CEOInterviews.AIPaul Grewal

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Blake Lot0:15

Hello and welcome to the messy middle. It's your favorite podcast that covers law, tech, the world of work with a little bit of fun and pop culture mixed in. I am your host, the chief global affairs and legal officer here at LinkedIn, Mr. Blake Lot. With me, I have some friends on my right here. I got my chief of staff, Mindy Hepburger. How we doing, Mindy?

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Mindy Hepburger0:36

Doing well, Blake. How are you?

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Blake Lot0:38

Pretty good. So, now we're going to revisit for those of you who listened to our first podcast. I checked in with you on your excitement scale. So, we're going to go back to the excitement scale. On the first episode, you were a solid three out of 10. Where are we at today?

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Mindy Hepburger0:53

Same.

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Blake Lot0:53

Same. Okay. Okay. Well, one of these days we're going to... well, we'll probably stay there the whole time, honestly. But I'm going to go to my left here. I got my producer, Mr. Michael Hughes. Hi, Mike.

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Michael Hughes1:03

How are you?

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Blake Lot1:05

Oh, good.

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Michael Hughes1:05

I'm going to answer for myself.

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Blake Lot1:07

Oh, please do. Just jump right in there.

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Michael Hughes1:08

Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing well.

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Blake Lot1:09

Okay. You're doing well. So, today we got a great guest with us. We have the chief legal officer of Coinbase, Paul Grewal, joining us. And look, some people they say that cryptocurrencies, it's just kind of like gambling. So I thought it would be good for us to talk a little bit about our own personal experiences with gambling. Mike, you a gambler? Have you seen... first of all, have you seen the Kenny Rogers movie, The Gambler?

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Michael Hughes1:39

I did not even know it was a movie, but I do love the song.

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Blake Lot1:43

You do love the song. Do you know when to hold them?

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Michael Hughes1:46

I do. And when to fold them.

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Blake Lot1:47

And when to walk away.

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Michael Hughes1:48

And when to run.

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Blake Lot1:49

Okay. So, what is your personal experience then with gambling, because you clearly know the Kenny Rogers stuff.

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Michael Hughes1:56

Yes. Not profitable but immensely enjoyable.

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Blake Lot2:00

Okay. So, what are some of the ways that you've lost at gambling?

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Michael Hughes2:05

Oh, pick a table game that's in a casino, probably losing. I have played baccarat, which I don't really know how to play.

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Blake Lot2:13

Yeah, that probably...

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Michael Hughes2:15

I also heard it's the best odds in the casino.

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Blake Lot2:18

I think it helps if you know how to play the game. That helps.

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Michael Hughes2:20

Well, you got to get closest to nine. I know roughly how to play, but I don't know like a strategy for it. So, I'm just hoping, you know, luck is on my side there.

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Blake Lot2:28

So, you're like an amiable gambler.

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Michael Hughes2:30

I'm an amiable gambler. Like, I enjoy blackjack. I think there's a little bit of thinking involved there. Like, I like craps. I know how to play that. I don't really understand how someone can win over the long term with it. And then I've dabbled in sports betting.

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Blake Lot2:44

Dabbled in sports. Well, I think we'll get more into that later on today, but we're gonna head over to Mindy here. Mindy, how about you? You like to throw the money down a little gambly?

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Mindy Hepburger2:53

I'm not a gambler. I mean, I'd play enough to get the free drinks.

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Blake Lot3:00

Spend the least amount of money and still get the free drinks and have a good night, but that's about it.

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Mindy Hepburger3:04

Okay. So you're looking at like where's the slots?

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Blake Lot3:08

Yeah. Slots, or like the cheapest table.

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Mindy Hepburger3:12

Yes. And now there is no such thing as a cheap table anymore. You go to Vegas. Like unless you're like a $50 drink or something, it's trouble.

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Blake Lot3:20

You got Fremont Street.

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Mindy Hepburger3:21

You can go up to... I mean if you go up to Nevada state line.

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Blake Lot3:24

Yeah.

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Mindy Hepburger3:24

Tahoe. You can play for less.

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Blake Lot3:27

Play for less. And that's what you're targeting.

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Mindy Hepburger3:30

That's what I'm targeting. I feel like life is enough of a gamble that I don't need to go do it.

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Blake Lot3:34

Oh, that was deep. That was deep. I agree. I agree. Life is a gamble.

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Mindy Hepburger3:39

What about you, Blake? What is your personal experience with gambling?

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Blake Lot3:43

Lot of poker in college. A lot of poker in college. Like in the dorm room, there was many many hours. And I didn't lose, but I didn't win. Well, I lost. We had one Rob, my roommate basically. We funded, you know, at least his social life, his books, you know, I'd say his travel.

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Mindy Hepburger4:05

And now poker in the sense of like today where it's like Texas Holdem or were you playing like stud and stuff?

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Blake Lot4:11

Definitely stud. We would play guts. A lot of guts.

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Mindy Hepburger4:15

I don't know if you know that one. I don't think I know that.

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Blake Lot4:17

It's like a matching pot game and used to get... but like basically if you're in college you can kill the hours there if you have a... and we had a keggerator in the room as well. Yes. So keggerator poker many many many hours. And led me to really be able to embrace disappointment in life when it happens.

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Mindy Hepburger4:40

Yeah. You can embrace failure early.

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Blake Lot4:42

Exactly. I learned how to get over that. That and probability. Mindy knows I do math in my head all the time.

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Mindy Hepburger4:48

So that's all from gambling.

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Blake Lot4:51

That's pretty good. And but no table games for you. That was in college. Now you're done.

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Mindy Hepburger4:56

Rare. No. No. Yeah. I've... actually when I played poker in casinos I tend to win but that's again it was Rob's fault. The guy was a very very good poker player. So we basically funded most of his enjoyment in college. But look, that's just one aspect of ourselves with gambling. And you know what we need to do is we need to talk to our buddy Paul, talk to him about cryptocurrencies and whether or not it is or isn't gambling. Because look, on the one hand when it comes to cryptocurrency there's definitely some folks who think it's just rampant speculation and should be banned and other people who think it's the finance of the future. The truth I think it's somewhere in the messy middle but we're going to need to ask our friend Paul Grewal. Paul Grewal, welcome Paul.

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Paul Grewal5:46

Thank you, sir. It's great to be on with you.

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Blake Lot5:48

So, thanks for coming on and mixing it up with us here. We usually like to start, it is a LinkedIn podcast, so we like to start a little bit on... with career journey with our friends. Now, I know that, you know, you did a bunch of stuff, then you went to law school, you became a law firm partner. We all know that nobody cares about law firm partners. So, let's start the story after that, and where you became a magistrate judge. And so how does one actually become a magistrate judge? Like do you have to... how much do you have to network? Do you have to... is it about who you know or how does that process work?

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Paul Grewal6:25

Well, first of all thank you again for having me and I will say talking career journey with the senior executive at LinkedIn is a bit intimidating. So I will do my best. That's... I'm also going to stare at you like very intimidating fashion. So there we go.

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Blake Lot6:42

Exactly. Exactly. Right.

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Paul Grewal6:46

Look, the process and path to becoming a magistrate judge is both highly formal and extremely informal in a couple different ways. The formal path is you apply like any other job.

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Blake Lot6:58

Oh, I didn't realize that.

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Paul Grewal7:00

Yeah. Because unlike most federal trial court judges who are nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate and serve for life, magistrate judges are actually appointees of the court themselves. And so what happens is when there is an opening on a district court like for example the Northern District of California where I serve, there's official notice posted, there are qualifications laid out and you submit a written application to kick off the process. That's how it works formally. The less formal, maybe even informal part of the process is that by the time you get to sort of the final list of candidates, in most cases it's a group of five, six or seven people. You're talking about people all of whom could do the job and do the job very well, I'm sure. And so I think part of it is, you know, who the sitting judges are most comfortable with, who they're most excited about, and maybe even a little bit, you know, who they know from previous experience. So it's all that wrapped up into one big question. Honestly, not so different than a lot of jobs, right?

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Blake Lot8:01

For sure.

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Paul Grewal8:02

And then when did you have... did you have a judicial philosophy? Anything that for... I'm not sure... if you're on the Supreme Court you are Scalia and you are originalists. If you're a magistrate, do magistrate judges have judicial philosophies? Did you have one?

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Blake Lot8:19

Um, I'm sure some magistrate judges have a judicial philosophy. I'm not sure I ever found mine.

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Paul Grewal8:25

Yeah. And the reason for that is, you know, 98.6% of the cases and controversies that come into any court including a federal district court presided over by a magistrate judge don't really involve politics or philosophy. It's really about taking the law, applying it to the facts and making calls. And so the circumstances where I think one's philosophy could present itself or form are actually pretty far and few between.

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Blake Lot8:53

Yeah. Interesting. So your career journey went on and you left and it's somewhat like I remember when I heard about... at the time I was interested and surprised you left the bench and you went to Facebook and sort of led litigation, regulatory, a bunch of things that was like had overlap with what I was doing at the time. And I'm curious at the time like you were there at a pretty interesting time and it changed over time. When you joined, did people still think of Facebook as the good guys? And was it different inside the company versus outside the company? Did it change for either one of those at the time you were there? And how did that affect your job?

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Paul Grewal9:35

Well, after about six years, give or take, on the bench, I looked at people like you, Blake, and frankly, it looked like you were having a lot of fun.

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Blake Lot9:45

I did have a lot of fun.

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Paul Grewal9:46

And maybe do.

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Blake Lot9:47

Yeah. And still do, right?

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Paul Grewal9:49

And you know, I was at a point where I hadn't accomplished everything I maybe could have as a judge, but I felt like I had done a lot and done maybe even more than I would have expected after a relatively short tenure. And so, you know, I did take a somewhat unusual step in leaving the court. Maybe even more unusual than that was, you know, leaving the court to go to a tech company. I don't think that is very common. And I don't think that since I left there has been a stampede following me but for me it was... I think the combination of the challenge, I'd never worked in house before, and the particular challenge that Facebook was facing at that time as you allude to. For almost its entire history up until that point, you know, Facebook was one of those tech success stories that could do no wrong and that captured the public's imagination and attention. You know, at that time, we were still in the phase of the company's history when presidents and prime ministers would be walking around campus like it was nothing. Or, you know, you'd go to lunch and you'd bump into a rapper or a famous artist in the cafe.

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Blake Lot10:59

Which rapper did you bump into in the cafeteria?

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Paul Grewal11:02

I can't betray confidence under the terms of my exit agreement.

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Blake Lot11:06

That's fair. Okay.

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Paul Grewal11:08

I will just say that...

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Blake Lot11:09

It was Nelly, wasn't it? Was it Nelly?

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Paul Grewal11:13

Honestly, if it were Nelly, I would tell you because I would be so excited by that. But, you know, it was just no big deal. These were things that just happened every day. And then the worm turned, as they say, and by the fall of 2016 when I finally settled in after a few months, things changed dramatically at Facebook. We had the election, the presidential election, which raised, you know, allegations of Russian interference on the platform. Not long after that, we had the Cambridge Analytica affair. And so in my role running lit and regulatory affairs, I was kind of soon dragged into a bunch of stuff that maybe was predictable with the benefit of hindsight, but certainly was not something I expected to be playing some part in so quickly in my tenure there.

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Blake Lot11:56

And how much did your time on the bench prepare you or not prepare you for where you ended up there?

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Paul Grewal12:01

It was actually the most fantastic preparation I could have ever imagined. And the reason for that is, you know, as you know, maybe better than just about anybody, when you're running a chunk of a legal team at a company like LinkedIn or Facebook, you are thrown into a dozen, maybe two dozen different subject matter areas on any given day, right?

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Blake Lot12:25

Sure.

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Paul Grewal12:27

You are dealing with highly charged rooms and environments regularly. You are often given, almost always given, no good choice in a situation, only a series of bad ones.

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Blake Lot12:42

Right.

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Paul Grewal12:42

And you know I think the other thing that also was quite relevant and drew upon my experience at the court, you are forced to make decisions and do so quickly even if on imperfect information. And so in a lot of ways, yeah, that my time at the court was the ideal training for what was to come.

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Blake Lot13:01

Nice. So you've been at Facebook now for a few years. You've spent time on the bench, now worked in-house at a tech company. What drew you to crypto in general and Coinbase? What was the genesis of you becoming the chief legal officer there?

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Paul Grewal13:18

Yeah. So, I was at Facebook when in 2018 or so the company made a decision to pursue something called a stable coin in the form of a project called Libra. And it turned out that as we were dealing with a number of... open question I haven't... because you know, right, as we were dealing with Cambridge Analytica and all the concerns about our privacy practices, it turns out you announcing the intent to launch a global stable coin that to some felt like a threat to the US dollar and other fiat currencies.

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Blake Lot14:00

Everybody was like, 'Huzzah, great. Let's do it.'

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Paul Grewal14:03

Wasn't exactly perfectly timed or well staged. Again, with the benefit of hindsight.

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Blake Lot14:10

No, it's interesting.

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Paul Grewal14:11

Even though I wasn't directly involved in that product launch, in the aftermath of that and as our executives were called to testify and the like, I certainly was given the opportunity to learn much more about how crypto worked, what stable coins were, and what interesting legal issues could come of that. And so in a lot of ways, I was primed for the call from Coinbase. And as I came to learn not long after that, it was already anticipating many of the issues that were to follow. I also should say there was one earlier moment, Blake, and everybody, that was certainly a part of the genesis for me, which was on the bench as a magistrate judge, something in like 2011 to 2012, I issued a search and seizure warrant for this strange new digital currency called Bitcoin. And while I can't say for certain I was the first to do that, I certainly must have been one of the first. And so the breadcrumbs had been laid long before Coinbase came calling for sure.

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Blake Lot15:13

Oh, that's so interesting. So, okay, great. I'm glad we got to crypto because I want to ask you, so Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange in the world and probably much more. So, I like many people have heard about crypto, talked about it all the time, but like really have no idea what it is, right? So, if you're like a... just a regular person, like treat me like I'm a seven-year-old, why should I care about crypto? Assume I know nothing and you won't be far from the truth. And also, as an extra bonus points, if you do not use the word the blockchain because nobody really knows what... that's not... I don't even know if that's a real thing. I hear it all the time. But you may use the words distributed ledger if you'd like.

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Paul Grewal15:59

All right. Well, within those very narrow constraints, I will attempt to do my best. I will start by saying that if you were actually a seven-year-old, I will tell you you shouldn't care about crypto. Frankly, you ought to go outside and play. Touch some grass, go feel the sun.

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Blake Lot16:10

Okay, good.

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Paul Grewal16:13

But I'm a very curious seven-year-old as I was.

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Blake Lot16:14

Fair enough. Fair enough.

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Paul Grewal16:17

Well, look, the reason why anybody should, I think, care about crypto is that in a nutshell, it has become, I think, an important part of our financial system and will impact how we all interact with our economy both here in the United States and globally in very important ways. So, that's the why. Now, what is it? What does it do? You can think of it in a number of different ways. A lot of people inside of crypto think of it as alternatively a store of value like something like gold which holds value over time and space in ways that are useful even as dollars and other fiat currencies rise and fall sometimes quite dramatically. It's also a unit of account or a means of payment. Which means it's another way to pay for things and move value in ways that are much more efficient than gold bars or dollars or if you think back to early money, things like seashells or stones. It is effectively programmable money and so it is as easy to send from one person to another as an email and just as fast.

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Blake Lot17:26

Hm. So, well, I'm a big seashell guy, actually. So this is... you're talking my language. Mindy, how do you feel about seashells as currency?

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Mindy Hepburger17:41

Never used seashells as currency. Actually, not as currency. I watched a TikTok video actually. I asked it to explain to me crypto. And it gave me an analogy to using points at like a Sephora, which tells you something about my TikTok feed, actually personalizing here. So it, you know, like points that you can use to purchase things.

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Blake Lot18:03

Is that... how did TikTok do on that one, Paul? You seem a little underwhelmed by that one.

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Paul Grewal18:09

I'd give it an eight and a half out of 10. I guess the basic idea.

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Blake Lot18:12

Yeah. I mean, look, whether it's, you know, ancient societies that use seashells or more recent ones that used gold bars or, you know, whether today, you know, with your Sephora account, the fact of the matter is like we rely upon all sorts of alternatives for credit or value to pay for things. And in most cases, dollars or euros or whatever work perfectly fine. In most cases, if you want to send money electronically, a wire through your bank or a send on Venmo or Cash App is probably okay. The problem is in many cases there can be delay, there can be expense and if you're talking about a single payment to a manufacturer down the street it probably doesn't make as much sense to rely upon crypto. But if you're managing treasuries, if you're moving tens of millions of dollars on a daily basis from one account to pay for vendors in one country to another account to pay for employees, it matters that this be as efficient, as fast, and as cheap as possible, and that's what crypto offers.

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Paul Grewal19:13

Faster, cheaper, better.

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Blake Lot19:15

Yeah, usually that's a winning strategy.

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Paul Grewal19:17

Oh, it usually works.

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Blake Lot19:19

What about like... some people are... and popular perception is like okay crypto is like for young bros who like to gamble. I was literally... I was in DC. I was in an Uber. I was talking about how I was going to interview like the chief legal officer at Coinbase and the Uber driver goes, 'Oh yeah, I lost all my money in crypto.' He's like, I had 150,000, I invested, it went to 500,000, then I put in these other coins and those went down and they're gone and now I'm driving an Uber. But he was still very pro crypto actually. He was super pro crypto. But so what if somebody says, 'Hey, crypto is just gambling.' What do you say to them?

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Paul Grewal20:04

Well, what I say to them is it's probably time to take another look because look, the reality is that in the earliest days of crypto, people were just first learning what these things were and what they could do. Quite naturally, it was the early adopters, many of who used these currencies for activities that fell outside of traditional finance, that were the first to embrace it.

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Blake Lot20:29

Yeah.

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Paul Grewal20:31

The fact is though that today though crypto in many ways has become boring. I hate to admit this, LinkedIn crypto is now... crypto is LinkedIn now.

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Blake Lot20:41

Well you know I need... I'm neither young, I don't really gamble much. And I'm a pretty poor example of a bro in many ways. I've got couple kids. I go to bed at 8:00.

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Paul Grewal20:55

You go to bed at 8:00.

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Blake Lot20:56

You go to bed at 8:00. I don't believe that.

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Paul Grewal20:59

Yeah. I'm a farmer. I'm a farmer.

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Blake Lot21:01

What time do you get up? You get up at 2:30 in the morning?

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Paul Grewal21:04

Not quite 2:30, but not much long after that. Yeah.

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Blake Lot21:07

Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

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Paul Grewal21:08

Is that because you like to do like... I'm going to grind and get stuff done from 3 to 6 when nobody else bothers me? Or is it just... are you actually a farmer? Do you farm?

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Blake Lot21:20

I don't actually farm, but I come from farming stock. So, I hesitate to describe my, you know, my very basic gardening skills as farming. But to answer your question, I'm an early to rise guy in large part because I like to exercise first thing. I like to get some work done before the inbox piles up. And I like the peace and quiet of my house before all hell breaks loose when everybody else wakes up.

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Paul Grewal21:43

And what's the... what's your go-to exercise? We're going to be doing a wellness segment at the end of this. So I'm interested in your... what's the Grewal wellness routine?

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Blake Lot21:53

Well, if you follow me on Strava...

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Paul Grewal21:56

I do not, but I should. I should. I don't know what Strava is. Do I know what Strava is?

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Blake Lot22:01

It's a social for the wellness session.

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Paul Grewal22:05

Okay. Sorry.

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Blake Lot22:06

Athletes.

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Paul Grewal22:07

Oh, I see.

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Blake Lot22:07

100%.

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Paul Grewal22:08

And I underscore amateur in my case. I'm a Peloton fan. I lift. I run. I ski. I bike. I do a bunch of stuff.

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Blake Lot22:15

Nice.

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Paul Grewal22:18

Oh my god. We should have you on the side. Pretty active. It's pretty good.

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Blake Lot22:21

But well let's talk about wellness and let's talk about the wellness of our regulatory and legislative regime with respect to crypto. Do you see that? See that transition?

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Paul Grewal22:34

Pretty good, right? I'm a natural.

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Blake Lot22:37

So again treating me like the very precocious seven-year-old who wants to know about these things. Explain to me what the current state of crypto legislation is around cryptocurrency. What it currently is and what it should be.

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Paul Grewal22:54

Well, the easiest way to think about it is this. Since its inception, crypto has been subject to regulation. Initially, it was regulation at the state level with things like money transmission licenses and of course consumer protection laws and the rest. Over time, federal rules started to come into place. Crypto and exchanges that provide access to crypto like Coinbase are treated as money services businesses which means you have to register with the Department of Treasury. You're talking to the Bank Secrecy Act and things like that. But what has been missing for crypto for some time has been a comprehensive set of laws that define what crypto falls to the jurisdiction of for example the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. What authority the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has over crypto and what is the best way to make sure that bad guys are held to account who maybe trying to use crypto for nefarious purposes. So we have been working for the last several years on legislation that would answer these and many other questions. We've had some success. Last year we were successful in getting legislation for stable coins, a particular type of crypto passed. That's something called the Genius Act sometime in the middle of last year. And we are now...

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Blake Lot24:15

I like the label on that Genius Act that you're gonna get that one passed. That's a good one.

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Paul Grewal24:18

Well, you know, I don't know who actually comes up with the acronyms and labels that apply, but in that case, I think they nailed it. Right now, we're working on getting a much more comprehensive set of rules for what we call market structure in crypto passed. And we're very close. The House has already passed a bill. The Senate has had multiple hearings on this in the banking and ag committees and we're hopeful that we're going to get this thing over the line in short order.

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Blake Lot24:43

Okay. So do you have a... so what do you have like a general strategy or philosophy when you do this kind of engagement work? Like generally how do you approach it and then like what in your experience works and what doesn't when you're in there and then either talking to on the regulatory side versus the member side and it might be different. Like how do you approach all this work and how do you frame it?

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Paul Grewal25:09

So I always start with a very basic question but a very important question which is what is it we actually want? Because you'd be surprised how often companies and industries and other interests pursue regulatory strategies without really understanding what the endgame really is. In our case what we want is stability. For several years, really the last four years of the previous administration, crypto had no stability. In fact, it had nothing but instability in the form of investigations, lawsuits, and challenges by the Securities and Exchange Commission in particular that really fundamentally sought to undermine our right to operate in the United States. So how we go about getting consensus around a set of rules really begins with answering that question. Then from there it's important to lay out both the public case for what you want and to privately explain why what you want is in the interest of the person that you're explaining it to. Different politicians, different regulators have different priorities or motivations. And so it's always important I think to frame what you want very explicitly in terms of what they want because at the end of the day these are human beings and generally human beings are focused first and foremost on their own interests much more than broader interests that may be important to them.

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Blake Lot26:35

Totally. And then the key is to do it in a way where even if you don't say exactly the same thing to every single person, you're not saying one thing to one person and the opposite to somebody else. You have to have that... your credibility is your coin as you know so like you need to be in a situation where okay you're talking to people and the things that they care about but they're all things that you can support.

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Paul Grewal27:00

Absolutely. And you know where I really feel that lesson for me Blake was honed and refined was in the courtroom because as you know when I was trying cases once upon a time myself or presiding over trials as a judge I saw over and over again good lawyers with good cases lose when they forgot that basic lesson you were just laying out which is preserve your credibility at all costs. And when it was tempting to take a shortcut and make a point that was fundamentally undermined or undercut by something else they had said or done especially in front of the jury in an adversarial system that's going to be exposed almost immediately. Well, when you're lobbying or pushing for legislation, you're not in a directly adversarial system. Everyone's not literally sitting at the same table in most cases, but you are still very much in an adversarial system where if you say one thing to one person, but say something else to another, that's going to be called out. And at that point, you're toast.

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Blake Lot28:02

And you're talking about the engagement that you're doing with members of Congress and the strategy. How is the relationship with the industry at large with financial services incumbents? Like is Coinbase and the crypto industry considered a threat? Is it very adversarial? Do people see the writing on the wall? What's that like?

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Paul Grewal28:23

Well, some people have described us as frenemies with traditional finance in that we have some very important partnerships with finance even as we obviously pose some threat to their traditional business model. But I actually think that misses an important nuance which is yes, we have disagreements for example with respect to stable coins. I mentioned earlier...

Obviously it's a direct competitive threat posed by another way to move dollars around on the internet besides your bank account. But I wouldn't say that puts us in a hostile, adversarial position overall, because the fact of the matter is that improving the financial system is ultimately in everyone's interest. And perhaps a little less Pollyannish, there will be plenty of opportunity and indeed plenty of money to be made for all of us if we can move this thing forward through new technology and new standards. And so we partner wherever we can, and where we disagree, we disagree intensely sometimes, but for the most part respectfully. And I think overall that's served the American public's interests.

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Blake Lot29:32

Is there, like, what's your favorite bank to work with? And I'm not saying like where do you bank or not, but like what bank do you think gets it?

P

Paul Grewal29:45

Oh gosh. Now you're asking me to pick either among my children or... okay, we can cut this out of the pod. Don't worry. You love all you love. I will say like there have been some very forward-looking banks that I think get crypto. And I can say this, I think that right now in the banking industry there is an important moment of decision that it confronts, which is I think for the longest time the largest banks, the so-called G-SIBs, have operated in general partnership with much smaller regional and local banks and even community banks, because they generally have shared a common interest on whatever banking rules or banking standards may be discussed. But I think that a lot of community banks and a lot of smaller and regional banks have come to understand that crypto and the technology behind it actually offer a very powerful way for them to compete much more directly and intensely with the largest global banks. And so I think there is a reckoning coming within banking, if I can offer that, that has yet to take place, but it's coming. And I think you're going to see different banks look at technology, including crypto, much more as an opportunity than as a threat to the traditional business.

B

Blake Lot31:11

And Paul, I have another question along those same lines. When you're speaking to members of Congress and you have to go on the Hill, is... arguably probably, you know, scandals involving other exchanges and everything have made your job more difficult and have made it harder maybe to gain trust among the American people or members of Congress. How much of your time is spent when you're talking to these legislators convincing them why you're not them or why that's an outlier within the industry at large?

P

Paul Grewal31:47

Unfortunately, and I think in earlier days it took up an extraordinary percentage of the time. And look, it's never a good thing when not just one but multiple leading figures in your industry, indeed in some cases your direct competitors, are indicted, convicted, and go to jail. And so...

B

Blake Lot32:06

I agree that that is generally not good. I'm with you. Like some top legal analysis here. I'm with you. I'm with you on that one, Paul.

P

Paul Grewal32:17

That's right. But in some ways there is a huge opportunity in that, because when you can demonstrate that no, we've actually been in existence for 14 years, we are licensed at the state level, we have licenses at the federal level, we operate in dozens or hundreds of countries, we have thousands of employees, we're publicly listed, we are audited by big four accounting firms. When you can demonstrate all the ways in which you've built your business in a very different way from some of those competitors that have chosen to take shortcuts, it in a certain way actually enhances your trust and your credibility. But you have to do the work and you have to take the time, and that's what we've tried to do in all these engagements now going back many years.

B

Blake Lot33:05

Yes, that makes sense to me. Without dumping on competitors, if you can keep your nose clean when they don't, that sometimes distinguishes you. So I said that very diplomatically. Did you like that? Maybe not.

P

Paul Grewal33:26

I do. Maybe not that diplomatic.

B

Blake Lot33:30

Maybe you should be getting on the next red eye to Washington. I'd love to send you my stud.

P

Paul Grewal33:34

Yeah, I bet. You spend a lot of time there. When you're trying to really get that bill across the line, you got to do the work. I wanted to ask you about prediction markets because we talked earlier about gambling and crypto. It feels like prediction markets, isn't that just kind of like literally gambling? Like how is this different than gambling? What is the... talk to the skeptic as to what's good, what's the optimist case for why prediction markets, and then talk to them and say like hey here's the reason that what we can do for safeguards whether or not it's inside trading or all those sort of things.

Yeah, look, prediction markets are definitely having a moment. I think the moment actually began in November of '24 around the presidential election when it became clear that multiple prediction markets were just much more accurate and much more ahead of the curve in identifying who the winner of that election would be than say traditional polling. I think since that time prediction markets have only gained traction in large part because they give people what they want in a way that they want it more than what is traditionally the case. What a prediction market is at its core is nothing more than a listing of contracts for different types of events. Some of which can include things that have otherwise been popularized in traditional sports betting like picking the winner of the Super Bowl or trying to identify how many points or rebounds LeBron James might have in a particular game. But the types of contracts that are listed in prediction markets go far beyond just sports events. And I think it's not surprising that sports have been among the more popular subjects early in this space in large part because Americans, including myself, love sports maybe more than just about anything else. The reason why though prediction markets legally work very differently than say a casino or a sports book is that unlike a casino or a sports book where you're betting against the house, where the house isn't there simply to take a small cut of the transaction, but is actually sitting on the other side of the table from you when you make that bet. With prediction markets, you're literally listing contracts and taking the other side of a transaction from another person or another entity, not the company that sits in the middle of all of that. And that legally has tremendous implications under the Commodities Exchange Act, which is the law that governs prediction markets and event contracts and the like. And so there have been some open questions about how all of this works. But the fact of the matter is it's a, again, faster, better, cheaper way for people to engage in the economic activity that they want to engage in. And so it's important that we get the law right. It's important that we cross every T and dot every I. But I think once all that works itself out, you're going to just see a much more efficient, effective, and frankly safe way for people to do things that they want to do.

B

Blake Lot36:44

Yeah, I having looked at some of the briefing cases because there's a bunch of back and forth between states, particularly on the states looking to regulate sports betting in particular. My sense is that their argument in the area of sports gambling and sports betting given that that has traditionally been an area of state province is maybe a little stronger than like elections and other things. But I guess, well I know the cases have gone both ways. I wouldn't be completely surprised if there was a split there but we'll see.

P

Paul Grewal37:24

Well, it's interesting. There are actually certainly lower courts have come out in different ways in the cases that have been decided so far. I think though Blake ultimately this will have to be resolved at the appellate level, maybe even at the Supreme Court. And I think whatever court ultimately renders the final word, they're going to have to look to the law Congress wrote and that particular law I mentioned earlier, the Commodities Exchange Act, could not be clearer that these listed contracts when they are on CFTC regulated exchanges are swaps and swaps are the exclusive province of the federal government, not the states.

B

Blake Lot38:01

I've seen Trading Places. I know all about the... actually everything I learned about the CFTC was from Trading Places and the end when they do the bit with the oranges.

P

Paul Grewal38:14

Orange juice, pork bellies, it all goes back to Trading Places.

B

Blake Lot38:18

It all goes back to Trading Places. Do you have one bet for the prediction markets? If you have like an NBA champion, do you have something that we should be looking at as sports rolls around?

P

Paul Grewal38:29

I'll offer one observation. And it's certainly not financial advice or definitely not any other kind of advice. I find that prediction markets on weather are super interesting and the reason for that is yeah like it's not subject to any of the manipulation concerns or other concerns that have been raised about markets and it's like one of the few areas where you really can have an information advantage over others based on your own independent research and work. So there's a whole community of weather prediction markets types who are constantly buying and selling contracts on how much rain or how much sun a given location is going to get. Check it out. I'm telling you, it's way more interesting than I could possibly make it sound in 20 seconds.

M

Mindy Hepburger39:13

Thanks for the tip.

B

Blake Lot39:14

Yeah, Mindy's now going to spend the entire weekend doing a deep dive on this and then I want Sunnyvale to be 81 or 82 degrees. This is the operative question. Like the barometer's dropping. That's right. Stat call Greywall. We like to do a point of the podcast here where we flip it and we say enough about you. Let's talk about me. So we're going to do this in two ways. First of all, it's funny because I was talking to my daughter about... I was saying that I was going to have you on, head of Coinbase crypto, and she's like... she knew that my first guest was Jay Oberoli who's like leading AI expert and so she's like, okay Dad, AI and crypto, way to be a man with a podcast. But I say no no no Paul's great, he's going to flip it on me. So here's your chance. First of all, would love for you to... I love how you use LinkedIn. Like you use way more humor on LinkedIn and show more of yourself on there. So if you want to talk a little bit about LinkedIn, how you use it, what you think, how we could be better, and then if you have any questions you want to fire back at me, we can turn the tables.

P

Paul Grewal40:28

Oh my gosh, where to begin? First of all, I love LinkedIn. I've been a user for many, many years. And what I like about it is that people are just kinder to one another on LinkedIn and more respectful in their engagements even when on occasion people bring up relatively controversial subjects. So I just find the tone and the quality of the discourse on LinkedIn better than just about any other place. You mentioned I try to offer a little bit more of my personality than maybe some others. And I get it. Especially lawyers on LinkedIn tend to be a bit more formal and operating within the box that they've set for themselves in terms of their professional persona. You know, I respect that, but I also think that people want to know a little bit about who you are and what you are. And so it's effective and frankly fun just to show a bit more of your personality than you might otherwise be inclined, especially if the expectations are low as they are for lawyers. As for questions and feedback I have for you, Blake, oh my gosh, where to begin? Go. So first and foremost, I find that the video on LinkedIn is really powerful. I get great feedback on the videos that I post. I find that the video editing tools on LinkedIn are maybe a half a click or a half a step behind where they are on some other platforms. So just as a customer and a proud user, I offer the feedback that I think if you guys up that game just a tad, you're going to see a flood come in of really interesting content even above and beyond what we got right now.

B

Blake Lot42:08

Super fair. We do have a CapCut integration. So I push you that way, but very very fair. Mike was a TikTok guy, so he understands like the power of making tools to make it better.

P

Paul Grewal42:21

Awesome. Well, that I think that is totally fair. And then the question I have for you is I'm always looking for even more interesting people to follow. Who's someone that you've recently started to follow or maybe have followed for a while that some of us wouldn't know that we really ought to consider giving a click to?

B

Blake Lot42:38

I'm not sure if you wouldn't know, but I think Spencer Cox is really interesting. Who is the governor of Utah. If you're in our space and you're interested in tech and law and somebody who is like not being passive about what he thinks and how tech should be regulated. I think I would definitely follow Spencer. My understanding is like he's mostly posting on LinkedIn, but he may also, his team may also post on X. He particularly, you know, I think he's a great follow.

P

Paul Grewal43:11

I love that suggestion. And Governor Cox has certainly not been shy in sharing his opinions on prediction markets recently. And so I'm very well aware of his independent thinking on technology issues. So I'll give him a follow for sure.

B

Blake Lot43:24

Yeah. So I think good content and also probably good for your job to follow him.

P

Paul Grewal43:29

Yeah. No doubt. No doubt about it. There's both personal and professional incentives there. And if I can ask one other question of you... Sure. And LinkedIn, what do you think? I mean you're swimming in this day in and day out. You've helped build the company given your tenure. What do you think makes for the most interesting content that you see every day if there's one quality above all others that stands out in your mind?

B

Blake Lot43:55

I think the most important thing is authenticity. So that's why I think you're doing it so well. Honestly, I think that... and this is the part where we all like pat each other in the back. But genuinely, particularly lawyers, they feel like they have to play it safe. They have to not show themselves. They need to be like it's just like me on a panel and me like I don't know sitting on a throne. No. The fact that like you get a sense of the person then when the times that you're in saying like here's what the policy should be, I'm so much more dialed in. So that's what I'm trying... and that's why I started a podcast.

P

Paul Grewal44:42

Yes.

B

Blake Lot44:43

Bringing it full circle.

P

Paul Grewal44:45

Yes. Exactly.

B

Blake Lot44:46

I love it. Thank you Paul for your time. Thank you for your feedback. Any feedback for Mike or Mindy, any questions for Mike or Mindy before we go?

P

Paul Grewal44:57

No. Gosh, you guys have made this so much fun and easy. Thank you for having me. It's really been fun.

M

Michael Hughes45:01

Yeah, it's been great, Paul. Like I said, I'm a fan and wish you luck in DC and thanks for educating us more about what crypto is.

P

Paul Grewal45:14

All right, thanks guys.

B

Blake Lot45:17

All right, welcome back to the Messy Middle. As you know, it's a podcast that covers the world of law, tech, the world of work, but also with some fun and pop culture mixed in. So we're going to be going to that fun part right now and learning a little bit more about ourselves. On our first episode, we had some fashion advice. What else do we like to know about? We like to know about wellness. So we are going to the source. Our director of wellness here at LinkedIn, Mr. Michael Susi. Welcome to the Messy Middle, Michael.

M

Michael Susi45:47

Oh, yes. Blake, it is great to be here. Thanks for having me.

B

Blake Lot45:50

Oh, well, we need the help, Mike. I got to tell you like we need to upgrade ourselves. Like we are all a work in progress. Each one of us is going to be coming to you as the director of wellness, the wellness guru, if you will, to help us with our wellness issues and problems. And we'll start with Mike.

M

Michael Susi46:12

Oh, great place. He needs the most help.

M

Michael Hughes46:16

Great great place to start. I am in my late 30s now. I have three children. Yeah, not to give away my age here, but...

B

Blake Lot46:27

He's in his late 30s.

M

Michael Hughes46:29

But I have young kids, so I don't have a ton of time to go to the gym yet. Every summer, I'm just like, sure, I wish I was jacked. Like it looks like it's very fun to me. I intrinsically just don't have a ton of time to go to the gym given my schedule and everything. And I also hate getting sore. Like I've started working out a few times and then you get sore immediately and you're just like I don't want to deal with this. So then I'm done. What can I do? What should I be thinking about to push through that? And how can I go best on my journey to just be jacked for the summer?

M

Michael Susi47:04

Sure. Well, that's a lot to take in all at once to go from not wanting to be sore but also wanting to be jacked. So you may have to have a little bit of give and take there. But embrace the soreness. That's one thing I would say. Embrace it. Just it's a badge of honor. How are your kids, how old is the oldest and the youngest?

M

Michael Hughes47:22

My oldest is six, my youngest is one.

M

Michael Susi47:27

Perfect. So various weights. So as you progress your weights, you take the one-year-old, you squat and press, and then you want to go heavier, you get the six-year-old, and then you can do that till they're 18, you know, and you'll have plenty of time because it'll be family time, you're with the kids. But progression is about starting with light weights, high reps, and then as you do the heavier kid, you do less reps.

M

Michael Hughes47:49

Oh, so this is really useful for me because I had thought really the only way there is you've got to be lifting real heavy stuff.

M

Michael Susi47:57

That's going to add bulk. But if you want to get sculpted, you need to start off doing higher reps, like 15 rep range, like three, four, maybe four sets, 15 rep range. That's only allow you to do so much weight. Right. And also, you should be able to do on your 15th rep of your last set, you should be able to get two more reps. It's not that you should do them, you should be able to get two more. If you can't, then your weight's too heavy.

M

Michael Hughes48:20

So, like depends if you have like a first grader. So, for a first grader and you want to do 15 and then you up yourself to like a third grader if you're pushing yourself.

M

Michael Susi48:29

Then you do 10 reps.

B

Blake Lot48:31

All in your family, Mike. All in your family.

M

Michael Hughes48:34

Well, you just wait. You'll come back to New York now. My traps will be huge. I'll have no neck.

M

Michael Susi48:39

All right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

B

Blake Lot48:41

Mike is set. Okay. Mike's going to be so jacked on Long Island when he hits the beach this summer. All right, Mindy.

M

Mindy Hepburger48:49

I mean, I could not hate working out more. So, what do you say to somebody who really just doesn't enjoy it at all? I get none of this like endorphin hit. I get nothing. So, what do you recommend?

M

Michael Susi49:04

One thing I would say I would recommend first, don't do anything you hate. Life should be enjoyed, not endured. So, if you don't like it, don't do it. Right. This isn't like high school calculus that you have to do at the graduate or whatever. So, you know, within our tenants of wellness, and if people aren't familiar, we have our six tenants of wellness, which are the principles of our wellness program, and they are thoughts, breathing, hydration, nutrition, movement, and rest. Notice it's not exercise. So, the point is have your body be in motion, avoid stagnation. Now, if you wanted to do certain things like Mike wanted to do, or if you wanted to compete in the Olympics, I'd say you need to get into the gym and exercise. But if your goal is just to have some good flexibility, be mobile, keep our joints moving well as we get older, then just think about movement. Don't think about exercise because that seems to be a demon word. So don't do it.

M

Mindy Hepburger49:53

Good advice. I mean, I sounded a little delivered to my age right now, but that's fair. It's fair.

B

Blake Lot49:58

Yes, for those of us... what was that Gen X specific advice? Like are you going to tell her to do water aerobics at the Y or I mean what are we talking about here?

M

Michael Susi50:11

I would say also as we get older and I'm Gen X also, you know I'm smack dab in the middle of that. We want to also maintain muscle mass and bone density as we get older and proprioception. There's your word of the day, proprioception.

M

Mindy Hepburger50:24

That's not a real word.

M

Michael Susi50:25

It is. Knowing where you are in space right without having to see things. And so that helps us not fall. And as we get older, a fall is so much worse than when we are younger. So like think about the benefits of doing that could be standing on a stability pad like those blue pads that you have in the gym or a Bosu ball. Just simple things like that can go a long way to one, it can be fun. You'll challenge yourself. I know you like a challenge. I know who your boss is. Yes. And it'll benefit you into your long fruitful old age.

B

Blake Lot50:57

So, you're not worried about Mindy's age, but your advice was how to not fall.

M

Michael Susi51:05

Yeah.

B

Blake Lot51:08

Okay. Basically, I feel like this is trouble, Mindy. I know for us.

M

Mindy Hepburger51:11

Well, we're going to have to start doing more pickleball, I think.

B

Blake Lot51:15

Yes. What about pickleball? Do you have thoughts on pickleball? Like, I feel like I've heard it's a health epidemic.

M

Michael Susi51:22

It's a double-edged sword. It's great. It's easy to get into. It's fun to play. You can play to a lot of places, but you also got a lot of people like, 'Oh, that's easy. I can do that. I haven't done a lot before.' And then you come out and you're just not used to moving all these planes of motion. And the courts are generally hard, so they're not very forgiving. So, there's a lot of injuries in that capacity. I would recommend if you don't move a lot, don't just think because it's not as hard as tennis that you can just go out there and go out like you're in your early 20s and dive all over the place. So, warming up is more important. Just taking care of your soft tissue, get massages. If you want to go be more active, just be conscious of the fact that it's not as simple as it looks because the game may be... I don't want to say easy because I know it could be very challenging, but...

B

Blake Lot52:04

Yeah, don't say it's going to be easy.

M

Michael Susi52:06

That was a great... don't say it's going to be easy.

B

Blake Lot52:08

Dumping on pickleball. That's... everybody you can at Michael with your pickleball age there.

M

Michael Susi52:15

That's a great intro for the two of you by the way, what you were asking about pickleball. If you're not someone who moves around a lot...

M

Mindy Hepburger52:22

I did notice that. I did notice that.

M

Michael Susi52:24

Yeah. If you're not someone... look, we actually have been a very effective pickleball duo at times. We've played together. Yes, it's happened.

M

Mindy Hepburger52:33

I can imagine. But also that balancing and not falling over. I know maybe we were talking about...

B

Blake Lot52:36

We're back to us not falling over. Really? This is what we're back to. Okay.

M

Michael Susi52:41

That is also pertinent though when you're playing in your Turkey Bowl Thanksgiving Day game back in Cherry Hill that you don't fall over. You're able to stiff arm and keep people away from you. So there's applications beyond just not falling. So...

B

Blake Lot52:52

Oh, good. Well, did I say that? No, you did not. But we're going to move on. For myself, okay, Mike, I don't know if you know this, started a podcast, right? It's a video podcast. So, like I went not that long ago, was in the doctor's office and like very unfairly, I'm going to say very unfairly. They weighed me immediately as I walked in. I had my keys and my phone, all of my clothes on...

M

Mindy Hepburger53:22

Your life alert.

M

Michael Hughes53:25

My wife...

B

Blake Lot53:28

Oh, that is fair. That was a good one. That was a good one. For the Messy Middle listeners, I do not have a life alert, but I've heard it's an excellent product, but the number was a little higher than I like. So, what's the way if I want to... let's say I've got a podcast, got to look good for the cameras, maybe drop a little tonnage. If I don't want to go the GLP route and what do I do besides just like maybe cut back on the beer and sweets?

M

Michael Susi53:55

Get taller.

B

Blake Lot53:56

Get taller. How does that...

M

Michael Susi53:59

Well, it'll be distribution. You'll be more evenly distributed. Okay. You know. I would go back. You know, you're going to get taller. Your BMI would change all those sorts of things by your height. But, sugar is certainly something if you consume a lot of that, that could be something to be looked to be cut back on. Though at the same time, you want to have, if you enjoy it, you should try to enjoy it. Movement, you know, you may not have time or don't want to go to the gym. Again, like try to take active breaks. I recommend if we can take a meeting that doesn't require you to be on video, take a walk. I know you do that already. You do...

B

Blake Lot54:34

I do that even on my video meetings. I take my phone and I just kind of walk around and talk to people sometimes. And so look at sugar.

M

Michael Susi54:41

They're like who's that weirdo like talking to his phone on the campus. Honestly like literally this happens. But okay what else? Try to move, you know, pay attention to your sleep. You know poor sleep can also raise our stress levels and we hold on to stress hormones and that's challenging to drop weight even if we are doing the things that would typically help us drop weight. So look at your sleep, have a mindfulness practice, be in tune to those things and don't be... I also say celebrate things like when we look at wellness so many times it's like what do I need to stop doing or what should I do different. Like celebrate the wins that you do have, you're doing something well, like do those, double down on them. That can create some energy and the scale can be a tricky thing so I maybe wouldn't dwell on that number that the doctor gave you but rather get into things about more about how your energy is, how do you feel as opposed to just the number on the scale or your body composition because at the end of the day, you can get jacked or whatever the case may be, but if you're miserable in the process, I mean, what good is that?

B

Blake Lot55:43

Yeah. You see that, Mike? You're going to be all jacked and miserable this summer.

M

Michael Hughes55:48

I'm going to embrace the soreness and come episode six, I'll be popping out of this sweater.

B

Blake Lot55:53

I love it. So, well, I feel like we all learned something. Thank you, Director of Wellness, Michael Susi, for giving us the advice that we need to improve ourselves. And really just show people our best selves because that's going to happen. Michael Susi, we are going to bring our best self. And when we do, we're going to shout out Michael Susi who clearly showed that he was an ageist to me and Mindy in this podcast. Thanks for joining us, Mike, on the Messy Middle.

M

Michael Susi56:23

Thanks for having me. See y'all later.

B

Blake Lot56:24

See you. And that's a wrap for another episode of The Messy Middle. Thanks to Paul Grewal, Michael Susi, and my partners in crime, Mike and Mindy here. Another great episode. If you like the episode, you can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, LinkedIn. Like, follow, subscribe, and if you liked us, give us that five star rating, baby. Five stars. See you next time.

Paul Grewal

About Paul Grewal