I started my journalism career at three
great companies Newsweek The Wall Street
Journal and The New York Times the
problem was within two years and nine
months I quit all three jobs I have a
theory about why I’m not used to people
telling me what to do I grew up in a
household without any rules my parents
did not impose a single rule on me or my
sister while we were growing up that
meant that some mornings I might eat a
popsicle for breakfast it meant that I
watched about as much TV as you would
imagine an eight-year-old would watch if
there were no limitations placed on her
and there was a TV right in her bedroom
I also apparently asked for an album
called
get lucky buy a band named loverboy
because I owned that when I was five I
think growing up this way is a big
reason that my sister and I both became
our own bosses she’s a successful
co-founder and CEO and I’m an
independent journalist with two podcasts
[Music]
earlier in my career when I struggled as
a freelancer I often felt bad about the
fact that I couldn’t just stick it out
in these jobs I didn’t like but
eventually I realized that actually the
self-employed lifestyle is much more
similar to how humans have existed
throughout history we would just do what
we needed to do when we needed to do it
as my friend the venture capitalist
built I has said on my podcast
we lived in a flexible work fabric that
meant maybe we would go fishing in the
morning maybe we go berry picking in the
afternoon and it’s only recently that
we’ve become cogs in the wheels of these
larger corporations as a journalist I
report write and record my podcasts on
my own time and then I pay myself
directly from the revenues of my
business
I don’t contribute to this larger entity
that then pays me a salary and gives the
profits over to owners and shareholders
in my world I am the worker and owner
and the shareholder I’m a small
corporation a corporation of me while
this setup isn’t incredibly common
nowadays I think it’s gonna become a lot
more prevalent over in the next few
decades it’s a trend that could perhaps
take down some of the biggest businesses
we know today
it could also remake the way many of us
earn our money and the reason for this
shift begins with of all things Bitcoin
Bitcoin you might be thinking yeah
Bitcoin cryptocurrency magic internet
money what some people call criminal
money it’s that crazy digital asset that
was born about ten years ago Bitcoin I
started covering Bitcoin in the spring
of 2015 when Forbes asked me to head up
its fin check50 list with another
reporter she and I divided the list in
in categories and I took digital
currencies at that point I still down
the crypto rabbit hole as they say for
me
earning about Bitcoin was like traveling
to a foreign country oh wow
let’s take a peek down that Street oh
what’s around that corner oh my gosh
look at that amazing view but this whole
journey was taking place in my own head
after a while I realized I could not
stop turning over in my mind this
at that time I was covering a personal
finance and career you know how to earn
money how to earn more money how to
negotiate a learn how to retire at 25 I
also wrote about freelancing because I
was a freelancer and at first I thought
personal finance and career were really
different from Bitcoin the first two
topics really didn’t change very much
and Bitcoin was constantly changing to
the point where I struggle to keep up
but eventually I realized that the two
are a lot more similar than I originally
thought before I explain why I just want
to say that what I’m about to tell you
is gonna seem kinda out there so I want
you to think of my talk today as a visit
to you from the future
it’s sort of like this photo of magazine
clipping I saw making the rounds on
Twitter earlier this year it’s from 1999
and in it sci-fi author David Gerald was
asked to give his description of the
future of computing when you read it now
it is a spot-on description of an iPhone
don’t a Siri
he even ends it by saying we should dub
this device a pain in the ass because it
was going to destroy all of our privacy
well I don’t know if I can be quite as
prescient as David Gerald what I can
tell you is what I am seeing from
reporting on the front lines of this
technology it’s what I like to call my
front row seat to the world’s most
suspenseful movie the one that’s gonna
last decades my first takeaway for you
from my visit to you from the future
is that developers are using a
technology behind Bitcoin to create a
parallel financial system Bitcoin was
the first time that we had truly unique
digital assets previously if I sent you
something on the internet I was always
sending you a copy so if I sent you a
word doc or a text message or a photo I
always had a copy of that word doc that
text message that photo now I could send
you a Bitcoin and everybody in the world
could be certain that I no longer had it
and that you had it with these digitally
native assets with these internet native
assets you could now create an Internet
of money you might be thinking well I
already moved my money digitally I log
on to my bank website onto PayPal onto
venmo but no that’s all just a digital
veneer on this legacy banking system
that grew up out of physical and paper
money when I pay you via my bank account
I basically you know send that message
and my bank will debit my account on its
ledger then it will credit your account
on its ledger those two banks then have
to come together and reconcile those
accounts and that process can take days
that’s why bank transfers take days
often with dick coin there’s one ledger
and it’s in the cloud and instead of
tens of thousands of employees at these
banks managing all these Ledger’s it’s
just a piece of software with Bitcoin
through my podcast Unchained I interview
developers who are building what they
call the world of decentralized finance
this consists of a number of protocols
for financial functions our current
internet consists of many protocols for
communication for instance HTTP
hypertext Transfer Protocol is how we
can all read each other’s web pages SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is how we
can all read each other’s email messages
developers are now creating protocols
for financial functions such as
derivatives money markets debt credit
exchange and more that means some day
instead of putting your money into a
money market account at a big bank with
all its many employees and branches
around the world
you might instead put your money into a
money market account created by a smart
contract a piece of software created by
a few developers and posted online in
the future instead of trading a
derivative that was created by an
investment bank you may instead trade
one that was created using a protocol
this sector that I’ve just described is
really different from this world that we
already know of the too-big-to-fail
banks however I talked to these young
developers many of them fresh out of
school grad school some of them dropouts
like you know the first wave of tech
entrepreneurs often they have little to
no financial background but they are
creating this parallel financial system
that can bypass the traditional banking
system what I’ve just described to you
is actually so new that much of it is
either only just launched or is just
about to launch so the sector is tiny
but disruption is coming my second
takeaway for you is that in addition to
this open financial system I’ve just
described we will likely see the
emergence of a new business model you’re
all really already familiar with the
path that many startups take to becoming
public companies in the future I think
of many more services will come to us
via leaderless user owned peer-to-peer
networks similar to Bitcoin let me take
a step back Bitcoin is actually two
different things
there’s Bitcoin with a lowercase P which
is what I’ve been discussing so far
which is the digital currency the
cryptocurrency Bitcoin with an uppercase
B is the network that’s what enables you
to send 1 million dollars with a Bitcoin
from here to China in 10 minutes for
little to no money especially
comparison to International Bank wire
transfer fees this is revolutionary this
system of the payment network and the
digital currency was the first time that
such things were created using software
without a company to keep it all going
if there was no company behind Bitcoin
then who helped see her to success
it was the users and workers of the
system itself
they were the ones who helped grow it to
a market capitalization of more than a
hundred billion dollars which is more
valuable than Goldman Sachs if there was
no CEO and business behind them then how
were they motivated to do so they were
incentivized by the design of the
software itself it was programmed to
every 10 minutes release new bitcoins to
anyone who contributed to the security
of the network many people focus on how
these miners win new Bitcoin but you can
also think of that as a payment to this
leaderless IT department that’s helping
to ensure the security of the network so
much though that the Bitcoin blockchain
has never been hacked in the future I
think many more services will come to us
via these leaderless user owned
peer-to-peer networks with a crypto
asset at the center that’s incentivizing
behaviour on that network that is how
now today a cryptocurrency miner can
look at the cost of their mining
equipment the cost of their electricity
they can project how many of those coins
they’re expected to earn over time and
look at the price of that coin and
determine whether or not it will be
profitable for them to mine it or not
similarly users might look at that
network and say ok this services may be
cheaper than using one offered by a
middleman and also I could be this user
owner I can use this token but also if
more people join the value of my tokens
may rise the total crypto asset market
capitalization is
just over two hundred billion dollars in
some ways it’s a small number meaning I
think someday it could be much bigger
and in other ways it’s a big number in
the sense that I think much of what’s
out there today probably won’t survive
and will go to zero but it’s not that
different from the early days of the
internet where people were excited about
pets calm Webvan and cosmo and yet out
of that same hype cycle we also got
Google and Amazon my third takeaway for
you from my visit from the future is
that along with these shifts we could
very well see many more people working
for themselves this is where my previous
beats of personal finance and career
intersect with crypto when you take this
open financial system this parallel
financial system that I described with
this new decentralized business model I
think we will see many more Orkut
markets open up that are not open today
we will also see many new channels for
us to transact financially if you’re
like me 20 years ago maybe you woke up
and you checked one email address and
now at least I wake up I check multiple
email addresses Twitter telegram signal
I messages whatsapp limp LinkedIn
Facebook and similarly in the future I
think many people will check on multiple
financial transactions that occurred
overnight not just in the market of
their country stock exchanges but in
global markets that run 24/7 365 I think
we will see many of us being able to
monetize assets that we currently have
that we can’t earn money from now
whether it’s unused airline miles
whether it’s the time and attention you
give to an ad whether it’s spare disk
storage you have or idle compute cycles
on your laptop while you sleep where
you’re born could have less of an impact
on how much you could earn over time
theoretically a teenage girl in
Bangladesh with access to the Internet
should be able to plug into these user
owned networks and earn just as easily
as a mid
man in Silicon Valley creators will be
April to offer their wares online
whether it’s a digital photo a digital
artwork an mp3 and ebook an article and
embed a smart contract inside that will
ensure that they get paid every time
it’s consumed in short many more people
will become the worker the owner and the
shareholder the one thing I cannot tell
you in my visit from the future is
whether or not we really will see these
leaderless user owned peer-to-peer
networks compete with or even displace
these too big to fail banks and these
tech giants after all many of these big
companies are looking to use this
technology to cement their dominance and
frankly regulation will play a role in
how this all shakes out however if this
vision I’ve painted comes to pass then I
believe many more of you will be
quitting your jobs and when that happens
you won’t have to make this big speech
with all these elaborate excuses about
how the reason you quit was because your
childhood
[Applause] [Music]
great companies Newsweek The Wall Street
Journal and The New York Times the
problem was within two years and nine
months I quit all three jobs I have a
theory about why I’m not used to people
telling me what to do I grew up in a
household without any rules my parents
did not impose a single rule on me or my
sister while we were growing up that
meant that some mornings I might eat a
popsicle for breakfast it meant that I
watched about as much TV as you would
imagine an eight-year-old would watch if
there were no limitations placed on her
and there was a TV right in her bedroom
I also apparently asked for an album
called
get lucky buy a band named loverboy
because I owned that when I was five I
think growing up this way is a big
reason that my sister and I both became
our own bosses she’s a successful
co-founder and CEO and I’m an
independent journalist with two podcasts
[Music]
earlier in my career when I struggled as
a freelancer I often felt bad about the
fact that I couldn’t just stick it out
in these jobs I didn’t like but
eventually I realized that actually the
self-employed lifestyle is much more
similar to how humans have existed
throughout history we would just do what
we needed to do when we needed to do it
as my friend the venture capitalist
built I has said on my podcast
we lived in a flexible work fabric that
meant maybe we would go fishing in the
morning maybe we go berry picking in the
afternoon and it’s only recently that
we’ve become cogs in the wheels of these
larger corporations as a journalist I
report write and record my podcasts on
my own time and then I pay myself
directly from the revenues of my
business
I don’t contribute to this larger entity
that then pays me a salary and gives the
profits over to owners and shareholders
in my world I am the worker and owner
and the shareholder I’m a small
corporation a corporation of me while
this setup isn’t incredibly common
nowadays I think it’s gonna become a lot
more prevalent over in the next few
decades it’s a trend that could perhaps
take down some of the biggest businesses
we know today
it could also remake the way many of us
earn our money and the reason for this
shift begins with of all things Bitcoin
Bitcoin you might be thinking yeah
Bitcoin cryptocurrency magic internet
money what some people call criminal
money it’s that crazy digital asset that
was born about ten years ago Bitcoin I
started covering Bitcoin in the spring
of 2015 when Forbes asked me to head up
its fin check50 list with another
reporter she and I divided the list in
in categories and I took digital
currencies at that point I still down
the crypto rabbit hole as they say for
me
earning about Bitcoin was like traveling
to a foreign country oh wow
let’s take a peek down that Street oh
what’s around that corner oh my gosh
look at that amazing view but this whole
journey was taking place in my own head
after a while I realized I could not
stop turning over in my mind this
at that time I was covering a personal
finance and career you know how to earn
money how to earn more money how to
negotiate a learn how to retire at 25 I
also wrote about freelancing because I
was a freelancer and at first I thought
personal finance and career were really
different from Bitcoin the first two
topics really didn’t change very much
and Bitcoin was constantly changing to
the point where I struggle to keep up
but eventually I realized that the two
are a lot more similar than I originally
thought before I explain why I just want
to say that what I’m about to tell you
is gonna seem kinda out there so I want
you to think of my talk today as a visit
to you from the future
it’s sort of like this photo of magazine
clipping I saw making the rounds on
Twitter earlier this year it’s from 1999
and in it sci-fi author David Gerald was
asked to give his description of the
future of computing when you read it now
it is a spot-on description of an iPhone
don’t a Siri
he even ends it by saying we should dub
this device a pain in the ass because it
was going to destroy all of our privacy
well I don’t know if I can be quite as
prescient as David Gerald what I can
tell you is what I am seeing from
reporting on the front lines of this
technology it’s what I like to call my
front row seat to the world’s most
suspenseful movie the one that’s gonna
last decades my first takeaway for you
from my visit to you from the future
is that developers are using a
technology behind Bitcoin to create a
parallel financial system Bitcoin was
the first time that we had truly unique
digital assets previously if I sent you
something on the internet I was always
sending you a copy so if I sent you a
word doc or a text message or a photo I
always had a copy of that word doc that
text message that photo now I could send
you a Bitcoin and everybody in the world
could be certain that I no longer had it
and that you had it with these digitally
native assets with these internet native
assets you could now create an Internet
of money you might be thinking well I
already moved my money digitally I log
on to my bank website onto PayPal onto
venmo but no that’s all just a digital
veneer on this legacy banking system
that grew up out of physical and paper
money when I pay you via my bank account
I basically you know send that message
and my bank will debit my account on its
ledger then it will credit your account
on its ledger those two banks then have
to come together and reconcile those
accounts and that process can take days
that’s why bank transfers take days
often with dick coin there’s one ledger
and it’s in the cloud and instead of
tens of thousands of employees at these
banks managing all these Ledger’s it’s
just a piece of software with Bitcoin
through my podcast Unchained I interview
developers who are building what they
call the world of decentralized finance
this consists of a number of protocols
for financial functions our current
internet consists of many protocols for
communication for instance HTTP
hypertext Transfer Protocol is how we
can all read each other’s web pages SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is how we
can all read each other’s email messages
developers are now creating protocols
for financial functions such as
derivatives money markets debt credit
exchange and more that means some day
instead of putting your money into a
money market account at a big bank with
all its many employees and branches
around the world
you might instead put your money into a
money market account created by a smart
contract a piece of software created by
a few developers and posted online in
the future instead of trading a
derivative that was created by an
investment bank you may instead trade
one that was created using a protocol
this sector that I’ve just described is
really different from this world that we
already know of the too-big-to-fail
banks however I talked to these young
developers many of them fresh out of
school grad school some of them dropouts
like you know the first wave of tech
entrepreneurs often they have little to
no financial background but they are
creating this parallel financial system
that can bypass the traditional banking
system what I’ve just described to you
is actually so new that much of it is
either only just launched or is just
about to launch so the sector is tiny
but disruption is coming my second
takeaway for you is that in addition to
this open financial system I’ve just
described we will likely see the
emergence of a new business model you’re
all really already familiar with the
path that many startups take to becoming
public companies in the future I think
of many more services will come to us
via leaderless user owned peer-to-peer
networks similar to Bitcoin let me take
a step back Bitcoin is actually two
different things
there’s Bitcoin with a lowercase P which
is what I’ve been discussing so far
which is the digital currency the
cryptocurrency Bitcoin with an uppercase
B is the network that’s what enables you
to send 1 million dollars with a Bitcoin
from here to China in 10 minutes for
little to no money especially
comparison to International Bank wire
transfer fees this is revolutionary this
system of the payment network and the
digital currency was the first time that
such things were created using software
without a company to keep it all going
if there was no company behind Bitcoin
then who helped see her to success
it was the users and workers of the
system itself
they were the ones who helped grow it to
a market capitalization of more than a
hundred billion dollars which is more
valuable than Goldman Sachs if there was
no CEO and business behind them then how
were they motivated to do so they were
incentivized by the design of the
software itself it was programmed to
every 10 minutes release new bitcoins to
anyone who contributed to the security
of the network many people focus on how
these miners win new Bitcoin but you can
also think of that as a payment to this
leaderless IT department that’s helping
to ensure the security of the network so
much though that the Bitcoin blockchain
has never been hacked in the future I
think many more services will come to us
via these leaderless user owned
peer-to-peer networks with a crypto
asset at the center that’s incentivizing
behaviour on that network that is how
now today a cryptocurrency miner can
look at the cost of their mining
equipment the cost of their electricity
they can project how many of those coins
they’re expected to earn over time and
look at the price of that coin and
determine whether or not it will be
profitable for them to mine it or not
similarly users might look at that
network and say ok this services may be
cheaper than using one offered by a
middleman and also I could be this user
owner I can use this token but also if
more people join the value of my tokens
may rise the total crypto asset market
capitalization is
just over two hundred billion dollars in
some ways it’s a small number meaning I
think someday it could be much bigger
and in other ways it’s a big number in
the sense that I think much of what’s
out there today probably won’t survive
and will go to zero but it’s not that
different from the early days of the
internet where people were excited about
pets calm Webvan and cosmo and yet out
of that same hype cycle we also got
Google and Amazon my third takeaway for
you from my visit from the future is
that along with these shifts we could
very well see many more people working
for themselves this is where my previous
beats of personal finance and career
intersect with crypto when you take this
open financial system this parallel
financial system that I described with
this new decentralized business model I
think we will see many more Orkut
markets open up that are not open today
we will also see many new channels for
us to transact financially if you’re
like me 20 years ago maybe you woke up
and you checked one email address and
now at least I wake up I check multiple
email addresses Twitter telegram signal
I messages whatsapp limp LinkedIn
Facebook and similarly in the future I
think many people will check on multiple
financial transactions that occurred
overnight not just in the market of
their country stock exchanges but in
global markets that run 24/7 365 I think
we will see many of us being able to
monetize assets that we currently have
that we can’t earn money from now
whether it’s unused airline miles
whether it’s the time and attention you
give to an ad whether it’s spare disk
storage you have or idle compute cycles
on your laptop while you sleep where
you’re born could have less of an impact
on how much you could earn over time
theoretically a teenage girl in
Bangladesh with access to the Internet
should be able to plug into these user
owned networks and earn just as easily
as a mid
man in Silicon Valley creators will be
April to offer their wares online
whether it’s a digital photo a digital
artwork an mp3 and ebook an article and
embed a smart contract inside that will
ensure that they get paid every time
it’s consumed in short many more people
will become the worker the owner and the
shareholder the one thing I cannot tell
you in my visit from the future is
whether or not we really will see these
leaderless user owned peer-to-peer
networks compete with or even displace
these too big to fail banks and these
tech giants after all many of these big
companies are looking to use this
technology to cement their dominance and
frankly regulation will play a role in
how this all shakes out however if this
vision I’ve painted comes to pass then I
believe many more of you will be
quitting your jobs and when that happens
you won’t have to make this big speech
with all these elaborate excuses about
how the reason you quit was because your
childhood
[Applause] [Music]
Please follow and like us: