hello everyone we're about to get
started so if you are coming to this
session you should come join us
now people are filtering in great all
right hello my name is Michael white and
this is a mere talkie and we are doing a
session on crypto for activism I want to
explain first the the format that we're
gonna do is gonna be little more
interactive than some of the sessions
that you've had so far so I'm gonna give
a 10-minute brief introduction to some
ideas about activism and crypto then
Amir and I are gonna have a onstage
discussion for about 20 minutes and then
we're gonna have questions from the
audience and so while we're talking you
know think of your question and then
line up at this mic and we'll we'll just
kind of go into a free-flowing
discussion I also have copies of my book
for free at the end of my talk just go
grab them over there they're in a stack
there's about 20 copies so first-come
first-serve okay are we ready great ok
so my name is Michael white briefly I
just want to tell you my kind of story
to situate myself in my context I am a
lifelong activist I started doing active
as when I was 13 years old and I did
lots of things I went to Palestine to
direct action nonviolent I basically
tried to just every year I did a new
kind of campaign eventually I worked my
way into a magazine called Adbusters and
in 2011 during the kind of peak of the
Arab Spring we put out a call for
something called Occupy Wall Street and
very quickly the the call was picked up
by activists in New York City who
started to self-organize and they they
went ahead and created basically the
movement so I'm one of two people who
came up with the original idea for
Occupy Wall Street we picked the name
the date and that kind of stuff and then
there's about 200 people in New York
City who actually organized for the very
first day of the movement but I've also
been kind of lurking in the crypto scene
for a long time because you know occupy
around the time that we were coming with
the idea for Occupy Wall Street Bitcoin
was very new I was paying attention to
Bitcoin I was an early kind of adopter
of Bitcoin I got my first five Bitcoin
for free from the Bitcoin faucet and so
I've been in the scene for a while I
remember when counterparty versus
aetherium I remember the
first etherium announcement and that
kind of stuff and so it was just kind of
recently they started to come out of the
crypto closet as a word and to talk
about cryptography cryptocurrencies and
activism and recently when I was invited
to give this talk I actually went ahead
and like learned solidity so I have a
basic understanding of solidity to give
more like depth to this conversation
alright so let's get into it so one of
the things that I think is very
tantalizing question is that we know
that Satoshi embedded a reference to the
financial crisis in in the source code
for Bitcoin so in so some one question
I've been thinking about is in some ways
is Bitcoin a better form of protest than
Occupy Wall Street which of those things
is was a more effective response to the
financial crisis Bitcoin or Occupy Wall
Street and as we kind of think about in
that our minds I want to point to some
of the ways that activists can think
about how to use blockchain for activism
so if you're an activist and you want to
use blockchain what are some of the
models or ways of thinking about how to
do activism on the blockchain so that's
we're gonna get into that now so there's
basically four models that I want to
think about if they are new economic
logics new funding mechanisms new social
contracts or governance and adversarial
smart contracts so let's go through
those one by one so new economic logics
I think we've seen a lot of these right
so so it's very easy in solidity to
create programmable money that violates
core concepts of capitalist economy so
you can have for example deflationary
tokens extremely easy to burn a certain
percentage of tokens upon transfer you
can have like sortition tokens where you
know people are rewarded randomly based
on the health of the economy so this is
like shuffle shuffle monster came out
recently or you can have like
redistributed tokens you can have tokens
that implement like a Tobin tax or a
financial tax which is something that
has been talked about at the left for
like 30 or 40 years but only with I
think the emergence of aetherium is
actually possible to encode so there's
there's some there's some problems
though with economic logics the first is
that activists are not writing smart
contracts to a blank slate right if
theory em still dot it's a theorem is
still the base currency even if you just
look at like the gas cost you still have
to pay in aetherium so there's still
you're still in you're still basically
in here
and economic logic from aetherium that
itself might be unfair it's it's hard to
enact progress the second thing is it's
hard to enact progressive politic
progressive policies that rely on
knowing who is rich and who is poor
right we know this is a problem so
obviously you can split if you're a
wealthy
aetherium holder you can split your
wallet into many different wallets to
appear like many different poor people
to benefit unfairly from a progressive
system and this is that this is the
problem of identity that's very that a
lot people are talking about how to
solve so it's very easy to appear poor
in in aetherium and only the rich can
really prove that they're rich but
anyone can like pretend to be poor this
makes a lot of the kind of leftist
policies very difficult to implement the
third the third problem is that the most
popular economic logics have turned out
to be basically Ponzi schemes right so
this has left a lot of people in the
community very jaded about the idea of
creating you know like redistributed
currencies so I created a very simple
redistribute of currency called sparkle
and one of the first reactions was this
is like proof of weak hands you know
what I mean this is this is basically a
Ponzi scheme which I thought was very
interesting I didn't think it was
evidence of Ponzi scheme but I but I
think that what that's saying is there's
a basically a jaded jaded miss about new
economic logics still I think they're
very promising okay let's go on to the
next one the second area of kind of
possibility is new funding mechanisms
right so we within the activist
community there's a growing sense that
we need to escape the dominance on
risk-averse philanthropic organizations
and foundations right that we need to
escape the nonprofit industrial complex
if you ever heard that phrase within
activism and I think the etherion
presents some interesting possibilities
so two examples we have like our die you
guys been following this so it's
basically it's like see die but instead
of earning the interest you're able to
identify a beneficiary of the interest
right so you can deposit your your die
and then you can withdraw at any time
but the beneficiary gets to keep the
interest so this is a simple example of
how you could have you could basically
have people stake large amounts of
qalaat of money and then interest is
given to a nonprofit that they support
the other one of course is
really promoted by Vitalik and others is
quadratic funding so the point here is
that basically we can create new ways of
movements funding funding themselves on
the blockchain and so my proposal in
this category would be something like
like movement coins or protest coins
coins whose coins whose existence is to
fund social movements and and I would
love to think about that with you okay
moving on to the third thing and then
we'll get into our discussion the third
category is new new social contracts new
forms of governance
okay so activists especially within
Occupy Wall Street you know we talked
about creating a real democracy
consensus based assemblies and all these
kinds of collective decision-making but
when we try to enact it in the real
world through our assemblies obviously
it collapsed like we weren't even able
to make the simplest of decisions but
within a theorem there's been a lot of
work around these decentralized
autonomous organizations we have the
yang da Malik da meta cartel Aragon etc
here though I think we've we've started
to learn that you know just because you
have a Dao it doesn't immediately
eradicate power imbalances nor does it
necessarily mean that decision making is
more equally distributed so there's been
a lot of questioning about for example
not to pick it on anyone but the
concentration of decision-making within
the maker Stability fee or something
like that this is an example of how just
because it's just because you enacted
doubt doesn't mean you're necessarily
creating a more democratic or or
Liberatore form of decision-making
distribution of power but but here I
think there's still tantalizing
possibilities and I'm personally really
interested in the emergence of kind of
sortition based decision making where
people within a community are randomly
picked in order to make decisions this
gets back to into the problem of
identity and how do you identify people
but there's something called humanity
Dao that's trying to verify individuals
verify humans so I could imagine a
system where you you know tie up with
humanity Dao in order to enact sortition
based decision making and then the
fourth the fourth kind of category that
I want to think about before we get into
our discussion is is adversarial
contracts and this is I think is the
most exciting and the most purely and
essentially activist way of thinking
about
currency and so I mean adversarial in
two senses first adversarial contracts
are ones that are inherently in
themselves a form of protest okay so
under this category you might think
about like privacy coins privacy coins
might be conceived of as inherently a
form of protest against the existing
status quo and the second kind of form
of adversarial would be adversarial in
the sense that we're learning about in
that we're seeing developing like
machine learning right so people have
developed certain objects that like
there's a there's a like a 3d printed
turtle that appears to a machine like
it's a gun so this is an adversarial
this is another concept of adversarial
so under this under this you would think
about smart contracts that interact with
other smart contracts or the basic
aetherium virtual machine in ways that
produce political consequences
unintended political consequences so
they're adversarial in that sense I
think this is the most promising
direction for for activism on the
blockchain and there's a lot of kind of
thinking that needs to be done about
this and I look forward to kind of
talking about it but now I want to move
into a discussion with Amir taki who has
a lot of experience I would say creating
adversarial concepts on the blockchain
and his himself also an activist so
thank you yeah very interesting to be of
my Nika here that I was also involved in
Occupy from very early days I think what
we need to the main issue now inside of
cryptocurrency is we seem to be
repeating the same mistakes that have
been shown to us throughout history in
the history of Technology and even in
the history of activist movements and
we're not learning from those same
mistakes we're just repeating them over
and over again as a way to segue into
that the point three you made about the
third form of how you can use the
technology had so new forms of social
contracts and you said in in occupying
they had they wanted to create a new way
a new form of governments which in the
end didn't really create any real social
change it just ended up being like a new
way of managing things and you know just
because we create a dowel or we create
some new structure doesn't eradicate the
power imbalances so maybe you can talk a
bit about what gave occupy its power and
why I didn't transfer to real social
change and maybe some of the
contemporary examples about that
happening as well yeah well this whole
question about Occupy Wall Street and
it's whether or not it resulted in
political change whether or not was a
failure is one that's really complicated
and difficult the book I wrote is called
the end of protest and I was one of the
kind of the first people to talk about
Occupy Wall Street as a constructive
failure not a total failure obviously
did good things but it it the movement
failed to achieve what we wanted which
was like you know a revolutionary change
in the nature of power we wanted to
basically achieve what the Arab Spring
had achieved which is like overthrowing
Mubarak but we wanted to achieve that
around the financial industry we wanted
to overthrow the power of money of our
democracy which we obviously failed to
do I think that like in terms of for the
crypto community thinking about decision
making and why our movement kind of
failed there's a couple things that we
did wrong that I think crypto community
can like learn from first of all is that
we were we were unable to distinguish
between who was in and who was not in
the movement so anyone could come up and
just say like I'm an occupier and be
like a totally disruptive presence okay
this is this is I think gets back to
this question of kind of how do you it's
like identity how do you tell whether or
not someone is is actually a beneficial
part of the movement and it's not and
right now I think within the crypto
community the main way that they've that
has been addressed is to this concept of
like well whoever has the most coins
they are part of the community and then
they get you know 99 percent of the vote
and I think that's one way that is one
way to solve it yeah because the early
adopters accumulated all the coins they
get to make the decisions but that in
itself is also a solution that's not
giving more power so I think it's I
think it's an unsolved problem but I
think that that there is something about
crypto I believe it's a solvable problem
and I think
that it probably could involve some sort
of some of the new concepts that are
being involved within the Dow but I
think that yeah I think that there is
important not to be naive
just because you've created something
new does not mean that it's inherently
going to create positive social change
and in some ways I mean we can get into
this in some ways I think blockchain and
cryptocurrencies are perhaps like the
most evil technology ever created yeah
right in some ways the in some ways they
are the most unequal distribution of
wealth I mean think about how unfair it
is like I just told you I got five
Bitcoin for free in the early days
that's that's in its in itself that is
extremely unfair it's unfair to have a
system where people got aetherium for
very very very little bit of money and
now can cash out even at $190 they're
making they're making massive profits
yeah well not only that there's just
like a social credit Sesame credit
system in China now where if you talk
with the wrong person because a man is
monitoring everybody's chats on WeChat
if you're late for an appointment
you get like a so a lower social score I
mean you cannot rent an apartment you
cannot get a train ticket
you know there's insiders inside parts
of China now where you cannot go two
blocks without having your iris scanned
entire systems from monitoring and
managing human beings as tours as human
resources I see a lot of that rhetoric
inside of blockchain going all me and my
friend we were in the future we will
have a smart contract between each other
these are really scary fundamental
systems of control I actually saw a
blockchain project recently which was
about having people's credit scores and
debt ratings on a blockchain so the
credit card companies it's like it's
like your data about your score with
money would become like permanent in a
permanent global database like even it's
if it's decentralized it doesn't mean
that people are free or there's no power
you know so you talked actually about
number one new economic models and you
said yeah you mentioned a few things but
the interesting point I think is we
should start to look at the technology
because you said you said oh poor people
a rich person who pretend to be a poor
person we should we should start to
think that these models that we create
don't necessarily can be quite
oppressive and instead we need to be
thinking about the ideas of deriving us
and how we make tools individuals
empower human beings to shape the world
around them what type of human beings
were empowering rather than a perfect
system the Alec a little space of
freedom and equal resources to a bunch
of people because I think that our view
is a bit totalitarian yeah well I think
there's two ideas here so one is this
question of like like a lot of people in
the activist community kind of pushed
back at me for even talking about crypto
because they see it as an inherently
oppressive technology but I think
instead like if you look at the history
of Technology obviously it always has
like a like a dark side like Paul really
talks about there's always an accident
associate with technology and I think
that like I think that that personally I
think that that cryptocurrencies are
perhaps one of the most evil
technologies created and yet at the same
time they hold this this tremendous
possibility this whole tremendous
revolutionary possibility so at the same
time as you have the ability to collect
you know yeah we can live and I can I
think it's easy for us to imagine a
world very soon where like everything
about ourselves is encoded on some sort
of immutable blockchain that some
government out there is like reading and
it involves all of our you know this
this whole this whole level basically
blockchain is a tremendous tool
surveillance yes but at the same time I
think it I think that it's that
activists have still have this window of
opportunity like it's still so new I
mean it's amazing to think that theorems
like what five or six years old it's
still so new that there is a possibility
that we could that we could turn things
but I think like at the same time
there's a question about how much
Liberatore possibility there is because
of the very nature of of the system so I
so it's like I don't know I I don't want
to just like
say that it's impossible but I also
think that it is important to kind of
have like a like a skeptical view but
yeah it's tricky yeah boy whenever I go
to any of these speeches where people
turn out synthetic derivatives so people
couldn't get easier mortgages I'm not
concerned me thinking like why aren't we
leveraging that to speculate on
government bonds and use them to dump
them in mass like we literally have
amongst us like the capability and power
to crash national economies a lot of a
lot of the thinking is on really low
level like you have the old rich who
they raise their kids from generations
in in particular ceremonies and and
rituals which are like cloning their
dynasties to maintain power and you have
this nouveau crypto riche who they just
want to buy yachts and Lambos you know
if we want to be a power like we want to
actually be a political power like step
it up to a real level we have to really
think big and the main issue I'm
experiencing now is there are all these
crypto companies and they're just
focused on their brands their little
niche that they're carving out and
they're all trying to one-up each other
and it's kind of the same thing I
experienced in Occupy I went to occupy
in the beginning it was amazing
many loads of young people from all over
come over the country they intuitively
feel something is wrong and they came
there because they wanted to change
something and they arrived there and
what did occupy off of them said okay
let's have a discussion what we're
actually doing and you know that
momentum over time kind of dissipated
some of them got normal jobs now some of
them are into drugs I don't know but
that energy kind of just dissipated yeah
well I think again I think there's two
things here so one is that and I think
this is in terms of applicable to the
crypto community is one is that the the
experience of social protest teaches us
that we mustn't be naive about the power
of the status
well the power of the status quo is so
tremendous that like look at look for
example look at the fallout of the Arab
Spring like who would have thought that
overthrowing Mubarak would result in a
government even more regressive than
then Mubarak the Sisi government is
worse then and if you're an activist in
Egypt your experience in 2019 is worse
than your experience in 2009 so there's
this so that relates to the crypto
community I think that in some ways when
we when we get into a new thing and
we're like yes like we're fighting
against the status quo we become very
naive about the possibility of actually
damaging that status quo and the status
quo is amazing at co-optation so very
soon you find that you're all suddenly
being absorbed and this is this is
happening in the crypto community
through succumbing to the idea that we
need to submit to regulation I see
that's very much like that we should
already already be submitting to
regulation and and I get that because
people because you know there's a lot of
pressure to do so but it's like it's
already the death knell I think the
second thing that you're bringing up and
I think that when we think about well
why did occupy happen why do social
movements happen is that social
movements happen when you create a new
form of protest that people suddenly
believe is going to create social change
right so one of the questions that
plagues activists is this question of
like why is it that sometimes people
rush into the streets and sometimes they
don't so like in the American context
like there's been gun violence for years
why is it suddenly that March for our
lives emerges or like Occupy Wall Street
people would wonder like in the weeks
between months before Occupy Wall Street
there was actually protests on Wall
Street there's actually a march on Wall
Street that went nowhere and then why is
it that it took off with Occupy Wall
Street it's because we presented a new
kind of social protest that people
suddenly believes like this is gonna
work and then when they stop believing
it it's gonna work than they left I
think Kryptos in that golden moment or
maybe it's already ending we don't know
where people are drawn some people are
drawn to the community because they
think oh this is a new form of if not
protest at least changing the world that
hasn't been tried before but I think
you're right that that there is a
there's a window of opportunity that
closes and it might be closing now where
suddenly people realize start to think
no this isn't a space where change is
possible instead it's a space where
we're trying to replicate existing
models like like I love defy
I'm all in you know putting stuff into
dye and all this kind of stuff - but
ultimately what that's doing is
replicating in a certain sense the
existing models which i think is what as
activists we need to push back against
and try to imagine new models but it's
very difficult to do so yeah well what
is the state the state is ideology it's
the military and the administration it's
a system that use human beings as tours
as resources and ideology that we live
under now is the ideology of liberalism
which is an ideology of nothingness it's
an ideology which is a historical which
is that we've reached the end of history
what I see happening inside of Krypto
now is 90% of the projects are gonna
fail because they don't they don't know
they don't have a vision of the society
they're trying to create it's all very
vague and wishy-washy and something I
read actually is that now Chinese
companies are actually edging out
Western companies globally because
Western companies are just concerned
with their own personal profit whereas
Chinese companies have a core of
Communist Party cadre who kind of steer
all these companies towards a shared
strategic objective now the the the
point is it's not the oh we need to
create a system of management where
there's a boss and the boss is telling
someone to do it no it's not that it's a
the way that humans work together is
based off of storytelling storytelling
is something fundamental from the very
beginning of history's it's actually we
actually understand the world better in
terms of stories and we do in abstract
models you know and mechanisms and and
having a story or a narrative which is
an explanation of how did we get here
why is the world the way it is you know
like what is the world that we're trying
to create is something that can allow
many groups of people to come together
to change the world
and which if we're trying to create a
world which in which create which make
people to be free you know like we need
we if we don't and I see it a lot of
times there's a lot of projects which is
I mean you've heard of this paper called
the tyranny of structure lessness the
same thing happened in Occupy you know
you go to a meeting
and it's like all different sorts of
people there's like a hippie person I
don't know a pacifist person this guy
and they believe this thing and this
thing there's no there's nothing shared
between those people it's like how can
you build a democracy when you don't
share anything together you know you
don't you don't even have like a common
basis on which you which you're
beginning your work you know and that's
why authoritarianism emerges you know it
doesn't matter what structure you create
necessarily the technology is actually
really the way I see it is is like a
complicated artifice and we used to
trick we used to trick the old power you
know is really an extension of ourselves
and there is a constant competition
between different groups with different
philosophies vying for power to shape
the development of that technology it's
a mistake to see technology as this like
static thing that just stay there and
never change the technology is actually
shaped by us by our motives and we have
to be clear about that like what is it
where and all of this news about
Venezuela Syria Cyprus and so on it's
fake news like there really isn't any
major adoption of crypto we need to be
analyzing those markets we need to be
breaking them down seeing where there's
an opportunity where how we can deploy
develop the tools to exploit those
opportunities to to grow to actually
make something that's useful for people
that's why the the narrative is so
important and the philosophical level in
crypto community the intellectual level
is so low and that's why we're so
effective there's a lot of speech and
focus now on structures and mechanisms
sorry on mechanisms and techniques but
there's very little joining the dots how
do these make a structure or
infrastructure you know we can't just
think of like small parts yeah yeah but
I mean at the same time
[Applause]
yeah I mean I think you make a lot of
good points but I also think at the same
time one of the like one of the
narratives around crypto that I think is
true and is also beautiful and
revolutionary is that crypto does allow
so one of the I think it one of the base
reasons why occupy failed or a lot of
social movements run into trouble is
this question of sovereignty you know
and I think that with Occupy Wall Street
we we basically had this kind of magical
thinking that if we can set up
assemblies in the streets then and and
it's a more perfect form of democracy
then then naturally sovereignty will
flow to us and naturally our governments
have to listen to us and naturally the
police won't be able to help and I think
that one thing that we that turned out
to be not true obviously but there is
something about crypto that that does
have an inherent kind of sovereignty
there is it there's for the first time
it is possible for like you know people
in this room to come together identify a
new form of economic logic distribute a
token that embodies it and have it like
exist without a state having to get
involved so I think that like that that
is beautiful and does hold a lot of
potential but I agree with you that
there's this whole other side which is
the the creation of what does that look
like right and I think it's much easier
right now to I think a lot of crypto
sink is is you know for better or worse
it's focused around this question of
well how do we speculate you know I mean
how do we create how do we create
speculative currencies that make that
make money which is a very different
question I think then how do we how do
we create sovereignty and self
sovereignty all these concepts that we
hear about in crypto which I think are
the most powerful but are kind of hard
so hard to actualize in about a minute
we're gonna take questions from the
audience so if you won't have a question
I hope that you will line up here we
already have a question good and we're
gonna go into into questions in about a
minute unless you want to right now
because I think questions are a lot more
questions okay so everyone just line up
and then yeah I you know you know common
courtesy ask a question not like a long
speech but about a year ago at DEFCON 4
the speech was about political apathy
you mentioned that people are not voting
and then the we saw a year later the
emergence of all the scandal of Canberra
general
now we have all Kenbridge analytical the
documentaries coming up and how they
manipulated people from Facebook the the
people that are the ignorance that are
actually making it happen and vote I
would like you to comment about what can
the crypto community actually do to make
a change
socially what are the first steps that
you think that are gonna make a
difference because we still need to vote
whether we like it or not we still have
to go to our governments and decide who
is gonna be like in power so if you
could comment on first of all the
political apathy and then what can we
actually in your mind or your mindset
from from all the discussions you've
been having what can we actually do to
help to make a change well all of the
modern concepts of the computer like the
network socket the file were all
invented in the 70s with the development
of UNIX computers have not changed in
over 50 years but to compute the
computer devices that we use they've got
faster they've got smaller that haven't
changed and fundamentally the technology
that we're using is built for consumers
for individuals you know like even
something basic like sharing a file is
still really difficult you know the
whole point of civilization is bringing
humans together to be able to
collaborate on a large scale so we need
to think about the technology like how
do we build technology how do we build a
new paradigm of computing that can be
used to support like a new type of
society a new type of civilization every
revolutionary movement its success is
dependent on its ability to shape the
development of Technology as you were
here in Japan now there's two provinces
Koba and Iger which is where the ninja
originated from then these provinces
were democratic self-governing provinces
within feudal Japan and they fought a
war against the samurai the ninjas were
people that they were able to develop
technology from common everyday items
that they could use to wage a guerrilla
insurgent war against the samurai who
were the defenders of privilege and
power in Japan which is that which is
the which have a very nice legacy about
how technology was used
- and we're going into a very scary
world like we can't be ignorant about
technology like the way technology is
being used how can we beat Facebook I
think okay I think Facebook is is
irrelevant like Facebook is is is not an
empowering tool but the problem is it's
a linux free software all of these
movements they're just trying to copy
the dominant paradigm they're not
developing their own system of thought
they've become entrapped in the system
that they're trying to fight against
same thing with crypto recreating the
same system inside of us we need to
create a new system and we need to
recruit the people into that new system
yeah I mean I think that's I think
that's excellent I would just add to
that though that one of the things
that's so difficult one things we learn
from social movement creation is that
the ideas that are the most powerful and
revolutionary are the are not seen and
it's very hard to see them so like when
I when I when we came up with idea for
Occupy Wall Street and when I told
people the idea for Occupy Wall Street
before it started no one believed me no
one told me was a good idea
similarly with with aetherium like like
we know from the we know that like the
the ideas that are the most
revolutionary are not seen so it's also
it's it's not just coming with new ideas
it's also having the capacity to to know
that we can't tell what they are
necessarily and to go against our kind
of knee-jerk thoughts about what they
what they should be so next question um
so you know I think it's definitely
clear that blockchain technology is
super empowering and that it gives us a
lot more power from inside our homes in
front of our laptops then we had before
but one of the ways that it really
restricts our ability to use you know
the technology to do whatever social
change we want is that it has Network
effects and therefore we have to kind of
do it along with other people who may
have very different political agendas
than we do even you know inside inside
the etherium community we're much less
politically United for example then
inside the Bitcoin community and I think
that but you know imagine if you're some
community outside of cryptocurrency and
you want to you know create use the
technology you have to have a certain
amount of like network effect but right
now people who are outside the crypto
community because the crypto was
launched
basically seated by radical
revolutionary cypherpunks and
libertarians see you know see the
technology itself as being you know
associated with that politics and
therefore they're not even trying to
they're not even trying to form network
effects around you know another instance
of the protocol that is used for their
political goals and so right now you
know there's basically no major
left-leaning cryptocurrency it just
doesn't exist and no major left-leaning
movement is interested at all in
starting a cryptocurrency
even though you know just from a tech
point of view doesn't seem obvious why
would it be helpful so what do you think
you know we do to help people with
different political views use this box
chain and not have the blockchain
revolution be relegated to you know
radical right-wing politics yeah that's
a good question I mean I think in some
ways like the the the sad answer is that
you know activist culture is broken
right and so like activist culture has
certain assumptions about what should
and shouldn't be done and when you go
outside of those those assumptions you
get cancelled and like punished so it's
like even from within activist culture
like there's a tremendous pushback
against for example like during occupy
and the years it's kind of breaking down
now but there was a reluctance to engage
in any form of electoral politics but I
think that crypto is also one of those
kind of no-go zones it's a no-go zone
for activists because they it violates
kind of like the the the social concept
like rules of activism so I think one
way to do you know part of this talk is
to like break that down like more
activists need to talk about crypto and
like to break it down but I think the
other thing that I find so inspiring
about aetherium Bitcoin these kind of
things is that you know when you build a
social movement you do need a lot of
people you need network effects like
when you're creating like the internet
you need people to use your services one
thing I like about crypto is that you
don't have to wait for anybody right
like if you go onto compound finance and
you look at how people are actually
borrowing on compound finance like it's
like 600 people it's a very small it's
very small because it because it can so
what I'm trying to say is that there's
something about crypto because of its
connection to being a money in itself
that it doesn't need to wait for lots of
people so I guess I would push back
against this idea that we need to get
mass adoption in order to have a
revolutionary
and I would instead say that that the
challenge is to to create that
revolutionary and activist II use of
aetherium and then like just move
forward and not wait for anybody and
right now I think that's what's lacking
so it's like that parts that's lacking
rather than adoption but that kind of
jives with your feelings about it or I
totally agree view activist or left-wing
politics is we should dead end but we
need to redevelop our thoughts and go
beyond or this left-right paradigm yeah
if I'm trying to do as much social good
as I can louder louder if I'm trying to
do as much social good as I can over the
course of my lifetime two strategies
that come to mind are Bill Gates style
like launched a crypto technology that
isn't inherently activist and accrue a
bunch of wealth and then deploy it later
versus spending time most likely with
fewer resources building activists tech
how would you think about those and
other alternatives yeah well I mean you
I think my answer would be you have to
look at what happens to people who
pursue the first path and they it's what
so Nelson Mandela says for example where
you sit is where you stand which means
basically like when you find yourself so
so if you find yourself in a position
where you have a billion dollars the
things that you're going to support and
stand for are not gonna be the things
that you would have supported when you
had no money and that doesn't mean that
you're like a bad person or anything but
it's it's everything is influenced by by
your position so I think that that I
think that adopting a philanthropic
model within cryptocurrency and relying
on wealthy whales to kind of fund this
ideal society but that they themselves
aren't like building an activist tech is
kind of the wrong way to go I think that
instead we need we need an act that we
need like activist smart contracts that
are themselves the interaction with them
is the ease the form of protest I think
that's what this lacking I mean yeah and
that's that's the direction I want to go
I want to like I want to create the
first smart contract that's banned for
purely political reasons and I think
it's like you think about that well what
would that look like
you know what would that be like that's
a whole whole Avenue of
you know so the the contract itself is
protest not oh I'm gonna like you know
invent uh you know a new form of die and
then get rich and then fund activists
thank you for that answer that really
has my head spinning but my original
question was to your point about stories
versus systems and how people find
storytelling much more natural what ways
have you come across to tell stories
that help people engage with the
complexity of systems without getting
overwhelms there's two books I want
people to read one is manifesto for a
Democratic civilization by Abdullah
öcalan heroes series of five books only
two have been translated to English this
is the foundation of our philosophy for
our organization and the second book is
the myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford
who is a philosopher and historian of
science and technology and he connect
that political philosophy to the
technology and so these books form the
foundation or base of a of a movement of
a technology movement that can that can
make a revolutionary change in our
system but we have to we have to bring
it to the contemporary law point with
like contemporary knowledge and examples
and we also have to start to build a
roadmap and start to think about the
technologies that we want to build by
what kind of platforms how we going to
reinvent an operating system
what infrastructure and hardware that we
need to create that we can deploy these
technologies in in places when
opportunities present themselves and we
need to force start forming groups
around these philosophies yeah and I
would just add briefly to that and then
we're gonna be sure they have time but I
think that generally speaking a social
movement is created out of three things
you need a new tactic that like people
believe will create change you need a
contagious kind of mood and then you
need something that's outside of any of
our control which is the right
historical moment right so I think that
cryptocurrencies and smart contracts
they can be that new tactic and I think
that they can also be
vector for spreading that kind of mood
in a certain sense but there's also this
whole question of the right historical
moment so what I like about what I like
about smart contracts is that they exist
and they just kind of wait I mean
they're on the blockchain they wait so I
can imagine the deployment of an
activist smart contract that no one like
pays attention to but then all of a
sudden something happens in the world
and this smart contract becomes the
foundation for this whole eruption of a
social protest so I guess what I'm
trying to say is like there's also this
whole element of things that are outside
of our control that we need to like tune
into so we just ran out of time yeah
thank you so much the two books write
this down is manifesto for a Democratic
civilization by Abdullah öcalan and the
myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford
these this this book by or chillin is
the best book that I ever read you can't
read it like a story book you have to
study the text it took about the
different historical events and authors
anyway yeah I just wanted to end with
that yeah and there's three copies of my
book over there so thank you very much
[Applause]
you