Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and numerous other ventures, has demonstrated a remarkable ability to utilize Twitter to connect with his audience and advance both his personal brand and his various interests on a broad scale. Building on this success, he recently made his first appearance on a rising platform – Clubhouse, a Silicon Valley startup gaining significant traction for its live, conversational format.

During the session, Musk addressed a series of generally favorable inquiries, using the opportunity to engage directly with his followers on a range of topics including space exploration, potential Martian colonies, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, and Covid-19 vaccinations.

He clarified some misconceptions surrounding his viewpoints on several subjects, and at times presented a more considered perspective than often conveyed through his meme-driven and provocative Twitter activity. For instance, in contrast to earlier discussions regarding the feasibility of inhabiting Mars, Musk emphasized that while Martian exploration is a valuable undertaking for the long-term survival of humanity, life there would present considerable challenges.

The latter portion of the conversation took an unexpected turn with the introduction of Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, who joined the discussion (reportedly at Musk’s invitation, though some coordination appeared to be involved).

Musk then shifted roles, becoming the interviewer and prompting Tenev to elaborate on the events of the previous week surrounding the Wall Street Bets situation.

Some observers characterized the Clubhouse session as a substantial public relations effort orchestrated by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz – a significant investor in both Robinhood and Clubhouse, as well as companies associated with Musk’s enterprises.

With over 5,000 participants (exceeding Clubhouse’s usual capacity), alongside numerous journalists and live streams on platforms like YouTube, the event offered a glimpse into how A16Z’s evolving media strategy – which aims to bypass traditional journalism in public discussions about technology – might function.

And judging by the events of the evening, it appears to be gaining momentum, at least for the time being.

Below is a record of the session as it unfolded:

As this is being written, Elon Musk has joined Clubhouse for his inaugural live session, immediately pushing the app’s limits with the standard room capacity being surpassed, and further amplified by Musk’s fans creating additional listening rooms on Clubhouse, Youtube, and other platforms: live-streamed here and here, for example.

I am reviving my live-blogging skills to cover the interview… and will update this post as the conversation progresses (apologies for any typographical errors in the meantime).

Musk began by discussing the prospect of traveling to Mars, acknowledging that it would likely be “difficult” for the initial settlers, but ultimately a crucial endeavor for preserving the “candle of civilization in the dark”.

When asked about his belief in extraterrestrial life, he stated that there is no definitive proof of aliens’ existence, although he considers it “quite possible” that alien technology exists, perhaps at a relatively basic level – comparing it to technology equivalent to a “7/11” or an “iPhone 6”.

He mentioned that his children are not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of moving to Mars.

Regarding online memes, he quipped: “He who controls the memes controls the universe” and explained that memes influence the prevailing cultural “zeitgeist”. He described memes as a complex form of communication, distinct from images, as they convey “10,000 words, not 1,000 words”. He added that they are often aspirational and humorous, and “I love memes, they can be very insightful.”

When asked if he intentionally appears unconventional on Twitter, he joked: “I started crazy on Twitter.”

He clarified that he doesn’t actively seek out memes himself, but relies on “meme dealers” – friends who curate and send him memes they believe he would appreciate.

He discussed his company Neuralink and also asserted that Tesla possesses one of the most advanced AI teams in the world.

Concerning AI, he emphasized the importance of “how do we stay relevant” and at least “stay ‘along for the ride’ in the good scenario” and integrating our minds with AI to leverage its capabilities.

“People are already cyborgs,” he stated, referring to the ubiquitous presence of smartphones as an external cognitive layer. He explained that the data transfer rate when typing on a phone is limited, akin to “trying to talk to a tree,” while a direct neural interface would dramatically increase this rate and processing power.

He posited that individuals could choose to remain human or embrace a more robotic existence, and that upon waking each day, they wouldn’t necessarily be the same “mind” as the previous day, drawing a parallel to the concept of a video game, similar to the “Altered Carbon” Netflix series.

He described early iterations of this concept involving tiny wires implanted in the brain.

He announced that Neuralink would be releasing new videos in the coming month, including footage of a monkey controlling devices with its mind. He did not address the ethical implications of this (one of many instances where Musk was not challenged on his statements). He believes the benefits of early implants will significantly outweigh the risks.

The moderators then inquired about the essential education for 5-year-olds.

Musk discussed the engaging nature of video games for children, but stressed the importance of understanding “the why” behind things.

“We are programmed to forget the low ‘probability of things’ if they aren’t relevant,” he said. For example, disassembling and reassembling an engine provides practical understanding, unlike simply taking a “course on wrenches”.

When asked why there aren’t more individuals like him, he offered a blunt response: “If you need encouraging words, don’t do a startup.”

He also shared his perspective on cryptocurrencies.

He recounted receiving a slice of cake as payment in Bitcoin in 2013, stating, “I should have bought it 8 years ago.” He continued, “At this point Bitcoin is a good thing. I am a supporter. I am late to the party, but I am a supporter.”

He acknowledged Bitcoin’s increasing acceptance within the financial world, but stated he had “no strong opinion on other currencies.” He explained that Dogecoin was initially created as a joke to satirize cryptocurrencies, but “fate loves irony.”

He also suggested that chaos is often the most likely outcome, and that the most ironic scenario would be Dogecoin becoming the currency of the future.

He noted that his Twitter account was temporarily locked after making a joke about Bitcoin.

The conversation then turned to his electric car company, Tesla, with Musk stating the goal of producing 20 million cars and trucks annually. This is an ambitious – and largely unchallenged – statement, considering the company produced less than 500,000 cars and even fewer trucks in 2020. It represents a significant undertaking.

He also shared his thoughts on self-driving technology, predicting that autonomous vehicles could eventually become so reliable that individuals would rely on them for a substantial portion of their weekly driving time – roughly a third, or 60 hours instead of 12. (Again, these are optimistic projections, as fully autonomous cars are not yet in widespread use.)

He also discussed the challenges of remote work during the pandemic, stating that “Fear is not the mind-killer, context switching the mind-killer,” referring to the difficulty of shifting between different subjects on video calls.

When asked if he would start another company to address Covid-19, he joked that he was already occupied with Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and other ventures.

He spoke about the significant advancements in vaccine technology, particularly mRNA technology, which enabled the rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines. He expressed optimism about the vaccine’s effectiveness.

While acknowledging the current vaccine supply shortages, he predicted a future surplus, stating, “There is going to be an avalanche of vaccine,” and “I guarantee you ‘it’ will be thrown away this year.”

He hinted at the possibility of utilizing his existing companies to contribute to vaccine production, claiming, “The Tesla machine can make a bazillion doses super fast.” (This claim was not challenged or further explored.)

He unequivocally stated his support for vaccination: “I am not an anti-vaxxer, I am a pro-vaxxer.”

The discussion then shifted to his early experiences in the technology industry. He recalled that in the early days of Silicon Valley, he questioned himself: “Do I watch the internet being built in front of me or do I get involved?”

He admitted to being “too shy” to speak to anyone in the Netscape lobby.

He described coding the first online maps and directions by hand, utilizing the server during off-peak hours.

Marc Andreessen, also participating in the Clubhouse session, jokingly offered to provide Musk with a job the next time he visited one of his companies’ lobbies.

Musk praised ‘The Last King’ and Cobra Kai as his current streaming favorites. He found some of the plotlines in ‘The Expanse’ to be overly fantastical. He was recommended Devs, Mythic Quest, and Ravens Banquet by the moderators. He described Tenet as “pretty good,” but acknowledged that it wouldn’t “make complete sense” if analyzed too deeply.

He demonstrated an impressive knowledge of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

The conversation then took another turn as “Vlad The Stock Impaler” – Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood – was brought into the Clubhouse room to discuss the GameStop phenomenon.

“Vlad” began with a somewhat hesitant attempt to explain the events of the previous week, but was subsequently questioned more thoroughly by Musk.

Musk then assumed the role of interviewer, and a more detailed transcription was undertaken due to the significance of Tenev’s responses.

“All right, tell us what really happened. Give us the inside scoop,” Musk said.

“This has been a very surreal weekend and week for me,” replied Vlad.

Vlad explained that Robinhood Financial is the customer-facing app that processes trades, while Robinhood Securities is the clearing broker-dealer that settles those trades. He also mentioned Robinhood Crypto, their cryptocurrency business. He continued, “So, basically Wednesday of last week, we just had unprecedented volume, unprecedented load on the system. A lot of these, so-called meme stocks were going viral on social media, and people were joining Robinhood and there was a lot of net buy activity on them.”

He noted that Robinhood reached the top spot on the iOS App Store and was close to the top on Google Play.

“Thursday morning I’m sleeping. At 3:30am Pacific, our operations team receives a file from the NSCC, which is the National Securities Clearing Corporation. So, basically as a broker as a clearing broker. We have to put up money to the NSCC based on some factors including things like the volatility of the trading activity into certain securities. And this is is the equities business so it’s based on, stock trading and not options trading or anything else.”

“They give us a file with the deposit and the request was around $3 billion, which is, you know, about an order of magnitude more than what it typically is.”

Musk: “This is not an unprecedented increase in demand for capital. What formula that they use to calculate that?”

Vlad: “Just to give context, Robinhood up until that point has raised around $2 billion in total venture capital. So, it’s a big number, like $3 billion is a large number. The details are, we don’t have the full details, it’s a little bit of an opaque formula, but there’s a component called the VAR of it, which is value at risk. And that’s based on kind of some fairly quantitative things although it’s not fully transparent. So, there are ways to reverse engineer it, but it’s not publicly shared.”

“And then there’s a special component, which is discretionary. So that kind of acts as a multiplier.”

Musk: “Discretionary meaning like it’s just their opinion?”

Vlad: “There’s definitely more than just their opinion.”

Musk: “Everyone wants to know, did something shady go down here? It seems weird that you get a sudden $3 billion demand, you know, at 3.30am in the morning. Just suddenly out of nowhere.”

Vlad: “I wouldn’t impute shadiness to it or anything like that and actually the NSCC was reasonable. They worked with us to actually lower it. So, it wasn’t unprecedented activity. I don’t have the full context about what was going on in the NSCC make these calculations.”

Musk: “Is anyone holding you hostage right now?”

Vlad: “Thanks for asking. But anyways, so this was obviously nerve-racking, and I actually was asleep at this point. Our Chief Operating Officer basically said, let’s call up the higher-ups at the NSCC and figure out what’s going on. Maybe there’s some way we can work with them. And basically, there was another call. And they lowered it to something like $1.4 billion…. But still a high number.”

Vlad said the team then proposed managing the risk by limiting trading in the volatile stocks. At about an hour before the market opened, the NSCC reduced the deposit requirement to $700 million, which Robinhood promptly paid. This explained why trading was restricted to closing positions.

Vlad emphasized that restricting buying was a difficult decision, but necessary to comply with regulatory capital requirements. He stated that the team worked to ensure customers could still sell existing positions, as restricting selling would be even more detrimental. He noted that other brokers faced similar restrictions.

Musk: “So it sounds like this organization calls you up and they basically have a gun to your head. Either you put up this money or else. Basically, what people are wondering is did you sell your clients down the river? Or did you have no choice? And if you had no choice that’s understandable. But then, we’ve got to find out why you have no choice. And who are the people that are saying you have no choice?”

Vlad: “I think that’s fair. We have to comply with these requirements, financial institutions have requirements. The formula behind these requirements… it would obviously be ideal if there was a little bit more transparency so we could plan better around that, but to be fair, we were able to open and serve our customers and 24 hours later, our team raised over a billion dollars in capital so that when we do open tomorrow morning we’ll be able to relax the stringent position limits that we put on these securities on Friday.”

Musk: “Will there be any limits?”

Vlad: “Well I think there’s always going to be some theoretical limit, we don’t have infinite capital, right? And on Friday, there were limits. So, there’s always going to have to be some limit, I think the question is, will the limits be high enough to the point where they won’t impact 99.9-plus percent of customers. So if someone were to deposit $100 billion and decide to trade in one stock that wouldn’t be possible.”

Musk: “If you had no choice then you had no choice. It’s a ‘gun to the head situation’. That’s understandable.”

Vlad: “Yeah, these are unprecedented times, and to be fair to those guys they’ve been reasonable. So, I think the one thing that is maybe not clear to people is Robinhood is a participant in the financial system. So we have to work with all of these counter-parties, so we do get a lot of questions about ‘why do you work with market makers?’, why you work with clearinghouses. Vertically integrating… I mean it’s hard enough to build an introducing… clearing broker-dealer… not too many people have done that. But the financial system that allows customers to trade shares is sort of a complex web of multiple parties… Everyone says it could be better. It could be improved. It’s just the necessity of trading equities in the US, that you have to do all these things.”

Musk: “To what degree are you beholden to Citadel?”

Vlad: “There was a rumor that Citadel or other market makers kind of pressured us into doing this and that’s just false. Market makers execute our trades, they execute trades of every broker-dealer. This was a clearinghouse decision, and it was just based on the capital requirements. So, from our perspective, Citadel and other market makers weren’t involved in that.”

Musk: “But wouldn’t they have a strong say on who got put in charge of that organization, since it’s an industry consortium, not a government regulatory agency?”

Vlad: “I don’t have any reason to believe that. I think that’s just like, you know, then you’re getting into kind of the conspiracy theories a little bit. So, I just have no reason to believe that that’s the case, you know.”

Musk: “Okay. Well, I guess we’ll see what happens with directions. Hopefully, that was insightful or at least a little bit entertaining. “Are you not entertaining?” he said. [Apparently a reference to the movie ‘Gladiator’]

The moderators thanked Musk and Vlad for participating in the Clubhouse session.

An interesting note: Musk stated he was unaware of Clubhouse’s existence until a week prior.

The moderators concluded the session by playing “Starman” by David Bowie…