Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. So Tracy, obviously, we've been doing a lot of crypto episodes lately, talking about like bitcoin and its future, a lot about Defy lately. But of course, like when all this got started, I remember, like years ago, like people thought this was like very like dangerous, sort of like provocative technology that you know, people like, oh, are they gonna ban Bitcoin? Are they
going to ban all this stuff? Um, it feels like I don't know. My opinion is that it feels like a lot of that stuff is like now the dollar signs are in there, a lot of that stuff has been sort of like forgotten about, her sanitized away. I mean, I think you still see hints of it when people talk about the potential regulatory response on things like DeFi and the idea of people create synthetic stocks that basically bypass regulations, Like, there is a hint of it there.
But you're absolutely right that bitcoin and the associated technology blockchain kind of started out as this crypto anarchist dream that was very much about maybe not undermining or actually I think you could say undermining or bypassing um existing authorities and creating something that was sort of immutable and also outside of their reach, right, like something that totally has its own internal governance, that is permission list that anyone can access, that is extremely um sort of durable
to an outside attack, very difficult to thwart. Like this was sort of like the philosophical underpinnings of it. And now you have people on Wall Street talking about like, oh, is bitcoin player role in your retirement portfolio like gold? Or can we trade synthetics soybean futures, uh, the ethereum and like all that is like theoretically kind of exciting, but it doesn't feel very uh, it doesn't feel very cypherpunk like at least like how we thought of all
this stuff in the early days. No. I think it's like that classic thing about if the technology lives long enough, it's eventually going to be co opted by Wall Street and the thing that it probably sought to disrupt, right, Like I'm thinking again about peer to peer lending and how that was supposed to bypass traditional banks and then eventually all the banks just got in on it. But yeah, you're absolutely right, I think with all the excitement over
cryptocurrency prices as well as the potential for defy. We've sort of drifted away from the original crypto anarchist or cyber punk dream. You know that that raises all kinds of questions because there's like this marriage happening between crypto and Wall Street, And sometimes I think it's I kind of going to be like oil and water, Like it looks good on paper, but can the too really interact?
And then of course, like the question is like, well what happens, Like okay, like maybe they can be tamed and be used to profit, but nonetheless, decentralized distributed uh software databases still extremely powerful, and perhaps we forget that
some of the original motivation behind it at our peril. Well, I'm going to push back on that last point, but I do I do agree with you that, like there is a tension between Wall Street getting in on technology, which is basically all about sort of decentralizing control, right and Wall Street slash finance slash banks are very much about having I mean basically they're all about having control,
risk control systems in place. Um and so there's sort of an open question about how useful a decentralized technology is going to actually be with um to them exactly right. Well, I think, after all, after all this talk of money on recent episodes, it's good to go back to philosophy a little bit and what these systems really are. And we have the perfect guests. Are we doing blockchain not bitcoin? Kind of kind of? I think that's maybe one way to put it. I think we have like the perfect guys.
He's kind of a legendary figure in the crypto world. Um, we're going to be speaking with laud Zamfeer. He's currently an independent researcher for the Ethereum Foundation. He's actually been with involved in the Ethereum project since before launched, actually
in April. Before that, he was a very early bitcoiner and I think, you know, everyone else likes to talk about price Vlaude rights, the sort of more philosophical pieces about blockchains and this sort of the power of this software, which he seems to recognize both the potential and the risks for uh so extremely influential player in the space. He also characterizes himself, in addition to being a philosopher and a formal student of the law, an absurdist. So
we're gonna find out what that means. Vlaud, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks Joe, I'm a longtime fan of yours. Thank you, And I'm excited to be here and you know, excited to talk about all these pressing issues that we have today in this space. So what do you kick us off? I mentioned your like history a little bit. You're pretty early, You're much earlier into bitcoin than most people. Then you're got involved with the Ethereum Foundation before it actually officially launched as a
tradeable coin. What do you talk a little bit about your background? What drew you to this space as an area of research and interest. Well, I got into bitcoin during the Cyprus Bilian sort of financial crisis during like um, it was like one of those crises where like the government there decided to like seize money from people's make accounts in order to pay back that to the you and and then like bitcoin kind of like I saw a lot of headlines then because like people were using
it in order to evade this capture. And so for me, like I got into bitcoin as like kind of like revolutionary like financial technology that would like help save people from like capital controls, inflation and like you know this kind of like you know that like the global financial system has been like co opted by like the law everywhere.
The bitcoin provided a kind of escape, and so I was in the bitcoin for this kind of escapist you know, cipher palm kind of like radical like we can escape the central banking system kind of agenda, and like that was exciting. Like I was excited you know, for like the future of money at the time, and like I was really like a bitcoin and thrown through in that way.
And then I got interested in ethereum um when I kind of realized that like this you know, just like the blockchain and not bitcoin kind of story where actually like the technology like is useful way way outside the scope Bitcoin, and it's something where we potentially use this to like decentralize, you know, all sorts of things and to disintermediate into like a kind of you know, do things without going through gatekeepers, you know, a way outside
of just money and finance. And I was interested in like decentralizing academia or like peer review through like content curation and things like this, which are kind of like still in somewhere very much part of ethereum um Um. I definitely want to talk about some potential use cases of the technology. But I also sort of want to jump in with one major question um, which relates to what you were just saying about the original vision for
bitcoin and why you got interested in it. But Joe has been writing a lot about Wall Street embracing ethereum, or being pilled, as he puts it, So I'm just curious, like, what, what do you think what is it about ethereum that has caused it to be embraced by the financial community, like a community that a lot of people would say
it should probably be bypassing all together. Yeah, and you know, in some way you could say that it is, but I would say, like this basically, like the theory is very much not Bitcoin, and it was like set up in some way to like fill some of the gaps both like politically and technically that Bitcoin left open, and so ethereum like you know, very much like contrast itself to Bitcoin politically, legally, and also has this kind of programmable layer where you can build a lot of applications
that are basically like not possible in Bitcoin, and those include things like famously all this DeFi stuff that work intro the conversation with that, like is in some way like financial wizard dream today and so and so, there's like in some way like there is interesting financial stuff that happens on ethereum and ethereum and the way it's like postured and positioned, it's it's not like the future of money and the way Bitcoin is, Like it's hard
to understated how much not bitcoin etheroreum is because of the kind of poor representation that theorem gets in the medium. But like if you kind of like are in the scene, like you deal very much like ethereum is not a Bitcoin, and and I think that that the kind of it's not being bigcoin and it posturing in a way that's a much more general morphous you know, you can project
your own fantasies onto it. It's not like the future of money in the same kind of like you know, clear defined kind of way that bitcoin tries to be.
And so and so I think it has like a niche and crypto currency and blockchain like it kind of and it kind of like created and changed the way that people even think about the space from like you know, just thinking about like this the kind of money and finance narratives actually to get much broader than that which in some way, let's it actually provide a safe space
for some of the financial activity. But that's also very questionable in terms of like how safe is it really to like, you know, do these things without like New
York being super down with it? And so on? They what you say, They're like, do these things without New York being super down with It's something that I like struggle with our question a lot because, like, on the one hand, like blockchains are theoretically unsensible, and we could get into how realistic that is, but like that is sort of the story, like Okay, you you set the
software free, and you theoretically can't stop it. In theory, though, one can imagine like, um, someone looking at a decentralized lending protocol or something that certainly looks like a stock market that runs on the theoreum and saying, you know, regular saying this is illegal. This is like securities fraud or selling of unregistered securities. Do you expect an inevitable
clash on that level? And do you think people within the sort of crypto blockchain community are naive about thinking that the law will just sort of not be an impediment in the end, Well, I mean certainly to some extent. But I think what they really think is they think that they've thought this through and they see how it will play out, and that they're going to win, and that like, you know, the time is right for this revolution and like they can do this without New York's
approval and like they're just gonna win, you know. But basically like they have this like view actually like a different view of like the legal reality. They're like they don't they like I think they're ready to call New York's bluff and to say like, hey, like you know, you can't tell us what to do on the blockchain,
like this is not New York, you know. But then of course you know you're gonna interact with a smart contract and then like get into like a legal relationship with someone in New York and then be suited and then you're like going to the States one day, Like you know, it's there's obviously ways in which you know this is going to come to a head and where people are going to get in trouble legally because of the stuff and normally use it a place for conflict.
It's like a place where like it's guaranteed that there's going to be conflict. There's no way to get around that just because of the basic like let's say legal political realities of of defy and of blockchain and blockchain governance. Can we talk a little bit more about the mutability
idea of blockchain? So Joe just touched on this, and I think we have to talk about it because it's sort of central to the use case of the technology, right, this idea that you can build a code that can basically exist and be the thing around which like multiple players or two people can come to an agreement and it means they don't have to have a middleman, and um, you know, it allows for these sort of trust less
transactions and things like that. But I guess my question is, like how immutable is blockchain actually, given that we've had incidents of the chain or the code being corrupted, and you know, I'm aware that as we're recording this, I think it's like almost the five year anniversary of the Dow attack when you had, you know, someone who basically drained the Dow of all the ether it had collected from the sale of its tokens. I think that happened
in like June five years ago something like that. So I'm just wondering, like how safe, how rely doable is the blockchain if we're going to be relying on it um for all these different transactions. Yeah, I mean, well there's a lot to impack there, but like these are topics that are very near and dear to my heart. And I would say firstly that like, Okay, I think like the true like revolutionary potential blockchain isn't because of
the immutability thing. Like I don't think it's like, I don't think immutability thing is really anything more than like misinformation or disinformation about the nature of blockchain in order to kind of manage the way that we have conflict about blockchain tech, and so like that it's like a tactical misinformation that happened from the start in order to protect the blockchain from like what we're seeing as like political legal adversaries that are too strong for us to
have like a independent, like legal way to manage dispuse like the Instead, we kind of have this sperchine where basically like we're supposed to not argue about or supposed to not really change the protocol. And I think like the real kind of like potential doesn't come really from the immutability as much as from the fact that this is a new kind of cyberspace. Is that like isn't owned by like the guy who owns this one server.
Is kind of like a cyberspace that's in a different kind of space that's like maybe more shared than as possible in like today's like software as a service kind of model. And so it's this in the ways in which we can fight over and the ways we're gonna
have disputes over the governance of this space. I don't think it's going to be limited by immutability, and I think that's going to actually unlock a lot of value in blockchain to kind of for us to get over this idea that it's useful because it's immutable, and that is trusted because it's immutable. I mean, it's like saying, oh, you can trust me, I put myself in a straight jacket.
Like that's something someone who's not very trustworthy you would say, you know that, someone who's like kind of like maybe up to something else would say and and and and and.
In my opinion, you know, basically, like one way to say it is that the norm of not disputing the software was associated tightly with the software, so tightly that you don't even learn about blockchain without learning about the imutabality thing, and that has created this amazing international legal order that is basically extremely depu you know, like it's like says the software is like not allowed to be changed, and like it doesn't matter like who wants it or
like what is happening, Like you know, it's a really kind of radical founding fallacy or founding trick or like founding disinformation in like the cryptocurrency space that we talk
about the history of a little more. But all this is to say, look, I don't think that it's immutability as much as this question of like this new type of space that we could that we have, you know, because like you know, you can't shut down a server or regulate a server in order to regulate a cyberspace in the way that like it's kind of expected in the cyberspace today, and so I think it creates new political and legal ground for dispute and this and and
to Toshi and co. Kind of tried to front run this by saying it's immutable and like we decided that this is the protocol forever. But like that is kind of bullshit. But that doesn't mean that blockchain is not useful. It's it's quite you know, quite the opposite again, So let's talk about this idea a little bit more So. Obviously, if I'm running an application that's like on Amazon Web Services AWS, that's space that they own and I have to play by their rules and Amazon has to play
by the government's rules, and that's pretty straightforward. If I'm building an application on ethereum, it isn't, uh that obviously creates new things. So what do you talk us through like some of the implications of this if we're talking about the real power of blockchain is not the immutability per se, but the idea of like a new I guess it's like a new shape of space that exists that's sort of like outside of the conventional way we think about like service as a software. What makes that
so revolutionary? And what do you see as the sort of like what's the conflict model I guess within that new role? Yeah, so today the dominant conflict model is like misimutability thing that we kind of just talked about, but it's certainly, you know, not really like sustainable or defensible or like analytically, like you can kind of just tell like not just from history, but like from like the institutional arrangements that like Okay, it's like it's obviously
not like actually immutable. Like nothing is like really like actually immutable. That's not like a real you know thing for tech objects. You know, there's like always governance, and so like the what this basically means that like the model for conflicts for this new space is basically like
on determined and determined. Basically there's no way that like anyone can say by like decree like what it's going to be because basically no one has that legal competence or authority and and it's kind of like it kind of is forcing us to reckon with the fact that law doesn't just exist inside national borders and that like you know, we have to deal with the way we have disputes over software that doesn't exist and can't just be subject to this command and control line that you
mentioned earlier. Well, just to follow up on this a little bit more, I mean, like what is I mean, what makes it so powerful and revolutionary because like in theory, like with bitcoin, like that is you know, it's really hard to change it may not be strictly speaking permanently immutable, but we know, like it is really hard to change. But what is the power that gets unlocked in your view by creating this new space, this new type of software.
It's like the power that's created by you know, having somewhere that's outside of like the jurisdiction of your state authority, which like today and for the most part it's like charged with like maintaining legal order. And so you know, it's basically like in some way, like you know, you just aren't subject to the same disputes from the same
parties that you like normally would. So like you know, normally, if you were to try to start unregistered securities exchange, that you can really like just like you know, tell you like no, you have to stop, and then like you know, whereas like in crypto like defy today, it's like not so simple basically because it's not clear exactly like how that plays out, like you know, in the
terms of the like life span and that conflict. And then if it doesn't play out right, you can actually create a bigger problem through trying to to try and shut it down, um and so and so there's kind of like, um, the legal nondeterminism, like a legal uncertainty that it makes it difficult to see you know, like how is the unit swap going to be like regulated in the US, for example, or like lots of other questions you know where where where it just there's there's
no legal opinion in the world that like it's just right, and it's like a matter of like the like you know,
real like legal nondeterminism. And so I think that like creates a tremendous opportunity because it's like politically uncontested territory or politically non uncontested, but politically contested is what I mean territory, uh, and so and so that and so it's a kind of whole place for like, you know, not just people who like want to escape finance, but also people who want to like maintain the same ifty
of their financial systems. But also not just in finance, but you know because ultimately with like ethereum and like blockchain not bitcoin, we kind of go away beyond just just finance. So two questions here, and they're related to the points you were just making. But can you maybe elaborate on the use cases for blockchain technology? Um, you know, we've been talking a lot about defy defy, UM, making
synthetic stocks, things like that. Um, But you mentioned a few other potential use cases like curation earlier, and I'd love to hear more about those. But secondly, how desirable is it to basically bypass these sensitive or politically contested areas, Like you know, a lot of people would argue that regulation exists for a reason. Um, there's a reason why finance in particular, UM is heavily regulated. So I guess maybe just elaborate a little bit more on on your
last point, like why would you want this? Why is this a desirable thing to have? Yeah, so so let me say that, Like, Okay, I think answer in a reverse order. Um, So I don't think the escape is
like realistic or desirable, but I think what is. You know, something we have to face is the fact that, like we don't have a national or state authority that can call the shots and so and so what that means that we need to develop legal ability legal security without having the ability to rely on like state enforced rules
and so. What that means is, you know, the nature of law today as we understand it needs to kind of like or let me take a step back, Like the most powerful legal forms today aren't equipped to deal with this particular conflict, and so it creates a trendous opportunity to for us to find ways to manage our conflicts in a in a in a scope where that doesn't easily lend itself to the like existing like most powerful legal forms and so and so that is like
a tremendous opportunity. But I don't think of it as escaping law. I think if it is discovering law actually and discovering you know, and and and and being kind of like you know, secure in our conflicts without having this state that can enforce rules and that so that we can mediate our our experience of law through like
the state. Because because no one wants to create like a global crypto law state that will enforce the rules on crypto you know, it's like there's like a push against that kind of like global state in the law and just in like you know, just like basic common sense of like how is this going to be abused
and corrupted? But thankfully that we have a tremendous legal history in the world, and we have like tremendous amount of legal culture and it's not doesn't just boil down to state rules, and so we have an opportunity to have important legal disputes in a way that is in some way not according to the normal status quo. And that is trendously interesting. However, as you say, like the idea of escaping law is fallacious and dangerous and facilitates a lot of bad stuff, and and certainly I don't
advocate legal escapism. I like I would love to you know, fight it, in particular in the context of crypto, because like people have this idea that just because it's not in this jurisdiction of a state, that that there's no law, and that's just incredibly untrue on like a deep, deep analytical basis, and it keep deep in a political way where like it's impossible to escape the law, like it's
just not that's like not a thing. And so it's just like it's just that like the particular you know, state enforced rules legal form that people are like lazily expect to like always work, you know, but even though like you know, it like obviously like doesn't always doesn't work.
And so then they and then so then they get themselves crazy thinking like I can escape, you know, like the law, but like that's not that's not reality, Like I mean, you know, the reality is that like it doesn't matter where you go, like you bring the law with you, and other people will bring a law to you. Um. So I think it just forces us to re evaluate as opposed to letting us escape, and that kind of like new situation where we have like where we have
to deal with our conflicts in a new way. Um. It's super interesting. Although unfortunately today is dominated by this a mutability norm, which basically is kind of having people pretend like, oh, they can't interfere with the software, like the software is just like fully autonomous, which I think is crazy talk because like you know, nothing is above the law, like nothing is in subject to dispute. I mean, like there's no way in which like software will ever
be above the law. And so it's only a matter of time before mutability becomes kind of like sidelined and minimize and we have to find another way to be secure in our conflicts around blockchain and cryptom Okay, so you say, like it's kind of crazy talk to the immutability norm, but it is also true that if New York regulators were like unite swap is illegal now there they can't. In the past that they could there was a entity offering some sort of like exchange that they
didn't want. Like I'm thinking, like, okay, like when there used to be betting, you know, more betting markets that were available in the United States on centralized by run by centralized companies or gambling or whatever, and a regulator could say this is illegal now and it would go away and that would be it. But if a regulator said in theory where you can't do you to swap anymore or something like that, it obviously isn't that isn't easy. Maybe you know, it's not above the law, and maybe
immutability is unrealistic. But it's obviously a very different interaction than it was before when it was like say the regulators kicking out online poker site. So in your in your vision, how does this sort of like traditional notion of law enforcement and regulation interact with this new with this new uh, with this new model. Yeah, And I
mean that's a that's a challenging question. And basically, like the easy thing to say is okay, well, you know they get to I mean, they still have like all of their like local and also internet legal means, and they still have the ability to issue sanctions and to say like oh no, like that's criminal, Like oh no, like you know, don't send money to this address because like you know, or like don't buy like this token because like and you're just like supporting terrorists, like you know.
They have this authority to do these things, and those will be and there will be like real legal consequences for people who find themselves in the you know, in like let's say, like the scope of US law, which is fast and so it's not like they don't have means of regulating many persons that are in the law who would be maybe using these systems, And so I don't want to minimize that because there's a lot there, But I also want to say that like you know,
because of yes, I mutability, but more more generally, because of the these protocols need to be used everywhere, you know,
or not everywhere. But we could like if if they were to like say, mandated change to the theory and protocol in order to let them shut down youn swap, like that would become like theory in USA or something, and it wouldn't be the same, right, so you need to kind of like there needs to be like a different level of kind of legitimacy and coordination and opt in on a global basis for a dispute brought by you know, someone to to lead to this change and so and so there's kind of like this sort of
like nebulous culture that is going to like you know, like judge the legitimacy of this legal order and then say whether like you know like like budge for it, and and and in some way immutability already says no, like very much like no to all of it, and so like because like that's like the status quote today, it's quite hard to imagine. However, you know, in the future, we're gonna have like a basically you know, let's say,
you know, mediums are having these disputes. It's not going to be like, you know, we just like accept state authority to like tell us what to do. I mean, because that's like not the ethos at all, but where we like you know, don't want to like do like
and allow like all of the worst behavior. Like you know, if you want to have like your cake and need it too, you know there there you basically need to be secure about your ability to manage these conflicts and to say like you're you have a right to have your sanctions and we have the right to have our sanctions, and like you know, we're not even like a single body politic and so and so, like we're not gonna understand have like official like here is like you know,
like the etheroryum, like the sanctions that like the THEORYM will respect or anything like that. But through the course of disputes and through the course of you know, the various like events that are going to happen in crypto, you know these things are going to change basically, and you know it's up to kind of like people with right legal minds to kind of try to like front run all these situations and figure out how we can
prevent some of these very bad outcomes. So, I mean, just on that note, like what does this actually mean for society? And I know this is something that you
Um and Vitalic have touched upon before. You know, this idea that society is basic built on contracts and what we're talking about is a new type of contract technology or a new space um for agreeing contracts in and you know, potentially I take your point earlier, but potentially contracts that can sort of like outlive or exist beyond the reach of um I guess, uh, coordinated legal systems. Maybe that's one way of putting it, Like what does
this mean for society as a whole? Well, I mean, you know, that's an excellent question that I don't think it has like a super simple answer other than like, you know, we need to reckon with the fact that we have this kind of space now that we need to govern and to understand like how we have conflict over and around the kind of like first thing to note them that I have to mention it's like, okay, well, smart contracts aren't actually contracts, like like legal contracts like
exist in the law, like smart contracts are like in the ether, inpersual machine, like in contract a terms like smart contracts and more about execution than actually like contracting, and so like you know, they're not really contracts. They're more like something you might use when you're trying to avoid getting into a contract, and then you might accidentally get into a contract in some cases. But in terms of contract law, like I mean, you can't expect too
much change. I mean, contract law is like you know, like extremely robust, and like, you know, we've been throw a lot in contract law and it's not like you know, like smart contracts are like a new paradigm and contract law really, although they may be a way to, um, let's say, execute some terms of a contract in some cases, like for the most part, smart contracts are not legal contracts.
And it's it's kind of in a misnomer that's been both tactical and extremely effective, but also is a leads to this kind of idea that like these are contracts
when they're like not really. And I think that like the question of like how do blockchains and cryptocurrency let us organize, you know, how the impact the way that we organize aren't isn't going to be like a necessarily a contract law reality as much as it's going to be something like in terms of you know, the new spaces and the new intersections of different cultures and and and economies and and stuff that that are going to
be facilitated in these spaces. But but the question of what, like how will blockchains effect and influence like the way we organize the society are you know, deep and uncertain, and there is an extent to which like the technology really is you know, better than traditional consistuts protocols, and so like there is a way where like, okay, we know it will help us in some computer systems in
like a rather clear way. But in terms of like like you know, the promise of like social revolution or like a social change in the order, or like a social like you know, like new way like escape or things like this, like those are all like deep leading
out of termistic and like very unclear. Like it could just be that like you know, this inspires like the worst kind of global totalitarianism in like a crackdown, as much as it could be that like you know, we're able to use it responsibly in a way where we can you know, justify the maintenance of our freedoms in the law. How could this go bad? I mean we were talking earlier before the show, and you you talk about this sort of like the danger of unstoppable software.
What are some of the risks if people don't think about this right or if a sort of like if a community can't sufficiently self govern if there does, if if people fail to achieve some sort of like norms about say cutting off some of the most egregious Uh, patterns of behavior that can be done on a blockchain, Like what are some of the risks that people should
be thinking about. I don't necessarily want to give people ideas, but I will say that, like whatever you have anything in the law that isn't subject dispute, you could like imagine it being part of like some Rube Goldberg machine that like does some kind of like you know, very
unlawful thing in the end. So so so you can you can imagine that, like you know, each of these indisputable components can together come together to make things possible, like you know, the sharp increase in ransomware, and like you know, for for one example, that's like kind of like everyone knows about and it won't give anyone ideas for me to talk about, Like like ransomware is a good is a good example of something where you know it's it just makes the business of ransom so much
easier to use cryptocurrency. And and so you know that is like some like quite obvious you know, unlawful bad some of different levels conduct that is basically being facilitated here. And then we currently don't have the means to really stop or let me rephrase, we don't have the will
or the legal strategy like legal capacity to stop. Is that something in your view that the cryptocurrency or say people within say the Ethereum network, or I guess you know some of these are different networks, Bitcoin, narrow, et cetera. These things that people who are working on governance in these areas should be more actively thinking about. Absolutely, uh, and I think you know, um people need to be much more secure in their ability to handle conflicts in
cryptome Um today. They're you know, they have these kind of like aggressive postures because like they don't believe that they can handle these disputes. They think that if you like delete some coins from some ransomware attack, then like that opens the floodgates to like the government deleting your
coins because you didn't pay taxes or whatever. You know, you can imagine people have like fears about all the things that could happen if we started to do anything, and and and and people like don't have like the security to like say, look, you know, we can judge these things, and we don't need to say, look, we don't need to delegate to like a system that decides and therefore we captured by the system, like we can have like the legal security and like the responsibility for
legal judgments in order to you know, have our cake, and needed to to like not out un checked state authority, but also to not allow unchecked scammers. Since you brought up scamming and ransomware, I'm wondering if we can just go back to that question from earlier about use cases for blockchain, Yeah, because I like what gets you excited
about potential use cases for the tech? I'm I'm really excited about you know, are this like opportunity that we have to both both because of the improvement in the technology, but also because of this crazy legal trick and this
crazy legal reality that like crypto exist. And I think, you know, the thing that's like most exciting to me is like this multidisciplinary mix of like this crazy kind of institution which like you know, sometimes passes itself off as tech, but it's really of a very interesting, dynamic, multifaceted,
like ontologically very complex type of institution. And I think that like, you know, these although primitive today, stand to become like complex, dynamic, very interesting institutions that get to do a lot for us that like currently we don't have in cyberspace. Because like in cyberspace today, we have basically a situation where we have a kind of a neo feudalism where like our feudal lords who like own
the big computers like own us. And I'm like not exaggerating by a lot, And so I think there's like a state of crisis in cyberspace that crypto helps to respond to, you know, as much as also there's like a state of crisis in like global governance and global law and like blockchain crypto kind of like sits in that space and can help us provide new realities, new paradigms, new places where we can try again and like hopefully not fail this time to have like you know, good
governance and to have like you know, institutions that are part of a kind of society that we want to live in. So I think I think it's like you know, very much like very much political, and very much in
reaction to some of the prevailing political reality. Today. We're basically like you know, power is concentrated and in a way where perhaps um with this decentralized computer or you know kind of like you know, like the servers that are like you know, I'm no longer owned the cyberspace, Um, we can maybe create and have a new balance of powers, like like like more balance of powers, you know, more rule of law as opposed to just you know, having
like the feudal lords or like the legislatures or the states kind of like act lawless and and like lord over everyone as if like you know, they own the law. Do you envision in like a future theoretically in which sort of like everything that we do online, whether it's something that resembles traditional social networking sharing sharing stories and videos and photos of our friends communication, that it could all essentially be done in this sort of like new
decentralized sort of like crypto based manner. Like is that like a future that seems realistic too? Um, Well, there's a number of like technical like legal, economic, you know, there's lots of lots of barriers, and there's like a you know, just because we have like new primitive forms in this direction and like way more possibilities and before,
doesn't mean that like we're there are yet. I mean, like privacy in cryptocurrency is very bad, and there's a lot of basic norms around how we have disputes that aren't really settled in a way that's like secure or sustainable. There's a lot of reasons why you know, we can't and we wouldn't, and they would be like a very bad idea for us to try to like do everything with cryptosystems. That said, you know, it's not clear what
the technical, legal, economic, etcetera. Limits are, and so that's something that's like kind of also subject to ongoing kind of discovery, negotiation and so on. It's hard to imagine how that would look safe. It's easier to imagine why people would do it despite it not being safe. And so like I'm you know, concerned because like you know, of the like lack of basic infrastructure that's like required
for this to be safe. However, the opportunities there, the stakes are, they're like the contention is there, like people are ready to fight over these issues and and and and and kind of see what happens. Although you know, we are still in a position where we could easily see some really bad outcomes when like for example, you know, like the unsoppable software, the like global cyber state, or like the uh, you know, the feudalists just controlling everything.
Like there's a lot of bad outcomes that are kind of in the cake today that like could easily get baked you know, into like our reality, but it's not it's still like not said in stone yet, it's not clear like you know, these these outcomes will happen, you know, I'm optimistic that we can find better outcomes than than
any of these kind of like established ones. I wanted to go back to the beginning of this discussion, when we were talking about what attracted you into bitcoin in the first place, and then how you got interested in the theory um um. And it's a slightly weird I guess, like cultural or values question, but some people would describe the bitcoin community today as being I guess toxic is one word, or like openly hostile to outsiders and hostile
to alternate visions of crypto. And so I'm just wondering, as someone who sits on the opposite side of bitcoin now, um, and it's heavily involved in ethereum, like, how would you characterize the cultural differences between Bitcoin versus ethereum. Yeah, I mean I think, um, you know, Bitcoin has like a relatively defined culture, whereas like ethereums culture is still kind of like amorphous and people you know, have different like
sustained different very different politics and views within ethereum. So ethereum kind of is like much more diverse and in some way less toxic than big coin because like the the like incentive to like get everyone out who doesn't toe the party line, like isn't really like there as
much in ethereum. And so what happens is basically like ethereum is like supports much more diversity, you know, and an ethereum by by virtue of like being more amorphous, by about like being about kind of everything instead of just being about money, it kind of has um you know,
support from much more efficients. And but that also means that like there are like struggles and factions and people like you know, like having fights over like what is ethereum in a way that doesn't really happen in bitcoin and bitcoin they're kind of just like you know, twenty one million, twenty one million bitcoins and if you don't agree, get out, and if you don't like one magna blocks like get out, and like you know, they have this kind of a toxicity, which which is which is kind
of like um. I like to describe it as a channel authentication UH strategy where basically it makes it so that like you, if you don't, if you're not like one of them, like you can't really tolerate to be there. And so you can kind of just like bird virtue of being in those channels, like you're kind of authenticated, and it makes it a safe space for them, and I think it also it also helps them reinforce this immutability.
And I'm like earlier Joe mentioned like, oh, it would be very hard to change bitcoin, and the reason is because like you have all these uh toxic bitcoiners who will basically like be horrible to you if you suggest that we don't need to do this immutability thing. And not that it's like hard to change the software, it's just like hard to get through the bitcoiners who like have this kind of like pseudo cult or like real
cult or pseudo religion around around Bitcoin. I mean, I guess the question is is, like we've all interacted with that, and we sort of know that phenomenon, But could it be that that's a good sort of like survival strategy, a good evolutionary strategy. It's like, obviously Ethereum seems to be more open to debate and governance questions seem to
be more up in the air and so forth. But you know, if you're trying to like bootstrap a new money into existence in a way that bitcoin is trying to do, does it make sense perhaps to create this cult environment so that you go through so that even during the lean times, nobody is threatned. Nobody, nobody who's
involved wants to pivot or no change. Like adversity comes and it's like, well, some people might be tempted to change the project, but you know, bitcoiners by shedding themselves essentially of people who would be even tempted to think about changing the software or changing the project, Like, does that create a certain amount of resilience that can survive attacks or periods where the price is low and so forth.
Kind of, but it also lends itself to be coming like obsolete or like a relic or like a kind of quaint vintage item or something. You know, it's kind of no offense. I don't, I don't know, I don't. I don't want to say it. I guess it's let me say, it's not the smartest strategy I think in the long run, because it's kind of like you know, a maximum commitment now, like committing to the position like never change it. Like it's kind of like it gives
up on their ability to maneuver. Who knows what will happen in the future. And it's kind of like painting yourself in the corner. You may like that corner for now, but you might find that one day you have you have a need to move around. And and I don't think it's particularly tactical. I don't think it's particularly smart.
And just from like also the point of view of like the political agenda of bitcoin, you know, which is also which also which does involve like, you know, having some measure of legitimacy ultimately and like good will from society which is undermined by this kind of like toxic hardline attitude. Yeah. I totally agree with that last point. And of course there's like there's also an irony there.
It's sort of like being a technological luod Eye, but at the same time being extremely into this new technology that you think is revolutionary and is going to change the world. Um, although I guess it's not that new anymore. Um. But just on this note, there was one other thing I wanted to ask you. Um. So one of the things that makes ethereum different is that it does change, um, it does respond to challenges. There's a really vibrant debate
over which direction ethereum should go in UM. And there are different factions UM, but you could also describe them as communities, and they're all sort of talking to each other about the future or of ethereum or the vision
for the future. I'm just wondering, when it comes to building consensus in the ethereum community, how helpful is it to have a sort of figurehead UM like Metallic uh to help that happen, because that that also seems to be like a key difference between the ethereum community and Bitcoin that either like sort of has a leader. Yeah, I mean it's it's a it's a blessing and a curse. I mean sometimes um, you know, basically like sometimes people expect Metallic to make cause when like you know, he
doesn't like really necessarily want to. Sometimes, you know, it's really really really useful to have UM, you know, hotalic be kind of like a cediator of you know, the different political kind of current in ethereum. But basically it also it also can lead to a kind of a suspension of judgment where basically people think that like, oh, like you know, if the Italic approves of this, it must be great, you know, and so and so they're
definitely like cuts both ways. But I would say also the Italic is kind of like much more you know, benevolent dictator for theorem to then the theorym like one point oh where like we still have kind of like the OLDEVS call and the E I P s and we have like this kind of process of you know, the core developers and and and and then in which is some way, you know, in some way very independent and has been for a very long time of Italics
like influence on day to day basis. So it Italic is actually really more like a researcher and like a pioneer like future direction as opposed to like you know, providing like any basis or day to day dispute management. So to sum up, it's sort of like big picture of views. If I'm getting it, it feels like the message what you're trying to say is, you know, there really is this potential through crypto, through blockchains to create new regimes of governance that could in many ways be
better than what exists now. And some of that may be financial, some of that may be political and so forth.
But to get there, the community itself has to take governance more seriously, and that it can't be that if if if we're going to replace governance with blockchain governance, then the people who manage and sort of like contribute to these blockchains have to take the idea of law and have to take the idea of potential melieability and regulating and maybe cutting off bad behavior more seriously in order to get to this point where blockchain has become
an important thing. I think, I think that's I think that's more or less right. I have life by myself like having a slight reservation around the idea that law is an idea, but like, you know, other than that, I think like that's I think that's I think that's right.
And I think though, you know, it's it's more like having a kind of an ecosystem where like you know, like the tech people are doing tech governance and you have like people with like a legal disciplinary skill doing these types of like more dealing with the legal questions as opposed to trying to have like a kind of passing off of this institution as just technology and so I think that the big the big thing really is going to be UM more diverse governance or like a
more multidisciplinary approach as opposed to kind of like tech centric approach that we kind of have now and and and so and so it's not so much about like developers really being more realistic about law. I mean, developers don't want anything to do with law, Like they should be isolated from liability. They shouldn't be making these decisions. These decisions are crazy, like like for the developers to be making, you know, like it's not appropriate to put
a software developer in this kind of legal position. And so I think, you know, there's a there's a there's a need for kind of reimagination of the nature of these institutions or for us to have the kinds of skills and capacity to deal with these governance and law issues that just don't exist in technical disciplinary retraining. That's a really well point. Well, Vlaud, thank you so much
for UM coming on odd lots. It's great to hear with, great to speak with one of the original originals in the space, one of the big thinkers, and uh, that was a great conversation. I appreciate you joining us. Yeah, my pleasure really really fun than thanks a lot, take care of luck. So I thought that was actually super fascinating. You know, Tracy, have you come across like people, uh like on Twitter who like something bad happens, there's something
and they're like, bitcoin fixes this. Have you come across like that? No? Never, that's no never seen. Yeah, of course, like bitcoin I once wrote down I think I wrote down all the like things that bitcoin was supposed to fix um and it was a really long list. And I remember I think the last the last time I did this was like during the depths of the COVID crisis. Can remember some people were talking about blockchain like fixing
the pandemic, which again seemed like a bit of a reach. Well, I mean like obviously would people say that a lot of times like okay, I think a lot of times they're joking or just you know aligned that people will say. But I think like Vlood like raises a really interesting point, which and you know, if you want to push a deeper or something, it's like, how can bitcoin fix this?
If like people who are involved in bitcoin don't actually and I think this is his point, like don't actually seem interested in law or governance, and so like, you know, there's this sort of like belief that like somehow bitcoin itself has these powers to like write ills or whatever. And yet it's not obvious to me that the people who are involved in bitcoin in any way, with whether it's developers or holders or anything at should you have any like interest in engaging on what it would take
to fix x or y totally. Well, this is why I brought up the toxicity point, which is like, if you have a community that like kind of describes itself as we are changing the world, but then won't actually talk very much about ideas of how it's changing the world, um, that seems problematic to me. And then the other thing is like almost by definition, bitcoin tends to be an exclusionary community. Um, there's a finite supply of coins um that will ever be in existence. And it's sort of
like you know, first come, first serve. If you're an early adopter, you're kind of worshiped on the platform. And again, like if you're trying to recruit people to the cause,
it seems like a weird stance to take. Like to me, I think you would want to be much more open and much more engaged and willing at least to talk about potential issues either with cryptocurrency itself or the underlying technology, right, and like okay, like bitcoin isn't going to fix everything, but even if you want to say like bitcoin to like be more of like a core financial infrastructure as
opposed to say gold. Right, So it's like obviously, like I don't think like ethereum is the same mutable sort of like difficult to change properties as Bitcoin, but you could see like people within that community they're clearly going for it, Like they're clearly making an effort to plug themselves into the financial system. Stable coins that run on ethereum.
You know, you get bonds, various synthetic equities that run somehow are built on top of ethereum, and so they're at least like so you know, you could say like that community is at least like trying, whereas you know, you could see this sort of like yeah, the bitcoin communities like fantasy about like everything is going to run on a bitcoin standard, but it's not exactly obvious to me. It's like, yeah, well, how are you going to get there? Like what do you wait? Like what what is the plan?
And then the actual like plan of like, well, let's make this happen then seems to run into the contradiction of to make anything happen would require like governance and effort totally and like engagement and a minimum, which I certainly don't see happening like I see bitcoin like bitcoiner is sort of hiving themselves off in a corner of the Internet and talking amongst themselves for the most part um, which again like is unfortunate in many ways and probably
one of the reasons why Ethereum seems to be um making more in roads into traditional corners of finance. But then again, like there is that open question of whether or not cryptos should be doing that in the first place, given the original vision of you know, sort of being
this anti authoritarian, anti establishment technology. Yeah, but I guess like just like big picture, like I think like Blood's message is like super interesting, which is like if you are like aiming to create power, And I thought it was like his description of just the Internet like setting aside like state power, this sort of like feudal internet that we've built, which is true where it's like almost everything you do you sort of like pay a Facebook
tex or an Amazon tax or there's just a handful of like extremely powerful entities. And so it's like if you like have like a vision of replacing that power, then you sort of like have to like you know, think about law experts. And you can't just have like, you know, software developers have it be all on them to like think about society and think about law, both like sort of literal written law and sort of like
common law, etcetera. And so like the sort of like call to like take this stuff seriously, it's a it was like super interesting and important. Yeah. Absolutely. Also his um, the idea of sort of creating an independent, separate space that you can use to create new agreements or try to like come to a new consensus like that to me sounds intriguing, um, although I still have questions about it, but like also very very different to um the bitcoin vision. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay, Um,
shall we leave it there. Let's leave it there, all right. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wi Isn'tal. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guest on Twitter, Vlad zam Fair. He's at flad Zamfair. Follow our producer Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson. Followed the Bloomberg
head of podcast, Francesca Levy at Francesca Today. And check out all of our podcast at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening to