UNCHAINED: OG Olaf Carlson-Wee on Why His Crypto Thesis Is Stronger Than Ever
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2024
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Crypto creates an “incentive vortex” that is destined to take over everything, according to the investment firm’s founder and CIO.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Polychain Capital founder and CIO Olaf Carlson-Wee has been through every single bubble in crypto history, from Bitcoin’s rise past the single digits in 2012 to the ICO craze of 2017 to 2021’s NFT mania, and he says his main thesis about crypto has remained consistent since the beginning. That is, that crypto constitutes an “incentive vortex” that will replace the world’s preoccupation with country-backed currencies.
Carlson-Wee, who was the first employee at Coinbase, joins Unchained to discuss the significance of the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs, how he successfully navigated all the industry blow-ups in 2022, the challenges of balancing incentives for early adopters versus new users, why EigenLayer is so significant, why Worldcoin’s distribution strategy is a “disaster,” and the strange places that the intersection between crypto and AI could take us.
Show highlights:
- Why Olaf sees the current market as the cusp of another bull run and how his thesis has remained consistent since 2011
- How the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs marks a significant milestone
- Why criticisms of the crypto space are really criticisms of money in general
- The fundamental differences between Web3 applications and the Web2 ecosystem and why they matter
- The importance of fair token distribution in enhancing the value of Web3 projects
- When Olaf expects Bitcoin to replace legacy financial systems
- The areas and technologies Olaf and his fund are keen to invest in
- Why Olaf thinks a modular blockchain architecture is superior to a monolithic one in the long term
- How EigenLayer is innovating to enable new types of applications and whether it competes with Celestia
- How Polychain managed to avoid being hurt by the major market blowups of 2022, including Terra and FTX
- The evolution of the space from an ideologically driven to a more pragmatic approach
- The significance of incentive design in crypto ecosystems and the trade-offs involved in system design
- Olaf’s perspective on the recent rise of points systems
- The growth of privacy-focused crypto projects and the potential for private blockchains to become the norm
- Why he thinks Worldcoin’s distribution strategy is a “disaster”
- Olaf’s interest in the intersection of AI and crypto and potential developments in this area
- His bullish outlook on SocialFi and Web3 gaming
Thank you to our sponsors! Popcorn Network
Guest:
Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and CIO of Polychain Capital
Previous appearances on Unchained:
Olaf Carlson-Wee: 'If There Is a Money-Losing Exploit, the Money Is Gone'
Why The First Employee Of Coinbase Launched A Hedge Fund
To the Moon and Back With Polychain's Olaf Carlson-Wee
All Things Cryptoeconomics, Pt. 1, With Olaf Carlson-Wee and Ryan Zurrer of Polychain Capital
Links:
Olaf Carlson-Wee
Forbes:
This Man Has Been Living On Bitcoin For 3 Years
Why This Hedge Fund CEO Once 'Put Most Of My Meager Life Savings Into Bitcoin'
TechCrunch: The future is a decentralized internet
Blockworks: Why Polychain Capital Founder Never Sells His Crypto
CoinDesk: Olaf Carlson-Wee: Crypto Is the Great Wealth-Redistribution Machine
Restaking/EigenLayer
Unchained:
DeFi Protocol EigenLayer Reaches Restaking Capacity, Pushing TVL Past $1.4 Billion
Do You Need to Think Twice Before Restaking Your Assets?
Olaf’s tweet on EigenLayer
Crypto + AI
Olaf’s tweet: “in crypto nearly 100% of value accrues to start-ups and outsiders, not existing establishment interests”
The crypto ethos
Episode of The Chopping Block where Haseeb Qureshi talks about Justin Sun
Recent investments from Polychain Capital
CoinDesk: Crypto VC Firm Polychain Capital Raises $200M for Fourth Fund: Fortune (Jul 18, 2023)
Polychain Capital and Hack VC Lead $18 Million Funding Round for Bitcoin Staking Protocol Babylon
The Block: Polychain Capital-backed Bioniq to leverage Internet Computer with new Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace
CreateSafe, the company behind Grimes AI, raises $4.6m in seed round
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Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for listening to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto, on the CoinDesk Podcast Network. |
| 0:06.5 | You can also listen to the episodes on the Unchained feed earlier if you subscribe there. |
| 0:11.7 | Plus, check out all our content on our website, Unchained Crypto.com. |
| 0:17.0 | One thing that was a big moment for me, this, you know, this happened probably about 10 years ago. |
| 0:22.1 | But I was thinking about Bitcoin as this sort of abstract incentive machine that people get plugged into. |
| 0:29.8 | And that, you know, the Bitcoin network or Ethereum network, you know, they're operated by machines. |
| 0:35.8 | But ultimately, these systems control humans. |
| 0:40.3 | Like, they manipulate humans' incentives to drive humans to, like, work for them. |
| 0:47.0 | And I had a big moment where I realized, wait a second, you got wrapped into this. |
| 0:52.3 | Like, I work for Bitcoin. |
| 0:57.7 | Like, I'm the guy who got wrapped into this. Like, I work for Bitcoin. Like, I'm the guy who got wrapped into this incentive mechanism and now work for this thing. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're a no-hype |
| 1:07.7 | resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. |
| 1:13.1 | I started covering crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor of Forbes was the first mainstream |
| 1:17.3 | reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the January 23rd, 2024 episode of Unchained. |
| 1:24.3 | Streamline your Defy with VaultCraft, the ultimate on-chain toolkit for deploying custom automated defy |
| 1:30.5 | products on any EVM chain join volcraft's referral program unite with the community and supercharge |
| 1:36.8 | your crypto details on vaultcraft dot io today's guest is olaf carlson, founder and CIO of Polychain Capital. |
| 1:45.9 | Welcome, Olaf. |
| 1:47.2 | Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me. |
| 1:49.4 | Excited to see you again. |
| 1:51.4 | I think you may be the only guest of mine to live through every single bubble in crypto. |
| 1:57.2 | You live through a tiny bubble from single digits up to $30 in June 2012. |
... |
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