What Erik Voorhees and Other Crypto-Libertarians Get Wrong
This week I decided to do something a little bit different and go solo. For this episode I wanted to analyze the mindset and beliefs in a lot of the mainstream cryptocurrency discourse. In order to do that I wanted to use someone who is a popular figure and thought leader in the space, Erik Voorhees. Erik is the CEO of ShapeShift, an pseudo-anonymous cryptocurrency exchange turned definitely-not-anonymous cryptocurrency exchange in order to comply to new regulations. Before that he also start...
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Transcript
Hey, guys. You are listening to the Blockchain Socialists. And for today's episode on the podcast, I thought I'd do something a little bit different. Instead of doing an interview, I wanted to look at some of the, I guess, content that's out there, that's sort of dished out by the mainstream sort of cryptocurrency, news sites and like the people that they're they're just frequenters on their in their circuits and focus on in particular one specific guy. I don't know if you guys know who he is, but his name is Eric Voorhees. And Eric Voorhees is a, interesting guy. He is one of the, you would say, pioneers or one of the the first starters, early adopters of cryptocurrencies. He was one of the I think he was famous for, being one of the first people to go full crypto. So to completely reject any sort of, use of fiat money or US dollars and instead, do everything with Bitcoin and I guess whatever other cryptocurrencies that he likes. And he's been pretty known for at least since 2013, from what I know. And as you can imagine, he is a typical, mainstream Bitcoiner in terms of his views. And he's, very well known. So he's a and very right wing libertarian. And so, he's famous, largely for this company called ShapeShift. But before that, he had a couple of ventures in the beginning. So, he started some company, called Satoshi Dice which is one of the first gambling, Bitcoin, websites. We can, like, place, you know, a bet that some dice is gonna roll, on some number and you could win or lose a Bitcoin that you bet. Basically he made a bit of money through that. And, then he started his company ShapeShift. And ShapeShift, which I admit was a service that I used years ago. When it first started out, it was this sort of, like, meant to be an anonymous exchange. So so you would like, you know, if you go onto the site right now on shapeshift.com, you'll see on the right, you can immediately see what coins, which cryptocurrencies you want to trade, and you just sort of click, which one. And then you say, do you want to do it quickly or precisely, which would determine how much of a, of a of a gas fee that would be charged to you. But at the moment, there is a sign up and a login. So this was something that they that they put in, I think a couple of years ago. But before that, they used to be completely anonymous. So you could all you had to do was put in the the cryptocurrencies you want to, give and which one you want to receive and you put in your, wallet addresses and it would do the work for you. And the reason, big part I remember he was, you know, wanting this service was because he's a very, principled sort of libertarian. In that, he's one of those people who's very obsessed with privacy. Or he was at least until, I guess eventually, he realized that he could not, support his business without complying to state's laws which were at the time a couple of years ago changing to, force people to or force exchanges to have to keep information, particularly cryptocurrency exchanges. So, he he changed on his, on his principles in order to keep his business afloat. As much as he will say that he doesn't like The States, you know, he adheres to it, in order to keep to keep making a profit. Another thing that might be interesting to know is that he became, or he didn't become, but he, he had a slightly viral tweet where Bernie Sanders said billionaires should not exist, which got, I mean, very big at the time. This is what during his campaign. And then Eric Voorhees did a retweet saying the state should not exist and, like, you know, a bunch of people, went wild for that. Bitcoiners especially. So right now, ShapeShift is, it's it's basically like a normal exchange at this point, with it just has a slightly different UI than most other ones. But I think it's interesting to note that back in 2016, it actually suffered from some pretty big hacks. So according to Wikipedia at least, they lost 469, 1,900 Litecoin, and 5,800 Ethereum or Ether. So they lost quite a bit of money, during that hack and so they had to, shut down and figure their stuff out. And as well as in 2018, there's an investigation by the Wall Street Journal saying that, ShapeShift had helped process over $9,000,000 in funds that were related to criminal activities over a two year period. So that's, I mean, that's something that is, is expected to happen in this type of platform. If you're gonna if you're going for, anonymity then obviously it's going to be criminal activities. I'm not a narc but you know it's something that I think, if you're owning this company then you will you're going to get these type of criticisms obviously and they're just bound to happen, and you know, you can't really control the types of criminal activities that are going to happen. You know, this is I think there's a difference between, using some cryptocurrency to buy some weed versus some other, much shadier stuff. But so what I wanted to do, is talk a bit about Eric Voorhees and get into the mind of Eric because I think he's a perfect example of sort of the mainstream thought in cryptocurrency world, and would be interesting to break that down a little bit. So I want to go through a couple of different videos, that he's been a part of. So ending with, the interview that he did on, during Consensus Distributed hosted by CoinDesk. So if you don't know, CoinDesk is a very main stream, cryptocurrency, newspaper or online journal, I should say. So they release articles quite quite regularly, and they're pretty popular for, keeping up with the news. But so every year, they help host a large conference where all the bigwigs of cryptocurrency worlds come together in New York City. And they it's sort of like a three or four day conference where everyone shows off their different projects. You got people from, from, like, really the corporate world, big corporate, the big banks, people I mean, JPMorgan, all these different, players that, you know, not too long ago said that, cryptocurrency was, you know, something they didn't wanna mess around with, but then turns out they're actually trading. It's pretty common or that their CEO says that they don't like cryptocurrency, but then, you know, they have several speakers that talk about cryptocurrency quite often. And then you also have sort of the the really crazy libertarians that were there. And I say this because I went there a few years ago back when things were, you know, pre corona and things were looking up for the cryptocurrency world. So it was a it was an interesting conference to be, to be in especially, considering my political views and thoughts on cryptocurrency and sort of experiencing what other people's were, which really turned out to be sort of the mainstream Internet talk as well, which is pretty common and it was really interesting experience to see in real life. But anyways, since this year they couldn't do the conference, they did an online version where they just did, different panels and interviews. And so Eric Voorhees had one where he talks about the future of wealth. And he has some pretty, interesting thoughts that I want to go through and sort of break down, sort of the inconsistencies and the, contradictions of of I mean, not only his thoughts but also just right wing libertarianism in general. But so in order to get into the mind of Eric Voorhees, there's a couple of other videos I would like to show as well and some, some interesting tidbits. So ShapeShift has a lot of different social media accounts where they share, different types of bits of information and try to entice people to, get into the cryptocurrency world. So I think this was a really interesting, read because, this is there's a this article on Medium called nine best books for crypto beginners, which is published by ShapeShift July 19 in 2019. But so they go through, these books that are recommended by the CEO, Eric Voorhees. And if you can I could I could just go through the the titles and the authors and you'll kind of understand the type of guy he is? So the first one is Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. The second one is What Has Government Done to Our Money by Murray Rothbard. The third one, Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammis. The Social Singularity by Max Borders, How Money Got Free by Brian Patrick Eija, The Law by Frederic Bastiat, Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos, The Bitcoin White Paper, and Bitcoin Millionaires by Ben Mezrich. So as you can tell by these recommendations, we got some pretty, far right wingers on this, especially Murray Rothbard. I mean, he is sort of the I mean, even more extreme, Austrian economic economist than, than, Friedrich Hayek. Seifedean Ammus is a very well known right winger, libertarian. Complete faith in markets and wants to go I mean, I think ideally if Bitcoin didn't exist, he would want he would say that, similar to, to Rothbard that money should go back to the gold standard. Andreas Antonopoulos is just sort of a very famous guy throughout the industry. And he is surprisingly actually not that right wing. He's more of a I guess he he he posits himself as more of the technical guy. I think he he would be an interesting guy to talk to. He's not a complete chud like a lot of the other guys out there. So that's it's interesting to see him included in there as well as sort of an apolitical recommendation, I think. But so this sort of gives you the idea of where this guy's thinking is. If these are the type of books that he's recommending for crypto beginners. Because, I mean, if you're basically, he's saying he's also using this a bit as a as a pipeline. I mean, if if you're recommending Rothbard to newbies, in the cryptocurrency space, like, you have some sort of political aim. Of course, you know, he's not silent about his political views, so it's not that surprising as well. But so ShapeShift, they did this, I guess, series called Down the Rabbit Hole, that they have on YouTube. I think back in 2018, it looks like they did. But so I think it's I think it was also just another sort of marketing tool to get, people into the cryptocurrency space. And so I wanted to play, the trailer for this down the rabbit hole series that they did. And then they have a a video that focuses especially on Eric Voorhees, which I think is also very revealing. And then let's get to the interview that he did with CoinDesk. So this is this is the trailer. And I'll I'll, make some comments throughout the way.
We are currently performing a very radical and very dangerous experiment
of eliminating privacy wholesale from entire populations. It's crazy that in this moment of history, we are still
talking about poverty and hunger. The development system was broken. The communities were not being included.
The six conversations in the world of cryptocurrency.
About cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. When I was younger, you know, I listened to to all the music from the sixties and seventies, but I was also reading a lot. When I found out about the Federal Reserve,
the light bulb went I I have no idea how listening to the music of the sixties and seventies and that are related to each other, but okay.
And I was thinking, we've got some problems coming up. The first article I read, I was This is Eric Voorhees. Virtual currency goes up by 800% in six months. What hit me was when I really understood that there is no one behind it. It couldn't be shut down, and then I was just hooked. Why is any of this important? Why does it matter at all? These currencies allow us to infuse human values. So so this this woman right here, right, I was wearing wearing a t shirt that says, Satoshi is female.
Getting some strong Hillary Hillbot vibes. For the first time. But now we have to see how we can use these technologies to enforce
more complex social contracts. Countries. It's not a bank. It's not a government. It's people, and it's a new set of values.
You can't be yourself when you're under the eye of others, especially powerful others.
The same fire burns within all of us. It's just expressed a little bit differently.
Wow.
So that was their Down the Rabbit trailer. And as you can tell, it's very, I mean, it's it's it's like a mix of of, like, neoliberal corporate sort of, like, fake, motivational video with cryptocurrency and Yeah, it's just it's it's it's interesting. It's sort of It sort of aligns with this idea I've been having of the new liberalization of cryptocurrency. But anyways, they did this series with six different people and the last one that they did was Eric Voorhees. So Eric Voorhees, was episode six. And so usually what they do is they do, like, the person's name then colon the something. So Eric Voorhees is the entrepreneur, but there are other people like the musician and the philosopher or something like that. And so Eric Voorhees is the founder of ShapeShift. And, ShapeShift is doing, you know, they did this this six episode series and the grand finale was to finally get to know who Eric Voorhees, the CEO of ShapeShift is. So strap in. Let's let's find out who Eric Voorhees is, according to ShapeShift.
I don't call myself an anarchist, although I'm sympathetic to that line of thinking.
I don't understand What a great start. I don't call myself an anarchist, Proudhon. Let Proudhon.
Let's continue. And why it's radical to simply believe that adults own their own body. That shouldn't be like a crazy position. That shouldn't make someone a terrorist or an outcast of society.
I'm really curious to hear about his thoughts on child labor laws.
Eric Voorhees is an entrepreneur and pioneer in the cryptocurrency industry. He first entered the industry as the director of marketing at BitInstant and has since played a founding role in Coinapult, Satoshi Dice, and most recently is the founder and CEO of ShapeShift. We met up with Eric in Denver, Colorado for a beer and to talk cryptocurrency's role on human liberty. Cheers. Human liberty. What were you like when you were a kid? Like did you have a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit that you've been able to pull through today?
Yeah, both.
Why do they start? They start with this childhood, which I think is, it's funny.
Both my father and my grandfather were entrepreneurs in school.
Family of entrepreneurs. Family of entrepreneurship, but never I feel like that is code for,
I grew up wealthy. I really knew what to be doing. I don't think it was necessarily impossible that I could have taken a different path, but I don't know that I can really work for other people. Do you feel like that that's come from anywhere in particular? Or was that always something that you just felt like I I should be able to be independent? The root of it came from a a day when I was a child. I was maybe, like, six or seven. So
the the story that's gonna come up is very funny, but I think it's really interesting that I mean they're starting off like it's this really liberal view of entrepreneurs as if they're like they were just born, just you know, more inquisitive than other people or like they just didn't like being told what to do. And that's why they became an entrepreneur. Zero, zero mention of anything about, the material conditions of which he may have been brought up into. Nothing about, you know, the type of opportunities that he was given growing up. I mean, it's yeah. It's just an extremely short sighted view of what creates an entrepreneur. But, yeah, it's it's not surprising though. It's it's pretty common within libertarian circles.
Seven or eight is at a daycare and we were walking around in the hills. And I picked up a rock by the side of the river, and I threw the rock into the river. The person watching us, she yelled at me, and she said she said, don't do that. And I said, why? She said, because if you do that and everyone else does that, you'll dam up the river. And, like, as a six or seven year old, I knew that that was completely preposterous. That was the first time I recognized like this person of authority who was older and wiser and in charge of me was just flat out factually wrong about something. Oh
my god. God. Like really? This is so you became the person who you are today and your political beliefs because one time you threw a rock into a lake and someone said don't do that. Jesus. I mean I mean, okay. I could believe that that story happened. It's, I'm sure some, some older woman who was just like worried like overly worried about kids or something probably told him not to do that. And when he said why, she just had a shit reason as to why she wanted him to stop. I mean, this is so like how how is that? This the story that you go with. I mean, how is that what determines your your political beliefs or like the beginning of your political beliefs? I mean, it's just, it's incredible. I mean, wow.
Gotta be a lot it's gotta have a really nice life if that's what if that's what did it. And I realized that just because someone is in a position of authority doesn't mean they're right. There were times before you were running a business that you were working for other people and it was mostly when you were you had moved out of The United States. So what was the reasoning for doing that? After college,
I moved to Dubai and moved there largely because Dubai. A, it had no taxes, and b, people
Because of no taxes.
Came to build businesses and and earn money and, you know, find a life for themselves. People. To build businesses and find money and no taxes.
Wow. I mean, you tell this guy is he's very he's very principled. It seems like he really I think what he says, he really does believe in actually. It is just I mean, it is just quite silly. I mean, Dubai is not a cheap place to to just move to after college. Like, there is a huge hole in this story and, you know, maybe because he comes from a family of entrepreneurs, he had, you know, this drive or he had his own small business or something in which he saved up money to do that right after college. Otherwise, I find this so hard to believe that he didn't have some sort of, like, material help to do that. You know? It's or he's just he's totally fine with taking huge risks. I don't know. Yeah. It's also very telling that because of no taxes. I mean, if you you the people I mean, not even the people, like, the things that move to places with no taxes are corporations. Like, not people, you know. But I guess if you are so extremely, principled and really do have this hatred for, or distaste for the state collecting your taxes, then I guess it's, for them a totally reasonable thing to do. Even though taxes pay for roads and everything else, but let's not get into that.
Rich and poor from every country in the world. Rich and poor. Just didn't hit Dubai. You mean like the slave labor Dubai is weird period where you still had a boom going on in Dubai, but the rest of the world was falling apart. This like sense that it shook out of me that, like, maybe the West isn't leading the world in every way. You know, I'm I'm here in this place that is seems to be fine.
That's also very interesting the way he says the West isn't leading the world in everything. Due to his experience in Dubai, I mean, I would not be surprised if he was one of those guys on Twitter, obsessed with, how good the West is. But I guess after living in somewhere else, not the West, you begin to realize that, maybe it's not all cut out to be what it says it is.
And The US is falling apart. Europe's falling apart. This is the recession. Help, like, shake me out of this US centric worldview that most Americans
suffer from. What was that next move? Because it looks like you kind of pivoted a little bit what you wanted to do for your life. I felt Like, this really I think it shows the the the transition from
American libertarian to world libertarian which is probably even scarier, in certain ways.
Like, you know, whatever I was doing professionally, I wanted also to be doing something that would make a difference in the world, and I cared most about human liberty. While I was still in Dubai, I listened to Peter Schiff. Human liberty. He had a podcast, and it was through him that I learned about Austrian economics. And then when I moved back to The US Fuck. I moved to New Hampshire to join the free state project. Basically move a bunch of Austrian economics. Libertarians to one small jurisdiction and see how much change you can actually
affect. I learned about big So now he's moving to New Hampshire to join this libertarian commune to make change but isn't the whole point of libertarianism not making so much change? Isn't it about organic like undirected profit driven growth? You know, like, it's not surprising that lady I mean this this free state of libertarian, of this libertarian commune is not like, nope. I hardly anyone even knows about it. Like, obviously, it's not making much change because Libertarians don't have any sort of agenda or any sort of, like, political road map for or theory around change. Their theory around change is trust in markets.
Bitcoin from another free stater. And then, you know, within a week, I had lost interest in the free state not because that wasn't a good project, but because ten years spent in Bitcoin would have an effect not just in one little jurisdiction, but actually around the world. And it was a much more powerful tool to actually bring about change and bring about human liberty than voting in any kind of local state elections ever ever would. Why is this important? Why is any of this important? Why is this important? Which may be true, honestly. Bitcoin matters because it gives people a way to transact value independently of censorship. For a civil society to be built, you need to have freedom and privacy in communications,
and you have freedom and It's a very common thing to say. Bitcoin allows you to make transactions without censorship. I think it could be true. I would be very curious to see though if all of a sudden communists and socialist organizations began to create a vanguard to take over the Bitcoin network or to start using the Bitcoin network, to see how, whether or not censorship happens then.
Privacy in thoughts and freedom and privacy in finance and in money. And that last one hasn't ever been protected or enabled, and Bitcoin solves that problem.
Freedom in finance and money. That it it tells a lot if when your sole focus is on the creation of or is yeah. Having freedom through money. I mean, it's again a part of that libertarian playbook and the belief that, this this sort of fetishization of money, needing to be free, but not really describing what that means and not really thinking about what type of effects that has on the people around you. If if I mean, part of the reason that we have financial regulations is partially to tamp down the worst side effects of unfettered capitalism and freedom of money. And I'm not saying I'm like pro regulation of money or whatever but I mean if you do a little bit of analysis that's that's part of the reason why they do it. But what libertarians and and Eric say mean when they say this is basically, like, I want to use my money to, create the world that I want to see. But and this is ultimately extremely undemocratic. This is a belief that people who don't have money should not be free. I mean, he doesn't mention that workers should be free, that people should be free. He's saying that money should be free, that money should direct what actions and what resources we use and and what we and then and just give us direction in general. Which I think is very, obviously, very flawed type of view, and not very, and not very thorough analysis and doesn't really just take into account, the working class.
I can tell, like, by the way, you're just describing that. There's, like, a lot of passion behind how you feel about being able to reach those people and give them those options. Can you talk a little bit more about how that actually emotionally makes you feel?
This music, that was killing me. I'm being so emotional.
I've tried to develop my character to have the right attributes in the same way that I think money should have good attributes.
My I developed my character to have the right attributes like I want money to have the right attributes.
Honesty and humility and sincerity. If I become an old person someday and look back on my life, if I I have any effect on, like, helping those people, that would be immensely rewarding. Because ultimately, like, when you're an old person, what are you gonna care about? Are you gonna care that, like, your quarters were a little more profitable? Or are you gonna care about the influence that you had?
Which is wow. This type of view, I feel like is also super common just amongst the extremely wealthy as well. I mean, I think there's a certain amount of wealth that you reach where I mean now do you care that you made a little bit more money like probably not but that doesn't mean that you are just going to give up on making more money. Capitalism always incentivizes the maximization of profit. That's that's its that's its purpose, and using that motivation to how to to create goods. So I mean, what when you I mean, there's sort of like it's sort of like this entrepreneur nirvana that or like ego death where you pretend or maybe not even pretend but I mean you say that you don't care about the amount of money you make and you really want to you really care about the people that you save. That could be a couple of reasons why you like maybe it's it's just a greenwashing attempt or maybe they do actually believe it. But I mean, look at any example of retired billionaires. I mean, Bill Gates. I put he I mean, he he made all of his money in Microsoft and since he left, I doubt he's, like, you know, tinkered with the computer since then. I mean, now he's focused on his, his foundation and but at the same time, you know, he gets all of this free positive press for all the work that he that that people think that he's doing. But at the same time, his net worth has gone up. Ever since he's left Microsoft, his network has only gone up. Net worth has only gone up. So, like, do you really not care about not making money? Like if you really do not care about not making money and you really care about maximizing the, the help that you're giving to other people, then give away your fucking money. Give it away, all of it. Help the working class. Help poor people. You've been exploiting them like crazy. But, anyways, that was, the entrepreneur episode six of Eric Voorhees from ShapeShift, whom Eric Voorhees is the CEO of. So, obviously, this is, you know, makes him look nice. So now that we you you had a a pretty good idea of who Eric Voorhees is. Let's look at his interview. Let's listen in. This is the interview they did with CoinDesk for Consensus Distributed.
For his role as CEO of ShapeShift, one of the most established and successful high profile companies in the crypto industry. Eric was one of the first people in the world to go for crypto, and he was behind one of the original trading desks in New York City as well as some of the early efforts in gaming. Now, even the focus of Nathaniel Popper's, 2016 digital gold book really put the spotlight on how Eric had already made the sort of psychological leap, to go full crypto. So before Eric was known for ShapeShift or any of that stuff, it was really his blog, Money and State, and the great things he had to say, in some of his conference appearances, that made him a household name in crypto. So welcome, Eric. Household name. Hey. Happy having day. Always saying. Yeah. Very important. Religious calendar that we've built in ten years here, you know, between I like to think of the, October as kind of conception and then the birthday on on January 3 or even ninth perhaps, if there's a conversation there. This is rough to listen to. Next week. Let's not forget.
This is rough to listen to. I mean, this is making Bitcoin into a religion, you know, having these holidays. It's amazing. The amount of effort. Yeah, the amount of effort that is being put forward in trying to create a Bitcoin culture that is similar or that reflects modern day culture in a way or modern day religion, by creating, you know, these holidays related to Bitcoin. So it's a I think it's it's part of this fetishization of Bitcoin and this, like, constant hope that Bitcoin will catch on just like all the other things in the world that have caught on. And that finally once Bitcoin does, we'll have the influence and and the wealth and the power that we that we always wanted.
We've got you today. And for everyone out there, Eric, and ShapeShift and CoinDesk have come come together on a bit of a wallet, project here, looking to do that going forward. And we do have some pizzas available on it. So go ahead and have a look at that wallet, and you can get some NFTs that'll give you pizzas. Wow. Now, we had Safed Ian on a little while ago talking about central banking as one of these institutions. Now Of course. Central banking. Is definitely one of your, you know, things to think about. It's it's part of what your your your world view and and one of those institutions that need to change. But I would take your, viewpoint as a little larger than what, say, Fedim is looking at. You look at central governments in general, not just central banking, a bit of a larger view. Now we've seen some of the most amazing, reactions that governments, have had around the world, all different cases. And and what are your reactions to this this use of power that we've seen
in the past few weeks from governments around the world? Basically saying, what do you think about money printer go brrr?
That's quite a question. So first, I I'm not surprised by any of it. Whenever people have problems these days, they tend to ask, beg, desire.
One important thing to note, if you're listening to this in the podcast, is that behind Eric, he has a Colorado license plate that says Fiat sucks. FIATSUX. Wow.
The government to step in and solve those problems for them. Some of those problems can be solved by governments, some of them cannot be, and many think they can be solved but actually end up making things worse. So, certainly as the coronavirus has spread around the world, it's been a horrible human tragedy and that, you know, tens of thousands of people dying and just completely awful. Many people I think will go to someone who's been, directly affected or or has died from this. And that's a serious problem, but that will recede at some point.
But that will recede at some point. Coronavirus is terrible. A lot of people are going to die. You'll probably know someone that dies, but it'll go away. Don't worry about it. I am a doctor. I'm a medical professional. I have a master's in public health, and I know that coronavirus will just go away. Don't worry about it. Really, really, it shows you the sort of contradiction in the libertarian mindset during this pandemic. Like, they just don't have a good response to it. I mean, phew.
The the virus will will go away over time within a year and Within a year. He knows. Go away is the intervention and specifically the the habit of intervention and the the ways in which the government has further encroached into people's lives. Some of some of them small, some of them big. That never recedes. But
The encroachment of government into other people's lives. I mean, if you're talking about, like, the police violence currently going on around the country in The US, I mean, yeah, you'd be right, but I don't think that this is what he means.
It doesn't go away when the weather gets warmer or when a vaccine is found. There's no government vaccine that we can take next year. So
what Government vaccine? What is that? What is it what what is that supposed to mean? We just have a vaccine. I mean, certain countries, the government will pay for it most likely. But what like, as if, like, the government is too incompetent to make a vaccine? I mean, it's not the government that makes a vaccine anyway. Jesus.
What I'm really worried about isn't the the short and medium term effects of the virus so much as the long term effects of, the further government intrusions, not just into the, into the economy, but into people's, social lives and behaviors.
I don't wanna wear a mask. It's basically what he's saying. Government intruding people's behaviors. Goddamn. Can't wait to tell him about seat belts and cars.
So in in your perfect world where, let's say, people had all adopted crypto already, I guess, how would this situation be different, than what we're seeing now?
Good question. Well, there's no such thing as a perfect world. So as much as crypto, I think, would make the world better, it it doesn't make it perfect. It still has plenty of problems. But a world in which people were using real money, and by real, I mean something that that originated from a marketplace versus from a from a government. It would be one in which a virus, could not could not change the long term relationships of, of economic actors.
What? The virus will not be able to change the relationships between economic actors under Bitcoin world or cryptocurrency world. I don't really see how not just let me continue.
And so by that, I mean, right now with fiat, when banks step in, when governments step in and change monetary policy in response, the economic interactions of people, both
right now. But how have how have relationships changed? Isn't wasn't his argument has been that governments have continued to perform the same actions as they did before in the past, like during the recession that, you know, monetary policy keeps printing. I mean, that was an act of making sure that the economic relationships stayed in place. It was the government coming to the rescue for capital.
Now and over the coming years, we'll be drastically affected by that activity. As as, say, Dean said earlier, it always feels good when you have the heroin shot, but the effects of that are what are really, really problematic.
But who's getting the heroin shot here? It's not, it's not it's not the average person. I mean all of that money is going towards bailing out big companies and banks. I mean, it's not like there's that much relief. I mean, the the hero this is very selective heroin.
So in a world where people were using real money, market based money Real money. Marketplace would be less influenced by,
by governments who are The market would be less influenced by government. I mean, this is this is very classic repeated over and over again libertarian sort of mantra. I mean, it's it's taken, sort of classical economics to its extreme and, you know, almost very literal, the sense that the invisible hand of the free market will keep us safe.
Are quick to jump into complex systems that they don't understand well and cannot affect nearly as beneficially as they believe in.
I mean, do you think that's well, I guess so in with Bitcoin or, you know, broader cryptocurrency maybe. You know, the same could be sort of said is that we we have a system that maybe not all the actors who are able to make some sort of decisions understand how, you know, how nuanced and complicated the world is. I guess what how would you respond to that?
Well, with Bitcoin, it removes the ability of humans to change the monetary policy. And and, ultimately, that's good in the same way that we we don't have the ability to affect why mathematics.
But like he's just saying that it's good as if it's a fact, but it's still not really clear why that would necessarily be a good thing under under capitalism. I mean we did have the gold standard. I mean governments at a certain point just held gold, and that was a market based commodity, to handle to handle money between different sovereign nations and that failed. It didn't work out so well. Like if you do any bit of reading history on on the gold standard, it didn't work out. That's why we changed.
When we get scared about a virus, we don't have the ability to affect, gravity or the the changing of the seasons or how the planets orbit the sun. No shit. We don't have an ability to change any of that stuff. How was that related? How was that related? Something as as crucial as money, which is, you know, the most important good in this society is how humans interact day to day with each other.
Most important good in the entire society. I don't know. I mean, like, food is a pretty important good or water is pretty important. I mean, I would rather I'd rather be stuck on an island filled with food than an island filled with money.
That kind of thing should not be, within the purview of any small group of people to unilaterally change. I think it will be very clear in the future, you know, five years, ten years, twenty years, in in the future that a a group of central bankers deciding what the price of money should be will appear very, very foolish indeed. And, in Bitcoin, that power is is removed from people. And that's why ultimately it will be much more trustworthy over time. And is why ultimately it will retain its value far better. I think it's really interesting. There
a lot of, Bitcoiners, and cryptocurrency mainstreamers, and almost billionaires like Eric Voorhees, they tend to have this view that it's a good thing that people aren't involved. It's a good thing that that the computers are doing it for us. But why? I mean, it's it's I feel like it stems from this very anti democratic belief. This this this lack of belief in other humans except for themselves as an individual. Like, if basically it's this conclusion that, well, if the rules were just set and always the same and rigid, this hierarchy in reality, then and that it's, you know, only held by something that other humans can't change or that, you know, basically it's saying that there are no externalities that I cannot prevent from changing the rules that way I can understand these rules and benefit myself in the long run. It's a having a lot of confidence in yourself, I guess. And not a lot of confidence in other people, which turns into a sort of distaste of democracy, I think.
Over time. So the economist, Joshua Gans, who spoke at consensus last year, has weighed in on the recent, inflation risks in America. And he said, woah. Woah. Woah. Certainly, 3,000,000,000,000, I guess, it was when it was printed, maybe more. Not even sure where we're at right now. No one is, I guess. A bunch of trillions were printed, and then we'll We're rounding to the trillion now, which is really to the trillion now. A lot of money. Trillions. But what he said was, look. In a in a scenario like this where things are already so imbalanced unnaturally, so demand was evaporated by everyone staying at home. And he said, this is the one circumstance where you can actually get away with printing money. It's free money because demand is so low, so you're not putting anything out of balance. Right? So his theory was when you print money and demand stays the same, you're you're out of balance. So now maybe he's right. I mean, this stuff is really complicated. I don't think any of us can really have that vantage point understand how complex all of this stuff is. Let's say he is right this time. Let's say it was free money. Demand was so low and was okay. In your worldview, in your predictions, do you see this becoming a habit of governments that now that the Pandora's box is open, we can start solving any one of our problems? And
perhaps that imbalance will will The premise of this entire question though is as if the government doesn't do it already, which I'm sure, I mean, even Eric Voorhees would agree with me on this one. The US government seems to seems to always have enough money for the military, it always seems to have enough money for the police, it always seems to have enough money for all of the things that are sort of the worst things about the economy and about The US in general. It always seems to have money for, but it doesn't seem to have money for, social welfare programs or programs that help the the middle class, the working class, and the poor. So I mean, the premise of this is kind of silly because it's not like it's not like the government has a habit of spending too much money on health care. That is not a thing that happens at all. So it's really they've already built this narrative that, you know, the the US government is just wild with their spending which is, I mean, you can say it. I mean, I would agree that in the sense of the military, they spend way too fucking much, obviously, and it's always going up. But, you know, at any moment, I mean, I think that they're just completely terrified if, a socialist comes to office or someone more progressive actually. I mean, just, anyone who would propose any sort of program, it already gives them this, like, base in this emotion of just being like, what the fuck? No. We need to, curb our spending. We need to be frugal. When in reality, The US monetary system doesn't work the same way as, you know, your fucking personal finance. The government is the one that makes the money. At any moment in time, if it wanted to, it could pay off all of the debt it currently owes because it prints the money. Therefore, it can print money just for the act of not having debt anymore if it wanted to. I mean, The US is such a hegemonic power that it could do that if it wanted to, but it doesn't because that would not benefit the interest of capital within the country.
We'll we'll find our way to that imbalance?
Yeah. I mean, the certainly the Pandora's box opened in the last crisis in 2008. That's when when really this idea of print money and call it something like quantitative easing was, was was floated, was debated a lot back then. But ultimately, they went ahead with it and the the bad consequences of that haven't really appeared yet. So advocates of that kind of policy, can continue to advocate it. And so this time, when, when the crisis hit
I mean, I think the I think we'd probably agree with Eric that, you know, how the two thousand eight financial crisis was handled was not, was not good. I mean, the the wealthier got even more wealthy, and the poor got more poor and have not reached the same levels of wealth as pre the crisis. So
the the the problem,
I don't think, is just specifically the fact that money was added to the economy. It was how it was added to the economy. It was given to giant corporations. It was given to bail out big banks, too big to fail companies. The government took over, a couple of different companies and then did nothing with it. They just sold back their shares back to the shareholders and didn't do anything with it. So it's this obsession with quantitative easing and money printing is just it's such a shallow analysis of what happened in the entirety of that of that crisis. I mean, it's it's so much more than just, oh, they printed money and then they shit the bed. No, it's like they gave the money to the worst fucking people to give it to. You know, I'm I'm no expert in, how to recover, an economy from a recession, obviously. But, I mean, I'm sure there are better ways in that than what the US government did. I mean, you look at Iceland, they, like, imprisoned all of those bankers and, like, now they're doing fucking great. There's so many other ways to think about this. I mean, what if instead the government just, like, gave money to to working class people or people who are suffering? Would that have been better? I don't know for sure, but I would bet yes. I would bet money that yes.
There wasn't even any debate about whether people should print money, whether the government should print money or, whether that would help anyone. All major economists, all politicians, everyone on Wall Street, and certainly much or most of the business community, all agreed that we should print money immediately. It was just a question of whether it's 500,000,000,000 or or 2,000,000,000,000 and and, ultimately, they decided let's do both. Let's do 2 and a half, 3 or 4,000,000,000,000. It's it's just preposterous. You printing money does not print wealth.
He does not he doesn't mention at all who was receiving that money. Like, it's a huge factor in this.
It does not print wealth. It simply rearranges how wealth works in society. And what you're doing is you're essentially taking wealth from the future and you're giving it to people today. And, of course, people today, when you print that money, will feel good about that. The damage is distributed over time, and the damage can be very pernicious and very severe.
This you're not there isn't just like a set amount of money in the entire world and that if you take it now, you won't have it for later. Like, this isn't a personal savings account. That's not how this works.
And to that person who said that, I think he could make that argument if there was any plausible suggestion that the money would be destroyed after the crisis recedes. If the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve actually went back to something normal after this, at least he could make that argument. I would still take other issues with it, but he could make that argument. But all of us know that the the fed's balance sheet will not return to anything normal. Indeed, it did not after the two thousand eight financial crisis.
But don't forget, this is not a they did not borrow money this time. They printed money. There is a difference, and it's important to it. Right. Right. Borrowing is more honest. Printing is just Mhmm.
I mean, what is more or less honest? I mean, the job of the Federal Reserve is to print money. That's what it's meant to do. So I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that.
Printing is just stealing. I mean, when you print when you print money, you are stealing purchasing power from all the people that hold money today and in in the future. It is just that. Pretty big pre mine. It's a big pre mine. It's
it's a pre mine. I love how they can only they can only relate to the world through, through cryptocurrency terminology.
Which is not stated upfront in the white paper. So it's it's more like a pre mine that can happen at any time ongoing with no one, clear on when it will occur or how big it will be. It's it's just theft.
So I wanna shift gears just a little bit. I just wanna talk about shape shift shape shift a bit. Are you guys planning any big cool things at shape shift coming
up? Yeah. People always like to ask this and and I want to tell them Cool things. What the big cool things are. But Tell me, Eric. We can't do that yet. We can't tell I know. People what we have, coming down the pipeline. UT's egg. We have our our mobile app coming out very soon. So I think people can get excited about that. And ultimately, I think people heard recently that we acquired Portis. So Portis is basically a beautiful way to get self custody in an experience that is as easy as logging into, any website. With an email and a password, you can have a self custody wallet. And so we have big plans with that technology, in the ShapeShift platform and around the ecosystem.
Have you has your ideas about how cryptocurrency and blockchain will work with the everyday user, has that shifted since you've been at ShapeShift? So, again, as Nolan mentioned, you know, pretty anti state, one of the first people to go all crypto, but we have seen the regulators sort of catch up and have to put different put different rules onto you guys at ShapeShift, and you've had to deal with some of that. So has has that changed your view of how cryptocurrency will take over the world or be used by the everyday person?
No. It hasn't. I mean, I have to say that I'm I'm thankful that the governments of the world have not realized, as quickly as I feared they might, how existential of a threat Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were to fiat.
This guy's, you gotta be pretty, you have a lot of anxiety if you're thinking that. I mean, I'm I mean, maybe the reality is just that it doesn't go against their actual interest. I mean, is that not something that you consider? I mean, it's not really Bitcoin is really not competing with the US dollar in in any sort of significant way. So I mean, I mean that's one and two, I mean you cannot be It's it's hard for me to think that the interests of the government and the capitalists of the country is not aligned. I mean, it's if you do I mean, depending on how you understand how the US government works, I mean by and large the people who work in the governments are funded through, capitalists and they're funded through big business, they're funded through or individual billionaires. So I mean, they represent the interests of those people and those people don't really have I mean, to the Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is just like a fun new way of making money for them. It's just something more interesting. It isn't it isn't, fighting against them. I mean, it's it's using this sort of fake division that of the world of being government versus entrepreneurs, essentially. Government versus people. I mean, they think. Yeah. So it stems from this very, flawed view.
I think there is a combination of of hubris and economic illiteracy, which prevent, banks, the financial establishment and government from really understanding what is playing out over the next couple decades. And that is that fiat currencies, currencies that are based on
I mean, or I mean, I think he has this view a lot of Bitcoiners do that there right? That there's this direct competition between Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and, and the government. When in reality, what history has shown is that neoliberal capitalism has been very good at co opting any sort of rebellion. Any sort of like attempt at, at changing the system becomes commodified. You know, it it turns into like t shirts and, like, you know, goods and, like or becomes into more services that now JPMorgan can offer. So it's not like I mean, this view is just very black and white, and it's it's just it's a lack of understanding of history, I think, and how changes have happened throughout history before.
Politicians' wishes will tend to go away over time and real market based money that is very effective in digital age, will will take over. And this won't happen overnight. It will happen at the margins over time.
And Just take over. My
my daughter and and certainly her daughter will grow up in a world in which, in which they they actually get to use real market based money. And this this will be a great thing. It'll mean prosperity for the world. It will mean honesty and integrity in our financial system. And this is something I'm immensely proud to be part of.
Does your daughter already have a Bitcoin savings account? Of course.
She does. She's not old enough to understand that yet, but she knows the name Satoshi Nakamoto. And, she knows the the Bitcoin logo, and she points it out. We we saw some Bitcoin graffiti the other day. Yeah. It was the Bitcoin logo in the street, and, she saw it and she pointed to it and said Bitcoin and
warmed my heart. She'll be eating pizza she'll be eating pizza one night for dinner next week, I bet. She loves pizza. Adorable. Thanks a lot, Eric. Thanks, guys. We'll be hearing
So that's that's the end of the interview. So I think that's a it's a good place to end it. This is my first time doing something like this for the podcast instead of doing an interview. I hope it helped, I hope it helped you think about what sort of the the line of thinking is or the logic in the sort of mainstream, cryptocurrency discourse. Not that, you know, I hope this doesn't come off as that this is everyone, but this is really just a subset of specific people, who are actually quite prominent in the cryptocurrency space, who have this, you know, value proposition for cryptocurrency, and for blockchain in general, which I and I think most of my listeners probably do not agree with. But I think we can offer alternatives. But in order to offer those alternatives, we need to understand, what the other, threads are playing in the space at the same time, because I think it helps us think about our own propositions and our own alternatives. Should we, use something like cryptocurrency or blockchain? So I hope it was helpful. Let me know what you think. If you have any tips or if you want to give some feedback, my, messages are usually open or, you know, call me out in public. Why not? But if you liked it and you want to hear more of it, then I hope you'll consider giving to my Patreon account. Right now, you can either give 3, 6, or $10 a month to support. It helps me pay for all of the different hosting services that I need to pay for for the podcast and for my website. So at the moment, I pay a little bit more than what I get out of it. So any amount really helps. And if you do pay, you get some secret access to or some special access on the crypto leftist discord as well as the occasional Patreon only content, of which, I'm hoping to make more of. At the moment, I'm trying to make as much content available to as many people as possible. But in the future, I will likely make more content which is Patreon exclusive, or exclusive to people who help me financially or help me in other ways with this project. So, I hope you guys enjoyed and,
talk to you guys next time. Time.