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disclosures. Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland.

There are few things as old as financial catastrophe, except for maybe finance.

But in the latest fiscal meltdown in Greece, people started asking questions about whether

a very new technology, Bitcoin, and the underlying blockchain could help.

One of those was Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims. So it's just fascinating to me that you can take this underlying,

the technology that is under Bitcoin and use it to represent literally any exchangeable good.

And it can even, in the most extreme case, sort of be used as a mechanism for barter.

And so because Greece a few weeks ago was at this point where people were getting desperate,

they're sending people IOUs.

I just said, you know, why couldn't you represent that with, you know, the blockchain technology?

Obviously, we don't have the ability to do that now as There's a lot of infrastructure that has to be put in place.

But could you do it at some point in the future when Bitcoin is more mainstream,

when people are used to paying this way when you have a generation of people who are used

to paying for things with their phone?

MIMS is joined by Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong in this segment of the

pod for a wide-ranging discussion

about the current state and future possibility of Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain.

When it comes to Greece, or the next financial snafu, Armstrong thinks there's potential for

Bitcoin to help, but there's also some education that needs to happen.

...