Good afternoon. Andrew here. At the 2025 DealBook Summit, I sat down with two of the most important C.E.O.s in today’s shifting investment landscape: Larry Fink of BlackRock and Brian Armstrong of Coinbase. I also had a fascinating conversation with one of the top leaders in the auto industry, Mary Barra, the C.E.O. of G.M. Below, we have some highlights from those two conversations. Over the coming days, we’ll be sending you emails with excerpts and takeaways from all of the interviews and task force panels at this year’s DealBook Summit. You can also watch all of them on YouTube or listen to them as podcasts. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
What Brian Armstrong and Larry Fink said at the DealBook SummitBrian Armstrong co-founded Coinbase in 2012, and today it is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. Larry Fink co-founded BlackRock in 1988, and today it’s the world’s largest asset manager, overseeing $13.5 trillion. During an interview at the DealBook Summit, the chief executives discussed what’s next for crypto and the broader outlook for investors in a rapidly shifting market. The below highlight from the conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Andrew: You historically over the years did not agree with each other, at all, about this world of crypto. You [Brian] obviously were a proponent from the beginning. Larry, you were, though, on the other end of it. You famously in 2017 called crypto an index for money laundering. Larry Fink: And thieves. Andrew: And thieves. Money laundering and thieves. You now have the biggest Bitcoin E.T.F. So what happened here? WATCH: Brian Armstrong and Larry Fink Are Not Worried About Another Crypto Winter LISTEN: The Leaders of Coinbase and BlackRock Discuss Their Optimistic Vision for the Future of Crypto Fink: You’ve got to evolve and change. During Covid, when we had a little more time on our hands, I took it upon myself to visit and talk to a lot of people who are advocates of it. I wanted to understand, What am I missing? So around 2021, 2022, I began to evolve those views. And those statements were not about crypto; those statements were specifically about Bitcoin. But I see a big, large use case for Bitcoin, and I still do today. I have very strong views, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wrong. But by having strong views, you have to test yourself and ask yourself. And you know, in my role I see thousands of clients a year, and we have these conversations. And this is a very glaring public example of a big shift in my opinion. Andrew: How much do you think folks in the legacy industry either didn’t get it, want to promote it or want to be part of it because they were scared? Brian Armstrong: This is the classic innovator’s dilemma, right? Any time you have a new technology, everybody who’s an incumbent has to decide, Do we want to embrace it or do we want to fight against it? And in some of these larger organizations, it’s kind of funny actually because there’ll be a part of the organization, like their lobbying team in D.C. — it’s actually fighting against it. But the innovation arm of the company is actually embracing it. And for many of the largest banks now, we’re actually powering pilots with them doing stablecoins and custody and trading and these kinds of things. I think it’s like any company; you have to embrace change and be on the frontier. It’s not unique to crypto. Andrew: Is there any chance in your mind at all that Warren Buffett is right? He and Charlie Munger used to call it rat poison and say: “Eventually it’ll go to zero. It just might take a while.” Fink: But they’re talking specifically about Bitcoin. Sorkin: They’re talking about Bitcoin. But you offer a Bitcoin E.T.F., so you can speak to this. Armstrong: I don’t think that that’s going to happen at this point. There’s something that happens from a psychology point of view as we all age, and we grew up in a certain environment and we’re shaped by the experiences we had. For Charlie and Warren, they grew up in an environment of American pre-eminence, and the dollar was everything, and how dare you question it. And we’re in a world now where democracies are trying to figure out how to curb deficit spending, and Bitcoin is kind of this new digital gold. People are going to it in times of uncertainty. Andrew: How much of it is a function of money being spent? So you were behind the political movement that really pushed a lot of this. You spent about $50 million in corporate donations in the 2024 cycle. The crypto industry spent about $130 million. Armstrong: Our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world, and I prefer to do that just with our products and integrating crypto into the traditional financial system. But it turns out, over time, that a big way we can accomplish our mission is actually holding bad government accountable, right? So if there’s 52 million Americans who have used crypto, and they want to see clear rules on the books to protect consumers, I think in the last administration we saw that our representatives in government were not actually fulfilling those values that the American people had. Fink: What is the purpose of Bitcoin? Then we get into stablecoin. The $13.5 trillion that BlackRock managed on behalf of our clients, it’s basically managing hope. That’s all it is. Why would anybody invest in a 30-year outcome unless you’re hopeful in 30 years you’re going to have the compounding effect? Bitcoin is an asset of fear. And when you’re less fearful, like when we had a trade agreement with China, you saw a shift downward. So you own Bitcoin because you’re frightened of your physical security. You own it because you’re frightened of your financial security.
What Mary Barra said at the DealBook SummitMary Barra, the C.E.O. of General Motors, has been navigating the Trump administration’s tariffs and a slowdown in U.S. electric vehicle sales. The company also recently refocused its autonomous-driving initiative, Cruise, from self-driving taxis to fully autonomous vehicles for private owners. At the DealBook Summit, Barra discussed that decision and the company’s plans with electric vehicles. The below highlight from the conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Andrew: I wanted to ask you about autonomy because Cruise was an early investment, and I know a lot of the technology from Cruise is going to end up in a lot of your vehicles, but it’s not something you were pursuing in the same way as before. And I want to understand what you think the lessons of Cruise were for you, because I think you had very big ambitions in that space. Barra: I think any transformative technology, and as we talk about artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, is one of the ultimate applications that I still strongly believe in. Our investment in Cruise that we made in 2016 — if you remember, at that time we thought by 2019 we would have autonomy. Frankly, we still don’t have it yet where you can drive anywhere under any condition. We said it was one of the most challenging technologies to develop of this generation. But I think there’s been tremendous progress and technology has changed greatly during that time. WATCH: Why G.M.’s Chief Executive Remains Bullish on E.V.s LISTEN: Mary Barra Says Her Company Will Continue Investing in Fuel Efficiency There’s tremendous learnings and assets and people that we still have from it, so I look at that investment as foundational to where we are now, and I think we’ve learned a lot. And I’m very excited; we just announced, about a month or six weeks ago, that we plan to have highway L4 capability starting with the Escalade IQ in 2028. With the researchers from G.M., combined with Cruise, combined with the simulation capability they developed and we’re continuing to use, is phenomenal. So as we look at that and go into the future, now with Sterling Anderson who joined from Aurora, I think we’re well positioned. But we did, to your point, make the decision to focus on personal autonomous vehicles because that’s our business today. As this evolved, we looked at, Do we really want to be in that business where we’re competing with buses and cabs, etc.? And we said, No, our core business is personal vehicles. Andrew: Do you think there will be a personal-vehicle business, and there will be an autonomy-fleet business? And it’s going to be separate? Barra: I do think they can be separate. We’re focused on personal autonomy. In this area, everyone’s talking to everyone. Or at least I would say that G.M. is talking to a lot of these different companies. What we realize is there are significant differences between personal autonomy and some of the transitions and what you need to do, than there are from a robotaxi fleet. And that’s why we decided to focus on personal. Andrew: The C.E.O. of Ford said it is very hard to find skilled labor in America today. Where do you think we really are on that? And is skilled labor required? Do we have enough of it? And if we don’t, are robots ultimately going to do it? Barra: Well, my dad was a die maker, so he was what would be considered a blue-collar worker and he was one of people I look up to very much in this world. I wish we didn’t have a negative view of people, whether they’re plumbers, electricians, die makers, because I think that craft, because it is a craft — the capability is incredible. So I agree with Jim on those issues. I think that we do need to celebrate people who choose those fields. They’re very important. And I think as you look in an A.I. world, they’re going to be really good jobs. From a G.M. perspective, in the last five years, we’ve invested over $250 million in apprentice programs alone. So training electricians and millwrights and pipe fitters that work in our facilities. We also work with the military. As people come out of serving the country, putting them into programs so they can be dealer technicians, because there is a shortage of them right now. I think, as a country, we need to have much more respect for the people who choose those career paths because they’re important to this country and they’re hard-working.
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