People by WTF

I've said it before I'm a crypto critic. I've never bought a Bitcoin, never held a stable coin, never traded a perp. So I sat down with Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, the company that stores more crypto than anyone else on the planet and asked him to explain the whole thing from scratch, like I was an idiot. What followed was the most patient walkthrough of this industry I've ever been given: what a blockchain actually is, why proof of stake replaced proof of work, how stable coin issuers make money, and why he believes fractional reserve banking the foundation of every bank you've ever used shouldn't be the foundation of anything. I pushed him on where the yield really comes from, why an intermediary deserves my treasury returns, and whether crypto has quietly become the opposite of everything Satoshi wrote in that white paper. I'm still not buying a Bitcoin. But for the first time, I understand why so many people do.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

05:12 Income inequality and making everyone a capitalist

11:15 Inequality's magnitude and AI's concentration problem

17:54 Why AI agents will pay in stablecoins

24:28 The risk and yield economics of stablecoins

31:21 Remittances, a digital rupee and tokenized gold

38:09 Bitcoin and blockchain from first principles

45:25 Mining economics and the Michael Saylor playbook

51:09 How proof of stake secures a network

56:52 Smart contracts and DeFi lending explained

1:01:42 Creating entrepreneurs and India's fear of failure

1:08:16 India's crypto adoption and the leverage wipeout

1:15:56 Banks, stablecoins and the fractional reserve debate

1:22:13 The everything exchange and money as energy

1:27:50 The AI bubble question and open source models

1:34:43 Going to Washington and suing the SEC

1:40:01 The rise of perpetual futures trading

1:45:32 Bitcoin's psychology and fair market data

1:51:35 Base and building the new financial system

1:57:25 Whether Brian would run for president

2:02:14 Sleep, health and advice for obsessive traders

2:08:50 Bitcoin versus gold and remittance opportunities

2:13:34 Agentic commerce, moats and capital formation

#nikhilkamath-Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
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Brian Armstrong – CEO of Coinbase

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barmstrong/
• X: https://x.com/brian_armstrong
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brian_armstrong/?hl=en

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#nikhilkamath-Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/

Brian Armstrong- CEO of Coinbase

• LinkedIN- https://www.linkedin.com/in/barmstrong/
• X- https://x.com/brian_armstrong
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brian_armstrong/?hl=en

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I sat down with Nikos Christodoulides, the President of Cyprus — and the rare leader who came to politics as a historian first. Cyprus is a country of a million and a half people sitting on the bridge between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, which makes it one of the most strategically placed nations on earth right now. We got into why he believes the world is sliding back into raw power politics, why the institutions built after World War II no longer reflect reality, why India has to be at the centre of whatever replaces them, and why he thinks war is the easiest mistake a country can make and the hardest to undo. We also talked about democracy under pressure, why he moved from the left to the centre-right over a lifetime, what AI might do to work and governance, and what it actually feels like to wake up every day and carry the weight of a country. He told me it's a very lonely role — and that the only thing that matters is whether history, not tomorrow's headlines, judges you well.

00:00 Introduction

03:07 Being a historian first, a politician second

08:02 Why power politics is returning to the world

12:03 The case for India on the UN Security Council

17:01 How postwar institutions favoured the incumbents

22:23 Whether democracy still delivers economic progress

27:02 Designing a new regional order from India to Europe

34:39 Why interests, not values, reshape alliances

40:53 The only real way to avoid war

42:35 Where he stands on left versus right

46:02 Moving from academia into political reality

47:11 What AI could do to work and democracy

52:08 Thinking about the next generation, not the next election

56:22 What it feels like to hold power

1:03:09 What diplomacy taught him about negotiation

1:07:57 A closing argument for India's leading role

#NikhilKamath – Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/
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Nikos Christodoulides – President of the Republic of Cyprus

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikos-christodoulides-660b02139/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikoschristodoulides/?hl=en
• X: https://x.com/Christodulides

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Most politicians know history. My next guest is a historian who became a president. He runs Cyprus — a million-and-a-half people sitting on the bridge between Europe and the Middle East — and he thinks the world is sliding back into the kind of power politics he spent his academic life studying. We got into why starting a war is easy and finishing one is almost impossible, why he believes India has to lead the next world order, and what it actually feels like to hold power. Full episode drops soon.

#NikhilKamath – Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/

Nikos Christodoulides – President of the Republic of Cyprus

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikos-christodoulides-660b02139/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikoschristodoulides/?hl=en
• X: https://x.com/Christodulides

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I always assumed India was becoming the pharmacy of the world, until this conversation made me sit with the sharper truth that we're the generic pharmacy of the world, and from there we got into whether China really killed our API industry or whether Indians still quietly lead it, why a drug like semaglutide turns into a miracle and a problem the second everyone wants it, the side effects nobody wants to talk about, the ethics of running a prescription-driven business, whether the global enthusiasm around Indian hospitals is actually justified, and why fear might be the single biggest thing holding Indian entrepreneurship back.

#nikhilkamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/

Rajeev Juneja-Vice Chairman & Managing Director at Mankind Pharma Ltd

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeev-juneja-27882a24b/

G.V Prasad Reddy-MD & Co-Chairman at Dr. Reddy's

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gvprasadster/

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Martin Escobari is the co-president of General Atlantic, one of the largest growth equity funds in the world, and he says entrepreneurs and gangsters have more in common than we admit — so few make it, so many die early, and the ones that survive are almost always wounded in some specific way. He grew up in Bolivia in the 80s through 35,000% inflation, eleven presidents in ten years, and three coups; his family lost everything in a revolution; and he now believes America is converging towards the volatility he escaped, not the other way around. I brought in Arian, a 21-year-old founder who cold emailed Sam Altman from India, and asked Martin to allocate $100 billion across three industries with a blank slate today — AI, healthcare, energy transition, and the rise of the new consumer in the global south. We got into why India hasn't produced a truly global company, why four out of seven frauds in General Atlantic's entire history happened here, why the next generation of Indian founders has to build without shortcuts, and why fiction makes better investors than non-fiction. The most interesting two hours I've spent at a dinner table this year.

Timestamp:

00:00 Introduction

05:14 Engineering a happy life

08:22 Surviving Bolivia's hyperinflation

12:19 Trauma as the engine behind every entrepreneur

20:17 Built-for-turbulence companies and spear fishing the storm

25:31 Is America still worth the journey, and what is wealth for

31:00 Capitalism, communism, and learning to think critically

37:19 Submarino, the IPO crash, and the India that almost was

43:02 Aryan's story: cold-emailing Sam Altman from Mumbai

51:18 The four mega-trends and where to put 100 billion

1:01:53 Why India has never built a global company

1:10:25 How General Atlantic is built: perpetual capital and pooled bets

1:16:14 Manifestation, the 8-second rule, and the checklist for great companies

1:24:23 Failure, dead ends, and the courage to change your mind

1:28:36 The venture-to-IPO value chain, monopolies, and young revolutionaries

#nikhilkamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: x.com/nikhilkamathcio
• Instagram: instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio
• Facebook: facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio

#MartinEscobari — Co-President and Head of Global Growth Equity at General Atlantic

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martin-escobari
• Twitter: x.com/MartinEscobari

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Martin Escobari is the co-president of General Atlantic — one of the largest growth equity funds in the world, with over $5 billion deployed into India. He grew up in Bolivia in the 80s with 35,000% inflation, eleven presidents in ten years, three coups, and a family that lost everything in a revolution.

I sat him down with a few Columbia Business School students and a 21-year-old AI founder named Arian and asked him the questions a 20-year-old and a 40-year-old would each ask differently.

Full episode drops soon.

#nikhilkamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: x.com/nikhilkamathcio
• Instagram: instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio
• Facebook: facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio

#MartinEscobari — Co-President and Head of Global Growth Equity at General Atlantic

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martin-escobari
• Twitter: x.com/MartinEscobari

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Ajay Banga took Mastercard from a $30 billion company to $360 billion in a decade, was the frontrunner to run Citibank's quarter of a million people, quit to become CEO of a company with 4,000 — and today runs the World Bank Group, a $120 billion-a-year institution that was originally built to rebuild Europe and Japan after the Second World War and now exists to kill poverty by creating jobs. He says 600 million people in Africa have zero electricity and he doesn't mean inadequate electricity he means black none, that 1.2 billion young people in the developing world will turn 18 in the next 15 years with only 400 million jobs projected for them, that if you don't give them hope the demographic dividend stops being a light at the end of the tunnel and becomes a freight train, that the five sectors governments should obsess over are infrastructure and smallholder farming and primary healthcare and tourism and value-added manufacturing, that India gets fewer tourists a year than a country a fraction of its size and cultural weight, that the World Bank financed Japan's bullet trains and France's nuclear plants and helped create HDFC, that every dollar invested in tourism creates more jobs than a dollar in any other sector, that fossil fuels aren't going away but energy security is becoming a national security question, that small AI delivered on a phone to an illiterate farmer matters more to the developing world than large language models, that life is 50% luck but most people leave their luck on the station platform and forget about it, and that the only way to put a nail in the coffin of poverty is to give somebody a job because earnings are not just subsistence — they are hope and optimism and the belief that tomorrow will be better than today

00:00 Introduction

02:26 AJ's career journey across industries

09:00 Consumption patterns and consumer insecurity

15:00 World Bank's five-part structure explained

22:00 Killing poverty through job creation

29:00 Primary healthcare and farmer empowerment

35:00 Wealth concentration versus societal prosperity spread

42:00 Demographic dividend becoming freight train

49:00 Five sectors driving future jobs

56:00 Decency quotient over IQ EQ

1:03:00 Energy security and nuclear opportunities

1:10:00 Forward thinking beats historical grievances

1:17:00 Luck flexibility and taking risks

1:23:00 Closing message on optimism

Nikhil Kamath Entrepreneur & Investor

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-world-bank-group/

X - https://x.com/WorldBankGroup

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/worldbankgroup/

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Ajay Banga took Mastercard from a $30 billion company to $360 billion, left when he was the frontrunner to run Citibank's 250,000 people, and now controls $120 billion a year as the President of the World Bank Group — the institution that was built after the Second World War to stop poverty from turning into war. He says life is 50% luck but most people leave their luck on the station platform, that India gets under 20 million tourists a year which is insane for a country with beaches, mountains, culture, history, food and what he calls cool people, and that the world is about to have 1.2 billion young people turn 18 with only 400 million jobs waiting for them — and if you don't give them hope, the demographic dividend becomes a freight train. Full episode drops soon.

Nikhil Kamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/

World Bank Group:

• X - https://x.com/WorldBankGroup
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/worldbankgroup/

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Rishi Sunak says patience is a bigger competitive advantage than speed, that every decision that reaches a leader is 50-50 by definition because if it weren't someone else would have made it, that the long term is just a succession of short terms you either survived or got kicked out of, and that the thing he wishes he'd done more of in his career is read fiction — because non-fiction tells you what to do and how to do it but fiction teaches you why and gives you a deeper understanding of people.

Akshata Murty says her identity was never her father's name or her husband's title, that the middle path between stoicism and epicureanism is where the answer almost always lives, and that the validation she chases is impact — not position, not wealth, not the approval of people who've already decided who she is.

First couple's episode we've ever done, and it went places none of us expected.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

06:04 Foundery: India's consumer brand accelerator

12:20 Storytelling as a leadership superpower

18:05 Parents' pharmacy inspired political career

24:04 Educating children in the AI era

30:05 Leaning into human skills over AI

36:17 How Rishi and Akshata decide differently

42:10 Goldman Sachs to Prime Minister journey

48:03 Patience as an underrated competitive advantage

54:15 Entering politics: resilience, patience, service

1:00:06 Staying unapologetically Indian in British politics

1:06:51 Life inside 10 Downing Street

1:12:20 AI sovereignty and global trade tensions

1:18:32 De-globalisation and supply chain resilience

1:24:38 Free trade, tariffs, and level playing fields

1:31:17 Akshata's identity beyond famous family

1:37:53 Validation through impact, not inheritance

1:44:04 Finding balance between desire and austerity

1:50:04 Being kind to yourself after failure

1:56:42 Identity, heritage, and the living bridge

2:03:03 Nostalgic Bangalore food and childhood memories

2:09:05 Why young Indians should enter politics

2:16:03 Education, financial literacy, and compounding

2:22:04 Learning to learn in the AI age

2:29:52 How Rishi and Akshata use AI daily

2:37:09 Can AI truly be creative?

2:44:06 Losing the Prime Ministership: lessons in dharma

2:51:30 Poets versus politicians: who should we hear?

2:58:17 Motivating young people to shape policy

Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas

Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast

• Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rishisunak
• X: https://x.com/RishiSunak?s=20
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rishisunakmp
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rishisunak

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@akshataonline
• X: https://x.com/anmurty
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