How I Invest with David Weisburd
E141: Balaji Srinivasan: The Rise of Network States and the Fall of Nation-States
25 Feb 2025
In this episode of How I Invest, I chat with Balaji Srinivasan—former CTO of Coinbase, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and bestselling author of The Network State. Balaji shares his vision for how the internet could ultimately succeed America, the rise of network states, and the implications of Bitcoin's exponential growth. We discuss the future of digital governance, crypto democracy, and how decentralized technologies are reshaping global power structures. Whether you're a crypto investor, a technology enthusiast, or someone curious about the future of governance, this episode is packed with thought-provoking insights.
Full Episode
You know, just like Rome succeeded Greece and Britain succeeded Rome and America succeeded Britain, I think the internet eventually succeeds America. If you think about Bitcoin, it's definitely appreciated more where the dollar is depreciated more against Bitcoin. It's on the order of last I calculated about 8% a month for the last 10 years.
What that means is since inception, the smart money has been exiting the dollar for Bitcoin The biology fund, techno capital for techno radicals. So investors, Neville, Brian Armstrong, and Emily Choi of Coinbase, Mark Anderson, Chris Dixon of ASIC and Z, David Sachs, Gary Tan, Toby Luckey. Here's some problems.
High inflation, privacy violations, lack of shared consensus, costly energy, election controversy, security breaches, loss of manufacturing capability, too many other things to name, right? You can just keep doubling down on that, try to reform that system, right? Or you can build a better one.
Apology, Srinivasan. Apology, you are the former CTO of Coinbase, a general partner at A16Z, the co-founder of Earn, the co-founder of Council, the co-founder of Teleport. I'm getting tired going through all your background, but alongside being a VC and a co-founder, you're also Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Network State, which I did actually read over the Christmas break.
So welcome.
Great to be here. And that's the network state, by the way, behind me on my shoulder over there. Um, so you can kind of see it.
And you're working on the version two of the book. Tell me about that.
You know, I got the first version of the network state out July 4th, 2022 auspicious day, of course, for starting new countries. Um, And just as a pure Kindle book, and I basically became a book publisher and had to figure out all the Kindle formats and so on and so forth. And it's actually, it hit number two globally on Amazon. And I tweeted that out at that time. You know what number one was?
It's one of the most popular categories on Amazon. It's billionaire romance. I was competing for the number one spot with the, I think it's like the most eligible billionaire. That book, I think is, so it was a bestseller, but it really is sort of, I feel it's catalyzed a movement.
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