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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian talked meme stocks, his support for cryptocurrencies, and his new VC firm 776 in a recent interview. Here are the 10 best quotes.

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Reddit's co-founder Alexis Ohanian sat down for an interview with CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin on Thursday to discuss the meme stock saga, cryptocurrency regulation, and his new VC firm 776—which plans to raise $150 million.

Ohanian said the SEC and other regulators should avoid having a "heavy hand" when it comes to both meme stocks and cryptocurrencies, arguing adults should be allowed to make "adult decisions" with their money.

The Reddit co-founder also talked about his belief in ethereum and all of the applications being built on its blockchain admitting that "that's where a lot of my holdings are."

Here are the 10 best quotes from the interview, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
  1. "What this represents is a secular shift in the intersection of community and capital. Whether it's on platforms like Reddit or others, retail investors have more connectedness, more information, more ability to trade than ever before, and this going to be the new normal. 'Meme stocks,' you know, I think it's a charming name but at the end of the day momentum investing is nothing new…retail investors have just never been able to sort of jump on an opportunity in real-time and this is what it's like in the age of ubiquitous social media."
  2. "There are a lot of people who are doing their research. I think anyone doing any investing should absolutely be making sound financial decisions, doing their research, etc. I Just think we've crossed the rubicon, it doesn't matter one platform or another, this is how people are sharing content, they're able to open an app and execute a trade and it's only going to get easier, it's only going to get more normal…this is here to stay."
  3. "I do think there are professional investors who are paying attention to these trends and putting dollars to work as well. It'd be naïve to say that wasn't happening as well."
  4. "Ultimately, we have as a responsibility to ourselves…to do our due diligence, to be smart investors. I don't know the ins and outs of the SEC's responsibilities around this, obviously they want to protect consumers, but at the end of the day adults making adult decisions about what stocks to buy or sell is really up to them."
  5. "Decentralization can be incredibly empowering because it enables people who may not have had a way in through traditional gatekeepers to show that they are good at what they do, to create value for what they do. Whether it's making art or making investments and I think more and more decentralization…is going to push the culture to find ways to have a more entrepreneurial mindset around this."
  6. "The technology has proven itself and there's certainly no shortage of people who believe in it. I think there's a delicate balance here, we have an emerging technology that is incredibly empowering and one that I think by and large can do a lot of good, but like all technologies, it has downsides and consequences."
  7. "I would, generally speaking, just not advocate for a heavy hand for any kind of regulation on this [cryptocurrencies] because, at the end of the day, these are opportunities for us to seize. And hopefully, as a country, we can lean into the best parts of this and actually be better as a result because other countries are absolutely leaning in, in a big, big way."
  8. "We're going to invest in great companies, great founders…the big thing for me is ten years into building my previous venture firm and 15 years from founding Reddit, I see 776 as a chance to combine my product background, building software, with my investing background. We're very much a software-enabled venture firm…I really want this to be as much a startup in the way that we develop software to run venture as it is a venture capital firm."
  9. "As the Reddit guy, I tend to see a majority consumer-type companies. My biggest investment to date was in a fintech company called Alt…which is making it as easy to buy and sell collectibles like trading cards as it is to buy stocks….the best part of this job is you get to be around great founders who tell you what the future is going to be and sometimes you decide to invest and help them build it."
  10. "I think there's a lot of interesting stuff that is bubbling up, but I do think Ethereum has, at least over the next year or two, really got the most to prove, or at least the most potential to show something, because there are so many interesting applications, NFTs are just the start of what's getting built on top of the ethereum blockchain. That's where a lot of my holdings are, candidly."

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