Talking with Omid Malekan - Trust has been lost, here's how to restore it

the world. We're gonna dig into a topic. Like I said, I like to look at it from the lens of politics, finance, and technology, and today it's really all three combined that are under attack. And I'm joined in studio by Ohmid Malikan. If I said that right, you can find him on Twitter at Malik Anam's will put it in the show link down below. He's the author of a book called re Architecting Trust, which, of course, to be watching my show is something I talked about a lot, and he's

the adjunct professor at Columbia Business School as well. Oh Man, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me so. You know, I like to look at the world changing through the lens of the politics, finance, and technology, and this one issue specifically, and we'll talk about today, is really all three of those. It's a political method attacking um source of some sort of technology that kind

of masquerades as a as a financial thing. And it was you know, all of the Treasury Secretary, you know, the Treasury Department. I mean, it's all three of those, um and and it's something you've been talking about quite a bit um And of course we're talking about Tornado cash. Why don't you kind of frame that up for us a little bit? So one thing that not enough people recognize or appreciate is the fact that in crypto, full transparency is the default state, which is definitely not true,

would say the banking system. Right, like you and I do a bitcoin transaction, we both now see each other's the entire financial history, which is great from a security

point of view. But then, uh, if this technology and new financial system is to go mainstream, then it's not really gonna work, right, Like, you can't have it that every time you want to make a donation to a charity or your company is paying you in crypto, now suddenly you've exposed your wallet address that has your everything, right, And I think like on a long enough timeline, it. Your wallet will have your everything, your money, your stocks, your n f T s, maybe the d to your house,

et cetera. So Tornado Cash for Me has actually a very innocuous use, which is to just restore a basic amount of financial privacy, which I think most people would agree is a good thing. And what was so troubling about the U. S. Government adding it to the sanctions list was the fact that they were not criminalizing people doing committing an actual crime like funding North Korea or terrorists or something. They are now criminalizing the mere act

of seeking financial privacy. And I think the connotations for that, the dangerous connotations for that move are actually much bigger than crypto. Uh yeah, I would say that. I would. I would even say, um, maybe it's even bigger than that. So the problem that we have is when we have I consider bitcoin to be a technological revolution, not a new technology. And the difference of that is a new technology is cool, it's a it's a continuation of something. Uh.

An iPhone is a new technology. We took a computer phone, we put them together. That's cool, great. Um a technology technological revolution is different, it's bigger. There's been five of them. Um, so industrial revolution, steam engines, railways, electricity and steel, um oil, automobiles, microprocessors and when humans we are not good at seeing the future, so we try to understand it from something that we already know. So, like when electricity was invented,

what was the first application of electricity? It was a light bulb? Right, So what is this electricity thing here? Omitt, Oh, well it's kind of like a digital candle. What the hell do we need that for? Candles have been light for five thousand years? Right, Um, we don't them. We don't need all these stupid wires. We just have a candle. Well, electricity was like that, but it became so much more. And so the problem that I have is I think

this is something so revolutionary. Um, all new technology has the first killer application, like the Internet. The first killer application of the Internet was email. That's what got everybody addicted. But now we use it to like have my car, use AI to navigate me around traffic, using social media or something right like. And so when we say that it's an attack, it's an attack on software, it's attack on financial privacy, but it's really it's it's an attack

on software. I think maybe because if if it's only financial, then that limits the really the grasp of what software really could do. Maybe I don't know if that matters for what you're thinking. It does actually in part because the I like your framing of crypto really being a financial revolution, because the idea of a revolution is not just not just financi right, sorry, a a revolution technological

and and even application wise, go bigger. Like my the book I wrote is really a book about trust, because trust matters in everything that's important in life, and that includes finance, but it also includes something like a social media platform, like you're gonna go on Twitter, Facebook, how do you trust what they're showing you? How do you trust that they're not gonna suddenly cancel you if you say something that's politically not fashionable. Um, and the and

the risk. The list goes on and on from there.

So I've spent years trying to figure out how to communicate the core value proposition of crypto to people who are not technologists, they're not financed people, they're not traders, And the one thing that I found resonates is to just tell them that this is a new and better way to build trust among communities of people and the applications of that to me are end us, which means that if you have something like an arm of the U. S. Government trying to really clamp down on it, then the

limitations that they're going to impose on all the benefits are also endless. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, So it's definitely trust lists, right, so instead of having to trust this third party central in a mary, um, now we don't have to trust anybody. But the reason why I wanted to take it like one level higher was because of really what I think

the implications are. Because if you're saying, well, they're trying to take away people's right to financial privacy, which is true, But I think what they've done is to the point that you made earlier. Um, what they've done is they've sanctioned a software protocol, which has never been done before. So they typically would sanction a person or maybe a country, but that person should have some sort of due process and should have a right to probably appeal that or something.

As a matter of fact, I believe on the sanctioned list there's a link where you can actually appeal to get taken off of that list. But how does the software protocol have due process? How do they appeal that.

That's a great point. They can't, which is kind of the scary part of this, right, because once you expand the sanction ability to code and language and maybe even physical devices, then the skies the limit, right, Like, yes, I am sure bad people have used Tornado cash, but bad people I also use the Internet and iPhones and flashlights. So this is one of those instances where I think the slippery slope argument is very applicable. Yeah. Yeah, we

we have laws against doing certain things. Um, so if you commit murder, obviously we have a law against that. But if you drove a car on the highway to commit that murder, you don't sanction the highway, right, you don't sancs in the car. We have cars, we have we have highways. I bet that that killer probably drank some water before he went there too, we don't sanction the water, right. Um, what what he did was illegal,

and so we look at it in those terms. And so I was just trying to look at it from a bigger standpoint because what I'm afraid is like, um, what about you know signal on my phone or tour uh tour for my you know internet? Right, So what it's doing is it's a it's I don't even know if it's a mixing service so much, but it's a way that we can kind of like hot blend in with a bigger transactions. But that's exactly what tore does.

It blends my internet surfing together or sit you know. Um, and if you if you start sanctioning that, that has massive implications. Yeah. And it's not just tour I mean, if you're talking about software and language, then yes, but like why do we have blinds and curtains on our windows?

Why why do we have doors for bathrooms? It's it's to me privacy is one of the most fundamental human rights because any person, you mean, it doesn't matter whether political discvision, this position is there are things about themselves that they don't want the world to know. Yeah. I love that thought. I want to I want to come back to that. I want to get back to this privacy and trust issue. We'll talk about your book. I'm in the studio with Ohmd Molikan. We're talking about the

death of trust, something to talk a lot about. Of course, you're listening to the Mark Moa show talking about the decentralized Revolution. I'm gonna be back with this conversation and more in a minute. So don't go away, We'll be right back. All right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark mo Show talking about the decentralized revolution, the way the world is changing through the lens of politics, finance,

and technology. I'm in the studio with Ohmd Molikan. He's the UM author of a book called re Architect and trust Agent, professor at Columbia Business School. Let's um, we were talking before the break about you know what happened and the sanctions against the software protocol what that means. Let's just jump even back to a higher level. So before we went on the break, you were talking about, um, why do we have curtains on our home? Why don't

we have doors in our bathroom? A lot of people might say, well, if you don't have anything to hide, what you need privacy for? And I would love to find one person like in real life that would actually say that. And then I would say, well give me your phone, let me let me stroll through your phone. Like nobody would do that, right, Like they wouldn't do that. Um, but let's jump to a little higher level. And when you wrote the book re Architect, and trust. Um, how

does this issue with trust and privacy? How do you see those two things were kind of working together. So there's this The interesting thing about trust is that there is this cyclicality to it. And uh, you alluded to something.

I think it was earlier this year at the Bigcoin conference, after the UM what happened with Russian sanctions and the Canadian truckers that they don't We're witnessing the loss of trust and then you reach a point of no return where the whole thing falls apart, and I try to build out allegorically this thesis in the book that the funny thing about trust is that in the long run

it's always self defeating. You know, the more trust people put in a person, a company, a government and institution, then the more likely it becomes to abuse that trust in the long run. Right, And like a simple example of that is we had a guy like Bernie made Off, who was actually considered a very clean, respected man on Wall Street, and because of that, no one bothered to

double check what he was doing. If it was just you and me trying to do what he was doing, then probably people would have been a lot more suspicious and skeptical and not that we would do a Ponzi scheme, but we couldn't get away with it even if we wanted to. So history is rife with examples and I have many of them in the book where someone does something good, becomes in a position where we trust them, and then they slowly begin to abuse that trust for

the simple reason that they can. And that's why trust is always cyclical. So in the example that we're talking about, one of the reasons why the dollar is the global reserve currency and frankly why America is the most powerful country in the world in many ways, the most um desirable country roles for people to interact with and living is because of trust. Because our system, our laws, and historically our system of money was one that was predictable.

There were rules. We followed our own rules, even when it harmed us and what's been happening. And we had a rule of law. That's the big thing that you're saying. We had a rule of law. Other nations they seize people's stuff whatever the no rule of law. We had that here people could trust that there would be a rule of law. Yeah, and historically, specifically, if you want to be the issuer of a global reserve currency, then

having a reliable legal system is a requirement. Um, that's why, like today, China is one of the biggest economies in the world, the biggest country by population, nobody uses its currency for international trade because they don't trust its legal system. So it's troubling with Tornado. And then before that, what happened with Russian sanctions. And I know the Canadian truckers was Canadian, but it's actually not hard for me to imagine the same thing happening here in America is that

we are starting to abuse that trust. We're starting to go back on our own values of the rule of law. And I think for Americans like me and you, this

is going to have negative consequences down the road. What about I mean, one thing that really shook me hard was the highest branch of government, well one of the three branches of government, that the Supreme Court had information leaked, the most sacred body in the United States, the Supreme Court had information leak that was obviously one side, very partisan, that was specifically leaked for a very specific purpose that

was an attack on the highest union. And then and then not to be outdone, California, then, um, they were mad because the Supreme Court had also overturned some gun rights laws, and the California governor and the head the head of the Justice Department said, um, that we're going to come back and fight against this with everything that

we have. And then a week later, os we just leaked all the names of all our concealed permit like so not on the Supreme Court, and then the Department of Justice in California just accidentally leaked it after they vowed to get vengeance, Like those are the highest level. If we can't trust the courts and the Justice Department,

what does that say about trust? Yeah? Unfortunately, these are examples of a continuing trend that we're all experiencing in America, and I think it's actually like the scariest part of it to me is that it's totally bipartisan. The kind of things that trouble someone like me, like violating the rule of law and some of these slippery slope examples

with things like financial crimes. Uh, these are the things that seemed to be happening on both sides, and the result is what we're seeing today, which is that people increasingly don't trust their government, and then by extension, don't trust each other. So it's cyclical. I like how you frame that up. I hadn't really thought about it like that.

And the problem is that we have human nature that's always involved, and so that's kind of like to your point, right, that's the same reason why, in my opinion, we can't have humans controlling money. Not one should control money. UM. And so back to trust. So gold had been money for five thousand years. UM. They said, hey, gold doesn't have enough velocity. We can't move it fast enough. So if we put the gold into the bank, UM will

issue debt on top of it. So you have a paper goal stificate and IOU and we'll hold the gold. You have the I O U s and then whatever you want, you can just redeem them. And so people trusted that. But then they printed too many of those paper goals stificates and so by nine thirty three the government owed more gold than they had. So they said, well, here's what we do. Well, just seize all the gold. So they seized all the gold, and then after they

seized it all, then they revalued it. So not only do they seize your gold, then they stole your wealth. So that was a big blow to trust it. Somehow people still trusted I don't know how UM. And then one comes along and they say, oh, now we're just going to default to the whole world on the goal that we owed up. I guess you know, are bad. Like like, it seems like that the death of trust

has been coming, coming, coming, coming. Do you think at some point, like it's cyclical, like, where does it, like UM come to a head? At some point, you could argue it comes to a head with the inflation that we're starting to see in almost every country in the world now. And part of the reason why is, by the way excellent history of money there. That's chapter one of my book UM. When you tether your currency from any form of discipline, like having it be backed by something.

It could be gold, could be anything, could be bitcoin, UM, then you end up in situations with every subsequent crisis where the central bank is like, oh, well, you know, we can fix this by just printing a trillion dollars. But then the next time around it you need to trillion, and then the next time around you need a trillion. And then you also have people in UM politics saying, oh, well, if we're printing all this money, here's a list of causes that are near and dear in my heart. Can

you please print money to fix them? Yeah, exactly. So I'd like to keep chasing this thread with you a little bit because, um, in my opinion, as we I kind of both just agree to it's it's humans. It's just human nature. And uh, centralization leads to manipulation and something I like to say, And so the more power and control you give me, the more I'm just gonna probably start trying to manipulate that a little bit to

my favor, of course. But then so at some point it seems like there must come to a head if it's cyclical, and then it starts over again. So I want to chase that through with you a little bit. When we get back. You're listening to the Markma Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution, the way the pendulum is swinging from centralization to decentralization, looking at through the

lens of politics, finance, and technology. I'm in the studio with Ohmed Moli Khan, the author of re Architecting Trust. We got a lot more to cover when we come back. Don't go away, We'll be right back, all right. Welcome back, you are listening to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about, of course, each and every week, the decentralized revolution, the way the world is changing through the lens of politics, finance,

and technology. Of course technology being that big piece which I'm in the studio talking with Ohmed Moli Khan, the author of re Architecting Trust, and I think we're gonna come back and pin technology on fixing this. But let's see where we go with this. So, um, you're you said how trust is cyclical, and I hadn't really thought about it like that before, so it's kind of new. I'm thinking through this as we're talking, and I can

understand how you're saying. The more we give trust to somebody, the more it gets violated or manipulated, and then at some point it breaks, and then I guess it starts over again. So, um, I don't trust my business partner anymore. I probably will never trust him again, but maybe at some point I'll go get a new business partner and I'll trust them, right, But then, like, um, you know, I won't trust my wife again if she cheats on me, but I'll probably get married again at some point, right

to be That's how it starts. UM. But then if I think about it, like there's a lot of nations, most of the nations in this world who don't have a good rule of law. We're about we're kind of in that bend today, But um, these nations don't seem to restart, like trust never gets re established in China or Iran or Lebanon. So how do you see that cyclicality kind of playing out in the environment that we're in.

If you go back historically long enough, then you could argue that even in those countries, like there were times where they were the high trust societies and say like the West was not UM. And one of the interesting things, since we were talking about in the previous segment technological revolutions, the one thing that those always trend in one direction are the interesting ways that people built and invent new

technologies to become better at building trust. So even any examples that you gave, like with your business partner, UM, one example of a technology that will hopefully help you regain trust with the future business partner is a contract. Contracts to me were a technological innovation UM invented to solve the problem of trust, and in ancient times they had this problem of like, how do we even know

if the thing is authentic? So they would do in the Middle Ages this crazy thing where they would write two copies of the contract on the same piece of paper and then they just tear it in half and each party we get one half and when they got together in the future, if the teeth lined up, then it was an official contract. It wasn't a forgery. And that, by the way, is the word where the word indenture

comes from from the Latin for dente or teeth. So people have been doing this forever basically, And UM, to me, a simple way to understand blockchain and crypto is the latest technological innovation in order to achieve trust, particularly in a digital and global setting. I like that answer, And

that's that's exactly the way that I see it. It's and that's kind of what I said at my I was talking about my my talk at bitcoin at the Bitcoin conference, and I said, UM, it's almost like we need a decentralized ledger that nobody can control because as long as somebody controls the ledger, and that's really what it comes down to. Back to the gold example that

we had. UM, when I put my gold in the bank, and the bank gave me a paper clertificate they had the ledger, who had you know who who has the golden who has the I O US and so whoever controls the ledger or the database, then that's who we're trusting. And so as long as Facebook has my data, I'm trusting them not to manipulate my data. But of course we can't trust them, they've been proven to sell my data. As long as well as Fargo has my banking records,

I trust them not to do stuff. But they paid the largest fine in history because they added a bunch of fake bank accounts. Right. Um, So like we've continued to lose trust all these institutions, and so how do we gain trust again. We need a new relationship and probably with a new piece of technology that fixes that problem. Which is back to the question I posed the audience at the Bitcoin conference, which is it's sort of like

we need that decentralized ledger. So if we have a ledger that nobody can control, um, then we could have trust or as would bitcoin, we say it's trust less. I don't have to trust, I can verify you trust the outcome. Right, you don't have to trust any other party that's part of the system. But you just trust that your coins are yours and yours only to do something with and if you decide to send some to

a friend, no one can interfere with that transaction. Yeah, now you've you've you know, I keep talking about bitcoin, you keep talking about crypto, So there's a little bit of a disconnect there. I'm just curious to your answer. You would agree that if somebody could if somebody could change the ledger, then it's not a trust less technology. It would only be trust less if nobody could control

the ledger. Yes, yeah, so, m I I put a tweet this morning, or maybe I started writing and I forgot, but um, it was something to the effect of what we need is like a trust less technolog g about what we got is a bunch of dog coins and memes or whatever. Right, But it's like the real revolution. The real revolution to me is decentralization. That's the revolution.

So we've only we've only had centralized controls of ledgers, and the real revolution is now we have this decentralized technology that can have a ledger that nobody can control. So if we have a ledger that somebody can control. That's not really revolutionary in my opinion. So would you agree with that? Yeah? So, I mean there's there's all types of technologies and they're all cool and like I mean, if you can put a dog on a on a meme or whatever, like that's cool. But it's just not

a revolution. The revolution is the decentralization and that's where the world needs. We need a way to regain trust again because we need to have global trade. Right with global trade is uh is what allows us to have ideation and progress. But if we can't trust each other, I'm afraid I did. I did a talk called d evolution re evolution and so as the world has evolved through global trade, um, now it's going to d evolved because now we're going to go back into these small

island nations we can't trust each other. But then we can re evolve if we can have a decentralized ledger like bitcoin that we can trust. So I think I think it's inevitable. Um. The more that I talk about it was someone like you, the more I think it's inevitable, um that we have them, and there's just no other way that the world can move forward at this point.

It seems like I agree, and the more um trust is lost in the traditional ways of doing things that I think the greater the opening for something like bigcoin and and the other applications of the technology. I'm not to me, the battle here, the battle in the world of ideas isn't really like between bigcoin and dog coins. Even though I've never owned the dog coin, I'm not

really interested in dog coins UM. To me, though, I feel like in crypto we fall into this trap where we f fight a lot of these civil wars amongst ourselves, but really it's a relatively small community UM going up against everybody else. And the applications start first and foremost with what bitcoin represents, which to me is censorship resistant and UM eight political algorithmically minted money. I think that is a magnificent, magnificent accomplishment in the having studied the

history of money. But then there are a lot of other applications like defy because like you said, you know, what is a bank. A bank is just a bunch of ledgers. But they are not transparent ledgers. They are not auditable ledgers, not by me and you anyway, UM, they're not censorship resistant ledgers. In fact, the entire financial

system is built on active censorship and discrimination. So to me, um, when you start with bitcoin, it's almost inevitable that then you get to be like, well, why don't we use the same idea to evolve not just money, but then something like banking. Well, I think I think the reason why is because back to the word of the day, which is trust. I would encourage everybody on this let's listen to this right now. UM. I talk a lot

about investing topics. Don't ever loan money or invest money into somebody that you don't know and you don't know if they have ability to pay you back. Don't ever do that. You need to know who that person is. You must have done your due diligence, and you have to have enough information where you trust that they'll pay you that money back. And so when I got a house loan, I needed someone to look at my credit worthiness and determine if I can pay that money back

and give me a rate. Yours maybe isn't as good or yours as better, so they give you a better rate, and that's okay, But somebody has to decide that. And the problem that I have with defy is like now, I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna give money to somebody who I don't know, and I don't know what the credit worth is and I don't have any trust there. We'll talk about that in a second. That's that's a big

topic I own a dig into. We don't have enough time before the break, but it's an interesting conversation that I love. I mean, like I said, this is a key word that I use. Trust. You're listening to the market Moall show. Of course, we talked about each and every week, the decentralized revolution, the way the world is movements from centralization to decentralization with the new technology that

we have. I'm in the studio with Ohmad Malikan. You can find him on Twitter at Malik Mali konoms Sorry man, I'll link to in the shows down below. He is the author of a book called re Architecting Trust. You should check it out, and he's an adject professor at Columbia Business Business School. We're gonna be back talking about defy and trust and technology and more in a minute. You don't want to miss the conclusion of this, so don't go away. We're gonna be right back, all right,

Welcome back. You were listening to the Markma Show. Forced we talked about the decentralized revolution. Each and every week I'm in the studio with Ohmed Malikan. You can find them on Twitter at Malikan Ohms will link to that in the show note below. He's the author of a book called re Architecting Trust, which is a really cool book you should check out, talking about the ciclality, cyclicality of trust, UM and looking at through the lens of

the financial system, which is pretty cool. Adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Now, Omen, before the break, I kind of cut you off. I'd posed a question and then cut it off. So I'll just reask the question again, which is um. When it comes to money and business and all these things, we need trust, and so UM defy to me, UM, at least in the current state we have today, doesn't really seem very practical. Maybe almost sort of a scam um not using that word lightly.

But when I think it's one thing, but I get something different back, and so UM defy this decentralized finance. I'm putting money in these protocols, but I don't know who's getting them. I don't know what the risk level is and so it seems to actually work against trust. I would only want to invest into somebody's business or loan them money to buy something if I had trust with them, because I've done due diligence, I knew them, etcetera. So how do you reconcile those two things? Well, do

you have a bank account? Yep? Okay, So when you have a bank account, you are lending money to a whole bunch of other people that you don't know. Well, I'm not really because, um one, that's not really how the bank works anymore, and the old fractional reserve system it did. But um I have insurance against all the money in my bank count So if they if they did something and lost my money, I have insurance on that money. Yeah, the lack of fd I C insurance

is a I think that's a valid complaint against defile. However, I think it's interesting to ponder the social and economic consequences of things like FDIC insurance, particularly when it comes to banks doing stupid things with people's money because people don't care anymore. But nevertheless, the problem that you spelled out is it's always been a problem, right, Like, there are people who want to lend and there are people who want to borrow. That's just the state of humanity.

And if they only limited themselves to those who they strictly knew, then they would just be a lot less credit in the economy. So historically, what we've done is we put a bank in the middle. Uh. There are different models of banking, but one of the roles that the bank plays is to solve this problem of a coincidence of want and trust, right, like me and a borrower have to want to borrow and lend at the

same time and trust at the same time. The bank solved that problem, which I think is actually an im thing for the economy. There will be a lot less economic growth if we had a lot less credit. The problem is the state of banking as it's been for centuries, which is that one it's completely opaque. I don't know what's happening inside a bank. You know, there's been things that happened when it turns out nobody knew. Even the

CEO didn't know what was happening inside the bank. And to a lot of what should be a automated transaction is still left up to someone's discretion, right, So it's something like, Hey, if somebody is buying a house worth five thousand dollars, don't lend them a million dollars, only

lend them up to that for example. Um So, the reason why I think defy is important from a trust building perspective, particularly when it comes to financial services, is that it takes the flaws of the banking system as we have it and address it with the same kind of features that makes something like bitcoin special, mainly transparency, consensus, automation.

I don't in that example that you've given, though, I don't know if um, like, it's still going to require some it's more of like a c FI model, which was kind of like the Celsius kind of block Fire model in a sense where they do automate a lot of stuff supposedly, but like somebody was still kind of going behind the scenes. Now, if they had more transparency, maybe it wouldn't have ended it so badly for them.

But in that in that example, if somebody wants to loan a house, buy a house, get a loan for a house, Um, how do we know that house is valued at five thousand and not a million? To your point, So then we have to use an oracle so an oracle has to be tied in with a local agent. So then now I'm trusting that local agent to be that oracle. So that's a central entity. It's not it's not truly decentralized because now there's a central person that's

making that decision. So it's kind of like a we're using software to offload a bunch of stuff and automate a lot of things, which gives us efficiencies and hopefully gives us greater returns, but it's not truly decentralized because somebody's they're making those decisions and inputting that data. Right. Yeah, as I always tell my students, to me, decentralization is not binary. It is a spectrum. And there are things that are very decentralized, like I consider bitcoin very decentralized

right now, which is part of its charm and appeal. Um. But then decentralization also has its limitations as far as adopting something, upgrading it, evolving it over time. Um. So most other crypto applications do involve trade offs from the pure decentralization model. But to me, again that's not the

most important comparison. The most important comparison is what do I trust more properly designed defied protocol or a bank, And the answer is the defied protocol, which, by the way, I think in the future there's already a bank in Philadelphia that's sourcing wholesale funding from a defied protocol. So I think in the future it's going to be a sort of a conversion of the two and not necessarily a replacement. Yeah, I would, I would agree on that.

I mean, obviously to your point that the solving the need and want we have you know, peer to peer blending mark it's for example, and those have grown really big, and those serve a good need. Um, you know, somebody is using technology to kind of compress and automate that. There's greater returns and so, um, there's some efficiencies there. I guess for me, I would just say not everything needs to be decentralized. I just I feel like not

everything needs to be decentralized. Um. One thing that does is money, because if we if we give it to somebody to control. We know, to your point, trust to cyclical, and so if someone has control over money, we've been we found out through millennia that they're always going to try to distort that in some way, whether that's clipping coins, or that's issuing more paper to certificates on top of it, or whatever it may be. So one thing that does

need to be decentralized is money for sure. Um, back to kind of what we started talking about, UM, some of these communication protocols like that might might need to be as well. Kind of a thing. Right, money is communication, right, So money communicates our wants and our needs and our desires. Right. So money is communicate sation. So that's where like this whole Tornado cash going back to where we started to get so messy, and again understand that technology is going

to become so much bigger than we understand it. Um, they're really since they can say they're not, but they're censoring communication. And I believe that the Supreme Court has already upheld that three or four times. I'm not a legal expert. I hope they have. But I like the idea very much that money, money is a form of personal expression, um, which here in the West we really treasure.

So it's funny to me that increasingly in the financial domain, UM, because of all of these different laws that are supposedly designed to catch crooks, they keep limiting every individual's right to personal expression with their money. Yeah, exactly. I was just trying to look that up. I know I covered that before. I believe it was three or four different court cases where it's already been challenged and the courts held that up. You know, Uh, code is speech, code

is communication. Money is communication. I had it up here, but I can't I can't seem to find it real quickly. But yeah, it's gonna it's gonna be interesting. But again back to you kind of where we started too and then being able to actually censor a public good. So now again back to the highway. Should well, it looks like more criminals use this highway um than other highways, so we should sensor that highway and just the precedents that it's set. So in your opinion, I guess to

kind of put a bow in this. We gotta kind of wrap it up here. Um. It's cyclical, and typically it's some sort of technology that then brings the trust back. I couldn't trust my handshaken deal before, so now we have the technology of a contract. So now I'll trust again using that piece until that piece fails me and then we'll have to come up with something new and you think that is a bitcoin blockchain. Um, and that's

how we'll get trust. And am I summon that up right? Perfect? Yes? Yeah, well I would agree, I would agree, and and and and the more that we see it, I mean, there's the more inevitable it gets to me. Right, It's like, how do we how do we go forward without it? Like I just I don't understand that we can go back to the dark ages, but that nobody wants that either. Um, awesome, awesome. I appreciate it. Um. Everyone check out the book re architect Ing Trust that's been that's the author's my guest,

Ohmed Mali Khan. You can find him on Twitter at Mali Khan Olmes. He's uh, the author of that book, re architect and Trust, the adjunct professor at Columbia BIZ. He's been talking a lot about the need for trust, and I agree it is something really really big that we all need to be aware of. And uh, man, like I said, the more I think about it, the more inevitable it seems to be. Um, we need a decentralized letter nobody controls. That's what I got free today.

Thanks so much for listening to the Mark Moss Show. I appreciate it. Hit us up on social media. Let's know you heard this issue and that's what I got. Until next time.