126 - The Crypto Revolution | Josh Rosenthal

Josh Rosenthal is our favorite crypto native historian. He has a Ph. D. in history, and received a Fulbright Scholarship to the Sorbonne’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Josh moved beyond traditional academia, sold some Web2 companies, and is now a crypto investor. He’s the historian that helped us craft the Crypto Renaissance podcast episode, which many people credit as the reason why they got into crypto. And he’s here to do it again with the Crypto Revolution on the 4th of July, harkening a new independence day for the crypto nation. ------ 📣JUNO | Crypto Friendly Banking https://juno.finance/bankless ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🚀ROCKET POOL | ETH STAKING https://bankless.cc/RocketPool ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦁BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 🌴MAKER DAO | DECENTRALIZED LENDING https://bankless.cc/MakerDAO 🔐LEDGER | SECURE STAKING https://bankless.cc/Ledger ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 6:00 Josh Rosenthal 14:43 The Broad Themes of History 23:33 A Permissioned World 28:40 The Context of Revolution 36:21 Taxation and Value 42:30 The Revolutionary Goal 46:34 Launching an Experiment 50:51 Coordination 54:07 The Whiskey Rebellion 1:02:45 Flawed Policies 1:07:45 Net Improvements 1:16:28 Vocation 1:23:52 The Land of Opportunity 1:30:24 The Public Forum 1:37:50 Permissionless Building 1:45:40 Digital States 1:51:25 Make things easier 1:57:30 Get building 1:59:58 Help others 2:05:00 Closing ------ Resources: Josh Rosenthal https://twitter.com/JoshuaRosenthal?s=20&t=_dhf5sZnqBpbG_SMeKcvrg https://twitter.com/JoshuaRosenthal?s=20&t=_dhf5sZnqBpbG_SMeKcvrg The Crypto Renaissance https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/-the-crypto-renaissance-josh-rosenthal ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless. Guys, we have a fantastic episode for you. The Crypto Revolution. This is the sister episode to our favorite episode of all time called The Crypto Renaissance. We have Josh Rosenthal, who's a PhD in history, who went through the parallels between the original Renaissance, historical Renaissance, and crypto. Now, today, on the 4th of July, Independence Day, we are going through the parallels of crypto and the American Revolution, calling this the Crypto Revolution. The lens that we are

• 0:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  applying today is, how is crypto like early America? How are you like an early revolutionary? So excited about this episode. It was an absolute blast with Josh and I love these historical analogues, David. What were a few of the takeaways from you?

• 1:04David Hoffman?

  We always joke on Bankless, we're speedrunning the history of money and finance, and also human coordination. And this is that last part where we did the Crypto Renaissance episode. We compared and contrasted the way that crypto is very much like the Renaissance. And Josh makes the claim that the American Revolution, happy July 4th, everyone, is the logical conclusion of the Renaissance. The Renaissance man turns into these revolutionaries who break free from top-down state control. And so, this governance experiment, experiment in decentralized governance based on a protocol, is something that had never been seen before. Rather than a monarchy, we have this piece of paper that is a code that we all agree

• 1:44David Hoffman?

  to. And there's also just some other parallels behind this innate human desire that is built into the American ethos that I think we have lost, and that's now being captured by the crypto ethos. Crypto is here to produce a more perfect union of humanity. Crypto is a nation of builders, a nation built on freedom and independence. And crypto people are here to discover themselves, this innate ability to build. Something to become an entrepreneur, to add value, not just for your own sake, but also for the sakes of people around you is very much baked into this human desire that has always migrated westward, if you will, starting in Europe with the Renaissance, going on a pilgrimage towards America for freedom.

• 2:27David Hoffman?

  And now we are going, because there's no physical land left to go, we are going into the metaverse to find our freedom and to be able to build stuff. And so Josh Rosenthal is of course, the best person to tie these parallels together as we go into the crypto revolution to understand in what ways is this the same story that we have heard once again. And so Bankless Nation, I hope you have a fantastic 4th of July and thoroughly enjoy this part of crypto's history as we go through the crypto revolution.

• 2:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  The last thing I'll say before we get to Josh is I think some of you might find this episode a bit idealistic. Of course, we are idealistic on crypto. Also, there's some idealism about the US and for some whose experience of America is kind of not the aspirational vision of what America could be, you might recognize that. And I don't think this episode is saying America is perfect or that it's lived up to its vision or its aspirations. But those aspirations are good in and of themselves. And the US has been a fantastic experiment post Renaissance and into the revolution of economic freedom and personal freedom, not perfect, not finished, not complete, but a worthwhile experiment. And we see some parallels with crypto. So with that,

• 3:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  we'll get right to the episode with Josh Rosenthal. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 3:44David Hoffman?

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• 4:26David Hoffman?

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• 5:11David Hoffman?

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• 5:55David Hoffman?

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• 6:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey, Bankless Nation, we are super excited to introduce you once again to Josh Rosenthal. He is our favorite crypto-native historian. He has a PhD in history, received a Fulbright Scholarship to the Sorbonne's Institute for Advanced Studies. He's no longer a practicing historian, though. He has sold some Web2 companies. He's now a crypto investor, and indeed, a crypto-native. Josh is the individual who helped us create our favorite podcast of all time. Both David would say this, and I would say this, which is The Crypto Renaissance. Podcast. If you haven't listened to that podcast, go back and listen to that. We'll include it in the show notes because it is the precursor episode. It is kind of the sister episode to this one because we are here on the 4th of July.

• 6:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is Independence Day for those of you in the US, celebrating our independence in the crypto world. And we are talking about the sister episode to the crypto Renaissance. Because first you have a Renaissance, then you have a revolution. This is the crypto revolution. Josh is here to talk about it with us. Josh Rosenthal, welcome back to Bankless. How are you doing?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks so much. Thanks for having me back. And just right off the bat, I'd like to say thanks for continuing what you're doing. Like they say, you can only know about a person in two points, like when things are great and when they're brutal. And like, I think it's like more instructive on the latter. And you guys have just been fantastic in terms of delving into the issues, giving people context. And especially first time cyclists, like broader context, cultural and historical. And I personally appreciate it. So a pleasure to be here.

• 7:43David Hoffman?

  I think Bankless listeners have noticed Ryan and I get more giddy as prices go down for some reason. Just because the bear market ultimately, you know, this is where the revolution happens. This is where the revolution is born. It manifests later, but it starts in the bear market. And so we are excited. Yeah, we're here for it.

• 7:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so Josh, the way we want to take this, I know you had some thoughts you wanted to share with us today. But we want to provide historical context on the American Revolution and how that maybe relates to crypto. And we're going to talk about that. So first, we want to go through the high level of all of this. And then go through the high level of the revolution historically and how that applies to crypto. From a value perspective, from a vocation perspective, from a governance and identity perspective. There are some incredible analogues and parallels here. And then we also want to end this with some action items. All right. What can people do with this information? And I know you're fantastic at that as well. So let's just set the context here.

• 8:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And maybe take us from our initial episode where you asked individuals listening, Bankless listeners, to put themselves in the position of the medieval you, someone in a pre Renaissance time period, how they experienced the world and how The Renaissance changed their experience of the world through technologies like the printing press and through double entry bookkeeping, the Neo ledger that we came up with. That's where we started on the journey of the Renaissance. Could you just recap that quickly? And then let's start to talk about this second chapter from Renaissance to revolution. So take us through that.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For those just catching up, you know, one of the models I can think of, when I look at crypto, I think the best way to describe it is as a Renaissance, which is a crazy claim to make, but it's fundamentally the historical rhyme that best fits what I think we're seeing. And so just kind of laying out the TLDR, medieval you lived in a permissioned world and we looked at value and communication and identity. And value for medieval you was access to wealth and it was subject to the control of others, the decisions of others. Communication likewise was permissioned. It was top down and ideas were controlled by access, you know, to expensive manuscripts and their economic powers reinforcing that hierarchy. And those two things fused to form your identity, your horizons, who you were and what you could do. And the key world to your medieval world was permissioned. And the crazy thing about it is you might not have known it was permissioned

• 9:58Speaker 02

  at the time. It would have just been the air you breathed. You wouldn't have been aware of that. And so with the Renaissance, we saw two new decentralized technologies converge. And it kind of gets to what drives history. It wasn't, you know, means of production and it wasn't great men with ideas, but it was really communities making history by using decentralized technologies for social coordination. And so there are two technologies that arrived simultaneously, ledger-based financial primitives, which we call double entry bookkeeping, debit and credit may sound familiar, and a new permissionless communication protocol, which was really the printing press, not just texts, but also images and ownership baked into the protocol itself. And so this gave you access to capital, there's sharing of ideas at scale. It essentially unwound a hierarchical world and early adopters, you know, had asymmetric returns on that. And so that basic idea is that your medieval

• 10:42Speaker 02

  world, which is static for, you know, recent memory to all the way through centuries, was fundamentally fractured for the first time, bursting open with new opportunities. And so you could hear competing visions and join a community based on your values, your job, your family, could start a business. It's what historians call the birth of sociopolitical pluralism and proto-capitalism. Your stars were no longer set. And so as we go into the next chapter, you can make meaningful choices. So what did you do with those freedoms? So if the Renaissance marks an unwinding of medieval hierarchy and the birth of the modern world, it's the birth of this creation we call the early modern world, which is still what we're in, it didn't obliterate medieval structures. It offered a revolutionary idea, the idea of an alternative. Luther forked reality, like Satoshi, and now it's

• 11:24Speaker 02

  forks beget forks. And so faced with new opportunities, what did you choose to do? Some people chose to stay in those vestiges, and that gave us juxtaposed communities with competing visions. And if you adopted those new values and joined a new community, that meant you likely faced resistance, conflict with previous ties, your family, your friends, your bosses, your landowners, your overlords. And that's kind of the context for the American Revolution. What did this pluralism mean? And so if you adopted these new communities, you had some options. You could stay put and convert your political authorities, and sometimes that ended badly in what's known as wars of religion. You could try to migrate to a different geography and physically reside with your community where it held political dominance. And you had mass communication now, so this idea, different geographies

• 12:07Speaker 02

  courted these communities, partially because of the massive economic benefits they reaped from them. You could also choose to participate in your government and try and carve out liberties for you and your community by threat or military force, but also just by the weight of your newfound economic power. And here's where you have the genesis of a variety of political representation experiments in governance. But for people who still found those vestiges too constricting, there's just one other option that remained, and that was to strike out for new shores and leave. And there is a diaspora in Exodus, like many attempts in this political experiment on a global stage were undertaken. We've forgotten most of those. Huguenots in South America, Acadia, New France, we just, we don't remember them anymore. Largely because, just like the last Renaissance was so vibrant, it eclipsed all those previously, the American experiment in independence was the most successful in

• 12:52Speaker 02

  terms of staying power to eclipse those previously. And that largely is the context for our discussion today. If you're an American and into history, you kind of think of Puritans and pilgrims. But at the time, it wasn't fixed. Those people were zealots and kooks and nut jobs, people who were so obsessed with this Renaissance vision of individual sovereignty acting in community that they struck out. And it wasn't just religious freedom, the way we think about it, content of personal belief, but it was really about what you could do with that freedom. Associate with others, engage in economic enterprise, and build with whoever you chose. And so- That is the American experience in terms of British colonialism. But if you're way out on the edge, over leveraged, if you will, in the pursuit of sovereignty and community, what then? What happens when the experience doesn't meet the ideals?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  And that precisely takes us to the debate with the British Colonials, right? Like, do you remain loyalist or do you go revolutionary? What form of governance best serves your interests as well as your neighbors? And how do you even think about that? And so rather than just doing kind of one history, like most historians do, one damn thing after another, we can pull on these threads if you're interested in looking at value, which is money, economic systems, and ownership and business, and communication, sharing ideas at scale, the technologies, the platform, and the content, and particularly how ownership functions therein, and identity, how you viewed yourself, values and allegiances, and organized yourself according to governance. So that's kind of, that's several hundred years of history in two minutes, but there you go.

• 14:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And Josh, we want to get there. And we want to start with kind of like the timeline of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence and kind of start there. But while we're still addressing the themes and the analog behind kind of the American experiment, this experiment in self-governance, bottom-up governance, a nation at its best, aspirationally, by the people and for the people, we start to see some parallels with what we're doing in crypto. So you mentioned this group, this tribe, who rather than work within the existing confines of the establishment structure that was left to them in Europe, they came to the US, literally headed west. That's how we end every single podcast, is this is the journey west. And we have these Puritans headed west. We want to get into their head.

• 14:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  But a few of the cores that I think we're going to talk about here in the parallels. Number one, crypto is a nation of builders. In the same way, I think, the best parts of the US in its early phases were a nation of builders. Maybe we could talk about that. But also, America has a history of like, we weren't sure it was going to make it, right? There were like lots of parts in the history of the US, just like the history of America, where you're like, was that whole experiment a good idea? Are you like, are you sure these people, you know, know what they're doing? This could go off the rails in so many ways, and it almost did. That's another theme. And it's Literally called the great American experiment for a reason. In the same way, we can call crypto, the great crypto experiment.

• 15:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, all this stuff at some levels, we're still in beta, aren't we? I mean, this is still an experiment. We don't know fully how it's going to play out. So tell us about some of these parallels and like the common quest, I guess, for self sovereignty and freedom. Why don't you pull on some of those strings at the high level before we get into the detailed history here?

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, sure. So when we talk about crypto and I said, hey, Renaissance is a good way to think about it. It's a rebirth or recreation of society. It was an unwinding of medieval hierarchies and every form of technology and control and organization, and essentially unwound them. And then what do you do with the pieces? How do you put those back together? And that's the context of what we call the great cultural Renaissance or rebirth of society. And when we really get building, we get building into the Renaissance, tracing these themes like through. And it's not just me as a historian kind of forcing the themes. If you ask revolutionary you, this would be in your head. This is the context for why you're taking actions. And so just the long story short, if you're into crypto, you're part of this like story. And it's echoing throughout the ages, Renaissance, revolution. It's always the same characters.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  It's always permission versus sovereignty, hegemony versus decentralization, subjugation versus independence. And so the shift from Middle Ages to Renaissance is context, but revolutionary you and even what we're doing in crypto day, they aren't different stories. They're all chapters in the same story. Medieval you is permissioned, Renaissance you had a choice. Revolutionary you is about what you chose to do. That was to build and to build in public as part of a great experiment, not because it's easy, but precisely because it's hard. People would pile on and it would be ridiculous, but there's no other way to do it but to build through it and participate. And that's actually how you surface unintended consequences and hidden dynamics. And so in both phases, we were driven by the stupendous optimism. Critics would say it's naive, zealous impetulance. We thought we could rebuild our world from the better from the ground up.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  After we toppled medieval institutions, we proceeded to rebuild this imagined community instantiated by consensual currencies and contracts, like the same pieces of crypto. And we, we did it all in public, to your point, like on chain, keeping records on the way, full display for the world to see. And when it failed, and it often did fail, like repeatedly, the old world piled on hard. Our first constitutional forum didn't last a decade. That's a giant fail, back to the drawing board, not gonna make it. Then debt and rebellion after rebellion, not revolution, internal rebellion. Until we adopted a strong centralized authority, it was basically a king with a different name, critics said, where's your decentralization now? And when it came time to build, we, to create a more perfect union, we argued, we scabbled, we basically anonymously shat-posted on each other and then did these middle-of-the-road options.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  And we gave, just an example, we gave the central bank a short-term charter because we didn't trust it. And then we revoked it the first chance we got, after just a few years, because we thought it was working against us through bad lack of clarity in regulations and actually causing inflation. Like, American history in a nutshell, in the history of decentralization as part of this continuous experiment, is a history of not going to make it. The critics always say, just give it time, they'll collapse into chaos and come crawling back. And the crazy thing about all this is we didn't disagree. We actually leaned into it, which is crazy. This had never been done successfully before the building. Our history, we'll get into, is a history of moonshine-fueled rebellion, the modern post office attempting to tax our emails, the Fed denying a spot ETF and forcing court action. That's not unexpected, that's what happens when you experiment.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  And we called it that and did it in public, inviting others to point out the failures, to gloat when the community broke, to carefully track our downtime. It wasn't a bug, it was the feature. And to your point, Ryan, like, the safe bet was against it, right? As historians, you step back and you say, oh, we know that was a renaissance, we know that was a revolution, we always, we envision ourselves as characters in the story and we would have bravely marched out. But the experience of that, it wasn't that way, it was volatile, it was cataclysmic. You know, the people in the Renaissance thought their world was ending, and it was. And when you actually tried this experiment, it would be chaos. The smart bet, from the institutional intelligentsia, political theorists, reasoned from armchairs and said, hey, governance from the bottom would be chaotic, you can't even have a piece of that. That was like Enlightenment axiom, age of reason, like, the answers would be obvious,

• 19:31Speaker 02

  thinking from first principles. Like, any form of self-governance would burn out and collapse into chaos. And they had reason to say that. Like, when we tried these little experiments, dissenting voices from bottom up, peasants' rebellion after Martin Luther, Rousseau in France, it tended to end poorly. Massacres, bloodbaths, guillotine running, you know, 24/7. And if it ever did succeed, so the reasoning went, you know, and take on an increasingly ossified structure and become the very thing it was created to replace, which is, you know, irony. And that's like, shades of Leviathan, in either scenario. Smart bet was to say institutions were inevitable and history had these time-tested models. Who are you to question it? And like honestly, the loyalist position was very attractive, right? Stick with the devil you know, even if he wore a monarch's crown.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  And so this experiment that we partaken, the freedom to attempt to pursue one's economics interests and find a governance to ensure that it persists was crazy. It was like the risky bet to take. Like Renaissance gave you choice to express one's value, to join a community and help others. And the American debate is about how best to do that. And that's the context. It's not just dumping tea over the boat. It's really history swinging back and forth between decentralization and aggregation, big tics and talks, medieval to Renaissance, and little tics and talks that characterize American debate and discourse. Like since day one, do you remain loyalist or do you revolt? Centralized institution or more autonomy for divergent geographies and communities? And this is federalist versus anti-federalist experimenting in public. And the long story short part of it is all

• 20:57Speaker 02

  those downtimes, all those experiments that did go off the rails and blew up in our faces to the glee of spectators, they paid off. We built through it and discovered an unexpected solution, a way to balance structure with freedom and to prevent both chaos and calcification. And it was a new model of largely demarcated lines with broad spaces to play and tinker. Today, we'd call them sandboxes or safe harbors. And we knew those would go bad over time. And so we kind of built into the system eternal vigilance, not from an external enemy, but from ourselves. And one of the things about history is that, you know, there are unintended consequences, exploitation of peoples and lands, and that's true. You want to go deeper into history to get a better mastery of it, to prevent that from happening again, and

• 21:39Speaker 02

  to give you a lens to better look at your current experience outside the blinders of your life experience. And so when we use these lenses, we say, hey, in terms of the Renaissance and the revolution and where we are in this great debate and great experiments, we've ticked and talked back to central leverage. We have centralized institutions with very few sandboxes and regulations that aren't nuanced once again. And so crypto- Isn't just another part, isn't another thing. It's actually part of this great experiment. It's the ability to rebuild our world from the ground up and to participate in this imagined community instantiated by consensual concerencies and contracts. And maybe it won't work, it'll probably fail, it definitely won't go according to plan, and we'll veer between chaos and hegemony all the while doing it in public.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  And so this is by design, the volatility is a feature of meaningful structural transformation. When things die, they do so by slow ossification. And crypto is, the reason why we're forcing this issue is because now we have the technical rails to actually do this meaningful generative, which is a revolutionary idea, creation for the first time, to remember our history, to pursue a more perfect union as a community of builders and the space, and the power of spaces to experiment. It's a way to reimagine what it means to be a nation, but also the technical rails to pursue on a global scale independence. So that's the, that's the whole thesis, kind of A to Z.

• 22:52David Hoffman?

  And the podcasts that we do with you, Josh, the Renaissance Podcast and this Revolution Podcast, I think are so incredibly important. We could talk about this DeFi app, or we could talk about that blockchain, but when we talk about the pendulums throughout history, we tap into something that everyone, I feel like, knows intrinsically. We have been here before. And when we experience things, when our ancestors experience things, it gets written into our DNA. And we understand some of the concepts that we're going to talk about today, intrinsically to our bones. Like, everyone can relate to their peasant self in the 1400s Renaissance. Everyone can relate to their ancestor that was a part of the American Revolution. And like, even if they didn't have ancestors in that part of the world, there's other

• 23:36David Hoffman?

  components of this swing from decentralization and aggregation to top-down control and authority. Like, we have been here before. What's unique about crypto is that this part of the cycle is like, we have so much more recorded history to have data points on. And so like, while there have been 100 pendulum swings between order and chaos throughout history, only recently, we have been able to write all of these things down and had the internet structure to be able to communicate these things and the podcasts to talk about them on. And so as the listener listens to this, You are not a passive observer of this lucky revolution that tends to happen once every 300 years, right?

• 24:17David Hoffman?

  1400s Renaissance, 1700s American Revolution, 2000s, the crypto revolution. You are not just a passive observer, you are a part of this story. And if you are on the edge of your seat, as I am right now, it is on you to not be passive in this story, but see and understand your role in history. Because that is how we get this done. You talked about the first attempt at like the American structure that failed after 10 years. The reason why the American experiment succeeded after failure, after failure, after failure, is because of the people that decided to undertake this revolution. They knew that there was a there there, they didn't know where it was, but they were committed to these ideas of independence, these ideas of freedom.

• 25:00David Hoffman?

  So they were going to get there, they were going to run this experiment into the ground. They were going to ride Bitcoin, they were going to ride Ether 2.0 and nothing else. And so as we go forward into this crypto renaissance, like it's important to understand that like your ancestors have been here before in one way or another, and we are about to park upon this great crusade once again.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Man, that's so, full disclosure for everybody in the audience, the crypto renaissance isn't me. That was, you know, David and Ryan doing that and saying, hey, I think there's something here. It's like, everybody knows this, we know this in our bones, right? History isn't about names and dates and facts, it's about remembering and kind of suspending disbelief to figure out like where you have a part in the story. And for most of history, you don't really have a part in the story in the same meaningful way like you do today, right now. It's, it's really important, yeah, ride Ether to Zero is like live free or die. These were the calling cards saying like, I know despite the fact that all evidence to the contrary, I'm going to persist in this. Like not because I'm just obstinate and into faith and faith or feedism, but because I know there's something meaningful here, even if I can't articulate it. And, and it's kind of a counterbalance to this vague feeling of unease where we know. Something's not quite right, right?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Like, your medieval peasant self, you didn't know you were permission. That was the crazy part about it. It wouldn't have occurred to you. And it's like, in some senses, we're medieval today in this part, right? Like, we, we think we have control of our money. You actually don't. You have a broker, you have an IOU. You can't spend as you want to. A credit card won't process it on the rails. You basically, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Or you think you can communicate. Well, somebody else owns the platform. They own the broadcast layer. They own the technical code. You fill it with your content. They can deplatform you, or they can subtly shift you through, or they carve out your identity. It's like, we're subject in all of the same ways. And it was only with Renaissance here where you woke up and said, hey, there is an alternative. I can do something else. And so, all the way up, like, through this continuation of the Renaissance, like, things kind of re-aggregate and you continue, like, persisting and, like, participating in this experiment, saying, like, live free or die, I'm gonna do this regardless.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  And like, somehow, I can use it as a lens to say we're over-leveraged. And a couple of things of over-leveraging, we've just gotten used, we've been born in this weird period of, like, stasis again, just like medieval you, where we have 40, 50 years of kind of, like, global status-ism, post-Bretton Woods or what have you, where we think there's a institutional path, we think there's a predefined way to get there, and we tend to view volatility as something negative, rather than, like, meaningful structural transformation. And so, we kind of have to rewire the way we think about that. And one way to do it is to look at history and say, what would it have been like at the Renaissance? It would have been chaos in Armageddon. What was it like at Revolutionary Independence and pursuit of it? It would have been chaos in Armageddon. And like, the way we did it was to experiment in public. There is no other way through it. And so, yeah, it really forces the question.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  It's like, not just what side are you on, but it forces you to really clarify your values, what's meaningful, what's important to you, and what are you willing to do as a result of it? Yeah, so well said, absolutely.

• 27:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Josh, I've, you know, long seen so many parallels with kind of the early founding of the US, the American Revolution, and like, what we're doing in crypto, right? And I get a little weird on this, because I think there's like, some pretty direct analogs, right? It's like Ethereum and Bitcoin being sort of like, in these other crypto products, this is the great experiment of our era. This is the new America. This is the land of opportunity, right? We even have our own constitution in these crypto networks. That is code, right? We call these things protocols, all of the times, Ethereum, Rust. On a protocol Bitcoin rests on that protocol. Well, the constitution is a protocol as well. The constitution is a protocol for coordinating people, governing people. Decentralized governance.

• 28:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. In the same way that Ethereum and Bitcoin are a constitution for coordination as our smart contracts. I even see people like Satoshi and Vitalik is almost like these. This is going to sound weird right now, but I just think in history it will literally view them as this almost like founding fathers. Fathers, yeah. Right? Like, I mean, these are originators of kind of the thought and the code and the constitutions of our crypto networks that are so important. And we in crypto, as David was just saying, we are like the revolutionaries. We are those crazies deciding to like rebel against the existing system. And despite what all of our friends and family say, embark into this new world and this new journey. There's going to be opportunities associated with that.

• 29:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's start with kind of the, I guess, the timeline here in the history, because some people listening will have like vague ideas of American revolutionary history. Like I myself have some, you know, I've taken some AP history classes, American history classes, of course. I've watched the Hamilton musical. All right. So that's, that's something too. You know, but like, I don't know all of the details, but a lot of thought coming out of the Renaissance went into the revolution. Right? I mean, you had thinkers like Adam Smith and, you know, capitalism and, you know, Locke and Rousseau and others talking about like these freedoms. Can you just tell us, let's take us to the Declaration of Independence? And why did this colony, this British colony decide suddenly, okay, we're going to revolt against the king.

• 29:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're going to separate from the British Empire and like, we'll go to war if we have to. Why was that decision made? What's kind of the context here and take us to the early part of the revolution?

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So you're not wrong thinking about it this way. It sounds like crazy and audacious to think about crypto as like a new nation, right? It's like how, it's such a crazy historical claim to make, but this literally is the continuation. Like the historical rhymes fit really well. Like if you do a PhD in poli sci, like the first thing you walk through is Benedict Anderson. You're going to say, hey, Nations are imagined, communities, instantiated by consensual currency and contract. And so a lot of our discourse has been around crypto as finance or replacing fiat, and that's true, but it really is serving the function of a nation in that sense, right? Imagine communities, consensual currency on tokens and contracts now with smart contracts and NFT for property rights, like expanding into governance, exploring governance with

• 30:42Speaker 02

  a thousand synthetic flowers, being able to permeate not just democratic, one token, one vote, not republican delegation like based on election, but like quadratic voting and like proof of attendance, experience, expertise. We're experimenting this, it's all real. And David, to your point, it's not just that we have more history, we have greater visibility to do this all in public. One of the reasons we've forgotten about this volatility and the craziness of the experiment was because that's just not largely shown to us anymore. We haven't had the visibility to do this. And so we have better tools to be able to do these experiments at scale with better speed and greater visibility to work together. So it is really a historic moment. And yeah, just taking us to, let me walk through kind of the history at the same time as I pull on one of these threads. And so I like these threads, different people have different threads, but these are kind

• 31:25Speaker 02

  of the ones I use to assess like when a complex system changes. And so this is kind of like value, communication and identity. And so let me walk through value and I'll take us through a little tour of history. And then I'd really like to stop on one point, which isn't thought about in terms of the context of the revolution, but I think is like very salient as some historians would say it's the culmination of the revolution and like very much like the stage set for our discourse today. And so that would be, that would be the whiskey rebellion as well. So we'll go from Tea Party to Constitution, I'll drill into Fed as an example, and then we'll go into whiskey rebellion, kind of doing that chronology while I do a little bit of this value. And so just big picture is Renaissance, you have choices, you can pursue, you have this idea of an inalienable right to build, to pursue your vocation and to organize yourself

• 32:10Speaker 02

  like with different forms of governance you were experimenting with. And when you don't have, it's not just taxation without representation, it's without clear regulation where the burden of regulation actually like burns you as much as the taxation itself, because then you're submitting not just authority to tax, but authority to like set the stage, particularly where it's unreasonable and the implementations of those policies. Which is like a slightly more nuanced view. That's what sent the founding fathers, that's what drove them crazy. And so like, the answer to that is really grounded in value, which sounds like super selfish, but it was a revolutionary concept at the time that like drove them to the tea party and continued like pushing back as a result of that.

• 32:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was kind of property rights?

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was partially property rights, but it was also, there's this revolutionary concept of like generating value. This was like crazy, right? Medieval you, your world was static and property and wealth and value was static. If you wanted something, I had to take it from you, Ryan. If David wanted something, you had to take it from me. That was the way that things were, value was finite, basically. So coming out of the Renaissance, saying like, there's an idea of like generative finance, like shades of Adam Smith, where I can actually create wealth by doing something. That sounds so simple, we take it for granted. We say network effects and virtuous cycles, but that was insane, basically. Medieval you, like the meaningful part about your work wasn't doing value creation, it was being outside the world.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  You're better off in a monastery and a nunnery and a cloister, being outside the world. Like with Luther and company, all of a sudden, the most meaningful thing you could do wasn't being outside the world, but it was participating in it through economic generation. You could actually create meaningful value by pursuing your vocation, by building a product or a service and doing something for the market. And the market would reward you if it actually was valuable. And when others used your thing, it created value for them. So you had this mutual creation of value in terms of like generative.

• 33:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  People don't realize, Josh, like there's no such thing as an entrepreneur before this.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the birth of, no, you went from farmer to entrepreneur. The holiest thing you could do in the medieval world was, you know, basically be outside of it, be a monk. The holiest thing you could do in the post Renaissance world was be an entrepreneur. It didn't mean you had to be, you know, VC financing and investing. It meant running a small family business. You could be a farmer, but you owned your farm and you could do what you wanted to with the fruits of that. And now you had access to literacy and you could see different manuals for precisely how to do this. It was the birth of capitalism. Historians call it proto-capitalism until it becomes capitalism. And so you, you literally could generate wealth and that was radical, instead of taking from someone else, which meant that your tools of coordination were generative. You could create value for me as I created value for you. It sounds very kind of like VW bumper sticker on your bus, but it was unbelievable.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  There was no entrepreneurism, there was no creating a market, there was no refining a service. And so now with this like spirit of capitalism, the holiest thing you could do was like work for yourself? But by doing so, you would actually work for your neighbor and for society at large. And that was just like radical in terms of generation.

• 35:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Josh, I want to kind of make the point, right? It's like, you know, we are living in a different era of capitalism. Some would call this kind of like crony capitalism or late-stage capitalism. But like going back in time, the concept of being able to open your own family business and get into the merchant class, get into the middle class, that was such

• 35:18Speaker 02

  There was no middle class.

• 35:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  freeing protocol.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  There was no middle class.

• 35:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And so this was an amazing revolution at the time. And this is what the like revolutionaries were like tapping into. So like getting back to that theme is, so why were the founding fathers so pissed at the British? Like, what were they doing with this value chain? Were they getting in the way of them, you know, creating their own businesses and becoming entrepreneurs and?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  No, that was exactly it. That's the context for it. It wasn't, we tend to think of it just in terms of pure political theory, like abstract, you're not being represented. But if you were there at the time, you viewed that, like to your point, this was the creation of the middle class and now you're participating in it, right? And yeah, some people didn't have access, but it was crazy that anyone had access to this. And the idea of taxation without representation particularly burdened some regulation around the details of the policy implementing it, was that it impinged, it wasn't just theoretical, it literally impinged upon your ability to create your business, to create wealth from nothing, to make the best of yourself and to help your neighbor while doing that. That was the inalienable right. We call it, you know, pursuit of freedom and happiness. But that was like literally through value creation. That was the context of everything you read. That was what you did. And so this taxation, it wasn't just representation, but it would potentially

• 36:26Speaker 02

  break you. It wasn't a slippery slope. It was the details of the regulation were so onerous. We essentially pitched a fit because we said, it's a sharp knife to the heart of who we are. You have an inalienable right. No longer has like the divine cosmic, like, are you setting a pyramid? Your now like divine duty is to pursue your vocation, your calling, like through this entrepreneurialism, through what you like and what you're good at, and generating something valuable for yourself and for others. And so by these forms of taxation, it's not just taxation, it's a policy implementation and a lack of clarity around it that just doomed it to fail and liquidated everyone. That was a sharp knife at who you were, why you were here in the first place, what you're assembling. And so, yeah, we can, if you want to, we can definitely kind of turn back and kind of go through.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Like, the way to think about why everyone pitched the Tea Party was like really around, it was impinging upon value, like, the ability to pursue your interests unencumbered.

• 37:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  And what, it's for people who, again, maybe didn't take their AP history, what's the Tea Party? We're talking about like dumping, in Boston, actually, the colonists, like dumping the tea?

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually.

• 37:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  And sticking to the British?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, in a nutshell, absolutely. Dumping the tea and sticking it to the British is the easiest way to describe.

• 37:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this was kind of the start of the Revolutionary War, it's like one of the precursor events.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  This is the start of the Revolutionary War and the precursor around it. And usually it's portrayed as people, you know, bros get mad about not wanting to get taxed, or taxes are too high, and they dump it. And that's not what happened. It was, it was monarchy, it was governance preventing you from pursuing your calling of wealth creation. That's why everyone went apoplectic when that happened. And so they dumped those physical assets. They said, "We control things on the ground." And that was the clearest. And it was also symbolic, and there's a bit of like, cultural construction and ritualism to it. There's things going on around that. But basically, it was because the revolutionary idea was that you could create wealth, and this was impinging you from doing that, basically. It prevented you from participating in a virtuous cycle of creation. And that meant that your colony would fail, right? If you can't create, your colony's going to fail. And the whole reason

• 38:22Speaker 02

  you're here is because you were already out on the edges. You had already left for a new land. And so like, now what's the right way? What's the best way to prevent careening from chaos into also from like, having an overly ossified, monarchical system? And so, we basically said, "No." Like, where we draw the line isn't just in taxation, but it's in taxation without representation. What we meant by that with the Tea Party kicking off the American Revolution, is, the policy itself was poorly implemented. And it's just something that happens again and again and again and again. Like, if we play the story forward, like, the Tea Party, it sounds weird, but it's like this idea of like, rule, that you have an obligation to the policy, not just the tax. And like, it wasn't foreseen,

• 39:04Speaker 02

  right? Like, as a loyalist, like, the whole idea was you were subject, it was a clash of worldview, right? It really was like medieval versus Renaissance. Remember how I said some people persisted in those medieval structures? Those were the loyalists. Those are basically people who said, "It was an ideological battle around like, value creation." Loyalists said, "You are subject to a monarchy. There's a divine hierarchy appointed by cosmic powers. There's a king here. He's imbued with supernatural authority. There's a divine contract." With a crown and all this ensured that it was for your best and like that was like a good trade to make. It was safe, it felt good, had a good UI UX. Revolutionary you wasn't part of that. You were part of that Luther breaking that hegemony and saying, I don't know about that whole cosmically instituted hierarchy thing, right? You've

• 39:46Speaker 02

  participated in different forms of government, representative pluralism, divergent communities and structures, league of electors, even in popular revolution. And more importantly, you'd managed yourself, right? You'd done it on the ground. You've organized community events and helped others in need. And like, those values were contagious. You've gotten used to this independence. And so when you were obligated not just to pay taxes for services and public goods, but when you did so and not only you didn't see the benefit of it, but it was like clearly arrogant and the implementation of the policy prevented you from not just pursuing your business, but from being you and yourself, that was it. You were done with it. You would absolutely revolt. That was, you know, live free or die. That was eth to zero, however you wanted to kind of carve that out, basically. And the debate isn't between like equality and outcome. It's really, it was about the form

• 40:31Speaker 02

  of quality as like opportunity. And so like, yeah, we kicked it off with a tea party. We dumped some tea. All hell broke out. We're fighting Concord. We're like clearly the worst bet to make. They have, you know, professional troops, like we're fighting from the edges and using guerrilla war content. We're farmers, right? We're like militia. It doesn't make any sense.

• 40:49David Hoffman?

  Just to completely break the fourth wall and make this like crystal clear, where we have this like top-down regulation from the United States, from the United States government that is holding so many parts of this industry back. And it is frustrating the entire industry. And like, there's so many products that we have not built that we could have. And there are so many things that our entrepreneurs and our builders could have built, but they are hampered by regulation. I'm not missing the fact that Michael Sunshine and Grayscale just sued the SEC because the SEC is preventing a lot of the true manifestation of the products that we are building in this space from actually emerging. And it makes sense that this is the way forward where like you talked about, it's not some sort of just like ideological, like purism, like, hey, I think governance

• 41:34David Hoffman?

  should be this way. It comes from people with raw economic incentives saying the regulation And authority and top down control is preventing me from becoming my true self. It's preventing my business from truly expressing its true raw power. Because the legal structures and the top down authority are not allowing me to do the things that I want to do. And the things I want to do are the things that I know best. And it is fundamentally about pushing entrepreneurship, pushing computation to the margins. And saying like the state, the holy divine pyramid of godly divine influence does not know what's best for me. And now that I'm an individual and I have the tools to engage in entrepreneurship and value creation. I need this top down central authority to get out of my way.

• 42:18David Hoffman?

  So I can create value for myself, my family and my neighbors. And so like this is where like in the American revolution. Where the Americans went and invaded in the Boston harbor and threw the tea overboard. It wasn't about the tea, it was about the message. It was about get your hands out of my business because you're holding me back. And now we are doing the same thing where grayscale is suing the SEC. And we're saying, get your hands, get your regulation out of the form factor of how my business is expressed. Cause you're harming our industry and we will go down with the ship. And because we're going to go down with the ship, we will fight you until we have our freedom.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's what like the tea party is to the whiskey rebellion is to filing suit on the SEC. That it's also, we'll get into it a bit, but it's not just, it's not selfish pursuit of economics. You really believe that you can generate value in the world, that you pursuing your calling was the way to improve the world for yourself. And for your neighbor and for the community of governance. And you chose to participate in that experiment, like literally a way to think about it is.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Is that you're helping your neighbor by making the world a better place and pursuing yourself and helping them pursue themselves. You're opening up the door for them to do the same thing. And the fruits that you actually are growing like will like feed them basically and governance as well. So like, if you want to break the fourth wall, the basic idea is that, yeah, wouldn't other people, at least some other people be better off? Like owning their own like value, controlling their communication, their identity. Wouldn't they be better off in the, especially if you're down the distribution curve? Like, why keep trying to play minor league ball, play a different game, right? Like, isn't that a better approach to it? Maybe even that actually if the technology is really generative, maybe that's how you get out of like budget deficit and interest rates. That's what we've seen like. Repeatedly through these sorts of explosions and harvesting, like, maybe you can actually take on new forms of governance. We have the technology now, like, to literally do

• 44:03Speaker 02

  these governance experiments at scale, basically, right? Like, maybe we can pay for public goods in ways our cities can't, like, get out of our way to let us do our stuff. And, like, that's not a return to, like, complete chaos. The solution we came up with was, like, safe places with safe harbors, call them safe spaces for innovation. Like, that was the balance we struck. And so today, I'd say, we've all but forgot, we've swung so far back, where's your safe space here, right? Like, to do innovation. Like, that's essentially what we're suing the SEC for. Not because we're philosophically opposed to it, but because we need a place to, like, pursue our economic activity, yes, to benefit ourselves, but also others, and, like, also the government. Like, let us help you help yourself.

• 44:40David Hoffman?

  And so, out of that desire, we throw the tea overboard. We kickstart the American Revolution, and we gain our independence. We can fast-forward through, like, the shooting and the war part, because I don't really intend on doing that. And so, we win as independent seekers of the ability to express our values upon the world. And then, like, that's when the American Revolution, or the American Experiment, starts. Like, we are the British retreat, and we are given this blank slate to mess up, and mess up again, and mess up for a third time, until we get it right. And so, that's where this experiment in decentralized governance starts. And I think that's where the story continues. Can you continue along the story there?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So I think the parallel isn't so much, let's, like, do the Tea Party thing and basically recreate the United States. The part I really think is interesting is, like, the nature of that debate, because it wasn't set. Just like the Renaissance was always reforming, you know, so too, the nature of this political debate was always in the pursuit of a more perfect union. And that debate went back and forth. And so, like, that's the context, I think, we're pretty clearly in today. So to, to fast-forward, we basically go through British independence, and there's a debate within the community. Do you remain loyalist? Do you revolt? The answer to that is largely around how you viewed yourself in the world, and, like, your economic activities, and, like, how important they were to you, to your identity. And so, 1777, we have our first constitution, and it's, like, odd. It's not what we'd expect, right? It lacks the power to tax. It lacks the power to regulate the government. It's weird.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  And we've kind of forgotten about that, just because that was like what we'd say now is a false fork or a false start. But it kicks off the great debate where we basically have this exchange of ideas about how best to structure the governance to prevent chaos and also ossification to allow economic generation and you to pursue your true self. And so that's really a debate between like the Federalists and the Anons. They have different names and different points in time. It's kind of Federalist Papers with Madison and Hamilton and, you know, they're advocating for a strong discourse. And the people on the other side that were saying, hey, be hesitant of that strong governance, they weren't just anarcho, you know, Anon anarchists. They were Anon though. It was people like Jefferson, but also a lot of these people writing and taking the names of Roman Republic.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  The idea was that they did this to say, hey, a subtle shift to empire actually tends to create, you know, persistent imperialism. And so it's a debate between how best to govern, how best to represent, and that like kind of kicks off the whole discourse. And they did this debate in public while the Old World piled on. They did it through shitposting repeatedly. You know, there's images of someone, you know, and the Federalists were really good at shitposting. They like, they wiped out the Anons, like they did a fantastic job. Like some of their better stuff is, you see like, you know, an Anon and he's like prickly and anti-Federalist. He's like a porcupine and, you know, the devil's whispering to him, giving him taglines and memes to generate and the British Crown in the form of a lion's doing the same thing and Lady Liberty's weeping, basically. He's just, if you're into decentralization, not into this hierarchical, monarchical, like

• 47:30Speaker 02

  medieval vestige worldview, like you're basically just like a incorrigible, like SOB, right? Why else would you be doing that? There's another answer why you might be doing that. And there's another image where it shows what goes on behind the scenes and, and, you know, an anti-Federalist club and they're a bunch of drunken gluttonous like folks just getting like smashfaced. And that's like why you would do that. Why would you threaten? Your behaviors are self-serving. They aren't in the form, in the service of neighbor and others of governance. They're basically, they're just for your own ends. You're just, you have no self-control, like basically. That's why you eschew these centralized structures. One of my favorites is this, you know, Mad Raging Tom. You can look it up. And it's like, some people think it's Thomas Paine. It's probably Jefferson. Either way, he's trying to pull down democracy and the devil's helping him and they're having

• 48:13Speaker 02

  a difficult time. And, you know, he's obviously drunkard because he has a bottle of whiskey at his feet and that's why he's doing it. And there's like, there's a subtle sexual, that's probably better for another podcast. The point is like- The point is, there's other, it's like very nefarious activity. And like, long story short, if you want to strike out on your own, if you want to like, move towards this anti-federalist position, like, you're essentially like making this leap into the unknown, and that always ends up back in the arms of like, British monarchy, right? Like, so there's another image to leap or not to leap, and they have George there. And so, this is the discourse.

• 48:39David Hoffman?

  And these same governance debates are absolutely found in the crypto world. We have like, the super libertarian Bitcoin maximalists that came first into the industry, and they're like, the anti-federalists, is like, get your big organization, like, top-down control out of here. And then you have something more of the federalists, which I kind of consider to be like, the shared security model of Ethereum, where we have this one center of security that secures the whole entire union, right? And like, we've called Ethereum like, the united rollups of Ethereum, right? Like, we have the bottom layer one, that organizes and secures the layer twos on top of it. And this is like, the federal saying, hey, we do need a strong central government to protect and coordinate between all the states.

• 49:22David Hoffman?

  And then you have also, like, the Cosmos model, which is like, leaning a little bit more back into the states' rights, heavy states' rights, heavy app chain emphasis, total sovereignty. And so, like, these conversations have happened in the crypto space. How do we organize our blockchains? Whereas previously, it was like, how do we write our constitution? Now, it's like, how do we coordinate our blockchains?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  No, that's exactly, like, the crazy part about it is, we're using, so we have these IRL governance models, and we're importing them into the synthetic world as we're recreating the nation now, right? And like, as we move to the second unfold, these transformations tend to move in like, two unfolds or two phases. One, where you do the same thing you saw previously, but use like, the new technology to do it better, faster, cheaper. And then the second unfold is actually, to do things you couldn't have otherwise imagined, that wouldn't otherwise be possible using the new technology. And so, like, phase one, we're early days, right? We're using like, IRL governance models that we know, some of which were popular, some of which have like, kind of faded away, to manage the synthetic worlds. And phase two of the unlock, I think, we'll actually, and we'll get to it, we're actually going to start using, like, the things we generate in the synthetic world, out of a

• 50:25Speaker 02

  synthetic lab, where we speedrun not only finance, but we speedrun governance, to actually port back over to new governmental models. And you're, you see that even in early days, with different politicians playing around with different ideas, but the point is, we actually have the simulation capability to do that now. So yeah, you can, the point of this whole discourse is that, like, Shipposting and the world piling on, like whenever you're trying to do anything, wherever you are in the spectrum of decentralization, like that's just how the experiment plays out, right? Like, that's just like characteristic of it. So when you see that, don't think, oh, it's a bunch of crypto bros getting mad. It's like, as crazy as that sounds, and Ryan, to your point of like, how did the British, they saw him as a bunch of crypto bros, right? They're just like, low level, unintelligent, like, people that are just pursuing their own economic interests at the expense of helping their neighbor, right? Like, oh, that's why

• 51:08Speaker 02

  you're into crypto, isn't it? And to say, no, no, we're actually pursuing this, like, this experiment of how best to like govern to free ourselves and like also to work with others for their benefit, even if they don't recognize at the time, that was like lost on those folks. And so this is just like, very much a continuation of the experiment. And again, you know, you can read now, and that's great, but you're still communicating through these images, which have the semiotic import. And like, that's the best way to tell a story. These tend to be broad

• 51:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Memes.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Memes, they're absolutely like, shitposting with memes is starting with Luther, all the way, like culmination of Renaissance into revolution. This is how we do it. Into crypto, it's not, this is like, what happens when we have historic epic structural transformations? We do this experiment in public and we meme it out.

• 51:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And by the way, guys, if you are watching on YouTube, we're showing these memes as Josh is talking about them, kind of early manifestations of memes. You know, I feel like, yeah, from the historical timeline perspective, a lot of pop history in the US, like, people kind of skip this whole phase, right? So it's like, oh, the America won the revolution, and then there was the Constitution, everything was perfect. But you're saying, no, okay, so the war was won, but then this first Constitution was kind of garbage, kind of didn't work for anybody. And people sort of forget about that. And then there was a series, like a decade of debates, even longer, between the Federalists and the Anons, as you say.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  The crypto tribes.

• 52:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, the crypto tribes. And then the outside world, I know there's this scene from Hamilton the Musical, where King George like gives a song, and he's like, at the end of it, he's like, "Good luck!" Like, he's just like- Colonists, good luck with this because we were bringing the empire and the structure and you're just this whirling band of chaos and cool, you can win a war, but like, can you actually govern? Probably not. And then he's got evidence here where he sees the Federalists and the Anons kind of arguing back and forth. But what was the outcome of this? Because it wasn't pretty. In fact, there were even like rebellions, Josh?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I know you want to talk about the Whiskey Rebellion. Is that the first one? Like-

• 52:57Speaker 02

  It's my favorite rebellion.

• 52:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  We had the tea party. And this was not a rebellion against the British now. It's an internal-

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  Rebellion in the US. So what are these rebellions? This is a forgotten chapter of American history post-revolution.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's so- and also just back to your point on that first Constitution, you can kind of think about it like early Dao's, right? You can even think about it like, you know, pick your Dao where, you know, you have a leader and they go away and say, just figure it out. And you have 12,000 people in Discord typing around. It doesn't quite work. And then like Kane comes back, or somebody comes back and they're- you have to find this balance between top down and bottom up. And there's not one solution, but you have the freedom to experiment around. And so you can think of our first Constitution as like purely decentralized, just do whatever you want to. And like, the knock is like, that's the exact same thing as people pointing and saying, hey, we told you corporations would always win. Their Dao's are too chaotic. Like, the historical path is you tick and you talk and you experiment your way out of it. That's like, that's what you expect. Like, yeah. And so like the same thing, like the British and world point

• 53:51Speaker 02

  of view, like the reasoned people in the armchair are sitting back and like, they basically said, look, you're gonna, it's gonna be complete chaos. Yeah, you can win a war because you're naturally more chaotic and like, that's, you can do it on your own terms. But like, you can't rule. You can't organize. The debate was about, are you just like tearing down authority for its own sake? Or are you really doing it to pursue your true self and your neighbor and others? That's the debate. And like, that's going to be tested. And like, can you actually pull that off? And like, early days, like, not great. Try one constitution that like fails, basically 10 years you're writing it, like you're shitposting each other like through this debate. And like a series of ongoing revolutions, just like ongoing Renaissance, it's like, we just forget about them. Shay, just a number of others. Like, the Whiskey Rebellion is kind of one of my favorites. And like, I want to-

• 54:34Speaker 02

  I'm not saying it's the most important, but I like the idea that it gives us a glimpse into kind of similar analogues to what we see because it's very much an overreach of like one party like through a particularly poor implementation of policy, tax, like impinging upon entrepreneurs who are more sophisticated than we would think they are to not only like supplement their IRL income, self-insure their crop, but actually provide back to the cities. And so like drilling into the whiskey rebellion is really a different way to tell the Fed story.

• 54:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, let's get into that.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So there's a series of ongoing rebellions and like basically they really hit the people. You know, it's not just theory. These are the results of on the ground experiments, causes and effects and these unintended consequences, basically. And so we go through this new, we basically have a series of these rebellions. We end up with a new constitution after a decade of debate, like from this like shitposting back and forth and from these rebellions where we'll get to an example of that. And after a decade of debate, we get together and we have a new constitution and we're trying, that's why we use the words in order to form a more perfect union. And this has checks and balances, has delineated lines of power, it cards out places to experiment. Today, we'd say sandboxes, particularly financial and economic. But like, how did we get here? Like, what was the nature of that like chaotic like experiment in public? And that's like, the central bank is a really good example

• 55:44Speaker 02

  of that. So 1791, Hamilton manages to push it through. And like Jefferson hates the idea, right? Jefferson thought like three later agencies would like become permanent institutional craft. So Jefferson's able to negotiate, you know, a 20-year charter for the Fed to be revisited. And that charter was revoked in 1811 after this lengthy debate. And like even the Congressional Research Services will say it's a function of bad regulations, creating inflation, da, da, da, da, da. So like, what does it actually mean on the ground? And like, the example that is like a really good lens to give the listeners a taste of what it was like is the whiskey rebellion, you know, 1794. The Fed is set up, all hell breaks out as a result of them not like using like clear regulation and impinging upon your economic liberty to be your entrepreneur. And basically, that's the result of, you know, revoking the charter and then basically creating out these like

• 56:29Speaker 02

  safe harbors and sandboxes. So the Boston Tea Party is what everyone loves to talk about. And it's a key point, and I get it. But like, the whiskey rebellion in some ways is like, is like a better analog.

• 56:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  What were people doing with whiskey? Like, was whiskey an entrepreneurial exercise? Like, what was the importance of whiskey? Take us back to that lens because I don't think we have good.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so whiskey is, whiskey is, um. So the American Revolution creates debt. And then basically, the question is, who's going to pay for it? Right? And so it's always a question, like throughout history, you see this clear theme of like fiscal policy, like determining governance and like, of course, who's going to pay for it? Not like the British and New England, but those on the frontier, like out in Appalachia, the Irish, the Scotch, the Germans, like the people in the sticks. Right? And so like, they're going to pay for it by like having their whiskey taxed. And like, the way the whiskey was taxed was if you were bigger, you paid less, which is like reason for an uprising. But it was the nature of the regulation. Like, the Fed demanded taxes to be paid in fiat in full. And that was like the most inflammatory, it was the least aware, most arrogant legislation that essentially would liquidate every farmer and cause like inflation shock and like

• 57:31Speaker 02

  supply chain crashes everywhere. So you're a farmer, you farm corn, right? That's what you're doing in Appalachia. You're not a medieval farmer. The difference is you own your land, you can do anything with the fruits. You're literally an entrepreneur. You're running a family business. And you're not dumb, you're really smart. You diversify, you mitigate risk, and you engage in product development. You make, you do the most revolutionary, it is the most American thing you can do. You make moonshine, right? Like, you turn your excess corn into whiskey. And that excess corn would otherwise rot. And this is like huge. And like, as a Kentuckian, I have to say, this isn't bourbon, like disclaimer, disclaimer. It's more like White Dog or whatever. And it could actually be like good, it could be like apple. Anyway, the point is like whiskey allows your farming to be profitable. It is a supplemental income that allows you to do your first line business.

• 58:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it like a store of value? Is it almost like a currency?

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a currency, but it's also like a way to self-insure your crop. So as a farmer, you never know what's going to happen, right? You plant too much, you're broke. You plant too little, price crash. Like, it's like problematic either way. And so like whiskey allows you to plant too much. It allows you to over-plant, basically. And when you over-plant, like what do you do? You have enough to hit the market price. With the excess, you've invested in, you know, time, labor, and capital in the supplies, you turn that corn that would otherwise rot into risky. You literally distill the values, called liquid gold. You're, so on one hand, it's supplemental income that makes your farming possible. Like, long pause, that's your first line business, your entrepreneurial business. Your farming is possible because of the supplemental money from the whiskey. It's also possible, your farming is only possible from whiskey, because it's the way

• 58:59Speaker 02

  you're self-insuring your crop, by being able to produce enough, ensure you hit the market like. Peg and then be able to turn the excess into something valuable itself. So instead of having like Fed basically insuring yourself insuring. And then third, like to your point, Ryan, yeah, it's absolutely, it's a currency, which is crazy. So you're creating like commodity steadiness and commodity prices. But it's a currency because like on the frontier in Appalachia, you have very little access to like dollars. You don't see fiat dollars. Most farmer families see like five, very few fiat dollars every year. Foreign spirits are very expensive. It's tough to transport across the hills. So you distill value and you trade, you barter, you settle accounts, you pay for goods and services in whiskey. It's their community token, basically, right? It's like if Moonshiners, the original Dow, that's them.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  And so you don't have a lot of access. And so if you have a demand, you're fine paying taxes, but you need to be able to do things to do that. The regulation around the unnuanced regulation saying pay them in full in fiat, it would break them. It would liquidate all the farmers instantly. It was a lack of policy with nuance and it caused absolute chaos. A rebellion, an intentional inflation because of the supply lines and liquidating all the farmers. And so crazy rebellion, not unlike the Tea Party.

• 1:00:10David Hoffman?

  And so probably one of the biggest reasons why this rebellion was a rebellion, again, to what you're saying, it's not about the tax. I'm sure they were happy to pay the taxes. It's about not being heard. It's about you guys don't even understand what I'm doing here. And you guys are doing this undue regulation. And this is our frustration towards like the things like the IRS and the SEC and the CFTC is like, you guys are just, you could do things that will make us aligned with you, but you are doing this stupid thing that rejects us. And now as a result of that, you are not allowing us to work inside of this system. You don't know who we are. You don't know what our business is. You don't know about the value that we're generating. And because you're not permitting us to work inside of the system, you're forcing us to work outside of the system.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:56David Hoffman?

  Sadly.

• 1:00:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  You don't understand, you're not a whiskey farmer. You're an East Coast elite. It doesn't even get it.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the details of your policy or the lack of detail that makes it impossible for us to

• 1:01:05David Hoffman?

  Respect you.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Again, back to this Renaissance revolutionary, you like, and the thing is the details actually harm you, the Fed, right? Like left alone, we're going to generate unbelievable value. Left alone, the farmers are going to have food for the cities where you live. We'll pay the taxes, but like if you create a policy like You're going to create detailed policy which like wipes us out and prevents you from getting what you want. When if you nuance this policy based on like on the ground information, you're supposed to be representing us anyway, like we could pay the taxes, we could actually continue to help you. We don't need additional assistance. We can basically self insure against this and we can like have you enjoy the fruits of our production. We're doing this all on our own and we're happy to participate in the governance around that. When you come in with policy that

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  isn't nuanced, where the details of the policy, not the tax itself, actually breaks the system. It's just that's where it's just, it's like very problematic. And so in that case, it was absolute, it was negotiation and then when that felt rebellion. And then like a weird kind of rebellion where there's rebellion, it was neighbor versus neighbor. Some people were excise man, some people were resisting. And then, you know, angry rioters facing off against feds and then the marshals are sent to town and then the marshals give them like a few hundred barrels of whiskey to quiet the rioters and that doesn't work. Just pro tip in like history, if you're trying to like tamp down rebellion, don't, don't give them a thousand barrels of whiskey. I don't know, maybe, maybe that actually would work. And then like, even then you see this like great conversation going, the governor pardons them all, right? And like, it's essentially debated, but like, yeah, Ryan, and there's images of like manuals for how to like tar and feather and

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  excise man, etc., etc., etc., etc. But like, no, that's exactly right. It's the great experiment is can we govern ourselves? And the great debate is around the nature of that government. And it's not, do you pay taxes or do you not pay taxes? But like, are you able to carve out safe harbors and sandboxes for you as entrepreneurial renaissance you've pursued in your vocation to pursue generation for yourself and your neighbor and the government? It's like just conflicting worlds, basically, like meeting. It sounds crazy. It's like the beginning of like the later Star Wars things where it's like, it's like, oh, it's a rebellion starts over tax policy or trade, what? But it's like, it's not just trade, it's who you are and your ability to pursue this. And like, you can actually help yourself and help others. Like, if you don't

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  just hose us in the tiniest bit. So yeah, this is essentially them, like you guys may be too young, but like, if you remember, like, the internet comes out and like, we're trying to tax emails, right? FCC and post office are like, let's tax every email a penny.

• 1:03:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  They literally said this? Tax email?

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, it's not hyperbole. Like, that was the plan, basically, to tax email.

• 1:03:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I had no idea.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So it's like, this is what we do, right? This is like, literally, like, We basically say, oh, you need fiat dollars when no one's using it as currency, right? We say you need to tax emails, basically. We say you can't have a spot ETF. Like, this is just how we do it. It's like, technology allows, through self-coordination, allows communities to outpace institution. And then you get this hierarchical dissidence, basically. And the way we came up with a solution to get through that dissidence wasn't to burn it all down, but to have these little pockets where we could experiment our way out of it. And then the fruits of that experiment grew so gloriously that they actually helped not only yourself and neighbor, but government. Like, yeah, if you speedrun the story into, like, when's the last time you had a budget surplus? Like, the explosion of this digitization, that digitization wasn't even tied to ownership. Like, the con, it was only read, write, it

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  wasn't, like, own, and the code itself was open source. So everybody's laboring for these hierarchical constructions. Nobody's owning it. And like, but even that benefits governance. That's where you have capital gains, like, creating digital surpluses. You build your way out economically. The only thing that can stop you is not paying taxes, but like, a very poorly, like, being out of sync, not just with the community, but the opportunity. Like, taxing email isn't just like, a giant FU to everybody participating in the digital space. It's also just, like, doesn't fit. It's not operationally possible. And like, if you step out of the way, we'll create enough cap gains to get you a budget surplus. Like, that's the way to think about this.

• 1:04:56David Hoffman?

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• 1:05:39David Hoffman?

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• 1:05:46Speaker 02

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• 1:07:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, funny, another example is like the IRS doesn't treat like Bitcoin or ETH, even in small quantities, as kind of a currency from a tax perspective. It's all treated as property, right?

• 1:07:34David Hoffman?

  Exactly.

• 1:07:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's different than the Euro or the Yen or other foreign currencies. Why couldn't you treat these assets as foreign currencies? Why is there always this like, you know, tax event associated with them? Any legislation to this effect has gone absolutely nowhere. They don't even understand the space and maybe they're not incented to do anything about it. But, okay, so.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  No, and that, just to double click, real quick, like that, like the whiskey rebellion, like saying, hey, I'm going to require fiat and pay it full is like taxing email or like calling like everyone who's used in. Elven sword broker, right? It's a capital gain event. Yeah, it's like it's the same thing. You bred an Axie. And the detail to get out of it, I can't emphasize enough, wasn't to debate it out in policy. It was actually to have these safe harbors where you experimented your way out of it. You saw what worked and then you applied it at scale, right? You don't need to change everything. You need the ability to create and generate your way out of it. So that was, and so, yeah, long story short, we revoke the charter and like everything's hotly debated. What's the nature of governance? You can go through like the next like 100 years, basically around trials and errors around this, right? Like your point loyalists are laughing.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  You saw Jeffrey, you saw, you saw Hamilton, so you know that history. And that's exactly what happened. Like the revolution in France flounders, like we kind of get into an undeclared war. We passed Alien and Stition Acts. It's like it's a silence critics. Like the point is we're just chaos and international critics are piling on the whole way. We experiment with this dual federalism. It ends up in like civil war and reconstruction, not going to make it. And there's all sorts of anecdotes we could go into, but the basic idea is that as we move out of that, we're slowly accreting like aggregation of powers. And so the context for the debate isn't the Fed anymore, but value thanks to a new value construct called a corporation that allows fractionalized ownership. Again, hotly debated and we did everything we could do to not do that until we finally figured it out through the experiment. That becomes the locus of the debate for institutional craft.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  So now it's no longer Fed, it's actually SEC. And like, everybody has access through fractional ownership, but value becomes increasingly concentrated to fewer individuals and corporations. And you have this expansion throughout the 20th century as a result of that. That's the 1960s Lyndon Johnson, Great Society. And that's a counterbalance to social governments programs providing stimulus. You point to opportunity or equality, like in consolidation of control. And the thing that really, really got to us, just as we were talking about, was this overreach of like Fed, basically, and SEC. The institutions just can't keep up with the new technology. And this is the post office literally tried to tax emails. A real recent legislation, you know, called everyone who's ever played with a pixelated cat or an elven sword to say they're registered, need to be a registered securities broker. Like, and a lot of people in crypto would say like, this is all baked in the 1970s.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  These assumptions, basically of bureaucracy going past the point of no return. And like, our value creation in this debate becomes around TAM, Total Addressable Market Aggregation, right? And that becomes the feature where FAANG actually like is essentially like the NASDAQ index. And so there is a socially credentialed path to participate in this, where you're working from university and then working at a company and et cetera, et cetera. And like, They sort of lose their form. They lose their vocation in what you're doing. The universities become, you know, it's fine if enrollment goes down every year from here because of demographics, like now you're essentially a hedge fund, right? And your Ivy League president is a hedge fund manager. And like if you're an academic working in IP, like it's owned by the university and like conjunction with like the pharma lab that set up the lab in the first place.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  The, the point is you're moving like further and further and further into like an accrual of federal power. And we've kind of forgotten about these compromises of like clear demarcation for sandboxes, even to the point where we've just forgotten the history of that, the way we got out of that, not by changing everything, but a safe space to be able to create your way out of that. Like our Overton window shifted to where even Madison, like the Federalist do a tea party himself right now. And the shift is all around like communication as scaled through digitalization, but not ownership. So there's like a great break in this. And so it kind of gets to the question of like, why crypto now? We've had this institutional cruff. Why are we getting feisty about it now? Well, there's crypto is like a new nation state construct, but it really forces the issue. Now we have this internet of value.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  And so the opportunity isn't just to do centralized value accrual, but to actually do an ownership economy, return to like, you know, Renaissance you as an entrepreneur and revolutionary you, like running a small business. Like maybe it's essentially, you know, a capitalism 2.0 toolkit, you know? Historians always say all the previous stuff was proto-capitalism. When we got to real capitalism, 1920th century, maybe that wasn't even the real capitalism. Maybe that was all proto-capitalism until now. We can digitize ownership so you can like engage in those pursuits. And so the way to do this that we saw throughout the Hispier experiment historically was like clear demarcations of sandboxes. That's how you return with renewed energy to the great experiment.

• 1:12:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  That is the first thread to pull on here. And this is so it's like getting us back to kind of these threads of the revolution. This is the crypto revolutions, what we titled this episode. The first thread is all about value. And we find out that the American revolution 300 years ago was a revolution towards more property rights, more freedom in value creation. Right? And so we saw that even after the revolution, it wasn't kind of a one and done. It was this great experiment where we oscillated with different levels of centralization and decentralization, back and forth and rebellions and debates and annons and shitposts and all of these things. Until we finally figured it out and it didn't work perfectly because it never does. But it worked well enough that it was better than the previous system.

• 1:12:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  But all this time, we started to get this cruft on the existing institutions, this stagnation. And now we are back somewhat where we started with, with a better system than the medieval system. I would not want to go back and be a peasant on a feudal estate. Okay, I'm not advocating that, but we're still saying right now, maybe we haven't fully exercised our digital freedoms, our freedoms of capital and property rights. And that is where crypto comes in. This is another revolution. This is a revolution towards value. And so I think we've talked about that thread. Let's talk about the next thread here, Josh, which is-

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I should just let you summarize it. That's like said so much better than that's-

• 1:13:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was the context for everything. You allowed me to do that. So let's talk about the next thread of the revolution that, you know, the rebels, you know, were fighting for essentially. And this revolution was over and this is communication you mentioned, or another maybe term for this is like vocation.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Tell us what you mean there and like, let's go into the context of why the revolution was fought for communication and like vocation.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so this is like, you ask a simple question like, why the tea party? Why did everybody get mad? And you can say, oh, there is tax and da, da, da, da, da. But it's really about who you are and what you're attempting to do and like how you're attempting to unlock yourself with others, basically. And so like, we kind of went through the history and the narrative all throughout like this value creation. And so communication, these can go pretty quickly. The basic idea around communication, and these are the threads I pull anytime we look at these like transformations every 300 years or so, that's, it's not just like, you know, fourth turning, there's like these macro cycles. And so what we see is that, you know, revolutionary you can now read, the Renaissance essentially unlocked mass media. That's the point to take from it, right? And the reformation was largely around communities propagating their message. You can read, you can learn and like what you read and learn, doing that action, learning,

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  improving yourself, acquiring new skills and ability to generate is really around this idea of vocation. That was like Luther, one of the, you know, if he accounted for half the media that was written at scale with hundreds of thousands of these images, like a good portion of that was around vocation, saying, hey, you're a medieval farmer or your holiest thing you can do is be out in a monastery or cloister outside the world. No, no, no. You're actually called to participate in the world, in society, and not just be like sunk costs, but actually be generating value for yourself and others. And this is the idea of vocation, that you're free to be you and that there's like honor and nobility and dignity and like pursuing your own interests. Like you have this divine calling, not to medieval hierarchy, but to like find out what you like and what you're good at and pursue that at all costs. And this is where you hear about Protestant work ethic and Weber, Max Weber and these guys.

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  But like this permeates you, right? Like your work ethic, improving and bettering yourself is the sacred activity. Monarchy is no longer a divine right. It's now your vocation, your calling to participate in active generation, especially those things you're good at.

• 1:15:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Josh, is this part of the meme of like, the American meme of like the land of opportunity as well?

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. All this is, yeah, all this is land of opportunity. All this is like, you know, work hard, basically. It's not, we're so far over on the other side now. We tend to say, oh, that's just like raw crony capitalism where you're just generating money. And then like you do your day job and it's shitty or it's crappy and you do all that just because that's what you have to do to pay the bills. And then you go home and you write Harry Potter hand fiction because that's like what you're into. And like they're doing something with Dumbledore or whatever. And then like, yeah, you're still into these causes. You think like green is good and carbon and blah, blah, blah. It's like the splitting, right? And like, that was like, what vocation does said, no, all those things go together, right? The thing you're doing to pay your bills should be the thing you're passionate about. And you need to do that through these newfound economic structures where you generate value from that. You're free to do what you like to do. And by the way, you're not just doing this for yourself.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  You're also doing it for these other causes, which we'd call public goods today. You can use the same mechanisms to do all these things. It was a much more holistic view. And it was just really simple. What do you like and what are you good at? And you like, you pursue that at all costs. And that's like, where do you do it? Land of opportunity? All the nomenclature.

• 1:16:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the American dream, essentially.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, the American dream is not to get rich and own your own house. Like, that's not how revolutionary, independent you would have thought about it. It's like, the American dream is ability to pursue what you like to do and what you're good at and the freedom to do that in an economic system where that can pay for you and also pay and help and benefit your neighbor. Like, that's the dream. It's like this calling. It's not just happiness. It's not just satisfaction, it's like meaningful vocation, like the ability to create in a substantive world way to the world for yourself and for others. Like it is your calling, you're called to do that. It's not selfish. Like when I get done with my shitty day job, then I'm gonna like really be a Harry Potter fanfiction guy. Like no, it's like that is the thing you're supposed to be doing. It's crazy. This is kind of like when you guys talk about unlocking yourself, this is, this is

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  the historical context for it that came straight out of the Reformation and Renaissance. It's what defined Ryan to your point of like revolutionary you, land of opportunity, like high American dream. Like we've kind of thought about it in terms of the economic benefits, but it wasn't just that. It was who you are and then how you associate in governance. Absolutely.

• 1:17:32David Hoffman?

  But it's also the alignment between discovering who you are when you are unburdened by just the rules. When you're unburdened by the rules and you have this like blank slate, you can actually discover what you do when you have this blank slate to work with. And there's no coincidence that a lot of the most successful people in crypto, like they're not working 40 hour work weeks. Like, but also what is work and what is play and what is entertainment really starts to blur the lines. And this is one of the reasons why this industry is so captivating for so many. Like we wake up and we start working, but we're also on Twitter kind of shitposting, which is also kind of working because we're connecting with others and we're like, you know,

• 1:18:16David Hoffman?

  doing research, product market fit. And then when like, you know, the discord and like typing time is over, we go and we listen to like up only and like we get our entertainment or, or we listen to whatever is like the weekly roll up. Cause I also think that's entertaining, but that's also work. There is no actual boundary between what is in pursuit of entrepreneurialism, what is in pursuit of wealth. There is no differentiation between your local community and your business. And there is no differentiation between your entertainment and your work. And so all of these things blur together and it's why there are so many workaholics in this industry that are working like 80 hours a week is because like, well, sometimes they're working at a hundred percent clock rate, but sometimes they're only working like 40% clock.

• 1:19:00David Hoffman?

  And like the other is like 40% entertainment and like 20% like shitposting, right?

• 1:19:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  You know, the other piece I would add to that, David, and I think you'll agree with this is also values alignment.

• 1:19:10David Hoffman?

  Values alignment, right?

• 1:19:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, there's meaning and purpose here, like it aligns so well with like how we want the world to be in the future.

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  That's the tough thing to describe this is because like all these threads obviously interweave, right? Like if medieval you, your work is like laborious because you're told to do it and you don't like it. And like you're working with people with have absolutely antagonistic values, largely the people who are telling you to do that. Now you have choice and you can like join a community with similar values, right? And like create and build with them now. All this is in like public, like we have this, this was what defined the Renaissance doctrine of vocation. This is what defined revolutionary you, why you went batshit like at the tea party, like because you wanted to be able, this is, this is an impinging upon who you are is a function of what you do, not what you think about, but the actions you actually take in the world. And like, not just for bettering yourself, but bettering your neighbor and like the community, public goods through governance. And now you can do this all in public, right?

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Like you actually have this discourse, you have the ability to do it in public and to spend your time doing that. It's like this idea of like, well, I have a work-life balance. It's like, what if your calling is actually like how you like to spend your time, how you benefit yourself and your family, how you benefit others and you actually like like to do it. And by the way, you're creating value, not because you're clocking in, but because the thing you're doing is generatively meaningful. It's, it's hard for us to suspend like our modern disbelief, but that was the context for like independent, you know, for sure.

• 1:20:28David Hoffman?

  Josh, you opened up this conversation talking about how like medieval you, if you wanted to grow your wealth, you had to take it from somewhere else, right? There was no value generation. There was only, well, can my own personal supply of wealth, what can I get from somebody else and take their wealth so I can have it? And that very much feels like the stagnated, highly saturated world of TradFi and Web two in this very moment. If Twitter is captivating my attention, Facebook's not getting it. If Microsoft, if I go and like, I leave my job at Apple and I go to Microsoft, I'll just ladder climb my way up. But these industries have hit their saturation point. Meanwhile, you go into the world of crypto and you see literally this land of opportunity, which is a blank slate where there are so many.

• 1:21:10David Hoffman?

  Products left to be built, we are probably at like 5% of total saturation of the crypto space. And so it goes from, it's not just like a can you be competitive and can you out compete your competitors? It is what competitor can I become composable with? What other community can my community align with? How is my community composable with their community? Because we are in a state of complete undersaturation of the value creation in this space, where the value creation actually comes from DAO to DAO collaboration, or from individual to individual collaboration.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  That's kind of what I meant when I said this might really be capitalism for the first time. Now that we have, Ryan, to your point, property ownership and like strong rights on chain, we can actually do generative ownership, like maybe all that capitalism, we're kind of working with like stone tools previously, right? Like shades of Adam Smith, getting back to this, this vocation, I wanted to like hammer that just to give you a sense of it's not crude capitalism, it's in service of others, that revolutionary thing is that it actually like helps. And then like, Ryan, to your point, yeah, it's, you can do this on an ownership economy, right? Like, so like, if Web 2 was made of network effects, you know, somebody else doing something else, but sure, I have a network, but all the value accrues to the medieval overlord, like harvesting the fruits of my time, attention and labor, basically. Now in an ownership economy where we all, I'm doing network effects and capitalism to point on steroids, where we all own pieces of

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  this, basically, my ownership is actually like improved on that. And so like that opens up all sorts of like craziness for like long tail esoteric activities. Now I don't have to have aggregation with, you know, 2 million like views on a post with me making a dollar on it, basically, I can have 1,000, 100, like very small, like esoteric interests and ideas. And like, that is the actual idea of like generation through that. Like, instead of having empty vessels where like, I'm filling these like platforms with content because they're not creating it. And even the code itself has been a function of like open source community code, like, so what are these things? They're actually like nothing. All the generation is happening on the ground. And like, now I can actually like participate in that, like through generations. So that was vocation. It was How you see the world, like the key to like not just happiness and satisfaction,

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  but like fundamental meaning through value construction and like how you're describing it and like that basically like communication like sort of becomes economic generation at scale like you participate in public discourse but like and you're doing that like all throughout the history it's kind of a patchwork of bottom up distributed like decentralized like media platforms, local newspapers. It persists until like you have a consolidation in the 20th century and like now we have digitalization but we don't have ownership associated with it. So we have this like great divorce basically, right? So you have new economic creation but the value captured is for the creator or even the participant. And so like you're working under permission controls at the broadcast layer, at the platform layer, not just having a cord cut, not just being deplatformed, but even the algorithms are shifting what

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  you see and your voice going out and it's done in kind of a darker nefarious way where you might not even know that. And in fact, like background, I built a couple of web two companies and like did this with algorithms, sold one to a man he spent out where we're talking on the algorithms and like literally you have organic reach and how much can we artificially decrease that until you start to pay. It's like mutually like misaligned. And so this kind of gets into like crypto is generation is like the basic idea of like how can we use communication like not just to help ourselves like but as a new form of following your vocation. Like I really like writing Harry Potter hand fiction, right? Maybe I can do that as my day job basically through these models or I really like, you know, I want to be my own ISP or I want to own the broadcast layer instead of having

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  to like do that through Verizon. And so it's like this revolutionary new way to reassess communication and also the rails to persist communication through ownership, like native ownership at scale requires these like sandboxes. And like in that sense, like if all the digital generation and the wealth creation that dominates our world today came out of a fundamentally broken model where we like divorced ownership from content, from what you create and from what you consume, as well as from the code and the platforms itself, like open source. Like if we got those sorts of fruits out of like kind of a false fork, Imagine what we'll get, like where we have ownership at scale powering network effects in a capitalism 2.0. And the way to do that is through like safe harbors on that. Like honestly, maybe the best thing crypto can do for like the trad media world isn't

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  just recreate the platforms, but give it a business model and like have massive societal impact where you have a business model that isn't inciting rage, but like reassociating like ownership and like realigning incentives, like allowing you to pursue your vocation. Like, you know, even if it's like weird or odd or esoteric, not a thousand true fans, but 100 or 50. It's like, that's where you see the rub, like we were talking about where the technology outpaces the institution. Like, yeah, Zach may be an asshat, but like SEC's 50 years behind the times. Like, they're basically taxing my emails. Why can't I get paid on my content? It's just like the whiskey rebellion, the regulatory details. I'm not opposed to the taxing, but they're poorly implemented. I should tax the like fruits of the business app software instead of the email, right? Like, why can't I do that? And so it just doesn't match the industry, much less the opportunity. And that's like

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  deleterious for the government as well. Like, again, like what happened when we did this false fork? It was a massive explosion of value. And that's like through the 90s budget surplus, you may remember, cap gains that might be way in, way to get out of the like no win zone between inflation and recession, like through this generation. And like if we did that with a false fork through like divorcing content and like open source, like maybe we can actually do this, like and build our way out of it. And so it's like a massive, massive opportunity. And there's, there's various examples you can go into, but like if you have to sum it up, communication is about vocation. Do what you like, do what you're good at. And like now we can do that through the communication rails themselves because you have this economy of ownership, which is actually forcing the issue in a meaningful way.

• 1:26:43David Hoffman?

  Absolutely. I'm absolutely down for it. And just to tie off this section with one aspect I think we missed is I see a lot of parallels behind how governance was decided and debated in the revolution and how governance is decided and debated here in crypto. And it's very much this emphasis on the public open square. And you see these same behaviors. But Josh, I'm wondering if you can kind of walk us through the parallels of debate for how we should rule this nation, how we should govern this nation for the United States of America before it became that and how crypto is also Also engaging in the similar conversations under similar structures for how we govern over our DAOs or how we govern over our protocols. Cause you said the word building out in the open and that's some very much parallel alignment

• 1:27:27David Hoffman?

  that we see between crypto and the United States and the American Revolution. And it's that like open permissionless, not just like of our businesses, but also of our discourse. I'm wondering if you could help us draw these parallels here.

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's actually, that almost like seamlessly takes us into the governance piece, like literally around your identity. That's like, that's literally us building out in the open in the public square to say, how do you best do that? So we're starting to see, so in this two unfold model, you basically have like, Ryan, to your point, these IRL models of governance being ported into DAOs and that being kind of the first unfold. And now you have new technological rails of capitalism 2.0, which allows you to like, not only express identity, but do association in different ways. And so you're seeing these things unfold and like hotly debated memes and shitposting, but also like, do you do it top down? Do you need a leader? How should you? You have tools, like where government and debate has always been like a function of influencing someone, right? It's just like the business model. I advertise, influence someone, they take a series of actions and go down.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  Like now with crypto in an economic sense, I can just directly tie incentivization to it. I can pay someone or give them tokens to do that and have fractionalized equity in it. But the same thing on governance. I don't have to just like say, hey, who do I like or what have you? I can like do nuance basically with tech rails that like, let me do different things that wouldn't have been otherwise possible. So you kind of start out decentralized, chaos muddled up, right? Like our first constitution. Everybody who has a token gets a vote. Okay. Then that like gets whales and craziness and da, da, da, da, da. And like, all right, maybe we do electors and delegators and like kind of this next phase. Fine. Like you kind of have issues with that and that's kind of where we are. We go back and forth between that. And now with crypto, actually you're seeing in this government debate, like people playing around with different ideas on these tools for running governance, right? Quadratic voting. What if I, fancy word, like what if I,

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  what if I get five votes and I can use all five votes for one thing, or I can use, you know, one vote for five issues, basically? I see how important it is. Or what if I have it weighted by history? Have I been there since the beginning? Not to think airdrop and airdrop in terms of governance, or maybe I can do it by expertise, which I can establish, or maybe by on-chain action. Like we're essentially like speedrunning this governance model. We've done the shift where we've taken IRL models into crypto DAOs. That's where we are right now. And right now on Discord, you're seeing this unfold where we're starting to take new models and like apply them to ourselves. And like I think in the broader governance piece, we'll actually apply those new models. To government at scale, now that we have like ownership on digitalization. So like, yeah, it's very much like parallel all the way through that. And if you think we're just like making it up and this is a bunch of philosophy, like even on

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  just the pure play communication standards, there's like, you know, how do you decentralize? Or how do you have these sandboxes and safe spaces to play around with this? We're doing it in the DAOs right now with governance, but I think that will like work out into like government, like that will act as a bidirectional doorway and go from synthetic, you know, DAO world into IRL. And we're starting to see that. We're seeing that on the business and then we're seeing on the communication. And we are starting to see that on the public goods as well, which is a function of government. And like examples you could say are like, hey, you know, that's like, you know, maybe citizens van, service radio, CBRS is like something that opened up. And now there's like crypto tokenomic protocols that are requiring, you know, real world proof of actions and coverage, right? Like Helium and some other guys are doing this sort of thing. And so now you have like a safe space in a sandbox.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  We're getting people to coordinate in different ways. And like the, the mechanics of that, of how you do that in that DAO, that's one example of a DAO, all those are in the improvement proposals, they call them HIPS, you can read through them, all that is on chain. And so you have like a super successful way of creating like social coordination and alignment to solve a cold start problem on like communication broadcast layer, done through a DAO. And like every improvement initiative is on chain. So you can literally see how that, so now you have this like sped up cycle time, basically of like how best to social coordinate. And I don't know what the answer is. I know that will like see a thousand synthetic flowers blooming and it'll be, you know, complete craziness, particularly when they start subsuming the public goods function. So even pulling on that example, like that just isn't like physical work, you know, from

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  a DAO, doing different forms of governance in public square. That also is them starting to give back and actually do public goods, in this case, like broadband access to citizens of a physical space in a city. And so at some point, this all starts to kind of pull together. And like the way that works is it's all done in the public square. You don't have to go to Harvard to get an MBA. You can read every one of the DAO improvement proposals and that'll give you more than like any lecture you've ever heard.

• 1:31:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that is, I mean, the applying is the context of the revolution, right? And like the three things the revolutionaries wanted, were fighting for is value, which we talked about. And then this idea of vocation and communication. And you could start to see Bankless listener, the parallels here, right? It's like crypto is on the vacation side of things. The new land of opportunity, the Ethereum dream. Maybe that is starting to replace the American dream. As you know, America and our nation states start to stagnate. And the third element of this, the reason the revolutionaries were fighting was for more representation, more governance. This was, you know, part of their identity. And that again, is a reason why we are rebelling and opting out of the old system

• 1:32:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  in pursuit of more autonomy of governance, ability to coordinate with our neighbors. And I think a lot of us feel, Josh, that, you know, whether it's our web two platforms, don't have a voice. I mean, I have a Twitter profile. I don't have any like access to all of my followers. I have no ability to like leave Twitter. If Twitter censors me, like I'm gone, man. I could be permabanned, right? And so we are fighting in this web three revolution, this crypto revolution for our governance as well. And I know you made a point in some of the notes that you were thinking about for the show. And I want to kind of like say this and get you to comment on it. But the revolutionaries importantly, they did not burn the old order down. Okay.

• 1:33:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  But neither did they politely ask for permission to increase representation. Rather, they tricked people into doing the right thing. And you said later in some of your notes to us that the trick is that those who are exposed to the technology tend to adopt its values. And this resonates deeply with us because as we often say on Bankless, if they adopt crypto protocols, they adopt crypto values. And this was the trick of the original revolutionaries too. And part of why I really identify with this group of early American revolutionaries is because like, I feel like sometimes in our present moment, there's a lot of anger, Josh. But there's a lot of anger and it's kind of like this burn it down sort of mantra. Burn it down. I'm like, okay, burn it down.

• 1:33:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  But like, what are you going to replace it with, guys? Like, let's talk about what we're going to build. And so this is what I see in crypto is this movement towards building it. But we're not asking for permission importantly. Wondering if you could dig into this topic a little bit and give us the history?

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, boy. Oh, no, that's so good on so many level. That's a, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, we kind of go through why are you even doing this? You can pursue yourself, your economic interests. You did that through communication. Now you have this idea of a calling. Your calling can be in the communication, doing fanfiction or doing these other things. Like, and so like, how do you actually best achieve those goals using those coordination technologies? And this kind of gets into like, identity, like you're talking about, which is really a function of like, how revolutionary you would have seen it as of governance. And so this idea of like, independence, it always, in revolutionary thought, it took an object. We say, oh, independence from something like tyranny, but for them it's towards something, to build, like the basis for assembly. Like, and so medieval use assigned an identity, revolutionary chooses, and like, you exercise that through your vocation, and like, you're a builder at all costs.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  You're not a burner, you're building things. And so like, you're literally redefining your, your community. And this is, this is the context of, you know, the old world piling on and like, some people wanting to stay within hierarchy, other people going into like, sheer, like, anarchism, but like, you actually say, no, no, I actually want to build. And so, in that sense, it's like, crypto is like this rebuilding of governance and community. It literally is a nation in the sense of like, imagine community and satirical currency contracts. And so like, but not just in the US, but across the globe, right? Like crypto on these currencies, on these contracts, basically. And as you built, you joined communities and like, you participated in governance. And so, like, why crypto now, basically? It's a continuation of this great experiment, not of burning it down. That's what happened in the revolution as we fast forward.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  Like, what happens after? Can we actually govern? Can we create? Can we generate? Can we live up to that Renaissance dream, land of opportunity, whatever you want to call it? And so like, this governance, it wasn't static, we were continually playing around with it. And like, now crypto gives us these technological rails for meaningful reassessment, but also the ability to recreate in new ways. If you don't like something, don't torch it, like recreate it, refine it, like, continue to pursue the more perfect union and do that like, through authority of like, these like, sandboxes. And so people always say like, yeah, crypto, you know, speed runs finance, and that's true. But also, speed runs governance, like, right? Like, a thousand flowers blooming like through these ideas. And so now we have this, these sandboxes to try to recreate. You don't like the old institutions? You think they're not fair? You don't like the governance of them?

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, there's a place for like decentralized, like, what, privacy anonymity, for sure. But so too, there's also a place for like recreating these things using the new tools of like this technology, like, literally, not just token count or identity, but voting, quadratic, waiting, proof of attendance. In this sense, it's like recreating the sandbox of identity and roles. And like, we've done all this like overweighting towards centralization. And so now it's precisely in like the government's interest to do so. And that's the trick. Like, how do they adopt values? But like, you also have to be like crafty about how you go about it. So just saying, get out the pitchforks, isn't super helpful in terms of like, you're in the real world, right? You obey traffic signs, you like get a speeding ticket, you pay taxes, presumably, like, you're already in this debate.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  And so like, you might as well participate in it in a meaningful way. And the basic thought is like, going back to the political theory of the age, like Leviathan Company, like, government doesn't tend to give up power, but it does tend to open the door to massive value creation, once you've passed the point of it being more painful not to participate. And it's here where crypto has this absolute advantage, like, it generates wealth, but it also generates values. Revolutionary you, you weren't into the loyalism thing because you'd already experienced self-sovereignty and construction of community. So that was no longer for you, participating in those protocols, the value generation, as well as the protocol from those ledgers, as well as the communication protocol, which was now just part of what you thought about every day. Like, that created this value of independence. And so that's the trick. When you're exposed to the technology, and particularly communities intersecting with

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  those technologies, like, they tend to adopt the values. And that's like historically what happens when you have these epic changes of power structures. Some of it is generational aging your way in, but also it's the stuff is too valuable not to use. And so you have to kind of make the case, get them to participate with it, they adopt the values, but you can also be really specific about it. Making the case that crypto is more valuable to the government through various things. Funding public goods with direct representation. Bitcoin, Kevin Iwaki, carbon credits, what have you, supporting hybrid local models. If I have a restaurant or a coffee shop, I can support my income, just like the whiskey farmers, with these new protocols where I don't need PPP and drive up, you know, a variety of inflation. Like, it's actually like generative in these ways. And so that's the thing to like really think through.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Like, are you really interested in participating in this experiment? And like, that experiment means participating in the generation of it, finding your true you vocation, however you want to describe it, and like pursuing that. Like, it might be in communication, it's gonna be a function of how you organize, not just yourself, but how you organize those juxtaposed communities, like interacting with the government and like showcasing, not burning it down, but participating in it, specifically around speedrunning the new types of governance, paying for public goods, and also acting as supplemental income. In short, have crypto take over government responsibility. Don't ask them to do it. Just start providing the things that government naturally does. And that happens natively in a form of like, as you generate wealth for yourself and for your neighbor and for public goods. That's like one of the tricks to it.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  And where you do get those like cracks or chinks in the armor, or like orthogonal like opportunities for Trojan horses, if they open up radio band, go in there, build a protocol, incentivize, and provide broadband access to citizens when the government wasn't able to do it. Far easier for them to say, okay, keep going. And so like, it really gets to the heart of like, are you up for this? Like, some people aren't. There are lots of people who remain loyalists. And that was like the safe bet to make. It had a great UI UX. And like, now with crypto, you're forcing this issue, and not just for the state, but for you. Do you want to interact with it? Do you want to declare an independence not to burn it down, but to interact like with this great experiment? And like, the safe trade to make is like not doing it. And if you're going to do it, there's massive value to be unlocked by like generating your way out of it, building out of the current economic situation, like participating in the governments,

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  like speedrunning things inside the DAOs, and then taking that back from the lab as best lessons into like the real world through DAOs that provide community and public goods, and also take over the form of government, just as Pro bono, just because that's like what it means to generate. And if you do it right, they won't even think about it. Just like you don't say there's an internet anymore. You don't even remember the renaissance before. Like crypto will actually be this thing that like, uh, that like essentially forms a new nation. Like where we're acting in place of that for our good and for our neighbors and for everyone else's. Like it's a, it means like building. Like if you want to be tough and you want to be like, you know, cool, instead of saying burn it down. Like that's easy. The tough thing to do is to put on your hard hat and build. You're going to have to like participate in not enjoyable moments, bear markets.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  Like that's the nature of the historical transformation. There's going to be volatility as a sign of structural change, public piling on. Like the idea is this is all open source in the public square. You can like see it. You can be a nobody and show up at a hacker house. You can ask questions and get answers on Twitter. Like that's the thing you have to think about. Like, is it for you? After you tear it down, then what? We've already done that. Now we're in the next phase of like, what are you going to build? And how are you going to interact? And so it really, crypto doesn't just change governance. It changes you, who you are, your relationship to others. And that's what we call like governance through community and like communication around that. And like with value construction. So like, the question is like, now that you've torn it down, now that we've been building, now that we've carried on this debate,

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  we have the tech implementation like toolkit to do this again at scale in a meaningful way. So what are you going to do is the question, which kind of takes us to action items, I guess.

• 1:41:32David Hoffman?

  Before we get there, the at scale part is something I really want to drill down on. There's this meme in crypto that everything is going to have a token. And if something's got a token, well, then you bring a community along with it as well. And then there's a theory that's, that's going out there is that, well, if you have a token, you can also have your own layer two, if you want that as well. So that is also a possibility. And where this drives parallel with the progress of the United States of America, these communities with shared values and like at this point in time, shared physical location, could go out into the frontier and draw a line around their community and be like, new nation. Except that it wasn't a new nation state, it was just a new state. And this is how the United States of America formed. These communities.

• 1:42:16David Hoffman?

  Communities with shared values existed in the same spots and they're like, all right, we are now going to make the state of Minnesota and that is who we are. We're the Minnesotans. And it was the layer two to the federal organizational structure of the United States. And so, you know, we're kind of limited by land here. We only made it out to 50 states and inside the United States, but on Ethereum and even Cosmos with all the app chains, they have an infinite array of the possibilities of producing a community with a border around it. Not only is a token a border, an app chain is a border, a layer two is a border, and all the people that align with these things can go show up there. And so, we are no longer restricted by 50 states. We have thousands and thousands of layer twos,

• 1:43:00David Hoffman?

  of tokens, of communities that can be born here, and each one experiments with governance. Each one takes a lesson and they apply it and they see if it works. And if it works, all other DAOs, all other orgs get to copy this. And this is the same thing that is also true with state constitutions. There is 50 state constitutions and they have 50 different sets of laws. And some laws are so good that they get adopted at the federal level and they get propagated across all the states. And this is not true just like at an ideological level. This is also true down to the code where we have these EVM equivalent layer twos like Arbitrum and Optimism, that if an EIP goes into Optimism or Arbitrum and it works,

• 1:43:41David Hoffman?

  that EIP also works on Ethereum and it also works on every other layer two as well. And so we have this ability and infinite slate of experimentation unfolding us, where so many experiments get to run in parallel. And just like how I talked about like, well, we had the Renaissance, we had the revolution, and now we're in the crypto revolution. This one is blessed with these new technologies to scale out this innovation and development of governance. And so as soon as we get something right, we don't get something right for one DAO, all DAOs get it right. It's public domain infrastructure.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, that's so good. There's a Like the Renaissance fractures the medieval worlds and now you have different communities and the question is like, how do those coexist and like, can you actually learn from one another? And like with American experiment, we do this in ways with safe harbors and what have you, but you have this like layered dual federacy, right? Like, how do you have different like communities that are like formalized? And then you have these informal communities like Appalachia whiskey, like moonshiners is almost a DAO. Like, how do you do that? And so like, you'll see those same dynamics. Right now, everything you're saying is true, for sure. We're seeing that happen within the synthetic space, DAO to DAO, like chain to chain. But I also think the massive unlock that crypto is doing is it's opening these worlds, basically, where you'll have, you know, layered composition

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  between IRL and crypto, where you'll have, so NFT is a strong property, right? It's not just pixelated cats, actually establishing like bidirectionality between IRL and between the synthetic world. And so the lessons you learn in the synthetic world, like I predict, won't just remain in the synthetic world. The best practices coming out of those Petri dishes will like work their way into the real world, maybe informally at first, like Appalachian whiskey DAO, but like also maybe like into states and like rights as well. And that'll probably happen through like economics first, where I can like generate in the synthetic world and enjoy the fruits in real world and vice versa. And like, that's where crypto is like an economic model starts empowering like IRL business models and governance. I think you're gonna see the first unfold is we figured out in the lab in crypto and

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  using the lessons we've learned from history. And the second unfold is where we take the best practices from crypto and like port them back into the real world, maybe economically, maybe through public goods, and then maybe like at scale through new forms of governance. I know it sounds crazy, but like, that's how it tends to happen 100 years from now, 200 years from now. And like, the key is you get to participate in it. David, to your point, like, this is all publicly available. You can look at any of them proven proposals, right? Like, how crazy is that? Like, you can propagate it on chain, or if you're doing something else. Completely crazy. All this is available to you. And so like, it just forces the question with these new tools, like, what are you going to do? Like, burn something down in the corner, fine, great, and now what? All right, now we're in this great experiment and we have these tools in our toolkit.

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  So that's like the most meaningful, interesting, like, part of the communication. But it's also kind of the scariest, because it forces the issue, like, what are you gonna do? And that kind of, I guess, takes us to like, what are you gonna do?

• 1:46:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, let's talk about what we're gonna do. I mean, this is the 4th of July, Independence Day in the US, of course, and we've talked about so far with you, Josh, how many things we have in common on the crypto journey with the revolutionaries in the American War for Independence and all sorts of people groups of post-Renaissance that were revolting at that time and looking for more freedom and a better world, right? And so we went through, kind of, what are they fighting for? Freedom of value, freedom of vocation, and also freedom of governance and identity. So now let's talk about the practical side, the action items, because I know, Josh, you always love to leave us with some action items, so.

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  I do, I love that you guys do that, too. It's so good. Everybody just talks and you're like, no, do this.

• 1:47:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think it's important. I mean, like, what do we do? We're on a journey together, right? So it's important. So, okay, so, I hear what you're saying. I want to partake in this revolution. I don't want to be a loyalist, right? I am excited about this great experiment and where it's going to go. And I know it's not perfect, and I want to do my part in building it and improving it. Okay, what do I do? And I think you've got three things for us. Take us to the first one. What do we do first, Josh?

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is great, so this is, and just to, like, set the stage, this isn't crypto is the Renaissance, that's one lens, crypto is the revolution, this is, this is the story throughout all these ages, you're just looking at it through different lenses and different chapters of it. And so, these things are particularly, like, I think, salient to our times. And Ryan, to your point, if you're not gonna burn it down, then you're gonna participate, right? So, how do I actually participate in this? And there's, like, this is a unique moment in time. Like not pejorative, not just repeating the same thing, but like we have these rare opportunities every few hundred years, right? To actually do something to have like meaningful impact for pursuing like self, other, like meaning. And so like, again, this is gonna sound mundane, just like, you're like, wait, there's a revolution over like tea taxes, what?

• 1:48:17Speaker 02

  This is gonna sound stupid and boring and be unpleasant, but this is what you need to do. Like, the real meaning is in an actual like building, like in any way. The first is to get political, which sounds horrible, and trust me, no one, I understand that completely. But it really is time for kind of crypto to grow up. And there's like great meaningful places for anon, completely private, that's awesome. But there's also like very meaningful unlocks by getting clear regulation around a specific type of policy with, and that has a strong precedent in our history, so who we've seen today. And that's really like this great experiment discovered a political structure that yielded amazing results from a specific model. That's clear demarcation of safe spaces, sandboxes, safe harbors, with unencumbered space to experiment. And we didn't do it top-down, we didn't create a department of innovation, or a centralized

• 1:49:02Speaker 02

  sandbox agency. We worked within our current immediate context, and we used a variety of these tools, trips, tics, and tools, tips, tricks, and techniques to carve out these spaces, tricking people into doing the right thing, by getting them to interact with the technology, like pick up the values, showcasing the value of what we're able to create our way out, and like explaining how it's mutually beneficial. And that really means practically just getting our points in order, right? Start with one thing, win, and move on. And pick something, I personally think stable coins is a great example. Trick them into doing the right thing. Fuse the dollar as preeminent by adopting the new tech through a stable coin, without falling off in a centralized currency is a fast, easy option. Make the default choice the easier thing to do. Say, hey, government, you do a great job, we have a choice. You can build something, or you can just like do what you're doing and let us take

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  care of it, and we'll give you all this value just by tying it to it. Like, make the default thing easier to do. Or these Trojan horse orthogonal approaches, right? Like FCC opens up citizens' banned radio service? Build something that's as valuable as like Verizon out of it instantly, with millions of people using it all over China broadcasting where they can't shut it down. Like, when you have a crack, like build value there and like take advantage of it. And then, like cherry on the top, actually use it to like fund public goods that the government wasn't giving without raising the tax base. So like, get political means, getting points in order, like exploiting Trojan horses, and like really highlighting these, these economic and social advantages. Like, everybody kind of gets the idea that media, trad, media business model isn't great, and sites like, you know... Like rage, like what if you have ownership across a distribution curve?

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  What if that generation creates budget surpluses and gets you out of economic like difficulty? Like what if value creation is important for like a demographic workforce? Like play the story forward. What happens? We're now, as of this year, last year, like now going to have smaller and smaller workforce every year. As boomers retire and Gen Z is not into it. Like, what do you do? Like, how does that work? Well, crypto, if a third of the American workforce is about enforcing dumb contracts, like crypto gets us out of like massive demographic structural like issues for the next hundred years. And like fundamentally, like participate in like highlight ground up organization for like local creation and supply trains. That can mean like community support for public goods, benefiting yourself and others through these models. The space behind me was a drug den in the neighborhood. We changed it by running a $500 box or 500 bucks in no coding.

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  We turned a drug den into a community education center. Like, that may only work in places like Kentucky where real estate is cheap, but you can use crypto to actually solve like public good issues, basically. And so all that is available to you. So get political, which means engaging with governance, get your points in order, and like specifically like really think through how to exploit these chinks by building value and like actually creating public goods and just experimenting. Play with it, play with it in your neighborhood.

• 1:51:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  So that's the first one, Josh. And by the way, you did that transformation of the space behind you through like running helium nodes, using the surplus there. Is that correct to like transform the space and pay from that?

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was this little experiment where this was an old bourbon bar that fell into dilapidation. It's down the street from Churchill and it was just drug den heroin fire after heroin fire. And so the property was, was cheap. And so we literally mortgaged it again, like oncoming fruits of like proof of coverage stake. You can use helium, but use whatever you want to. And so it was basically the idea of how do you take a physical cost center and turn it generative? So instead of having police come by and all sorts of nefarious activity and the property value of all the neighborhood being depressed, we actually used crypto as like tokenomics to like solve this issue, basically, and created like we use it for office space and then do different community events and things like that downstairs. All that done, not through government intervention, but like raising, like generating through these things. And then the helium tokens, we actually validate, go back to providing broadband access to people for free in need.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  So like, that's just like one example of like, I'm not saying you have to do that, but there's, there's stuff out there. Web two will serve it up to you and you've kind of gotten used to that. Crypto allows you to find it. There's 20 other things like this you can do. But the point is like, Play with it. What do you have to lose? You know, 500 bucks and you default on something? Like, okay, like actually see, is it possible?

• 1:52:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Does this get into your second? So the first is get political action item. What's the second, Josh?

• 1:52:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the second is get building. So like, just the easiest way to achieve and persist in independence is to build and do so at scale, especially when markets are up and down. And so like, traditionally web two, like the values in your code, and if you can code, that's great. But like, this is back to vocation again, right? Finding what you like to do and what you're good at. Like, if you can code, great. If you can't, doesn't matter. Build community, build content, build conviction, build yourself, learn, read, listen, watch, use the products and services, find your calling and embrace this like generative work ethic. And like, one way to do it without spending any money, you can spend 500 bucks to do something like that. Where like, if you don't want to do that, like, turn your cost centers into generation. Like, literally crypto like moves, you know, it allows like early adopters to have like these, it follows an arc, basically, right? It tends,

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  like, these historical transformations tend to follow a path. It tends to start in finance, right? Because it's most value. Then you go into culture, art and identity construction. So you go from tokens to NFTs, then work, how you organize to achieve these community goals and like, association with one another, which is like DAOs and what have you. And then education to propagate it, which we're seeing on proof of attendance and experience. And then finally, where it becomes a business model, like the whiskey rebellion, to literally allow you to do frontline work and like, impact value. So find the things that you use for your day job, or for your personal self as an entrepreneur. And these aren't necessarily overlapping. Like, find the web two things you do, make a list of costs and services, and then go out and like, find the web three version, where you don't pay for it, but where you earn tokens, which can be traded

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  for dollars in many cases, like through participation. And so like, it's like, literally tactically, what you can do. Like, you listen to music, it's 10 bucks for Spotify for you. If you run a coffee shop downstairs, it's 15K to license to BMI. Or otherwise, lawyers are literally calling you up. That's their business model. Turn it off. Run Audius. Rent space, like, run proof of coverage. Helium's one example. Need to work or hire, use a community entity. Join a data. If you don't create anything, you're interacting and participating and creating value for someone else to distill. Through your data, join a data DAO. You can simply use an internet browser with a basic attention token. Like, it's not just creation, it's actually ownership. And like, it doesn't cost you that much. And like, by the way, if you get into it, there's all sorts of like weird little American spirit entrepreneurial like businesses you can build on top of these things like

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  super easy and quick, even without coding. And like, the point of the story is like, get building, especially like where it becomes a way of doing business. Starting with yourself, turning your cost centers into like revenue generating things, just like the moon chiners did with like corn into whiskey.

• 1:55:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, I know there's three, because good things always come in threes. So we got get political, get building. What's the third, Josh?

• 1:55:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is, this, these are going to be the least popular like action items ever. But the other is like, help others, right? Like, if you're listening to this, if you're listening to Bankless, you know more than someone else out there. Most likely, you're an elder states person in the movement. It may not feel that way, but we're incredibly early and you're here right now. People are paying attention to you, like watching closely what you do. So help others, I don't mean just financially only, like by sharing information, supporting others, learning with others, building out in the open. And especially around public goods, I think this is something like not glamorous or sexy, but will become increasingly important in the idea of like regulation and crypto being more than just for, you know, crypto vows and value creation. Like, literally can crypto like take over the function of government in meaningful ways by providing public goods?

• 1:56:11Speaker 02

  So you have a cause or an interest, like find the crypto version of that and participate within your calling, however. Explore the governance models like we were talking about, participate and learn, like and fund them with this new generative value. Like, one example we talked about was that broadband access in San Jose provided through this network. Like, it's literally construct the models right now, they're being built. Donors providing liquidity for a movement or a cause, progressively unlocking functions verified by an action on chain. Whatever it is, carbon sequestration, paying farmers to plant trees, open source pharma IP, supported with staking. Yeah, at a lower yield, but still supported, monetized by ownership with residual rights going back to the benefactor. Not just you, but in the DAO with cause. It's like great experiment indeed. And like, the core crazy part about this is it's not just altruism, it's something more.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  Like, it's generative. When you give, when you gave that broadband access away, it actually like created stronger network effects for decentralized ownership. Like, in other words, like crypto pays you to learn about it. Crazy. Crypto pays you to participate in it. Complete insanity. And perhaps most radically of all, like crypto pays you to help other people, those inside the community and those outside it as you're onboarding. And here I could give a little tirade about pluralism, which like, I'll just kind of like pass over. Meh, meh, meh. Like, just ever so briefly, like tribalism is super important in early days of adoption movements, but like, as you coexist in these juxtaposed systems, like, it becomes much more important to like, recognize other use cases, like, for variety. C-Fi, D-Fi, KYC, Anon.

• 1:57:37Speaker 02

  And again, think outside your immediate generational demographic, socio-demographic. These are other layers, uses, protocols, governance, like gaming, high-speed, cold storage, infinite archival persistence. We talk about like, layer, different chains. There's these other things out there from Arweave to Graph. There are other pieces in design decisions. It's like, we're responsible for others, but we also benefit when things are a patchwork of pluralism, so you can't pull one thread and everything unravels. And like, if you believe your values are the most generative and the most contagious, like, let it run. Pluralism isn't just tolerating others, it's like, using your creation to benefit them. And that kind of just like, takes me to like, if I had to sum everything we've talked about, and this is a lot of complex stuff, so I definitely appreciate it.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  Like, the crypto renaissance was about like, this advent of choice, this massive unlock, unwinding of hierarchy, unlock of opportunities. And so crypto's independence is about what we choose to do with that opportunity. What we choose to build and how we use a creation for others is a continuation of this great American experiment. How much centralization? Where do we draw lines? How do we create like, safeguards? The renaissance was always reforming. Crypto is a new independent nation, always pursuing a more perfect union, vigilant against this institutional cruff by carving out sandboxes and places to try and fail in public in pursuit of a more perfect union. Like, if I can leave the listeners with one thought, like, if you're into crypto, you're into a story echoing throughout the ages. Renaissance Revolution now. Right now, in this moment in history, is about what you choose to do.

• 1:59:01Speaker 02

  And like, I'd like to invite you to build, to continue this great experiment, to find your calling, what you like and what you're good at, and to pursue it at all costs, like liberty or death, like down to zero, in the service of yourself and your neighbor, to generate value, something for yourself and others, in this new economic model that gives you ownership through participation, to build business models like from media for society, like broadcasting and content that draw value not from incitation, but by reuniting ownership with participation, to experiment in governance, representing yourself and others with similar, and even conflicting goals through these new tools of social coordination, especially public goods for community members. And then finally, I'd like to invite you to do this all in public, to learn out loud, share your learnings and your failures, not because it's easy, but because that's how we build through it.

• 1:59:45Speaker 02

  And when we fail, and we're going to repeatedly fail, just like we have throughout, like, to see volatility not as evidence of pointlessness, but as a leading indicator of the historically meaningful structural transformation, and to persevere in order to benefit yourself and those who come after you, even those who are unaware of your efforts or outright antagonistic to your pursuit, especially now, to persist in exploring this opportunity and keep your resolve to achieve a more perfect union. And to you, citizens of the new nation, I wish you a happy independence.

• 2:00:15David Hoffman?

  Josh, thank you so much for walking us through the history of-

• 2:00:18Speaker 02

  Was that okay? That was a lot of stuff. It was all over the place. I apologize if I didn't go down this rabbit hole or that rabbit. It's like, it's kind of crazy. I can't believe, like, we did all that.

• 2:00:27David Hoffman?

  No, not at all, not at all. We still have to close it out. So I'll put some thoughts in here. There's a line that you said in the show, Josh, about how the revolution was the logical conclusion of the Renaissance, right? You get the Renaissance, you add some time, the Renaissance goes in a thousand different directions, and it converges on the American Revolution. And then we do that same thing. And now, here we are. But we are unique, like I keep on emphasizing. The Renaissance took 200 to 300 years to fully manifest. The American Revolution, that was like a 100-year endeavor of like a fight and then a debate as to how to govern. The crypto revolution is going to happen a lot faster, just because that's how time works. We are speedrunning the history of money and finance. And we're getting this all done inside like 20, 30 years.

• 2:01:11David Hoffman?

  And so we are all very fortunate to not only be in this part of history, but to consciously know it. That is also such a unique thing. It's like, we also know where we are in history. And thanks to historians like Josh, that we are allowed to place ourselves in this very unique moment in history. And so I also beg to the listener, just like how Josh is, is take that responsibility on your shoulders. Because while the crypto world feels big and chaotic, it's actually very small and it's actually very moldable. And it's you, the listener, that actually gets to dictate some of the future direction of this industry. And so Josh, thank you for allowing us to place ourselves in history. And hopefully these action items make listeners more biased towards action itself.

• 2:01:56David Hoffman?

  And we can build through this bear market together.

• 2:01:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a higher calling everyone has. I mean, you can, this is going to happen regardless and it's going to speed run. Not just finance, but also governance and then like port back those lessons. And like, you can wait until things are polished and the markets are de-risked. And UI UX of web three is as easily easy for you as succulent on web two's interfaces. But like, you actually get to make history. That never happens where you do that knowingly. Like you get cosmically meaningful calling at this moment right now. You get a po app for the great experience. Like, they won't give you credit. And if you do it right, they won't even think about it. But it's a stunning opportunity. And like, worst case, like you get to participate in history. And if you don't like where things are, then like, actually put on your hard hat and get building.

• 2:02:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well said, Josh. We'll end it there. And just a recap of the action items. So Josh says, go get political, get building, help others along the way. Another action item we have for you is go listen to the crypto renaissance episode. If you haven't already, we'll include a link into the show notes. And of course, we want to say happy Independence Day. And this is not an American holiday. This is also a crypto independence for everyone outside of the US and inside of the US. This is why we are on the bankless journey is looking for independence. That's our quest. That's our mission. That's what we're here to do. So go drink some whiskey for the fourth. Consider your role as an Nation Builder and are you a federalist or an anti-federalist? This is the debate we're having in crypto right now.

• 2:03:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can be part of that debate. What an exciting time. Risk and disclaimers as always. None of this was financial advice or historical advice. Crypto is risky. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.