When I bought my first Bitcoin in 2014, and by the way, I haven't sold any since then. I'm a believer in all crypto. It was like actually in fact, this is part of a design feature that this is how DNS should work. This is how identity should be working generally when you get to the internet.
Reid, welcome to Consensus.
Have you spoken at a crypto conference before?
I don't think so, and if it was, it was in the like prehistoric stone age 2015, etc.
Let's give a Consensus welcome to Reid Hoffman, please.
Reid, you and I spoke, I think it was about 6 months ago. And it was a fascinating conversation, and you said something to me then that I want to see if that thesis still stands. Which you said you were focused more on the app layer than anything else. And then since then, I think you bought a CryptoPunk. You did a number of podcasts. I saw on stablecoins. I think one of your wallets was docked. There was a lot of things that happened since then. Are you still focused on the app layer? Are you thinking about infra or institutions? Where are you today?
So, there's probably an addition. I'm still focused on app layer. I do think there was a number of areas that have been experimented with in the last 10 years that now as we've gotten this new level of stability, it's almost like internet one and internet two. Like Webvan went out of business, yeah, but actually now we have Instacart and all the rest. So, I think there's a lot of things that will be coming back, and that's part of the app layer focus that we were talking about. But the other thing, and that's part of buying a CryptoPunk, is I started thinking a lot. I've been spending a huge amount of time on AI. You know, kind of co-founded a couple of AI companies including one trying to cure cancer, and I've been thinking about what AI and agents mean for everything. And one of the things I went, oh, wait a minute. This is going to be another important thing within crypto. And not like for example, agentic commerce, yes. You know, kind of payments rails, yes, etc. You know, kind of the enablement of payments within agents, yes. But actually in fact what happens is when you begin to think we're going to have more agents than people, what does the identity layer look like? What does the kind of the notion of, hey, when your agent's talking to my agent and we book this talk here, you know, what actually in fact like, you know, is it a trustable, you know, transaction? Do you have identity, etc. And that got me back into thinking about NFTs. And that's part of why I ended up buying...
Hold on. CryptoPunk. You were starting to think about NFTs. Who else here is thinking about NFTs right now? All right. NFTs are coming back, baby.
All right. So you buy a CryptoPunk because you were thinking about sort of the network effect of community. What were the areas you were interested in?
Well, so precisely one of the things that I think is interesting is if you say that the entire world of work changes because of agents and the fact that you might have agents that are like your not just your talent agent, but also and scheduling agent, but also doing various kind of predictive productive work, but we still have this kind of super agency of humans doing that, well, what does that whole identity ecosystem look like? And that identity ecosystem, while there'll be important identity ecosystems within the companies, like it's going to be kind of free-range on the internet. And how does that work? And crypto's the obvious answer. Now, you know, is it Ethereum, Solana, etc. Who knows? And maybe all in terms of all this stuff. But that started getting me thinking about it. Then of course, you know, part of the thing that was very clever about CryptoPunks NFTs was like profile pictures, online identity. And then, you know, I met the CryptoPunks founders. They're great, you know, and then I was like, okay, I should buy a CryptoPunk. I should start, you know, getting because I always think you should get your hands into it when you're trying to learn, right? And so it was like one of the ways to try to learn.
I think about your career, and you know, we go back to PayPal, money on the internet. We think about LinkedIn, identity on the internet. But now we're really in this interesting world of trust and truth. And we, you know, and all of that feels a little fungible in today's internet. So, when you talk about crypto in terms of feeling like a natural fit, is that because a source of provenance, a source of truth, a source of origination is a place that we need to be thinking now considering where technology is?
Well, I think so. And like for example, like an obvious one is this obsession flash concern with deep fakes. So, you go, okay, is that really a video of Sam or not? And is this really me given that I've also made Reid AI, and I put Reid AI to speak at various conferences and so forth. And I think that part of that provenance, part of that, okay, this is, you know, certified, and how do you have, you know, part of the reason why, for example, crypto networks is certification authority being done in a very deep way. I mean, when I bought my first Bitcoin in 2014, and by the way, I haven't sold any since then. I'm a believer in all crypto. It was like actually in fact, this is part of a design feature that this is how DNS should work. This is how identity should be working generally when you get to the internet. So, that part of it, I think, becomes all the more important in an AI age, whether it's information, whether it's questions around deep fakes, whether it's question around this is really Reid versus Reid AI, this is actually information this conversation at this conference actually happened. Right? In terms of how it's going. And all of that, crypto is the technological solution. Right? And it's the natural kind of and it's part of the reason why like the deeper identity and trust questions. Yes, of course, identity trust really critical for financial. But it's critical for many things in addition to financial.
I want to pull on that. You know better than most people about social networks and their business models. It feels like, you know, if you're on X today, if you're on Instagram today, you're seeing a lot of AI-generated content, you're seeing a lot of people who are creating, you know, whether it's political figures or OnlyFans models. Right? Like it's the entire spectrum. And the idea of proof of humanity seems more important than ever today, but I also wonder, you know, is that just against the social business model?
