Mhmm. Yeah. So speaking of, Meta, so hi. I'm Vitalik Buterin, scammer in chief here to bring the, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, vision to the, crypto space and, abandon all hopes of, security and sound money and, bring on the infinite inflation so we can pray to the gods of Elon Musk and John Maynard kids at the same time. So, excited to be doing that with you guys today.

So the way that, I would describe the Bitcoin community is that they really emphasize the concept of sound money. This idea that, they are creating a digital asset. There's a 21,000,000 units of it. The, asset, is not going to inflate anymore. It can't be, seized or censored by anyone. And this is just a new form of money. And, money is, like, the most important base layer for an economy. And, they're going to, like, basically create this, kind of even better and more secure version of money and, just, you know, let society become, you know, more prosperous in their vision as a result of it. Right? So, they would say that, you know, any kind of bells and whistles in a blockchain, even trying to support smart contracts and, other kinds of things as, generally, most mostly a distraction. And, you know, money is just a 100 times more important than all of these, other things. And, you know, we're all going to get together. We're going to focus on that and, just, you know, try to create this new monetary unit that, does not is free of inflation, seizure, you know, all of these problems that have beset, fiat currency at least since that, dark and infamous, executive order from 1933. Right? So that's the, yeah, that that's the Bitcoin, I think, you know, view. The Ethereum view is, I mean, I think it's difficult to even say that there is a single view in Ethereum, or at least it's it's more difficult to say that for Ethereum than it than it is to say it for Bitcoin. Right? Because Ethereum is this much more general purpose platform, which, is both a strength and a weakness. Right? The strength is that there are just all of these, very different, groups of people that are building on top of it. Right? So there's, people you know, even in Ethereum, there are people who believe in something close to a Bitcoin y sound money vision except, you know, they believe that Ethereum can do a better job of that than Bitcoin. There are people who believe that, with programmable money, we can, create better tools for coordination. We can create new kinds of organizations. We can create new ways for people to cooperate with each other. There's, people who are interested in blockchain based nonfinancial applications. So one of the ways in which, they would describe that vision is that, you know, ten or twenty years ago, we had open source software. And open source software is like this way to build ways to do things with computers that are not tied to or or controlled by, you know, single corporations. But then, you know, in the years that followed, it turns out that open source was was, to some except the wrong conversation to have because it's not about where the source is. It's about where everyone's data is. And so the, yeah, blockchain vision is to say, well, we're gonna get rid of the servers that have the data as well. Right? And we're going to have applications that are open state. And, this could be blogs. This could be, yeah, social media. This could be, you know, domain name systems, like, pretty much everything. Right? So that's another, kind of viewpoints. And other viewpoints would be, you know, focusing on, like, international money transfers, and applications that have to do with, you know, things like lending and credit in the developing world. So I think there's just, you know, a lot of different groups with a lot of different viewpoints that coexist within Ethereum and the ecosystem kind of is all of those put together. Though, of course, the way that, Bitcoiners, tends to criticize this, right, is, they would say, well, you know, the Ethereum ecosystem can't focus, and it kind of keeps on changing its narrative and sort of, you know, pivoting to another one of these when it get up when it gets bored of the previous one. Right? So I guess that that that's, like, one of the ways in which you can view what the divide is like. Yeah. And I guess that I mean, when it comes to Bitcoin, that,

So the whole money, like, word, I think, is, you know, something that's often, worth unpacking. Right? Like, we have to remember that, the ways in which we view, you know, monetary units and macroeconomics and all of these things, really came of age at a time of, paper. And paper imposes a lot of constraints. Right? Like, because, you know, if you, like, give someone a $5 bill, well, you know, that $5.05 $5 bill is a $5 bill. You can't just kind of magically, pass a software update and have that $5 bill suddenly, yeah, look like a 6, the next day or whatever. Right? So, you know, it's, you like there's, like, trust limitations on, paper paper based money. Paper has to represent something. There's, limits to how quickly it can be issued. There's limits to how easily it can be verified. There's just, like, a whole bunch of different constraints that we inherited. And, often these are constraints that we, don't realize are constraints that, don't really exist anymore. Right? And so as a result, you know, you have these, debates that basically assume that, like, for example, the medium of exchange, the store value, and the unit of accounts have to be the same thing. Right? Like, you know, like, what's the standard Keynesian story for why, you know, it it's better to have your currency be slightly inflationary than, slightly deflationary. Right? Basically, because, there's limits to how quickly and how effectively the prices can adjust. And for various, weird economic reasons, it just, so happens that, prices adjust upward more easily than prices adjust downward. And so if you have a currency that goes up, then or sorry. If you have a currency where prices in that currency on average go up, then, you know, things are less likely to break in horrible ways than if things are going in the other direction. Right? But this is all assuming that the, yeah, sticker price, like, the thing that prices are set in is denominated in the same asset that everyone is holding. Right? Which was, obviously, true fifty years ago and, obviously, true a hundred years ago. But if you even look at the cryptocurrency economy today, right, like, if you look at, you know, people who actually, yeah, charge things in Bitcoin or charge things in ETH, you'll find pretty much all of them. They set their prices in US dollars or euro euros or whatever other fiat currency, and then they accept, you know, ETH or Bitcoin or Doge or whatever else they want to accept. Right? So unit of account and, medium of exchange have already been split. You know, medium of exchange and store value have been split. The thing held by the sender and the thing held by the receiver have been split. That's actually not even something that required any decentralized technology. Like, that's even a feature of, credit cards today. Right? Like, if you use your credit card internationally, you know, there's some weird magic happening in the back end and, you know, you like, I might be, you know, decreasing my balance in, you know, dollars or Swiss francs or whatever, other currency. And then, you know, the person receiving money might be receiving Mexican pesos. Right? Or so it's, like, these are all assumptions that have already been steadily weakened by technology, and I think they're going to be, yeah, steadily, yeah, even more weakened by technology over time. And so I don't know. I guess let's see. What's my conclusion here? Like, my conclusion is just that any money discourse that came out of, you know, the nineteen thirties or, nineteen seventies is, probably, outdated and, you know, not nearly imaginative enough. And, we need to, you know, really look at crypto not so much as a thing that gives us the one true option, but more as a toolbox that opens up more possibilities.

you know, it is denominated in cryptocurrency. But usually it's not exactly. It's, I mean, it's interesting how if we want to, like, start imagining monetary systems of the future, you could even think of some pretty exotic ones. Right? Like, you could even imagine a world where, you know, the central bank, is just a, an entity that issues a CPI. And, that CPI is denominated just in, you know, Bitcoin and ETH and, DAI and every, major whatever the major currencies are that people use. And that's the thing that people just choose to, you know, to nominate their salaries and rent in. And nobody ever actually has units of the thing, and it's not even possible to have base units of the thing. It's just an index. Right? So, like, you can separate the, you know, the money in the sense of the thing that people count in from, the, kind of asset that people have on on balance sheets, like, given it completely if it wants to. I mean, that that's not necessarily something that people would wants to do. Right? But, like, that space exists, which is, like, kind of mind blowing because that totally did not exist, pretty much before the Internet came about. Yeah. I think in definitely, I think for me and for a lot of people, I think,

Yeah. No. And I think it's, you know, definitely important to give, a lot of, credit to Nathan for the book. You know, he, reached out to me with the idea of making it. I mean, he was definitely responsible for a lot of the content selection and then obviously for, you know, connecting us with, seven stories and, you know, working with them to actually get the thing out. I think the, goal was to try to, like basically try to give a kind of less scattered and more sort of coherent, presentation of, you know, some of the philosophy behind, you know, thinking that went into Ethereum, thinking that went into a lot of the, applications that are in various parts of the crypto space now. And, to basically, you know, show, like, how or, you know, what are some of the big themes that people have been, thinking about. And, you know, by by people, I mean, both myself, but also, you know, obviously, yeah, all of the various people that I've been reacting to and the people that ended up reacting to those individual pieces and so forth. And, you know, just show things, like, you know, how did the discourse and, you know, the the challenges of, let's say, yeah, you know, financialized governance in, crypto come about. You know, how did thinking about, obviously, yeah, proof of stake itself, evolve over time. How did the thinking about, decentralized organizations evolve over time. And, you know, basically just, you know, create this, kind of presentation of all of those ideas together in one in one place, so that people can all see can see it all together instead of it kind of just being this, very scattered collection of, blog posts all over the place?

at this point? I feel like Ethereum becomes qualitatively different from itself, like, about every three or four years so far. Right? Like, there's definitely a lot of, strands of ideas that are common all the way through. Right? You know, the concept of stablecoins, for example, like, you know, people have been working on DAI since, like, back in 2015 and that that team itself, you know, came out of, people that were doing the same thing in, BitShares, before that. There, one of them, Nikolai, unfortunately passed away recently. I don't know. But, he was, you know, really, yeah, a great guy. I remember him even back in the bitch years days. So this was, you know, both a group of people and, that was just really passionately pursuing an intellectual, effort where just the core idea really was the the same all the way through. But then, you know, just saw all of these kind of leaps and balance of maturity. And, you know, it started off being this kind of fairly simple stable coin and then started talking about real world assets. And then the whole DAO and decentralized governance aspect became more sophisticated. You know, prediction markets, like, there was Augur back in 2015, and then there is a PolyMarkets, this year. You know, ENS was, one of the ideas in the white paper. So there there was a lot of these, like, threads that have, persisted in Ethereum all the way. But at the same time, you know, there there's definitely these, really big evolutions inside of them. Right? Like, one of the, yeah, big evolutions that I alluded to, I think, is definitely this, kind of growing realization of the need for a non financialized governance. Right? So, you know, that's that's one that took a while. I mean, that's, well, that's one that took me a while, because, it's to a large extent, like, that realization grew out of, like, you know, years of me trying really hard to make financialized governance work. Right? Like, my, my model there was basically it's, like, thinking of governance as being this kind of technical problem in the same way that, you know, secure business and fault tolerant proof of stake is a technical problem. Right? Like, with a proof of stake algorithm, so, you know, you can make protocols that have these, really clean properties that say, if more than two thirds of the participants are honest or even are independently, yeah, rational, then, I mean, all the thing is going to work. And, they don't even technically have to be rational. They're just have to be balanced on how much money they're willing to lose. And so if you accept these couple of things, then you can, like, create these really clean 20 line, mathematical proofs of, and all of these other things. Right? And so started thinking through, like, can we, yeah, create something similar for governance? And whacked my head against, the wall on that question a bunch of times. And, I think the, the place where I realized, that, that was a dead end was, actually when, Glenn introduced me to, quadratic funding. Basically, yeah, because, like, with quadratic funding, you can actually, see the logic for why, you know, it actually does have these mathematically clean, kind of proofs of, you know, why, at least under its assumptions, it's supposed to work. Right? You know, you have this, argument that, like, your vote or, like, how much you contribute reflects strength of your preference. But then the more that the more that you vote, the greater a percentage you are of the whole thing. And so the less public that good is relative to you to some extent. And but, so, you know, if you vote more or if you contribute more to a project, then you deserve a bigger subsidy, but maybe you don't deserve a linearly bigger subsidy. And there's just, like, all of these, arguments, and you just convert them into, you know, math equations that it just, like, works out really cleanly. But then you once you start, just kind of philosophically poking one level deeper and, you realize one of the really important things in, quadratic funding, which is the collusion issue. Right? Like, if someone can pretense to be two people, then they can cheat quadratic funding. Right? And they can, like, extract money and break the system. It's, this is, one of the points that I, yeah, made into my, blog a couple of times. Right? Like, when people criticize traditional economics. Right? Like, they, often criticize, you know, assumptions like perfect competition and, unlimited public information and perfect rationality and all of these. And it's, like, important to criticize them. But the one that's, like, even more or breaks things even more quickly that people don't remember to criticize at all is this, assumption of, uncor like, the uncoordinated actors. Right? This idea that you have these different actors and, when they're making the decisions, they consider their own interests separately, but they don't talk to each other. Right? And there's just this, like, entire really amazing literature of these mechanisms like second price auction, VCGs, and, you know, it's really complicated, stuff that people have been coming up with over the past fifty years where they have these really clean proofs that show why their thing is optimal, but their proof always relies on this idea that you never have two actors that are are cooperating with each other. And once you have that, then the proofs just unravel. And often it so happens that, like, the more an algorithm really effectively optimizes for the case where no one's cooperating, the faster it breaks when even two people are cooperating. Right? And, with, quadratic funding, like, quadratic funding is actually yeah. I mean, Glenn, I think, acknowledges that it's, like, a little bit less general and, like, less all encompassing than some of these VCGs, but it's significantly more robust to, groups of people cooperating with each other. But it's still not robust enough. Right? And so once you will look into this philosophical, what you realize is basically that, like, if the mechanism that gives you the correct answer is a mechanism that breaks once people are allowed to, cooperate even a little bit, then what that means is that there basically cannot be a mechanism that, gives you the correct answer without relying on information, some kind of information sort of passed in from the outside about, you know, how friendly the different actors are with each other. And I thought that was interesting and fascinating. And it's, like a limitation that I was forced to acknowledge because, you know, the math was staring me in the face and, I couldn't really argue with with it. But at the same time, like, you know, you have to understand that this is a pretty serious challenge to kind of purest conceptions of, you know, the crypto we vision for how to reorganize the world, because if, especially if you think through, like, purest crypto ideas about, let's say, yeah, supporting anonymity and, not caring about identity and, the whole, you know, valorizing the idea that, you know, you don't know if it's, a dog behind the the the keyboard. Right? On on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog is, like, the usual phrase. Right? Like, if it turns out that, like, taking those principles a 100% seriously, basically means that, like, well, you know, mechanisms for collectively allocating capital just, like, can't work, and they just necessarily break, as soon as, you know, groups of people try to cooperate or someone tries to bribe someone someone else, which, by the way, smart contracts do make it incredibly easy to do, then, like, you know, you realize that there is a problem with, at least, like, that pure version of the idea. And, you know, whatever the whatever the idea is, you have to kind of modify it a bit. And I think that's, a big part of, what the at least, minimum, my crypto governance, sort of research and, you know, thinking since then has been trying to do.

like necessary to happen because they have an interest for that, and because if they don't, then the other side is colluding anyway. Yeah, actually, okay, so maybe a question for you here, like, what are some of the first kind of collective action y applications of smart contracts that you had in mind?

What do you think is your favorite blockchain application right now? My favorite blockchain application right now?

Yeah. I know.

It's, I mean, I think, in general, like, this is, the the this is, like, one of the the reasons why I like like, I've I think I might have said a couple of times that I think, you know, of course, your theory is, underrated and that's, like it actually is more true that's than some people acknowledge that, like, there are similarities between, you know, people that, we would call far and, as opposed to center. And what I mean by that is that, like, if you have a belief that's, like, significantly, pretty far away from just, like, whatever the status quo is, then just by necessity, you're going to have to use, you know, different kinds of ideas and different and, you know, different kinds of techniques to try to get there. Right? Because, you know, your path to success is not just like, hey. Let's convince five senators. Your path to success is not going to be like, hey. Let's, you know, convince, Twitter staff to adopt a slightly different policies or, you know, convince voters of this kind of one tiny thing. Right? Like, if you're imagining a very different society than, what exists today, whether that society is in, the sort of direction you want or the sort of direction I want or the, sort of direction, courtesy Arvin wants or whoever else, then, like, you know, you are, but you're not gonna do it by just, like, you know, walking into, you know, MSNBC and just, like, blabbing about it for a bit, or and then lobbying in Washington for a bit and just getting it out there. Right? Like, it's, you know, you pretty much have to do something that's, pretty kind of more radical in some ways. Right? And I think, crypto is one of those technologies that does, you know, make it possible to do radical things. And, you know, using the word radical and you kind of, you know, very neutrally there. Right? Like, as I think, you know, people have had, all kinds of, revisions that they've kind of grafted onto, crypto. And, you know, we've, I think seen that from all kinds of people on the right. We've seen that from, you know, people on the left. We've seen that from, you know, anti American, you know, internationalists. I mean, we've seen that from a kind you know, a pro American, kind of human rights people that are actually totally happy with, you know, The US running the world because that because that's they think it's a less much less bad than all the other countries. But, you know, at the and they see crypto as a compliment. Right? So, you know, crypto does kind of attach itself to a lot of, different viewpoints. But, you know, if your viewpoint is that it is one that just says, you know, things need to look very different from the way they look today, then, like, you know, you have to pick a technology that's capable of, like, making a very different world happen. And crypto does, like, actually, yeah, fit into that box. Right? So I think that's my, fairly, simple, story for, you know, why crypto is exciting to people who have big dreams and, you know, big visions for a world that looks very different from, the from the world of today, whether different in a way we agree in or different in a way we disagree in. But crypto was not so enticing for people who think that the biggest problem in the world is that the top income tax rate is 39.6% instead of 43.4%. Right? So that's, Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And and then, you know, it it does feel like, pretty much like all kinds of, you know, interesting people and, people who are kind of independently minded in various ways. I mean, they do end up, going through crypto at some point, you know, even if their eventual vision for how to fix the world does end up basically saying, like, you know, hey. Yeah. We actually want more elitism and more centralization. So that's, you know, it's definitely a phenomenon. It's, definitely, yeah, something that, happens. And, when I feel like it it it can it's something that can have all kinds of effects. Like, I definitely think, you know, there are people who, wants to see a world, that, you know, looks very different from today, and then they discover the crypto space. But then the crypto space ends up shaping, you know, how they understands their own values and, what kind of world in particular they wanna see. Right? And, you know, sometimes in a more libertarian direction, sometimes they're in a more democratic direction. And, you know, often their starting point is one where the libertarian direction and the democratic direction are the same. And then, in in which case, great. So it's, you know, there is, like, a lot of different people and, a lot of, you know, different opinions and, in different situations, and it's, like, really hard to make make generalities that speak for all of them. But, like, yeah, I guess, like, I I just, like, I get why people who, you know, wants to wants to see big changes are attracted to cryptocurrency as a technology for making big changes happen. Right? And, it's important to remember that, cryptocurrency is not the first, like, technology that, you know, people put political hopes in. Like, the Internet, I think, as well. Right? Like, a lot of people put political hopes in the Internet. And, I mean, I do think that cryptocurrency is different from the Internet. Right? Like, the the way that I think cryptocurrency is different from the Internet is that the Internet was just it was a big enough leap over pretty much everything that it's, is just an obvious win even from, you know, completely non ideological, commercial points of view. And so the commercial points of view just kind of ended up, largely winning out over time because there's more money in them. Right? But, with cryptocurrency, like, I mean, obviously, there is a speculation as a, commercial, application, and the speculation has been big in the crypto space since, day one, of course. But, like, aside from that, it's, like, it does seem to have this kind of more fundamental property that, you know, if you want to use, like I'll I'll put it in a different way. The difference between the Internet and email is efficiency. Like, it's efficiency in our raw tech or sorry. Between the Internet and, like, snail mail is efficiency in our in a very raw technical sense. It's efficiency of, you know, a type that, you know, both, mother Teresa, you know, and, you know, US anarchists, and Mussolini would have agreed, like, you know, yes. This is the this is efficiency. I understand it. Cryptocurrency versus fiat is not efficiency in the same way. And, you know, crypto social versus Twitter is not efficiency in the same way. Right? And so, you know, you do have to have a particular mindset in order to, like, even find it appealing, especially in the early stages where you're kind of really going uphill against, some, pretty powerful, network effects. Right? But, that's, yeah, so that's, like, the the way that I think, crypto is different from the Internet. But, like, it's similar in that, you know, it is a technology, and, people put a lot of, political hopes in a technology. And people do tends to kind of put political hopes into a technology. I mean, when they do feel that kind of, approaches that are more like, you know, hey. Let's, you know, keep doing things exist existing ways of relying on existing channels as, like, just not good enough for them anymore. And, you know, do I agree right or, you know, do I disagree with their program? Well, it depends on what their program is. Right? It just so happens that, you know, I would, I would not want to see The US controlled by a king. I mean, I yeah.

I don't know. It's like see, well, one of my views on monarchy is, like, you know, it's fine if you have, like, a 150 k k people off in an island that if you're unhappy, then it's, like, pretty easy to hop off to the next one. But, like, if you start taking over an existing place where people have, you know, lots of expect existing expectations and existing investments and just, you know, grew up and put their entire lives into a completely different model and one that the entire world depends on. Like, that ends up looking really different. Right? So, yeah, I think, yeah, I, I would not expect, good things to come from the, you from America having a CEO anytime soon.

And I think that's part of part of part of the issue. Absolutely. Well, I think I I thought there's a lot of, really interesting questions in there, right? I mean, one of the questions is, is it a crypto to right wing politics pipeline or is it a, right wing politics to crypto pipeline and or both? And I think it's a bit of both. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Another one is, like, right when politics itself is not a static organism. Right? And, I feel like a lot of people's mindsets have, changed a lot in the last ten years. Right? And, I mean, I remember back in, you know, 2013 and, 2014. Like, in some ways so I view 2013 and 2014 as being kind of this great divergence, moment both for the crypto space and for, US politics. And, I mean, I wasn't following international stuff as closely, yeah, back then, but possibly for some international politics as well. Right? So, if you remember, go back to, Bitcoin talk before 2013. It's, actually a really fascinating place. Right? Because the, back then, Bitcoin was all that existed. And, Bitcoin was this kind of surprisingly friendly and peaceful for, for political activists of many, very different kinds, to kind of come together and talk to each other. Right? Like, there is this politics and society forum, and there would just often be libertarians and, socialists, that would just, you know, fairly peacefully have these long forum debates. I mean, I sent three paragraphs. You sent the five paragraphs. I mean, he sends eight paragraphs and, you know, maybe it goes, back down at at some point eventually. And just, you know, having sophisticated, discussions about all kinds of topics, whether it's, taxes and welfare, whether it's, you know, the minimum wage, whether it's health and safety regulations, like, you know, whatever the topic is. And, you know, there would be these, very deep and intellectual discussions about it. And, there were a there were, like, especially in, like, early twenty twelve to 2013 Bitcoin, both, what we would consider right leaning and what we would consider left leaning voices, that, that were there. Right? And sometime around, like, just at that time, things really started diverging. Right? So that was the time when cryptocurrency kind of splintered into, both the big versus small block, you know, issue on the Bitcoin side and Ethereum split off from Bitcoin. And then pretty soon after, you know, even more of these kind of smaller, crypto communities split off from Ethereum. And then, you know, in the mainstream world, like, that's when, Trump started getting bigger, and, that's, you know, when a whole bunch of other complicated changes started happening on the right. And, what what are the things that's, kind of, I think, has, made me more and more unhappy with the, right over time is that, like, you know, whatever your flaw the the flaws are of Austrian economics, like, at least it is an intellectual model, and it does present arguments, and you can engage with them as arguments. If you look at, you know, things like, you know, like, the the newer kind of canonical right wing literature. I don't know. Bronze age mindset is, like, the one that comes to mind. Right? Like, it's, people don't try to create, you know, complicated, you know, theoretical justifications for stuff from first principles. You know, it's like vibes, man. Right? It's,

marketing for their viewpoint is like, oh, you know, hey, you know, herder, obviously, yeah, I mean, if you, eat soy, you're a loser. And, I mean, obviously, you know, these, these guys want us to eat bugs and, you know, and live in pods, and, that's bad. And, you know, we're the pros and we're chads. Like, you're, you know, you're supposed to just that stuff continues to exist so clearly, like, there are audiences that it appeals to. And, yeah. I mean, I I don't know fully what happens. I mean, there's different theories. I mean, you know, one of the kind of, more black bill theories is that it was just kind of inevitable because, you know, later stage Internet technology is just inherently are about, you know, making these kind of short viral messages. And, you know, just, it create it encourages engagements both from, you know, everyone, regardless of kind of, you know, what their just intellectual level is or, you know, what what their depth of engagement on any particular topic is. And, you know, this is just the kind of discourse that wins in that context. Or, you know, there's more contingent theories that say that, like, oh, you know, like, that previous version of economic rightist theories, you know, ended up running its course post 2008 and something happens to, you know, needed to be around to replace it. There is, like, you know, lots of ways to analyze the situation, but it's, I don't know. I mean, the the end result of it. Right? Like, the base basically, yeah, you know, the, yeah, the the bra the the bronze age pervert pervert kind of like, Internet chat. Right? Like, that's, it's the it it's definitely not a faction that appeals to me, and and it's not a faction that intuitively seems to me like it is likely to have good answers for, you know, how to make continue to have a great society into the next half century and, you know, deal with all of the various, you know, economic and technological challenges. But, like, you know, that's just me. And, you know, maybe, someone will just someone else with that viewpoints will, you know, either make an intelligent robot or just call me a soy boy and call it a day. We'll see.

since the beginning, it seems to me. But That's a good question. Like, I, it's interesting because, like, I remember I, I made that poll, or series of polls on Twitter about a month or two ago and, you know, I asked people like, you know, am I left leaning? Am I right leaning? Am I woke? Am I based? You know, am I pro globalism? And I got very fifty fifty answers on, a lot of these. And it's, in terms of, like, what I think about myself. I don't know. I feel like I've, I'm definitely realizing that, like, I haven't thought about myself in the context of a particular mainstream label in a long time.

think through why. Right? Like, because, I

Yeah. I think, well, I mean, I definitely feel like I've, I kind of come to get more acquainted with that emotion, more as, you know, I've, kind of been in this, spotlight longer and I feel like I, understand it more, right? Like it's, especially when, you know, you end up being this kind of bridge figure in the middle of, you know, a whole bunch of these, very different and, you know, very, kind of complicated and diverse communities. And, like, for myself, that's, it just ended up being true in all in, you know, all kinds of ways. Like, the Ethereum community itself is pretty, diverse internally, and then there's all of these academic communities that I've been following closely. And then, you know, I've been just as a result of my, fairly nonstop travel the last nine and a half years. I've end up ended up, you know, in the middle of, like, a whole bunch of, different, places and different countries. And, like, I definitely totally get, and I do sometimes feel that emotion of, like, fear of disappointing people. And, you know, this, it's like if I have a viewpoint and, you know, even if I believe it, like, there's if I see a well meaning person that I feel, would, you know, be upset by, yeah, they're just seeing me have that viewpoint. Like, that's definite. Like, there's definitely moments where I just, you know, there are things that matter enough to me that, like, I pretty much, have to say them, but, like, you know, that like like, that emotion is definitely there. Right? And, I feel like I can, understand more, like, especially, where, you know, some of, like, main more mainstream figures that, you know, the media tends to kind of, you know, fairly easily dismiss as being cowards if, they, you know, refuse to kind of criticize or whatever p whatever people. Right? Like, it's, I think, like like so to be clear, I think they're often wrong to, to do that. And there are times when, like, I would have been, probably been braver than they were. And, but at the same time, like, it feels like, there's this sort of zeitgeist that, you know, if you're but, basically, there's this sort of theory. Yeah. There's this there's this kind of, like, how to describe it, internalized capitalism, maybe. Like, it's, you know, like, there's, like, internalized racism and internalized capitalism, and the mindset is, like, if someone does anything that's misaligned I like that. The way that they're that they're being misaligned is money, which is, it's right? So, you know, if someone is afraid of criticizing a particular group, like, oh, it's because they have a $75,000,000 advertising contract, and they don't want to lose that money. That's like, you know, bro, people are afraid of people are willing to lose huge huge chunks of money if they strongly believe in something all the time. Just look at Kanye. Right? But, peep at the you know, just people are yeah. So this concept

I'm sure there's definitely people who do, who do say things like that. But I think, you know, like, even to the extent that, like, I, I have acted in, in misaligned ways in the past, I'm, like, my guess would be that if you can, like, point out a situation and, you know, like, if on reflection, I decide today that, yes, I was wrong there, it's, like, 90% chance it's not because of of, financial reasons. It's for social reasons. Right? Like, you know, all of these people and myself included, like, you know, we have friends in all of these regions and there we have, you know, people with, you know, in all kinds of communities that just have these different mindsets. Or the But, you know, at the same time, they're just, you know, really good people and, like, you know, we don't want to disappoint them. So that definitely exists. But at the same time, like, you know, this year, for example, I mean, I was obviously, you know, feeling willing to be, critical of, Russia invading Ukraine. And I thought that was just, you know, it's a situation that was, important enough to be worth it. And that's, I mean, I'm definitely one where I basically did, minimum Yep. Base you know, sacrifice my ability to safely go back to Russia for quite for quite a while. But, it's, you know, and that's obviously a really extreme case, right? Like in some ways, you know, wars are like the most extreme, form of, you know, one of the most extreme collective human experiences in all kinds of ways, like, both in terms of the negative emotions they generate, but also even in terms of the positive emotions that, you know, the AI generate between people who end up being on the same side of them. But so that would be one example. But, so, you know, yes, and, you know, I'm sure to some extent, like, the desire to not alienate particular people affects me, though that is definitely something that I try intentionally try compensating for. Though, at the same time, I, it's interesting. Like, the, the other thing is that for a a pretty, long while recently, like, I have had this, realization that I think, look, western culture in particular does have this, a kind of pretty strong negativity bias in a lot of ways. Right? Like, people's first instinct when evaluating many kinds of things is like, oh, how is this bad? Right? Like, you know, people's first instinct in when they see a a government policy is like, oh, the regulator is must be malleable. It's people's first instinct that seeing some corporate change in policy is like, oh, you know, these people are greedy, and we have to oppose them. And there's just like this, like, on all sides that, you know, there is this actual desire to kind of see it in negatives before seeing positives. And, when I, yeah, just, like, think back to, you know, the kinds of conversations I would have, you know, in, like, you know, the, one and a half years I spent in, China, for example, or, you know, even talking to just non Western people in general or even just talking to Western people who are less politically engaged. Like, there's you don't see that negativity to the same extent. Right? And so I think it's, like, it is important to comp to try to, you know, not let negativity, I would get to you as well. Right? And that's, like, that does lead to, probably, yeah, I mean, a different conclusions and, different mindsets in a lot of ways. And, I mean, I think it's it might even be a mindset that's kind of more appropriate to the crypto space. Right? Because, like, if I all if your way of engaging with the politics of the world is that, there are people proposing bills and, so a lot of those bills are bad and you have to oppose them, then, like, your mindset basically is going to be like, you know, hey. What's the next threat? Right? But if, but crypto isn't really opposing things to the same extent as it is about creating new alternatives. And, you know, when you're creating new alternatives, then the, the work ends up being like, the kind of stuff that you think about be ends up being different. And, when you see a, like, you know, if you're left leaning and you see a right leaning person suggest an idea, like, one way to think about it is, like, oh, this is evil. Another way to think about it is, like, well, I disagree with some of the valences, but there is a really important underlying, underlying kernel here and, like, let me figure out what is my version of that. Right? Or, you know, if you're a right leaning person, you see a left leaning person suggest something like and you might ask, like, well, you know, what is my version of that? And that's, like, a question that I think is, really important to ask and can be, mineral could be really productive to be asking. But I don't know. I guess I got I got rambly there because, you know, as, I don't know. You you started asking, you know, what are my my political perspectives that I just mentioned that, you know, I don't kind of fall on a map as easily. And, like, maybe that's one of the reasons why. Right? Like, as if your mindset is this kind of traditional partisan politics mindset and, you know, you are a person of the libertarian side and your main way of relating to questions is, like, is it libertarian? Is it authoritarian? If it's authoritarian, I'm going to oppose it. Or, you know, is it an economically hierarchical or economically egalitarian? If it's economically hierarchical, I'm going to oppose it. Like, that's, it makes it easier to kind of see where you are in terms of parties. But, like, if your way of relating to questions is, you know, okay. Well, you know, we'll look at ideas, what are aspects that I like. And, if I like them, then I'll support it. And, if there are aspects that I dislike, well, you know, my way my way of relating to that, that initial idea will be to say, like, you know, here's aspects that I appreciated, here's aspects that I disagree with, then it's, having an kind of an identity conception of yourself as belonging to a side just sort of becomes less natural in a lot of ways. I don't know. I mean, I think it's about also like how

I actually, this is, funny. I was, talking to an Indiana a couple of, months back And, I mean, just, you know, keep in mind, this is one, this is one Indian, and India is, like, the one super big country that I've been to, the least. So I'm just kind of, you know, uncritically parroting their viewpoints. But their viewpoint is that in India, it's vegetarianism that is, associated with, kind of right leaning internationalism. And, you know, it's like, okay. You know, the connotations there are opposite. And, like, these are the kinds of things that totally, yeah, happen all the time. But, like, yeah, you know, like, you could you could so easily make a just so story that's like, oh, the right says that hierarchy is natural and, you know, higher and the hierarchy being natural is the main principle. And this is why the rich should rule over the poor, and why the man should rule over the woman, and why the man should rule over the cow, and so I'm gonna eat the cow. But, like, at the same time but then you realize that, like, wait, no. You know? It's just to be existence of these, you know, other cultures and other context shows that it's just totally not, you know, universal. And that's, like, it's not even it's not a side so much as it is a strand. Right? Like, a side is kind of natural. Right? Like, there's a, you know, there's a direction. Like, the concept of North does it, like, it it exists. It's, you know, there's a there's a ways in which it exists. So, you know, even if humans and culture disappear from the world forever. But, like, a strand is, you know, it's it's much more contingent. That's much more kind of relating to the world as it exists today. But, you know, yeah. There Bitcoin is is much more single strand y than Ethereum is. I think it's, like, my way of putting it. Yeah. And I think you you have been recently really into the really into pluralism, which I think can kind of also differentiate between Bitcoin and Ethereum, is that there is, much more pluralism in the Ethereum world than there is in in the world. Yeah. That that that's absolutely true, and I think that's definitely something that I also, like, intentionally try to be supportive of. Right? Like, this is, like, this is one of the things that I definitely like, I'm sure I don't succeed at a 100% of the time, but I try to be careful about, which is, you know, if I, like, if I have any perspectives of my own, I definitely don't want to, like, impose and say, you know, hey. Yeah. You You know, if you have a perspective very divergent from this, then you can't be an Ethereum. Whereas, you know, because, like, you know, if you try to do it too much, like, there's definitely, like, a little bit of that that sometimes can be worth doing, and there's definitely specific groups that it can kind of strategically be, be good to exclude because it creates just a healthier community. But, like, in general, if that's your default mode of relating to things, then, like, you know, you you end up kind of agreeing with yourself more and more all the way up until you you realize that you're you're you're just completely destroyed your pluralism. And that's, I don't think something that we wanna do.