WEBVTT - What Bitcoin Has To Do With The Dream Of Cryonics 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:15.080 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:20.200 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy remember the 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:22.959 episode we did a few weeks ago with David Chalum. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.639 I certainly do. That was a great episode. Yeah, I 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.160 love that episode, and in part because you know, I 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:32.000 feel like all this you know, talk about bitcoin and 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:36.560 cryptocurrencies these days, and really over the last couple of years, well, 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.360 a lot of the conversation is very forward looking, people 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.159 trying to figure out where it's going to go next, 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:46.720 what the technology could be used for, how big things 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:50.160 could get. I find it very fruitful to actually look 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:53.120 backwards and before even figuring out where it's going to 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.920 go next, trying to think about where it came from 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.760 and some of the problems that the early people in 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.200 alved into space we're trying to solve. Oh. Absolutely, And 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.720 I think whenever you're talking about new technologies, there's obviously, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.959 for for very clear reasons, a tendency to focus on 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.440 what's happening next and the future, and just trying to 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:18.520 refocus a little bit of attention on the problems of 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:22.240 the past is really useful and and often you know, 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.280 there there's a reason that things have happened um the 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.680 way they did in the past, and it tells you 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.640 something instructive about the future as well. Right, So bitcoin 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:36.040 has basically been around ten years, and you know, it's 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:40.640 been obviously extraordinary run. But the people who are involved, 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.920 we don't really know who exactly invented bitcoin. Obviously there's 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:49.840 a pseudonymous creator, but people were working on bitcoin like 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.080 problems for years before bitcoin came, about how to develop 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:56.880 sort of digital internet money in one way or another. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:00.400 David Chaum was one of them. Anyway, part of the 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.920 reason we booked David is I was inspired from having 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:07.560 read a book earlier in the year about this entire 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.920 prehistory and I thought it was so fascinating. And today 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.840 I'm excited because we're going to be talking to the 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:16.800 author of the book, and it's really all about the 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.480 long period leading up to bitcoin, the different ways people 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.680 are working on it. I must admit I haven't been 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.560 able to read the entire book. I'm still in my 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.000 Korean reading phase and I'm now reading a very long 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.679 history of the Korean War, but I have skimmed it. 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:36.080 It looks really interesting and I think one of the 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:40.600 things that comes through is that the idea of cryptocurrencies 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:45.200 has always been sort of inextricably linked to a particular 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:49.800 system of either values or sort of hopes and dreams 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.840 for the future. Yeah, that's exactly right. So on the 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:56.800 one hand, it's kind of a technological breakthrough, and the 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:01.600 technology is important, but really it's about values in politics 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.240 and morals and sort of the relationship that we have 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:08.760 with big technology companies or big government things like that. 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.480 And so, without further ado, I want to bring in 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.560 our guests. We're going to be speaking with Finn Brunton. 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.040 He has an n y U professor and the author 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:21.200 of the newly released book Digital Cash, The Unknown History 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:28.200 of the Anarchists, utopians, and Technologists who created Cryptocurrency. Fascinating book. 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.079 Very excited to have the author, Finn Brunton. Thank you 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:33.520 very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.400 So I just want to say I loved this book 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:38.920 and I I'm trying to get as many people to 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:41.120 read it, and I've tweeted about it a few times 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.160 and advocate I think it's going to be one of 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:45.640 the reads of the year. But I'm curious why you 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.400 wrote the book. How did you get started on trying 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:53.800 to really uncover the uh the prehistory of digital currency. 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.000 I was originally trained as a historian of science and technology, 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.120 and one of the things that you learn when you 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.240 work on that subject is how much the technologies around us, 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.440 the things that made our built world, the things we 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.720 use every day, both are there because of what they 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.120 can do, but also because of what they can mean, 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:17.520 often because of the hopes and promises and fears and 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:20.760 visions and histories that are wrapped up in them. So 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:23.400 with that in mind, years ago, I was working on 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.360 a project about spam and I noticed how spammers were 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:29.400 starting to adopt a lot of new, weird currencies that 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.039 I had never heard of before. Um this is even 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.200 in the pre bitcoin days. But they were looking at 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.200 currencies that were things like digital gold, currencies in the 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.920 nine nine, other ways to move money around that could 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:43.840 protect them from the eyes of the law and various 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:47.080 other forms of reprisal. And I just started to feel 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.560 like there's something really rich here. And as soon as 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.359 Bitcoin appeared, it all jelled for me, like this is 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:57.279 something where we can see in real time in the present, 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.400 the evolution of a new set of technology of gees 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:02.719 both in terms of what they can do, but also 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.800 in terms of all of the stories, the visions, the 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.800 fantasies that are wrapped up in them. So then you 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.240 mentioned the notion that we often have values or hopes 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:16.760 attached to technology, But I'm wondering when it comes to 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:22.200 cryptocurrency or digital cash in particular, it feels like, because 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:26.440 we're talking about money, which traditionally has been wrapped up 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.679 in you know, power and government and various other forms 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.760 of authority, it feels like with money there there's even 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:38.520 more values or hopes or dreams pin to this particular project. 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.240 Is that what you learned? Oh? Absolutely, Yeah, money is 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.719 always meaningful and it's always a relationship right in a 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.279 way that is. Yes, it's radically distinct from a lot 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:53.120 of other kinds of technologies, and I love to think 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.320 of money as being you know, different scholars of money 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.599 have come up with wonderful ways to try to describe 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.560 what it is. Some people call it like, you know, 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:06.839 a social micro technology, or a kind of diffused community powers, 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:09.960 like an enormous variety of different ways to try to 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:11.920 get at what this thing is. But the heart of it, 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:16.360 the essence of it, was defined for me by Himan Minsky, 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.960 the wonderful monetary economist, who said, um that anyone can 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.279 make money, like literally anyone can make money. The challenges 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.680 to get other people to accept it, and the process 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:31.599 of getting money accepted, of getting money to pass, that's 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.080 the process that's kind of the moment where you see 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:38.080 this thing really emerges, something that is like uniquely bound 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:42.080 into our social and political structures. So whether that's in 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.920 the form of a government being able to specify as 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.599 for example, the US dollar does this is legal tender 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.520 for all debts, public and private, meaning that you know, 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.200 if you owe me a debt, like you can't pay 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.520 it back in detergent you know, or euros or whatever 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:58.839 like I can. I can demand dollars in exactly the 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:00.680 same way that the government can do man payment of 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.279 taxes in dollars, and that becomes a way of establishing 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:07.560 not just the value of money, but also money. The 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.080 US dollar in this case as an act of allegiance, 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:13.640 as something where we accepted and pass it by and 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:19.120 large completely unconsciously because of a particular territorial political allegiance 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:21.880 that we have, and the same is true of the many, 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.360 many other diverse forms of money that flourish and exist 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.280 around the world today and also back through history. These 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.000 are things that we accept because we believe that in 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:33.720 the future they will be accepted from us, we will 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.680 be able to pass them on in turn, and perhaps 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.120 are passing them on is going to be because we 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.480 want to participate in some specific community, as with a 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.720 local currency. Perhaps it's because it reflects our bonds with 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.520 a larger kinship group, as with a lot of not 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.200 necessarily currencies alone, but a lot of different kinds of 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.240 money that we see that have to do with exchanges 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:01.000 within a particular tribe, within a particular culture, within a 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.800 particular family, or even things that we accept because we 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.000 think they will be worth something in the future because 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.240 something bad is going to happen, because they will be 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.320 worth more because of a crisis. I love that you 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:15.760 brought in that Minsky quote because that's always been one 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.679 of my favorites. So the book, I mean, not surprisingly, 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.400 the people who are working on this problem or digital 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:25.800 currency or new forms of money and the pre Bitcoin 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.600 era people came at it from all different kinds of backgrounds, 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.760 as you really nicely portray in your book. Obviously, there's 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:37.240 anarchists or people who may be doing something that's illegal, 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:40.440 like spammers trying to figure out a way to skirt 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:45.560 banking regulations, or sort of Austrian economics types who hated 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:47.800 the FED and wanted some sound money. Whatever it is, 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.160 I have to say, and I the most surprising thing 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.600 to me in the book, which I had no realization before, 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.040 and I've you know, I've read a fair amount about cryptocurrencies, 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:05.200 was the connection between queen cryptocurrencies and extropians or people 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:10.120 who were really into like cryogenics and life extension. I 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:12.800 would never have made that connection before, but it was 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:16.240 probably one of the most fascinating revelations. Let's talk a 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.760 little bit about that. Who were the extropians and why 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:25.240 were they interested in this uh in digital currency back then? Yeah, 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:28.960 they were absolutely the fine for me and working on 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:31.360 this project. There are a lot of things I discovered, 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.760 but they took the cake partially because they were, you know, 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.600 just about as as visionaries it's possible to be, in 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.319 terms of the scale of their hopes and aspirations that 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:43.800 they were putting into working on digital cash. So the 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:50.560 extropians were a fairly small network of kind of a 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:56.320 loose mix of of philosophers, technologists of various kinds, you know, engineers, 0:09:56.400 --> 0:10:01.000 computer scientists, software developers, um, you know Hi fi readers, 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.840 and some interested fellow travelers who are all kind of 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.679 mixed together, mostly in the Bay Area, but with kind 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.640 of scattered scattered others around the country and around the world. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.680 And two crucial things to know about the Estropians going 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:20.360 in is that they overlapped incredibly like closely with the 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.480 cipher punk movement that had preceded them, which is somewhat 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:28.680 more widely known, the community of again mostly software developers 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.560 and computer scientists who wanted to bring strong encryption to 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.000 the civilian world and start building new technologies on top 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:39.720 of that, like censorship resistant, privacy, preserving digital money. But 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:44.240 the Estropians also overlapped very very tightly with a lot 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.760 of the community around the initial appearance of bitcoin. A 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.480 lot of the same people who are part of the 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.719 Estropian movement are on that mailing list. One of them 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:57.400 runs the mailing list on which the Bitcoin white paper appears. 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.160 A lot of them are in the very earliest days 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.439 of sort of kicking the Bitcoin project around and testing 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.200 out the initial code um and a number of them 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.320 have even been proposed as candidates for the real identity 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:13.280 of Satoshi Nakamoto. So when you see that set of connections, 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:15.520 you start to think, who are these people? Who is 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.600 this movement? And the essence of the Extropian movement, as 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:22.520 their name would suggest, is they are the anti entropy movement. 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:28.040 They want to use technological innovation and scientific discovery to 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:32.600 produce a future of radical abundance um. They have the 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.560 set of key tenants which really kind of captures that 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:37.960 the spirit of the movement back in the eighties and 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:45.240 nineties boundless expansion, dynamic optimism, self transformation, intelligent technology, and 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:49.480 spontaneous order. And when you combine all of those different 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.840 aspects together, what you get is a story about the 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:55.560 use of new forms of technology that will be able 0:11:55.600 --> 0:12:01.079 to spontaneously generate new ways to live, new sources of prosperity, energy, time, 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.640 and space, that will create new forms of intelligence. They're 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.320 especially interested in these kinds of singularity style breakthroughs in 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:12.600 artificial intelligence that will then be able to produce a 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.280 future in which we can overcome a lot of the 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:19.520 limits of the human condition and expand out into space 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:23.880 and create some kind of radically new order of being so, 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:26.000 now you ask, like, how does money have to do 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.040 with this? And the marvelous answer is that for them, 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.480 digital cash was not just a way to you know, 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.680 protect the value of their assets from their fears for 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.560 the future for instance, even though that does play into 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.720 it a little bit, but also a way to produce 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:47.079 new kinds of markets and new forms of economic incentives 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:51.440 for innovation that will so accelerate the progress of technology 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:53.440 that it will be able to lead to this series 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:57.199 of breakthroughs that will make them effectively immortal, that will 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.800 that will create the society that they envision in which 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:02.120 they will be able to live forever. So how's that 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:06.679 for an economic agenda? So, Finn can you walk us 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.000 through that that theory a little bit, because I guess 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.360 when it comes to incentivizing innovation in cryonics, a lot 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:17.199 of people would say, well, why not just use existing 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.600 normal money. Why do you need a particular form of 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:26.520 digital or cryptocurrency. That's a really excellent question, actually, and 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:29.160 part of the answer has to do with with a 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.360 deeper part of the heritage of cryptocurrencies, which we still 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.040 see having a strong influence, especially over early form like 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.680 the early stages of bitcoin, which is Austrian economics, um, 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.880 the sort of Austrian school of economic theory. The Estropians 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.120 did something really unique in some ways, which is that 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:52.360 they fused the sort of Austrian economic theories, especially the 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:56.280 work of Friedrich Hyak, with a whole kind of for 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:58.880 lack of a better way of describing a very Californian, 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:04.120 very science fiction influenced sensibility to say that we want 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:08.320 to produce a future that is not shaped by the 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.800 existing ways that money moves around, because those are too 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.160 slow and too limited in terms of how, for example, 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:21.000 investment vehicles work, in terms of how those things are reviewed, um, 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.520 in terms of how people can accumulate assets they could 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:27.320 put towards, for example, Extropian goals that they could use 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.960 to fund, you know, nanotechnology and singularity experiments and so on. 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:36.480 They say, to produce the kind of spontaneous technological order 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.320 that we want to produce, to produce the society of innovation, 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.320 we want to adopt the model that High develops, which 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:47.600 is based on the idea of proliferating other kinds of currencies, 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:52.440 of essentially proliferating a free banking system in which new 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:56.280 kinds of technologies can generate their own banks, their own 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:00.040 transaction platforms, their own kinds of money, and produce a 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:05.080 sort of highly chaotic economic brew which will be able 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:10.040 to break the deadlock of how economic prosperity and funding 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.680 are normally produced. And I'm not necessarily when we say 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:14.760 all these things, not as like advocating for this as 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:17.480 a theory that I think holds water, but to sort 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.680 of explain part of their their ethos and by kind 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:24.760 of breaking the normal ways that funding is allocated for innovation, 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:28.960 that major firms and institutions and governments and courage technological invention, 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:31.160 they will be able to create something that we could 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.240 think of as like wildcat innovation in the spirit of 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:38.160 wildcat banking, right, like you know, unchartered banks that exist 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.800 outside the normal apparatus of banking, that are very well 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.479 suited to functioning in terms of things like black markets, 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:49.160 gray markets, intellectual piracy, you know, all kinds of overseas 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:53.200 economic systems which from their perspective, from the extropian perspective, 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.800 all feed into being able to fund and generate and 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.720 germanate new technologies and new dis discoveries that would be 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:07.000 otherwise being produced too slowly if they were produced at all. So, 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.720 just on that note, it feels like, so cryptocurrency is 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.800 supposed to be this agent of extreme change, you know, 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.200 sort of fostering new types of systems that thereby foster 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.560 new technology. But at the same time, presumably people who 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.320 are willing to freeze their own bodies in order to 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:30.160 wake up in the future, they want their digital investments 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:32.880 to also be a store of value. Right, You're talking 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:37.080 about a really long term investment horizon. So how are 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:41.600 they squaring, to put it mildly, um, how are they 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:46.120 squaring the notion of cryptocurrency as an agent of radical 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:49.000 change and the notion that it's also supposed to be 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:53.560 a you know, fairly boring store of value. That really 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:56.680 cuts to the heart of the challenge that the extropians 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.400 faced and of the kind of trade offs that were 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.840 embedded in a lot of these very early experiments with 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:05.840 digital cash, um, including the trade off that we can 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.800 see being made on one side very strongly when we 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:12.480 get to bitcoin. Right. So, the way we tried to 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:18.000 to walk that line was by producing a currency that 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:22.439 would be able to be extremely reliable as a store 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.920 of value. UM. And you might ask, obviously, like on 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:29.200 what grounds could that be reliable. But one of the 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.880 sort of crucial ideas, we will make this reliable by 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:35.360 having something like a Ledger system, by having some kind 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:39.080 of mechanism whereby everyone that holds the currency can collectively 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.879 agree on how much of it is going to be produced, 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:44.280 on how much of it is going to be available, 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:46.639 and that will make it so that you can hold 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.159 these assets while you are you know, technically dead or 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.240 d animated in metabolic coma as they put it. You 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:56.719 can hold these assets and know that everyone else who 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.480 holds them is going to be working with you to 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.480 keep their value over the long term in a way 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.359 that will save you from having to sort of worry 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:08.119 about the idea that some other agenda for example, you know, 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:11.480 quantitative easing or you know, pump criming or whatever, is 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.119 going to dramatically change the value of this this money 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:17.919 that you have access to. But at the same time, 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:20.880 you also want this money to have that kind of 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:26.280 um wild boom and bust capacity to be able to 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:30.720 generate the sorts of frenzies of investment that they think 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:32.879 are are most likely to be able to generate these 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:38.080 sorts of wild technological breakthroughs. So the they never quite 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:42.000 resolve that dichotomy, and you can see them developing different 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.560 kinds of money that work in both ways. From the 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:47.040 people who are trying to develop like very very stable, 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.760 solid investment structures like dynastic trusts that would be able 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:55.879 to hold and invest capital during your sort of posthumous 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:59.040 period um that would be able to eventually fund your revival, 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.600 and the people we're trying to generate these very unusual 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:08.439 experimental currencies that would be much more productive of wild 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:12.760 and disruptive including economically disruptive breakthroughs. And a really interesting 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.320 example of the latter kind of thing is an idea 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.880 that the Xtropians worked on a lot called idea coupons, 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:22.400 which were essentially a currency that would be issued against 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.080 the likelihood of a future event happening, which you could 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.000 both use, so a future event on the level of 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:30.720 like this number of people living on Mars by such 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.000 and such a date, or a computer of the following 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.280 like sort of metrics being in existence by such and 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:40.119 such a date, which you could use to both fund 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.160 that but also transform it into kind of an investment 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:46.080 mechanism for things that you otherwise will not easily be 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:48.000 able to find a way to invest in that you 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.920 want to see exist. So when we actually see bitcoin 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.520 come into being, one of the interesting choices that we 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:57.880 see being made with that is that the decision has 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:02.600 been made to shift over to the first aspect of 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.159 what they want that currency to be, something that is 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:09.359 notionally all about solidity, something that is all about being 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:15.160 an extremely reliable, deflationary store of value, rather than something 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:18.600 that's going to produce this kind of frenzy of innovation 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:38.879 which will hopefully bring these changes about. What I really 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.720 love about this is that if you think about just 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.960 sort of traditional finance, or even just traditional money, this 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:51.840 idea of porting value from time a to some unspecified 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:53.840 point in the future, maybe a year from now, maybe 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:58.200 when you retire in thirty years. Already money is currently 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.199 exists to sort of fulfill this time travel function that 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.679 we're talking about, So how do you preserve purchasing power 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.399 from a you know, one point to another point. Currency 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.359 itself is designed to hold value that you know, it 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:16.680 obviously leaks over time, investments, other structures. So what essentially 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:21.360 they're doing is trying to solve the problem that finance 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.880 currently solved, but just over much extreme time horizon. So 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.240 you know, you might go into a cryogenically preserved chamber 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.160 and you might not wake up for a thousand years, 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:36.520 because nobody knows when the technology will come to unthought people. 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:39.000 So in a way, and you know, there's a pretty 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:41.440 good chance that over a thousand years, your U S 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.200 Dollar bank accounts, there's a good chance that that's gone. 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:46.879 But it's essentially a way to just sort of radically 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:51.639 alter the time horizons or the time scales that money 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:55.040 and finance is already used for. Oh yeah, absolutely, And 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:58.600 that's part of what is so kind of fascinating about 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.800 it for me and I hope for for people at large, 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.760 is this is like a thought experiment, except that people 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.560 are actually trying to carry it out in practice. For 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:13.000 how you think about how money is embedded in time, right, So, 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:14.960 just as you say, like whether we're talking about like 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:19.680 depreciation schedules or like the discount rate, or the way 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.920 that we like allocate money in our personal lives into 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:25.560 college funds and four oh one case and yeah, all 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:30.040 that stuff, we're always you know, sort of juggling and 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:33.679 balancing different kinds of monetary time against each other. So 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:36.000 here's a group who's thinking about this in the real 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:41.080 long term, and it was also trying to understand the 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:44.520 ways that money will transform in over time in relation 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.120 to technological disruption. And they're doing that not just as 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:51.200 like you know, venture capitalists trying to kind of project 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:55.680 different disruptive transformations into the future, but also as people 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:58.480 who are trying to understand its consequences for their own lives. 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:03.360 How will what money is be altered by these various 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:07.440 new technologies that they're envisioning. How can they, as it were, 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.199 a bank on that to create these particular kinds of 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:15.480 currency that will be able to either fund those dramatic 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:18.520 transformations that will bring them back from the dead or 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.920 create the kinds of money that will enable their prosperity 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:25.440 when they are brought back from the dead. So, finn 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:27.920 I wanted to pick up on this point. Actually, and 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:31.000 I'm about to utter a sentence that I never thought 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:33.960 I would utter on odd lots, But you know, cryonics. 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:39.359 Cryonics is predicated on technology getting better. Right, Like, no 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:42.440 one at the moment is able to revive a body 0:23:42.480 --> 0:23:44.959 that's been put in deep freeze. So you're making a 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:47.600 bet that scientists will at some point figure that out 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:49.440 and be able to bring you back from the dead. 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:55.000 So why is there not a simultaneous belief that money 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:58.639 will also get better and change. Why is there a 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:03.320 belief that the digital money system that's invented now will 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:07.439 endure for hundreds and hundreds of years. That's a really 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:11.919 profound question, I think, because it also speaks to some 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:15.280 of the and I don't mean to be too critical, 0:24:15.359 --> 0:24:17.760