Overstock.com’s CEO Thinks Crypto Can Replace Wall Street

Patrick Byrne stepped to the podium on the main stage at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami in January, sporting a red “Make Bitcoin Great Again” hat and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Dirty Hippie.” The founder and chief executive officer of online retailer Overstock.com Inc. disposed of Wall Street in under three minutes.

“The simplest way to fix them is to drag Wall Street behind the barn and kill it with an ax and re-create it on blockchain,” Byrne said, as a screen behind him showed a bull disappearing behind a cartoon barn, then a splash of red gore. In the next half-hour, he prophesied that blockchain, the technology that powers Bitcoin and other digital currencies, will solve state pension crises, revolutionize securities lending, eradicate poverty, and reduce terrorism. Once you enable “global ledgers, all kinds of things would happen,” he said. “People switch sides. Capital is unleashed.”