Barry Weiss
speaker
976 appearances
13 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Barry Weiss’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Go to shopify.com slash honestly, all lowercase, to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash honestly. Brian Armstrong, welcome to Honestly.
I'm really happy you're here. So Doge has uncovered a lot of insane things over the past three weeks. It's felt like more like three years since Trump came to office. But, you know, there's been like trans operas in Siberia and DEI initiatives in Kazakhstan.
But I don't think there's anything that's going to stick with me more than this image of a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where 230 feet under the ground in a cave – 700 workers process federal employee retirements using paper by hand, which are then stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes.
And there is this incredible Washington Post article from 10 years ago about how it's basically a limestone cave version of the office and how all these people hate each other. Thank you so much for having me.
And then this other world, which is the world of the private sector, most notably the private sector in Silicon Valley, that is Lightspeed AI, crypto, blockchain, blood boys, rockets into outer space, the future, right? And these are the two largest employers in America. And now they have met inside this new MAGA Trump coalition in Washington. And I wanted to start by asking you,
if you think this merger marriage is working, and what you think of this sort of strange split-screen reality coming into one frame.
Do you think that America was freer 100 years ago than it is today?
I think some people who are watching what Doge is doing right now in Washington are like, their minds are blown. It seems absolutely insane. It seems revolutionary. But you can make an argument that actually what they're doing is just trying to chip away and trying to return government to what had been its rightful place.
Peter Thiel once said that people in DC are completely backwards. They don't understand any of the technology. And even to the extent that they can, it can't be stopped. Do you think that's true?
Like Signal, like you're talking about things like Signal.
So you're bullish on the idea that Doge, led by Elon, can drag the federal government into, I don't even know if it's the future, but the present.
Let's stick for a second on politics and Washington. Your company, Coinbase, invested heavily in this past election cycle. And you'll correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, but spending through pro-crypto packs like Fair Shake. And I think the breakdown is something like double the amount of money went to Republicans.
And the obvious question is, why are Republicans more inclined to see the world the way that you do or more inclined to be favorable toward crypto than Democrats?
Trump said just before the election that, and I'm quoting now, crypto is one of those things we have to do. Whether we like it or not, we have to do it. Previously, he had said things like, and I'm grabbing just one of many things, Bitcoin, quote, just seems like a scam and I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar. Why did he change his mind?
Give us insight into why and how he changed his mind and who influenced him on this score.
Who would be the foot soldiers in that army, exactly?
They don't think about it. Yeah.
Do you credit Elizabeth Warren for turning Trump inadvertently or unintentionally?
You met with Donald Trump shortly after the election. What did you guys talk about? Tell us about that meeting.
Let's pause on that for a second. You run the most important cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Your company is worth, how much is Coinbase worth today?
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