Bill Gurley

And there's no proof that works.

And so I like this idea of like,

state versus state competition.

I mean, I share that unease with you, Ed, and, and, but it comes from a place of, there was a, there was a phrase, I think Andreessen Horowitz used a lot called little tech, um,

And what they mean is the two-person entrepreneur, you know, and there's this idealism that many of us that have lived in Silicon Valley and practice venture capital love to believe that two people on a PowerPoint can create a new idea and become disruptive and create this, you know, huge company and economic wealth and whatnot.

If every new category is immensely regulated, that kind of goes away, right?

Because you need people with connections.

And part of what's driving what you're talking about is crypto, which got started without it, but now is heavily dependent on whether or not regulation goes a certain way.

Many venture capitalists have gotten comfortable with funding military equipment companies, which wasn't a thing ever during my career as a venture capitalist.

That requires connections and approvals and spending tons of time at the Pentagon.

So there's these new areas there.

And now AI, where very young companies are begging for regulation, which is not anything I've seen in my career either.

So I agree that it's happening.

It makes me uneasy because I like to believe in this more idealistic world than one where who you know matters to get a startup off the ground.

And there's places in between, like...

I think the fact that I can earn 4% on my Circle stablecoin via Coinbase is awesome and disruptive to a heavily regulatory captured finance industry that's been that way for 50 years.

And there's an article out today where the Circle stock is down because there's a draft that wants to make it illegal for them to pay that yield.

So that's one where I'm kind of in the middle.

I think the bigger regulatory capture is the actual banks and not crypto.

I think stablecoins could be wildly disruptive.