Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
alex gladstein chief strategy officer at
the human rights foundation and the oslo
freedom forum
in recent times alex has focused on how
cryptocurrency and especially bitcoin
can be a tool for empowering democracy
and civil liberties in the world most
crucially parts of the world that are
living under authoritarian regimes
as a side note let me say that i have
been learning a lot about the ways in
which money can be used to amass power
and in the same way the decentralization
of money can be used to resist the
corrupting nature of this power
alex and i do not agree on everything
but we strive for the same betterment of
humanity he is sensitive to the
suffering in the world and is dedicating
his life to finding solutions that
lessen that suffering whether bitcoin is
one such solution i don't know
but i think it has a chance and that
means it is worth exploring deeply
i'm staying in this path of learning
patiently and with as little ego as
possible i hope you come along with me
on this journey as well
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description
we recorded this conversation a while
ago and i thought i lost the audio and
was
really disappointed with myself for
messing this thing up but luckily last
week i found it
and so
rescued from out of the abyss of
non-existence
here's my conversation with alex
glastine
what are some universal human rights
that you believe all people should have
so free speech
freedom of assembly
freedom of belief
freedom to participate in your
government the freedom to have privacy
the freedom to own things property
rights
these are all basic fundamental negative
rights what we call them
these are the basic fundamental human
freedoms
what does negative rights mean
negative rights are
liberties and positive rights are
entitlements
so after world war ii when the un came
together it was largely a compromise
between the communist soviet union and
the you know free united states right so
the u.s had
uh on its side of the u.n declaration of
human rights
a bunch of liberties essentially things
like free speech freedom of association
freedom of assembly the soviets wanted
entitlements uh like the right to work
the right to have housing the right to
water the right to a vacation
so you actually read the un declaration
for human rights it's a negotiation
between the soviets and the americans
later
there was another document in the 70s
released called the international
covenant on civil and political rights
and this is what ahref uses as its sort
of like lodestar
it's founding document and this is like
essentially an international agreement
on the negative rights those are the
things we choose to focus on because
essentially authoritarian regimes can
commit fraud and claim they're giving
the positive rights the entitlements
without having any of the negative
liberties and they can do that because
they don't have any like free speech or
press freedom um when you when you take
people's basic fundamental freedoms away
it's quite easy to make like a potemkin
village and pretend that there's the
entitlements and that we have good uh
health care and you know
it's the same sort of thing that
authoritarians have done for decades uh
cuba and venezuela and and the soviet
union do you think it's possible for
authoritarian regimes to manipulate to
kind of lie about the negative rights as
well by saying that the people have free
speech
uh the people have the freedom to for
assembly and all those kinds of things
can't you still manipulate
the idea that the citizenry still has
those rights
the opposition leader of malaysia anwar
ibrahim he once told me
that the funny joke that you know in my
country we have freedom of speech we
don't have freedom after speech so yeah
they can absolutely manipulate whatever
they want but i've done research into
socioeconomic data and i guess what i'm
telling you is that authoritarian
regimes which make up
53 of the world's population across 95
countries um about 4.3 billion people
those who live under those regimes are
subject to
massive fraud when it comes to things
like literacy rates
life expectancy um any sort of
socio-economic data economic growth
they can do this because there's no free
press
um so for us at the human rights
foundation and for people like me
we believe that the negative rights the
liberties the things that are in for
example uh the bill of rights in the u.s
constitution these things are the table
and then we can build on top of that we
can build the rest of our societies on
top of that the freest countries in the
world have both the negative liberties
and the entitlements like norway for
example
but there's a big difference between
norway and north korea in north korea
they only claim to have the entitlements
and they definitely don't have the
liberties
do you think there's one right that's
more important than others you kind of
suggested the freedom of the press
maybe freedom of speech
that if you take that away all the other
ones kind of collapse along with like
from a ripple effect is there something
fundamental that you
like to focus your attention on to
defend to protect to make sure it's
there yeah i think i think free speech
is probably the most fundamental it's
probably why the founders chose to make
it into the first amendment
um
a lot of things are downstream from
there
property rights are also very very
important
obviously we've seen the the toll of
violent redistributionism you know in
over the last hundred years
uh whether it was uh lenin or stalin or
mao
or other regimes and everywhere from
ethiopia to
colonial colonialists everywhere to
north korea it's not a pretty legacy
is free speech clear to you as a concept
there's been quite a few debates
especially in the digital age
what it means to violate freedom of
speech there's
been a lot of new like novel mechanisms
for people to communicate with each
other like especially on social networks
and it seems that uh unclear
because a lot of times those are managed
by private companies
it's unclear how much protection do the
citizens have to have
when they're communicating a lot of
people are being censored on these
social platforms some people even
presidents get removed from those social
platforms
have you thought about the freedom of
speech in the united states but in in
the world
as it
as it's implemented in the 21st century
given the internet and all those kinds
of things
there is a soviet dissident
named natan sharonsky who
survived the regime
and he wrote a book
in which his thesis was essentially the
way that you can define a free society
is through something called the town
square test can you go to a public space
where you live and criticize your ruler
loudly
without fear of retribution if you can
do that you have you have free speech i
think that's a pretty good litmus test
most people in this world cannot do that
if you live in havana if you live in
moscow if you live in beijing you cannot
do that and that's not a free society
in austin texas in boston massachusetts
in london
in santiago chile and tokyo japan in
many democracies you can do that and i
think that that's a really helpful basic
sort of litmus test
does the content of the criticism matter
can it be complete
lies
meaning
conspiracy theories that involve
claiming that the leader is let's say
a lizard slash pedophile
slash
you know
i'm not saying that those are lies look
into it but uh they're very unlikely
phenomena so like does that matter i i
think it ends poorly when
the state tries to restrict speech
um i think that's kind of how i would
define censorship
i think censorship and de-platforming
are two different things
private companies
you know they get to make up their own
rules about what's allowed on their
platforms and i think that's very
different from a government with guns
and an army
restricting the speech of its citizens
with threats of violence these things
are different for me
that violence is a fundamental
difference
i don't know i i um i've gotten a chance
to have dinner with alex jones
and uh i've talked to him a few times
offline
and it does i understand why people are
so off-put by him
but it does bother me that he's
universally removed from every platform
it feels like there's many more
evil people
bad people
compared to alex jones who still
are given a voice on these platforms
and so i'm uncomfortable
with the universality of the application
of the censorship
by uh
by these platforms but on the flip side
you're right there's not a violence
there's not tanks
there's not guns behind that censorship
yeah it's a bit of a generalization but
alex jones would be in prison or dead if
he were in north korea or in cuba or in
russia or in china the the authorities
would not tolerate him to do what he did
and here he can kind of do what he wants
he's encountering some resistance in the
marketplace of ideas
large organizations corporations
and a lot of public sentiment
uh in different parts of our country
don't like him and they're doing their
best to drown out his voice but that's
very different from a violent threat of
censorship from the state and that's
what we study that's what i study are
these you know what is the state doing
that's kind of paramount for for me yeah
and that's true because in the
marketplace of ideas there could be a
company that springs up that gives alex
jones a platform and
the united states is not going to
prevent those companies from functioning
of course there's uh from a
technological tech from a technology
perspective
there is uh aws removing parlor from the
platform and gets a little weird
you know as you get closer and closer to
the computer infrastructure because then
you get closer and closer to the state
actually
the
the more you get to the infrastructure
that's usually managed by the state the
closer it gets to the control of the
state
i would argue aws is pretty damn close
to infrastructure that's kind of
controlled by the state if you
especially look at other nations
uh china russia
there's uh i don't know who runs the
compute infrastructure for russia and
china but i bet the state has complete
oversight over that
and so
that level of compute infrastructure
having control
about which social networks can and
cannot operate is very uncomfortable to
me but you're right i think
it's good to focus on the obvious
violations of these principles as
opposed to the the gray areas of course
the gray areas are fascinating
you mentioned hrf
human rights foundation what is it uh
what is its mission
yeah so i've been working for href
since 2007 um
we are a charity a non-profit a 501c3
based in new york and our mission is to
promote and protect individual rights
and freedoms in authoritarian societies
around the world so again we we define
about 95 countries as authoritarian
meaning it's either a one-party state or
opposition politicians are outlawed or
persecuted there's no real free speech
there's no press freedom there's no
independent judiciary there really
aren't checks and balances and even
trying to create like a human rights
organization or like an environmental
group would be illegal um and the
majority of the world's population lives
in that environment that's very
important you said 53.63
4.3 billion people and i saw you
outlined a lot of different um
sources of suffering in the world
and then you sort of put
people living under authoritarian
governments as like more than all of
them
i i forget i forget all the examples you
provided but
sure i mean it's uh yeah maybe a
convention if you remember the number of
people who are refugees the number of
people who suffer from natural disasters
the number of people who live under
abject poverty the number of people who
don't have access to clean drinking
water all of these are dwarfed by the
number of people who live under
authoritarianism
and yet it's not something that we talk
about a lot
because people are mercantilist and the
powers that be are happy to sacrifice
freedoms and privacy for money we live
in a profit-seeking world
to get evidence of this take a look at
the list of sponsors of the upcoming
olympics in in china where the ccp is
currently committing genocide against
the weaker population or look at the
number of people and the famous
investors who went to saudi arabia a
couple months ago for the davos in the
desert i mean ray dalio was there all
kinds of people were there
and or at least they were invited and
they said they were going to go
and this is a government that
at the time was torturing a female
activist who just wanted to drive a car
this is a government that had murdered
jamal khashoggi uh
in a brutal fashion uh just a couple
years earlier
so i mean at the end of the day when
when it comes down to brass tacks i mean
you know the powers that be the even the
free countries are led by people um who
are very very happy to sacrifice all
these pretty words about human rights
when it when it comes down to profits
unfortunately so do you think capitalism
that's maybe one of the flaws of
capitalism as it turns a blind eye to
injustices against human nature
against the human rights
like it turns a blind eye to
authoritarian governments
look i think that at the end of the day
like
free trade
is actually really good um and you can
just look at france and germany as an
example of of how like a capitalist
structure would develop if you have two
capitalist actors they're very unlikely
to fight each other there's very
unlikely to be violence right these are
two countries which
basically murdered some large percentage
of each other's male population three
times in a hundred years in three
different wars right and now today war
is like unthinkable
and a lot of that is because of
increased collaboration increased trade
so when you have two capitalist actors
they act
in a very productive way with each other
um but as soon as you introduce an
authoritarian actor you know all bets
are off so i think what you have is a
conflict between capitalist actors and
authoritarian actors
and at the end of the day people
need to
yes have more than just capitalist
intentions
in in the geopolitical
level i'm talking about they need to
actually take a stand for principles
otherwise you have athletes and
businesses and governments that are all
too happy to to do business with the
chinese communist party for example
right now i think that there is a little
more than just kind of the pure um
the pure profit yes
you mentioned what are the signs
that uh the state is an authoritarian
state
how do you know if you're living in the
authoritarian state or when you study
another nation or analyze the behavior
of another nation how do you know that's
an authentic authoritarian state
is it as simple as them
having a dictator is it as simple as
them as declaring that they don't have a
democracy or is there something more
subtle there's a couple good litmus
tests
one is actually can you have a gay pride
parade
that's a good serious it actually lines
up perfectly it doesn't matter what
religion the dictatorship is yeah they
don't like minor they don't like
minorities and they love to scapegoat
whether it's gays or religious
minorities etc so it lines up pretty
well that's really if you cannot have a
gay pride parade in your country because
you're fearful that you're going to get
the crap kicked out of you probably live
in an authoritarian regime um
i'm sure that it's not just about some
kind of homophobia why is that that's
really interesting because that's right
i'm going through so the fascism
scapegoats minorities there's an other
you create another group and then you
yeah i mean uganda is a great example of
this but so is saudi arabia so is china
um i mean
so is cuba i mean these are all regimes
which demonize
the you know lgbt communities
it's interesting because maybe you can
correct me but from my very distant
outsider perspective
uh the
sort of the way that uh certain
authoritarian governments speak about uh
gay people
is it's almost like
what is it um
we don't have gay people in our country
kind of idea as opposed to scapegoating
scapegoating which is like
well denial is the most powerful form of
demonization i mean this is what the
iranian dictatorship does
a few years ago when ahmadinejad who was
who was then sort of the de facto later
he came to columbia university and he
tried to give a speech which you can
look up and he tried to claim that there
were no gays in iran and that's the most
powerful form of demonization is trying
to just wipe out your utter existence
there's other good litmus tests too um
you know for example you you can think
about comedy um can you make money
making fun of your government on
television if you cannot you live in a
dictatorship most likely i mean it's
shocking to people that i work with
who live in dictatorships when i tell
them that not only are comedians
uh able to safely make fun of our
government but they get paid very well
to do so that's a hallmark of a free
society so that's another good litmus
test
hear that tim dillon you should go to
north korea check it out yeah and look
there are tons of flaws with democracies
these are really good tests by the way
the united states is a deeply flawed
country in many ways our prison system
is a disaster um there's you know a
horrible war on drugs we committed a
grievous uh
crime in my opinion by invading iraq
like we did a lot of
problematic things but our core
architecture is still an open society um
the people who criticize the us the most
usually live within it
and
if they were to move to a different
country and try to use that criticism
against their new rulers they wouldn't
fare so well so whether it's chomsky
or whomever if they were to go to cuba
and live in cuba and try to criticize
cuba like they do america it wouldn't
last very long
so i think what's important to
distinguish between
open societies and closed ones or like
like free societies and authoritarian
regimes it doesn't mean that your
government's going to be good all the
time
what it means is that the citizens have
a way to push for reform have a way to
hold the rulers accountable so even if
you don't like what the u.s government
does whether it was under biden or trump
or obama or bush
we can rotate them through voting and we
have an independent supreme court
that rotates over time and we have
people that we can elect directly to
serve our interests and then there's
like a free press and there's lobbyists
and all kinds of people that jostle for
power so there's a separation of powers
and i like to think about a free society
really as like at the bottom
of the foundation of the pyramid really
would be free speech
and then you would have civil society
like for example um human rights
organizations environmental groups stamp
collectors athletes any groups that come
together you know beyond the
government's sort of strict instruction
and then on top of that in the third
level you have separation of powers
again what i'm describing
so authoritarian regimes don't really
have any of these layers to them right
and then at the top
then you put elections but the elections
are meaningless if you don't have the
foundation below every dictator gets
elected kim jong-un gets elected he's
the only person on the ballot
every dictator from hitler to chavez
they all got elected elections on their
own mean literally nothing you have to
have these other layers beneath to
actually be an open and free society i
think it's very important for people to
understand
although hitler in an interesting way at
a certain point just said i'm going to
be a ruler forever which is interesting
the there's an important switch that
happens when you as opposed to having a
facade of elections you even you just
put that aside and saying basically like
we're not even doing this yeah there's
like a ladder that you climb the
election and you pull the ladder up and
then no one else can climb up this sadly
it happened in egypt and it was quite
predictable after mubarak was ousted
after the arab spring you know morsi
came in and it looked like you know the
muslim brotherhood was not really going
to be very democratic um but it didn't
really matter because then the military
came back and now we have cece who's
even worse than mubarak so
a lot of times in these regimes
unfortunately it's very difficult for
people to build that democratic society
afterwards um
some people have told me that when you
live in a totalitarian or an
authoritarian regime it's kind of like a
political desert what grows in the
desert scorpions and cacti right so
basically people with very extreme views
because you as an authoritarian ruler
your best method for control is to get
rid of the moderates you have to crush
the moderates that's very important you
want to have the only opposition to you
be extremists that way when you go and
have negotiations with the united states
you can kind of hold up the terrorists
or whomever the extremists and say it's
either us or them right and then the
realists who run the us government are
going to choose you and that's why one
of the reasons why the u.s government
has supported so many dictators around
the world over the last few decades
do you think
authoritarian systems emerge naturally
like that's the natural state of things
if you take
if you incorporate what human nature is
will there go is there always going to
be
corrupt people that rise to the top and
we almost have to um
construct systems that protect us
against ourselves
kind of thing
another way to ask that um
is
what kind of systems protect
us from our own human nature
we started with authoritarianism or
autocracy right ruled by one or or a
small group
oligarchy and all humans lived under
this structure for you know the the
virtual you know bulk of all human
existence only until pretty recently did
we start having actual democracy uh the
idea that we should be ruled by rules
not by rulers very powerful
invented in many places across the world
western africa had this idea and so did
the ancient greeks
and they started to implement it
although as most know we didn't have
full democracy for a long long time
because it was only property owners or
only men only per people of a certain
race
but this idea that that we can like
rotate our rulers and that we could be
ruled by rules is extremely powerful and
it really like for me
the ideas behind this um i think
unlocked a lot of the industrial
revolution these small personal freedoms
that were allowed in some countries but
not others and they unlocked a lot of
the scientific innovation over the last
few hundred years
um and to me there's like a really
straight line between like scientific
inquiry free speech freedoms and then
more prosperity and more effectiveness
as a civilization so i i think that
democracy you know ruled by the people
is definitely an upgrade from autocracy
or oligarchy you know which would be
rule by by one or a rule by a small
group
and i think that the the democratic
revolution
has been an incredible thing for our
world
and it's it's you know you could do half
class full half class empty the half
class full is that almost half the world
lives under democracy like that that's
an incredible achievement
but just under half
yeah just under half so
uh but that's billions of people is
billions of people and if you look at
the progress of things it's getting
better and better and better i mean if
you know yeah we're a little bit of a um
stalemate here uh democracy's really
blossomed uh between world war ii and
the year 2000 especially in the 80s and
90s you had an incredible
wave of fault you know where many many
authoritarian regimes fell and were
replaced by democracies i think around
20 2015 the
the acceleration kind of
came to a standstill a little bit um
there's some good news in some countries
and there's bad news in others um like
in the last 10 years you've had for
example the philippines has gone
backwards um thailand has come backwards
bangladesh has gone backwards turkey has
gone backwards that's that's like a half
billion people right there so you've had
some positives
um
like you know there was positive
movement forward in armenia malaysia
some other countries um but we're kind
of at a stalemate right now and
what most people fear them
about where we are right now
who i respect
is what does the digital transformation
of the world do to this like progress of
democracy uh or of open societies and
and that's what concerns me the most oh
interesting so i've and we'll talk about
well one of the most fascinating
technologies which is bitcoin how it can
help but
i have a sense that technology like most
technological innovations will give
power to the individuals
we'll give
will
fight fight authoritarian governments
supposed to give more power to
authoritarian governments but your sense
is there's ways to give
for technology to be utilized as a tool
for the abuse of the citizenry i've seen
both in my work at href i started by
helping to put together backpacks with
foreign information that we sent to the
cuban underground library movement so in
cuba you know to own a book at the time
you had to have the government's
permission there's very little internet
penetration okay so we would send in
movies you know v for vendetta dubbed
into spanish and people would sit inside
their homes yeah and they'd watch it and
they would answer questions with each
other it was very powerful and then
after that i worked with people inside
north korea we would send in flash
drives we have this program called flash
drives for freedom we've sent over a
hundred thousand flash drives
in our work into north korea a country
of about 25 million people that's a lot
it's a big big difference that's you
know many many millions of hours of
films books movies etc so i've seen the
power that technology can have where you
know in the 60s and 70s
you know to get to break an information
blockade you had to like send in crates
of books into a communist country so now
all of a sudden you can send the entire
contents of what was once the library of
alexandria on something the size of your
thumbnail like that's remarkable so
obviously i've seen the positives of
technology we'll certainly get into
bitcoin but i'm you know very concerned
about essentially big data analysis like
or what people call ai or general you
know specific specific kinds of ai like
very concerning i think these are very
authoritarian i mean it's very hard to
make a case that ai
is going to be good for human rights
very difficult in my opinion
it may be good for health it may be good
for
our efforts to protect the planet it may
be good for a lot of scientific things
i find it very hard to believe it'll be
good for civil liberties oh that's fun
this is fun because i disagree
uh give me your examples
i'm serious what what ai applications
will improve civilization
i thought you meant
examples of stuff that's already out
there because i can give you examples
that for for example the kind of things
that i would like to work on but also
the kind of things i'm hoping to see
which is
ai could be used by
centralized powers by governments by big
organizations like facebook and twitter
and so on
to collect data about people right right
but i believe there's a huge hunger
among people
to have control over their own data
so instead you can have
ai that's distributed where people have
complete ownership of their little ai
systems
so like the kind of stuff that i would
like to build or like to see to be built
is
you could think of it as personal
assistance
or
ai that's owned by you
and you get to give it out you have
complete control over all of your data
you have complete control over
everything that's uh
learnable about your day-to-day
experiences that could be useful in this
in the market of um
goods and ideas and all those kinds of
things so it has to do with
so you i know you talk about the
surveillance which is very interesting
it's who gets to have control of the
data and i think i i believe there's a
lot of hunger
in among regular people
to have control over their data
such that
if you want to create a business you
have a lot of money to be made from a
capitalist perspective by providing
products that let people control their
data where you have no control
it sounds like to me you're describing
encryption or at least the the ability
to encrypt the ability to use
uh digital keys to secure your property
and i that to me is a very powerful uh
individual right force for individual
rights very powerful and it's what's
what animates bitcoin ultimately which
we'll get into
but for me at least the way i look at it
today in 2021
the threat from big data analysis
used by governments and authoritarian
regimes is terrifying i mean to actually
see what the chinese communist party is
doing where they have hundreds of
millions of cameras overseeing society
cameras that can tell who's a uyghur and
who's ahan
that to me is terrifying and and
everything is sorted instantly there are
there are super computers that are built
in urumqi in xinjiang for this explicit
purpose and you know it allows the
government to quickly sort and basically
commit genocide a lot faster and it's
really scary so
i do agree and i've seen personally how
powerful technology can be as a force
for freedom um but i'm i'm very very
worried about big data analysis in the
hands of governments see that's funny
because i i tend to see governments as
ultimately incompetent in the space of
technology to where there will always be
lagging behind so you look at what the
chinese surveillance systems are doing
i i believe when once you start getting
bad
enough that
like
technologies would be created to resist
that so to mess with it from from the
hacker community but also from the
individual community so surveillance is
actually very difficult from a
centralized perspective to detect uh you
know to collect data about you to detect
everything you are because you can spoof
a lot of that information so i believe
you can put power in the hands of the
citizens to sort of
feed the government fake data to confuse
it at a mass scale to where
it will make their surveillance less
effective but that okay that could be
very sort of hopeful yeah i mean the
practical application in xinjiang which
is a territory the size of alaska
where a large percentage of the
population has been put into prison
camps
um the current issue of the new yorker
has an absolutely harrowing uh essay
that that tells the story of one such
woman
who in i believe 20 2017 got sucked into
one of these camps and it took her a
year or more to get out um and and she's
talking about how
in each home in xinjiang each home has a
qr code on it that the police can scan
and get like a quick instant download of
who lives there
each car has you know like a scannable
code
every every single person has their dna
taken and the dna is being sifted
through and analyzed by algorithms so
this is like the chinese government's
laboratory for how can we use technology
to
oppress a sort of like digital leninism
and that to me is one of the biggest uh
risks in our world today and it's not
talked about enough that's interesting
so technologies basically
enables the automation of oppression
absolutely so like
but to define technology
big data analysis and you know maybe
specific ai etc does but encryption
allows us to fight back it's very
important people understand we have
tools to fight back
you know big brother
can only grow
if it can feed on your data if it can't
get your data it can't grow so you have
to willingly give up stuff to the cloud
um for this monster to grow we can we
can we can like make the monster hungry
and shrink it if we give it less data
and i think that's where i would agree
with you in terms of like wanting to
empower people to be able to do stuff on
their own terms in a sovereign way and
yeah maybe you're you're kind of
thinking like the personal assistant who
helps out tony stark or something like
that and and that's yeah as long as
there's no back doors and that's a
sovereign thing that you've popped up
and created and you have the keys to
absolutely but practically speaking if
we're talking about the world today as
is
we need to be concerned about the way
that authoritarian regimes are using big
data analysis and they're going to buy
the software and this equipment from the
chinese government they're already doing
it street level surveillance has already
been purchased by governments everywhere
from latin america to sub-saharan africa
to the heart of europe um there's been
huge scandals in britain over their
purchase of chinese surveillance
technology
um part of the chinese government's belt
and road campaign which is basically to
build the infrastructure of this century
and to be in control of it is this idea
part of that idea is to is to ship out
and install surveillance technology
both at the telecom level and at the
surveillance level across dozens of
countries around the world and have that
back door right there's this national
security law in china which states that
like companies that are chinese which
are abroad are mandated to send data
back to beijing right so they're
building this like huge global
surveillance state and again not talked
about enough you should go google and
research the belt and road i think it's
very important that we confront this
yeah i'm really glad you're talking
about it because it's probably important
to understand i'm also hopeful that
as people get educated about
how much their data when collected
unencrypted but in general
can be used to harm them
i mean it's almost like an education i
feel like
if you know
it's a double-edged sword because i feel
like people become fearful too easily
and that actually has a very negative
effect on the quality of life
in some sense you want to have tools
that allow you to live freely as opposed
to living fear if you live in fear
it's not a good way to live so it's a
it's a balance um it's a free society
versus a fear society yeah
people are
it's all about the trade-offs you make
in your daily life like living more
privately with more freedom is
less convenient you trade freedom and
privacy for convenience and comfort and
speed absolutely it's an engineering
decision in everything that you do um
in the west
we in advanced democracies we have not
necessarily personally seen
the results of that trade-off because
we've we live in these free societies
that have these checks and balances and
freedoms but as soon as you step into an
authoritarian state and you make those
trade-offs your life you know
immediately becomes more more
restrictive and and what people are
worried about is that even in advanced
economies market democracies etc
the people are worried that they might
not survive the the great social
digital transformation um you know look
at what the nsa is capable of doing i
mean for now
it's
not that big of a problem because we
still have free speech um but it's
deeply concerning what snowden revealed
and it's a nice reminder
that we need to be focused on on privacy
and encryption and on helping users
become more more sovereign regardless of
where you live it's kind of like a
crutch to live in a free society like
you know it's almost like a free lunch
in a way um
you're not going to be sent to a prison
camp because of the color of your skin
or your beliefs or what you say about
the government
and you're very lucky again most people
do live in a society where you you can
be persecuted for those things
and i feel like especially in america we
we forget that we're we're distanced
from that really strong reality you know
on the topic of snowden and then nsa
what should we be thinking about because
that feels like a already an outdated
set of conversations because of the
information we've gotten from the past
it feels like everything's gotten quiet
now in terms of how much we actually
know about the hugely important i i
think the two lessons from snowden are a
the the patriot act and the war on
terror and mass surveillance are
not necessary for our democracy and for
our freedoms um this was a false choice
we never had to sacrifice them to be
safer
um and and we've seen that government
has spent hundreds and hundreds of
millions of dollars on these like
surveillance programs that you can read
about and amounted to very little except
for tremendous bureaucratic waste and
you know
you know erosion of our freedoms
but at the same time we need to practice
more privacy and the dramatic increase
in the usage of signal for example has
been really really great to see it's
it's fantastic that tens of millions of
people are downloading signal and using
it um you should try to be onboarding
more and more of your conversations onto
signal for example where governments
can't see what you're saying
maybe they can see the metadata maybe
they can see that you sent your phone
number sent a message to someone else's
phone number at this time but they can't
see what's inside so using encryption in
your life is very very important that's
a good starting point i would say that's
kind of step a
the ideas of democracy
the ideas of the balance of power
um
the all the ideas that we were talking
about the constructs
were inventions i wonder if there's
other inventions that will allow us to
sort of
not engage not give governments or any
centralized institutions so much power
like why why do citizens have to use
signal
why because that's an effort you have to
be because you have to like understand
exactly why so that's a nice little
solution for a particular set of
problems but like there's a million
other ways that data i'm sure
is being collected constantly if we
don't create
a system that
prevents the establishments of these
centralized powers then we'll always
have this problem yeah i think we can
keep it simple for the purposes of this
conversation you have politics
information and money those are the
three things i would encourage us to
focus on in politics yes someone
invented democracy i mean whether it was
the greeks um the west africans or many
others around the world around the same
time invented this idea that we should
be ruled by uh rules and not by rulers
right um
and that has
evolved dramatically right and now you
and then you have information
information also used to be highly
centralized right you know think about
how rich you had to be to gain access to
a library before the printing press or
you know how much money you had to have
or how close to the king or the you know
feudal lord you had to be to be able to
have that ability but now
you know
the majority of the world billions of
people have access to all information in
their pocket and they can set up an
account on social media and get their
word out so not only politics but
information has been dramatically
decentralized
and i would say that encrypted messaging
is kind of a corollary to that second
innovation and as much as now people are
like more effortlessly like signal is a
lot easier to use than pgp for example
they're more easily able to practice
privacy when it comes to having private
messages globally um these are all good
things and we need to keep pushing and i
think money is like
honestly maybe the most important piece
and that's why i spent so much time
thinking about bitcoin okay so
politics information money yes let's
talk about money what is money and why
is it important to think about
in the context of human rights
i have witnessed
money
be
peripheralized
take it has taken a back seat in the
human rights conversation the idea of
currency who makes the money who makes
the rules who issues it who sets the
interest rates all these things
it is not on the menu of human rights
activists if you just do like a
systematic study of like the human
rights discourse over the last several
decades
money is not there it's also not really
taught in schools like children don't
really learn about money where does it
come from it's it's kind of hidden from
from our from a lot of our discourse
um
only really when i got into bitcoin did
i start learning more about money
um i spent 10 years at the human rights
foundation
and we we did all kinds of programs
around the world we convened oslo
freedom forums in different places and i
got to meet hundreds of dissidents and
very rarely did they ever speak about
currency or bank accounts or moving
money from one place to another
but when i started asking them they
always had amazing stories about money
always i mean my friend ivan muire who
started the this flag movement in
zimbabwe which ended up toppling robert
mugabe when i asked him to come to san
francisco to give a talk about
hyperinflation which he lived through
he said no one's ever asked me to do
that before
but i'll come and he came this was about
three years ago
and the first thing he did when he got
on the stage is he opened up a shirt and
he brought out a necklace that had the
1980 zimbabwean dollar on it and he said
we in the activist community wear this
as a symbol of where our country used to
be because the zimbabwean dollar used to
be worth two british pounds and then of
course over the next
two and a half decades of economic
mismanagement and corruption by mugabe
it got inflated out of existence right
you've seen those like hundred trillion
dollar zimbabwean notes
um so he had to live through that which
was terrible and crushing
but he you know is an expert on money if
you actually talk to human rights
activists about money they know a lot
about money they're just not usually
asked to talk about it so you know for
me
um money you know when i study money or
look at money it's really about control
you know who who's creating it and how
much does the population know about the
creation of that money and when it comes
to bitcoin it's really the people's
money like there is no shadowy force in
charge of it we all know the rules we
all know how it's going to get minted
and how it's going to get printed and
you know that information is out there
for everybody to see and there's no like
special group of rules for one group of
people or another group
you know a billionaire and a refugee are
the same in the eyes of the protocol
this is a rather revolutionary concept
and in the same way that
democracy allowed us to decentralize
politics and have checks and balances
and in the same way that the internet is
this culmination of technologies that
allowed us to decentralize information
access to and control over it
bitcoin you know decentralizes money i
mean no longer again is there one group
of people who can just change it
arbitrarily we're all in the same
playing field and i think that is a
tremendous innovation
you know from one perspective money and
inflation hyperinflation is a kind of
symptom of
corruption as opposed to the core of the
corruption
and at this at the flip side in terms of
resisting the corruption resisting the
abuse
of human rights
it's interesting to think that
fighting inflation
or
funny uh
fighting the mismanagement of the money
supply
uh is a way to fight back
authoritarianism or to fight
authoritarianism
and
that's an interesting concept that i
think was introduced to me by just
plugging myself in intellectually into
the bitcoin community but also just
cryptocurrency in general
it's it's to like
it's not that money
is a symptom
you know money is a tool to fight back
too
absolutely
so in in what way
can bitcoin be used to um
to fight authoritarianism
not just in the united states but all of
those 53 percent that you're referring
to what how can bitcoin help so we
talked about authoritarianism
we talked about the surveillance state
to me
bitcoin has two kind of key mechanisms
through which it can help us
number one uh it's a sovereign savings
account it's debasement proof meaning
the government cannot print more
whenever they want
this is very very different from fiat
currency which by its very name its very
nature can be issued on sort of demand
right by the rulers
and while i live in a country where the
rulers do a reasonable job of managing
the money most people aren't so lucky so
only 13 percent of humans in the world
live in a country that's a liberal
democracy with property rights and has
what we call a reserve currency meaning
a currency so stable and desirable that
other countries save in it at the
central bank level right you basically
have the us
the uk australia switzerland the euro
and canada i mean those are like reserve
currencies and these are liberal
democracies where people have reasonable
guarantees over property rights
everybody else either lives under like a
weaker currency or an authoritarian
regime that's 87 of the world's
population almost 7 billion people so
for them
a sovereign savings account that's
permissionless meaning you don't have to
have id to use it is a big big deal and
a lot of people talk about zimbabwe or
venezuela as some like isolated cases oh
well you know hyperinflation only
happens in in those two countries
um i actually did some research into
this and
there's about one point uh
over you know close to 1.3 billion
people who live under double or triple
digit inflation this is not an isolated
instance we're talking huge countries
nigeria 200 million people 15 inflation
turkey
15 insulation for 100 million people
argentina 40 inflation for a country 45
million people um so you can go down the
list there's about 35 countries where
like people's earnings their wages um
are literally disappearing in front of
their eyes over a matter of weeks or
months against things like the dollar
gold real estate right so this is a huge
issue it absolutely is a human rights
issue for me i mean when it comes to
your time and energy having control over
that or having it stolen from you i
think this is pretty clear
and bitcoin is like an immediate uh
low-cost easily accessible solution for
people and i've learned this not from my
own assumptions but by talking to people
by interviewing dozens of people
whether it's in sudan which currently
has triple digit inflation um or
people who've escaped from syria who
have used bitcoin to get their wealth
out of the country and then also to make
payments back to people inside um or
venezuela or elsewhere it's very very
powerful
i think some very small percentage of
people who have used have owned bitcoins
was something like one percent right of
the world
whatever whatever the number is a small
call it two percent for the purposes of
our okay about a little under 200
million people
wow yeah
at most right now so if we look at
zimbabwe sudan if we look at small
percentages of people do you think the
technology's mature enough because it's
not just about the idea it's also about
the implementation of it like you know
bitcoin
for the most part requires access to
to the internet yeah and
what do you think
about
accessibility of this technology now as
a method of activism in the worst parts
of the world we often think like all the
conversations we've had about bitcoin is
essentially
middle class like wealthy people
relative to the
world they're kind of talking sort of
investment and high concept ideas then
there's also the people in the world who
are suffering who are
living through hyperinflation they may
not have a computer or access to the
internet like what how do you think
bitcoin can help there yeah so again we
have
one clear use case which is a sovereign
savings account that you can control
right the other use case is an
unstoppable payments network this is
very important for people who live
behind for example sanctions
like the us like basically um weaponizes
the dollar and it like sanctions
different countries and instead of
sanctioning like a handful of rulers for
example which i would support this is
like a magnitsky or smart sanctions
sometimes we'll just say we're just
going to shut off this whole country so
the people suffer cuba or iran are good
examples average people suffer right so
people in those two countries i just
mentioned cuba iran or even palestine
which is
also sort of like blockaded by the
israelis so you have cuba iran palestine
are three good examples where people
inside all three of those countries now
are using bitcoin to do commerce do
their business send money back
enforcement sanction resistant sanctions
resistant it does not get stopped by
sanctions right um
and also it's again remittances are
extortionate i mean the average
remittance
you know costs uh has a high fee takes
several days if your family is in ghana
or something like that or nigeria and
you live in the united states it can
take time to use western union um
sometimes you know oh it gets paused it
gets lost there's issues you have to
deal with customer service
screw that i mean you know if the person
has a cell phone which increasingly is
the case i mean by the end of next year
uh
more than five or six billion people
depending on different estimates will
have smartphones basically by the end of
2022 uh we're talking like the vast
majority of humans will have access to
smartphones they can all have sovereign
bitcoin wallets and there's even ways to
access bitcoin without the internet um
but i mean we can get into that there's
like hardware wallets and so on what do
you mean by sovereign
uh bitcoin wallet
you know most users today are using
bitcoin in a in a custodial manner so
this is kind of like having a bank
account
um where you have a deposit uh account
at a bank right so you have a claim
right you go to the bank and they have
some of your money and you take it out
right with an atm so
uh what i would call uh non-custodial
bitcoin use would be similar to
withdrawing cash from an atm you have it
it's a bear instrument okay so when i
it's what's called the bearer instrument
i know i'm so apologize i'm outside this
community just sounds funny no no yeah
so like a bear instrument would be like
a bar gold or yes um
a banknote or bitcoin that you control
meaning you have the seed phrase right
which
for the listeners essentially is 12 to
24 english words that you write down on
a piece of paper that's your like
password to get into your bitcoin
account
and that gives you that bearer
instrument quality right
but unfortunately most users uh still
use bitcoin in a custodial way meaning
they buy it on coinbase so coinbase
where something like that you would put
into into the custodial into the
category like a bank yeah
and look the good news is you can
withdraw to your own control and in the
bitcoin community we try to teach this
idea that it's not your keys not your
coins
in the same way that if you deposit your
money at the bank you might not get it
back i mean it's low likelihood but it's
but it's very possible same thing in
bitcoin like if you want to get the full
experience you want to actually custody
your own bitcoin you want to you want to
put it whether it's on an open source
software wallet like the blue wallet is
a good one for people to check out um or
a hardware wallet like cold card for
example there's different ways to do
this um but essentially like around the
world uh people are innovating like
don't think so low of of your fellow man
you know what i mean like people are
able to figure this out you know i get a
lot of flack from people saying oh
bitcoin's so hard to use i've read this
article in new york times saying this
guy in silicon valley lost all of his
bitcoin that's because he was a
and didn't care about it this guy lost
all this bitcoin because it wasn't worth
much 10 years ago and he you know he
forgot the password but if you're like
receiving your remittance from a family
member you're not going to lose the
password right and you trust in the
basic intelligence of people to figure
this out and to innovate and so on and
figure out we're watching it man
yeah you know i'm
it's kind of funny that but people in in
the united states are not very savvy
with money
it's exactly the way you're describing
it's like when you have very little
money
you're going to be savvy with money
you're going to understand exactly the
mechanisms that work
that are resistant to the corruption
that's around you i mean i remember
instead of growing up in the soviet
union
the general bureaucracy and the
corruption of everything around you you
figure out ways around that you figure
out ways how to function within that
kind of system to survive
under inflation under hyperinflation
under
all like basically being unable to trust
any kind of even the police force and
all those kinds of things you figure it
out and that same way perhaps bitcoin
could be
all the different ways to store
and uh gain
bitcoin
these mechanisms could be something
that's figured out in the third world as
opposed to in the oh i mean i mean the
capital of bitcoin could easily be lagos
and not san francisco yes in terms of
users in terms of people using it and
again the two use cases as a savings
account and as an unstoppable payment
rail these are the two ones that that
you should really think about this is
how people are using it today now
when it comes to
could it possibly be adopted by like a
sufficient majority of the population i
say yes and it's very similar to the way
the mobile phone spread
at the beginning the cell phone was only
for rich people it was only for the
elite it was huge it didn't work very
well the interface sucked it was clunky
over time it got smaller and smaller and
cheaper and cheaper and easier to use
and easier to use and today everyone
benefits so you're going to watch a
similar technology upgrade process with
bitcoin already in the last 10 years
bitcoin has gotten so much easier to use
i mean there are now mobile wallets that
are so slick there's one called moon
m-u-n wallet from a team in argentina
and these these guys created it because
they saw their own currency devalued
like three times in the last 20 years
and they've had a hell of a time trying
to get their money back and forth from
different countries so they were like
let's make this easy for people um again
you know this is
this is the people's money this is this
is something that cannot be controlled
by by governments or corporations and
that makes it very powerful and i think
it's actually quite exciting to be here
in the adoption phase in the early days
yeah man this is the early days and uh
you also mentioned that sort of bitcoin
is uh this is the mechanism of a
peaceful revolution so it's a way to
to resist authoritarianism in a peaceful
way it's ultimately a mec you know you
mentioned sort of um
politics
information
and money
it uh it seems like in the space of
money this is one of the peaceful
mechanisms it's a way to opt out
you can opt out
peacefully from the system
and yeah it's it's beautiful it's
beautiful
so so bitcoin is currently by far the
most uh popular sort of dominant
cryptocurrency that said
and i look forward to your letters
bitcoin maximalists
uh that said you know internet explorer
was the most popular
browser yeah for quite a long time and
then
other browsers came along that out
competed it like chrome
firefox
people should check out brave it's a
great browser um i think it's my
favorite browser at this point anyway so
why bitcoin why not another
cryptocurrency if you look in the next
10 20 50 100 years do you think it's
possible for another cryptocurrency like
ethereum or something that it's not even
here yet
to overtake bitcoin as a mechanism
when you say overtake
um
what do you mean what do you mean
overtake you mean number of users do you
mean a price per coin
then yeah the number of users because
we're talking about one percent two
percent yeah and if we are serious about
this being
um
in the space of money as a way to
give
individuals power
yeah fight the centralized powers that
you use the money system and so on
how do we get from 2 to 50
right to 60
to 80 percent
that that jump is it obvious to you not
obvious but
do you think
bitcoin is the way to get from two
percent to 50
or are there going to be other
cryptocurrencies they may emerge that
get us to 50 no i mean bitcoin is the
innovation the innovation is in having
the decentralized mint no one can change
the monetary policy everything else is
downstream from there in bitcoin the
meme would be 21 million there's never
going to be any more than 21 million
every other cryptocurrency either has an
inflationary policy i mean there's going
to continue to be more and more of it
over time or its monetary policy can be
changed by a small group of people this
is vividly on display in ethereum which
is like the second largest and second
most robust cryptocurrency right
i've talked to senior ethereum engineers
over the last couple weeks trying to
figure out
what is the monetary policy of ethereum
no one can tell me no one knows how much
eath is going to be minted in 2022 and
2023 after they shift to proof of stake
it i've seen estimates that range from
100 000 to 2 million so at the end of
the day you're going to be trusting a
small group of people to make those
decisions that is what we are escaping
with bitcoin so all these other
cryptocurrencies they might have their
use cases virtually all of them are not
it's very important for people to know
that if you take like the 4 500
cryptocurrencies on coin market cap
almost all of them are scams straight up
even the ones that have like noble
intentions
i just don't think are gonna add that
much value um ultimately i think bitcoin
to me is the innovation and and you know
that's because it has a monetary policy
and an issuance schedule that cannot be
changed and that's what gets me so
excited about i mean that's why it's
such an important tool for human rights
yeah it's it's interesting because when
you grow from two percent when you grow
in
the number of people using it at the
scale they're using it
it it's going to need to be resistant to
governments and institutions messing
with it
so it's interesting to see what kind of
um what kind of cryptocurrency would be
resistant to that obviously dogecoin is
going to win let's be honest
well i mean looking forward to the
number two cryptocurrency in the world
probably by like how useful it is to
people is tether which is totally
centralized has blacklists so i'm not
saying there won't be like new digital
assets that are lumped into this
category that have usage but they're not
they're not it's not the same innovation
as bitcoin it's just sort of building on
this idea of like a euro dollar maybe
like a dollar that is minted outside of
the control of the us federal reserve
right it would be a euro dollar so
stable coins are kind of like euro
dollars just minted by private actors in
a way right but they're still tied to
the dollar they're pegged to the dollar
they're not escaping the system escaping
the system is bitcoin we we aren't
reliant on the dollar we we have our own
you know full um store value medium of
exchange unit of account eventually and
you know the bitcoin world will be
denominated in different terms and i
think everyone everything else will be
tied to it i really do it does feel
currently like bitcoin is like like
pirates or something like that and
they're still like the central banks
that are like the main navies of the of
the different nations yeah it's just if
you talk about scale so there's going to
be a moment if bitcoin continues to grow
in its impact
when governments are going to seriously
contend with you know what do we do with
this
do you think about those moments is uh
bitcoin is the cryptocurrency world in
general going to be able to withstand
the
serious legal pushback from countries
from nations especially authoritarian
nations yeah so it's been interesting
it's been
12 years okay more than 12 years since
satoshi nakamoto created bitcoin
and they haven't been able to stop it
they have tried they've tried a lot i
wrote a long essay for quillette on this
like like why haven't governments been
able to stop bitcoin and my thesis is
essentially that there's been like this
mix of
different kind of technical social uh
and economic and political incentives
and disincentives that make it very
difficult
and i think to me the the the best way
to think about it is that bitcoin's like
a trojan horse so just just to actually
tell that story just a little bit
because i think it's important to
understand the classical mythology
tale um i find this very interesting of
the actual the actual trojan horse yeah
which was told in in the aeneid actually
by by virgil right and the idea was the
greeks had been like trying to take the
city of troy for like a decade at these
like impregnable walls and they couldn't
do it and ulysses and the rest of the
greek army were like we don't know what
to do um so minerva the the the god of
strategy and war you know kind of like
to get this idea from her i guess to to
actually try to use subterfuge and
trickery to take over the city so the
idea is and this was sort of hatched by
ulysses right to put this horse together
that would kind of be like a gift so the
idea was the greeks just like pretended
to leave right they they deserted they
left behind one soldier and this horse
and the trojans looked at it and they
were like what's going on here and they
brought in the soldier and the soldier's
like look they left they're so sorry for
all of the desecration and blood spill
this is their gift to you it's you know
honoring minerva you know it's like this
like you know trophy for you guys and
there were actually people inside troy
uh cassandra a prophet as well as lao
quan who was like a priest who said no
no this is obviously a trick this is
obviously a trick um but they were like
dispatched and ignored because the horse
was like it was just like so badass so
that the trojans were like
bringing it in the city so they brought
it in themselves no blood spilled at all
right in the middle of the night of
course what you realize is the horses
back to the greek soldiers and they come
out they let the army in which was like
hiding behind an island so this idea
that like
something could be so attractive that
you really can't say no even if you know
what's inside of it is it played with in
bitcoin so like
in bitcoin has this number go up
technology right is what we call it in
sort of shorthand ngo ngu right but what
people don't realize is that ngu is like
the trojan horse inside the trojan horse
is fgu freedom go up technology so
dictators and rogue regimes and
corporations are gonna buy mine tax
accumulate this thing because it's the
best performing financial asset in the
world what they don't realize or
they're gonna have to ignore is that
they're also aiding and abetting this
freedom technology which allows
individuals to be sovereign and
eventually erodes their power there's no
question that rogue regimes and bad
actors i've already used and will
continue to use bitcoin the thing is
when you think about a north korea or
venezuela
and that government instructs some of
its bureaucrats and cronies and
officials to start stealing bitcoin or
accumulating it or whatever
for short-term gain to get around
sanctions and and use it to buy dollars
or something like that right which they
can't get normally well guess what all
those people who the regime has
instructed to like figure this thing out
and use it they're all going to realize
oh my god this is money the government
doesn't control and it's going to spread
like a virus okay so this is like the
idea of the trojan horse allegory i
think it's so important and powerful
with bitcoin all the people talking
about bitcoin today on tv they don't
care about freedom or privacy they just
care about number go up but what they
don't realize is what's concealed within
and that's very very powerful to me
so the people talking about bitcoin and
tv are maybe investor types professional
investors
corporations and soon governments i mean
you just had today this morning on cnbc
the
leader of
the republican leader of the house of
representatives a congressman saying
like we need to be pro bitcoin as a
country and the other day peter thiel
had a very interesting comment where he
was basically like let's not fall behind
china in this race so you have
influential people in our government
like sort of posturing for this like you
know bitcoin race that's going to happen
in the next 10 years you're going to see
this countries are going to compete to
stack bitcoin absolutely so you believe
the the thing that's
shiny and sexy like the trojan horse the
number go up uh too hard to ignore
it and for to to uh
to define that a little further meaning
it's
it does seem like the more people get
excited and start using bitcoin the more
of its value grows so it's just a good
feedback loop yeah it's a feedback loop
and then the reason you're excited about
it especially is is that uh f g yeah
freedom go up freedom go up
which is it uh ultimately gives power to
the individuals to just so decentralized
yeah i mean like when tesla stacks
bitcoin
they're just doing that as self-interest
they think it's going to be a good
inflation hedge fund but what they maybe
don't care about don't realize or they
don't need to care i mean bitcoin's
power is it like co-opts people
into promoting a freedom tool even if
they don't care about or even if they
hate freedom it doesn't matter so when
tesla stacks bitcoin and the price goes
up and more interest goes up and more
people around the world are like wow
bitcoin then more people get involved
again more adoption more price more
developers better user interface more
privacy tools more mining more network
security it's just this like positive
feedback loop that continues to grow and
it will it will grow intensely in the
next decade as we go through the
adoption cycle and the reason why i'm so
excited about this is the human rights
world again to get back to our previous
conversation
is very hard to find people who who have
you know the empathy
or the altruism to actually make a
difference abroad in places like china
or saudi arabia or north korea
people are very quick to just like
they'll just quickly
toss off the pretty words that they care
about human rights as soon as profits
come into play so there's no alignment
of incentives right the reason why
bitcoin is so powerful is that it aligns
the incentives all of a sudden they can
be as greedy as they want they are being
forced to promote a freedom tool this
i've never seen before and it makes me
it gives me a lot of like excitement
it's very refreshing because we've been
laboring in the human rights space you
have to like raise money and it's all
like non-profit work and you're like
begging for people to make a difference
for you
here you have this like incredible asset
which people will accumulate out of
self-preservation self-interest and
greed and yet it will strengthen the
power of the individual that is what we
need to fight big brother that's what we
need to fight like what i'm scared is
happening in china like this growing
authoritarian state which is powered by
big data analysis
this is our way to fight back and and it
runs on this like
really interesting engine again that
like takes advantage of our base nature
as humans and i know that it sounds
terrible for me to say this but i mean
ultimately we are self-interested
and it is hard to to get people to care
about others living a thousand miles
away you know we are kind of
localized in our empathy
speaking as someone who works to help
people who live in
like 100 different countries it's very
difficult to get americans to care about
what's happening in belarus or in
kashmir it just is but guess what
they're going to definitely care about
bitcoin because they want to see their
their net worth go up they want to do
better for their family etc they're
going to get into this thing and it's
really going to like make that powerful
tool for everyone else who's using it so
this interplay dynamic is fascinating to
me
yeah i have to um so i'm somebody who
doesn't like
there are corrupting effects of greed
but it is also human nature
yeah i don't like it either but it we
have to be realistic you have to
acknowledge it and then maybe use it
for your advantage and it's not just
bitcoin itself like exchanges today are
adopting something called lightning
network which is a way to scale bitcoin
on a second layer much like we had gold
bars which we scaled with paper money
and then we had visa credit cards which
were a way of scaling the paper notes
bitcoin scales through lightning network
it's a private instant globally final
settlement network it's something you
all should
check out it's very very interesting
the exchanges aren't adopting lightning
for its privacy benefits like lightning
operates off the chain meaning
surveillance companies can't see they
can't do chain analysis on lightning
because it's on an onion routed second
layer kind of that works kind of like
the tour tour project
the exchanges don't care about privacy
they're doing it because it reduces fees
lightning is cheaper and faster so again
we have this really interesting
alignment of incentives where like the
freedom tech is being promoted by people
who don't i don't it doesn't matter what
their incentives are i could care less
if they were altruistic or not
and i think this is and you're going to
maybe see this even in the future
there's more things coming in bitcoin
down the pike
lightning was enabled by an upgrade
called segwit right which had took place
a few years ago which was the
culmination of the block size conflict
there's another thing coming up called
cross input signature aggregation which
may if it takes effect in the next few
years
it may compel exchanges to
collaboratively spend all their bitcoin
together in a way that really protects
our privacy and fights surveillance
but they're not going to do it for for
moral reasons they're going to do it
because it's going to save them money
and improve their bottom line can you
speak to that kind of collaborative so
you can have multiple parties in a
single transaction kind of thing yeah
like
you could do that today absolutely it's
called the coin join for example but
right now it's more expensive to
coinjoin a bitcoin you have to pay a
premium for your privacy this would flip
that on its head and would basically say
if you have one transaction hey pile
them all in have as many parties as you
want the more parties you get in the
cheaper it's going to be per party okay
and and that's not possible in bitcoin
today but it might be in the future but
again the beauty the beauty in bitcoin
are these like
these ways that it just aligns human
incentives and it aligns our like most
based desires and needs
and realities
with like freedom and privacy and that
i've never seen before and that's why i
think it's
so interesting so something that i'm
like somebody like eric weinstein
actually spoke to this
the you know the idea of blockchain in
general
from like a 10 000 foot
view
the blockchain is a centralized place to
keep the record of everything that ever
happened
and
does that concern you
from a privacy perspective from a
control perspective even though it's
managed
especially you know given the low
frequency of transactions for bitcoin
you can like you you can have a lot of
you know small computers across the
globe contain the entirety set of
transactions
you know all of those kinds of features
does that concern you that there's one
place where everything is made public in
terms of everything that ever happened
no i and i'll give you two reasons
number one
the bitcoin blockchain is ultimately a
settlement layer it's kind of like
something like
fedwire in the united states it's a way
for like
institutions to settle with each other
that's what i think it's going to be
like in 20 30 years from now the average
person is never going to touch the
bitcoin blockchain probably they're
going to use things like lightning or
unfortunately they may use bitcoin banks
but they'll either use custodians or
they'll use second layer non-custodial
solutions to interact the main chain is
going to get very expensive it's going
to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of dollars or even more if the dollar
starts to weaken
uh to make a transaction on the main
chain and that will be reserved for like
very large transactions or transactions
that need final final settlement etc etc
um
and i think that that's
that's fine
and and that's okay
and it's very important that that ledger
that settlement layer
be kept by thousands of people around
the world the bitcoin blockchain is not
centralized it is it is decentralized it
is run by people like me who run a node
at home i run a personal server i run
the bitcoin blockchain no one else you
run it that person runs it there's no
there's no one in where you have a full
node yeah i run a full node
it's great i mean it's pretty easy man
you run it and that way you can be
sovereign over all of your usage right
and you can run it on a raspberry pi
with less than 150 bucks of equipment
and that's so important because again
there is no amazon web service
vulnerability here that is a problem and
i agree with you we're trending in a bad
direction where like the government
could just turn off you know a big
important website or a news source well
they can't turn off bitcoin because it
doesn't live on aws it lives with us we
are bitcoin and i think that that's
that's very very powerful um and then
you can have this the something like a
lightning network where you can
escape some of the constraints of the
blockchain
depending on your needs of the privacy
and all those kinds of things
everything's an engineering tradeoff but
yeah you can trade off some of the
assurances of the base layer to go into
lightning for example and and there you
can get more speed and more privacy and
the things that bitcoin
lacks speed and privacy for example um
you can get on these second layers so
there's all kinds of cool engineering
things that people are coming up with um
but i also would just say
anyone who says the blockchain like
that's a red flag for that person
doesn't really know what they're talking
about like satoshi didn't use the
blockchain in the the white paper
blockchain was a marketing term com that
people came up with later
to try and do this thing
that was kind of like it peaked in 2015
and it continues to be an issue today of
it's blockchain not bitcoin and that was
like a very corporate um kind of social
attack on bitcoin to say we could take
this like ledger part of this radical
thing that's for criminals and all these
bad people but we could take one part of
it out and we could bring it over here
and we could make it safe for everybody
the real mccoy's bitcoin
i mean satoshi referred to it as the
time chain i mean really what they're
talking about is just these like blocks
that are connected chronologically of
transactions it's really not that
exciting the exciting part of bitcoin is
is the proof of work you know where the
transaction processing is done by mining
and by energy and by real world
expenditures instead of like
you know some central ledger
and you know when you remove the
blockchain from bitcoin it's not very
to me it's just not it's it's just not
that interesting i don't know to me
blockchain or time chain whatever does
it philosophically is it's pretty
beautiful idea i mean
it's pretty simple but
nevertheless is beautiful from a
i'm a big database person it's an
interesting way to store information
that especially that's totally publicly
accessible
it's
um i know that to bitcoin proof of work
is the fundamental idea yes
but
to cryptocurrency and digital money in
general into money the blockchain is a
really interesting idea to me the way i
think about it is it's kind of
you know physics and i like that there's
a place that you can rely on
that's very difficult to mess with but
it's not though like it's outside of
maybe ethereum every other blockchain is
easy to mess with so i you're saying
that for work is what makes it hard to
absolutely proof of work is the key
right and ethereum's about to leave
proof of work so
it's about to go to proof of stake
which is literally the existing system
where a small group of people get to
decide the monetary policy yeah
reputation
has a lot of value there and that you
could be
it could be manipulation it may sound
brutal but i'm coming at it from a
political science perspective for me
it's all about freedom versus
dictatorship and that's why i find it's
so compelling that
that regardless of how much power or
might or how many armies you have you
can't change the rules of bitcoin
if
you're wrong about bitcoin
what would that look like
what kind of thing
that uh in 10 20 years
that you you're not wrong
right but it doesn't pan out it doesn't
pan out but other things that actually
make you feel good about all the hard
work you've done do pan out something
you haven't expected what what might
that be well as we've talked about my
career started in human rights and in
promoting individual freedom and
fighting authoritarianism that fight
will will continue on no matter what
happens with bitcoin um i think it would
be a massive failure and a tragedy if
this project like didn't work bitcoin
yes if the bitcoin project didn't work
we would it would honestly it's one of
the only
things that gives me hope because it is
an effective way to push back against
creeping centralized control
if for whatever reason and i can't
really see one of the reasons i'm so
into it is i can't really see how it's
not going to work again i think the
trojan horse allegory
is too powerful
these big centralized actors are going
to be too greedy and they're going to
want some as opposed to banning it it's
way easier for them to buy it than to
ban it i think it's just what's going to
happen but if but if whatever for
whatever reason it failed i would have
very little hope left because really i
mean the chinese model of like
centralizing all of your data and
controlling it i mean ultimately is is a
very very powerful um sort of like arch
force and
i i i would be concerned that that would
be all of our of our sort of destiny
i do have to sort of push back the style
of communication and you you're not
doing it today you're doing you're being
exceptionally eloquent and arguing these
ideas
but me especially just
from studying history
and being very skeptical from growing up
in the soviet union
i'm very
skeptical and cautious when i see a
community of people being very sure
of an idea doesn't matter what that idea
is and there's a huge amount of
certainty around bitcoin part of it is
an important feature because you it's
number go up
so far
number go up is a really important part
of the mechanism to make sure that it uh
it grows in impact
network effects because i mean it's
really important to get excited about
idea for take hold that's the way human
nature works and so on but i also get um
even something that you mentioned
that you know others
may not you know if you mention
blockchain you're sensitive to the
attacks that have been
that have been mounted where the word
blockchain has been used people have
been fooled i mean like yeah and people
in the humanitarian sector have been
fooled into thinking that some
centralized blockchain project is going
to help some refugee all collapsed
there's a yeah there's a huge chat it
makes me sad that there's a huge number
of scams like you know what makes me
really sad and just a tiny little
tangent there's been recently i guess
with the growing platform or something
there's been a bunch of fake lex
friedman accounts
yeah
and have a million but not only do they
do stupid stuff
but they've been messaging people oh
bitcoin and stuff i looked in totally
and people write to me
and they're saying like tough man
i think it gets people i think they
click on stuff i think they they were
not sure and
it it makes me think like
people are gullible or not gullible but
like
they're uh
just like i am which is they're like
hopeful about the world they're
optimistic about the world you know
almost like naive about evil that's not
what goes wrong with bitcoin and i've
seen it um
people fall for these like i mean like
in these different countries i'm trying
to like talk to to different people
about bitcoin and like the amount of
like mlm schemes pyramid schemes ponzi
schemes
they're just so many of them and there's
plenty here too but like
in zimbabwe i was talking to this guy
who is a reporter who studies the fx
like the foreign currency exchange
markets he's just saying one of the main
reasons people don't want to get into
bitcoin is because they've been scammed
so hard by all these other things so i
would say that that's one one way it
could go wrong is that like people just
continue to be like
um afraid of it because of things that
are like that in the past well that not
it's not just the volatility it's just
the the na you know uh
yeah having if you think it's a pyramid
scheme you're not going to want to get
involved
and
in some sense if i were to speak to the
bitcoin maximalist
community is to maybe ease up on the
certainty because that gives me the
signal that it's a scam to be honest so
whenever somebody whenever there's a lot
of people being
cultishly excited about something
i start being very skeptical it's like
uh you know i used to like green day
before they became really popular and
then the moment they became really
popular i'm like i don't know he started
wearing mascara and it's like and i
don't like him anymore so like i i'm
very skeptical about
uh evangelists of an idea because i
think bitcoin on its own is just a
powerful idea that stands but i also
understand that in a world of a lot of
competing ideas where there's a lot of
scams
and a lot of money to be made through
those scams that you have to be that you
have to be innovative in the kind of
mechanisms you use to break through the
scam the ocean of scams
i took this personality test and i'm a
99 skepticism so i was first sadly
because i was first introduced to
bitcoin in 2013.
and i was like yeah whatever and it took
me four years to actually get into it to
go down the rabbit hole i didn't really
start to grasp it and start getting
excited about it until 2017. so i was
regrettably very very skeptical for a
long time and i just thought it was like
whatever so i i appreciate that and you
should be skeptical um but ultimately
you got to believe in things like i
believe in democracy i believe it's good
for people i believe it's better than
tyranny i believe in the internet i i
know that we've had issues with
centralization of the internet but i
still believe it's better to be
connected than to have bridges between
us
and i believe in bitcoin and to me it's
like a very similar progressive force
that we're encountering um but but i i
yeah be skeptical nothing nothing um
nothing will befall you that's bad if
you're like cautious and skeptical
that's like a good good good mentality
to have
one thing we haven't talked about
all the
violations of the human rights that
authoritarian regimes
do
there's a
not a positive
but there is a you mentioned that
nationalism is a drug yeah
there's something beautiful about loving
your country
having pride in your country
uh loving
the
there's a feeling of belonging
it could be country it could be tribe it
could be family
that's really powerful and that speaks
to human nature as well
and that can sometimes overpower
everything else
patriotism patriotism yeah and you know
sometimes
it can be seen when you study history
when you look at
stalinist
the soviet union or you can even look at
hitler and nazi germany we tend to paint
patriotism in a negative light and then
maybe when we look at the united states
but even here in the united states
people often
paint um
patriotism in a bad light you know every
time i say i love america so as an
immigrant i love this country
it's funny how that's taken as a
political
statement uh that
you know people i guess on the right has
been have been more active in saying
that they love the country and people on
their left
uh have not
sort of it's almost become a weird
slogan as opposed to a statement of just
love and i understand that patriotism
can be a slippery slope into uh letting
your government i mean it's exactly what
you're saying the value of freedom of
speech is
you hold your government to account for
all the ways they mess up i mean look
you have patriotism and then you have
jingoism right it's very important we
stay on the patriotic side like as an
american i'm very patriotic in terms of
i love the values that this country was
founded on if you read the bill of
rights and i love the fact that it was
just flexible enough that we were able
to change it to grant or at least to try
to grant all people the same rights it
was not the original plan of the
founders right it had to be changed but
since you know then we've remained um
you know like you know those laws have
have remained and they're very good uh
and i'm very proud of that what i'm not
proud of is the jingoistic part of our
country where we invade other countries
and bomb other countries and not proud
of our prison system i think it's a huge
stain on our nation i'm not proud of a
lot of things so i think you can be
patriotic but you can be you know
critical of your country um and that's
important you know i feel like the
jingoistic thing is is the thing that we
need to watch out for
um
that's just my own personal take
out of all the projects that the human
rights foundation works on what's the
most important one to you right now like
that's been occupying your mind
yeah i just read again this new yorker
piece that just came out that you should
read it's called ghost walls and it's
the story of
how the chinese communist party is
committing genocide right now just like
other regimes did in the turks did to
the armenians and the nazis did to the
jews and it's happening again right now
he said never again and you know that's
just not true we're letting it happen
and
again with the business stuff like
people are like airbnb is like a sponsor
of the olympics like what at the
individual level at a business level how
does somebody like me who's just one
little aunt how does somebody
uh like elon musk who's in charge of ten
thousand ants
uh fight it
like what how do we yeah how do we push
back a great blueprint is the the fight
against the south african apartheid so i
we did a few events down in johannesburg
um and i've had the pleasure of being
able to go to the apartheid museum
several times um and it really does a
good job of chronicling how they were
able to do it it took a while there's no
doubt but the way it was done was good
um peaceful action from abroad was very
important so there was like the sullivan
principles so like um you can peacefully
protest as a company uh particular
regimes
and it's very effective and not just
corporations but like the olympics is a
great example like
chinese government should not be able to
host the olympics the ioc should say no
not until you close down those prison
camps this is a perfect peaceful way to
push back no one gets hurt same thing
when we had the korean olympics a few
years ago north korea should not have
been allowed any sort of symbolistic
kind of hosting rights there they have
prison camps gulags that we can see from
outer space very clearly and their
regime is
the cruelest one on the planet probably
why were they able to sit and cheer and
and you know get to sort of co-host
those at the olympics this is spineless
like the the ioc the olympics and major
corporations should stand up um
especially in the cultural sector where
you don't lose anything like you know or
you shouldn't have to lose anything
so i think if we look at the way that we
forced the apartheid regime
out
this international solidarity of
musicians athletes performers
celebrities is very very powerful
unfortunately today's celebrities are
doing the opposite we just you know have
this press release go out yesterday
about akon and he's he's off
whitewashing the crimes of the dictator
of uganda and
trying to build a future city there with
him you know if this was the 1980s akon
would be raising his fist and saying we
need to you know fight the apartheid
regime how do we get back to that you
know we need to think about that we have
to figure out how to harness celebrities
influencers and companies and get them
to actually stand up for something for
once i mean that's something we've lost
we've really had a spine against that um
and and you know we've lost it you know
and and you lose things you lose them
forever look at tibet tibet was a big
cause for people in the 90s used to go
to colleges and kids would have the
tibetan flags all over the dorm rooms it
was like
radiohead would have tibet on the stage
and everybody wanted to you know free
tibet was a big thing
guess what like
we lost it for some reason it's not a
thing anymore and tibet has been totally
colonized you know so i think it's
important that we find a way to unlock
um an interest
of in the celebrity classes among
athletes singers
presidents you know we need to find a
way to punish these people
yeah it's surprising because the
we've
become more and more connected so we can
communicate more effectively at a large
scale and yet
we seem to be
worse and worse at real activism it
seems like the outrage that's overtaken
the communication channels has been very
us focused and often
more about outrage and less about uh
productive activism i'm very jaded i
mean it's very difficult to to do these
things at scale effectively i do not
believe we will be successful in
boycotting the chinese olympics we
weren't in 2008 i don't think and
they're much more evil now and i don't
think we're going to be able to do it
this time
and again to go back to the the bitcoin
piece that's why i'm like very
interested in this thing because it
doesn't require my altruism it doesn't
require some famous singer or some
corporation to to sacrifice anything
they're literally just going to follow
their own prophet seeking
self-interested motives and they're
going to end up making a stronger human
rights tool for other people uh freedom
go up fgu man
do you think we're
it's kind of a dark question but you
think we're headed towards a war with
china the united states versus china
i hope not
i hope not in the cyber space and
potentially even a hot war i think
there's too many people with too much
money to be lost to go to a hot war
on both sides but
eventually we're just gonna someone's
gonna have to stand up i mean the
subjugation of hong kong and the
genocide of the uyghurs and the
colonization of tibet i mean taiwan is
the next big thing i mean xi jinping has
made it very clear you know xinjiang
tibet hong kong
taiwan so
we're going to have to stand up for
taiwan for different reasons both for
moral reasons but also for semiconductor
reasons we need tsmc to be on our side
to not have china take over tsmc
so um there's different reasons why
we're going to have to protect taiwan
and you just hope it's not a hot war i
mean at this point
well but also from inside the
governments of china and russia as well
but china i guess is is the powerhouse
here is how do how do these governments
get reformed is it is there hope for
them to become democracies like true
democracies
of representative democracies and sort
of
reform them
to be
ethical players on the world stage no
empire lasts forever and it's impossible
to predict when these regimes fall i
mean no one no one thought the soviet
union was going to fall when it fell
like that like if you studied like the
news and the scholarship of the era
no one knew that the tunisian government
was going to fall after muhammad bozizi
laid himself on fire no one no one
really no one predicted that that would
become what we now know as the arab
spring right these things are impossible
to predict
and one day the chinese regime will fall
i just
we don't know when um yes
you know but and there's quite a few
folks who talk about the fall of the
american empire
and it also concerns me that we don't
know when that might fall you assume me
as a very excited naive american i'm
very excited by this project that i
think is the beacon of hope in the world
still
but uh
that's probably how do you you know
uh that's how that's probably how you
feel before it's the end it's a
party you want to leave the party before
it starts to deteriorate um
i i think america could continue to have
like a major major leadership role for a
long long time um i think certain things
we do will become maybe no longer
possible in terms of the way we
intimidate people on the world stage and
the term especially the way we use our
currency as a weapon
i think that that's going to decline
over time as we become more of a
multi-polar world um but i do still
believe in america and the values that
were founded on despite all the warts i
do believe in us and i would prefer us
absolutely to be the most prominent of
the multi-polar world vis-a-vis a regime
like russia or china absolutely there's
no question so we've been talking about
states and nations yeah but can we just
briefly talk about facebook and twitter
and companies that have a huge impact on
the world as well and actually one of
the things that make america a great
nation is
it is the place from which these great
companies have sprung up is there
from a human rights perspective
is there something that bothers you
about facebook about these large
companies
uh is there something we need to fix
something we need to
be upset about
fight back on reform
do some sort of real activism about
i'm very concerned about social media
platforms and companies it almost feels
like we're losing the golden age of the
internet you know we could like go
online and enter and you know interact
with each other and share and not be
worried about censorship it feels like
that that was a golden age like in the
late 90s 2000s
and now everything is is becoming very
politicized and i'm not sure that
there's a solution like i don't think
there's a button we can press to fix it
i'm kind of
uh afraid that this is sort of just what
happens when
uh
societies digitize like like i think
that certain opinions just become
demonized in in the sort of
um
in the room in the social room that we
have on the internet
and i don't know if there's a magical
solution there i do know that there's
technological solutions that will allow
us to continue to communicate and for
creators to reach their audiences
without censorship
um and that's very exciting like right
now you could be de-platformed
from
your uh you know from like whether it's
uh patreon or youtube or whatever um and
your your bank account can be closed
down right there are emerging ways
that adam curry like the pod father and
a bunch of other people are
experimenting with where you can
essentially have your audio podcast
across a whole bunch of different um
you know platforms so you know it's
censorship resistant and then your
audience can pay you over lightning in
streaming money like they can stream you
money as they listen so you're removing
the whole advertising piece you don't
need to do advertising anymore you have
this direct relationship with
um
your uh
you know your audience and this is
possible with something like lightning
where you can do streaming money that's
censorship resistant
and a lot of the people who are building
a lightning network
for example elizabeth stark who you know
started lightning labs and
has done
in her within her company that people
that work work with her have built a
huge part of the lightning
infrastructure you know what animates
her is this idea of like
again artists and creators being able to
have that direct
um ability to reach out and have that
peer-to-peer relationship with their
with their audience and i i'm excited
for that and i do think that's coming
but but i i am
very worried that the golden age of like
like what centralized social media
platforms is kind of behind us
um and i'm not sure how to fix that i
don't know if that's like a fixable
problem interesting i i have a hope that
it's a fixable problem i think i think
it's fixable because there's demand for
it to be fixed that's the way i think
about it well is twitter that bad right
now like i mean it's fixable in as much
as you can do a verification so you can
give a blue check to someone and then
that person is like more credible and
they go to the top of the comments and
there's like tweaks you can do you can
continue to improve it but it's not
going to fix the fact that like twitter
can decide to
kick off the president and like a lot of
people are going to be upset by that you
know like there's ways you can improve
the ux over time and they continue to do
so like clubhouse is a is a lot of fun
great phenomenon so it's twitter spaces
so they continue to iterate but the the
censorship to platforming piece i'm not
sure is fixable because if you i mean
you watch the us government hall these
people hall um
zuckerberg and dorsey and whatever in
front of congress
they want more censorship i mean our
elected
leaders want more censorship right see i
just believe
censorship is a really harsh word
i believe it's possible to create
technologies where it's not twitter
doing the censorship
but
it's individuals doing their own
selection of what they want and don't
want to see so for example if you get
sick and tired of donald trump and
whatever he says or you love donald
trump you get to select yourself
like you get to have more control over
what you consume twitter tries to do
that a little bit but they obviously
fail
where ideas
infiltrate our view that we that
like misinformation spreads really fast
and conspiracy theories spread really
fast to where the immune system that
twitter has created to try to censor
conspiracy theories and misinformation
is
over firing and you're now censoring
too many people so that to it's exactly
the same intuition as you said before if
the state is doing it
in this case twitter is kind of the
state
it's not going to work out well but if
it individu if you give power to the
individuals to do this sort of the
not even censorship but
uh incentivization and
de-incentivization
of
great thoughtful content and terrible
low effort content
uh then
i feel like that's going to create a
system where there's going to be a much
more open discourse of ideas dangerous
ideas difficult ideas controversial
ideas and people
in a decentralized way will be able to
use their own intelligence to select
content to share content spread content
let's keep it simple um let's look at
one example uh twitter and jack dorsey
and i think it's quite clear that what
he believes is the solution is as you're
kind of hinting at a more kind of like
regionalized uh system which is not have
one we call federated system right which
does not just have like one company in
charge of everything but there's an open
protocol and then there's like different
instances right so twitter make you know
jack's dream for twitter is that twitter
is this open protocol that the russian
government can use and the chinese
government can use and the iranian
government can use and the american
government can use and then twitter as a
company is going to use two and you as
the customer decide which implementation
you want to join and there's going to be
different censorship on each instance or
each federation but uh the protocol
itself would be like untouchable this is
kind of like the idea behind the
internet right there's like
different parts of the internet that are
censored but like at the very bottom of
the very bottom of the backbone of it
it's like this this globally connected
um relatively unstoppable thing right
so i think that's a pretty good vision
and twitter's working towards that with
the blue blue sky like initiative we'll
see i'm a little skeptical that it like
works out because i've used i use
mastodon for example mastodon is an
example of a um federated social media
now it's it's ruled by a benevolent each
instance is ruled by a benevolent
dictator it's just like i happen to like
this one so i know so rather than trust
one dictator twitter you could you could
you could choose which dictator you want
to trust and that's kind of the
federated model and maybe we head that
way but you lose things when it's
federated you lose the ux you lose the
slickness and the feel and all the
millions of dollars they spend on
developers like mastodon is like not
anywhere close to as nice to use as
twitter so i feel like it's again it's
this trade-off that we make with
everything where it's convenience
comfort speed versus privacy and freedom
right it's very hard to have something
that gives you both i don't know i think
i think uh yeah it is a trade-off have
you used one of these things that i have
not as good as the federator
they're not they're not but the
federation i don't think it's it's a
good i i think uh it requires genius to
require skill it requires great design
to come up with a way to
that you know it's
there's a pareto front here
the trade there's a right way to hit
that trade-off and i honestly think
there's
the ux
the experience
should be centralized should be designed
by the company but the data yeah and
like a lot of stuff that could be used
to violate your basic rights should be
owned by the individual and i think
there's a way to decouple those that
create an incredible experience to where
you go there and you enjoy the market
where you can
share your data and have complete
control over it and always have i mean
there's a lot of basic ux ideas like
just as an example
i think there should always be
in everything you design
a one button that's always there that
says forget i ever existed
delete everything you know about me yeah
and maybe it's maybe it's one button you
click and it asks are you sure and you
have to be able to say yes like that's a
feature that's fundamental to a good
social network i believe like
that currently social networks first of
all most of them don't allow you to do
that they don't make it transparent how
much data they had who they shared it
with and they also make it exceptionally
difficult to delete accounts so like
that's a very basic starting point
but that that having that button means
that you have control but that's step
one of the control there's a
transparency of knowing exactly when
what data is being shared about you how
much data is already being recorded
about you all that is transparency and i
believe in the i believe that's a really
good business model because when there's
transparency and control people would be
willing to give over a lot more data as
long as they know what they're giving
over as long as they know what they can
delete yeah i guess maybe you're more
optimistic about people caring about i
feel like
not ever so few people actually care
about their their privacy and freedom
i've just watched everybody give it up
you know um but but we'll see i guess
just to to bookend that i i think we're
at this moment where obviously the
centralized platforms are just so much
easier and better to use and to to
strike it out and and and you know
venture out and use a uh like a
federated instance or something even
like key base which is kind of like a
cool encrypted way to like have group
chats um it just requires like a lot of
your time and a lot of people don't have
that time but i will say one thing like
i do think there's this future where um
we do go into more of this like
uh try it's called a tribal model or
like tribes um which is this social
environment being built on top of
lightning um by uh
an app called sphinx and the idea is
like kind of like it's like a
decentralized slack like you have your
slack instance which has like a bunch of
people in the community and you have
different ways to um message each other
and it's all encrypted and then it has
like plug-ins for like things like jitsi
instead of zoom so like an open source
encrypted video messenger it has ways to
like plug in the content you want to get
from like uh like different um platforms
that you follow like podcasts things
like that and again it allows you to pay
those people directly in a censorship
resistant private way so it's really
nice to connect to the lighting network
yeah so it's all sort of built on
lightning but the idea you can think
about it is like
you're slowly starting to build up the
idea of a wechat but with freedom
principles right because right now
wechat's like the king of convenience
and comfort but of course it's feeding
all that data to the big brother and the
surveillance state um and then we have
like our own versions over here in
america that are not quite as convenient
or amazing but like we give up slightly
less you know privacy and freedom but
this thing has a lot of promising
features to it it's worth checking out
it's very like early days like it feels
like i mean i was pretty young but it
feels like the 90s in the internet like
it has that feeling
yeah you know it's rough around the
edges but you can feel the magic it's
pretty cool i i'm very much like with
steve jobs on this uh i think the
founding principles are exceptionally
important but at the end of the day the
design
of how sleek it is how well how easy it
is to use
and and that that's not just like pretty
icing on the cake
that is
the icing is the cake yeah because like
how easy it is to use how natural it is
it's the trojan horse thing like you
don't get
it has to be pretty and shiny it has to
have it has to fundamentally connect to
the basics of human nature which is what
is pleasant to use what feels good to
use
you have to you know to get to trick
people into eating the broccoli you have
to put like a delicious look at whatever
ptp is the kind of a pain to use right
for you you want privacy yeah so signals
are upgraded way better yep i mean and
it's way better than it was five years
ago and it's it's not quite as good as
like not quite as seamless right as like
a whatsapp yet um but it's almost there
and they were able to do it and and
you're gonna see that with with bitcoin
wallets as well i mean they're they're
almost there they're like if you use
like a moon wallet is like
i mean it's so cool looking and it's so
seamless and they've spent so many hours
thinking about your experience
we're getting there whereas 10 years ago
it's like impossible to use one of the
things that signal doesn't have and i
believe
these kinds of
applications need to have it's like a i
hate the term but killer app which is
like
a dumb
but very viral and popular reason to
switch
it i didn't see exactly i mean i've been
using signal but i haven't you seen a um
you know uh a big reason to
well you're on it man
i mean the the reason but i haven't
switched everything to it you know what
i mean like yeah the exodus to signal
was in
in january they had a huge user uh
surge for two main reasons one
hilariously enough of course was elon
tweeted like you should use signal right
um
which is not insignificant and then the
other one was that like whatsapp changed
kind of some of its terms of service and
like you know announced to all of its
users in this little pop-up um that it
was gonna be sort of like changing the
way it handled your data that spooked a
lot of people so these two things really
combined um and tens of millions of
people in the following weeks between
january and february joined signal it's
like it really has had its day in the
sun um
and they are like frantically trying to
keep up with it like and it's really
nice to see that uh
that this encrypted messaging service
which which prioritizes your privacy
um in a way that you know you know the
government again may know like the
metadata but doesn't know exactly what
you're saying unless they can get your
hands on your phone i think that's very
very powerful so it can be done i i
don't want to be uh too jaded here i
think it can be done yeah i think um i
think we can fight back and i think we
can make continue to make these digital
communications tools and platforms um in
a way that that that really benefits us
yeah i'm not i'm not sure but i'm
hopeful as well
i'm hopeful that if you look at the
trend of technologies they ultimately
are ones that respect privacy respect
security
and um basic human rights i mean that's
at least the hope
so gary kasparov i'm russian
he means a lot to me on a personal level
he's the chairman of uh human rights
foundation
what does gary have to do with anything
what's your relationship like with him
do you like chess
what what are his specific focuses and
ideas around the hrf can you just speak
to it in general
yeah so our chairman at the human rights
foundation was vast level uh who of
course was like the famous czech
democracy activist
uh who you know helped lead the velvet
revolution and then ended up becoming
the first democratically elected
leader
of the czech republic after the soviet
union fell
he passed away in 2011
and
it was very difficult to find a
replacement uh because who can fill
hovel's shoes you know
but if one could it would be gary right
so we like really tried to get gary to
join then thankfully he agreed and
we've had an amazing relationship with
gary over the years i mean he's been
relentless in his pursuit of freedom i
mean he could have retired and taken his
career in a different direction and he
could be hanging out with putin and have
a pleasure yacht and all kinds of stuff
but he decided to risk it
and if you actually study like the times
when he was running for uh president in
russia masha gessen followed him around
in the man without a face it's a great
great book about putin um there's a
fabulous chapter where she's following
around gary when he's campaigning and
i mean that he risked a lot i mean he
can't go back to russia anymore he gave
up his country um he's given up a huge
amount to be able to speak his mind and
to have this dream this beautiful vision
of a free and democratic russia he
really believes in it it's been a great
experience i work very closely with gary
uh we talk a lot we do different things
around the world together he's
he's come out to a lot of events in
different cities around the world um
and he's been a very active chairman
this isn't some figurehead he's very
involved and it's really really great i
mean everything he's involved with is uh
it's you know as one journalist who
attends our events says when he walks in
the room you know the average iq of the
room goes up pretty significantly uh i'm
not i'm not i'm not a big chess person
unfortunately so i have not been able to
connect with him on that but i think he
probably would prefer it that way you
know all he gets is people who want to
talk to him about chess you know yeah so
here we can we can talk about kind of
human rights strategy and like uh how to
you know improve our fight against uh
against dictators but um he he really
you know has that moral clarity that i
that i that i really uh appreciate so
yeah he's uh so he has a lot of
fascinating ideas about uh artificial
intelligence as well he's opened
my eyes a little bit to the
to the state of russia today because
i've read most books on putin
uh in the english language and sort of
on trying to understand things
and
i try to look at it from a historical
perspective like almost like
we're living a hundred years from now
and i look at putin as a
important figure in the history of human
civilization and study it in that way
i think the way gary looks at it he
probably doesn't appreciate me looking
at the way i do but the way he looks at
it is
we can still
change the direction
of russia
and we individual human beings and we
communities and we nations can take
actions
have policies that can change the
direction of russia to me i take a uh
sort of going to the library passive
view of studying fascinating aspects of
russia to me russia means
like most of my family suffered through
the soviet union and
i see beauty and suffering the the
poetry the music the stories
and just there's so much love that
emerged from the pain that i just enjoy
that the music of that but
to gary
and to many activists that i speak to to
them
they
they love not just the russia of the
past
they have a vision and a hope for russia
of the future and that
and they criticize me a little bit for
being a little bit too scholarly about
the past and ignoring the future and
there's something to that so he's he's
he opens my eyes
uh to look to the future of russia gary
and
a handful of other russian activists
that we work closely with including
vladimir kara murza who again i mean
it's just incredibly heroic the man has
survived two poisonings by putin
um they like to say that you know
russians will bring democracy
to russia on their own terms they don't
need our help this is what vladimir
especially says
but what he does say is that we should
stop propping up putin like that that's
kind of his uh stop uh kind of
legitimizing him that that's kind of his
argument he's like we don't need your
foreign interference we don't need your
ideas we don't you know we don't need
your help we can do it on our own but
please stop like propping up our you
know illegitimate ruler that's kind of
like his point of view which which i
think is interesting um
and fair
yeah let me just say on one unrelated
comment
some people criticize me
and others like joe rogan for giving
people a platform
i think in some cases that's applicable
but i think in most cases
knowledge is power
and
there's no such thing as giving a
platform the conversation just shines a
light
as long as you shine the light well and
uh as long as in shining the light and
having the conversation you reveal
something fundamental
about the state of things about the
people
whether that's putin or some of the
other controversial figures that have
come up
in possible future conversations so um i
don't like this kind of platforming idea
i think conversations save us don't they
don't destroy us
yeah i mean that's that's journalism
though i mean that's very different from
you know advocacy or strategic thinking
about
what to do with russia um absolutely
yeah we should interview everybody and
everybody should know exactly what
they're thinking yeah you know but i you
know journalism to me has become a dirty
word because
because it's done so poorly by so many
people that um
you know i listen to sometimes certain
programs like i don't know
like uh meet the press and the fox
sunday program just certain things just
to tune in and see what different news
medias
are paying attention to and the kind of
interviews they do you know
is like f five minutes at most but
usually it's like one minute it's these
quick clip things
and it's very gotcha and they're looking
for ways to to sort of grab almost a
misstatement they want to catch you off
guard
they want to ask the quote like like the
harsh question
but without any of the like the dance of
conversation that reveals the truth
you know you can't just get to the truth
by
asking it
you have to
sneak up on it
and i think that's an art form and i
think that art form involves long-form
conversation like i'm a huge believer in
just
i guess that's what's called i don't
know in-depth journal or whatever like
where you spend months or years on the
story yeah and then in that same way i
think of long-form conversation is like
you spend many hours and you spend
months and years preparing for those
many hours but like it's not this
like short form trying to
trying to get the most controversial
little tidbit of a story out and
unfortunately the funding mechanisms
behind journalism are such that they are
incentivized clickbait journalism versus
like
in-depth right long-form digging for the
truth i have a conflicted relationship
with journalism because to me press
freedom is so core right and independent
journalists around the world are so
brave yes um and especially in countries
like russia or china et cetera and um
really good journalism is still
something i absolutely i love and i
enjoy like this especially like to say
again this new yorker piece on what's
happening to the uyghurs is incredibly
well reported however
by the you know on the other hand you
have um
in this sort of clickbaity
journalism that's all about
sensationalism and and that gets used as
a tool i mean you know whether it be
against things like privacy or bitcoin
or whatever you have like people who
sensationalize and it gets used in the
service of the surveillance state the
war on terror whatever you know it's
it's difficult but you know i think
journalism is essential to a free
society um but
it can it can sometimes be it can wear
my patients thin sometimes like it's
been uh to be honest has been a huge
burden on me personally if i were to
just turn this into a therapy session
for a brief moment when i look at people
when i interact with people i'd like to
see the best in them
and
the burden that weighs heavy on me is
sometimes people i talk to may not be
good people
and i don't
i'd love to i believe everybody has good
in them and i try to focus on that
the burden that weighs on me
is sometimes that
there may be conversations where that's
irresponsible
where
i have to also call people out
i have to do enough the hard lifting and
the hard work of knowing exactly
what are the bad things that that person
has done
and i also have the responsibility to
call them out on it and that's for me
personally just not an unpleasant
feeling that's where speaking to
journalism
like i think journalists are too much
focused on the
the bad things a person has done
and not enough on the digging into the
the the full complexity of the human
being behind all the things that have
been done but at the same time
you know i can't have a conversation
with hitler
and not ask about the prison camps yeah
yeah yeah no so from the human rights
perspective one of our programs is we
like we try to
go after people who do like pr for
dictators so like
like then a lot of people do like pr
firms in washington get hired by all
these dictators
um
and they make a lot of money to make
them look good it's called whitewashing
or putting lipstick on a pig or whatever
you want to do astroturfing is like the
fake make like fake social media
accounts to make it seem like you're
popular
um but whitewashing is a huge issue so
um i think it's completely fair to
interview like dictators and stuff like
that amanpour does a pretty good job
she's she's really good she
she makes sure that there's no messing
around i mean her interviews of
mussolini recently the ugandan dictator
was very good i mean she's basically
like well like
why are you rigging another election
please tell us you know and she's
fearless and she's good and that can be
a helpful thing to have on youtube as a
resource um but it's it's it's quite
clear when
when it descends into a pr session and
you just have to be like very careful
about it like asma al-assad the wife of
the butcher in syria
you know was like profiled by by vogue
and it was this whole rose in the desert
things a bunch of nonsense terrible
terrible terrible uh total propaganda
but a like honest interview where
you uh you know you're asking about all
the tough questions
um very important you know so i think i
think it's just a matter of like content
is there a good resource to study
washing like to know what manipulative
pr looks like
i think you just you should know if
you've researched the topic you should
know it inside you because it would be
is there anything you're afraid to ask
that would be make sure you're asking
all the questions as long as you're
asking all the questions that you have
you're good but if there's something
you're afraid to ask
then then maybe you're self-censoring
right that's a good way it's it takes us
back to that like uh what is it that
litmus test about
uh is your country allowed to have a gay
pride parade yeah
so there's like obvious things that
might be on your mind that you just want
to ask and uh you shouldn't you
shouldn't run for that as long as you
feel like you're a free person when
you're interviewing
i think you're good
that's beautifully put
are there books
technical fiction philosophical that had
a impact on your life
that you recommend or even resources
like blogs
films
i have
four books i'll briefly mention
um number one is the fear the fear had a
deep impact on me the fear was written
by peter godwin it's about the
systematic dismantling of zimbabwe under
robert mugabe peter zimbabwean and it is
a riveting book i think everyone should
read it because it helps you understand
what it's like to go through not just
authoritarianism but also hyperinflation
and i mean really you know at the end of
the day what the fear describes is how
mugabe took this country
in the 1980s and he actually brought it
back in time to the 1920s in terms of
infrastructure literacy rates health
rates all these things he stole so much
from the people and it's a heartbreaking
book but it's a very important book um
and it's a it's a way to do
excellent excellent journalism
so the fear is a good one isn't this a
personal story
absolutely yeah because he he was it's
part of his whole family story and he's
in there he's interviewing people
personally um
so i i would say that one is it also
connected and sorry to interrupt is it
is it from the inflation perspective is
it is a good study of hyperinflation and
the effects
does uh does bitcoin at all come as a as
a
no you know a discussion of money does
that come into this or is it purely the
experience of inflation is almost a
symptom of an authoritarian a little bit
a little bit i would say it's not deep i
have another book on on that which i'll
recommend in a second but
i would just say that it's it's a very
powerfully written
book about how society can
uh
basically deteriorate and how you can
lose everything um the second book is i
just mentioned it but the man without a
face by masha gessen incredible book
about modern russia and putin just a
masterpiece
so that would be one of your favorite
books about putin in russia that one's
the best i mean she's just so fearless
incredible she interviews putin in the
book
at the end it's really good um
third one is a fiction book
uh called the mandibles uh written by
lionel shriver
this one's good it's a good gift book
it's funny it's dark it's witty but it's
about the united states
losing its status as the reserve
currency and going into hyperinflation
and what's interesting is that the
characters in the book map
where we are today the book itself is
about the late i think it's the late
2020s and we have a populist president
who decides to announce that the united
states is like basically going to
default on its debts and the rest of the
world comes up with like a new currency
and everybody switches to that one and
the dollar like overnight becomes
worthless and all these like economists
are saying no it's fine like inflation
won't be a problem
and there's this one character who's an
icon who's like an economist and he he's
basically he gets to the point where
he's living as a refugee in prospect
park in brooklyn and he's still saying
everything's fine you know so it's like
it's dry it's witty but it's also about
um the surveillance state it's about
centralization of power it's really good
so the mandibles i would highly
recommend um so those three books and
then on the topic of bitcoin because we
talked about it a lot i would just say
that my portal into bitcoin was the
internet of money by andreas
antonopoulos oh wow and i did it by
audiobook and
i just think this is an important one
for people to start with
because he goes through all the main
concepts whether it be proof of work or
you know how the network functions but
he does it in a way that's extremely
engaging and really fascinating and it
really just kind of like sparked my
curiosity is it is it discussing the
the technical sides are also the
philosophical because a lot of people
mention sort of the bitcoin standard is
the philosophical entry into the whole
bitcoin world very different from the
bitcoin standard it's it's more for like
the average person um it's not a history
book it's a collection of his talks that
he gave over like two or three years
it's not very technical it's very
approachable yeah um and some of it
might be dated now because it's like
2015 2016.
but i mean it's great it's great to hear
a shout out for andres because he he
seems to be one of the seminal figures
to sort of uh
make bitcoin ideas accessible oh andre
this is the ghost he's the
trace is the ghost trace is the ghost i
know a lot of people have issues with
some of his like more recent work but
andres is the goat i mean yeah he's the
reason i'm in bitcoin i mean he's the
reason i'm in bitcoin so yeah that's
that's fascinating it's and it's it's
funny it's funny to watch the bitcoin
maximalist immune system also attacking
uh attacking him and and this whole
feedback mechanism is working together
it's fascinating well i probably
consider myself a maximalist but i
really like andreas so i think there's
room for nuance there's room for nuance
in this world i'm glad to hear that uh
if people are fascinated by your work
what is the way to get more of alex
so two years ago
i came together with seven other people
from around the world and we wrote a
book in a book sprint we lived in a
house for four days we wrote a book
together it was really cool it's like a
design sprint but we did it in book
format and my co-authors are from
nigeria
venezuela the philippines from former
soviet union from all over and it's
called the little bitcoin book and
i'm still proud of it it's 100 pages
it's something you give to somebody who
knows nothing about the topic and it's
not a technical book it's about the sort
of social political
uh aspect of it like why is it important
for you for your finances for your
freedom for for your future
and uh we've translated it into like a
lot of languages by now uh i think
english spanish and portuguese are for
sale and it little bitcoinbook.com you
know you go buy it but we've made it as
for as a free pdf in
mandarin hindi punjab uh korean uyghur
which i was really excited about arabic
farsi and i mean it's breads man it's
been really really cool so i'm proud of
that
um
i also made a video that did very well
for reason magazine called why is
bitcoin protecting human rights around
the world it's five minutes and it just
i feel like i tried to boil everything
that i
that i want to tell you into this five
minute video
so there's that um i would recommend
that and then if you're interested in
the
why have governments not stopped it
which i think is really intriguing i
wrote this long essay in quillette in
february called
you know um
why haven't governments banned bitcoin
and um maybe that'll be a helpful guide
to some folks is this speaking to the
trojan horse idea that there's something
uh enticing about it yeah at the end it
does get into that but it really also
just kind of goes through technically
why is it hard to do a 51 attack like
why would like if a government wanted to
could it really get all that equipment
there's a semiconductor shortage like it
can't like there's like certain things
that stop governments from doing it
right and same thing with like this idea
of a 6102 which would be
um based on the idea of the executive
order 6102 which is from 1933 when fdr
made holding gold illegal in the united
states the idea is that like banks would
go around now with governments and try
to like steal everybody's bitcoin well
in bitcoin we have like a practice um
called proof of keys day every january
3rd
you know which is coinciding with the
launch of the bitcoin blockchain where
we all like withdraw our keys from
exchanges and we'd be sovereign users
what we're doing is we're preparing for
a 6102 attack which will one day
probably come right so
the essay just goes through all of the
like possible attacks and it runs
through like the ones that happened like
the chinese and indian governments the
two largest governments in the world
both tried to attack bitcoin by banning
their citizens from exchanging fiat for
bitcoin it didn't work interest instead
exploded it's like the barbra streisand
effect where
ins when you know by
by making something public and saying
you shouldn't do x it actually increases
attention about x a lot more right um
so i i think there's a lot of
interesting game theory there that
people would enjoy do you think uh
are you do you seriously concerned about
this kind of thing where
the ideas of sovereignty and that
bitcoin espouses would would actually
one day be tested
do you have a like a legitimate concern
because you said like one day very well
might
do you think it might
yeah well first of all bitcoin has been
attacked again many times and
we talk about the
you spoke about this with nick carter on
your show um
the sort of protocol wars or conflict or
whatever right and
bitcoin almost died a whole bunch of
times during that and ended up surviving
oh wow i didn't i didn't know how bad
the box oh it got blocked really bad it
was
it was a sort of a very existential
threat and um bitcoin survived and
that's why i'm so intrigued by it is
that it it basically survived
an attack
in an environment several years ago when
bitcoin was much more vulnerable than it
is today um it survived an attack by a
conglomeration of chinese billionaires
silicon valley corporations and a ton of
people who owned the majority of the
hash rate and all this infrastructure
they had 83 of all the hash rate and
they couldn't get what they wanted and
that was so intriguing to me like why
didn't it why i didn't get killed
so as nick said i think you should read
the block size war which is a book on
that you can get on amazon by jonathan
beer really good kind of like really
important to understand
the the the scaling conflict and the
visions over the different visions of
what bitcoin should be
and you know again people like me
believe it should be a freedom tool not
like a payments technology for retail
and i'm just i'm glad it worked out the
way it did because it almost didn't
do you think uh humans civilization will
destroy itself
so if we think about all the threats
facing
human civilization uh nuclear war
natural or engineer pandemics
you know we talk about human rights
violations we talk about uh
authoritarian governments yeah uh taking
control of the money supply yeah but do
you have great grander concerns for the
future of human civilization
do you have hope for us becoming
multi-planetary species
yeah i mean i i guess long term we'd
want to decentralize right we don't want
a single point of failure in a physical
speech because the earth is a single
point of failure
um but no i mean you look at all this
kind of like space uh fiction and i mean
who would want to live on mars man it's
like a freaking desert i mean the earth
is so beautiful i hope we can
save it you know it's just so gorgeous
when you look at the earth compared to
any other like exoplanet or whatever you
look at it i mean the earth is so
spectacular and wondrous and singular i
think we've got to do everything we can
to save it here
that's funny i mean i uh
sure a lot of people would have said
that about europe uh before the
explorers ventured out
uh columbus and the rest on to the
unknown the the thing about human nature
is that we are explorers too
some small fraction of us are insane
enough to explore in the most dangerous
uh grounds and i'm pretty sure there's
quite a few people that would love
to take the first step on mars the first
few steps on mars
in the harshest of environments even
when the odds of survival extremely low
and i'm thankful for those people
as i sit back and drink my vodka back
here on earth and enjoy
friendships because i think ultimately
that step to mars
is going to be a first step into a multi
into uh exploring and colonizing the
rest of the galaxy mars might be a harsh
environment but maybe space is not
uh like
uh other planets other exoplanets but
also forget planets just creating
colonies that flow about in space
there's exciting technologies that are
yet to be discovered yet to be
engineered and built
that i think require that first painful
step
like uh yeah the journey of a thousand
miles starts with one step i think mars
is that first step yeah no i was born
the day before the challenger blew up
and it was always so tragic for me to
look back on that because that really
like altered our arc in terms of space
exploration like that had not happened
we'd be in a very different arc and i do
respect and admire people pushing
for exploration but i at the same time i
just i want to recognize like the we
just you know we know how unique earth
is and
i do think we got to do everything we
can to uh
to protect
it i think you avoid answering the
question if we're going to destroy
ourselves
yeah yeah i guess are you if you do not
you're okay fine if we do not
decentralize properly
out into different
physical spaces probably i guess yeah
and then i mean do you do you have
concerns that are immediately facing you
so
um
not in terms of the injustices on the
world but nuclear war yeah look i'm a
lot more concerned about what's
happening right now like like what is
destroying ourselves
if you were to go and see what's
happening in xinjiang or north korea
right now or eritrea
that is destroying ourselves yeah and
it's already happened so i guess the end
that's why i said that is yes i mean if
you don't decentralize and power is
completely under one
person um life is destroyed as we know
it and and you know you don't have to go
into science fiction to know what a
totalitarian hellscape dystopia is
there's several that exist already and
and you know let's try to like help
those people at the same time as we're
trying to like push out into space would
be my like counter i guess yeah i agree
with you in my mind the sort of
destruction and suffering are next-door
neighbors so yeah we don't need to
destroy all of human civilization if
much a large fraction lives in
conditions that we would equate to
suffering that's uh that's not a good
world
is there advice that you would give to
uh young people today about life about
career about how they can help a world
where 53 percent
are living uh
are living under authoritarian
governments but in general a world
that's full of
injustice but also full of opportunity
just thinking about my own
upbringing i went to a public school
here and um we never learned about money
it was never part of our curriculum um
even personal finances was not part of
our curriculum you could take like an
optional course to learn about like
business or something
um and i think that that would be really
valuable
as a young person or as a teenager
to start
incorporating into your children's lives
is like a curiosity about what is money
i think would be very health healthy
regardless of what path that takes them
down um because we don't think about it
enough either from an administrative
sort of personal finance thing about
like responsibility uh or
more fundamentally like what is it and
who creates it where did it come from
both of those things are very important
so my advice to a young person would be
to get to the point where you feel like
you can
answer the question what is money
[Laughter]
so you ultimately see money as a as kind
of power and freedom and um
a mechanism is suffering so core to
everything
the united states
whether you want to call it the pax
americana the empire the hyper power
whatever you want to call this moment in
time where the us is dominant around the
world it is because of the fact that we
have this petrodollar system where we
are able to force
the saudis and other oil producing
nations to sell their oil in dollars
that is really inescapable inseparable
from our power um and that's very rarely
talked about and it's very important to
understand so yeah young people could
start thinking about that stuff it'd be
good
i remember being it sounds silly to say
but i remember being uh really
uncomfortable that i was dependent on my
parents
at a young age
or for like financial you need to be 18
have a bank account or whatever right
one one of the people that we supported
at ahref through our we do software
development funding for people in
bitcoin uh open source projects and he's
one of the guys we funded is this uh
very young smart sort of prodigy he's
like 17. but one of the reasons he got
into bitcoin was because he wanted to
have control of his money when he was
like 14. yeah i mean if you think in
history people who invented uh
uh all kinds of incredible contributions
to science or math i mean a lot of them
did it before they were 15. yeah so
think about that maturity that is
capable and possible in many people like
i've participated in some of the years
ago some of the
sort of selection processes for like the
teal fellowship which is like really
amazing like these people who are 14 15
16 who don't need to go to college
they're already like so smart they can
figure it out but they wouldn't be
allowed to have a bank account right so
hey
that's kind of cool like now you have a
permissionless money you can you can
open up yourself without uh permission
from your parents that's kind of cool
yeah that's fascinating to me i i i feel
like i would have loved my parents
more
if you had a little more separation if i
had freedom to to fully realize myself
because i felt like i was a little bit
trapped by i don't know it's uh uh it's
not explicit right it's a little bit
it's like a subtle
push that you're somehow dependent on
them i mean part of that is like
i think it actually very much has to do
not talking about money like what what
does it take to operate as an individual
entity in this world like knowing that
when you're 10 years old
knowing that when you're very young
so that you've
then you see the how amazing it is
to uh have the support of your parents
until you're 18. like have that freedom
have the freedom to appreciate the value
your parents bring and at the same time
the freedom to leave
in some
capacity
to uh carve your own path i mean like
just just all of that i think for for
weirdos like me especially because that
was a very non-traditional path that uh
i think it would be very empowering and
certainly would be empowering in the
third world too not just weirdos like
you yeah i was going to mention one of
the people i got
who taught me about bitcoin
her name is roya mapub she's an afghan
technology ceo
and in 2013 she started paying her
employees in bitcoin because uh they
were not allowed to open bank accounts
the women that worked for her she
started the country's first female like
all-female software company
and if they brought cash home their like
husbands or uncles or brothers would
steal it from them there's a power
patriarchal dominance thing going on
but they had phones and she was able to
pay them in bitcoin and no one knew and
it gave them that power and that that's
always stuck in my mind is a very
interesting uh effect of this kind of
thing of permissionless money like that
it could be an empowerment tool so
absolutely
so in your own personal life
where did the
deep
concern
for the for the suffering in the world
come from where was that born
i was going to be an engineer actually
and then in 2003 we invaded iraq and i
got very interested in why we did that
as a nation
and i switched to my focus of study to
like international relations and that's
how i kind of went down the kind of
political science democracy rabbit hole
and ended up getting a job at the human
rights foundation so that that i'm a
very much a child of like 911 and the
iraq war those are the two really
formative events for me personally can
you break that apart a little bit like
what
illusion about this world was uh
broken apart
by
the invasion of
iraq well i think first of all 911 just
shifted the world dynamics completely
from a focus on big power politics
between the us russia and china to this
new threat of islamic terror
and a lot of it we learned later a lot
of the things we did were manufactured
choreographed like there were no wmds in
iraq like the reason our rulers said we
needed to invade and destroy this
country was a lie
um and that that i think has really been
forgotten like i think a lot of like the
zoomers like today don't really know a
lot about that time period i mean it was
pretty crazy unanimously
i mean democrat republican like
joe biden hillary clinton like and the
republicans everybody wanted to invade
this country and it was very it's very
um
it's a confusing time there's a really
good book by ian mcewen called saturday
a fiction book that takes place during i
think 2003 and it's one day in the life
of the doctor in london
it's really good though to revisit this
time because
he has two characters he has a character
in the book one of whom is very pro-war
and one of them is very against war
basically he the father himself is
pro-war and his son is against it and
they have all these debates and it's
nice to go back to revisit but that time
was
it's really crazy and it really showed
you that like the media could be
captured into like helping promote this
idea of like invading another country
so i was very curious about why we did
it and like who who was pulling the
strings and why what are the reasons
that we went and what's really
interesting is that like i took all
these courses on and interviewed all
these decision makers
whether they were like neocons or
whatever different people who were
involved and
the whole like dollar reserve currency
thing like really never came up until
like i i learned about it more recently
because of bitcoin like and today when i
look back it seems kind of obvious that
the reason we invaded iraq was because
saddam hussein wanted to sell oil in
euros
it seems really obvious when you go back
and look at the chronology of it um and
we were like no we actually don't want
you to sell dollars in euros because
that would threaten the dollar so we're
going to invade you and then you're not
going to do it and no one else is going
to like sell dollars in europe oil and
euros right um i guess you could say the
same thing about gaddafi but um
we we as a nation have very much
protected our reserve currency let's put
it that way yeah actually one of the
things that bitcoin community has
motivated me to do is to look back to
the histories that i have studied myself
from just even the two world wars
the history of the 20th century from a
perspective of the monetary system
of of money and it's it's interesting
it's interesting to look at human
history in the context of money can't we
be patriotic and be pro america but like
not want the petro dollar like i should
be proud of my country why do we need to
be propping up the saudis why do we need
to be you know threatening to invade
other countries if they sell their oil
for a different currency i think we can
be just as powerful as we are today if
not more powerful in a bitcoin world if
you think about the infrastructure
americans are building all the
innovations we're building all the
wealth we have i think we'll be fine
better than fine and we won't have these
horrible negative externalities it's
it's really a an optimistic vision for
the future
i thought we learned the lesson of 9 11
and uh the invasion of iraq and
afghanistan
but we're leaving and you know biden
announced we're leaving afghanistan this
year 20 years for what
taliban are going to take over again i
mean that's like at least the good
this the longest war right the uh the
forever wars i feel like the past 20
years or whatever it is um
18 years 19 years
we've been very skeptical about invading
other countries
about
we've been skeptical about military
intervention in other nations
well
our leaders certainly haven't we're we
have like seven active wars right now
and then neither the russians and the
chinese everybody's starting to invade
everybody else
i mean so yes but i meant to a degree
that i was worried about like conflicts
with uh hot conflicts with iran with
north korea
those kinds of things sure that uh there
was not as much
warmongering as
as i was afraid about but yes you're
absolutely right we're still
there's a there's a big presence by the
united states and other nations and
across the world that's military this
the military-industrial complex
is a thing
that um
has huge detrimental ripple effects
throughout the entirety of our
governments
yeah so the big question is how do we
prevent the rise of this like
authoritarian
um
surveillance state in china
while at the same time kind of diffusing
the military-industrial complex on our
side that to me is like the biggest
challenge of our time
i don't have the answer but we should
keep digging
yeah i i believe there's a technology
technological innovations
you're suggesting that perhaps one of
the technological innovations like is
bitcoin is a big part of it yeah on the
money side i think the information side
there's there's innovations that are
open
that's possible and the political side
i'm the most skeptical about
i just feel like there's uh without hot
wars that we don't seem to make any kind
of progress
bureaucracies just grow corruption and
greed grow
and human nature does not
does not do well in the political
arena so i hope technology can
outpace the darker sides of human nature
so you're busy fighting the demons
the darkness that's out there but
looking in the mirror you're finite
being unfortunately this ride ends for
you soon pretty soon
um do you ever ask
yourself about the meaning of it all
of
why the hell us uh descendants of apes
are even on this thing striving so hard
to make a better world for ourselves
i don't often zoom out that much i feel
like my day job is pretty interesting it
keeps me very engaged
with all the stuff we've been talking
about uh as far as the
meaning of life though
it seems quite clear that
we do have the possibility as a species
to create um these you know beautiful
communities and constructs and to share
an exploration
of the world together
that is
often marred by
cold realities that we've discussed but
i do feel like in a way um that the
meaning of life is that that pursuit uh
um of course biologically is you know
the spread our species right but also to
to pursue knowledge and science and
innovation and and and freedom most
importantly i mean i think it freedom
has to guide us or else we end up
with prison camps if we don't let
freedom guide us we end up with the
prison camps so we need to have
scientific innovation and adventurism
and colonization of the stars but
without the slavery and without the
prison camps i think that's so key
there's something about the
creation of beauty that seems
fundamental to human nature and what
seems beautiful
as these communities
that um
that don't have suffering they don't
have injustice and we have some kind of
inner
sense of what is injustice
i don't know like some of the human
rights that you've mentioned earlier
they're they're they're just
philosophical constructs
but there also seem to be somehow deeply
in us
too
it there we have a sense of what is
right and what is wrong
it's not just
a kind of illusion that we've all agreed
arbitrary power torture
uh executions we know these things are
wrong i mean we know they're wrong
we don't have to read a book to know
that
um
but you do you do need to
people can get brainwashed i mean you
talk to people who've grown up in north
korea that you know they don't know any
better like they don't know what's going
on in the outside world
so they've never experienced anything
differently so that's why
look technology can play a big role here
in terms of like the meaning of it all
like it can really help emancipate
liberate people at least so that they
can make their own choices
about what to do at least so that we're
on a level playing field so technologies
like the internet and bitcoin um they
can at least like give you the option to
do things your own way on your own terms
and then
and then and then from there we'll see
um you know i you know i think it's
important that we have design choices
where we can like
um
have a little more say and that not
everything be pre-programmed for us that
that would be very disappointing
so i mean
yeah the open web and encryption in
bitcoin these are things that help
uh prevent social engineering and that
promote more freedom and and more
possibilities honestly and more
entrepreneurship and more creativity and
more scientific inquiry i mean think
about the people who tried to shut down
scientific inquiry 500 600 years ago or
whatever that we're trying to say
um
you know the earth was the center of
everything and they were wrong you know
and then you know all these conservative
religious types throughout history have
always said that um
you know there's no no value in science
and there's no value in technology and
they've been wrong the whole time so
let's continue pushing here let's
continue pushing
it's kind of scary to me sometimes
humbling beautiful but also scary to
think of you mention
north korea people are kind of living in
ignorance
it's scary to me to think about how much
ignorance there is in the world today
like how little i know personally or us
as a human civilization knows that has
yet to be discovered
between laziness and and ignorance right
like so i would be lazy if i didn't you
know
take advantage of the internet right
someone in north korea doesn't have the
opposite they don't have the option
there's literally no way for them to
access the internet so there's kind of
like um
social laziness
that philosophers have warned about
forever that we basically become sheep
okay
and then there's actual like
brainwashing and censorship that's
possible like by closing off your
population and keeping them off like the
internet right
um so i think these are two very
different concepts absolutely but i also
mean just like
not even laziness but cognitive
limitations and just historical
scientific limitations like
you know
we're very young species like all of the
exciting stuff we've been talking about
have happened on the scale of decades
maybe centuries it's very we're very
young and all the cool stuff we've come
up with
and it's just humbling to think about
how little we know but you're right that
you know
ultimately having the freedom to keep
exploring keep venturing out
even if we later discover that a lot of
the stuff we've been doing
now is
um
is ethically horrible if you think about
animals or i think about robots a lot
the kind of things we might be doing
to other consciousnesses that are here
on earth might be we might see his
atrocities later on but ultimately you
have to have the freedom to explore
those kinds of ideas and without that
freedom
you don't even get the chance to be lazy
yeah i mean look don't be a sheep
okay it's easy to beat no offense to
sheep and there's some practical things
man get on signals start encrypting your
messages
take control over your your privacy
the media doesn't want you to but check
out bitcoin you can be your own bank you
can transact with people around the
world and no one can stop you this can
put it put it put a stop to a lot of
arbitrary power and a lot of human
rights violations
um you know don't use wechat uh question
more uh you know research what's
happening in xinjiang i mean learn about
what's happening
in the genocide in that country and
let's think about how we can build our
society so that we never have that kind
of power concentration ever again and
each of us can make a difference alex
it's a huge honor to talk to you i've
been a fan of your work a lot of people
spoke really highly of you as one of the
beacons of hope for human civilization
so
i'm really glad we got a chance to talk
thank you for wasting all this time with
me today it's been an honor thanks man a
lot of fun thanks for listening to this
conversation with alex glasteen to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description
and now let me leave you with some words
from alice walker
the most common way people give up their
power
is by thinking they don't have any
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you