Hello, and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to the blockchain socialist podcast, your favorite source for Marxist analysis of the blockchain and crypto space. I'm your host, the blockchain socialist. Is that how we start a podcast? I don't really know. But what I do know is that usually you gotta have that, like, fade into the music type of thing, like all the cool podcasts have it. We just they're kinda talking and then their voices kinda get quieter and quieter as as the music gets a little bit louder. It usually lasts about half a minute or so. Bitcoin is a libertarian's wet dream. Blockchain and socialism have nothing to do with each other. Stop trying to sell us your socialist shit coin. These are just a couple of the responses I've gotten online so far look I know this isn't the typical topic discussion for socialists I get why a lot of people on the left have strong aversions to it. It gets a bad rap and usually rightly so. There are a lot of things wrong with the crypto space from a socialist or a left wing anarchist view. In fact, I've written about it quite a bit. It seems dominated by right wing libertarians, anarcho capitalists, and crypto fascists. Plus, all you hear in the news is about the crazy price swings of Bitcoin and how people have sold their fucking house to buy Bitcoin thinking they would become rich only to lose 90% of their value. These are all fair criticisms. However just like the left doesn't get fair airtime in mainstream media under this capitalist hellscape there are similar tactics used against cryptocurrency and blockchain although a bit less I believe there's a gap in the understanding of blockchain on the left that will be detrimental to the movement in the future. My goal is to present a positive vision regarding blockchain for the left so that we can realize its full potential to further our goals and work against the institutions of capitalism that bind us to wage slavery for better future. Like the Internet or a hammer, Blockchain is just a tool with no inherent political motives. The Internet was meant to make information free and thus lead to a freer society. But decades out from this experiment, it's clear that capitalist forces have destroyed that dream as companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and all the other ones dominate our digital lives which have increasingly become a part of our normal lives. The Internet didn't fail to meet its goal because the Internet was inherently capitalist. It was because capitalist institutions dominated it. There's no clear anti capitalist opposition to them, at least not a successful one. This pattern is going to continue with all other technologies if we do nothing about it. We should instead be trying to understand these technologies and how they can be used to fight back. So why should you trust me? Well, I've worked in the blockchain space and been interested in it for a few years now. I've helped build proof of concepts for blockchain applications and strategies for companies and government institutions to pursue blockchain. And I'm also, I'd like to think at least, decently well read socialist. The reason that I got interested in blockchain in the first place was because of the potential that I recognized, that it had for a more fair political and economic system, socialist one. Although on the surface, the blockchain and cryptocurrency space may seem like an absolute hellhole of right wing nut jobs, and there's some truth to that. If we do a thorough analysis of the technology, we can imagine how it could fundamentally change our relationship to production and each other. So in order to repent for my sins of being a class trader, I'm trying to use what I've learned to further the immortal science of Marxism through the site that I started, the blockchainsocialist.com. It's where I publish all of the articles and interviews that I've done. So if you're curious about blockchain and how it could potentially be helpful for left wing and anti capitalist causes, If you want to learn about Blockchain without having to be bombarded with, right wing content and economic fantasies of Anarcho Capitalists, then you've come to the right place. This space is meant to try to look beyond the neoliberal and right wing libertarian framework that's usually used in mainstream Blockchain and cryptocurrency discourse. It's to try to explore the possibilities for using decentralized technologies to undermine the capitalist states and begin creating an alternative to the hell world we find ourselves in. I also know that nerdy left theory stuff can be boring for some, so I also try to use a lot of memes and humor to help make it a bit spicier. There are already a few projects working on creating some type of alternative system to the current one. They may have their own subreddits or and their own websites but a lot of them in my opinion are a bit flawed and can use some socialist influence. So the hope here is to act as a a platform for a lot of these different types of projects to be discussed from an explicitly left wing point of view in the hopes of creating a broader crypto leftist project and community. If you're a lefty just starting out to learn about blockchain or if you're already knowledgeable about blockchain but kind of a political, and you're curious about how blockchain can help the left, I would suggest starting with the Blockchain 101 for socialist series that I've already published on my site to learn what I think are the things that blockchain can bring to the Left. I'd also suggest joining the r/cryptoleftist subreddit to get not only my latest articles that I always publish on that subreddit but also general Blockchain news from a Left wing perspective and then you can also follow me on Twitter at IDMSBFTMOD or just search the Blockchain Socialist to check out my tweets and keep up with me or if you want to learn much more about the technical technical details about how Blockchain works without any bias, neither left nor right, I would recommend this video by 3blue1brown titled But how does Bitcoin actually work? It's really good, it's purely, technical review, but it covers all of the things that you need to know as a foundation for blockchain as I've mentioned before I've published about 15 articles already about the intersection between blockchain and left on the blockchainsocialist.com including interviews but the interviews I've published have all been transcribed and while I think they were great interviews one of the reasons I'm pushing myself to do this podcast is I think it also be great if I could just publish the audio of the interviews that I have or just audio of my thoughts, to expand on different ideas that I've written about. Since some people prefer to listen rather than reading due to time. On top of that, I'm also going to start republishing some of my articles on medium as another way to expand my audience which I'll link in the post if you want to read it there or share it on social media. So if you're just now discovering this new space for crypto leftist or you've been around for a while, thanks for listening. If you really think that there needs to be a voice for the left in the largely right wing dominated space of Blockchain and Crypto, please consider contributing a few bucks to my Patreon if you have the means to do so. If you become a patron, you get special access to polls that will guide the project, extra channels in the dedicated crypto leftist discord server, and you help me be able to afford the server costs and equipment like the microphone I'm using right now which I was able to purchase thanks to my first two patrons, Matthew and Paul. So thank you guys for the support. It's really meant a lot to me. I will never have advertisements or be paid to shield for any crypto projects trying to ICO, so I'm fully funded by listeners like you and I promise to continue to give an objectively left wing point of view. In the future, I'm also hoping to use the money to help fund projects that align with the principles of readers and listeners to try to experiment with these things in real life. So thank you comrades and never hesitate to reach out or directly message me on any of the platforms I've mentioned before. I try my best to answer everyone and I'm open to any feedback or criticisms.