Speaker 1: So the big question is this, how do investors like
Speaker 1: us get access to the ideas, information, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: the right people that give us the tools and information
Speaker 1: we need to make informed and educated decisions to have success.
Speaker 1: That is the question, and this podcast will give us
Speaker 1: the answers. This is Mark Moss, your host. Let's get
Speaker 1: this started. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Market Disruptors podcast. Today, I'm sitting down with Rob Biglione,
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of zen Labs, and we are
Speaker 1: talking about their Privacy coin, privacy platform, and privacy overall,
Speaker 1: the need for privacy. We're talking about what the US
Speaker 1: government is talking about encryption, putting in backdoors, why privacy
Speaker 1: is important, what that fight of encryption looks like, and
Speaker 1: then we get into some other topics. Rob is a
Speaker 1: pH d in economics, so we get into economics, Austrian economics,
Speaker 1: and so much more. It's a great conversation with Rob,
Speaker 1: and just go ahead and jump right into it. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of the Market Disruptors Podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: I am joined by Rob Biglione. He is the CEO,
Speaker 1: co founder of zen Labs, Horizon Cryptocurrency, and he's got
Speaker 1: a very good background before that as well. It's very interesting.
Speaker 1: We're gonna dive into UM but let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Welcome Rob Hey, thanks for having me appreciate it. Yes,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of conversations in the past. It's
Speaker 1: always a pleasure to talk. So thanks. Thanks for coming
Speaker 1: back on UM. So I've got to know you pretty
Speaker 1: good over the past. But for people that are listening
Speaker 1: for the first time, why don't you give us your background,
Speaker 1: which I think is very interesting in kind of your
Speaker 1: path into cryptocurrencies and what you're working on right now.
Speaker 1: Totally So at my background, Actually, I started my career
Speaker 1: as a physicist and mathematician working UH with the military.
Speaker 1: So I was an Air Force officer, worked in Air
Speaker 1: Force Space commander, working on satellites and intelligence systems and
Speaker 1: rockets that launch them up. And from there I went
Speaker 1: into the more of the operational side of the intelligence
Speaker 1: world and actually parked myself in Afghanistan for a couple
Speaker 1: of years doing initially a counter i E ed mission.
Speaker 1: It was really quant a quant intel work, and then
Speaker 1: started working with a bunch of different parts of the
Speaker 1: military and a bunch of different missions over there UH,
Speaker 1: and then from there I got lucky enough to have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to go back to academia, so I left
Speaker 1: that world, went back to from my PhD in financial economics,
Speaker 1: and I had a very good departments that allowed me
Speaker 1: to study bitcoin. I was studying asset pricing specifically, and
Speaker 1: then they allowed me to actually look at bitcoin asset pricing,
Speaker 1: so that was fun. Um. They hired me back as
Speaker 1: an adjunct faculty member to teach bitcoin in boxing applications
Speaker 1: and finance, and then I launched zen cash back into
Speaker 1: the seventeen with my cocount row first Loose and we
Speaker 1: ran that as an open um, you know, public boxing
Speaker 1: system for a couple of years, and just recently in
Speaker 1: this January, we launched an off shoot, basically a commercial
Speaker 1: offshoot called Horizon Labs, which is really taking the base
Speaker 1: protocol technology that we've created there and we can talk
Speaker 1: about that, but bringing that to the commercial domain and
Speaker 1: really just trying to get that next level exposure for
Speaker 1: the tech and then the real economic use cases. So
Speaker 1: um Horizons in which used to be zen cash, now
Speaker 1: Horizon is a is a privacy coin right forked off
Speaker 1: of z cash and z classic, etcetera. But you have
Speaker 1: your privacy coin, and then you went on to become
Speaker 1: more of a privacy protocol where you could build privacy
Speaker 1: applications such as private messenger, private storage, etcetera. So it's
Speaker 1: not what you're talking about taking that layer and putting
Speaker 1: that out of Rising Labs. That's exactly right. So actually,
Speaker 1: to be specific, we're we're a few months away now
Speaker 1: from releasing an alpha of our side chain protocol. So
Speaker 1: the way that we're looking at this, and really the
Speaker 1: that pivot from a privacy coin to a platform is
Speaker 1: via side chain. So the way we look at it
Speaker 1: is we want to create a hub and spoke sort
Speaker 1: of model where you have a very stable, secure main
Speaker 1: chain and then you have all the applications of the
Speaker 1: logic and business logic and anything that you want to
Speaker 1: do bespoke, um, you can do on a side chain,
Speaker 1: and you can have your own side chains. You can
Speaker 1: have any number of side chains. Really that that part
Speaker 1: is not really bounded um and then it doesn't the
Speaker 1: stuff that happens on the sessions doesn't necessarily clog up
Speaker 1: the main chain. All that goes to the main chain
Speaker 1: is basically the security feature. In the fact that's consensus
Speaker 1: on the side chains the met So this is our
Speaker 1: our solution for skillability basically and really where I think
Speaker 1: we will be industry leaders once we're release this because
Speaker 1: it's a truly unfederated side chain system. And when we
Speaker 1: talk about philosophy and you know, what we're doing later
Speaker 1: in the show, we can talk about that, but I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to be truly decentralized. And the
Speaker 1: side chaine systems on the market to date have been centralized,
Speaker 1: so those where you have to rely on trusted nodes
Speaker 1: or trusted certifiers. Ours is truly decentralized, one where the
Speaker 1: main chain doesn't even have to know what happens in
Speaker 1: the side chain. No one approves or you know, authorizes
Speaker 1: of the side chain to exist. It's just any aptive
Speaker 1: offering and take our toolkit, launce there on blockchain is
Speaker 1: the horizon side chain, and do whatever they want on
Speaker 1: that chain and still retain the security properties of you know,
Speaker 1: our public architecture. Interesting, so a lot of times we'll see,
Speaker 1: like with Lightning for example, as a side chain of Bitcoin,
Speaker 1: Lightning is more centralized and solutely yeah less, it's less
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's less secure than the decentralized main chain. Um.
Speaker 1: So typically I think of side chains is less less secure, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: but you're saying there's a way that you guys can
Speaker 1: keep a side chain but still keep its security or decentralization.
Speaker 1: There absolutely like massively secure. So we're actually using an
Speaker 1: interesting recursive snark technique for security and leveraging our thirty
Speaker 1: thousand nodes basically are are super and secure notes system.
Speaker 1: They have close to a third about thirty thousand nodes
Speaker 1: right now like full nodes operating in the network, and
Speaker 1: they will be basically a competitive marketplace for them to
Speaker 1: be certifying nodes. So you'll have a massive note network
Speaker 1: where basically, um, you know, all of these notes will
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to act certifiers or forgers on on
Speaker 1: the side chains and also actively hunting and sent to
Speaker 1: byst the hunt for fraud uh and uncover fraud. So
Speaker 1: it's actually extremely secure system. That's that's nice hybrid public
Speaker 1: private architecture. Yeah. I remember you guys had suffered an attack,
Speaker 1: um that you caught pretty quickly and you got really
Speaker 1: in front of which I really thought that the way
Speaker 1: you handled that was good, um, and you made some
Speaker 1: updates to the system, so um, I believe if incorrect,
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong. But after that you had updated
Speaker 1: system and even changed the way maybe the consensus work
Speaker 1: so that even though um, your chain might be, let's
Speaker 1: have less value than the Bitcoin main chain, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make it easier to attack. That's exactly right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: what we did was we modified the macomotive consensus. So
Speaker 1: instead of just being um, you know, I'll say, naively,
Speaker 1: just the longest chain role you know, the most the
Speaker 1: most proof of work, um, you know, dictating which which
Speaker 1: branch of a chain gets to be the valid one,
Speaker 1: we added a second check which basically provides a delayed
Speaker 1: block penalty. So that so the attack vector for this
Speaker 1: fift one percent attack thing is basically you would have
Speaker 1: a neferious actor mining privately and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden dumping all of these box of devine privately into
Speaker 1: the network and scooping the network into thinking that it
Speaker 1: has the most accumulated pro for work, and then they
Speaker 1: can execute double spends. And this happened to us. We
Speaker 1: had a few double spends that were executed or basically, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a hacker or whatever you wanna call this
Speaker 1: type of criminal stole a few hundred thous dollars from
Speaker 1: an exchange it lists that. Um. So it was a
Speaker 1: terrible event, but not catastrophic. What it did was it
Speaker 1: really kicked us into gear to try to solve this
Speaker 1: problem for the industry and for us of course, so
Speaker 1: we added this second check. So it's really a two
Speaker 1: checks type of consensus. Now it makes us much more robust.
Speaker 1: If you know, without it, then we are without it. Um. Now.
Speaker 1: Not not to say like bitcoin is massively secure because
Speaker 1: it has a ridiculous amount of per for work on there.
Speaker 1: We have a miniscule amount of work, but our penalty function,
Speaker 1: we can actually modulate that to be as escalated quickly
Speaker 1: be on it to be and right now it's you know,
Speaker 1: it seems to be more than sufficient to protect us.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's good now. UM. I know, with new technologies
Speaker 1: we can't really envision the future because they give us
Speaker 1: new platforms to build new things off of. We can't imagine,
Speaker 1: but um, as best as we can. What do you
Speaker 1: see being done on these side changes at least now
Speaker 1: or in the near future. Yeah, I mean, so there
Speaker 1: there's a ton and actually are we we have a
Speaker 1: go to market strategy we have a great strategy marketing
Speaker 1: bad team, and they've already been carving out projects with
Speaker 1: select design partners. So basically, right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: once our alpha's released, you're gonna hear an announcement for
Speaker 1: some key companies and projects that we're working on. Two
Speaker 1: showcase the technology. So for instance, one of them is
Speaker 1: a large digital invoicing company in Latin America looking at
Speaker 1: um integrating cryptocurrency payments, looking to do things like factoring marketplaces.
Speaker 1: So if their clients have receivables or payables these notes,
Speaker 1: they can actually digitize them, you know, standardize them, make
Speaker 1: them transparent, and put them into an auction marketplace environment.
Speaker 1: So that's something we're looking at. By by doing that
Speaker 1: side chain, they have their own token exactly, so they
Speaker 1: have the token their own system. So basically, if if
Speaker 1: their system becomes massively popular, it's theirs. They control it.
Speaker 1: And then importantly, we provide our software developer toolkit provides
Speaker 1: a basically a reference blockchain model and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of tools, but they can modify the consensus and at
Speaker 1: any type of transaction type they want from there to
Speaker 1: really make it very bespoken configurable to their needs. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so that that's one of them. Um. So also
Speaker 1: there's another projects looking at a factory marketplace seems to
Speaker 1: be a pretty hot topic, and another auction environment looking
Speaker 1: at a tokenization platform, looking at working with one of
Speaker 1: the main maintainers for a version of hyper Ledger that
Speaker 1: has an e v M UH and seeing if maybe
Speaker 1: we can put in UH an e v M variant
Speaker 1: of hyper Ledger running as a Horizon side chain. So
Speaker 1: it just shows you the generalizability of it as long
Speaker 1: as UM an a v M an Ethereum virtual machine,
Speaker 1: so exactly right, So an Etherium virtual machine as a
Speaker 1: side chain on the Horizon main chain exactly. And in
Speaker 1: that sense, it means that any smart contract that was
Speaker 1: written on Ethereum would be compatible to basically just kind
Speaker 1: of ported over to work with US. Now wouldn't interact
Speaker 1: with the you know, the Ethereum chain, but you're basically
Speaker 1: replicating the same type of you know, infrastructure that then
Speaker 1: they can build on us as an alternative. Okay, yeah, okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Um So you know when we talk about like bass
Speaker 1: layers and then we add chains and layers and side
Speaker 1: chains and all these different things on there, Um I
Speaker 1: mean that's kind of how things scale. Um, what about like,
Speaker 1: um using like side chain or some sort of like
Speaker 1: horizon side chain to like add like a a privacy
Speaker 1: layer on top of a bitcoin, like a side chain
Speaker 1: of bitcoin. There's some sort of like interoperability like that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. That's a really interesting question. We honestly have
Speaker 1: not thought about that. So that's that's something to consider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff. What I like about the side chain model
Speaker 1: is you can experiment with any type of system as
Speaker 1: a side chain, and rather than the launster room blockchain
Speaker 1: and figure out how you do this big big launching
Speaker 1: and convince people to run your software, you can just
Speaker 1: do it a small experiment on the side chain. Modify
Speaker 1: the you know, the privacy features, modify the applications you
Speaker 1: running their, modify consensus. Uh. It's an excellent experimental environment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could almost like, uh, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe wrap wrap the wrap the bitcoin with us in
Speaker 1: privacy coin and then uh and then add like a
Speaker 1: privacy layer on top of the bitcoin network or something
Speaker 1: like that. UM, I don't know, I've I often just
Speaker 1: thought about like you know, obviously bitcoin is missing a
Speaker 1: huge piece of that of privacy. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a big glaring hole that maybe they'll get to
Speaker 1: at some point. But then there's a good solutions like
Speaker 1: like uh like Horizon and I just wondered about that,
Speaker 1: But I'm not I'm not the guy to figure that
Speaker 1: out by any means. Uh, But I definitely understand that
Speaker 1: the need for privacy. You know, from your background, you
Speaker 1: were in the military, and I think you were working
Speaker 1: on some sort of like encryption stuff there or some
Speaker 1: sort of reconnaissance intelligence or something. Yeah, I mean definitely
Speaker 1: encrypted systems, but really from the intelligence satellite perspective. Okay,
Speaker 1: So but encryption, and so you understand you understand kind
Speaker 1: of the need for that. Um, what do you think
Speaker 1: about the need for privacy and the maybe the war
Speaker 1: on privacy that we have today. I think maybe specifically
Speaker 1: about um, you know, them calling for an end to encryption, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so trying to stay above the line with
Speaker 1: the thinking is I I I've seen you know, the
Speaker 1: downsides of um, you know, or I guess said, there's
Speaker 1: a downside to people being able to hide and obfuscate,
Speaker 1: you know, bad behavior, right, we all know that no
Speaker 1: one's trying to argue against that. I think you would
Speaker 1: be a big shame though, if regulators, um didn't I
Speaker 1: take the time to understand what we're doing and all
Speaker 1: of the social and economic good and value that comes
Speaker 1: with actually allowing people, uh, you know, privacy, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a shame or philosophically weird to say, allow
Speaker 1: people to have privacy, because I think we have a
Speaker 1: right to it to begin with, right, Um, So I
Speaker 1: guess my my persecative is there are bad people out there,
Speaker 1: and bad people can do bad things. We all know this,
Speaker 1: and it would suck if they use their technology to
Speaker 1: do it. They use cell phones, they use dollars, right,
Speaker 1: they use all the tools that are currently exist. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yet we know that cell phones, you know, and
Speaker 1: encryption on cell phones is absolutely critical, and the abilities
Speaker 1: for people to communicate with each other has unleashed quite
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars with economic value and social good. So
Speaker 1: I really hope regulators take their time to do their
Speaker 1: due diligence and don't overreact and take you know, these
Speaker 1: kind of like strong man examples of terrible scenarios and
Speaker 1: try to destroy the intern industry would just be a disaster.
Speaker 1: I think when they get into those hyped up examples
Speaker 1: like you said, you know, like uh, I think it
Speaker 1: was Obama you said, you know, if we can save
Speaker 1: one life, really so we're going to destroy the entire
Speaker 1: constitution and and and and start a civil war to
Speaker 1: save one life, and then how many lives get destroyed
Speaker 1: after weigh the good and the bad and and uh
Speaker 1: and and it's almost like, um, you know, I could
Speaker 1: whisper a secret to you, and how are they going
Speaker 1: to regulate that? But because now I want to share
Speaker 1: a secret with you over communication, now said it has
Speaker 1: to be listened to, right exactly? You know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldna say. The argumentative technique is to come up with that.
Speaker 1: You know that that micro example that just you know
Speaker 1: is in your face. Look at this kid that was
Speaker 1: killed from this you know, predator who used encryption somehow.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible example and it just it listed at
Speaker 1: list it's emotions. And then on the other hand, you said, hey, Constitution,
Speaker 1: Bill of Rights, you can't do that, and this kind
Speaker 1: of like abstract argument, and people just naturally flow towards
Speaker 1: that emotional argument, and it's easy to forget you know that. Well,
Speaker 1: if you violate human rights, and you violate the Constitution
Speaker 1: and Bill of Rights, you can have a whole lot
Speaker 1: more destruction that happens. I think, I think we can
Speaker 1: see all the hot button issues, uh that that are
Speaker 1: discussed politically have gone from um, logical arguments to emotional arguments.
Speaker 1: So most of these things, uh, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: even want to say, but you know, whether it be
Speaker 1: guns or vaccines or whatever, Um, you can't have a
Speaker 1: logical conversation, even climate change, you can't have a logical conversation.
Speaker 1: It's always an emotional one. And then you you can't
Speaker 1: can't reason with with emotion, right, Yeah, exactly, No, I
Speaker 1: completely agree, and and that's really a shame and it's insulting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's insulting. Curious though, UM, what you think about this
Speaker 1: attack on privacy, not from a philosophical level but from
Speaker 1: being a US based company? H what does that look like?
Speaker 1: Do you think? I mean, I'll just have you out
Speaker 1: this with, Hey, we're US based companies, so we have
Speaker 1: to comply with US law. We have no intention of
Speaker 1: not doing that. But sometimes I don't I'm optimistic on it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that these strawman arguments and kind of
Speaker 1: doomsday scenarios that get pulled out out for you know,
Speaker 1: pr opportunities. I don't think that they're gonna carry the
Speaker 1: day and we're going to see destruction of privacy. I
Speaker 1: don't think we'll ever see a backdoor on you know, iPhones,
Speaker 1: or at least one is legislated, And of course there's
Speaker 1: all those agencies that can do that with you know,
Speaker 1: illegally without us knowing, and then hopefully we catch them.
Speaker 1: M But you know, so I'm optimistic. I think that
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty well established that code is sort
Speaker 1: of a kind of a freedom of speech element, and
Speaker 1: you can't repress code, you can't try to violate the
Speaker 1: mathematics of encryption. Sorry, just doesn't happen, right, So I
Speaker 1: I I don't think we're gonna have this dystopian um outcome.
Speaker 1: I really hope not. Yeah, I I would agree. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're gonna basically have to blow up the Constitution, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, exactly that that the argument will come
Speaker 1: back down to the right to freedom of speech, and
Speaker 1: and that's gonna be a very tough one for people
Speaker 1: to swallow. Although it's been interesting to see what's happened
Speaker 1: on the digital Uh like the three D printed gun front. Yeah,
Speaker 1: trying to claim that freedom of speech as well. Yep,
Speaker 1: but what about um, I mean that would be affecting
Speaker 1: I guess US companies. But there's plenty of blockchain, cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: encryption stuff going overseas then, right right, yeah, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: In fact, what I view as an imperative for US
Speaker 1: as a project and horizon and for the entire industry
Speaker 1: is we have to decentralize, and we have to decentralize fast,
Speaker 1: because you don't want single points of failure where it's
Speaker 1: the US government says, hey, Rob, we're shutting you guys down.
Speaker 1: Stop doing what you're doing, right, um, freeze money. I
Speaker 1: mean if if you have points of failure and you
Speaker 1: have humans in the loop, of course, um. You know,
Speaker 1: let's not be cavalier about this. And too many people
Speaker 1: in the industry have been cavalier about the government's ability to,
Speaker 1: you know, stop these systems. And we can say, okay,
Speaker 1: technically you can't ever stop bitcoin, right it's it's it
Speaker 1: could be replicated by anyone with a computer, so you
Speaker 1: can't technically stop it. But they can make our lives
Speaker 1: hell and destroy a lot of lives, So we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be cavalier, um, you know, and I really hope that
Speaker 1: never comes down to that. Now, we are an international
Speaker 1: organization and we are decentralizing, say our treasury, we want
Speaker 1: to decentralized decision making with the voting system, right, decentralize
Speaker 1: our note network from the tracking to the payments of it.
Speaker 1: We want to just decentralize everything so we don't have
Speaker 1: those constail here. And you know, I would love to
Speaker 1: be able to just be one of many participants in
Speaker 1: this UM ecosystem. We see the we can see the
Speaker 1: contrast today now because of Facebook, right, Uh, they're being
Speaker 1: brought before the US government to testify, but there's no
Speaker 1: one from Bitcoin going to testify exactly. There's a glaring
Speaker 1: difference that, uh that has become very obvious you know. So, um,
Speaker 1: is that something that's in the roadmap for Horizon Labs
Speaker 1: or absolutely? Yeah. Yeah, So with the whole side chain thing,
Speaker 1: so we're going live within alpha in the end of
Speaker 1: Q three slash early key four. We'll see how that goes, uh,
Speaker 1: And the whole point of where one of the big
Speaker 1: things that that allows us to do is we're building
Speaker 1: a voting system on a side chain, so basically where
Speaker 1: our treasury pool, we're democratizing and we'll have a way
Speaker 1: for people to vote on how the resources are used
Speaker 1: and how this what kinds of decisions are made as
Speaker 1: an organization. And then we're also gonna have another side
Speaker 1: chain that does our our no tracking payments and automating
Speaker 1: all that. That's just the start. So we have to
Speaker 1: decentralize fast because we know that you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: in the US, and I don't think it will be
Speaker 1: in the US, but the leg parts of the world
Speaker 1: where what we're doing will be considered illegal, which is insane, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're building technology, we're united people around
Speaker 1: the world, We're giving people opportunity, and we're basically innovating,
Speaker 1: you know, economically, technologically, socially, and I can see some
Speaker 1: systems that are more repressive trying to stop that. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want us to have points of
Speaker 1: failure where they can go after this points of failure. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean that's the problem with the financial
Speaker 1: system as we know today is that it's permissioned. So
Speaker 1: you have to have permission to join at and a
Speaker 1: lot of people aren't aren't able to receive permission and
Speaker 1: two billion adults on banked and so there's this this
Speaker 1: exclusion and then of course there's a gap of equality
Speaker 1: because people can't even get into the system and uh
Speaker 1: through cryptocurrencies, whether that be stable coins or bitcoin or
Speaker 1: whatever method they choose. Um, it's permission lists, but um,
Speaker 1: definitely they don't want that and exactly, yeah, it's shocking.
Speaker 1: But you know what I do think that what I
Speaker 1: love about this technology and other things that that I
Speaker 1: participate in, like C setting, is we have to make
Speaker 1: governments compete with each other and view us as as
Speaker 1: customers instead of subjects. And then as soon as they
Speaker 1: start viewing their role as providing useful services, uh, and
Speaker 1: that we have many options, then I think that you know,
Speaker 1: they'll start competing with each other to do better a
Speaker 1: better job. And you see this in a way like jurisdictions. Think,
Speaker 1: think about that that that you just said, because I
Speaker 1: know you're I know you're deep into the libertarian philosophy,
Speaker 1: so you can get this. But think about what you
Speaker 1: just said where they should look at us as customers
Speaker 1: instead of subjects. Yeah, yeah, there's deep it but but
Speaker 1: but but the government is servants of the people. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. But feel that way, right, right,
Speaker 1: But so we're going from wishing that their subjects or servants,
Speaker 1: but to now at least just at least treat us
Speaker 1: as customers. Yeah. No, that's that's just lip service. I mean,
Speaker 1: go into a government agency and try to get something done,
Speaker 1: and then are you really their boss? Of course not No, no,
Speaker 1: I don't it's not yeah exactly, but no. But this
Speaker 1: is the line that's used, which is very misleading, is
Speaker 1: we don't control government. There is a very small subset
Speaker 1: of people, say a few hundred, you know, at the
Speaker 1: first level of control, and then you have thousands at
Speaker 1: the next level of control, and there are our bosses. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not the other way around. No matter what
Speaker 1: can of rhetoric there is. I think it should flip
Speaker 1: back around, right, Yeah, exactly. I was. I was in
Speaker 1: l A with Max Kaiser and he was he was
Speaker 1: he was talking to a small group and they were
Speaker 1: talking about these increasing regulations and whatnot, and he just
Speaker 1: basically the same converse station and he just said, look,
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment was put into place to protect against
Speaker 1: tyranny and if you don't think your government is representing
Speaker 1: you is a tyrannical and then maybe you should think
Speaker 1: about that. And he just kind of left it like that,
Speaker 1: you know, not advocating for anything obviously, but just something
Speaker 1: to think about, you know. But we should have the
Speaker 1: right to change the government. But now we'd like it
Speaker 1: if they could just look at as customers. UM. But
Speaker 1: I think that actually goes into something that we talked
Speaker 1: about before we started recording, where you would you would
Speaker 1: you had said you had gone from New York to
Speaker 1: California to Texas, and I'm in California and and those
Speaker 1: two states are the highest tax states in in the nation.
Speaker 1: I'm stuck in one of them. But you left to
Speaker 1: go to a lower tech state. We were talking about
Speaker 1: going to Puerto Rico, which is a behaven because it
Speaker 1: can bring taxes down very, very low. And just the
Speaker 1: fact that UM, as a customer, we would go where
Speaker 1: we're treated best, exactly. Yeah, And there's a reason why
Speaker 1: so with Horizon Labs. In January, we lost Horizon Labs.
Speaker 1: And there's a reason why we chose Austin, Texas as
Speaker 1: our headquarters because they don't have repressive taxation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a botching hub. It's emerging as a blotching hub.
Speaker 1: You have key talent there, but people are moving there
Speaker 1: and relocating from you know, Silicon Valley traditional areas to
Speaker 1: Austin and to other parts of Texas and in states
Speaker 1: like that that are actually trying to attract people instead
Speaker 1: of you know, repel them. So it's it's that concept,
Speaker 1: like do we see it within the United States? You
Speaker 1: have states competing with each other. You see it with
Speaker 1: you know, internationally, countries start competing with each other, right, Um,
Speaker 1: so I want to see more of that. I just
Speaker 1: want to see competition. You know. I'm not a fan
Speaker 1: of you know, uh, you know, replacing governments or rebellions
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, because you know, the reality is
Speaker 1: you and I may disagree with a government, and you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of the population doesn't disagree with them. They
Speaker 1: actually like that government, and then what what percentage you
Speaker 1: gets to impose its will on the other percentage? Right?
Speaker 1: I just don't like scenarios like that. They seem to
Speaker 1: be like win lose, which is why, which is why
Speaker 1: the answer is less government, right, yeah, exactly, and everment Ever,
Speaker 1: men should be out of everyday decision. So, um, then
Speaker 1: instead of fifty fifty split, it should be like the
Speaker 1: majority of people don't have a problem with government because
Speaker 1: they're not really affecting my life that much, right Exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in, you know, the set of
Speaker 1: things the government does being as small as possible, because
Speaker 1: then you have the least ability for to violate people's
Speaker 1: rights and then to basically cause such discontent. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a different scenario because people that have discontent with
Speaker 1: the small government just wants to get something from government,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's for themselves or for others. Maybe
Speaker 1: they feel like they're being philanthropic by taking your money
Speaker 1: and giving it to someone else, but that's not real,
Speaker 1: you know, philanthropy. So I can't said the word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you came to have that viewpoint being
Speaker 1: a PhD in economics financial economics, because it seems like,
Speaker 1: and I'm not I'm not a PhD in economics, so
Speaker 1: you can correct me if I'm wrong, But it seems
Speaker 1: like from all the people that I know that are
Speaker 1: masters or whatnot in economics, Um, really teach in the
Speaker 1: school system is kind of exact opposite of what we're
Speaker 1: talking here, right, So they teach that, um, we should
Speaker 1: be able to control the market, and we should have
Speaker 1: centrally planned uh policies to control the market versus personal um,
Speaker 1: you know, responsibility. So yeah, I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: couple of biases or behavioral biases that that play themselves
Speaker 1: out in academia. One is, uh, academics really like to
Speaker 1: feel smart, right, you know, like basically we go through
Speaker 1: out our lives is like the top of our classes
Speaker 1: that are high school and college and all that, and
Speaker 1: we go into academia because we're good at it and
Speaker 1: we're always we've always been told our whole lives, you're
Speaker 1: so smart, right, And they kind of get off on that,
Speaker 1: and then it manifests such that we tend to gravitate
Speaker 1: towards theories that have tractable solutions, like tractable but also complex,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a nice feeling to be able to
Speaker 1: solve like a second order differential equation and have attractable results.
Speaker 1: And not everyone in the world can do this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, but you can and you have attractable result there.
Speaker 1: So it's a nice thing because then then the next
Speaker 1: thing is the biases they like to everyone likes to
Speaker 1: feel important, right, and it basically lass hundred years, probably
Speaker 1: since Kan's and maybe a little bit before that, UM
Speaker 1: economists and academics started getting more influencing government because the
Speaker 1: things that they were telling government, we can control this,
Speaker 1: we can you know, overcome these problems that they kind
Speaker 1: of self identify in the market, UM by giving you
Speaker 1: more power. Of course, politicians are gonna love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give me the theory that justifies that I have more power,
Speaker 1: of course. But true science though, and you know, so
Speaker 1: I know in the libertarian world and anarcho capitalists where
Speaker 1: all that that kind of you know I live in
Speaker 1: you probably live in is um. There's this big academic
Speaker 1: dashing that goes on, and I think it's gone too far,
Speaker 1: like very very much too far by people that don't
Speaker 1: really understand what goes on in academia and true academics
Speaker 1: is true science where we do have a scientific method
Speaker 1: and we have Dad and his processes and techniques to
Speaker 1: evaluate hypotheses. Now, there's too many, too many academics that
Speaker 1: violate these fundamental premises and they impose their opinions under
Speaker 1: the guys of academic credibility, like Paul Krug for instance,
Speaker 1: he's not an economist anymore. He was an economist and
Speaker 1: now he's just basically a social commentator on the left.
Speaker 1: But he's using his creditis that's when you reach the top, right, yeah, right, so,
Speaker 1: and that's a shame, and I think that that does
Speaker 1: a big disservice to the world of science. Right but true,
Speaker 1: like true, academia should be just based science. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's just really unfortunate. But there are amazing guys that
Speaker 1: you know, like John Cochrane for instance, my my favorite economist,
Speaker 1: finance professor out of University of Chicago. Now I think
Speaker 1: he's at the Hoover Institute. But the guy, the guy's brilliant.
Speaker 1: He wrote all the you know, or some phenomenal books
Speaker 1: and that surpricing. But he's a real scientist and he's
Speaker 1: the kind of example that I look up to. But
Speaker 1: it isn't science is a science is not like fact.
Speaker 1: Science is some thing that's an evolving learning stage. Right.
Speaker 1: We're constantly testing and learning exactly. It's a process. And
Speaker 1: so you want to talk about economics as a science,
Speaker 1: but we don't have controlled studies, no, no, no, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the studies are are very very very much uncontrolled. I
Speaker 1: think there are some control studies or not, but they're
Speaker 1: very limited because the range of what you you should
Speaker 1: extrapolate the results to be is very narrow. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, especially in social systems, their complex systems, So
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be so arrogant. I think that we really
Speaker 1: understand human behavior so thoroughly that we can predict everything.
Speaker 1: Uh and then and have you have you dived into
Speaker 1: the Austrian economics, then you've I'm a huge fan. That's
Speaker 1: where I came from. Actually, so that was you know that,
Speaker 1: that was where I came from before I went into academia.
Speaker 1: And I still very much love love and you know
Speaker 1: the premises. I think Austrian economics to me is more
Speaker 1: of a philosophy than it is necessarily economic science. It
Speaker 1: provides a great um framework, but it is like a
Speaker 1: hundred year old you know, economic tool tool set, and
Speaker 1: there are there are more modern tools as well. Would
Speaker 1: you say though? The big difference is that with Austrian
Speaker 1: it's more about human incentives, like personal incentives versus um
Speaker 1: traditional economics or kinsing economics being more like master planned
Speaker 1: and controlled totally totally. Yeah, So Austrians probably more micro
Speaker 1: and Kaanging is more macro, and I definitely think macro
Speaker 1: is more voodoo science because it treats it treats economics
Speaker 1: like physics and it's not. Uh, you know, so I'm
Speaker 1: much more of a believer in at the human level. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing that Austrian economics doesn't have, although maybe there's
Speaker 1: a huge overlap, is the behavioral economics stuff that came
Speaker 1: about basically from uh, you know, from the economen in
Speaker 1: diversity experiments that they started doing the sixties and seventies. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then some of those papers really blew open this
Speaker 1: whole you know, sub field of economics that I think
Speaker 1: maps in a way back to Austrian school of thought
Speaker 1: where we're actually looking at human humans as non standard
Speaker 1: economic agents, you know, because you know, if you want
Speaker 1: tractable you know, second order differential equation solutions, you need
Speaker 1: uniform economic agents, and we're not all uniform. We don't
Speaker 1: have all the same utility functions that are easily mappable
Speaker 1: and tractable. Right. So I'm a big fan of where
Speaker 1: economics is going. Although the problem, there's a downside to
Speaker 1: that is you have some some academics that use this
Speaker 1: as like a toolkit to advocate for more control from government,
Speaker 1: which I think is the exact wrong outcome from it.
Speaker 1: They basically say it's like a market for lemons. As
Speaker 1: as an example, you see this, you know, okay, nice
Speaker 1: theory that says that you should never have a secondary
Speaker 1: marketplace basically for used cars. No one should ever buy
Speaker 1: a used car because the previous owner or the current
Speaker 1: owner knows more about the car's condition than you. There's
Speaker 1: an information asymmetry, and therefore you guys can't agree on
Speaker 1: a price. This is the academic arguments, a famous art
Speaker 1: you know, a journal article. Obviously false. We have secondary
Speaker 1: markets for everything, right, so obviously false. But if you
Speaker 1: were to just take this theory in blind apply it
Speaker 1: without context, I think you'd be completely wrong. And I
Speaker 1: think this is where unfortunately, a lot of policy guidance
Speaker 1: has gone well. It seems like in that analogy, but
Speaker 1: also the other policies that I hear, it always leaves
Speaker 1: out the human incentive part. And I think humans have
Speaker 1: this innate ability. I have little kids and I see
Speaker 1: them on the playground and they're already change trading their
Speaker 1: bologna sandwich for the chips, like we have this, we
Speaker 1: have this like innate ability or desire to trade and
Speaker 1: to uh and do property and and uh. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody wants to preach equality, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, some people just are more motivated than other.
Speaker 1: Some people want to work harder than other something and
Speaker 1: and uh and there's incentive there and so um when
Speaker 1: these these macroeconomic policies don't take that into consideration, and
Speaker 1: they they almost work against a lot of that incentives
Speaker 1: from from my from my standpoint. And even that car example,
Speaker 1: as you say, um, I may have an incentive to
Speaker 1: save money, and I may have an incentive to save
Speaker 1: money because I know more about cars than you do
Speaker 1: and I have an edge, right, and so you just
Speaker 1: you just you can't that away from people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know one other things that they're out there is
Speaker 1: there's uh utility to freedom, all right. I value freedom.
Speaker 1: So even if you were to just mathematically proved to
Speaker 1: me that you know, eating sugars that actually don't eat
Speaker 1: a lot of sugar, but say like eating eating fat
Speaker 1: is bad, you you go and prove it. You have
Speaker 1: some theory us evidence. If you take away my right
Speaker 1: to eat a cheeseburger, I'll be pissed even if I
Speaker 1: know that it's not necessarily bad, but it's completely disproproportionate
Speaker 1: because maybe it gives me some value right now. And
Speaker 1: I know I'm not gonna eat a hamburger every meal
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life, which would be a
Speaker 1: short life, right, But freedom has value, and to just
Speaker 1: impose people on people, you know, the will of the
Speaker 1: I don't know. The Ivory Tower is a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: Even if they're right, which I don't think they are,
Speaker 1: so well, they can't. They can't be They can't be
Speaker 1: right for everybody. I might be okay dying at forty
Speaker 1: years old if I can eat a cheeseburger every day,
Speaker 1: and that's my right exactly. I love cheeseburgers that much,
Speaker 1: and I don't need to live to eighties, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat an every day and and to forty, And
Speaker 1: who are you to tell me that I can't. I
Speaker 1: think I think it's a philosophical argument that, um, you
Speaker 1: can't make somebody's life better by taking away their choices
Speaker 1: or forcing them to do things they don't want to do, right, right,
Speaker 1: I'm very much opposed to that absolutely. I would love
Speaker 1: for them to say, hey, we can help you. Here,
Speaker 1: here's the plan, here's why it's bad, and try to
Speaker 1: reason with me education exactly. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: it goes. I think it just goes from a win
Speaker 1: win into a win lose deal. But I think there's
Speaker 1: also a stark difference in you know, Austrians believe in
Speaker 1: saving and deploying that capital versus Austin traditional economics believes
Speaker 1: and spending for capital. Right, and so that's a big
Speaker 1: difference totally. And I think the reason why that's important
Speaker 1: to understand right now is I believe what bitcoin is
Speaker 1: doing is it's changing that narrative because we've never really
Speaker 1: had a deflationary currency before. And I know this personally
Speaker 1: because I own bitcoin, and I know because I talked
Speaker 1: to other people a bitcoin. But it changes the way
Speaker 1: I think about spending. So might dollars. I have no
Speaker 1: problem spending my dollars yep, Oh, two thousand bucks last
Speaker 1: week and went to Texas with my daughter. Sure dropped
Speaker 1: too grand we on a trip together. No big deal.
Speaker 1: Those are my dollars. They're worth less next month. Anyway.
Speaker 1: My bitcoin, I'm not selling that for anything, right, and so, um,
Speaker 1: and that's where we should be, right, we should be
Speaker 1: in that saving mindset deploying capital. And so that's a
Speaker 1: big difference, right, I completely agree with you on that.
Speaker 1: I really don't know where the nonsense of you know,
Speaker 1: perpetual deficits and perpetual inflation came from. I think it's
Speaker 1: just insanity. Um. Now you can see why it's supplied
Speaker 1: because it's really useful for politicians. Why would they ever
Speaker 1: want to live within a budget? Politicians are too creative
Speaker 1: to live within a budget. They want obviously they want
Speaker 1: to spend more than they have right now because they're
Speaker 1: not responsible for paying it. So of course they're gonna
Speaker 1: gravitate to any theory that tries to pseudo justify that
Speaker 1: that nonsense. But it's not sustainable. No, But it's human nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: human nature is always gonna want to push it as
Speaker 1: long as you can push it until you can't push
Speaker 1: it anymore. Exactly. So, Um, you're not an economist, but
Speaker 1: you are a PhD in economics. Uh. But so, I mean,
Speaker 1: right now, we have this system where we have uh,
Speaker 1: we have this system that whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: it kenzie in or modern whatever, where we're building debt.
Speaker 1: We're spending money we don't have. In the next couple
Speaker 1: of years, we wont be able to cover the debt
Speaker 1: the interest on the debt um And now we have
Speaker 1: this other system that's creating this deflationary currency. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we're starting to see the this, you know, the stink
Speaker 1: differences of that. All the developed world, not just the
Speaker 1: United States but the whole West at least, but most
Speaker 1: of the world is in the same economic situation where
Speaker 1: we're spending spending spending. Is there a way out? I mean,
Speaker 1: once they've gone down this path, there's really no way,
Speaker 1: Like you have to continue down the path, right, there's
Speaker 1: no way I mean there. I mean, I guess you
Speaker 1: could wake up tomorrow and just change your mind, but
Speaker 1: that's likely not going to happen. So the reason that
Speaker 1: hasn't collapsed yet is because theoretically, they say, hey, growth
Speaker 1: will catch up and we'll be able to grow ourselves
Speaker 1: out of our problems, grow ourselves out of the debt.
Speaker 1: Right so far hasn't happened. We've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: growth around the world, but that actually incentivizes politicians to
Speaker 1: spend even more. So you know, if they just spent
Speaker 1: less than we're growing, you know, and we got into
Speaker 1: less that per year, and then we were growing, would
Speaker 1: eventually be able to theoretically work ourselves out of it. Um,
Speaker 1: But I just don't see right now. The incentives are
Speaker 1: not there for politicians, so I wouldn't expect at anytime soon.
Speaker 1: I think we need more competitive governance, really, and this
Speaker 1: is why I'm such a fan of things like c
Speaker 1: setting and cryptocurrencies, because we can vote with our our
Speaker 1: our money, now we can vote with our feet. These
Speaker 1: are really empowering things. There's never been a better time
Speaker 1: to be alive than today. Yeah, I believe we're in
Speaker 1: a very transitional period that you know, maybe a hundred
Speaker 1: years from now they will have this period written about
Speaker 1: in history books, where, um, what the heck were they thinking? Like, no,
Speaker 1: I totally agree it was a fifty year they did.
Speaker 1: Like what the heck? Have you ever seen that video
Speaker 1: of like an alien comes to Earth and uh, some
Speaker 1: some encount terms his first human and the humans said,
Speaker 1: do you want me to take you to our leader?
Speaker 1: And the aliens like, what's a what's a leader? Like?
Speaker 1: Where does they lead? Where do they lead you? You know?
Speaker 1: And it's just really cool video it's like a cartoon.
Speaker 1: I highly recommended because it's a huge parody of I
Speaker 1: think a hundred years from now people will look back
Speaker 1: on today. I think we're savages, Like, how can we
Speaker 1: live this way? How could we let people exploit each
Speaker 1: other this way? And by exploit, I mean really exploit,
Speaker 1: not these like weird fantasy terms of unexploiting you because
Speaker 1: I'm getting I'm making money. No, No, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: people actually taking you know, taking us and putting us
Speaker 1: in cages for smoking pot or you know, violating people's
Speaker 1: human rights, are stealing from people, like systematically through through
Speaker 1: unfair taxes and stuff like that. That that's real exploitation.
Speaker 1: And I think this will be looking back on is
Speaker 1: barbaric and completely unnecessary. I agree. And to think that
Speaker 1: we have no um, no standard unit of account for
Speaker 1: wealth or value or whatever you want to call that,
Speaker 1: which really I think stems you know, at the at
Speaker 1: the base of all these problems. But um, yeah, good
Speaker 1: stuff and interesting. We could we could talk about that forever,
Speaker 1: but kind of we're kind of running out of time.
Speaker 1: But um, I love I love what you're doing, Rob,
Speaker 1: I love I love the information that you're putting out, um,
Speaker 1: and I love what Horizon Labs is doing to increase privacy,
Speaker 1: which I think is uh is a big piece we
Speaker 1: didn't really get into. But from from a philosophical level,
Speaker 1: the privacy is such a big piece of an entire society.
Speaker 1: You can't just maybe tell me in a couple of sentences,
Speaker 1: why why you think privacy is so important to a society.
Speaker 1: I mean, privacy is at the heart of everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's almost so big of a question I don't know
Speaker 1: how to answer. You know, how do you answer something
Speaker 1: like that, because, uh, you know, if you don't have privacy,
Speaker 1: you really don't have the ability to have any kind
Speaker 1: of freedom. Right. Um. You know, we can say you
Speaker 1: have freedom, but the second some authority doesn't like what
Speaker 1: you're doing, it doesn't like what you're saying, uh, doesn't
Speaker 1: like what you're doing with your money, right, then then
Speaker 1: they could do whatever they want to you. So, you know,
Speaker 1: it's starts if you believe in freedom and you believe
Speaker 1: that human beings have a right to their own lives.
Speaker 1: I think you have to believe in privacy. And it's
Speaker 1: not about having something to hide, It's about having the
Speaker 1: freedom to have your own thoughts and um to people
Speaker 1: who think they have nothing to hide. The problem is
Speaker 1: is that there's someone on both sides of the aisle.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter what debate you're on, pro life,
Speaker 1: for a choice, Democrat, Republican, whatever, there's gonna be somebody
Speaker 1: on the opposite side. And uh, and really it comes
Speaker 1: and it's more than just the decisions. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: the thought and then it's the creativity that comes from that. Ye.
Speaker 1: So so anyway, I think it's a huge piece and
Speaker 1: I love it and and and that's why I really
Speaker 1: like the project and follow along? So where do people
Speaker 1: follow along? To learn more about Horizon and Horizon Labs
Speaker 1: and yourself. So our website, Horizon dot global is the
Speaker 1: one stop shop for everything. But then please join our
Speaker 1: join our discord, join our telegram groups, you know, come
Speaker 1: to our Reddit page, participate, see what's going on, and
Speaker 1: we're always up there. I definitely encourage our team to
Speaker 1: be very active with the community so you can reach
Speaker 1: out to us directly. Please do cool All right, good stuff.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for the conversation, Rob, I look forward
Speaker 1: to it again sometime. Thank you, Mark, appreciate it. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you like this, episode of the Market Disruptors Podcast.
Speaker 1: Please help us take this to the top of the
Speaker 1: podcast charts. Just please do me a favor and rate,
Speaker 1: review and subscribe. Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a
Speaker 1: quick review goes a long way and helping us reach
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Speaker 1: Disruptors Podcast.