Free Market Friends with Naomi Oba
About a month ago I spoke at Dappcon about Solidarity Primitives we've been building at Bread Cooperative. Before my talk, Naomi Oba gave her own wonderful presentation titled Crypto Culture and its Discontents that unknowingly set the stage quite well for mine so I had to ask her on the podcast.
We discussed the issues with crypto culture including obsession with quantification and financialization, and how to feel emotions instead. Naomi also helped write the Sapphire Punk manifesto, an exploration of a post-cypherpunk politics that reject the extreme individualism rooted in the original cypherpunk movement.
"All that is solid turns into data points." - Engels probably if he was still around
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Transcript
Then I realized there's many things I'm unhappy with in crypto, so maybe I'll just talk about that. Which maybe the the side effect of that is that then our our feelings don't speak at all. Maybe think about the thing that made you feel good and not horrible about yourself. And wouldn't it be nice if we built something that made people feel less horrible? And that is, like, also true in crypto. Right? Like, we we have this entire mantra of moving fast and breaking things, and it's often, I think, things we don't even understand or feel any responsibility to, like, let's say, take care of it or even acknowledge that maybe we did some wrong. We all have things to hide. I think Like, none of us would want our entire Google search history to suddenly be on the blockchain. Does everything really have to be traded? Does everything really have to be commodified? Maybe if you need to put your friend's time on chain, you've maybe not understood the real value of friendship to begin with, and you have some hard work to do on yourself first.
This episode is sponsored by NIM, the world's most private VPN that protects your Internet traffic and metadata. Unlike traditional VPNs, NIM uses a decentralized mix net to scramble your Internet data, hiding who you're talking to, when, and how often. You can switch between full mix net mode for maximum anonymity or a faster VPN mode for everyday use. Pay in crypto or fiat and even your payment stays anonymous thanks to z k powered anonymous credentials. Take back control of your online life at nim.com. Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And this episode is happening, I think, a couple, three ish weeks, maybe. Time is just a hole right now for me. After Berlin Blockchain Week, which is not one week, but actually two weeks of events about the crypto world, where a bunch of projects share their updates, people meet each other in person, have a bunch of fun. We make fun of the fact that we all work in the crypto space. And, I think Berlin is quite special to me because we also held Breadcon, which is an event where we, at Bread Cooperative, we shared a bunch of our own updates, what we've been working on and curated a bunch of talks, sessions, workshops, roundtables and such. You can check out the after movie. Hopefully it's been published by now. We also published an article on our blog on Mirror if you want to read through it. But, for this episode, I am talking to Naomi Oba. She told me to not introduce her and she can introduce herself. But the reason I asked her is because she spoke right before me at DAPCON for her talk titled Cryptoculture and Its Discontents, which was very funny and it was a great lead up to the talk that I had right after. So maybe before before I ruin all your your jokes and funny criticisms of crypto, maybe Naomi, if you want to give your your own introduction.
Yeah. No pressure on the jokes part. And, yeah, I didn't know that I was the perfect lead up to your talk. I just realized afterwards, but that's how things happen sometimes. But, yeah, I'm Naomi. I've been in crypto for, I think, now seven years. So I've I've been around a few cycles, and I've seen a lot.
And Yeah. I've seen a lot.
Yeah. And they just sit there. And, yeah, I'm a writer. I'm a creative person. And so, yeah, I actually work in marketing these days at the moment for a project called SQD. And outside of that, I write for different agencies. And occasionally, I also have to go write for CEOs who can't be asked, which is always a funny experience. But yeah. So that's me. I'm I've been around. And, I mean, recently, more often had asked myself if I actually wanna continue being in this pace or in this industry as people call it. And instead of just quitting, I figured, okay, I'm just gonna start talking about how I feel about this entire mess and see if other people feel the same way. And that's kind of been the motivation of the talk I did at APCON. And also the previous one, the the one I did at East Dublin, which was more about, yeah, alienation and technology.
And those are things that I've been thinking a lot about, and I feel like a lot of people in crypto don't necessarily even realize. Yeah. Definitely. Like, I think what the nice the thing that I, appreciate about some of the writing and the talks that you've given, at least the one that I saw, is that you're at least bringing in a little bit of, when I say critical theory or just theory, to the space that we're working on a bit and providing that critique that is definitely needed. So maybe, you know, what I'll do, I'll definitely leave a link to your talk since it was recorded, just like mine, from DAPCON. It'll be in the description. But if you want to give a little bit of a summary of your talk, Cryptoculture and its Discontents, And, yeah, maybe maybe pull out some of the criticisms that you were the biggest criticisms that you had in that talk.
Yeah. I mean, the, title is, of course, a nod to Siegfried, Civilization and its Discontents, which is probably one of his more famous essays. If people haven't read it, I say it's, like, fairly accessible, compared to other writings. But yeah. So, I mean, this all started because I just found out, like, two weeks before DEPCON that I was actually expected to do a talk, and then I was panicking a little. And I was like, shit. What am I gonna talk about? And then I realized there's many things I'm unhappy with in crypto, so maybe I'll just talk about that. And since I had just recently read this essay, I figured maybe Friday's a good lens to look at it, or at least, like, as a starter. So, yeah, that's that's how the title came about. And then, basically, I think my main critique is that in crypto, we reduce everything to numbers. And, that can be the token price. It can be, like, how many members do we have in the community. It can be engagement card. It can be any sort of number. And by doing that, we kind of abstract away a lot of well, maybe the mess that makes us human, but also makes us feel things for better and worse. And that maybe if we only frame success as numbers, then there is no way we could ever just stay at a certain level and still consider it a success because there's nothing else we take into account. And I think, like, may basically, the criticism is that we are so techno utilitarian that we don't even have the words to talk about. Like, anything that exists outside of that, like, morals or feelings or Who needs those? All of those. Fuzzy things.
Yeah. I think there's, definitely this obsession with quantification, in particular, in the crypto space. I it has, I think, of course, a lot to do with the fact that it is, for many people, probably the majority of people, it is an investment vehicle. It is something that the success of engaging with crypto is very easily quantifiable thing of number go up, price go up. And this also, I think, feeds itself into, at least when you're working in the industry as well, a high amount of quantification, which is itself a form of abstraction and alienation towards the people that are actually working or you're interacting with. There's not like a yeah, it's kind of like the number, the numbers speak for themselves, which maybe the side effect of that is that then our feelings don't speak at all. So we don't even know what we're feeling, even though we're seeing big numbers.
Yeah. Because, you know, that that doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's, I think, the same with big tech. Right? Like, people now measure, like, how well they sleep. It's like, to find out how I slept, I'll have to check my app. That's a form of being alienated from yourself. Like Yeah. But this is pushed as something that's very aspirational.
Yeah. And then one of the things that you touched on in the talk was, crypto positivism. Did you want to explain that a little bit?
Yeah, basically. I was studying sociology on this side and then I came across, Comte, who was the guy who came up with the term sociology in the first place. Also, it was this idea of positivism. He was very obsessed with science, and he thought that eventually science would be kind of the integral function of society or that it would kind of serve something like religion, I guess, as a glue that holds people together and gives them the basis for life and reality. And so he he said that, anything that is true can be measured and direct the experience and anything else that exists outside of that isn't really a thing. And I think that's kind of the the positivism aspect of it. Mhmm. And this is then crypto positivism. Anything that cannot be measured as an axis, basically. And yeah. So that was my my thesis there. And I've seen it a lot. Like, so whenever people in crypto say they wanna grow a community, it's usually something like, yeah, we need to reach, like, 1,000,000 people in the next three weeks so that our investors are happy, or it looks like we are growing. And there's usually just, like, the numbers and maybe the, how many messages are sent, but very rarely do you see, Ali, qualitative analysis. Like, are these people having real conversation, or are they just sending GM at the chat?
Maybe GM is just the quantifiable measure for having a good time.
Yeah. Maybe. Or the same thing goes with coins. Right? Like, everything being turned into a coin is good because then there's more coins. Right. Right. Coins for the sake of yeah. Because the only thing you can measure something is if it is like a coin. Right? Yeah. Anything else is,
yeah, immeasurable for us. It's yeah. It's interesting because it's like, it's like we're becoming the blockchain in a way by only focusing on the numbers because numbers I mean, a blockchain only speaks in numbers, right?
Yeah, we were all used in block space. Yeah.
Yeah. And one of the I think I can't remember the exact quote that you put into or the modification of the quote from The Communist Manifesto that all that is solid turns into data points, I think is what you said.
Yeah. I think that's that's yeah. Yeah.
Which is, of course, a reference, because you don't know, to the Communist Manifesto where supposedly Engels, though it was written by both Marx and Engels, said all that is solid melts into air. All that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. Which my reading of the quote is sort of like where eventually we that they're kind of like foretelling. Eventually we will realize that everything that we actually held dear is simply has vanished in front of us because we've been focusing, we've been alienated so much. And then we realize that. And then finally, when we come to our sober senses, we see the real conditions of the world. So it's like, I mean, in that context, it is about, I think, class consciousness or, like, kind of eventual class consciousness that people would feel in that book. Yeah.
Do you think it'll happen in encryption that we have class consciousness please, or no?
Real stress. I mean, that's a good question. I mean, I've been I've been back and forth on it. Sometimes I feel I think there is there is something still we have not yet fully captured, I feel, in the nature of work or labor in not just in crypto, but in tech, in the tech industry, I think, is quite difficult. As we've seen it, I think there's, of course, one, it's like part of the labor aristocracy. Like if you work a nice tech job, you have a pretty good salary, why would you unionize and jeopardize that? So I think that's one thing. Also, I think there's something in particular with crypto that everything, so much of it is dealing with capital, that you're already kind of, you're deep inside the simulation when you're working in crypto in many ways, even the work that you're doing or taking part in. Like you don't see, like bankers or investment bankers are not unionized. They're like deep within the shit. They can't like that. There's a contradiction in supporting, especially in investment banking, supporting unionization, while also working on at the behest of big capital. There's something similar in crypto, slightly different, but I haven't really I haven't put my thumb on it yet.
Yeah. I mean, we are getting a lot of investment bankers in crypto these days, so it might be time for you to think about it more seriously. It's true. They've been here for a while. No, that is true.
But so then if we are to like think, take a step back, come to our sober senses, what do you think, are there any better measurements or good measurements that would be what maybe crypto could aspire to or not?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think a good start would be to take some lessons from sociology. Right? Like, they are always combining quantity quantified data with qualitative data. So it's never just one or the other. It's always birthed. And we don't have that at all, I think, at the moment. Mhmm. Like, nobody even is working. I mean, sure, the Infofire, they were kind of working and all that, but maybe it worked. But in most cases, it didn't. Mhmm. It just, like, took whoever created the most noise and said they are the most relevant. Right. Yeah. That's, of course, a bit simplified. So I think that would be a good start. I think also, like So were you sending everyone remarks is what you're saying? That's what I that's what I heard. No. I mean, I'm just saying, like Some humanities. Maybe think about the thing that made you feel good and not horrible about yourself. And wouldn't it be nice if we built something that made people feel less horrible? And if so, wouldn't it be something worth measuring?
Mhmm.
Like, using that as part of your criteria to say, like, I don't want people addicted to my product. I don't want them to feel a sense of, like, powerlessness. I actually want to empower them and to give them a place to not be, like, rage baited or feel FOMO as, like, the only two options, but something else. And maybe it's just like, oh, yeah. This thing is really convenient. Right? And I can now send money to my friends and family without bothering with, like, the banks or whatever. Or maybe this is a really useful, like, app where I can connect with like minded peers. But, yeah, of course, the problem is, like, as soon as that you wanna scale that, it usually erase the initial value. At least for social networks, I think that's something we are seeing at least with broadcaster. They're trying to improve, like, the Q Dial, which is called quality daily active users. And, well, it's not necessarily quality that they're increasing at the moment, but something is increasing. And it makes it worse for everybody who was there for the quality. Yeah. Yeah. How are they measuring it? Every day it is.
How are they measuring? Just like peep like, the amount people post?
This quality? It's it's basically just like daily activity. Right. So there's no real quality measure, I think. Right. And maybe that is once again how it's at odds with, like, they got a lot of VC investment who eventually wanna see some money back and maybe then it just doesn't work for these sort of use cases to build something. I would actually take a human into account and I mean, for me, when I got into crypto, my whole idea, maybe that was, like, idealized and naive, was that we could be an alternative to initially maybe finance as as a starting point, but as something that stands opposed to big tech, which has very much leaned into in certification and this dopamine economy Mhmm. Where it doesn't matter if you're actually having a good time. It doesn't matter if it's actually a good search engine. It's as long as you keep coming back. Right.
Yeah. I mean, I think I would argue that this is definitely a natural or natural, I mean, way that kind of all of capitalism kind of works in some way. It's kind of built into the incentives of a lot of these, in these, not in the companies themselves, but in the structures that these companies exist within and just the logic of venture capital. I think it's always, I mean, it's a difficult thing where you want to start, you want to start something, you think you have a good idea, especially in the tech world, because it involves like a high level of a disruption of what the status quo is. So sometimes it can be difficult to kind of measure, you know, realistically what your revenue could potentially be, your market cap or whatever, like market share. The fact that you kind of can't predict those in the start means that like you just come up with crazy ways to value what a company should and shouldn't be, and therefore you get investments based on those crazy valuations. You're testing the hypothesis over time, which is really difficult, and then you kind of just, yeah, have to find investment based on that. And eventually they're going to come knocking on your door for that return. And so you better have it soon after they knock.
Yeah, that's true. I don't know. For me, like, a lot of this disruption also looks like distraction. As well. I mean, there's I don't know. And that is, like, also true in crypto. Right? Like, we we have this entire mantra of moving fast and breaking things, and it's often, I think, things we don't even understand or feel any responsibility to, like, let's say, take care of it or even acknowledge that maybe we did something wrong. Never. Because, yeah, of course. It didn't matter because the number went up still. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, creative destruction of capital, deterritorialization.
But, yeah, I guess the one thing that kind of came to mind to me, I feel, whenever you were speaking earlier, was that it seems to me that part of the alienation problem kind of comes from this narrative of trustlessness. I think that the it's kind of you're trusting in oftentimes like this narrative is like you're going to you're trusting in reality, you're trusting the code, you're trusting the technology, the infrastructure underlying the screen that you're interacting with to do the transaction that you're making, without you having to do anything. That this narrative also expanded into things like DAOs and effectively the imaginary at one point were automated companies, more or less. And so this, I think this trustlessness of like, it's not about I don't have to trust a human, so I don't have to I don't have to care about relationships with humans. I just have to care that when I press the button, it does the thing that I am expecting it to do and no one's going to stop it. I feel like this part of the a side effect of this thinking is alienation for sure. I don't know. That's me. That's what I think.
Yeah. I also think this trustlessness is kind of a weird thing to say because at the end of the day is people still have to trust your product, right? Like most of the normal people will not go and understand the smart contract or the workings of the blockchain. So you're still asking people to trust. It's just, like, distributed trust maybe. So, yeah, it's not really trustless even. Yeah. Maybe I think the the the term trust engine is maybe more closer to what we're trying.
An academic friend of mine, Morcha Mannen, and a couple of others, I don't remember who he wrote this paper with, but, they called it a confidence machine rather than trustlessness, that con that you build confidence in the technology by using it over time and then you trust it. That, there's, like, levels of levels of of confidence that you build in something before trust. Something like that. I could be butchering it, but that's more or less how I understood it.
Yeah. I think there's also, like, a relationship between transparency and trust. Right? Where I I think it was Byung Chul Hahn who said if you have complete transparency, you will never have trust. Mhmm. Because, like, trust is something that happens because you don't know all the things about somebody. And it's like usually it's like true for human relationships too. Like, if you put a tracker on your girlfriend or boyfriend, it's probably because you don't trust them and it will not help.
Not trust less. I don't know. Do quite the opposite. Opposite. The AirTag will tell me if they're where they are or if they're cheating or whatever.
Yeah. Sure. You should also check their payment history and everything just in time. It's like and then you will feel better. I think that is, like, the framing, but, obviously, the opposite is true. If they have nothing to hide, why wouldn't they? Yeah. But that is, like, in a policy. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, we all have things to hide, I think. Like, none of us would want our entire Google search history to suddenly be on the blockchain. No. I've never I've never searched anything cringe. Yeah. Sure. Why don't we build, like, a search engine on chain there that everybody can see?
So you're also a part of a a group of writers. I can I don't know if that's the right word, the framing for it? I think philosophers. Philosophers.
That's the word I use. Philosophers
who wrote something called the sapphirepunk manifesto. So sapphirepunk is another a new form of punk that we've created. It's also, if I understand correctly, a reference to post cypherpunk or a different name for post cypherpunk, which I did really like. I really like this term post cypherpunk. I think it's, at least I kind of identified that with it a lot more than just the term cypherpunk. I think that a lot of the Once you go into the history of cypherpunk, I think it's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag of things that like some, at least for me personally, it was like some things I agree with, other things I'm like, no, I'm not really into that. But I think there is still like kind of the cypherpunks were prescient at least in their criticisms about privacy on the Internet. But, anyways, would you like to tell us more about what sapphirepunk is and why is it, also post cypherpunk? The pun the puns would make it difficult for my mouth to, like, sapphire, cipher.
Yes. There's anything punk. I saw there's even a magazine that's called Golf Punk. You go to the airport shop in Hamburg Airport. But, yeah. So so anything punk sport like the golf.
Yes. There's a golf Very, very punk. Yes. Golf is very punk. Yeah.
I mean, it's like a seems like a weird combination. But, yeah, post cyberpunk. Well, I mean, I think it was a few months ago or maybe longer. But anyway, I got in touch with Anne, who is also one of the few humanities people in crypto, I would say, Anne Brodie. And we started talking, and she was talking about her problems with Cypherpunk. And we quickly realized that, well, we shared a lot of the same sentiment and criticism and in part experience having worked in crypto for so long and, yeah, often talking against the wall the second you have something that's not backed up by numbers or just like some moral concerns about doing a certain thing. So, yeah, and, so she suggested, like, why don't we write a manifesto? It was something like that. And then you tell yourself, sure, why not? Because when else would I do that in my life?
Everyone has to publish a manifesto in their life. At least one interesting art. Yeah. Yes.
So, yeah, then we started just with well, accumulating our notes, and I went through my personal notes, like, that I've been taking from different sources, different books, and it all started to come together. And, yeah, eventually, we wrote more people into the effort, because it turned out we are not the only ones who felt like Saiffle Punk had made it come to a bit of a dead end. And if we want, more people to see us in a more sympathetic light, maybe we need some something else, some evolution of that and not a sheer distraction, but something that thinks forward that what cypherpunk has started and maybe adjust us to the time we're in. And so that's why it was called post cypherpunk because it's kind of like modernism, right, post modernism. So, yeah, it's like thinking forward and but still building on top of it because, of course, this was there and it'll always hold relevance, I think, at least a little bit in the crypto industry. And so, yeah, it was post Cypherpunk for the longest time until Waseem suggested that maybe it makes more sense that instead of just saying we oppose something and framing ourself as in opposition or against the Cypherpunk thing, I will use something entirely new. That's how sapphire punk came to be. But I do agree that probably if you say post cypherpunk, there's way more associations for people with it, which make it maybe more accessible at first. But, yeah, the idea was, Sapphire Park was also because when we started writing this thing, there was a lot of, like I think we were all a bit angry outside and frustrated and depressed with the state of the industry. So you could see a lot of, like, we reject this, this sucks, stuff like that in there. And so we tried to put, like, a more constructivist pin on it and then yeah.
That's, I think, also kind of was signified by this change to calling it Sapphire Park instead. Yeah. Yes. Do you so, I mean well, one thing I wanted to comment on when I when I was reading through it, I could definitely tell. I could see I can always recognize Waseem's puns. So Waseem was on has been on the podcast at least a couple of times. Like, if you read through the manifesto itself, you will be delighted by the amount of puns throughout the manifesto. So it is a a fun read. For example, to each according to their nodes. That was the way Yeah.
I don't know if most people will recognize the reference, though, I think, in Crooked. But if they do recognize it, then they're a good one. Sorry. I'm not yet.
But yeah, I guess, would you want to talk a bit about maybe the if we start from start from the beginning, what are the things well, I mean, maybe just for people who don't know a little bit more, if you want to explain, what is cypherpunk a little bit? And what are some of your criticisms or discomforts with it?
Well, I think Wasim did the really great talk about it a little later in that day, which we, I was there and he started with actually even just like a cypherpunk manifesto, right? That's like the title it had. And this already says that this is for an individual. So it's like about you and it always has been. And you have to protect yourself because the world is dangerous out there and everybody is out trying to get you. And, well, that was probably to a degree pretty fair in those early days, where privacy wasn't really a thing. But, yeah, I think this kind of thread goes through the entire thing. It's very individualist. And the way it frames certain things like privacy for example we just didn't agree with because privacy as you also allude to in, that it is maybe more than just a individual affair. I can protect my privacy, sure, but if somebody else leaks my chat history, it means nothing in the in the biggest scheme of things. And, yeah, of course, also, like, the Cypherpunks can come across to a degree, maybe a bit aggressive. And also it doesn't help that it was mostly like the weird nerds, I guess. If you want, like, mass appeal, people who strike you as the anarchist weird uncle might not be be the best. But, yeah, I think a big part of it is also like, rooted in shame. Mhmm. Basically, if you don't live up to this, like, shame on you. Right? And we have to hide ourselves from each other because otherwise, it might reveal
yes. Yeah. Definitely. The if this so the I can't remember who wrote the cypherpunk manifesto or whether it was, like, a non or not, or was it, not sure. Different than the there's the oh, fuck. What's it called? There's a cyber independence manifesto, I think, or is it? Ah, yes. Was that is that the same as the Cyberpunk one?
I don't think so.
The declaration of independence of cyberspace. A separate one. Yeah. I think they're two they're two separate ones, but they kind of have the same vein of quite extreme individualism. So a lot of the people who are involved in the, like, cypherpunk mailing lists were definitely people who were liberate like economic libertarians, like conservative economic libertarians. They were people who would have been gold bugs otherwise probably, but instead they were computer nerds, math nerds, interested in cryptography. And due to the position they were in, I think there were some things that they were able to see before others, but it's just the framing in which they try to go at the problem of surveillance. Yeah, it's a very individualistic one, which also feels kind of short sighted, especially in the context of today, like twenty, thirty years later, where we do have a bunch of issues with privacy. But a lot of those issues with privacy don't have to do with like, like ones that cannot be solved by simply protecting oneself and being, like trying to be anonymous oneself all the time, but that there are, there are collective practices. I don't know if that's the right word or techniques, technologies that require a collectivity in order to make privacy work. So it kind of contradicts the manifesto a little bit, I think.
Yeah. I think there was also this great book called Privacy is Power. And she argues that maybe we don't even have the moral ground to do things such as selling our own data. Right? Because much of our own data is not even just ours. I think the best example is always DNA. I remember, like, everybody for a while was doing '23 and beyond. Oh, yeah. And nobody was thinking about it at all. Oh, yeah. Okay. This is also your parents' DNA. It's a big part of your other kids. It's theirs. But, yeah, this was never part of the conversation. I think it's, this could have happened in Fincher, but thankfully, we haven't attracted any. Mhmm. Yeah. Such a big deal. If we did, who knows? Maybe everybody's DNA will be on chain so we can monitor.
Well, you can at least probably buy other people's DNA reports on the dark network. I mean, you can also buy the eye risk. Can. Oh, yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I did have my I did I did give my parents, sweet as they are, tried to give to me a DNA, like, 23 and Me thing, and I was like, no, I don't want to do it. But then, like, I think my brother ended up doing it, and like he that they just gave it to him, and then he did it. I was like, well, does it even matter that I didn't do it? It was one of those hard things where I didn't I didn't wanna be the super ungrateful son for trying to give a gift. I wanted to ask for a different gift. Oh, yeah. Didn't ask for a gift. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that's, I think another aspect that still people hold very high in crypto is decentralization. And I think, like, if you've been long enough in crypto, you realize that most of the time, decentralization for the sake of it, it just means the power shifts to somebody else. Mhmm. I think, like, everybody who's been in DAOs has seen this. Right. Very viscerally where suddenly whoever has the most capital holds the power, so there's no really decentralization. Yeah. So so that's maybe another thing where we work well. I mean, decentralization is great, but it's like, it doesn't do much if all you do is shift the power to somebody else who's then gonna be the one using it as they desire. And, yeah, I think the the idea is always that technology is, like, credibly neutral, and that's probably one of those things we do not agree with. And yeah. So that's that, all of these things, they they went into this money faster. And, well, who knows what happens with it. If it gives people who feel the same way a place to go, I think that's a good start.
The cypherpunk influence is definitely it exists in crypto as it exists right now, and kind of its negative side effects, I think, are there. Part of it, I think, is that the original cypherpunk vision was also based on a kind of market supremacism. It was like, I think this connect this this thread that you were pulling on in your talk at DAPCON about this obsession with numbers and quantification and alienation is a manifestation of a kind of market supremacism which requires like price finding and like the engaging in the the battle of the markets in some way, the competition of the market to offer services in the hopes that this competition produces the best for everyone. I think there is like a lot of reason to say that that is not what happens in reality. Like that's something that's good in theory, bad in practice, but a lot of people still try to believe that. But, yeah, I guess the, I don't know I don't know if you would make the same the same connection, but, yeah, how do you think that we can what do you propose for some sort of alternative to market supremacism?
That's a good question.
Maybe Big one.
First thing. Yeah. Solve the world's problems right now. Five minutes. It's just like like now. Three thirty seconds. I think, like, maybe a good place to start would just be asking ourselves what are things that should maybe not be decided by markets and having that discussion in the first place. Does everything really have to be traded? Does everything really have to be commodified? And I mean, of course, we live in a world where that is the norm. Right? To a degree, we are all commodified ourselves, and we are, like, willing participants in our own turning ourselves into that because, of course, we are all on social media selling ourselves, but, this is like like most of the things, it's framed as empowerment. It's like liberation. Right? You're now free to free to sell your nudes online. That's, like, a great achievement. Yeah. So I think, like, maybe the that's, like, probably also crypto, of course, doesn't exist outside of the rest of, a culture and big tag. But maybe because we are so niche, we could start trying things differently. Right? And saying, like, okay, maybe certain things should not be. And maybe we find other ways to decide, if something's valuable or not. And maybe if you need to put your friends' time on chain, you've maybe not understood the real value of friendship to begin with, and you have some hard work to do on yourself first.
I think if you have not tokenized your friends, you're not real friends,
personally. Yeah, no. I mean, sure. If you have not at least 15 selfies with yourself and then one friend, like, is it even a friend? Like, does it even exist? Probably not. I mean,
if you don't own my personal token, my friend token, then you're not my friend. That's how you can buy it though on, at this, on Uniswap though.
Yeah, sure. So everybody can like it's like permissionless friendship.
Exactly. Yes. Free market friendship.
Free market friends.
Yeah.
In theory, friendship comes with a certain commitment. Right? And they may I mean, it's a voluntary commitment, but it's still like sometimes you're gonna put up with some big inconvenience for your friends. Right? That's not something you will do if it's just a joke.
But I think I think so. You make I think that is a poignant question to be asking oneself, which it sounds simple, but in the context of the crypto world where 90% of things that are being proposed are some sort of like imposition of markets on top of something that either doesn't have markets or has a market anyways, but it's inefficient or something like that, stopping and being like, what does not, what do we have that does not need a market? And going backwards from there maybe, and then being more intentional about where markets should or should not be. I was thinking, I've been thinking this like the other day. I think it would be really cool because I think one of the blind spots that a lot of people in crypto have is they think of everything as a market. It's kind of like markets, markets or business ontology. I think this is, you know, not to get too far into the weeds, but I think this is a big part of capitalist realism or this idea that people lack the ability to imagine something else besides capitalism, but they can very easily imagine apocalypse. It's that you're constantly surrounded by things that remind you of the market. I mean, you go to work, you're commodifying your labor, you are paying rents, you are paying for food, like you buy commodities. Like 99% of things that you use are something that you bought from a store, some commodity, oftentimes. And so, like I've been thinking maybe we should start collecting, reminding ourselves what are the things that we're interacting with that aren't a market. We're not in reality, and most people at least, I'm not buying my friends for the most part on the markets. I'm not commodifying my friends. It might be one or two of them, but not not really. Only the ones I don't buy as much. I was thinking the other day, I was like, you know, driving, I was in the, there, I was thinking how, like, traffic lights. Traffic lights are a great example of a very non market interaction that we have in the world all the time because we're not buying and selling the rights to cross the intersection, right? Or like, not yet. But someone, someone has proposed a crypto scheme. I mean, that is effectively what, like, you could argue what, like, block building is. It's a payments to to use the to cross the intersection. To use the public infrastructure you already paid for with your tax money. Yeah. I mean, there are toll roads, I guess. I kind of that is, I guess, is one manifestation of that. But for the most part, traffic lights are very non market based. It's completely planned. It's a planned economy of allowing cars to pass through or not. So I've been thinking maybe it would be a good idea to like, just collect, to collect these different interactions that are not market based so that people can be reminded of the non market interactions that they engage in and enjoy and love so that we will stop turning everything into a market in crypto?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's also inherent in the way that everybody is just a wallet, right? Then every interaction is just a transaction. And I think, like, Simmel was writing about this, about money already, like, hundred fifty years ago. That basically then, yeah, everything is abstracted, and maybe we extract ourself from anything meaningful as well in the process. And, yeah, of course, it's true. We all just live in spaces that constantly remind us that there's markets. Like, even on social media, right, which started us like a place to connect, there's always advertising all over the place. So it's kind of like, yeah, that you're never really free from. Yeah.
Sponsored content or anything like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Sponsored content. True. And I mean, in crypto, especially, people are so addicted to their phones. I don't know. Do they ever really see anything outside of the platforms where there's also ads? Who knows? But, yeah, maybe if you are so focused on the one thing you don't even have the eyes to see. Right? Mhmm. What's there? Because there's, I think, a lot of things that are not transactions, a lot of things you can, experience just sitting outside somewhere. But, yeah, that requires like stepping back and stepping out. And I think one thing we have adopted from hustle culture is definitely this chronically online life, this obsession with constantly being productive or at least seeming to be. Mhmm. Which maybe robs us of the space and silence we would need to realize that most of the work we're doing doesn't actually do anything on a bigger scale. We get so hooked into like the small incremental changes. Right. Yeah. And then of course we don't have the time to reflect like, okay, maybe me buying all this shit on Amazon just because I can't wait for one day to get my whatever isn't great. Maybe maybe there's something more behind that. Maybe it's a similar thing we do in crypto where everything has to be instant gratification.
Yeah. Toke the the one thing that ICOs and tokens have done is allowed for VCs the instant gratification of exit liquidity.
That's true. Good for them. You're very relieved. And I would ask the instant gratification of losing our life savings. Very gratifying. And if you if you lost your life savings, you can log off, you know? You can just, like That is that is freedom. Losing all your I I mean, I think that's that's another problem. Yeah. What is sold is freedom is often more like freedom from. Right? Like, it's always freedom from taxes, freedom from obligations, from any sort of duties, from any bonds to other people too, I think. Now with this AI agent hype, I feel like people jumped willingly on it because they didn't even think about what their product was gonna do for humans. So now they have an easy way out. Just gonna say, okay. We are catering to AI agents. And Doesn't matter what you think about that. Easy pivot to AI. Everyone just pivot. Everybody just build something for agents instead. Yeah.
So they can talk to each other. Maybe maybe a market for market for AI agent friends.
I think it I'm sure that already exists. And that is a very weird thing that I yeah. I mean, I remember I've seen pitch decks for, like, the loneliness epidemic is a huge market opportunity. And then here's our AI companion. And of course, it's like a subscription model, so you will always have to continue paying to talk to your company. Yeah. Yeah. But
yeah. We'll have time. Yeah. Fun I'm yeah. It's a point that hopefully people will realize kind of the insanity of the amount of commodification that's being pushed by by the tech sector. So one one point in your manifesto I also wanted to get at is that you stated privacy is not a bunker, it's a commons. So I thought that was really interesting points, and I was curious to hear from you how you thought of privacy as a commons.
Well, I think because privacy is the thing, like, as we already touched upon, right, that allows us to actually have relationships with each other, like meaningful relationships. They're not the ones that are parasocial where you know everybody, everything about the other person because they share everything online.
No. Everyone who's listening to this podcast is my real friend.
If you want to delude yourself, you might. It's like free, free for all to do that. But yeah, so primacy is something I think that we all have a bit of a duty to also uphold, not just for ourselves but for other because it is relational, right? It's not just, something that you do for yourself. It's something that I think, enables the functioning of democracies societies and therefore we all should feel some sort of duty about maintaining it. And this is of course, like, it's really easy for somebody who's who finds something out about somebody else and then I guess use this market thing and just sell off the information to the highest bidder. But maybe there's, like, reasons outside of markets that would make it morally very questionable and yeah. Maybe that's the conversations we need to have more. What are we not willing to sacrifice to the market? What is worth maintaining? Even if it comes at a little cost to ourself. Mhmm. The little more effort we have to make, the little inconvenience we have to put up, which at the end of the day if, yeah, if my privacy protected is, well, ours, right, then it's our privacy. If all of us, we take care of it. So, yeah, I think that's that's kind of the idea of privacy being a commons. It's not a bunker where you go and bug yourself and never interact with anybody else. Although, I mean, maybe that is if you take this, self sovereignty to the extreme. This could be what you do. Right? You go live out into the woods. You have your own nuclear reactor, and you only talk to your AI girlfriend, which is a locally hosted model because you don't want anybody to interfere. And you have your own satellite, of course. I mean Yeah. Yeah. You're not gonna pull your flight a subscription to Elon. You'll have your own life. So, yeah, then you're, like, super private, but you're also very lonely. And I think there's a good phrase in the Money Fast two about the more secure the enclave, the lonelier the architect. Mhmm. And I think this, is very much, yeah, a part of this, where we think privacy is a commons and not just
something to lock yourself off. I think those are good points. Yeah. There's, it's almost akin to maybe thinking of, like, gossip as a commons in some way or something like that.
Yeah. I mean, to a certain degree, I think gossip is yeah. It's fun. And as long as they are not too vicious about it Right. Right. Yeah. It's I think the problem is, like, with gossip now online, it can get, pretty bad really fast. Mhmm. Of course. Yeah. There's, like, often, like, a mob with WiFi. Right? Just like yeah. Yeah. Life in quotes that lives have been destroyed thanks to people having too much Internet access and free time. Yeah. Hate. Turn it off. Just turn it off for a little bit.
So for me, my one of my last questions, just curious to hear from you if there any what's next for cypherpunk, and is there a place for yeah. If you want to share, like, your your plugs where people can check out your work and what you
do. My plugs. Well, I mean, what's next for for us at least? We put this manifesto out, but this is like a work in progress, I would say. So there'll be more edits, and we are also gonna talk start talking about it in public a little bit more. So we will start hosting a Twitter space, see how that goes. It's also funny that, you know, all these years in crypto, we haven't managed to build an alternative to Twitter. We are so dependent on it. But, yeah, so that's why we're gonna use that one because that's where everybody's at. So I think those are the things that are nice and then we will see. I think each of us anyway carries these ideas into the conversations they have. And if it turns into a movement, great. If not, also cool. I think the the main point for us is that I don't know. Sometimes when you read something and you feel really seen and, like, reassured that you are not crazy and not alone with this, that's, like, already enough. Right? Mhmm. So, yeah, I think that's also another part of it because still we are not completely disillusioned with crypto and haven't rage quit. So we're trying to carve out a corner for people like us, I think. So yeah. Other than doing that, if people wanna read from me, that's, I'm on Paragraph at crypto now. So that's where I write occasionally. It's not always about Crypto. Sometimes it is. And, yeah, of course, on Twitter, on Farcaster. Mhmm. There's other places people can find me. Yeah.
Cool. Yeah. No. I I really appreciate the writing that you guys did in the manifesto and providing an alternative ideology almost of compared to cypherpunk while trying to take things that are interesting or good about it, but rearranging it in a way that is, I think, more fitting for the current times that we are living in. So, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on, Nomi. And I will see you Yeah. Thanks. I love you, mate. I will see you in the metaverse.
Oh, okay. I never go to the metaverse.
Alright. Catch you later. Thanks.
Bye bye.
