Gurley reveals he took a personal Ethereum position after studying crypto, citing developer pragmatism over Bitcoin
“I was swayed by the arguments of the Ethereum crowd. And so if our and and and I've taken I've taken a personal position, not something at benchmark.”
Gurley argues Ethereum is smarter crypto play due to developer community and proof-of-stake ESG benefits.
“The developer community is clearly in the Ethereum camp. I think there's a ESG benefit once they move to proof of stake versus Bitcoin.”
Gurley reveals personal position in Ethereum after studying crypto, says Ethereum crowd more pragmatic than Bitcoin.
“We are in chain analysis, which you referenced. And I'm swayed by the Ethereum crowd. The parties that are involved there seem to be way more pragmatic.”
Gurley warns that if Solana replaces Ethereum, it suggests all crypto tokens are worth far less due to race-to-the-bottom dynamics.
“And that's why someone said to me the other day, if Solana eats ETH, then all of these tokens are worth far less than we imagined because there's just a race to the bottom.”
Gurley questions whether governance tokens have value without ability to extract economic rents from the system.
“And everything from my history of studying finance and economics would say that if you declared you'd never rake the system”
Gurley argues governance tokens without economic rights would be worth a small fraction of tokens with revenue capture.
“And everything from my history of studying finance and economics would say that if you declared you'd never rake the system governance token, simply the right to kind of control a group or community would be worth a fraction, a small fraction of what an economic token would be.”
Gurley says tokenization's intersection with marketplace and UGC companies is remarkably nuanced and tricky.
“There's a ton of people that are thinking about tokenization and how that intersects with a marketplace company or a UGC company and a game company.”
Gurley questions whether tokens have value without the ability to rake the system, citing Uniswap DAO.
“It's interesting to me. I've been spending a lot of time trying to go deeper on crypto, and I think there's a fascinating question about whether or not a token will have value if it doesn't have the ability to eventually rake a system that it's involved in. And one of the great examples out there is the Uniswap DAO”
Gurley says if he could redo Second Life, he would let the currency appreciate instead of fixing it.
“And that's why earlier in this conversation, one thing, if I went back on Second Life, I'd probably not stay with the fixed currency. I'd probably let it explode.”
Gurley suggests if Solana eats Ethereum, the next competitor could make Solana equally uninteresting.
“Yes. But I think there's an equally interesting counterpoint to that, that Solana might be cheaper than Ethereum, but then the son of Solana might make Solana equally uninteresting.”
Gurley argues tokenization with appreciating currency can provide massive advantage for marketplace bootstrapping through incentive structures.
“And so if you build the right incentive structure around your tokenization, that could be a massive advantage to an on ramp, especially if you're able to get your currency to appreciate over time.”
Gurley says with crypto wallets you can send $25,000 in two seconds for two cents.
“And now if you have a wallet of any kind and I have a wallet of any kind, I can send you, you know, 25,000 US dollars in two seconds, and it'll cost me 2¢ to send it to”
Gurley notes bonds and crypto ICOs already use supply-demand matching that IPOs avoid.
“And by the way, that's how every bond is priced. And that's by the way, how all the initial coin offerings work in the crypto world. It's just what you would do.”