CCG Chronicles #12 - Origins of the Crypto Commons
During the CCG I interviewed a co-founder of the event and organization that runs it, the Crypto Commons Association, Felix Fritsch (@FelixFritsch2) . Felix is a PhD student who focuses on the synthesis of cryptocurrencies with commons theory and has written articles like "Challenges and Approaches to Scaling the Global Commons" with many others including those who have been on the podcast before. During the interview we spoke about his story for getting involved in the crypto commons m...
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Transcript
Hi, everyone. What you're about to listen to is an interview that I took in person while attending the CryptoCommons Gathering Conference in Austria in August 2021. The conference itself was a wonderful experience where people of a lot of different backgrounds and political ideas were able to discuss openly and safely about how crypto can intersect with fostering the commons. What you'll notice from these interviews is that these differences in thought are sometimes apparent because we all come from different places, and what was honestly refreshing about the experience is that we could do it in a supportive environment. This is probably one of the most receptive audiences in crypto to socialism, which was really great for me. Also, a heads up is that you may notice sometimes that the audio was clearly recorded in the house that we were all staying in, which wasn't the best place for recording, but we did the best that we could with what we had. A lot of the interviews will also likely feature in the documentary that I'm making about the world of crypto and its potential futures with a friend. A big reason I was able to make it to this conference was thanks to all the support I received from patrons. So if you find the work that I do important, I hope you'll consider helping out starting at $3 per month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist.
So maybe to start off, just for people who don't know you, you can give a quick introduction of, who you are and how we came to this point in time where we are sitting across from each other for the Crypto Commons gathering.
Yeah. I'll I'll I'll try that. So, I'm Felix. I'm born in Vienna, thirty two years ago, and, I've been for a large part of my youth and and early and also I've been active in in in various social movements, on the left, and I pretty much always identified with the political left. But then lately, well lately, last last decade or so was frustrating and I gradually turned more and more away from from activism at least, protests on the street and stuff like that because it appeared very futile. I studied political science and economics for bachelor's and then international development studies, in Amsterdam for a master's. And after that I did peace research, so it was peace and conflict and peace negotiations, peace treaties. I was working in that for about a year in in Geneva. Well, found out I don't wanna learn French, and, there's absolutely no social life if you don't learn French. So I quit. And then, that was so that was the the the point of reorientation that was in mid or late twenty seventeen when we had the first ICO boom and all these crazy ideas of crazy white papers being thrown out there with the vague promise to fulfill. Maybe eventually most of them died off but I think that the main the main value this this wave brought was opening up the space of possibilities and starting to explore that and also all starting to explore obstacles that were not that clear before. And, well, in that current, I I I decided to to go back to university to apply for PhD and do that with a proposal, research proposal on blockchain as digital movement, an approach that I I since dropped. But anyway, I got a position. I got some funding. And I'm writing on CryptoCommons from a from perspective of, mainly political theory and political economy, and how we came here. Well, two things. We did same, kind of event last year, with my brother who's into digital engineering, into drones, machine learning, and three d print. But on the other hand, I think, a notable event was meeting, meeting Jeff and Griff and Chris from Commonstack in Thailand about two years ago, and that really kicked off, good, collaborations. So we were writing on a paper last year together, seven of us, that has been published with, Frontiers in Blockchain. And that brought us, together. So some most of the of the seven people were here during the conference. But also other workshops and collaborations with mainly with Jeff, from Commonstack. And so last year, I I discussed this, quite a lot with him and with Julio, of course, who's my partner in organizing this event here.
No. Did you just meet Jeff and Griff, like, randomly in Thailand? Or was it No. No. It was planned. So,
yeah, we have a travel budget. My university has a travel budget, which is quite quite decent. And they paid me a trip to Thailand Yeah. For because, yeah, I I saw somewhere randomly in their Telegram, channel in the Comstock Telegram channel that they're having this retreat, and everyone is welcome to join. And, yeah, I took that, at face value and and wrote them if I can come in a week. Yeah. And then I spent, like, two weeks with them. And at first, it was I was coming from a quite critical angle, and I I think some of my criticisms are still, valid. Some others, I I I withdrew. Or I let's say I changed I changed my idea of what they are actually doing, and I think I also managed to to induce some change, in their own image of themselves. But, yeah, it was it was rather random.
So then was that was that, like, the start of when you were starting to think about the commons as, like, a concept
in the crypto Yes. World? Yes. With the commons stack? Right. Before that, I was much more on digital activism, basically. You know, hacking as a mode of direct action, of political direct action. Right. So in autonomous tradition, I was thinking of of doing that, but then as crypto turned more and more into an industry and even, you know, like an industry and NGOs if you want, such as the common stock, it didn't seem useful at least to use a social movement theory and methods for something that is not really a social movement and where the methods don't play. Right. So I I dropped that and then was looking for, yeah, a new A new angle. A new angle. Yeah. A hook to to to start a story from something interesting there. And that was, for me, definitely the use of of of comments, of the notion of the comments in a market setting. And, this idea of build common marketplaces where people kind of compete over price but also collaborate and with well, yeah. Initially, I was, mainly skeptical because of the very liberal use of some, political and economic concepts that sometimes mean quite distinct things and lose their meaning when you throw them around widely. And this is, well, yeah, to be honest, this is what the CommsTech did at some some points at least. And I had long discussions with Jeff and with Griff. And Jeff, I think that was, like, seven, eight days we were up until four each night discussing stuff, and I I still have recordings of that. I transcribed it all. Did you have to, like, teach him, some Marxism a bit? Yeah. I tried to. Well, yeah. First of all, they're mentioning value a lot. What what kind of value are you talking about? Exchange value or use value? And just this distinction helped them a lot in in structuring their thought. Mhmm.
Yeah. That's really interesting. I think, like, yeah. It was funny the other day that when we were the conversation between Giulio and Griff, you can sort of, like, I heard about it. I wanna see that. Yeah. Yeah. You can you can see the differences between, like, the the variety of different people who are within this movement or, you know, if we can call it that. But, so then now I'm curious why you wanted to mix these two words, crypto plus commons. Like, how how do those things
intersect? Sure. I mean, I that's why I mentioned my political, history or or history of activism. I got frustrated. Right? Yeah. Or with, legacy forms of political activism. Yeah. And, yeah, I I guess you can you feel for me there. So I was frustrated with that. And, at the same time, I do think a potential is opening up here that crypto might not just be the, the Panopticon and, the the surveillance hellhole that, some are sure building under many other criticisms as well. And crypto has terrifying potential, definitely, but this is happening anyway. And it's, so, again, the the what I think needs to be done is at least work on an alternative and work on an alternative narrative to spread the liberating capacity of of crypto to normal people and people that are, as me, feeling as leftist, were frustrated with how how thing how bad things go and how how bad things will go
in the foreseeable future. When you say how bad things will go, are you talking about I guess you're talking about one, like, general problems that we already know about to climate change. Yeah. Yeah. That that on one pressure is rising.
Left is utterly fucked and is not getting out of that. Like, the political party left. There's no dead end.
And, yeah, I don't see that changing anytime soon. And I guess on the other side as well, if you're just looking at the crypto space, there's also I mean, I guess what I like about what you're what you're saying, it's sort of my feeling is that, yeah, if you do nothing about it, then obviously, the entire technology is going to be used for ways that, you know, everybody already criticizes it about. Like, if you just sit there and just criticize, whereas if we come in and try to engage it and try to influence it to some degree at the very least, and, it may even be a good spot where a lot of different left wing, you know, organizational practices could be utilized in for a, like, a future, then it's, like, a more useful it's more it's it's a fairly useful use of your time, at least, you know, from a political standpoint. True dot. If you think that crypto or blockchain is going to, even if you think it's bad, there's still a very high chance that it's going to enter into our lives. And, you know, whether or not we think it's bad or good.
Yeah. Right. It is the usual, technophobia among leftists that I see playing out in a large part of them. Basically me, I don't want that change. I'm just not gonna look at it Right. Until it's there. Yeah. That doesn't stop the change. Right. So, yeah, I think I think that that holds for pretty much everyone here. We see the potential. We see also terrifying potential, and we wanna create, an alternative.
Right. And offer an alternative. Yeah. One of the things that I will notice that, I have lights for the most part, I don't feel that anyone is really a techno utopian. Like, I don't hear anyone saying that, like, like, the solutions will fix the problem. And I think the the majority, consensus has been, like, there is a need for some sort of, like, social cohesion and, like, social knowledge behind technology?
I think I mean, okay. I wasn't around that much, four years ago. But in general, the discourse, shifted within crypto from a hard techno, optimist or techno solutionist stance to some acknowledgment that, yeah, social is actually important and you can't, do social purely on chain. Right. Yeah. You still need all of that around the fluffy call it cultural script or yeah. Plenty of of of of names to call that. But, this has been for last two, three years, more and more the discovery. Also that, when building these systems at some point and that is now, the focus shifts from technology to, social, attraction to social coordination. So meaning community managers, community leaders are now, well sought for, meaning also social scientists that understand, social dynamics better than, the often very naive and simplistic assumptions devs might make on their, user base. Right. Yeah. I think we will see that more in the coming years. Yeah. It's interesting.
Like, or just take Griff, for example. I mean, he's tough. And, I mean, I noticed this in the the DAO space anyways, the emphasis on culture has been an an emergence, a new thing. Whereas I remember before, it was very much, like, no, our govern like, governance will be on chain and you will just, like, go on. Case closed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was it's it's it's changing with with that realization. Of course, whether or not they will accept that they were, you know, wrong in the beginning, you know, whatever. But I think they're accepting that, social is a lot more important than than they thought.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good thing. And, yeah, this is also, you know, for me, it was a zero knowledge of of of coding. Right? Can't write a line of code. And I don't don't think I should be learning. I think I should be staying where I am, basically social sciences. So when I first met the Commonstack, yeah, I was very skeptical, of their use of terminology. I was also skeptical, and I still am, of the, economics of their, augmented money curve or of the, let's say, implicit is it really a promise? It's well, it is an implicit promise of of speculative potential that is not just hypothetical. And I tend to disagree that this will function in the long run, but there's only one way to find out now. Yeah. Because it really depends on on on your idea of human nature and drivers of decisions. And if they're right with, philanthropy being combinable with, speculative, behavior or basically, with the you know what? What they do is they say, well, you have philanthropic people that might also want to do make a profit, and why not combine that in one, like, see take both as a motivation, which is kind of impact investment, but much more, speculative. I mean, what they so I don't know. Are we going into, like, a kind of research on, like, just mechanisms, ideas, and stuff? Because I would like to throw some out there. Yeah. Sure. So for example,
the way I think about what the the common stack does did anyone explain the augmented bonding curve stuff
roughly? Nothing. Okay. I can go very briefly through the augmented bonding curve and how I see that. So augmented bonding curve is a bonding curve is basically, in a way the common stack uses it is a fractional reserve system. You have a smart contract. You pit put in a coin. It means another coin and holds your, original coin in reserve. Mhmm. Just like a central bank. Right? It issues new coin that is, collateralized by by other's coin. You can the the the curve is determined by an equation so you can shape it as you want. The more tokens are in existence. We have a y, this price. X, there's amount of tokens in existence. And then we say the first token costs one, the second token costs two, and so on. And then when you go back on that curve, basically, when you sell back to the contract, and the contract destroys them. First, it issues them. Then it redeem redeems and destroys them. Then you go back on that line to, in the end, zero tokens, zero money in the in the in the reserve. And that is just generally a bonding curve. Basically replacing a multi sided market with a one-sided market where everyone interacts solely with, the the smart contract in the middle. So you always have, a trading partner, which is good, especially in illiquid markets. The augmentation, the common stock introduced is basically a tax mechanism that taxes either upon entry or upon exit. So either, you know, as you have that one central trading agent, you can control the trades or you can tax these trades. So whenever you sell tokens to the, to the smart contract and they are redeemed and destroyed you do not get everything you should get. But it's it's some tax is taken out. It could be like 1% or let's keep it low so so it doesn't really it's not too much friction in the system. But anyway this tax fuels a funding pool. There's a separate pool from the reserve pool and token holders have voting rights over the funding pool. So the the idea is that you gather an economy or you gather agents around an idea of doing good, doing something for a commons. That could be, for example, the first iteration is the token engineering commons. That means building tools, open source tools for token engineers. And the funding pool is, used by token holders or token holders can vote on the funding pool to be used for, various, purposes or various things that serve, the shared purpose of forwarding, token engineering commons. That could also be a beach commons. Let's clean up that beach, and let's buy I don't know. Whatever you need for beach beach cleaning. Right? And then you could have, for example, people living around that beach. The stakeholders, can buy some tokens, have, voting power over funding pool. And whenever someone leaves, this setting, they pay a tax to the funding pool, so some money comes in. You can use that on the beach. That could be, for example, for you, I don't know, a summer village somewhere by a river. And there there are plenty of of of settings where you could have this, and it's nice to play around a bit with it. Well, I think what this is I mean, it's a governance token. Okay? It's you can call it whatever. But I what I think or what in my perspective, what that really is, it is a bet on the effective capacity of an idea or what I would call a mimetic derivative. So mimetic from memes, but in a broad sense. Right? Any notion, any idea. Let's clean up that beach, improve the top in engineering commons. Whatever. All of that are mimetics and, they have effective capacity. So they they vary in how much social traction they gain, how far and how fast they circulate, in in social groups, and how strongly people feel towards them. So, affect is interesting because the autonomous school, works a lot on on the value theory of affect, basically, going from labor theory of value to an affect theory of value. Labor theory of value is very objective or tries to be as objective as possible. Affect theory of value is completely opposite. It is, basically the aggregated, subjectivity of all, participants in system. And that really fits, networked, economies. And that really fits, in the whole crypto scene because in in the crypto scene, how tokens gain in value is not because they're being used in some production right now, but because you have hypes, you know, speculation on the effective capacity. Right? Basically, you spec if you speculate, right, you speculate on how many other people will feel strongly positively towards that token and will thus buy in. You do not really, at least now in crypto, speculate on, oh, the production of wheat is gonna be higher next year, so we will need more of that currency to do no. That's not how it works. Right? Right. So you have this strong match of of autonomous, theoretical elements and crypto. There are many more that I I want to explore more. I'm I was hoping that we will have more, academic, participants from that field next year here. So that's an explicit invitation for all the autonomous that did not come this year. Please come. There's work to do. Could you explain a bit, what is the autonomism?
In few words? Yeah. I think it's really it's really interesting, school of thought that I mean, I myself, I feel like I need to learn more about it. But, it is one of the schools of thought that, for example, Vangelis, early in the conference when he was mapping out the different political strains Mhmm. Within the, the crypto common space, and the crypto space in general, is he included, like, autonomous Marxists and post Marxists. Mhmm. Mhmm. But if you look up at least whenever I looked up, like, autonomous Marxism, it was not very easy to find information about it actually. Yeah. Well, so one problem is that it's not one coherent
structure of theory. It's rather a few elements that are in loose connection and not all of the autonomous necessarily share all of them. And it has also quite some history. So autonomous thought started with, workerism in Italy in the in sixties. That was a movement of of young scholars to go into factories to align with workers, and, yeah, be organic, intellectuals for the workers movement. However, in oh, you have to correct me if I'm wrong, please. In the seventies, basically workers movement failed. Capitalism reshuffled, reorganized itself, decentralized production broke up big units into smaller units, thus, crackdown on worker power. And basically, autonomists said, so that's the shift from, operas and workerism to post workerism. They basically said, okay, fuck the unions, at least the big ones. This is not leading anywhere. The industrial, worker is a dying species and is losing, its its power. It's not the main subject of revolution anymore. The coming revolution will be one of general intellect. So that's an interesting concept. Yeah. Will be sort of coming or could be. Right? That they put their eggs in a different basket, and that was the rise of cultural workers, of care workers, of of all that subjectivity. Right? That is now affect or that drives, affect, the value, connected to affect. And that was, like, fifty years ago. Right? So that shift already occurred pretty early.
But it's it's like a movement that is fairly,
it's fairly present in in Italy. Right. That's what I wanna say. You still have a lot of, a lot of squats in Italy that pretty much all not all of them, but most are in that autonomous sphere rather than in organized, Marxist groups. They yeah. A lot about is about, basically escaping, the systems attempts of commodification of everything and building, basically, building islands in a sea of capitalism. And that, of course, resonates with the commons. Right? Where you also wanna build these protected islands and maybe connect them over time, but where market relations cannot penetrate, which is also why, crypto commons are a strange breed. Right. Yeah. Because you invite the market under certain conditions there. And you don't just try to exclude it. Yeah. Shall we continue this? Gersing to autonomy? I don't know. I mean, there there are interesting concepts. The general intellect Sure. Yeah. Is the knowledge commons, basically, that we share and, that over time so this is a concept already developed by Marx somewhat or mentioned by Marx. Over time, our productive, the means of production become more and more immaterial and more and more our brains. Right. On one hand and patents on the other. Right? So you have you have this idea of common knowledge, a common knowledge base that we grow together and that we draw on and that, allows us also to to escape complete, valorization and commodification in a way. At the same time, well, capitalism has its own ideas on that. Right? That might be IP. That might be human capital instead of general intellect. You can play that game there. Well, the Autonomous also have good, good thought on the question of money of the commons. So quite interesting, experiments also in in a social center, a squad in Milano called Macau, that has been around for a decade or so. And as far as I remember, that was 2014 that they had, first of all, visited by by some bit Bitcoin devs at the time with, Vitalik Buterin among them Yeah. Staying there for a month and getting them into the idea of crypto. Then they had, several meetings on on creating a money for the commune, that became Commoncoin. They're still experimenting. Yeah. They are connected to and dine. Dine.org was was doing, some stuff with them a couple of years ago. So there is and, well, that's another trait of autonomous. They have a different relationship to technology than, classical Marxist, which is well, they they see this ambiguity and play with it, you know, of of technology always having terrifying and liberating potential. Mhmm. Yeah. So they would actually from within left, they they are probably the most open to to what we're working on. And they're involved fairly early. Yes. It sounds like even as well. Yes. Yes.
So then maybe, I guess, considering all of these different, I mean, I guess we could call them contradictions a bit in in in this space and, you know, I think that's that's okay. What now I I think maybe now we're at the end almost of the conference. So I'm curious what your definition is based on this conference. Like, what does the crypto commons mean to you now?
In the end, to me, the crypto commons is a banner under which, people deeply concerned about mechanisms of the capitalist system, not just fiat money and inflation and money printer. But people that have deeper thought on that can gather without using old, old, banners of the left. But I mean, god. Most of the people here are implicit leftists. Right? You know, they have often they have problems, being explicit leftist because of Yeah. Party politics that they they associate politics with, and they exclusively think in party politics if we say politics. And then, yeah, who wants that?
Yeah. Yeah. I think if if people will listen to, like, other interviews, that we've done so far, the group that comes together. I mean, like, some people will say, like, know what do we need to use the word socialism or, like, you know, communism, capitalism? We need to use it. You know, we just need to do and then they begin to basically describe a socialist system. Yeah. Which is, like, very funny. And there's I mean, yeah, there are contradictions in there, and we but at the same time, I don't think any type of libertarian movement is going to have complete, you know, logical centralization for, you know, the exact thing that everybody has in their head and what the vision is. It's always going to be some slight differences. There's always going to be people who use words slightly differently and may not like some words and prefer other words because of how they personally feel. Sure. In the end, that's fine. Right? Right. The point is that you just move forward.
Yeah. What what we wanna do is, shape, shape this technology, the development of these technologies, and shape their social, interpretation and use. That's what we wanna do. And, we do that under the banner of crypto commons because that already puts us in opposition to private property, and the usual usual game. Yeah. Same way, same way, same moment. It's, it's, it's only implicitly political, which allows many more people, especially in in Right. Because in in in text fields, it allows them to to enter without, getting overly political Right. For now.
But it allows them to have beers with Marxists and, like, chill and Yeah. In a more casual setting talk about, politics Right. Than in, like, a declarative
way, I guess. Yeah. But so coming back to the question, you were asking what the crypto comments mean for me. Yeah. On one hand, it is a banner that we're gathering under, and it's narrative that, I wanna develop and push for. I think, I think this conference, is really important for for getting that start in a more coordinated fashion among the people, the groups here. Also, definitely, with this documentary that could have huge outreach to to many people that haven't ever heard of crypto commons. Right. Right? They're not in our tiny Twitter bubbles.
Yeah. Yeah. We need to grow the niche. Yeah. Definitely. And I I think,
this gathering was a starting point for that. Yeah. Absolutely. For a new phase, in which we, yeah, should really roll out our narrative and and start attracting more people, more thinkers, from different, different backgrounds also. Yeah. More political activists, more academics.
Yeah. I I told you this before, but, you're doing God's work by hosting this conference and giving it a start. So thanks a lot for, for setting it up. So has the conference itself gone as, like, you expected it to go?
Yeah. Pretty much so. Okay. I know. I I have some experience with, organizing small events like this in rather informal settings, which is what I like doing most. You know, problem was more I I always knew how it was gonna be if enough people come and good people come, but problem was mainly how to explain that. Like, I couldn't just say, come. It's gonna be super nice. I had to to to give people some idea whether true or not of what would be happening here. So for example, we had to make a full program. Although, we knew that the program is more, an idea of how it could go and that probably by the third day we would rearrange the whole program to fit actual needs on the ground. Yeah. That this is pretty much what happened. I was happy that it did take place that that at some point we could, you know, we were relieved from that, from that obligation of of always maintaining the structure and stuff. Bridgeport could have been like a good amount of self organization, I would say. Yeah. Exactly. Same same for the house, for cooking, cleaning, all of that. And that worked pretty well from the from the beginning. And I I I definitely bet on that. Yeah. It was a bet. And if people hadn't been cooperative
They would have been annoying. Would have been yeah.
Annoying. But then, I mean, with whom else with a bunch of commerce, can you try that and can you count on them actually getting getting how to live a commons
Yeah. For a week. The the particular nature of this type of conference was that it wasn't like a I didn't feel like I was purchasing
No. Like a spot. No. No. No. No. You were not you were not purchasing a spot. You had to apply Right. For the right to purchase a spot. But we wouldn't sell you a ticket without, reading your, application and or CV before because we we're limited. We have limited space here. Right? I think much more than 50 people at a time here doesn't make much sense. We'll see next year. I think it will be difficult, but we really like, the main target was get the right people here. Not get as much people as possible and definitely not earn money with it. Mhmm. Having some funds is nice, and we have a lot of plans on how to use them. But the purpose was always bringing together the right people, and I think we achieved that. We so we have to to to let's say that the usual, like or for me, my Twitter sphere. Right? The usual crypto bubble of of Blockchain for Good and so on. The common stack and and their universe and and several others. But then I think one of the main one of the things I'm happy for and and I think worked out really well is that we brought, community community currency people in. And that there appears to be some some interaction. The old school. The old school and the new school. Right?
And, you know, even just that that Matt said he's gonna be, joining the new school, for a bit. Yes. That's cool. I've noticed that Matthew's, he's opened up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
And if he's just wrapping his idea in new words Yeah. Yeah. Calling it tokens. If it works, that's that's cool. If we get, mutual credit, experiments more into that space, yeah, definitely. We're gonna have we can have some, well, theoretical and, practical conversations of different theories of money, of monetary systems, and that's slightly needed. Else, I'm happy that we had so I'm happy for all participants. Right? They're all great. I'm just, looking at for the unusual parts now that we brought in, Andreas from the cope, Faircope movement in in Germany. Yeah. That is a real good link. And and the other, COP projects that, Giulio got in, through his contacts. Yeah. It's Plen plenty more good participants. I would like to say what I what I think was missing a bit. Like, if if any downsides, I would have liked to see more, academics that, present, you know, give good presentations, coherent ones, structured presentations of half an hour to forty five minutes, and that have an impact over the day. So I'm not thinking about summaries of this of the field and some we usually know better than an outside observer. But rather one idea that that changes dynamics here. And the problem is that you need good speakers for that, and it's very subjective. Right? But, yeah,
if if if we could have academic soup could define
different types of value very well. Yeah. That that would be definitely a thing and we're gonna have a glossary next year. I'm gonna develop that and try to to helpful. To do that. Yeah. That would be great. Just some in the first days, some glossary work, some main concepts, and please do not confuse that with that. You know? Yeah. Someone giving an overview of of commons, theory and different, well, commons as institutions, commons as resources, and so on. Mhmm. Philosophers. Yeah. These kind of academics. If if anyone hears that and and and thinks they might fit, please contact me. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. I mean, we have about three hundred and fifty days until the next gathering. So
Have you already started planning the next one?
Yeah. I'm I'm applying the next one since the first day. Oh, last one. Sure.
So, I'm curious to hear from you. You you mentioned it a little bit, but you've done you know, based on your research, how do you think this particular niche of the crypto commoners, how does it differ from, like, the traditional I mean, just, like, the the crypto world in general. How how how do you see those differences? Some people have said it being, like some people have said leftist. Other people have been shying away from that, but I agree.
Oh, yeah. I mean, implicit implicit leftism definitely. In terms of values, there is some concern for for the collective or, there is some understanding that, well, if we have a world built on volunteerism, we need to encourage people to actually volunteer for things. Right? If we stick with the the libertarian approach to it but then realize that, okay, if we all just, exclusive, if we all act exclusively on our own self interest, this is gonna be a shit show. You have these, that that would be grief. Right? Devatarian, by values, but at the same time, these, capitalists have a whole problem. Then, I mean, you have a lot of visionaries or or or idealists, I guess, in this space, more than maybe in in blockchain, broader field of blockchain. Let's say I'm I'm actually thinking about, let's say, DeFi, Dejins that are usually exclusively concerned about price, price movement.
There hasn't been a single mention of price in our conference.
Yeah. I saw I saw, a Holochain chart yesterday as a meme. That was the first chart I saw or chunk of price. That was I don't know where where where coins went in the last week or so. I have no idea. And it doesn't really matter, right, for this year.
One thing, that yeah. You you can cut that as you want anyway.
That I I I have the feeling, a thought that I've been developing the last two days. I'm not sure though how it fits with our agenda in this documentary and towards our sponsors, if we have any. But it is this idea of, okay, there is a lot of enthusiasm here and, a lot of optimism, and we're all quite high on on on what we're doing. But at least in in financial terms, we're all high on big big capital entering a promising market and, taking strategic bets. And this is, in the end, where all that money is coming from. It's not magically created, this value. No. It is cash fiat inflows It exists in capital. That we sell our tokens for in the end. But somewhere this this, fiat has to come from, and that is from big capital. And not saying that this is a bad thing. This is happening all the time in different, emerging industries that you have this upstream. And when you are in a real upstream, that is global shifts in economy, and when you're in that financial upstream, you can hardly fuck up at all. Everything becomes incredibly easy. And, yeah, as you see here, right, you have so many new, collaborations started, things being funded. It's just because money is here in abundance, and we all kind of know that. Yeah. We all would like to have more budget, of course. But compared to any other, creative experimental field, Money is lacking. Yeah. Money is lacking everywhere except for here. Because we're experimenting with money. Right? Or anyway. And that yeah. Again, this is happening with or without us. We can just as well swim on that, upstream and and do cool things with it. But I think, we should also be aware that we are in an upstream of big financial capital, and they are, well, controlling from afar where this, journey goes. We can try to subvert it somewhat, and we should try to subvert it. And to to, on one hand, create our niches and try to impact the whole direction a bit, create a counter narrative, to their, purely financial narrative. Yep. But, yeah, I would like to, in future, see more open conversations about this. Right? It's not a many people would be, I think, would not have would be uncomfortable maybe with that. Everyone, I guess, kind of knows that it's true. We don't talk about it much. And, yeah, I said it's it's not a bad thing. It's just we have to be aware of that. And, on the other hand, I would also like to say what we are doing here, every one of us, be it you guys, be it me, any of the projects out there, is creating so incredibly much value for the big chains, in the end for big capital that is investing in this vision. Because we are all developing this vision further. We are building new projects on top of the main chains or on competitors. But in the end, we all of this fuels the ecosystem. We work on translating, a technical narrative into social narrative, which opens up to so many more, participants in these economies.
Yeah. I I I think,
we have We're looking for funds. Right?
We're looking for funds, and we're going to be subversive about it. Yeah.
Yeah. That I I think like some some donors also appreciate that that you know groups wanting to to retain independence and some radical thought. For example, can I tell that? Yeah. It's been that was in 2014 so I'm allowed to talk about it. There it is. Back then I was involved in a political group in in Bosnia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and, we applied for 20 k funding for a house project that was somewhat similar to here. It was a different theme. Right? It was, left, left wing politics in in in a post war, post conflict, country with a lot of issues. But anyway, we applied for, 20 ks to Sorge, to to what's that foundation called? The Open Society Foundations.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And
we told them, yeah, we want your money but we do not want any liberals because that's like, we're not an NGO. We're a movement. Just give us money. Somehow. And they did. They they actually liked that direct, approach. Yeah. I do hope that, potential sponsors would also see our supporters would see that we're doing, something official here and that, too much, too many deliverables and a too tight project or, you know, too much involvement by a specific chain would hurt this rather than than support it. Like, I don't want any any chain, taking over this place. Yeah. I think It should be neutral ground between different, approaches and and projects.
I think making, like, the crypto commons, as a part of something that other chains sort of want in on, but then be in competition with one another. Like, so putting the crypto commons into a sort of advantageous position would, you know, sort of encourage the money to flow and retain the independence.
Right. Sure. I think so another thought, that I've been developing on how to talk about this here, what I what we're actually doing, what I'm doing with the house, and what service I'm providing with this house to the community is that we're giving, a dispersed, decentralized community that mainly communicates and knows each other or via digital means, we give them a temporary home in which they can have all the social interaction, all all the fun, all that serendipity, that creates great ideas. I can have that for a week or a month and then, go back to their usual pace of work, in in which this is simply not possible. I do think, especially after which still during COVID, this is immensely valuable and important for for for people. And this is also feedback that I'm getting that the physical space is informal and, where it is quite clear that you work together as a group and as a commons, that you preserve the space as a commons.
You practice it in your, like Yeah. Right. Right. And that that's another
that's another thing. We talk about commons all the time, but a large part of commons and of commoning is in the physical. Yeah. And and that feeling of community develops so much stronger in the physical when you share food.
Yeah. Definitely.
I mean, I I think I would really like to offer different communities in in Europe
a temporary home. Nice. I mean, I will probably sit here at some point. So, yeah, I think, this has been a really interesting conversation. Is there anything else that you that you want to mention before we head out?
Not for now. Yeah. No. Sure. There are plenty of things missing. We were jumping around wildly, but that was that's good. Yeah. It won't be the last time that we talked. Yeah. For sure.
Then maybe to to end it, you can you can just share with us the where people can keep up with you and your work.
Yeah. You can find us on www.cryptocommons.org. Well, site is not very far developed yet. But you should at some point see an invitation for next year's gathering. However, well, I think we're not gonna do a lot of a whole lot of advertising Yeah. For next year. I said we have limited spots here. Pretty much everyone wants to come back. So it's gonna be a scramble for the remaining tickets anyway. Yeah. And else we have a Twitter account, that is Gathering Crypto.
And you have a Twitter account? I have a Twitter account. Yeah. That's FedEx fridge, two.
And you can follow me and see that I never post anything except for one paper I publish a year or so.
But I'll I'll include that paper in the, in the description so people can check it out. Yeah. Do check it out. It's it's it's,
it's quite interesting paper. Quite packed with loads of different
One of the first of its kind. Yeah. Yeah.
Also so dense and packed with a lot of different stuff that you can't really put it anywhere, anyway. Yeah. That's true. But it was it was a fun exercise.
Alright. Cool. Thanks.
Cool. Thank you.