At the end, the key thing is you've got to live with yourself. That's the real test. Everything else is fleeting.

Everything I do now is about growing the pot to have more to give away.

Commodity exchanges have a lot of advantages. One, you are helping transparency. Two, they are not political. It's institutional building. It can survive any environment, in theory.

The biggest determinant in our lives is culture, where we are born, what the environment looks like. But the second biggest determinant is probably governance, good governance or a certain kind of governance makes a huge difference in our lives.

Brunch is boring, but that's part of the charm of it.

California has something which not every place in the world has: It has what I would call a sunny side, and I don't mean just physically, but the sunny side is a future. California's worth saving, to put it bluntly.

In my teens I was interested in photography. Then I decided that I should learn something about the world of commerce. And I came to America at age 17 to escape Europe. I went to NYU - nothing better than being 17 years old and coming to New York.