why would people want to not be able to travel around the world? Why would people not want to do business everywhere around the world? And so I think that’s probably 20 years out. So 10 years out, I suspect we are going to, the world quality of life is going to be very similar, but 20 years out I think the borders will be completely dissolved.
45:48 Yeah, and governance will be competitive, and they will have to fight for every customer that they have, and we will be very happy with our governance. We will look at that we will pay happily, just the way we pay happily to get something on Amazon or our Netflix subscription or whatever. We will happily pay for the governance we are provided by whoever it is that we’re paying, and we’ll probably pay different amounts to different governments, where if I spend a hundred days in one place, I’ll pay sort of a third of my taxes there, and then I’ll pay, you know, two-thirds somewhere else.
46:36 I think that is going to be coming too, and I think there are going to be governances, governments that are 11 miles offshore or up in space that have real followings, like big huge followings, where you say, I am a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the ocean, you know, whatever, and that, and those people will, will keep the other governments honest, and we will be much more mobile. Transportation’s getting better and better and better. I’ve seen so many great entrepreneurs creating new transportation devices that people will be able to move to wherever they want to go, and you will be much more likely a citizen of the world than a citizen of the US or some other country, but you will pay taxes to wherever you are.
47:40 And I think cities are going to, I mean, if you live in a city, you’ll be very happy to pay taxes so you have infrastructure and some of the things that are provided for a large group, but the I don’t think we’re going to need as much governance at the big scale, the national scale or the state scale. I don’t think they’re going to be quite as important.
48:06 Brian Rose: I always finish with an advice question, and I guess I’ll ask you, Tim, if you could pick up a phone and call up the 20-year-old Tim Draper and give that young man some advice based on everything you know now, what would you tell him?
48:23 Tim Draper: I would tell him to work toward this decentralized future, and whether that, where, wherever he goes with it, whatever his nose follows, whatever and I would say, be free. I trust you, be free. Right?
48:39 Brian Rose: And then on that note, the final thoughts to anybody listening who might be a 20-year-old or other people out there, what’s that one piece of advice you want to give them as far as understanding these markets, investing in these markets, or just understanding the future?
49:00 Tim Draper: Know yourself. If you’re talking about investing, make sure that your, you or your family or whatever, is taken care of for a decent period of time, and then you can take bigger risks with smaller amounts of money. Don’t take big risks with something that is going to affect your lifestyle, and then always read the fine print. You know, people get very ambitious, and they over-extend, they’ll borrow too much, they’ll do, and that, always think, what is the upside here?
49:48 What is the downside here? How bad can it be? Make sure you understand that, because weird things can happen. The black swans happen, these strange occurrences that you think will never happen. They happen, so just be ready for those.
50:06 That has helped me as an investor to, to sort of make sure that my family is well taken care of first, then to make sure that I’m taking good solid risks, you know, good risks, big risks on things that might really happen and change everything, and invest for good cause. For a good cause, like it should be good in your heart, whatever it is you’re investing in. It should feel good in your heart, and that’s why I’m so excited about bitcoin. It’s like trust, it’s freedom, it’s global, it’s open, cross-border, everything.
50:51 Brian Rose: So there you go. That’s beautiful stuff. I really appreciate that, Tim. It’s an incredible thoughts. That’s why we’ve been really drawn to this whole space, because it’s got a lot of trust, freedom, accountability, hope, love, discipline, all the things that I think will take humanity to the next level.
51:09 Brian Rose: What’s the best place for people to follow you or invest with you? What’s the best place for people to go?
51:17 Tim Draper: So, I follow me on Twitter at Tim Draper. That’s probably the best place, because that’s where I put everything. Occasionally I put things on LinkedIn and very rarely on Instagram.
51:30 So, at Tim Draper is my Twitter handle. And to invest with us, I mean, you’ve got to be a big institution to do that. But if you are a big institution, feel free to contact me. I’m easy to find.
51:47 Brian Rose: Tim, really appreciate all your thoughts on this and your belief in the space and your willingness to kind of really go out there and put it out there.
52:00 And also give us some perspective in these damn markets. So really appreciate the time, next time let’s do it in London or in person in California, and thanks so much.
52:08 Tim Draper: I appreciate it. Sounds great. Thanks for having me on the show, Brian.
52:11 Brian Rose: All right, great. Stay with me here, and we’ll see you all next time on London Real. Take care, bye. You
