Yeah. So, I was, for kind of some some context, I was, graduated graduated college and and sort of service class part of class of 2008. And so it was kind of coming kind of coming of age in the midst of that the big financial crisis that happened at that moment. And that really sparked some serious interest for me in kind of finance system, money systems. It was it was as if this kind of thing, right, as I was launching into the world. All of these, like, forces that were really sort of, like, not understood by by most people were suddenly kind of, like, you know, causing a crisis that was affecting everyone. So that really kind of motivated me at the time to get into sort of, you know, really geeking out on, on different kind of alternative ways of organizing, those those kind those sorts of structures that are really foundational to capitalist society. Right? And so so, you know, I kind of went down the rabbit hole on, like, local currencies and time banks and let systems and, and odds and sort of, you know, looked at some some and actually, even as a teenager, I had, done little early kind of micro task things with something called eGold, which was, you know, you know, thing where it was like, oh, digital currency and there's a vault of gold. And so you are in little tiny, like, chunks of gold that you can then send to people and things like that. So it's kind of but, you know so so and then had been aware of the kind of Liberty Dollar project, which was sort of, like, a similar thing that was in the libertarian, world. That was again based on the idea of there's a vault of some month some, some material somewhere and that you're essentially that and then they administer, you know, a centralized ledger that allows you to make digital transactions kind of backed by that. You know, so I've been aware so I've been aware also of the the way that Liberty Dollar had failed, which was, you know, more or less that, the the, the kind of I think the coinage that the guy was producing, had because it had the word dollar on it, he was charged with, I think it was, like, counterfeiting. And then all of the, the collateral was seized and put in an FBI storage locker. And so therefore, you know, your digital currency isn't gonna exactly, keep working if your collat if the sort of thing that you're saying is backing it is has been seized by the FBI. So kind of, I was sort of aware of all of those things in the in the aughts as kind of stuff that was of interest as I was, you know, probably pursuing my primary interest, which was in kind of cooperative finance, really getting it, getting, interested in credit unions and the history of credit unions and, you know, how kind of financial institutions owned by their the people who use them can provide an alternative to, you know, the dominant financial infrastructure that that we live in. And so I first came across Bitcoin proper, when I was just, I was, I was talking to a friend of mine who, was kind of, you know, interested in open source kind of hacker community stuff and had also spent a year just kind of like, you know, there's a time, there's a period of time in the two thousands where there's almost kind of like an early golden age of online poker where, you know, sharp people who knew how to like make, make some, you know, algorithms that would let you play like dozens or hundreds of games simultaneously effectively, like were making their living playing online poker. And then there was a big, big crackdown that, you know, all major services were shut down and, you know, that that that sort of really disrupted that, that world. And he because he had been part of that, he he then heard about Bitcoin as one thing that would be like, well, this is something that could allow for these sorts of services to operate without, you know, without having the the payment, payment processors as a point of point of vulnerability. So he was like, oh, knew me, knew that I was really geeky about alternative currency stuff and was like, hey. You should check this out. So, you know, I sort of looked at it and was like, you know, I was like, oh, there is no there is no, vault of physical material that could be impounded. Right? That that's this is kind of like solved that vulnerability problem, and kind of has created something that doesn't require, an institutional central administrator, which I found really, really innovative and interesting at the time. So I kind of like, you know, started going down the rabbit hole, you know, getting really enthused. My my friend and I ended up creating a little tiny business where I think we were the first ones to sell t shirts for, like, 4 Bitcoin. People were selling Bitcoin t shirts to sell for dollars. We were like, there should sample website, create one design, order like 200 t shirts. And then, you know, and then and then, you know, just ship them to people. So it was a very, very simple business, but it was kind of a way to tip our toe in the water. And I was also kind of pretty, you know, involved in following stuff on, like, the Bitcoin talk forums and, you know, thinking and thinking through kind of how how the the sort of like my interest in cooperative financial institutions might overlap with this. Having some some kind of vision or or discussion of of what would it look like to actually have lending institutions, which was, you know, in 2011, extremely premature to be thinking about, given the the huge level of volatility at the time. But it's, like, you know, a decade later looking at DeFi and other things that have emerged. It's, you know, I think that there's a lot of there's a huge amount of, like, potential and a lot of folks who've actually been in some ways reinventing some of the logics of of cooperativism, in some ways, almost from whole cloth because they they don't come from that as a tradition. But the logic, the a lot of logic makes makes sense, in many ways. And so, yeah. That's I'd say that's my kind of, like, the the the origin story of my interest in in this this side of things. Yeah. It's that's really interesting. You sort of start off as, like,

in the beginning to get to get your Bitcoins, I think. Back then I mean, it was it was even it was something where it was early enough that there weren't any really credible exchanges. So people people when you were buying and selling, it was like you'd find someone on a forum and then be like, hey, I'll PayPal you this. And that felt really sketchy to buy a $100 worth of Bitcoin doing that. So we were like, well, if we want them, why don't we why don't we like here's a little like thing that we think people people have Bitcoin and they have nothing to spend it on at this point. So let's let's just like provide something that we think, you know, those those people would wanna spend some Bitcoin on. Yeah. It would feel reasonable.

My my sense of the politics in the beginning was first first of all, the kind of milieu we were come where we were in, the financial crisis of two thousand eight loomed large. Right? And that was on both kind of the right and the left with, like, somewhat different interpretations of kinda why and what should be done. But I think you can see both, like, you know, the occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party movement as being like, you know, very much kind of having that, that crisis as as kind of a catalyst for, for for what they were doing. The second piece is that the, you know, the the I think the early on, you know, so you had people kind of coming in, and the communities that sort of drew people in were at first kind of communities that inherently had, you know, either, you know, at least elements with them in them with the techno technical know how to to kind of decode the meaning of what what this thing was. Right? And so for instance, like, you know, certainly the the peer to peer open source community was, you know, an obvious, like, first mover inherently. It's a peer to peer digital currency, like, the people who are really into that were were kinda like they aren't established from the get go. And then you look at sort of like what these other communities that kinda came into it, you know, and what what politics kind of underlined their, underlined their sort of interest. Right? So so you had I mentioned earlier this kind of the that online poker community, which I think kinda tended to lean pretty libertarian, you know, legal gambling and and all that. You had the sort of folks who are really interested in the black market, implications of this and, you know, the the folks who are kind of most, you know, the the guy who, who was busted kind of for running the the Silk Road, you know, was was kind of openly spreading kind of Samuel Conkin's work on on agorism, which is kind of a, flavor of, of, like, look like an archo libertarianism that really focuses on putting practices, putting energy into developing and strengthening black markets. And so, you know, being able to stand up things that you could buy drugs and guns and shit, like, you know, under the table, with Bitcoin was was something that was you know, this was a tool that very much appealed to people who were kind of in that orbit. And this is even in in 2010.

happening. I mean, sort of that that doing an extension. Certainly the awareness of, like, you know, the idea that that That you could do it. It was a yeah. It was it was a replacement for cash. Right? And why do you run black markets in cash? Because it's not something that, you know, is tied to is tied to sort of any sort of institution. Right? And so that metaphor of, like, Bitcoin as digital cash, for that for that group, for the more technologically savvy of them. And it was an opportunity for some people to, you know, suddenly you create an infrastructure where people can buy cocaine, heroin, LSD, whatever, you know, anonymously or kind of at the time what was perceived to be anonymously, of course, you're in your first mover, you're early in the space, you're, you're, you're standing to make some good, some good amount of money, right? Some good premiums, that sort of thing. You know, and then, and then there, you know, then, then there was kind of political, more explicitly political communities that were, interested in alternative finance. Right. And, and that's where this kind of, this divide that's wasn't the term wasn't used at the time, but I think it is probably one of the best framings of it between the kind of people who are interested in digital metalism. Right? Bitcoin is, you know, a, gold. Yeah. It's a it's a digital gold. Right? Or and or something that's a simulator, a gold simulator, versus people who are kind of interested in kind of this idea of infrastructural mutualism where, you have a money system where rather than these kind of privileged centralized institutions kind of, taking the cream off of the economy because because of their position in the financial system, you know, everyone could, could kinda be equal co owners, of that financial system. And so there's this kind of, you know, egalitarian, egalitarian finance kind of impulse, in in some level of tension with kind of a hard money impulse. And it was definitely that, you know, I was kind of, at the time, still sort of, you know, somewhat sympathetic to the to the sort of logic of hard money, in the context of, you know, the the kind of seigniorage that, that the the peep the sort of people at key points in the financial system get as new money is created. Right? The it doesn't sort of distribute equally. It concentrates. But it also but I was probably primarily interested in this idea of, alright, you know, this kind of broad based thing that everyone could have ownership of that that in some ways mirrored my interest in cooperatives, credit unions, find like, financial cooperatives. And so the the potential for that to become sort of a new backbone for, kind of like a a new a new wave of online cooperativism was something that I I very early on felt like there was potential to and was, found quite exciting. And so then from what I understand, besides the the t shirts, one of the other

Yeah. Yeah. So so I was following the, the kind of call to action on for Occupy. And I remember I met up with a couple of friends to watch the livestream of the kind of New York thing the first night. And as I watched, I I decide I made the decision that if they made it, I think they started on a Friday. And if, like, if they're still there on Monday, I was gonna, like, I was gonna go down, to New York from Vermont and spend a couple of days and get a sense of it. So they were still there. I, you know, hopped on a hopped on a a train with a with a friend of mine, and and off we went to, you know, to check it out and spend a few days marching and doing all of that stuff. And then in the sort of way the way that kinda connected to, you know, beyond again, talking about what Wall Street being this kind of carnival of alternatives to the kind of existing financial order. So there are people kind of like there, you know, doing skill shares and education about all sorts of different, you know, possibilities. It also, you know, also more practically sort of I I did did a little post on Bitcoin talk and was like, alright. I'm going down to, you know, to Zuccotti Park. You know, if anyone wants to sort of contribute Bitcoin towards, you know, buying supplies for the protest, like, you know, here's an address. Send it this way, and I'll, you know, stop in and, you know, buy, you know, buy groceries or whatever supplies are needed. And, you know, and it was something where, you know, there's there's at that point there in that that core community, there's enough folks with, like, strong sympathies to it. And the fact that DocuPy was also itself something that, by it was kind of a, you know, the the sort of like protest without a demand type thing, that kind of then allows people to project their their sort of desires onto it, which has has been an interesting strategy that both kind of has strengths and limitations in terms of being able to mobilize a lot of people, but also kind of getting caught into, like, you know, tactical lock and other things that, like Getting your demands met, I guess. Yeah. If you if you read the book like Twitter and tear gas, she sign up to Fuki really breaks breaks down kind of the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. But, you know, so so kind of at that level, there are definitely people in the community who are willing to, you know, kick in a few bucks worth worth of Bitcoin at the time to, like, you know, support this to support this sort of thing. I actually kind of had a funny thing where the second time I went down in October 2011, there was a Bitcoin meetup happening, and I've been chatting with people on the forum about it. And I was going to try to make I was gonna try to sort of attend one of their meetings to talk about what I saw as the connection between the the the sort of, you know, what was happening at occupy and the opportunities it had for, you know, this kind of digital currency project. Right? And then I missed I I wasn't able to make the meeting because we there's a big march and and we got kind of all for, like, six hours. Kind of in in a I was kind of a group of, like, 50 people where we're just surrounded by orange netting and NYPD officers, and they just wouldn't let us leave. So I didn't make it to that thing after all. But the other the the other thing we kind of did was, you know, just the idea of one of the things that I think excited me early on, which is kind of ironic in terms of where the transaction costs have ended up for Bitcoin, but was the idea of it being something that could allow for, like, microtransactions. Right? So you could send someone, like, 25¢ over the Internet for without it being a costly thing, which, you know, when Bitcoin was like $5 or $10 Yeah. Yeah. Paying like a fraction of a cent in, transaction costs. So so we set up a website, that was both kind of to, like, to continue the fundraiser thing. It was called, like, I think, feed the protest. But we also want created something where we're like, okay. Let's find some people on the ground who are who are, you know, basically producing reports of it. And we'll, like, give them, like, a little little dollop of Bitcoin for every, like, tweet length, bit of news and update that they will kinda put through the feed that we'll put out on on this website to try to, like, you know, create a flow of relatively high quality content, about it while also kind of, like, you know, come providing some compensation to the people who are doing that. So we played with that a little bit. We also discussed the idea of kind of using similar kind of bounty system for trying to build a database of police officers who are, who are sort of, like, known to be be assigned to the to the protest so that, like, pro so profiles and kind of, logs could be built. We got part of the way there. Didn't didn't end up, fully get getting to that point, but, you know, It's an interesting idea. Watching sort of, modern cop watch groups kind of starting to or having starting starting to do thing do things like that in an intentional way, which has been exciting to to see. Yeah. So, yeah, so so that that's just kinda some of the some of the connections there with with Occupy.

sort of There's also the sense too at that time because that was right around I think it was before Occupy kicked off. But, yeah, but that was right around the time that, you know, there's the big there like, kinda WikiLeaks put out the collateral murder video, and then there's a sort of embargo of, like, providing funding to WikiLeaks. And then and so so there's a sense that it was also, you know, if if there's gonna be kind of, like, repression through the financial system of, you know, radical challenges to power, that having having something like, something like Bitcoin, like cryptocurrency, could provide a safety net, which we've seen kind of as very much a double edged sword, but it has been true. Right? You you see, like, you know, white nationalists kicked off kicked off Patreon and things like that, but are able to kind of still still accept cryptocurrency donations. But sort of, you know, at the time, it was kind of so so that I think the the WikiLeaks example in 2011 was still pretty fresh. And so so there's the sense of, like, okay. Well, I'll you know, in the same way you have alternative media, you know, vectors. Right? You also have alternative kind of value flow vectors if you need to get the value to the right, to to the people you're supporting.

it's just a tool that shouldn't be ignored, I guess. Yeah. Yep. No. And and and yeah. And so so I think that in that sort of activist milieu, especially one that was really inspired by financial system problems. It was something that was at least of interest to a certain subset, and there are definitely like ideological debates around it. And that kind of prefigure, I think, a lot of the more nuanced stuff that came as kind of you know, old coins that weren't just, carbon copies of Bitcoin with slight edits, like, you know, Litecoin or whatever started to started to emerge.

I mean, again, it was definitely part of the founding community. Right? Where, you know, the the folks who'd the the sort of what what people wanted out of what the kind of the libertarian libertarians wanted out of something like Liberty Dollar, which I think it was went went down in maybe either 2008 or maybe it's 2009. So it was the end of it was pretty close to the beginning of Bitcoin. You know, it was a natural it was almost a natural kind of, like, merger and match, especially with the sort of, like, you know, attempt to

Bitcoin should have showed up. So there was already this community of, like, damn, we lost Liberty Dollar. Wait. Yeah. Yeah. So so there's a there's a community of interest that was looking for something that would do what Bitcoin did, right, within the libertarian community. And there was a pretty big, you know, there in I think there's compared to today, I think the vast majority of libertarians are completely comfortable with Bitcoin. But early on, there's something that felt that seemed to be a big generational divide where it was sort of older folks were, like, didn't understand the logic of what it was doing and were, like, there's nothing backing it. It's no no better than fiat, blah blah blah. And then the younger folks were like, no. It's actually better than gold. So it's kind of like a, you know Yeah. Concrete versus abstract conflict.

Yep. Yep. So is is the and so that was very present. So I think, like, in many ways this is like the the libertarians who are involved early on in some ways felt like they had something to prove to their kind of their dads. So yeah. Yeah. Essentially, yeah and then and that it was it was there's this almost kind of traditional thing of, like, oh, it's been around for thousands of years, and it's the, like, I think up and I think it was actually kind of Bitcoin was an interesting moment for for libertarianism because, you know, it kind of, challenged a certain like, it it forced it forced a confrontation a bit around what actually were was, you know, the libertarian ideal for money. Right? Was it that you had, you know, a vault with gold in it that that was that was, you know, that the the notes could be exchanged for at any time, or was it something that it was gold was simply the tool to create kind of the the, predictable scarcity that that underlined the value of the of the currency. And you could just sort of, like, bootstrap boot that bootstrap that out of, you know, cryptographic system and, you know, proof of work system, which is what Bitcoin did. And so so I think that that there that was a really interesting interesting element. And, you know, the the other group that I would say was very, very involved early on, right, was the, was the the sort of a goris faction. And, you know, that, you know, Bitcoin just fit so well or cryptocurrency in general. Right? And I think the the folks who are who are kind of interested in that probably moved on to things like Monero, later on, that were again, once the sort of limitations of Bitcoin's anonymity became clearer. But people for whom, you know, their practice is, you know, collaborate and support and prop up and expand black black and gray markets to sort of undermine state capacity. Right? And so the ability to, to use this online currency that behaves like cash suddenly opens up this door to to bring huge numbers of people who, who would otherwise been only operating in the online economy in a kind of above ground ways that, you know, would be reportable to the IRS and, you know, and and could be traced back. And rather than having to go through elaborate, machinations to be able to, you know, sell drugs or whatever they were doing, online. You know, here's here's a way of doing it in a much more straightforward way. So I think there so so so that group, which is kind of a very small small fringe group within libertarianism, but nonetheless is kind of like within the camp, like, they show up to the, like, free state project events in New Hampshire and stuff like that. You know, that you know, the and and that meant that sort of there there are these, like, little communities within libertarianism, like the tech nerds, the gorists, etcetera, who sort of first brought it up, the mainstream saw it as weird, and then gradually gradually it was adopted, but that that was the kind of injection point. Those were, I I see as the injection points of it. Yeah. I I think it's really interesting to note

won out. That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to a certain extent, you know, that was seeded just by the architecture of the system itself. Right? Where if what you're doing is functionally creating, a simulated logic of, like, an ideal, like, hard money system, you know, and and that's a piece of the puzzle. And then you also have this the these kind of, like, decentralized elements that make it kind of, you know, what censorship resistant or whatever. You know, those those things are gonna also sort of attract people, but the fundamental kind of, mechanics of how value is created and maintained, definitely definitely were things that were that made it early on that that that made it something that would that libertarians, I think, were were, were set up to be early adopters of, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I I was probably very I think I could probably probably trace, like, I was, like, you know, very interested following very closely crypto stuff probably between 2010 and 2014 or so. And then, and then gradually, my interest kind of the focal point of my interest went elsewhere, and I've still kind of kept kept involved. And, you know, there's certain projects I've I've like and find interesting and but it's not sort of at the level of intensity that it it had been. So the things that I I I work on kind of at my core, right, are, you know, I'm the executive director of a nonprofit that, called the Vermont Play Ownership Center, where we do a lot of work on business successions. So, you know, someone owns a business, if they wanna sell it to their workers as a worker cooperative or an ESOP or something like that, you know, we provide education and support and, some financing to try to, help make that happen. Right? So basically, my my my day job is to try to make it so that there's more worker co ops in Vermont. And then I've also sort of, you know, probably kind of around that time, but been involved with number of other kind of startups, both kind of more at the brick and mortar level and also kind of, you know, think the sort of inter one of the intersections between cooperativism and kind of crypto. And open source is the the platform coop world. And so so I was at the first platform coop conference. Was it maybe either 2014 or 2015 in, at the new school in New York, and I've stayed pretty involved in that world. So, you know, I was involved with, you know, the buy Twitter campaign, which was a kind of a educational campaign aimed at where we got a show shareholder vote aimed at kind of, having Twitter create a create a committee to study the idea of exiting ownership to a user on cooperative. And so at the same time, a group of us stood up a mastodon instance called social.coop. It's kind of a little bit of a dual power play. That's become sort of a nest of people who are interested in in cooperatives in the intersection of co coops and tech and open source and stuff like that. So, yeah, there's there's probably, like, 200 to 200 people who, like, post on it regularly, and then it federates out to the broader fediverse. You know, and then I've also been involved more recently well, a few in kinda trying to for years, I've been part of a group that's been, working to stand up a little little coop brewery in the town I live in, and we actually just signed our a lease on a little space, January 1. So that's kind of moving, which is exciting. And then and then I've also been, working on, real estate cooperatives. So, actually, we've we've formed two of them. One bought its first building in June, and one, is in the process of of closing on a building that hopefully will have closed on by by early, February. And and those are kind of things where it's consumer cooperative corporation that, you know, there's there's securities law exemptions for consumer co ops and for for other kinds of co ops that took me a while to fully wrap my head around, but now I'm pretty pretty clear on them. So so we're able to kind of raise raise kind of small investments with capped returns from from local folks, and then tenants can become members of the cooperatives. And then if there's profit beyond those kind of capped returns to the sort of investor members, that money goes back to the tenants prorated by how much rent they paid. So classic consumer coop logic. And so so when kind of thinking about all that coop organizing, which is, you know, you know, distributed ownership in a way, as kind of this this primary focus of mine, you know, I definitely have still been kind of giving giving thought to what the intersections are between between that and, you know, and the crypto world. And there's certain projects out there that I've I've I've kind of been interested in because of their connections, either kind of like implicitly or explicitly to co ops. And then there's some things I've been kind of giving thought to over the years about, you know, that would just make, that would be useful for, you know, building the cooperative movement and making that easier. So I'd say one of the projects I've been, I do follow and kind of have found interesting, is Moeda, m o e d a, which is kind of a was one in 2017 ICO that grew out of a hackathon, like, sustainable development hackathon at the United Nations. And, basically, it's this kind of, you know, payments platform that involves this kind of microlending thing. But rather than traditional microlending that's that's lending to individuals, it's mostly sort of lending to, you know, co ops and rural underdeveloped areas of Brazil, where you you basically, like, you know, you take your tokens, you use them to essentially purchase a Brazilian real stablecoin, and then lend it to the, you know, lend it to the coop and then receive the, it back the stablecoin back plus plus a little interest payment and then, you know, rinse and repeat. So, so that that's been one that, you know, of the, like, you know, all of the vaporware of the ICO craze. That's been one of the few things where it's like, oh, they've been plugging plugging along, actually trying to do what they said they were gonna do, and having it be something that's maybe making people's lives a little bit less shitty rather than just being a purely speculative, play. So so that's that's one I definitely have been following. You know, I certainly think the I'm curious to see how the the proof of, stake stuff with Ethereum two point o comes out because I do think in terms of as we were talking about before we started, that the infrastructural mutualism thread in the early Bitcoin community. I think a lot of that energy kind of transferred into Ethereum. And so there's some some kinda cool projects that are, that are kinda built on it. And also, I think, you know, that logic, at least from a climate change perspective, feels a little bit better even though it's still, you know, with Ethereum at over a thousand dollars. It's gonna cost, like, only you have to be have a certain amount of resources to actually, like, you know, stand up a full full Ethereum node. So, you know, it's again, you're not gonna have, it's you you still have that kind of concentration of resources problem that that you saw in Bitcoin that that's happened in Bitcoin as well. Yeah.

Mhmm. Rig that actually is profitable. I've I've given some idle idea some idle thought to the idea of actually trying to, Vermont was, I think, one of the first states to, to authorize under its law kind of a blockchain based LLC legal structure. And I I know the lawyer who is kind of, who teaches at Vermont Law School, who is kind of behind that sort of push pushing for that to be put into the thing. And I'm like, I've been thinking it's like, would it make sense to just as a for shits and giggles, stand up one of those and as, like, you know, as essentially, like, a a cooperative, as a sort of legal container for for a cooperative ETH staking node if I wanna, like, do a little bit. But definitely don't have, you know, $20 to put into it.

Yeah. Yeah. So so one thing I've been giving some thought to, is the is kind of like especially for consumer cooperatives, where oftentimes the the financial relationships are, you know, the the are, you know, vary in size, but, you know, as as kind of like, you know, the an idea that something that that kind of occurred to me early on that kind of excited me about cryptocurrency, and I think we're only kind of it's only, you know, becoming growing, is the idea that it kind of reduces you know, it is is that sort of, like, ability to do kind of, like, incredibly low friction kind of micro payments. And so so one of the things with consumer cooperatives is they, you know, in co ops in general, one of the key concepts is the patronage refund. And basically, like, a co op for for folks who are not who've, like you know, and even many folks who are familiar who are friendly with the idea don't really understand the logic of, like, what actually makes a co op run. Right? But there's two main there's two main things to be aware of. A, they, you know, they're democratic, so one member, one vote, in terms of governance. But in terms of value sharing, the core ideas that they distribute surplus on the basis of use, not capital ownership. And so what how you define that use can look different for different co ops. Right? Worker co op uses, you know, hours worked or something like that. For a consumer co op, it's dollars spent. And so so when so if you you have a cooperative grocery store and its goal is to operate on a not for profit basis towards its members through a patronage refund, you know, everyone buys their groceries and at the end of the year, the cops like, okay, well, we had a 5% rate of profit, so we're gonna return that profit to the members prorated by how much they spent at the cooperative. And so, you know, for, you know, the I think that there's there's one kind of low hanging fruit thing, I think, is it just the frictions of, you know, with when you have consumer co ops that have, like, consumer co ops that have, like, people spending and receiving relatively small amounts of value, it just becomes more expensive to make those sort of, like, payments to to them versus, you know, not. And so so I've definitely given thought to the idea of potentially trying to stand up a, basically a co op owned cooperative that would manage a stable coin that when, that then, basically, when when co ops pay the patronage refund, rather than paying it out directly in cash, you have, like, members have an app that, like, all the that connects to all of the the co ops, and they can kind of receive their passion's refunds. And then other types of little things too, like, if they do a survey and they're paid, like, 25¢ for spending thirty seconds to do a survey or something like that from one of the one of the co ops they're a member of. You know, so so kind of as, like, a member of both management engagement and maybe even governance tool, I think there's a real real opportunity to kinda pool pool resources and significantly reduce transaction costs on a bunch of fronts. So I've had some conversations with our local kind of federation of food co ops about maybe trying to kind of, like, think through what some sort of pilot of this could look like. And, you know, and I think there's some interest even in terms of, you know, going beyond just the transaction cost. But, you know, if it's fungible, having at least some level of quasi local currency that doesn't run into the problems that a lot of the local currency projects in the late nineties and early two thousands ran into. So I so I think that there's there's some real real potential sort of there in terms of, moving both like kind of governance and kind of value, the return of value to cooperative members into the crypto space where there was it would strengthen co ops, make it easier to sort of reduce the minimum viable scale of co ops, and, and sort of, like, allow for built in, built in secure governance, you know, voting, things where whereas right now a lot of co ops will, like, go to a vendor who might charge, you know, some some amount per head when for for every vote they do to make sure that you've got some of the secure online vote and that sort of thing. So, you know, that that that's really kind of when I'm when I think about the the intersection of crypto and cooperatives, that's that that's what one something that I would like to see movement in direction in the direction of. And I've done little nudges, but again, you know, limited time and and attention and, you know, we'll so we'll see how much how how far I can I can push it, but that's that's certainly kind of, like, a vision that I have and that excites me?

Yeah. One one of the things that, has become apparent to me, having been involved in a number of kind of startup co op projects, is there's this, like, kind of there's this missing middle between the early phase where you have just a volunteer group who's excited and putting, you know, that sort of volunteer energy and trying to stand it up. And the point at which you're like, okay, we now are have are of the size that we can serve, professionalize, you know, the folks who are working on it, so they're making their living through doing this. And, you know, we become more more more more formalized institution. And the gap between that is oftentimes hard to jump. And so, like, even looking at food co ops, there's the sense that, like, okay, you need 800 members before you can you can, like, you know, really commit to a brick and mortar store and all of that. And until then, you're, like, at most, maybe hiring a part time organizer, but oftentimes, it's just an elected volunteer board trying to trying to move it forward. And so, you know, one of something that I've definitely pay attention to is is looking for models that both kind of like that can work within legal the legal sort of labor structure labor law structures, but allow for some value sharing that a lot that can create some role that's in between employee and volunteer. Right? So with the coop brewery project I mentioned earlier, for instance, like, we were stuck for years on this kind of dichotomy between we need to raise at least $500,000 to get to the scale where we could support support the staffing to, you know, make the business sustainable. But, like, you know, we had a hunt little over a 100 members who'd each put in a $100 and, like, we couldn't really sort of, like, raise that kind of money until we had a clear vision of where we would be and what space, but we couldn't get into a space until, you know, until we sort of, you know, had the money to do it. So it's kind of a chicken and egg type thing. And, and so so but then, you know, there's a lawyer in in Vermont who's been doing some stuff around kind of using these kind of partnership esque kind of worker collective model. And so, ultimately, we were like we figured out we could sort of split the difference by creating something where the consumer co op owns owns this kind of LLC or most of it, but then the folks who are doing the work kind of own little chunks. But the operating agreement says that most of the profit up to a certain point goes to, goes to the folks who are doing the work prorated by how many hours they work. And so so so it's not like wages. It's not an employment relationship. At the end of the year, there's kind of profit. And if there's profit, it's distributed equitably amongst the people who are doing the work. And these are people who had been volunteering anyway. So it's kind of a way of, you know, supercharging and rewarding them for, you know, what is real work that they've put in, but without kind of creating the sort of overhead where we had to raise half $1,000,000 to just even have a viable business. And I think I think that that logic is in some ways similar to, you know, thinking about, okay, what are the ways that we can kind of streamline and make, you know, these this kind of, like, small the the equitable contra the the equitable compensation for for small contributions to projects that are still meaningful versus kind of having to have this all or nothing, logic.

like, assuming that the co op becomes sustainable in the future. In in this case, it's even more direct. It's, like, basically, you're working for a share of that year's that year's, you know, profit or free cash flow. Okay. Yeah. Right? Versus the sort of, like, value of the company itself the commodity value of the company itself. Yeah. Okay. And so it's basically saying all the profit, Yeah. The logic of this is all the prop basically, they're 90% of the profit up to, like, the the living wage rate locally, you know, goes to the folks who are doing the work, and 10% goes to the consumer coop to, you know, kick back to the members a little bit. And then if there's profit above that, it's divided, like, fifty fifty. And then if there's profit above, like, even, you know, really a high amount of profit, then, like, 90% goes to the consumer coop.

Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. Yeah. No. It's an interesting question. Yeah. I I certainly think that, you know, and have for people who kind of, like, I would put in that category of the sort of, like, the the those skeptics. I think some of the crypto UBI things, have been have been kind of interesting to to many of those folks. I know there's a few people in the hacker space I'm part of, who are kind of probably the the the more the more lefty folks, you know, who kind of got have gotten really interested in the sort of circles circles UBI thing recently and other stuff like that. So so I think the the sort of things that are explicit about saying, like, oh, you know, let you know, this is Bitcoin is one logic economic logic. Right? And you can be explicit about that. And there are other economic logics that we can, we can play we can play with here, and, you know, and there's an economic logic to the, you know, money in your pocket that you're using anyway. So, you know, no one's clean. Right? There's there's no one's pure when it comes to when it comes to interacting with money systems. Or, you know, Basically, no one.

And if you are, that's probably because you had access to it previously. The and so so I think that getting, you know, that being being sort of explicit about that, I think can can be helpful. And I think just pure, you know, in some ways it's almost like demonstration projects, where, you know, you'll you'll have people who'll be skeptical and yet they're like, you know, I don't know, using Robinhood app or some shit. And so the, so so so I think but having some projects that are that in my mind are kind of like showing the utility of it, in the context of things that that people on the left value, I think, like cooperatives, you know, to a certain extent, like UBI, other things along those lines, that if it if it can be like, hey. This is this is a tool that is making it easier to do what you're wanting to do. Right? The the utility argument. Yeah, I think I think that oftentimes will get you 80 to 90% there. Because it's like, okay, you know, you're an anarchist group and you're using Google Docs. Right? Again, it's like you you sort of, like, have to, you have to balance values with, you know, sort of the pure consumption values stuff with, what you're with, you know, with the practicality of, like, what you what tools are necessary to do the work you wanna do. And so I think if we can kinda get to the point where there's tools that can kind of check both boxes of, like, this is better than the other options that are at the table for me, and, you know, and it's, you know, and it it it meets my needs and my values, like, boom, slam dunk. And so I think there's a real opportunity to sort of, like, to broaden broaden the base in that way. And so so so those projects that are, like, you know yeah, you know, whether it's, you know, fun fun funding co ops in the global South, like Moy Moyda's been doing or making kind of, like, it easier to to start collective enterprises, you know, in the communities where people live. I think those are the things that that are really gonna, that are gonna motivate people in a different way.

But I I think about my kind of, like, extremely early sort of understanding of, like, politics and what was right and all of and, like, kind of economy and all that. And I definitely had this, like I think that there's this a lot of people simply have a bifurcated view of, like, you know, business, you know, economy, anything that operates on that, bad. Anything that operates kind of outside of that, good. Right? So, like, nonprofit, good. For profit, bad. And I think the sort of solidarity economy, kind of sector muddies complicates the story. Right? Where where it's like, okay. The you know, there are reasons to have certain you know, there's both solid critiques of why you don't want market logic to govern, to sort of be a totalitarian, thing governing all of your society. But there's also sort of places where, yeah, it makes sense to have that be what's kind of coordinating the distribution of scarce resources, you know, as long as kind of, like, people have equitable access to them. Right? So there's so there's a more complicated, discussion to have than simply, you know, you know, nonprofit good or profit bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what makes makes me think of, like, you know, David David Graber's work. I think that was, you know, there's sort of a point that he made that I found I found really compelling, which was that and I think it's like a lot of people early in their political journey are always are looking for, like, the one true system. Right? Where it's like, okay. Once we figure out that thing, whatever that thing is that I'm on about today, that'll solve everything. Right? And I think that but, like, what Graber and to a certain extent, Poliani and others have kinda, like, kinda make the points of is that, you know, in reality, like, great Graber's point was that, you know, you had, you know, most most societies and economies are are not pure systems. Right? They're they have market elements. They have, kind of hierarchical elements to them. They have, you know, communistic elements to them. Right? And they're just kind of like those elements exist in different parts of the society and economy at different levels and at different intensities. And so any economy or society is gonna be a mix of a variety of these things that fit together into a complex system. And any attempt to sort of collapse that into a single way of relating is gonna be, like, disastrous and probably monstrous because you're, like, you know, you're gonna end up with that's how you end up with, like, a Paul Potts situation or that's how you end up with, you know, kind of a Randian kind of cyberpunk nightmare. Right? Whatever it is that you're trying to collapse the complexity of, like, human, society like, social economy into, if it's a single idea, is gonna be bad. It's gonna it's gonna it's gonna fail. It's more about the sort of balance of these different things. Right? But that's a that's a nuanced conversation that, you know, I think the the Can't do any tweets. Right. And the and the tenants and there is a there is a reason, I think, that there's a tendency to sort of fixate on these things because, you know, especially for people early in their in their journey is that it's a chance to sort of really become familiar with it. The problem becomes when you become so attached to it that you can't see the forest for the trees, and you can't sort of, like, value the other sort of the the other pieces of the puzzle. You know, so if you go through a series of, like, this is really cool, and then this is really cool, and then this is really cool. At the end of that series, you're gonna say, oh, there's a bunch of things that I all think are really cool, and they all sort of interact together, and there's sort of a bigger picture here. And I think that's really sort of like it's, with with crypto, it's the sort of thing where for for people on the left, you it's either people who are just really into crypto as the thing they're on about and learning about now, or it's the people who are kind of, like, seeing the places that it can fit in and make and improve things without sort of without assuming that it's gonna have this, like, kind of utopian, to totalizing, impact either.

The Dunning Kruger thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Your confidence versus how much you know. Your confidence goes up fast and then collapses and then slowly rises again as you actually know about it.

hopefully, educated view on that. Although, that's something that's not easy and and I think takes time. Well, I think and I think that's really where where kind of, like, concrete projects are almost the best, Yeah. The best thing. Because it's like, you can talk to people about something till you're blue in the face. Show me it though. But it's like, okay. Like, oh, here's here's actually, like, a use case that I'm I'm using it for, that I'm gonna get practice with, and I'm gonna get familiar with it until until people kind of have the opportunity to experience it rather than just kind of, like, hear about it. I mean and that's even something where, you know, I see that in my work with with employee ownership where it's often times a business owner will be, like, oh, I kinda like that idea, but, you know, can I imagine my employees really, you know, running the shop? Right? Because, you know, it's always been organized in a pretty sort of top down way. And then and then they come to our conference where there's a bunch of folks from existing worker co ops and and ESOPs and other things, you know, getting into the nitty gritty of how do you really run a business like this. And then they walk away being like, no. Okay. This is real. There's people doing this. Do I can, like, go and talk to and, you know, it's not just a nice idea. Right? And I think there's a similar logic here where it's where it's like, okay. That's a cool idea. Now what? Versus like, alright. Let's bring you in and, you know, alright. You're using this thing, and then that makes it easier for you to understand the logic of these other things and, you know, and and go from there.

Yep. Yep. So, let's see. On social media, I I, you know, I share some brain droppings on, on Twitter, just at Matt Cropp, two t's, two p's. And likewise, if if folks are on Mastodon, you know, my social social dot coop, handle is, at MattCropp@social.coop. Other than that, you know, if if you're interested in kind of particularly interested in the kind of connection between cooperativism and and crypto stuff, you know, I'm always I'm always happy to have a conversation. So so hit me up on there or, you know, my, my employee ownership, center, email address is matt@veoc.org. So feel free to shoot me an email there as well. And then, you know, I I don't really kind of like I used to do you know, I was my best in fact, grad school and stuff, I used to do a fair amount of blogging, and there's some old older, you know, early stuff kind of about the intersection of credit union, my credit union thinking, and my and crypto stuff on sort of, the my old credit union history blog. But I say probably the place I've when I do do contributions of any any sort, I tend to do them. I tend to submit them to, grassroots economic organizing, which is geo.coop, which is kind of a clearing house for some solid like, solidarity economy stuff that's been around. It used to be a newsletter. It's been around for a while, and, you know, that's kind of my my usual feed of interesting little tidbits happening around the the, you know, more left oriented co op world.

your points were and how sort of still relevant they are today. So Yeah. It's there's some really interesting ways that the the world has kind of, like, matured in some ways in ways that I've I I was like, oh, that's where it's going. Otherwise, radically different. But, you know, it's it's it's a wild ride. You know? Yeah. Yeah. We're all sometimes right and wrong about

Yeah. My pleasure.