I was first introduced to Vitalik as the founder of Ethereum. And over the course of a few years, I've gotten to know that there is so much more to him. Today, we go on a walk to show you those other sides. Our walk, we talk about everything from decentralized finance to Wall Street Pete, Dogecoin, China, revolt of the public, a whole list of topics. I'm Morgan Beller, and this is my 1st NFX podcast. We've walked 3 continents together, and I hope to walk many more.
You're Russian, you're Canadian, you're currently walking around Singapore. And you work a lot with Americans. And Americans generally seem to think in a fairly fairly American centric way. But at the same time, the world is becoming more Americanized in some ways. So I'm curious, like, both from looking from the inside out and looking from the outside in, What do you observe if anything in the American psyche that you don't think Americans realize about themselves?
There's there's definitely differences between the United States and, like, many other places in the world, though a lot of the time, those differences aren't even what Americans themselves think. Like, just one random example of Right?
This this could also just be like Canadian prejudices, but I just, remember growing up, like, 10 years ago, my, kind of view of the United States says that it's this, you know, horrible materialist, capitalist white supremacist place where Pete eat burgers and fries all day. That's it. I spent some time in America. I spent some time in Europe. Spent some time in to spend some time in a plenty of other places.
And it just it does actually kind of become more and more clear that, You know, there's a lot of places that are significantly worse than the US on each one of those dimensions. And there's plenty of parts in the world that are more materialistic, than the US is, and there's plenty of, places that have, like, less of the of, you know, oh, we should try to be altruistic and kind of try to benefit humanity and those kinds of things.
So even you can even see some of these things in the crypto space. Right? So, like, one example of this would be, just, comparing a US based crypto project to some of the Asian crypto projects to some of the European crypto projects. Like, the crypto space is the strange mix of a kind of very idealistic, you know, open and decentralized the world stuff. To just, hey. Let's trade and gamble and make money.
And the the places that dominate on the trade and gamble and make money access are not the US. So the and the concept of, kind of just even, you know, things like let's support open source for the sake of open source, just to give one example. Like, that's definitely one of those things where that's, stronger in, like, both the US and Europe and then a lot of other places.
And, like, the reason why I say that kind of cut, it cuts across narratives a bit is because, like, the US says, or maybe the maybe the US left story of the US is that the US has, like, very big on, like, selfishness and individualism and not big on hearing about other Pete. But, like, open source software is, like, the exact opposite of selfish as an individual as of Flint so many ways.
And, you know, the in the US and Europe, like, from my own observation are probably 2 of its strongest epic centers. So, I mean, that's just, like, one example of many interesting things and contradictions. How do you define religion? Both what is religion and what is the smallest unit that can still be defined as religion.
Religion itself is definitely a a kind of bundle of a few things, right, like Huberia's like, a set of Beller, there's some notion of, like, some kind of mental and spiritual practice there's, some notion of social connection, and these things all, and Pete tied together. There's all also often some kind of moral code that gets attached, whether that that moral code is, like, kind of personal virtue and how you treat yourself or interpersonal virtue and how you treat other Pete.
And so, you know, there's this kind of big collection of things that are tied together in it. And, influence each other. And we're definitely, I think, starting to kind of answer a a world where those things start kind of coming apart and you start having some of those pieces appearing without other Pete. So, like, even already just the, you know, the idea that they're kind of is literally a man in guy who created the world, you know, was it 6024 years ago? I can't, I can't remember.
Actually, no, it's 6025 now. Sorry. I mean, is, is that end of significantly less popular than, it was, it was a 100 years ago. But At the same time, you know, the demands for the, yeah, kind of not literally Beller related factors is is still quite strong and it's still there.
So, you know, you have things like, you know, like yoga and meditation and, kind of this, attempt to explore all of these meditation and enlightenment concepts that's, a floor book spirituality without really having an epistemology attached to it. There's obvious, there's just secular morality. So it's a lot of the kind of secular moralisms, that, we we talked about before are, like, people, have made the case.
And I'm definitely kind of too far from Christian communities to be able to confirm it than either case. Like, people have made the case, that those, ideas are descended. So, kind of more moralisms that that have been part of, Christianity around kind of loving your the poor and loving your neighbor and loving your enemy and all of these things for, thousands of years.
And then as far as just the end of creating communities between Pete, Beller, the, yeah, kind of internet does supercharge that, but also change the nature of that in a lot of ways. Right? Like, you have fewer of these, kind of some closer connections where you, just meet people, like, once a week or just regularly in person. And then more of these just very loose connections where you just know someone by their username. And I don't know. That kind of connection has a different properties.
So So what what is replacing religion for you and and you know, your tribe? I think, Greg, a lot of things, kind of simultaneously are replacing religion. Some of them kind of more healthy than others. Like, there's definitely, kind of some of these, quote, political religions that are starting to come out lately. And, you know, the, like, there's different name, there's different names for the various political religions, like, there's, civic nationalism. There's Wokeism.
There's, you know, this big, long list. Yeah. So so there's Flint debt communities. So I'm not gonna go into that example, but it's, other aside from that example, of which idea or not, there's, mean, all sorts of subreddits. There's all sorts of, you know, just like various things happening in various dark quarters of the internet. Religion don't satisfy all of the functions of a religion. They do provide some things.
But, like and they they they do provide that of some kind of community aspects, you know, they provide it in a different form. And Do you think subredits camped as religions is Wall Street Betts, a religion of sorts. Ma'am, are you familiar with the book hub revolt public by, Martin Gorey. It's a book by a former CAA analyst, I believe.
And, it's goes through with some of the end of revolutions in the Middle East, that we saw kind of 5 to 15 years ago, Barack Obama, kind of the book was written before Donald Trump and Donald Trump just, like, played into it so perfectly. And, like, it's, it's, you know, discusses what is the common theme between all of these, events.
And so the common theme is basically that Like, the internet and social media are empowering direct, decentralized coordination, and just a much more powerful scale than, was possible before. And so, so, basically, the elites that were able to maintained controls during previous, eras are just having a much harder time of, of doing that just because of this of the sudden technological shock.
And the people who are not elites that have just various grievances with the things that the elites are doing are basically just aducing this new platform to revolt. And the way that I'm seeing Wall Street Beller is basically revolts of the public, comes to the stock market. Right?
So if you think about the stock market, one of these big defining events and a lot of these people's lives is the 2008 green financial crisis, right, where, you know, financial institutions, governments, and, like, a lot of powerful actors made some very big mistakes, and, I mean, mistakes is given them to kind of 2 kinds of word for it.
They had acted in ways that maximized their profits, so without without much concern for the and followed that, that could happen not just to them, but also to everyone else in the, in the case of the big risks.
And, a lot of people were that very angry about this, and I don't think anyone really Morgan, and a lot of people feel that, like, basically they got off easy, right, that they, yeah, words punished, for what they, what they did before 2007 hard enough, that, you know, almost No one or even no one, kind of went to jail in 2009 to 2010. The banks are mostly all still intact, and they're still doing really Beller.
And, like, Pete, just lots of people feel like the financial industry just hasn't, learn, learn their lesson. And they feel like they're just continuing to play all sorts of complicated games and just kind of manipulate and participate in this rigged financial system that's just designs to screw over the little guy, essentially.
And happened to a GameStop was basically that, well, at the beginning, you know, you have these creditors and they, started buying up this, stock that, had a lot of people shorting it. And they just thought that, you know, Hey, this company is the sun. It's a nice, old gay gaming company. It deserves to survive and have a chance. And, like, how dare these bankers, like basically just try to kill it. And then as the price went up, it just kind of evolved and they grew stronger.
And as I'm gonna shot up, much higher than, I think, anyone or almost anyone even expected at the time, and, that was, like, you know, it just kind of turned into this kind of much more powerful kind of symbolic thing that basically well, and it became even more powerful and, symbolic once all of this, kind of Robinhood stuff started happening, right, like, when that people, like, stopped being able to trade, when, then, like, basically, There were, and
especially when some of the kind of media pieces from, you know, the Wall Street a journal and all of these kind of financial Morgan that are coming out basically, blaming the kind of market market manipulators for screwing around with the it. And the public response was like, dude, you've been screwing around with the market since forever. How, you know, how dare you, blame us for doing for doing the thing that you really do as your, as your source of profit every single year.
And, I don't know, like, And, no, I think I'll, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Right? Like, I think I, like, I definitely don't buy the extreme story that says that short selling is, like, kind of fundamentally illegitimate as a concept. Right? Like, I think, you know, short selling is the financial markets. What produces a mist of free You know, you can't have, a speech, ecosystem without criticism. You can't have a financial ecosystem without being able to bet against things.
But at the same time, like, you know, it is true that there are a lot of these systems that have kind of multiple equilibrium And there's a lot of people even in the traditional financial space to get rid of of kind of attacking these systems and using big piles of money that ordinary people would never have access to to just force the system from one equilibrium to another and to profit as a result.
And know, they've been doing it since forever, and now that a group of, kind of random anonymous millennial editors is doing it. They're they're upset. And, you know, nobody's buying it. Realize it, but I think there's a kind of a lot of things that are very beautiful about that.
I think, yeah, it's definitely kind of just interesting because it does kind of just bring back Flint and center all of these, issues about the financial system that we've Really, people have been talking about the some extent for 12 years, but now it's, kind of, just all coming back. And As for what will come of this? I yeah. How do you think the financial industry will be impacted beyond, you know, some hedge funds lost some money? You talked about you think up will be effective.
But do you think any changes will actually happen regulatory? I definitely think there's going to be some kind of reforms of, just how stock markets work and how trading works. Like, even just the whole concept of, like, delayed settlements, where, you know, every like, when you buy a stock, you don't actually have the stock until 2 days in the future.
And the for those 2 days, the company basically or whatever broker you're trading through provides some amount of capital ahead of time, and they have to have a float that's proportional to some estimate of the volatility or whatever. Like, that whole scheme is definitely going to be looked at again. I I mean, that, like, it's time to switch to instant settlement, which, I'm always an amazing, like, And I definitely hope that we see some experiments in that direction.
I mean, on the other hand, I know that, you know, there's kind of the the stodgy old defenders of, the people us do approach to talk about the benefits of capital efficiency, and, just, it's some of those benefits from having delayed settlement and just allowing whatever kind of conflicting trades happen within that time period to cancel. We show they're out without needing to move any stock at all.
But at the same time, like, I'm not sure that, the millennials value and of financial efficiency that highly. I wanted to bring up you. I wanted to bring up you this one, but, speaking very abstractly, right? Like, the idea is that instead of having an order book exchange, you have this, kind of automated thing that just gives, like, a Currier, you know, the, the famous x times y goals k Currier.
And you if you can buy and sell against the curve by kind of moving along the curve and then whatever amount you move left is the type you give up and then, you know, you move obviously amount of tokens of the other type that you get. And it's this fully kind of just automated and incredibly simple construct. And theoretically, there's a lot of these kind of very good reasons for why it should be much more sufficient than a traditional order book exchanges.
And Pete, it's been much more does fall than, traditional order book exchanges. So, like, efficiency in a kind of idealized financial models is definitely not the only thing that Brexit sits at. And so I do wonder, like, is there some but he that, you know, to help with whatever inefficiencies that introduces because, you know, T plus 0 just is right and just. I'm like, I don't know.
We'll see. So I I do wonder if, you know, just like in the this example of Uniswapha, we're just gonna see much more examples of, people trying out, t plus 0 instance settlements in a lot of different context and liking T plus 0 settlements in a lot of instant context, in a lot of different contexts and just like to Beller with the financial when you finish and see if that it brings because it just, like, makes more intuitive sense.
So there's definitely also a, yeah, kind of broader cultural trend here, I think, which is like it definitely does feel like a kind of changing of the guard moments. Right? Like, you know, you see these kind of articles from the industry find, the issue of finding actual media that are, and of, you know, defending short sellers and edge funds and talking about how terrible, let's say, a James stop Beller and, you know, comparing them to these, trump supporters that, so a joyful leak.
I'm entered, your capital a few weeks ago. And, it just I don't think these people realize just to the extent to which they're just so perfectly fitting into that kind of tired old guard that just doesn't get the way, that the world has changed and things work difficult differently now vibe, right? Like, There's a it it feels like, you know, the kind of younger generation just has different ways of looking at financial markets.
There was less of this kind of expectation that markets are supposed to work like. Some kind of, you know, really well oiled, highly efficient, efficient machine where, you know, everybody is really serious. And, there's these if people follow these rules, then it does, like, perfect price discovery or anything like that. I think, you know, millennials are just more inclined today. Say, oh, you know, financial markets are right. I can't believe joke already, so let's just get in on the joke.
And I think that's, you know, to a large extent, that's inevitable. And there is, of course, the challenging question of, No. If, financial markets are going to be more chaotic and if things like a GameStop and Tesla are gonna be more the norms and the exception going forward, then, you know, what does that mean for the world and the economy as a whole? Any predictions or any thoughts on what or how financial markets may might or should be restructured as a result of this?
I generally am a fan of the approach that just says, well, you know, the markets are just gonna be what they are and that there's it's not clear that there's all that much that you can, that you can do about it without risking making things worse. And so the thing that we should focus on is that making sure that people's lives are, doing Beller, regardless of where the market sits at any particular points in time. One thing that is affecting the whole world.
Like, UBI And Beller Care and other topics you mentioned, but that is currently being decided on by local jurisdictions is the COVID vaccine. And there's this interesting or what I find interesting concept of challenge trials So the COVID vaccine, like, introduces idea of challenge trials to most people for the first time.
You know, the idea that you waive your liability rights by volunteering to get the vaccine early, and you're waiving your rights in exchange for hoping this vaccine saves your life, hoping this vaccine saves other lives and hoping to if you're thinking on behalf of the greater good that it expedites the testing and data collection and you know, saves the world. What are other areas in modern life that you think we should have challenged trials for?
Like, I think, one of the big, kind of problems with medical ethics, that I personally really dislike is, like, a hundred people dying of medical experiments gone wrong is a tragedy, but a million Pete, dying because, a treatment came a year later than otherwise what is a statistic. And, like, the, or the, just the way that, of medical ethics in particular is, like, structured as, like, the whole thing is basically turned around.
Like, you know, don't be like the task of the experiments and don't be like Beller and don't feel like them and all of these kind of nasty examples. And just because of, like, scope and sensitivity, which is a universal human fallacy, there's definitely not really this appreciation of, kind of need for speed as a humanitarian end in itself.
Like need for speed is, like, kind of just perceived as a, you know, reckless humans, reckless Silicon Valley prejudice perhaps, but, you know, the the fact that things, innovations happening earlier rather than later and just that, you know, really does improve a lot of people's lives and it's just a strong social good is still something that's underappreciated. And COVID feels like it's starting to change that. Right?
Like, like, I definitely that, you know, the the challenge to Allison of vaccines were both, like, approved and started, like, far, later than they actually should have been. But you know, after this experience, I definitely think that people are going to be more willing and more inclined to just start things earlier because COVID really does make clear that, you know, waiting has a cost. Right?
Like, every month of waiting, costs 400 or whatever number of, 100 of 1000 of lives Beller month of waiting continuous debilitating the economy. Every month of waiting continues at destabilizing political systems. And so if we can just, like, solve things technologically with the vaccines, then, like, the earlier we do that, like, basically Beller month of earlyness, in the solution is just such a large humanitarian game.
And I I I'm definitely hoping that that spirit can be applied to kind of a lot of other spheres. Going outside of kind of the medical, examples, one other thing that would be interesting to just consider is, the idea of kind of more experimental jurisdictions.
So basically places where you know, if you go and Flint in that place, that's that's considered as explicitly signing a contract that says that you're okay with, basically living in a place where a lot of new stuff gets tried, and there's certain kinds of higher risks.
So, you know, one example of this might be like drone food delivery, which, is something that, you know, if it can be made to work, we'll just you know, solve so many issues that were just the, like, get rid of traffic jams or at least significantly alleviated traffic jams. It would significantly allev at a lot of environmental issues, just reduce costs, make life better for poor people in a lot of ways. Self driving cars might be another one of those examples.
You know, just like a 1000 little things and just trying to more rapidly kind of iterate and, experiments on the urban environment. So, you know, can we have a city where if you move to the city, then, you know, you are like, basically, human challenge trialing self driving cars and deliveries Morgan something. I don't think that'll be really cool. Well, I cannot wait to live in an experimental jurisdiction in 3 1021 with you where biology is our president, and we are eating plant based diets.
That will be delivered to us by drones. Or I guess we won't be eating by then. Who knows? There'll be tubes in us or something like that. What is something that you think is truly widely accepted today that people will either realize is wrong or will be less widely accepted in 2 years 5 years 20 years and in a 100 years. And I think the different timescales, like, eliminate different factors.
So I mean, I guess speaking of, believing a guide currently in 2021, the really cool thing is believing in dog. Like, have you seen the dose corn prices? Our relationship to what kind of physical location is definitely going to kind of continue to change.
I, like, Our our relationship to nationality is going to, like, considerably change as a as a result of this as well, like, just the concept of, you know, if you're not hap not happy in a place or you feel like your rights are being entrenched in a particular place, then, like, you know, Wi Fi it just, go to a place that satisfies your values better is, one of those things that I think is, we're gonna start and of seeing more and more of. Our this is a scary one.
Our relationship to privacy is going to change Kilea and to kind of vary drastically just because, like, in some spheres, the right, the, the ability to communicate privately still exists. Right? Like, you have all of these encrypted chats and encrypted text in all of these, but, like, the level of in person privacy that, we have is lower than it has been in pretty much any point in history. Right?
Like, in a few decades, we're going to be, like, you know, forget about, you know, that, like, China being able to survey all the movements of its own people or the US being able to survey all the movements of its own people. Like, you'll be able to have China be able to survey all the movements of US people and the US being able to survey all the movements of Chinese people just because, you know, resolution from satellites is gonna be is going to be powerful enough to do that sort of thing.
So, you know, what will geopolitics look like in that kind of world as one of those kind of challenging questions that, is going to be interesting. Omri relationship to just the concept of how we form groups and tribes is definitely going to just change massively, though I'm not exactly sure how. Another fascinating one, I think, is that our, like, there's the concept of, yeah, immutable. Right?
Like, right, even up the top of this mind Pete where you're distinguishing, which is human nature and human nature is immutable, then there is kind of layers that you can wrap on top of around speech, whether it's education, whether it's tools, Beller it's, you know, having a phone that you can use to Google stuff, whether it's like ideologies and all of these things.
But over the next 100 years, or in the next 100 years, we are going to figure out how to, basically reprogram our self storage degree. And that is just going to break a lot of philosophical concepts. Like, even the philosophical conception of human equality, right, is to wanting to be challenged.
It's just them, like, much more explicitly, kind of differentiated between, you know, the idea of, more early quality in that everyone has a worth and like the everyone a bill, I think the ability to have good experiences is, something that's inherently valuable for a humanity to shoot for, from, you know, like, claims about, kind of, like, specific kind of physical or kind of, you know, mental mental similarity between different people.
And just kind of philosophically navigating that Beller, and creating the world that's kind of gets, you know, the good properties of out, out of all that, while, I don't know, at the, at the same time, just preserving this, a really important idea that we're trying to create a world where everyone can feel empowered and you know, feel feel good, essentially, just still continues. So that will be, interesting.
One thing that I think that I'm not worried about is, second well, One thing that I think will happen at that Flint that I'm not worried about is the 2nd order, social, and cultural effects of longevity. The longevity in particular, I think, is one of those things that it will cause changes and that it will lead to, you know, the world population, it just, like, totally not fitting in with, you know, standard development experts predictions.
And they'll be like, wait, WTF player, there are 17 Beller people in the world and 21100. Our charts showed that there should have been, like, 7,000,000,000. But, the look, the reality is that that the change is just gonna happens solely enough just in here because people already age at a maximum of 1 year per year that, we will be able to adapt. I can't wait for the meme army to take on people age at an average of 1 year per year and see what they do and see what they do with that.
You mentioned the Pete word privacy, one of my favorite and most troubling topics. And you said that our relationship with privacy is going to change, and that's scary one. Scary is a very polite way of saying how tariff terrifying it is, and that's why I had to stop watching black mirror because it became too real. And, unfortunately, I wish I was more optimistic, but it does seem like the object is in Morgan, and it's going to stay in Morgan. Do you see any ways to combat that momentum?
One possibility is that more of our life moves into the virtual sphere. And thanks to things like encryption and 0 knowledge groups and all of these cryptographic technologies, the virtual sphere will continue to be fairly free of snooping, and or at least have, out of less significantly less snooping than the than the physical world does. So that would be a kind of short and medium term mitigation to not having any privacy about.
I now have a pretty good idea of what your life and 3021 is going to look like, and it sounds pretty great. And, again, I hope to I plan on being there with you between now and then the near future, what do you think of, like, the next 1 to 10 years and what specifically what do you think or what do you have confidence in that most people would say is crazy? Okay. So I think, in the medium term future, 2020 will be remembered as a nadir.
So as a bottom point for probably US and a global, just like political culture and that people's ability to Pete, you get along with each other at large scales. And, basically, from here, things are only slowly going to start to improve. I expect that we're going to see almost a lot of, kind of different positive trends that kind of start coming out and, getting stronger over the next decade or so.
Like, one of the trends that I'm personally kind of excited about that a lot of people aren't following well is just this notion of, kind of, the techno progressive political conscience, like, just this idea that, you know, the large humanitarian gains that can come from, basically, you know, things like the longevity research, and the drones and, just building better cities and space travel and all of these things really can do a watch to kind
of, like, uplift people's lives in the end Pete people's make people's lives much better. What other things, to be optimistic about the rise the rise of, the thing that economists call, like, Tia Blue competition or, like, however, they pronounce the person's James, just like this idea that, you know, if you If you're not happy with the jurisdiction you're in, you actually can go and move to another one.
That's, like, we, we've been, we've been seeing, kind of the rise of, that in kind of, you know, 2020 2021 kind of slowly. So that in, you know, there's already more and more of these governments that are issuing no head of digital nomad visas. There's a lot of people, just even within, Jewel country is like, you know, if a Princess make this be the city of cool tech. And if you wanna come here, then, you know, you should come here. And just, like, essentially, jurisdictions.
This was a kind of somewhat Morgan like actor and they're kind of hopefully, just pushing each other, competing with each other too and, making each other better. This is, one of those, things that I'm definitely you know, cautiously optimistic about that good things come out of this. What else? There's a like, in general, like, basically, people were stuck in, bad jurisdictions should not be stuck. And then this is, one of those things that, I can, I hope we can find a way to get past?
Global poverty reduction, I think, kind of mainstream narratives really don't properly, appreciate the extent to which places like Africa are just continuing to, have quickly growing economies.
And, like, I've been following more and more people from, Africa on Twitter and There's like a theory just kind of strong and positive, like, positive, optimistic feeling among the among the, I guess, this community that's I really like, and and some of my other kind of culture, you know, generally, cultural ligand figures that I really like.
It's just, you know, there's, Africa doesn't really have, that much of a recent past, you know, like, it's basically just a lot of colonization and slavery. The present the president has been better, but still not, but still far from perfect. Another thing, also just the small countries. So, like, small countries are just a category that, I think, did really well, in 2020. Right?
Like, I think maybe in 2019, the way that it seemed was that we were just kind of moving toward more and more domination by this, like, large powers and, like, you know, it basically be the US and China and maybe the EU. Just of having a larger and larger influence on the world to the extent exception of, everyone Beller.
But in 2020, like, we were just seeing a lot of small countries did really, a really good job handling COVID, A lot of small countries are doing a really good job of just having healthy internal political cultures. A lot of small countries are doing a good job of, like, just having better and better policies. So that's interesting. Like, I think, a world with a Morgan, and kind of empowered small countries is a a world with, more choice and more choice and more experimentation.
I asked you to explain the future, and I did not specifically ask you to be optimistic or pessimistic, and all your responses were optimistic. So the fact that optimism was your default for what the future looks like, gives me hope, and puts a smile on my face. So here we are, and I think this is the longest I've ever gotten without talking about China. So the time has come. The geopolitical climate is both increasingly and decreasingly affecting and affected by the tech world.
And China's playing an increasing role every day as we've discussed many types, one specific example of where this power and China power struggle and physical and digital technologies is emphasized as with Taiwan. And the Semiconductor Industry. Generally, curious for your thoughts on How important from a geopolitical perspective? Is it for Taiwan to remain Taiwan?
And what happens from a technology perspective, from a privacy perspective, from an economic perspective, if China gets their way, with Taiwan. My general kind of moral view, of course, is that kind of the the focus of, those kinds of questions should be the welfare of people in Taiwan and not kind of, you know, bigger power games between, like, you know, much larger forces that some have whatever end of security inter security or political interests.
You know, I mean, it's, I mean, that one itself has been doing really well. Like, it's, I I visited it many times. It's, got a very night. Got a nice democratic political culture. It's got Audrey Towing. She is a very amazing, nice, late late late nice crypto community as well. I I have to say this because, unfortunately, it is my window to kind of every single part of the, every single part of the world.
So and I think, definitely definitely very much wish that, Taiwan that that Taiwan does Beller. With, but in terms of how that will intersect with all of these kind of geopolitical things, I don't know. Yeah, this is one of those areas that's, just very hard to, predict. I, I have a feeling that That's kind of optimistic feeling that, nothing very terrible is going to happen there, just because I feel like people are, like, as the world becomes more interconnected.
Like, there's just going to be too many people that realize any kind of really serious conflict. There's just a negative sum game for everyone. We'll see it in the fingers crossed. And it seems like there is a growing skepticism or mainstream skepticism of China Morgan concern that they're gonna do X, y, and z. What do you think people are underestimating in regards to China? And what do you think people are overestimating in regards to China?
Because mean, for context, you've spent a lot of time there. I think you speak Mandarin. I think you have a different perspective on it. I do think that people in the US overestimate the insta wish they can, accomplish what they think their objectives are by, going after a Chinese tech company specifically.
Like, basically, I think that, I mean, like, if your strategy for the scary things, that's, know, you're worried about Chinese tech company is doing is is specifically to go after checklists, then, like, 1st of all, you're going to be very vulnerable to just anyone, any non chinese tech, tech company Morgan anyone from any other part of the world that doing, trying to do exactly the same thing.
And, like, basically, if you've, like, essentially, I think my philosophy for cybersecurity space specifically is that we need less going after lions and more armoring the sheep, just because If you're go the problem with going after lions is that when you go after lions, it's hard to, incredibly convince the world that you're the one going after the lions and you're not the one being the lion.
And, like, in all, like, and the problem is that, like, the sort, the sort of entity and culture you need to become in order to like, properly attack Chinese tech company as many other other disadvantages. So could also be just kind of the libertarian and me speaking where I just keep wanting to think that, like, the the important thing is not America versus China. The important thing is like, companies versus state as an everywhere, essentially.
It it it's definitely true that, like, a lot of the Flint, even if it's, negative some for Humanity overall as a good for crypto. No, it's interesting how, conflicts, kind of, it can often end up by being, actually being good for the 3rd party. Right? Like, there's a, I remember when I was still in the high There was this interesting puzzle, about three people in a duel. Where it's, like, basically it's Pete people in a shooting duel.
That have a different levels of accuracy, a is more accurate than b is and b is more accurate than c. And the question is, who is the most likely to win the duel? And under a lot of, like, choices for rules and parameters, the answer is c. And in fact, the answer is c to such an extent that if the roles says that Pete that C shoots first, then C is optimal first shot is to shoot is to shoot in the air to make sure he does not hit ARB the first time.
And the reason why this is true is because A and B both know that A and B are each other's greatest threat. And so they're just gonna basically kill each other, and so it sees the most to emerge as the winner. And I mean, where you can see most of, like, mechanics are like this a lot of the time. Right? So, like, one fun political example is that, As of 2021, the Vietnam has won 2 wars with the United States. The 1st war is the 1 in the 1960s and the 70s.
And the second example is that Vietnam is the winner of the retreat war between the US and China. So and cryptile is, definitely one of those things that's, well positioned to be, again, like, this, Pete that set the winner of, great conflicts between whether it's, like, one state versus another state or states versus corporations.
That actually, like, what you're saying kind of, like, triggers me to think of, something I've been thinking about, which is January 2021, I think, has been an unintentional ad for decentralization. Which is something we've talked about.
I know I'm gonna use the c word, but in that, like, the first half of the month was and add pretty centralized communication apps, you know, with Trump getting kicked off everywhere, signal and telegram seeing record numbers, WhatsApp changing their privacy settings, And the second half of the month could not have been a better advertisement for decentralized finance. You're like, wow. But it was also a head fake. In that.
You see AOC. You see Ted Cruz all agreeing and getting riled up, and you're just like, wow. Everyone's gonna be so focused on the wrong thing Like, everyone's gonna be focused on the Flint of Robinhood, the financial systems, hedge funds, and DeFi is the sheep here. No. January 2021 was definitely to kinda very interesting, like, kind of Currier ball bag balancing back and forth month, like, especially in terms of just, like, the narrative around censorship, right?
Like, in the wake of the, you know, social media responses to, and, you know, the the the lovely uptick that you guys had over at DC the exam, like, basically a lot of people were, you know, booted off of social media and there was this kind of big, uproar around, hate speech and all these things. And, like, it was definitely, you know, a lot of ways, like, the most pro censorship moments, kind of in the culture Morgan least, like, the last, like, a couple of decades.
And in a lot of ways, like, that really worry to me, right? Like, And you even saw, you know, the response from outside, the response from outside the US must say, be rewarded. But like you saw, I'm Alex saying, yeah, that might make the, the Russian, the kind of opposition politician, basically, you know, like I said, you know, like, hey, guys, you're making a bad precedence Pete. And given that people from Europe were, concerns.
Well, you know, well, people in like, places in Europe do have, kind of government, imposed their restrictions on every Pete, like, you know, like, Germany has, I'm in the anti Nazi or some laws and all that, but they're very concerned about this idea of, like, basically a private corporation kind of enforcing speech restrictions Morgan, and ultimately, bigger than the country, just the, the world in some sense.
So, but at the same time, like, you know, within the US, like, there was definitely that's kind of dominant mood. I thought that, You know, these things are necessary and, like, actually, you know, the free speech thing is kind of overrated. And then 2 weeks later, the, Wall Street that's, discord server got, like, taken down from James, for hate speech. I was like, wait a minute. This stuff can actually get abused.
So, yeah, that was, an interesting, kind of one punch shot, 2 punch purple that everyone got. And in terms of what I think will happen, I think, kind of the chat is definitely out of the bag in terms of centralized entities, being pressured to censor people and just generally, and if Pete off of off of their platforms, if they're doing things that that they don't like.
You know, so I see the trends going forward as, like, just being, both of the, centralized services that end up needing to, or being pressured to kind of go after people and that people trying to, create these some alternatives to centralized services on the other hand, and they're just being a complicated interplay between these things, and that's going to be one of the big dynamics of, the next couple of decades. So we'll see you. Vitalic. You make me laugh. You make me smile.
You expand my brain. Thank you. This has been so fun. Thank you, Morgan. This has been fun. You've been listening to the NFX podcast. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you can subscribe to the NFX podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcast. For more information on building iconic technology companies, visitnfx.com.