A Marxist POV of the Bitcoin Miami Conference
Although it feels like the Bitcoin Miami Conference was ages ago, it still only happened a little over a month ago. There were plenty of memorable events, like Laura Loomer heckling Jack Dorsey, the weird doge coin guy who took his pants off on stage, and the announcement that El Salvador will pass a law to make bitcoin legal tender. It's obvious that many bitcoiners would celebrate the announcement as a legitimation of their favorite coin, but what would be an appropriate Marxist analysis of...
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Transcript
Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socials podcast, and I have Taryn Faivik. She is an adjunct lecturer of economics at John Jay College and a PhD student at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York studying economic geography with the earth and environmental science program. Her professional background includes food server and delivery driver, copy editor, union organizer, journalist, researcher, and public information officer with the International Organization for Migration. And she also recently attended the Bitcoin Miami conference and was probably one of the very few communists at the actual events. So very curious to hear, her perspective and how, how that all went for her and what she thought about it, especially, considering her research interests. So hi, Taryn. How are you doing? Hi. Thanks for having me on. Of course. Maybe to start off, could you give, an introduction to yourself in terms of the activism that you've that you've been doing as well as your research and, yeah, politics?
Sure. So I originally became involved, politically around the time of the two thousand three invasion and decimation of Iraq by The United States, that's where I became sort of politically aware. As an anti war activist, I decided that the most, decent thing for me to do would be to learn Arabic because I thought it was only fair that people should understand what folks were saying on TV when subtitles weren't provided for them. And that led me down a path of Palestinian solidarity activism. I lived in Palestine for, some time, and that sort of led me to an interest in what I guess geographers and especially economic geographers would refer to as uneven development. Right? Why is it that some parts of the world, people live one way economically and people live another way economically in other parts of the world? And so this met quite nicely with my interest in anti war activism, as I'm sure you could imagine. I decided that I would go off to London, and I would study development economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, where I also became involved with Occupy at that time. So I was I was in London, and I was I was involved with Occupy London, And I felt like that was a really interesting experience for me. I learned a lot. And then from then on out, I just sort of continued my thing. Had you heard of Bitcoin while you're doing doing Occupy? Oh, yes. I first heard about Bitcoin. Actually, I think when I was working as a delivery driver, so that would have been right back at the at the very beginning of things. Or no. No. Not when I was working as a delivery driver. Sorry. I I was still in in Central Florida at the time. But I heard about Bitcoin because a lot of the people that I hung out with when I was going to high school and to some extent in college were were nerds. You know, I was a nerd. We were all very interested in computers. We were interested in, programming. We were interested in peer to peer technologies, especially. I came from the in the background where you don't have to buy anything online. You can just torrent it. And so I heard about it long before Occupy, but I think at that time, it was sort of a a libertarian pipe dream. Right? People didn't expect for it to take off in the way that it did. So so that's when I yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. But I actually sorry. So so I actually became more interested. So let me put it this way. Because at first, when I heard about Bitcoin, I'm like, okay. That sounds like a libertarian pipe dream. It's really wrapped up in, like, Austrian economics, etcetera. You know, fix the money, fix the world kind of stuff. And then I became more interested in cryptocurrency more generally when I was in Venezuela. So I was in Venezuela in 2017, as part of a conference, a regional conference. And there, the Venezuelans were rolling out this thing called the Petro. Right? So Venezuela suffers under really onerous sanctions levied by The United States, and it's very difficult for them as an extremely rich country. Right? They have a lot of mineral wealth. They have a ton of oil. They have diamonds, gold, the whole shebang. I mean, the country is just really rich with resources, and yet they were dealing with this economic war that was being levied on them, led by The United States, backed up by the OAS. And so the people in in Venezuela decided that they would try and come up with this thing called the Petro, which was going to be a kind of cryptocurrency that they were going to peg it to the country's reserves of gold and diamonds and oil and things like that, and that that would somehow enable them to get around sanctions. So that was the first time that I had heard of cryptocurrency being used in some way besides Bitcoin, let's say, was in 2017. Then, obviously, when the pandemic hit and we saw that the price of Bitcoin started to exponentially increase, I became more interested in it, especially because at that same time, there was a lot of stuff going on with The US economy in terms of stimulus checks, lots of money being thrown into the environment. And there was sort of a chat about MMT, so modern monetary theory, which is sort of like fix the money, fix the world, but in in almost like a different perspective, obviously, coming from more of a left perspective. And so I noted really closely how these two discourses were developing, and and so I decided that I would get more into it. So I ended up probably reading, like, a dozen books on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency over the last year. I got really into it. I got kinda a little bit obsessed, and this is what culminated in me being able to go to the Bitcoin conference in Miami.
Alright. So I guess, it's sort of become part of your your research as well.
Yes. I generally focus on economic geography. So I focus a lot on how certain parts of the world seem to almost suck up value and suck up wealth and then, you know, turn it into built environments and those built environments act as financial assets on the world market. They underpin pension funds. They're you know? I live in New York City, and so, obviously, gentrification is a hot topic here. But I'm not just interested in how it plays out on the urban scale. Obviously, I'm really interested in how it plays out on the global scale as well. So Bitcoin and and I've had some discussion with people because they'll say, well, I thought you were studying Hudson Yards. And it's like, yeah. I am studying Hudson Yards. And, yes, on its face, Bitcoin does seem really, really different than, you know, the world's or not the world's, but the the country's biggest private development as of today. Yeah. There are some differences there. But in terms of capital flow, in terms of where value gets stored and how it moves, I think it's not that far off. So, yeah, it is a research interest for sure, and I hope to be exploring a lot of it. And I wanna try and connect it as much as I can to uneven geographical development. Eric Adams just won mayor or he just won the the Democratic primary in New York City, and New York City is kinda going through a tough spot right now. And Eric Adams also stood up and said that he wants to make New York City one of the friendliest Bitcoin cities in the world, which I think is rich because, obviously, there are a lot of regulations in New York, but but we'll see how it goes. I think there definitely is a connection there. I'm just trying to suss it out exactly.
Yeah. I thought I thought that was that was really interesting to hear. It's like there's almost like a a battle between cities for, for, like, being the Bitcoin capital, at least between Miami and New York, and there's probably others as well. I don't know. Yeah.
No. They're putting themselves out on the market.
Yeah. So I guess what got you interested in Bitcoin and blockchain and crypto generally? I mean, you you said that, you got interested in it as a as a research thing, and also some of your friends had had had known about it in high school, which is pretty interesting. I don't know if you wanted to talk about some of the stuff we're talking about earlier in in Grundrisse or not. Oh, right. So so I've had the privilege of
studying with David Harvey, specifically the Grundrisse. He does a really excellent course. I think that you can probably find it online at this point. But I got to do a really close reading of the Gundresa with with Harvey, which is great because I think the first time I ever saw David Harvey in person was at Occupy London, and so it kind of made a full circle for me in in terms of my life. And I always found his writing to be very approachable when it comes to to analyzing Marx. And so I read the I read the Gundrysa really, really closely with him, and I came away with a with a renewed appreciation for Marx's methodology. I think it's interesting because in Capital, Marx starts off by writing about the commodity. That's sort of his point of departure for his for his argument and for his his his type of thought. But in the Gundryse, Marx starts off talking about money. And the simplest explanation I could come up with is because money well, because Marx was broke. Right? So Marx was living in pretty crippling poverty in London. He was losing children to poverty. They were dying of tuberculosis, etcetera. And, obviously, if you're in that kind of position, money means a lot. Right? Money is the way in which you keep your family alive. And I think that anyone who's ever worked service after jobs or who has ever had to really, you know, financially struggle, money becomes a real a real point of focus, becomes a real point of concern. But because money exists as as a fetish, you know, it's a relational thing. It's not like there's anything inherent to money that gives it value. I am always very concerned that people lose sight of the for or sorry. What do they say? Can't can't see the forest for the trees. Right? Something like that. Where people don't they don't understand exactly what role money plays. They get a little bit almost distracted by money. It becomes something like a red herring. When people can't afford to live under capitalism, they say, well, the answer must be that I need more money. Right? But if you were to go around and give everybody in the working class as much money as it would take for them to fulfill their basic needs, then you would see the market adjust to try and recoup that loss. I guess you could call it inflation in some points of time. And so it's not the way to fix everything. Money is not the way that you fix the world. And I'm concerned especially at this juncture because right now, the planet is going through the mother of all crises, that people will get a little bit distracted and focus a little bit too much on money. And so that's why I think it's important to try and demystify this idea of money before we proceed as economists or activists or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now I want to ask you about, your experience at the Bitcoin Miami conference because I imagine I I've been to these conferences before, and sometimes certain parts of it can be, like, a little bit intense and a bit cringe and a bit strange. So I guess, can can you walk us through I think was it, like, three or five day,
conference? And what would that look like? It was really only a two day conference. And I have a pretty strong stomach for this sort of stuff. You know? Obviously, I am white. And, yes, I am a woman, but it's not super hard for me to blend in to hostile situations, I guess. And I would say that politically, the Bitcoin conference was was very hostile to someone like me with my politics, but then that's really nothing new for me either. I've had a lot of experience, doing ethnographies, so to speak, of different right wing spaces. I am originally from the Deep South, so it's not something that is terribly unfamiliar to me. It was I was I was fairly shocked by how many people were there. I think there were 14,000 people there. That's what the organizers were saying at the end of the day. And I think that the last conference that Bitcoin magazine had or something, there were, like, 1,900 people there. And so a lot of the logistics involved with the conference were really messed up, and I think it was a problem with scaling up. Right? Like, when we're gonna talk about Bitcoin, we're probably gonna talk about scaling up. When we're gonna talk about crypto in general, you talk about scaling up. Here was a problem with scaling up because I think they had, like, 10 people working the conference for 14,000 people. The first day, they had us sort of stand in line for three hours in the blazing hot Miami sun while they tried to get everybody inside. And that was sort of a a taste of things to come logistically. It was mainly overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male. There were lots of people there from many different backgrounds. You know? I I thought it was interesting the sort of contradictions that the space was holding because on one hand, you would have somebody from the Institute who's talking about how they wanna keep the suits out of out of Bitcoin. And then, you know, fast forward two and a half hours, and he's interviewing a senator on stage. You know, you've got people who are really hardcore free speech types, libertarian types. And then there's Jack from Twitter on stage, and Jack's the guy who basically banned Donald Trump from Twitter. So, again, the contradiction. Did you see was who was it? Like, Laura Loomer? Like, one of those right wing, Yeah. I wasn't I wasn't in there for that. Again, like, the logistics of the space were really challenging. The first day, there were a lot of big names headlining. And because most of the people were standing in line, I think that most of the people were not able to to view that setup. So I didn't I didn't catch Jack, but I did sort of think to myself, oh, it's interesting that he's here. And, of course, Laura Loomer is there. But, and then there was the piece too where, you know, this is supposed to be something that is free from state control, and yet you do have senators and you do have congresspeople who are speaking at the event. You do have people who are who are basically showcasing their state, being willing to shell out lots of of tax write offs, lots of of public benefits for you to relocate your Bitcoin business there. So that's an interesting contradiction. And then, of course, there's also Ross Ulbricht who actually I don't know if you know him. I'm sure you know a lot about him. But Ross Ulbricht being the founder so called founder of the Silk Road, he actually gave a twenty minute audio address to the conference, not once but twice. They replayed the address, both days. And so that was also a contradiction because this is a guy who's who's in prison for basically the rest of his life, and he's following the senator and the congressperson on stage. So it's just an interesting kinda whole shebang of contradictions there. So, yeah, that was kind of what that was what concerned me the most. That was was I was the most interested in. And I thought that the that the panel that kinda summed it all up for me was Tony Hawk's panel. So Tony Hawk was at the conference, and I think it was, like, $5,000 for your Tony Hawk ticket. You could meet and greet with Tony Hawk or whatever. And he gave the keynote on the second day. And his talk was entitled, when counterculture goes mainstream. And it was basically a talk about how proud Tony Hawk was for selling out. Right? Where he was like, what's the problem with me doing endorsement deals for McDonald's? I love McDonald's. You know? I love Subway. I'm so happy to make money doing what I love. And that is, like, you know, embracing this sort of sellout culture. And I thought it was interesting that they had him on stage because that was definitely the vibe for the whole conference. It was it was like, okay. So you had a lot of fun, And now here are the big boys. You got people from Goldman Sachs. You got people from, Ernst and Young. You've got people from all these these Wall Street kind of corporations. You're making it big. And now this baby that you have been obsessing over, that you've been posting about, that you you've thrown all of your life savings into your whole life into is now being taken from you by these bigger interests. And so it was it was really interesting to kinda suss out how that was
feeling in the space, let's say. Yeah. Did you have any conversations with anyone, like, pointing out those contradictions and to try and, get any general general feeling from people there?
No. I didn't I didn't really feel like that was necessarily the best use of of my time or my energy in that space because like I said, there were lots of sort of right wing people there. You know, I would overhear people saying stuff about women, And I was just like, yeah. I don't I don't really feel like I need to to sit anyone down and talk to them about the contradictions. And it is something also that that sort of, sat with me for a couple days afterwards. I think that plenty of the people there were actually openly speaking to the contradictions. You know, they understood which way it was going, but the fact that it was sort of outside of their control at this point, I think speaks to the larger nature of capitalism being pretty much outside of of lots of people's control. It's a class thing. Right? It's not like you can just sit there and say everything needs to be open source. That's the ethically correct position to make. And then everyone says, well, yeah, I guess that is the ethically correct, you know, position to take, and so we're gonna make everything open source. That's not how business operates. That's not how, you know, the world operates. You can't you can't cordon yourself off from the rest of the world. If Bitcoin is going to become bigger, then it is going to necessarily have to be a part of the rest of the world, and it will be influenced by all of the present different power imbalances and power structures that exist within capitalism. So
Yeah. Yeah. I've been sort of, I have, like, an extremely crude sort of dialectical analysis. You can tell me if it's bad or not. But, I sort of see, like, you have traditional banking as, like, the the thesis of of, like, neoliberal capitalism, and then you have Bitcoin, which was meant to be the antithesis. And we're just sort of seeing the contradictions of this synthesis, which has a lot a lot of contradictions and doesn't really it's it's presumed as an antithesis, I guess, but it isn't if you when you I mean, there's it's, you know, something that's very cooptable at the moment.
Yeah. I mean, nothing is created in a vacuum. Nothing is developed in a vacuum. Everything is relational to everything else. Even if people want to believe that it's the antithesis, it's it's not. I think that it's actually a very useful kind of technology for deepening the grip of capital on the planet. I think it's a really good escape hatch for crisis, especially, for the rich, not necessarily for the poor. I think it goes hand in hand. It might it might come off as something that doesn't seem to be that it might it might wanna look at itself as something as being the antithesis. It might look at itself as being like, we were the rebels. And it's like, well, no. Yeah. Rebels don't get
JP Morgan to come.
Yeah. And including JP Morgan, and they don't get senators on stage. That's that's not what the rebels get. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. When you say escape hatch, do you mean, like, the sort of, as an escape from, like, a downturn in the markets, like, as sort of, like, a diversified portfolio type of move from capital. Is that is that how you mean escape hatch? Or
Well, I mean, it's an escape hatch in a lot of different senses if you have a ton of money. Right? So if I need to somehow get around local tax law, I can do that a little bit easier using cryptocurrency. So if Joe Biden, for instance, wants to raise taxes on people to pay for all of these programs that he's proposing, well, that would be an escape hatch for some money. People have talked about it as being sort of like a deflationary asset as in, like, well, if inflation is gonna go out of control, then we'll put all of our money into Bitcoin because this is a way that we can see our money grow and also not, you know, have it touched by anything else. I think in terms of things that people can make money off of and people can trade off of, it's a very good opportunity for that because this whole space is rather unregulated. Right? And so all of the sort of what do they call them? Like, the dark money pools that existed around the two thousand eight financial crisis, which somehow contained trillions and trillions of dollars worth of value, and obviously, they didn't because that's, you know, one of the reasons why things fell apart in 2008. This offers people, again, that kind of quick shot in the arm of of profit at the end of the day. I think that in terms of and I don't wanna get too paranoid about it, and I don't wanna get too deep down the rabbit hole right now, but I think that there is a reason why this technology is being rolled out in developing countries quicker than it is being rolled out in, what we would call the global north or the first world. I think it's a it's a good way to sort of foment regime change. Like, I think it's a good way to get money to people that you might not be able to get money to them through more traditional means. And I think that there is a kind of plausible deniability attached to it, which becomes really important when you're thinking about how it relates to the state. Right? So Bitcoin is not anonymous. Cryptocurrency generally isn't anonymous. It's not it's not rocket science to figure out, you know, whether or not someone has bought Bitcoin, whether or not, you know, somebody has moved Bitcoin, whether or not somebody's getting paid in Bitcoin. It's not rocket science. Right? There's already blockchain surveillance in place, and then you can't ever discount the the efficacy and the ingenuity of human intelligence. Right? But it does kinda offer people this type of plausible deniability. Right? If the state does wanna look the other way, then the state can look the other way. People People can say, I don't know how to use a computer. I don't know how they got away with that. I don't know there's no way for us to fix it. There was this guy in Germany. I think I saw a story from last year where the guy did, like, three years in jail for installing some software on people's computers that really slowly and unobtrusively mined for Bitcoin. And he went to jail for three years, and the Germans were like, oh, don't worry about it because we've got his wallet. We've got his his ledger or whatever it was, the treasure. And so he doesn't have access to the money. You know? I mean, there's that kind of plausible deniability that comes with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin specifically. So, I mean, there's lots of different ways it could be used as an ex in as as an escape hatch. However, all of those ways are dependent on class again. Right? It's not as though it's some sort of philosopher's stone that gives you, you know, 100% immunity. You're still subject to material conditions and power structures, you know, between classes wherever it is that you are. But for the rich, I can see it being something that they would be very interested at this point in time. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess,
at the conference, yeah, what I how how did you handle yourself watching? I think just some of it seemed a little bit like cringe. Like, how how do you write notes on something which is so it's almost it's just, like, so surreal, I feel like. And so and so, like yeah. I imagine doing academic work on, like, you know, some of the people that that would be there would just be, like, a deeply, profoundly, like, psychological type of, work that you would have to do to, like, to to have any idea what their psyches are are coming from. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you could probably make, like, class based structural type of assumptions, but they're, analyses, but I'm curious how you did that.
No. I mean, it gets messy. I definitely thought about my friends in high school more than once, you know, to think about the kinds of culture and point in history that they're emerging from and understanding that, like, these are the people now who have an an incredible amount of power in the world, right, among the tech sector. And thinking about what it was that they were kind of fed at that point in their life culturally, politically, financially, etcetera, you know, and how that would influence the eventuality of me sitting at a Bitcoin conference in 2021. So, yeah, there was definitely a lot of of soul searching. Not a ton though because I don't wanna get too distracted, and I'm not sure how useful that kind of stuff is when you're when you're in that kind of environment. But no. I mean, it was it I guess it would be cringe if people felt one way or the other about it. Not exactly where I'm coming from when I'm going to the conference. I'm there as an observer. I know that there's gonna be a lot of cringe stuff there. I know that there's gonna be stuff that's, like, offensive or concerning. Yeah. But I'm there to try and just sorta sneak in, grab the intel, bring it out, and do whatever I can with it that could be useful.
So did you have, like I I guess you you did have quite a bit of Bitcoin knowledge before going into I mean, you had you knew what to expect, I imagine, probably. Yeah. That certainly helped.
That certainly helped. I'm not sure that everybody who went to the conference knew what to expect, but I I kinda had a little bit of an understanding of of what to expect with it. So I wasn't too shocked, but there were some things there that definitely hit me in the stomach pretty hard. I think the most shocking thing that I saw there was they had this art exhibition, I guess, is what they called it, and it was basically a branded dumpster outside of the stages. And the dumpster was made to appear as though it was full of Venezuelan bolivares. Right? The currency of Venezuela. And so I became interested in in well, not became interested, but had renewed interest in cryptocurrency because of my time in Venezuela, because I had actually seen what people in Venezuela were dealing with with regards to the currency situation. And it's a really heavy thing. It's a really, really heavy thing to have to deal with what the people in Venezuela are dealing with right now. And to see it trivialized in such a way, it was called the trash cash dumpster. And I was like, why couldn't you just put dollars in there? But they didn't put dollars in there. They put the boulevares in there as if some weird alien from outer space had come down and just devalued the currency overnight, not seeing it as something that the senators and the congresspeople that they were having on stage and the private sector people on stage had a real part to play in it. You know? This idea of fix the money, fix the world doesn't really get to the heart of what the problem is, and I thought it to be very concerning, very distasteful. And I was very concerned about how, on one hand, you would have a panel where they would talk about how Bitcoin is going to help foment regime change in places like Cuba and Belarus and Venezuela. But here's the next panel, which is how to circumvent how to legally circumvent all of the existing regulations and laws that are in The United States. You know? I mean, it just it came from this place of of not being super aware of the world around them, you know, and how things had developed to get them to the point where they're at right now. It was just sort of like a, this is my birthright. This is what God gave us. There wasn't a lot of actual analysis of what the situation was and how we got there. You know, when I'm hearing talks on inflation or when I'm hearing talks on how Bitcoin is supposed to be the way that this generation is going to get rich, and people are showing charts on stage, they're showing charts in their presentation that, like, I have shown students in my presentations. But the way that they're looking at it is so radically different than I am, and it becomes concerning because, yeah, people are really fed up with the high cost of housing and health care and college educations. Is the way to fix that to just put everybody on some sort of, you know, Bitcoin standard? No. It's not. You know? And if anything, that that makes things a little bit more challenging for most people. I mean, at the end of the day, there was a really interesting line, this guy, Jack Mallers, from Strike who closed out the conference with his emotional address about El Salvador. But there was this line that he gave in his talk, which which really resonated with me where he was he was referencing a a a chitchat that he'd had with somebody in El Salvador, and he said, you know, the price of Bitcoin goes up and, Michael Saylor gets richer, but I get richer too. And I'm just sort of like, how is it that one could make that that comparison of how much Bitcoin Michael Saylor holds in his hand and how much Bitcoin a young person in El Salvador holds in their hand. You know? Like, it's not even comparable. When you have people like Elon Musk jumping into it publicly I mean, the thing is is that I'm sure most of these oligarch billionaires have have decent exposure to Bitcoin at this point. You're almost baking in the previous inequality of a system into, like, a new system, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the interview or find the content I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out and join the newest patrons like Alex isn't here, Zachary, and Marshall. Any amount really helps since making this stuff isn't free in terms of money or time. As a patron, you'll get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to Patreon exclusive contents like q and a episodes, where you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer. And I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. In the last Patreon q and a episode, I answered the question, centralization versus decentralization, which is better for socialism, in which I use a framework of decentralization used in software and in blockchain to help us understand how we can think about decentralization in the context of political movements especially for the left. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain does not need to be used to further trench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope to consider helping out. Maybe one day when I make enough money off of Patreon, I too can attend conferences like the Bitcoin Miami conference and give my thoughts on those. But for now, let's get back to the interview with Taryn Fivik. I sort of feel that, like, Bitcoiners, their form of revolution is sort of, like, the same thing, but they're the billionaires, and they use Bitcoin instead sometimes.
There is a there is an anxiety among the tech sector, especially where they're like, I'm so smart. Why isn't this working? Like, we are all super smart. Why isn't this working the way that we want it to work? I'm so much smarter than every other person that I know. Why am I not in charge of things? And instead of trying to step back and look at the big picture, and this is something that's found on a lot of cyberpunk literature specifically. There's this sort of, like, I am the smart one man, because it's always a man, against the corporations in the world. And I think of that that that monologue and Johnny Mnemonic where he ends it with saying, like, I want room service, you know, like, this is what I want, why aren't I entitled to these things. And I think that that speaks to a more general economic anxiety, which is generally masculine and character, I have to say, where it's sort of like people are raised in a society with certain kinds of ideals. And when things don't work out the way that they thought they would based on their own merit, instead of it becoming a a question of, well, maybe we need to critique how the system is operating. Why is it that what they sell me is not what I get, it becomes this sort of, lack of it's like they're entitled. They're coming from a place of entitlement to say, why am I not receiving my birthright? Who is it that's standing in the way of my birthright? Well, it's probably these bankers. Right? It's these bankers. They're the ones who are standing in my way, which The ones you admire a bit maybe. I mean, but it's but it skirts really close to sort of this classical notion of European antisemitism where it's like, oh, it's the bankers, you know. And they have this whole art gallery part of the conference where there was, like, tons of of different art available. And if you want, I can send you some photos that I took of of some of the art, but you're just like, woah. That's a little that's a little off, and that's a little bit much, you know, but that's where people are coming from. So
Yeah. I'll be interested to see them.
Yeah. I can send them to you when we're done with our talk. Maybe you can put put it up on the
on the page wherever it is that you can Yeah. Sure. Pretty rough. Right. To to to the point about, Venezuela is interesting. It it's sort of they don't have to say socialism, but you know that's what everyone's thinking, I guess, is why they have the yeah. They do the boulevards, thing. It's it's very classic. I mean, it's like they've they've taken they're just taking all the memes from Bitcoin forums and just, like, giving some sort of representation to them at the conference so that they could finally live, like, the the, you know, the the the fantasy life that they have on r slash bitcoin. They can sort of, so play some of that fantasy, through the arts at the conference.
Yeah. I don't study memes, but I have a friend of mine, Gavin Mueller, who who works in The Netherlands, and he does a lot of work on on Internet culture and stuff. And there's definitely a deeper significance to memes than it just being, like, a really janky looking file that you make and paint. I mean, it is a pretty strong and powerful representation of politics. And I think that I'm trying to bring that into fruition. It doesn't really surprise me. It is how people are thinking. It is how people are creating in a lot of ways. So and it is how thought becomes constrained when we're looking at these issues. Right? You can't think outside the memes.
You can't memify it, then what is it there for? There's a I don't know if I don't know if you follow much, especially in, like, the Ethereum space. There's a lot of sometimes the there is a meme about memes where, you know, we're going to meme this into existence, and there's a this, you know, this big online conversation about memes.
I mean, that was the jump. Right?
Yeah. It's yeah. It's this, it hasn't gone away. 2016
in people's minds. Yeah. But I mean, you know, people think of the online space as being something that's totally different from what we used to call meet space when I was a kid. Right? They think of you being in almost a totally different realm with totally different rules. I think that, you know, it's interesting because from, like, a broader perspective and I am I was really in love with the Internet as a kid. I was really privileged enough that I had access to the Internet when I was pretty young, and I had the ability to, you know, teach myself some basic code, see how it was how the computer worked, you know, and I feel like there's almost like a generational gap between me and people who came after me where they don't really know how a computer works. It's just there, and they kind of assume that it operates and that it's going to do certain things. There was a tweet, like, last year or something where someone was complaining about the gatekeepers at Adobe because why can't you just give out Photoshop for free? And it's like, well, you know, I came from a I came from a background where we just downloaded Adobe. Like, you didn't have to go see them. There were ways to figure it out if you understand how the thing, works. Likewise, you know, when I think that that lack of understanding and how the thing worked was pretty much concurrent with what they call web two point o, where you have the walled gardens of the Internet now, and everything is going to be super regulated, super constrained. Everyone's gonna follow you around and stuff. And I have felt some kinda way, a little bit of heartbreak about how the what I saw as a child, the revolutionary potential of the Internet became absorbed into this greater beast called capitalism. But now that I'm older and I've read Marx and I've done some research, I understand how that's, like, inevitable. Right? I feel like Bitcoin likewise to a lot of folks there. There's this revolutionary potential that they believe Bitcoin has. Right? And it's just like the Internet when the Internet started out. You didn't have to be connected to your name. You didn't have to be connected necessarily to your your gender or your race or your your class background or whatever. If you were smart enough to get online, if you're smart enough to code, then you were part of this sort of, elite. I mean, that's what they call themselves. Right? The elite. That wouldn't be judged. And then you had the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, the Jacks of the world, the, you know, the the whole Tony Hawks of the world who are ready to cash in. Right? They're ready to cash in. And people get hurt. They get hurt about that. But it's like, well, that's how it was always gonna be. And likewise, with with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency more generally, like, yes, people are really excited about it. There are a lot of people really excited about it. Not just Bitcoin, but all these possibilities of blockchain and and crypto in a broader sense, etcetera. And, you know, that's good. It's just a shame because all the people who are gonna come in afterwards are gonna cash in off of that genuine passion and enthusiasm for the technology. And people will sit there and say, ah, you know, I was dispossessed to this. I was it was stolen from me. It's not fair. And it's like, yeah. But that's why people do what they do. That's why there are socialists out there is because people do understand that the system is as fair as it exists and that you can't just come up with a good idea and have it suddenly be the most profitable one in the room. That's not how life works. So Yeah. I don't know where the crash is gonna come for them, the emotional crash, not the financial crash. But the emotional crash for them, I think, is gonna be pretty tough. And I feel like that's why they had Tony Hawk on stage is he was supposed to sort of midwife them through that difficult emotional process and say, it's okay.
It's okay. I've been I've been through this. You know? I've I've I've had fame. I've been the top
skateboarder. I know exactly what you guys are doing. And now I'm selling out for for McDonald's. I I you know? And people judge me for it, but and and this was also really significant too. He's like, you know, nowadays, skateboarders when they take endorsements or when they do, you know, commercial deals or whatever, they're not given the same kind of hell that I was given because I paved the way for them. Right? I was this trailblazer of selling out. And so you too can be the trailblazer of selling out kinda thing. That was just like because there's nothing they can do about it. They can't go back in time. They can't pull it back. I mean, now, you know, there's a really good book that I read, as part of my bibliography, this book, money code space. And I don't have the author's name right off the top of my head. I feel bad now. I should have brought it in here before we started. This book called money code space, and the guy is talking about how at the beginning of Bitcoin, you know, one of the first meetings that was had with any kind of organization or entity outside of this cryptography space was with the Central Intelligence Agency, where developers of Bitcoin sat down with people and they said, don't worry. This is not gonna threaten you. This is not gonna threaten the the supremacy of the US dollar. This is not gonna threaten US, you know, hegemony. It's it's not gonna threaten that. And I think that people listened really closely to that, And I think now they see it as sort of a tool.
Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it was Hal Finney. It was one of the one of the early one of the early guys, on Bitcoin. I I remember, like, the forum's posts are still up where the guy saying, I'm telling you guys this right now. I'm going to go meet with the CIA. Don't tell me, like, that, that this is a CIA thing. Like, I swear, guys. I'm just going to say hi. I'm gonna tell them that it's all okay, like, so they won't mess with us.
Yeah. Because I mean, if it was actually because if money actually could fix the world and by fixing the world, we wanna be as mass and as unifying as possible and say that, you know, it would give people an equitable chance at being able to live a a healthy life. If money could do that, then they would have stopped it right out at the beginning. If Bitcoin somehow could be what it is that they want it to be, if that was really threatening to the social order as it exists, they're convinced these Bitcoiners are convinced that nothing can touch them and that they live completely outside the realm of of state coercive power. And that's very incorrect because as much as they have something called a code, the code is maintained by individuals. Right? It's maintained by a foundation. It's maintained by organizations. It's maintained by a media wing. Like, there are things that can be messed with. I think that, you know, the China thing is really interesting. I don't don't know how much you wanna get into the China thing or the El Salvador thing, but but it's very interesting because they say, well, this is, this is proof positive of its resilience. And it's like, no. I I think that was kind of the the plan for a while was to have, you know, China sell us their electricity until this thing got legs and could walk. In in that experience, did any of your thoughts about,
your ideas about Bitcoin or crypto, did they change at all, or did you did they shift?
I don't think that I quite understood before the conference how much this was a move against the third world. Let's put it that way. I didn't understand, going into it. Like, I understood that there were obviously, you know, things connected to issues of remittances for for instance. It was used by people to circumvent hyperinflation in their country of origin. It was used or allegedly is used to circumvent sanctions. Right? I kinda had that understanding of it. I didn't understand going into the conference how much it was connected to this really classic neoliberal strategy of banking the unbanked. Right? Because they're sitting there and they're saying that the reason why people in El Salvador are poor is because traditional banking doesn't wanna work with them. And so they're going to circumvent traditional banking, and they are going to now be the bank. Stripe is gonna be the bank for people in El Salvador, and that that somehow will fix things. This idea of financial inclusion. I didn't come at it from that perspective. Although it was interesting because when I got back home and I opened up my laptop to do a little bit more deep digging, I found that, like, I don't know if you know the the development economist, Hernando de So to, whose whole idea is basically that the way you solve poverty in the global South is by giving people deeds to their shacks so that they can use that as a financial asset and not just as a as a use value of a place for them to live. I didn't understand how much that was going to be a real profitable opportunity for this space. And I think that the the closing keynote from this guy, Jack Mallers, from Strike, who is talking about El Salvador adopting it, that kinda brought it home for me. I actually went back and I did some pretty not super deep dive research, but I I definitely read up a little bit more on El Salvador than I had in the past. I saw this new kind of thing emerging, how it was going to give you know, technologies like this are going to give capital access to populations that they might not have had access to before because of state regulations, because of banking regulations. Right? There's a reason why those things exist generally. This was going to be sort of a free for all wild west of financial inclusion for people who are living in the global south. That was one thing that I came away with and has been sitting very heavy on me since then. Is is that how you view,
this announcement about El Salvador, like, as, essentially, like, largely just a new evolution for reaching new markets in, like, sort of a classical I mean, like, neo imperial type of way, neo colonial type of way? That's how they spun it.
Do you know how many Bitcoin ATMs are in El Salvador when you made that announcement?
Probably not very many. Who? There are two
Bitcoin ATMs in El Salvador, when that announcement was made. I'm sure that they've probably opened up a few more, and I think that the banking sector in El El Salvador now is going to be coerced into dealing with bit with Bitcoin so that, therefore, all these ATMs will will sort of become Bitcoin ATMs in a way. From the reading that I've done on it so far, I think it's a little bit bigger than just banking the unbanked in El Salvador. I think it's also a way of money to go missing off the table. Now I don't I don't wanna draw too many conclusions about this because I it's all speculation. I don't have anything to back this up. But when I look at the role that organized crime plays in El Salvador and has played in the last ten years or so in El Salvador, it becomes kinda concerning to me, this idea that this thirty nine year old or I think he's 39. He might be at 40. I don't know. But this guy who kinda came from the left and then switched really fast when it wasn't the way for him to get into power, this guy who is a huge fan of Donald Trump, who seems to be supported intimately by the Venezuelan right wing. So there was a an expose published recently about how Leopoldo Lopez's party is actually providing this kind of layer of protection between the Bukele administration and everybody else in El Salvador. That makes me think something a little bit bigger is afoot than just banking the unbanked. I mean, I think that, you know, this guy who's on stage I don't even know how old he is, but this guy who's on stage crying,
walking out The strike the strike guy. Yeah. Jack.
He's pretty young, I think. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when he's shuffling around crying, he's showing pictures of him on stage posing with, like, this young boy and, you know, talking about how he knows it because, man, he lived there for three months, man. You know? And, like, that's that's real for him. I think that that guy is like, wow. I'm gonna be really rich. You know? This is gonna be a lot of money for me, and I think that that's fact. I think that he's gonna make a ton of money off of the situation in El Salvador. I also think that the Salvadorian government is gonna make a lot of money off of it. I don't think it's gonna be all about financial transparency, etcetera. I mean, the thing with Bitcoin and most blockchain currencies is that, like, there is a surveillance factor that is attached to it. And, again, there is that plausible deniability factor that's, you know, sort of, dealing with it too.
So I I guess you think, like, it doesn't necessarily there is a potential that actually El Salvador, at least the government in a sense like, it it is probably a net positive for them and that they can probably I mean, there's potential that they make a ton of money and, yeah, potent I mean, how that wealth is distributed is another question. But
I I don't I don't think it's gonna be, like, a wealth generating thing. I don't think it's gonna generate wealth. Let's put it that way. I don't think it's gonna generate wealth. I don't. I think that it's going to generate wealth for some people, but I don't think that and by generating wealth, I mean that, like, they're taking it from other people. I don't think that any, like, productive activity is gonna be taking place. I mean, when I look at El Salvador, do you know what the major export of El Salvador is? It's t shirts. Right? It's T shirts. And when they're talking about how they have a remittance based economy and how they're having trouble keeping people inside of the country, you know, I'm not sure that switching from the US dollar to Bitcoin is really gonna, like, fix that for people. I don't think that suddenly it's gonna be known for exporting, you know, technology and innovation. I mean, if it did, well, then I would stand corrected. But, you know, there was a lot of this discussion going on with Honduras after the coup in 2008, I think it was, where Honduras was now going to sort of be a a center for, free market capitalism, the sort of libertarianism. They were going to privatize cities and basically make them into special economic zones, and this was going to generate a lot of, financial activity within the country. And that didn't happen either. You know? People got rich off of it, but they it didn't get the country anywhere. I think what's really notable about the El Salvador case is that, a, their actual currency is the US dollar. Right? And so that's interesting that they're that they're including Bitcoin alongside the US dollar in that circumstance. And then the the other pieces is that, like, I don't I don't think that that that sorry. Pause. Cut. It's like an experiment. Right? I mean, this in El Salvador is an experiment. It is in The US's backyard. They have a pretty good idea of how things are running in that area, and it can be seen as sort of an experiment. What happens when you drop Bitcoin on top of a dollar economy? How does that operate? And, yeah, like, somebody's gonna get paid off where it may be. People are gonna get rich from it, but how is that going to affect things? One of the things that I was really interested in around this, you know, bull run for Bitcoin happening when it did during the pandemic is that I was looking at how different countries were handling their currency crises at that point. And I don't know if you know anything about the Cuban economy, but the Cuban economy has two different types of currency. They have a currency that is local, a seu pay, and then they have a seu se, which is pegged completely to the US dollar. So if I was to go and visit Cuba or if you were to go and visit Cuba, you would exchange your US dollars for something called a seu se, which is basically a one to one with The US Dollar. Because of the financial situation during the pandemic, I know that the Cuban government went ahead and hurried up and rushed along dropping the seuse. So they actually put their their own currency, the seuse, pay, the Cuban peso, on the world market as, as a sort of a stop gap measure around what was happening with their economy because, obviously, the tourism sector was shot. There wasn't a whole lot of foreign capital coming in, and they weren't able to buy what it was that they needed. And so they sort of dropped this dual currency system in the middle of the pandemic. And I thought that it was very interesting that meanwhile, in other parts of the world, you saw the emergence or the the ticklings maybe of a dual currency system in a place like The United States, right, where people are suddenly leaning into this cryptocurrency thing as being a possibility for the future. And nobody is sitting around and saying, oh, it's gonna replace the US dollar. None of these senators, none of these congresspeople are sitting around saying, oh, well, this is going to replace the US dollar. Rather, they were saying that it was going to act as sort of a a solid foundation for the US dollar over time. And considering the fact that Bitcoin can go places that the US dollar cannot, that's something to sit with for a minute. Right? That's something to sit with when we're thinking about how power is distributed globally, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Is is there anything to say, do you think for the flip side of that, if we're thinking about maybe in a more yeah. And maybe in a more positive context for us, like, is there anything to say for the anti imperial potentials for for cryptocurrency or or for Bitcoin, do you think?
I mean, like I said, I think that money is is something that's
It's not gonna solve everything, of course. But we have seen, you know, Venezuela and, Iran, I believe, who were trading with each other, potentially North Korea as well. I don't know. I'm I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Well, I mean, I think that when you live under sanctions,
that anything is better than nothing. I think that people who live under sanctions and I really it infuriates me because I've met lots of people who are anti war, and they don't understand the effects of sanctions. They don't understand what sanctions do to a country, how sanctions basically murder people. They kill people. They don't allow them to have access to medication. They don't allow them to have access to to food. It puts people in an extremely difficult position. It becomes really hard for the government or the state to try and maintain its legitimacy. Things become really, really stressful under sanctions. And so I think that however these countries that are withstanding, that are really surviving under these sanctions, under this kind of economic apartheid, I think that they are well within their rights to try whatever it is that they think is gonna work for them. But I don't think that any single one of them think that it's going to be a long term solution. I don't think that any single one of them think that it's not going to be tweaked or messed around with if it becomes something that's a little too good of a solution for them. I know that there are certain kinds of exchanges that have recently gone offline in places like Venezuela because they were accused by the US government of helping these countries circumvent sanctions. I know that there is a guy who is doing time right now because he did, like, a conference about Ethereum in North Korea and that that was considered to be material aid to people who were facing sanctions. Like, I think that if you could use it, then you'll try and use it, but I don't think that anybody thinks that it's an actual long term solution for the problem. And that, I guess, is, like, my major gripe with a lot of the crypto space is that people do think it's somehow this magic bullet that it's going to change things, that it's going to enable people to, in a painless relatively painless way, to sort of turn the world upside down in favor of of, you know, the little guy. But I thought it was funny because, you know, if people are are saying, well, you know, just wait and see. You know, one day I'm gonna get rich because Bitcoin's gonna hit a million dollars. And it's like, you know, when Bitcoin hits a million dollars, there's gonna be a lot more that you're worried about than whether or not you've got money in your bank account at that point in time. I mean, there's just this sort of compound crisis rolling down the line between the pandemic and global warming and just sort of where capitalism sits at this dead end phase right now. And people it's understandable that people are looking for a magic bullet. It's understandable that people are like, you know, oh, if only we could get this money thing right. Maybe it'll be a really easy fix and everything will go better. Well, Bitcoin takes too much energy to mine. Well, let's just make a tweak to it or we'll get another cryptocurrency that isn't, you know, gonna be so bad for the environment, etcetera. It's understandable. People want to have a better life. People don't wanna be living under the system that they're living under. But it's a red herring. It's not the way that you wanna fix the world. You know? There's no there's no magic bullet to to fix the problem. It's just gotta be good old fashioned class struggle. You know? That's how you're gonna be able to fix this. It can't just be with money.
Yeah. I know. My my my thing is that there is, like, this huge like, the the American state and American capital are sort of are sort of butting heads a little bit in this, in this particular niche of the world and and and what's happening. Like, in in in especially America, I feel like it's it's very it's considered, like, patriotic to be very rich. And, you know, to to have made a lot of money, it's like that means you're you've reached the American dream. You are, like, truly an American to have, to have become that way.
As Merck says, there's social power in your pocket, you know.
Yeah. So yeah. I think especially in America, I feel like. No. I just think it's interesting. I mean, I just wonder, like, for countries that are dollarized, like, if you are a very poor country and even if you say you're a very poor country and you are, you know, are waging some sort of communist struggle, but you are in such a place where you cannot, like, you're not going to, immediately, you know, move into communism as as, as as maybe you would want, and you have to have these, like, these stages in between considering to use Bitcoin or anything else. I mean, any sort of monetary thing, just considering, considering, like, the amount of economic violence that, like, sanctions put on and the amount of economic violence that I imagine dollarization does to a lot of these countries as well. I I only say this just because, I think we have of course, the tendency on the left is to just sort of, like, be like, no. No. Just, like, get out of my face. We shouldn't be talking about this at all. It's, like, it's a pipe dream. It's a Ponzi scheme. We shouldn't really be considering it. I feel like there is, like, an argument to be made that, you should see it as a tool, not as some sort of magic fix, of course, but as something that's now if you're a sinking sank sanctioned country and you don't have much else to go, I mean, you know, why not? I guess that's what I feel.
I mean, like, yeah, it's a tool. And sometimes you need a hammer, and sometimes you need a plow, and sometimes you need a scale. And, you know, and and so I'm all about people who are struggling doing whatever they can to try and and, you know, make life easier for them to win that space to be able to move forward. And I do think that, you know, the technology itself, just like the Internet, there's nothing inherently good or bad about it. Right? Like, not I'm not a Luddite. You know? I can look at things as they sort of exist. Although the Luddites were were interesting people too. I don't wanna put shade on the Luddites. But but, you know, it's like I think it's interesting to study these things from a left perspective if I wanna think about it positively as opposed to me just sort of roaming around trying to figure out which whole capital is gonna scurry into next. I think that there is, like, a worthwhile effort that could be made to think about the future. Right? Is this a kind of technology that can be utilized in the future under more, you know, agreeable conditions? Absolutely. Of course, it can be. Yeah. No. This stuff is definitely revolutionary in terms of technology. In terms of society, I'm not sure that it's necessarily anything that's inherently progressive just because of the technology. And, of course, we can see the the people around it or what have you. But, like, yeah, of course, it is. It's a big it's a big step forward in terms of the Internet. It's a big step forward in the way that we conceptualize, you know, the economy and the international nature of the world market. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that you can look at it and be like, oh, yeah. That's really cool. And maybe that could be useful in fifty years or in twenty five years or in a hundred years or something. But do I think that that's a replacement for the good old fashioned, like, getting your getting your hands dirty and trying to, you know Sure. Yeah. Fight this thing on the ground? Yeah. I mean, it it can't replace that. I do think it's worthwhile to to study it. That's why I'm studying it. I think it's a shame that more people on the left aren't studying it. I'm pretty certain that there are more people studying it in countries where English is not their first language right now who are in the global south, who do have a pretty solid understanding of it. So I'm not worried that it's completely going unseen by the left because there's lots of the left that I can't, you know, necessarily easily communicate in or, sorry, communicate with. But yeah. So I think there is a utility in studying it. There is a utility in following it. I just think that like, any other tool, again, you could create this perfect invention. And is it gonna take off? Is it gonna find root anywhere? Well, that's all dependent on the material conditions in which it comes to the world, how it was developed and then how it's adopted. Right? So we have to think about it as a tool, but in the the strictest sense of the word. Right? Like, there's a gun. A gun is a tool. I hate guns. I don't like guns. I don't get anywhere near guns, but it's a tool. Right? It can be used for many different things. Right? It can be used in a progressive struggle. It can be used in a lynch mob. Like, there's all sorts of different ways to look at it. It is human ingenuity. It is it is humanity sort of moving in one direction or another, and that that direction that humanity is moving in is based on material conditions, based on historical materialism. Like, you know, there's all these these things that kinda factor into it. So, again, like, I don't I don't sit there and have some sort of moralistic perspective on it. I have a moralistic perspective on the world, not not on this kind of technology. So
Yeah. I don't know. Is is there anything else you would you would want to say to maybe people on the left who are who are more skeptical?
Of more skeptical of what?
Of even, like, entertaining the thought of of the space.
I don't want anybody to get too caught up in the inherent moral nature of one thing or another. I think that every single person who is involved in the struggle has a role to play. I think that people should seek to contribute in whatever way they feel they are the strongest in contributing. And you can let other people make the decision as to what kind of priority that is because that's how it will be eventually anyway. You are only speaking to the needs of the present conditions, and so people who are running a labor union might not have a whole lot of use for it right now. They might prefer you to stand out on a on a picket line with them instead of go around and have arguments with people about the potential of the blockchain. And that's fine. That's what you should do if you're asked to do that. But if you've got nothing else to contribute in this space, the left definitely needs better programmers. They definitely need people who know the back ends of this stuff. They need people who can who can build websites. They need people who can find money. You know? And I don't think I think that, you know, it's like, yeah, this whole idea that Elon Musk is not taking Bitcoin anymore because it's bad for the environment, that he's not letting people buy cars in Bitcoin anymore, which might have something to do with the fact that Bitcoin just, like, you know, is really volatile and probably saw what was happening over the last three months and said, oh, I don't know if I wanna start sell cars like that at this point. But the idea that he's attaching it to this kind of, like, environmental degradation, that's that's silly. I mean, it makes sense for him. Whatever. He wants to dress it up, but not as business, but as him caring about the environment. I mean, look. People use dollars. There's nothing more blood soaked than a dollar. But if I need to run down to the store and pay for copies, I can't do that by, you know I mean, ideally, I could do that by persuading the workers to give it to me for free or something. But, no, you live in a society. You have to use money. You have to use the technology that's at your disposal, because your enemies are using it. Now not to become too infatuated with it as a as an end in and of itself, but you do have to contend with reality. And that means that you can't just be sitting inside all day, arguing with people on the Internet, having one persona that exists online and then the persona that exists in your nine to five. Like, these are all, like, compartmentalization. It's it's it's it's problematic for people. I think people just need to figure out what it is that they're doing well and try and put that to good purpose. So I don't know if there's any kind of currency that's gonna fix the situation that we're in right now. Sorry. I know for sure that there's not any kind of currency that's going to fix the situation that we're in right now. But, yeah, just to stay flexible, to stay mobile, to stay ready to adapt to different conditions as they arise. You don't want it to be something that only they know about. You know? Right. You wanna make sure that you have a clear understanding of it as well, which is part of why I'm doing my research.
Yeah. I think that extremely sensible position to take in my opinion, and it's a yeah. Some sometimes I think some people see the facade of what is, like, the Bitcoin community, and they sort of impose that on on everybody else and has sort of maybe what has, you know, prevented people on the left to to want to dip their toes into it a little bit or to look deeper into it. Think about the atom bomb.
Right? The atom bomb is a terrible weapon. It is a terrible, terrible weapon. It is a real low point in humanity's evolution that there was ever an atom bomb invented, much less ever dropped on human beings. That didn't mean that suddenly there weren't scientists all over the world from different persuasions, from different political backgrounds, living under different societies that were suddenly like, oh, I really need to know how this works. I really need to know what it means for the rest of the world. I really need to know what it means for the future and how everybody's gonna be developing and what it means for war and what it means for the environment. Of course, people who are really serious about the struggle are going to want to know everything about the atom bomb even if they look at it and say, I never wanna drop that thing again. I don't even want one of those, you know, but you have to have an understanding of it because it is a big part of the world. You have to be in the world. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Don't get caught up in these in these, you know, discussions or these arguments. You just gotta be in the world. You gotta adapt to what it is that's going on.
Yeah. Definitely. That makes sense. Take a take a materialistic approach.
Yeah. I'm actually going to be starting, on a project that is somewhat related to my time at the Bitcoin conference, but I'm gonna be starting on a project that seeks to write and publish, basic financial literacy material from the left from, like, a left perspective, from a critical heterodox Marxian perspective so that people understand stuff like what is money, what is rent, what are wages, what is, you know, international trade, what are sanctions, so that everybody can get a basic understanding for that. Because I think that that's one of the big, huge problems with our education system, is that people don't know how things work anymore. Right? When I'm coming up in my childhood, I'm learning about computers. I'm learning about how the Internet works. I'm learning about code. I'm learning about how all these pieces fit together. And nowadays, people just sort of take it for granted. I think it's important for people to get a good understanding of stuff like what is money, so that at least they're not distracted thinking that that's the end all be all for them. Yeah. That's that that's interesting. And that is especially a place,
from what I've seen, that pulls people sort of, I guess, sort of unknowingly to the right of it. Sort of, like, it it preached, like, general, like, financial independence type of, like, advice and, like, and and writing rich dad, poor dad, poor dad type of stuff. You know, it it it's a lot of it is sort of, like, individualistic, like, moralistic, like, self help, and where it's all up to you to sort of get your pull yourself up by your bootstraps and, like, you know, one day you'll, you can live off of your retirement or whatever.
Right. But then there's also, from another perspective, the idea that people somehow think that your great aunt Nellie renting out the room above her garage is a landlord just like BlackRock is a landlord. Right? Yeah. Like, it's important to not come at it with that sort of using these words and making them mean the same thing across all different,
contexts. You have to be able to read it within the context and know what's going on in the world. So That's about I think I've reached the end of my question. I don't know if there's anything else that you really wanted to mention or not, or or else I'll just ask the last one, where people can keep up with your work. I think it's important for people to understand that we are in a really
dire crisis at this point. Humanity, the planet is in a really dire crisis, and we need to be as serious as we can be in figuring out what the hell is going on and then mapping out a really reasonable strategy and how to fix it. I think that learning about how technology is developing, how it is changing the way that people relate to one another, how it's changing our workplace, how it's changing our our everything is part of coming up with that serious analysis and that serious strategy.
Very, very wise advice, I think. Thank you. So maybe to end it off, maybe you could share with people where they can keep up with you and your work?
Sure. I I'm on Twitter. I don't really like social media that much, but I'm on Twitter at Taryn Fivik, t a r y n f I, v as in Victor, e k. You can follow me on Twitter. And, I guess, like, keep an eye out for this project, which we should be launching by the end of the year, this sort of financial technologies literacy center, which I hope will be a good resource for people, for themselves, but also in their organizing.
Nice. Is is that the name of it? Financial and Technology Literacy Center? It's Financial Technology
Literacy Center, I think, is what we're gonna go with. So
Alright. Cool. FTLC.
FTLC. Yeah. It's the FTL is the faster than late. Yeah. Sorry. I'm a nerd, like I said.
Alright. Well, thanks so much, Taryn. This was a really interesting conversation. I'm so glad I got to got to got to have you on and, share your experience of, the Bitcoin Miami conference and and all your thoughts and your research.
Absolutely. And so maybe one day when you come back to New York, you can get a beer or something.