I am pleased to announce that a memorandum of understanding has been signed between the Republic of Kazakhstan and Network School. Our new campus will become a haven for global techno-optimism, with expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation, and active recruitment of talent.

Network School is not shutting down; that’s fake news. We received two notices. The first tells us to change the text of a sign. The second says that our coworking site, which was created by joining two adjacent units, evidently has a valid license on the left hand side but not the right hand side. We have a remedial period for both issues, and will remediate them shortly. But our members are otherwise unaffected.

Should the global tech community continue investing in Malaysia? Given recent events, I raise this question respectfully for the consideration of Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim (@anwaribrahim), for the people of Malaysia, and for our friends in the Malaysian tech community. The answer will be of interest to anyone in global tech that’s considering building, investing, or expanding in Malaysia, including executives at Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, founders of tech unicorns like Coinbase and Solana, and investors at the world’s largest venture capital funds like a16z and Polychain. As context, I am the former CTO of Coinbase and former General Partner at a16z. In October 2024, I opened a startup society called Network School in Malaysia, because I felt I’d been invited in by the government’s pro-tech policies. Specifically, the KL20 initiative set out Malaysia’s ambition of becoming a top 20 global tech hub. Their MDEC digital nomad visas and MM2H investor visas were created to facilitate an influx of global talent and capital. And the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone was announced to facilitate the flow of capital and talent between Malaysia and Singapore, where I live. When taken in combination with Malaysia’s datacenter buildout and its policy of welcoming visa-free visits for 98% of the world, it seemed like Malaysia might be a great place to build a global tech hub that was simultaneously inexpensive and easy to visit (especially for non-Westerners). And that’s what we did, by creating Network School. It’s an international tech community with its first node in Forest City, Malaysia. We picked Forest City because it had millions of square feet of empty space, because it was one hour from Singapore’s capital markets, and because it was within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Then, within 18 months, without a single penny of government money, we built Network School into a global attraction that brought thousands of engineers, investors, and builders from 70+ countries to learn technology, burn calories, earn online, and have fun, integrating with the local Malaysian economy along the way. Indeed, in terms of quantifiable contribution to the Malaysian economy, we’ve already invested 100M+ MYR in our campus to make it startup-friendly. For perspective, that’s about 4% of the budget of Johor, the Malaysian state where Forest City is located. We employ dozens of Malaysians directly and indirectly at every level from executive to staff. We’ve backed Malaysian tech startups like Collektr, hosted events for local teams like Superteam Malaysia, and are major customers of many local businesses like barbers, laundromats, and restaurants. We’ve also revitalized the multibillion-dollar Forest City project, causing millions of MYR in real estate appreciation. And, as the video below describes, we were on the cusp of a 500M+ MYR expansion to grow our community, as well as a global merit scholarship with my friend Amjad Masad of Replit. However, that emerging multi-billion dollar success story — which should rightfully have been hailed as a huge victory for the pro-tech policies of the Malaysian government — is at risk of being derailed by a fake story spread by an anonymous account named MP4P. In short: on the day before the July 11 Johor elections, MP4P posted an Instagram post falsely accusing Network School of harboring illegal aliens. The sensational accusations caused a tizzy in Malaysia, until Malaysian authorities came to our campus on July 14 to investigate. (I should note that the officers were very polite and professional.) After checking hundreds of physical passports from 40 countries, including dual passport holders, the authorities confirmed to the press on July 15 that all travel documents were in order. During the process, we cooperated fully; in the thread below you can see a photo of the men, women, and children of Network School smiling and holding up their passports in the bright daylight. Our faces are shown and our names are known; we have nothing to hide. With that said, the process is the punishment. What MP4P did is very similar to the American crime of “swatting”, because MP4P created a hoax report of a serious threat, thereby forcing the Malaysian police to take time away from protecting the Malaysian people towards investigating a nonexistent issue. Moreover, this anonymous MP4P account has also called for Malaysia to boycott Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft…a move that would cost ordinary Malaysians thousands of jobs…even while MP4P’s own Instagram collaborators promote their Apple and Google apps! I mean, we aren’t talking about a credible accuser, but just someone screaming inconsistently at the top of their lungs on social media for traffic, an all-too-common phenomenon these days. Anyway, at this point, all further investment we were planning to make in Malaysia is on hold until we get sufficient assurance that such issues won’t recur. So are the investment plans of many of our friends, including the execs and investors at global tech firms that we brought to Forest City. Because to put it very plainly: we have invested 100M+ MYR in Malaysia, while creating jobs for dozens of Malaysians, and our faces and names are known. Our Malaysian executives and employees deserve the benefit of the doubt over anonymous internet trolls. There are two paths forward. In the first case, if Malaysia still wants continued global tech investment, if it wants to be a top 20 tech hub, if it wants us to revitalize Forest City, then we request an audience with the Prime Minister’s office to discuss the terms of a memorandum of understanding between Network School and the Malaysian government, similar to the document recently signed between the Solana Foundation and the Kazakhstan government. Specifics can of course be discussed, but we would publicly commit to abiding by all Malaysian laws (we already do) and respecting Malaysia’s sovereignty (never in question). In return, they’d get to know our friendly community, and realize that we actually chose Malaysia because we thought it was a great place to build a tech hub where engineers from the global South, investors from the West, and builders from Malaysia itself could meet new people, build cool things, and perhaps create millions of dollars in economic growth in the fullness of time. That vision of peace and trade, internationalism and entrepreneurialism, is still on the table. We aren’t asking for any money — just a meeting, to help restore confidence in Malaysia as an investable jurisdiction. Alternatively, if you don’t want our investment, or those of our colleagues at billion dollar funds and trillion dollar companies, we will of course respect your wishes, and reallocate our capital to other countries instead. Either way, we will remain friends and abide by your decision. Please let us know.

Western civilization has collapsed before. But a few scholars preserved the ideas that once made Rome great. They made a backup, and it did eventually come all the way back. It just took one thousand years.

Incredible to celebrate the 14th anniversary of @coinbase’s founding today. It’s extra special to have Clarity pass through the Senate Banking Committee on a bipartisan vote. So many good memories and so much to look forward to! Coinbase has endurance.

The US federal budget is $7 trillion. There are 535 in the Senate and Congress. They collectively allocate that money. Specifically: 7000/535 = 13 billion per official. Which means AOC is a political billionaire. She allocates far more than any market billionaire. Indeed she allocates ten billion liquid, per year. A market billionaire has one billion, illiquid, per life. So: AOC spends 10-100X what a market billionaire has. It's not even close. She's right about one thing, though. AOC didn't earn the tens of billions she spends. The state taxed that money, by force.

The final rewards text in the CLARITY Act is now public. We’ve been clear throughout this process: much of this debate was based on imagined risks, not real evidence, nor was it based on a real understanding of how crypto actually works. Nevertheless, the crypto industry showed up to engage. Through months of meetings, the @WhiteHouse, @USTreasury, @BankingGOP, @SenThomTillis and @Sen_Alsobrooks finally arrived at a compromise. In the end, the banks were able to get more restrictions on rewards, but we protected what matters – the ability for Americans to earn rewards, based on real usage of crypto platforms and networks. We also ensured the US can be at the forefront of the financial system – which in this competitive geopolitical era is paramount. That’s important for innovation, consumers and America's national security. Now that this issue is behind us, it’s time to focus on the broader bill. While this debate has been underway, lots of progress has been made on other areas like token classification, defi, and tokenization. We’re excited to review the full, final text, and for the bill to move forward. It’s time to get CLARITY done.

Coinbase is testing AI agents that show up in slack/email at work, just like any human teammate. To start we're shipping two which are modeled after legendary former Coinbase employees, @FEhrsam and @balajis. (Who brutally frame mogged who in this matchup?) Soon, it will be easy for any employee to spin up a new agent for themselves or their team. I suspect we will have more agents than human employees at some point soon.

If you’re in the Singapore/Malaysia area, we have a Replit Agent 4 hackathon tomorrow at Network School. There will be a tutorial, a little remote guest appearance by my friend @amasad, and a hackathon. Here’s the event link:

Objection founder @aronpingdsouza is building "the AI tribunal for investigating the media" with the backing of Peter Thiel and @balajis. He explains how it works: "The fundamental problem with news media today is that false information spreads six times faster than true information. And so the incentives for generating clickbait content are very pronounced, and we've known this for a very long period of time." "And so by compressing the legal process, which often takes 10 or 20 years, and costs tens of millions of dollars — as we learned in the Hulk Hogan lawsuit — down to a couple of days, we can adjudicate factual disputes much, much quicker and much cheaper. The whole process can cost as little as $2,000 and can be done in as little as 24 hours." "If the New York Times writes something inaccurate about you guys, you can file an objection. Then human investigators will investigate the story line-by-line, source-by-source. They'll call everyone quoted in the article." "And then they'll present that information to an AI jury. And the original author, of course, has the opportunity to respond and say, 'My reporting was good. It was high quality.'" "But we live in the era of data, and I think it would be wonderful if every story published by the NYT included the long-form recordings of each interview." "I've done thousands of media interviews. Journalists always record them, but they never publish them in full." "So being misquoted or [relying on] anonymous sources, these are the tools that in particular print journalists use that have [caused] a massive degradation in trust."