Bankless - 151 - Why Are We Here? with Erik Voorhees

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

✨ DEBRIEF | Unpacking the Episode: https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/debrief-erik-voorhees-why-are-we-here  ------ Erik Voorhees is a crypto veteran of veterans. He’s one of the greatest advocates of open and permissionless systems that we have in this space. In this episode we talk about his legendary debate with SBF—this is the first time we’ve caught up with him since. What are his reflections now? We also dive into how this bull/bear cycle is similar and different from previous ones, how do we preserve crypto’s core principles, and most importantly—why are we here? Why crypto? Why now? Why stay? Erik doesn’t waste a word in this episode. Happy New Year everyone. Let’s keep building. ------ 📣 Kraken | The Crypto Exchange for Everyone http://k.xyz/bankless-pod  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/?utm_source=banklessshowsyt  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: https://availableon.com/bankless  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken  🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum    ------ Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 6:17 Where Did Crypto Go Wrong? 8:43 Crypto Labels 12:30 Responsibility 14:26 Accountability 18:19 FTX Collapse From Erik’s POV 24:05 SBF’s Headspace 28:45 Potential Alternative Realities 30:50 SBF’s D.C. Relationship 34:47 Was this Cycle Unique? 38:58 Lessons From Past Cycles 43:36 Learning Through the Pain? 48:33 Why is Individual Empowerment Correct? 50:20 Coordination & Order 54:26 Power 1:02:22 The U.S. Constitution 1:07:13 Code Enforcement 1:08:07 Why Are We Here? 1:09:49 Baked-In Crypto Principles 1:13:03 Perserving Core Crypto Values 1:16:48 Is Erik Radical? 1:21:44 Will Crypto Ever Go Mainstream? 1:25:53 Cycle Common Denominators 1:28:19 Bear Market Advice 1:29:31 Erik’s Bull Market Forcast 1:32:00 Action Items & Disclaimers ------ Resources: SBF vs Erik Voorhees episode https://youtu.be/Ytaa_5liwMA  A Response to SBF and Principled Crypto Regulation https://www.moneyandstate.com/blog/response-to-sbf  Sophistry and the Savior https://www.moneyandstate.com/blog/sophistry-and-the-savior  24 - Exploring the Frontier | Erik Voorhees https://youtu.be/rLsOHOvUOpM  ----- 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

The reason I'm here, the reason I'm doing this crypto thing and have been for 11 years is because I want to separate money and state. I think money is one of the most important technologies in society. It's something we interact with every day. The flows of money direct and govern human action everywhere at every scale. And something so important needs to not be under a monopoly provider, period. So I'm here to separate money in state. And every technology, every blockchain, every app that helps further that is something that I'm going to be supporting. So that's why I'm here.

Certainly some people are here to just like make a bunch of money, but I'm here for the principle of decentralizing money away from the hands of the state. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and 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, first bankless episode of 2023. Are you ready?

This is Eric Voorhees, and he doesn't waste a word in this episode. He never does. We talk about SBF. We talk cycles. We talk crypto values. We talk about what matters and why we're really here as the point as we get into this. A few takeaways for you. Number one, a discussion on his legendary debate with SBF.

That happened in November of last year, 11 days before everything with SBF went crazy, and this is the first time we've caught up with him. What are his reflections now? We talk about that. Also, we talk about the macro cycle, the bull bear case. Has it been the same as the previous ones was 2022? The same or different? If it was different, what was different? What are the lessons that we can learn moving into the next cycle? And most importantly, we talk about crypto values and why we're all here. David, we got a lot to discuss during the debrief. What's on your mind? I think I really want to take this moment in the debrief to kind of go back and talk about a lot of the core theses that bankless stands upon.

And, Ryan, we did, I think, a really good job in the early days of this episode of this podcast, laying out some of the core principles that we really think power this industry. And then, I mean, we kind of assumed that everyone knew them. And then we moved on to other things. But it's been a while since we talked about the protocol sync thesis, for example. And so since we were having Eric on, and since Eric is such a first principally managed person, a person who thinks very deeply, I want to go back and talk about some of the early theseses that we talked about on the bankless podcast and resurface them and take this opportunity to resurface them. Because there's a lot to catch up the newer listeners of this show on. So if you are not a premium subscriber, definitely go subscribe to premium to catch the debrief.

It is the episode that Ryan and I record right after this, right after we've recorded with a Monday. podcast guest to have a raw and unfiltered thoughts. There's a link in the show notes if you want to catch that episode, just a little bit of extra content for premium subs. So Ryan, I think we should go ahead and get right into the conversation with Eric Voorhees. But first, a special message from our strategic sponsor, Cracken, the first ever crypto platform that ever implemented proof of reserves all the way back in 2014. That's crazy. All right, Bankless Nation, before we get into our conversation with Eric Voorhees to kick off 2023. First, we have to take a moment to talk about some of these fantastic bankless tools from our sponsors.

Hey, Bankless Nation. If you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free Bankless RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad-free version of Bankless that comes with the Bankless Premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report,

a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible. your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the Permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the AirDrop Guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023. But really, the best part about Bankless Premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the bankless team in the Inner Circle Discord only for Premium members.

Want the Alpha? Check out Ben the analyst Digen Pit, where you can ask him questions about the token report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A. room for any questions that you might have. At bankless, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities, and we're super excited to ship what we are calling Bankless 2.0 Soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to Bankless Premium. It's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of

knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. Uniswap is the largest on-chain marketplace for self-custody digital assets. Uniswap is, of course, a centralized exchange, but you know this because you've been listening to bank lists. But did you know that the Uniswop web app has a shiny new Fiat on-ramp? Now you could go directly from Fiat in your bank to tokens in Defi inside of Uniswap. Not only that, but Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism, Layer 2s are supported right out of the gate. But that's just Defi. Uniswap is also an NFT aggregator, letting you find more listings for the best prices across the NFT world. With Uniswap, you can sweep floors

on multiple NFTs and UNISw's universal router will optimize your gas fees for you. Uniswap is making it as easy as possible to go from bank account to bankless assets across Ethereum, and we couldn't be more thankful for having them as a sponsor. So go to app.uniswop.org today to buy, sell, or swap tokens and NFTs. Bankless Nation, very excited to introduce you to Eric Voorhees, whom you know. He's a crypto veteran of veterans. He's one of the greatest advocates of open and permissionless systems that we have in the space, certainly an important voice. It has been very recently. He's likely also soon to be featured

in the upcoming documentary series about the downfall of SBF. I got to think that's coming pretty soon because the last time we had you on, Eric, was around this whole SBF debacle. And you were actually, you had a debate with SBF about 12 days, I think, before all of this went down. We'll get to that and more. But Eric, first of all, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. It's good to see you guys. Thanks for having me back. That was quite a bomb that dropped the last month and a half. So I have all my appendages still. Looks like you guys do as well. And we'll just keep rolling. Yeah, this is part of the reason why we wanted to have you on the podcast is I feel

like at this point in crypto, you're pretty bomb proof. And we want to ask a little bit later about the magnitude of this specific bomb and how it's measured against the other bombs that we've seen before. But can you help us with the high level question? Because coming out of 2020, of course, the headline is, some things went wrong in crypto. We were talking to some folks outside of the space and media and others. And we're like, hey, how does crypto look from the outside? And I remember Sager came on the podcast from breaking points. And he was like this. He's like, I'm not going to lie to you. It's looking pretty bad. That is the impression outside of the crypto space. And I want to ask you this question, where do you think we went wrong in 2022?

Or maybe it was the months leading up to it. Where did we go wrong as a community, as an industry? I think my response to that is to cringe a little bit at the collective use of we here. Right? Like crypto is this diverse tapestry of individual people. And many of those people are quite unsavory. Many of them are absolute heroes. and lots of people in between.

So where did we go wrong? I don't know. I feel like this was a good year for me. I made a lot of good decisions. I think you guys have done a beautiful job with your show. It's become one of the most important in the space, and I really value it. At the same time, you know, SBF,

where he went wrong was stealing $10 billion of customer money. So that much is simple. I think it's important that we don't describe ourselves as a collective to the outside world. People have different goals and views of what crypto should be. The cultures between these different chains are different. And I think that's actually part of our strength is that we're not this like monolithic group that all think and act the same way. So yeah, that's where I'd leave it. So Eric, we're just having a conversation in some similar vein with a fatality.

And he was talking about like kind of terms we use. And this one specific blog post, he chose to use the word Ethereum in the title, the Ethereum ecosystem, talk about Ethereum rather than crypto. And there is an element. And he said he was still kind of playing around with that. But there is an element of like, there are some group labels here, right? And how do we represent ourselves to mainstream? So for example, if I say, I'm.

in crypto right now at this point in time, that feels a little embarrassing. Now, I can explain what I actually mean, and I'm like, oh, I'm one of these crypto people, and I'm not one of those crypto people, but how do we come up with labels for this sort of thing, organic labels? I'm like, I'm part of the decentralization crypto side of things, not part of the FinTech bro side of things. What is that? I don't quite have the words to sort of describe this. And unfair, though, it might be, a lot of us have been operating under this group label of crypto. How do we get out of that trap? Well, I still proudly wear that label.

I think crypto is where an incredible revolution is happening. And so I don't shy away from that at all. I think things like labels and the words we use for some of this stuff are, somewhat superficial, and the superficial observer will get tricked into thinking things that they read in headlines. And if we play that game, it's just going to be unfulfilling and probably a losing proposition. The reason crypto is cool is because of what we're building. And so the constant focus on the building, on the software, on the technology, on the principles, that is what we should care about. And people will assign labels to us, and that's all fine. But it, it, it

washes away with the latest trends. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. And also, whenever a crypto is in a bear market, the reputation from the outside is just trash. And then these same people who don't care to look into what this actually is or what it's about get totally blindsided when the next rally happens. And then they ape in at the top. And, you know, those aren't the kind of people that we should care to

to court. We should be courting people that build quality software and that's really it. With regards to the point that crypto is a diverse cohort of people that have many different attitudes and some people are fraudulent scammers

who steal 10 billions of dollars and other people are public good maximalists and want to build public systems. Like obviously, very different collection of people that come to the space. Crypto's got something for everyone, no matter who you are. That's kind of one of the big selling points of what this industry can provide. And when you say that we can't blanket all of crypto into one label,

that I definitely think is the goal of this industry. We want crypto to be as large as the Internet itself. And no one would ever dare to say that, like, the Internet population, It's this one ongoing community of internet goers. It's diverse. But to take the other side of this conversation, I'll say that crypto is actually really small. And sometimes, and especially during bear markets, it kind of feels like we're all in the same room together.

We are like all one degree of separation from everyone else in this industry. It doesn't go that far. And so, like, who are, and I'll take some responsibility here. And this has been a theme on the bankless podcast lately with some of the episodes that we've recorded is like responsibility, right? And when somebody in my industry steals $10 billion or somebody in my industry destroys an algorithmic stable coin, even though I would did not take part in that whatsoever, I still feel responsible because that's my industry. That's the thing that I represent. And so this has been something I'm hopefully trying to reflect on and move forward into next cycle as in like SBF,

he like really rubbed a lot of the Ethereum community the wrong way, but we didn't speak out against him enough. Doquan definitely rubbed us the wrong way, but we really didn't come hard on him. And so like to some degree, I just want your perspective on this. To some degree, I do feel responsible for some of the bad things that happened in this industry in 2022

because it's my industry. What would you say to that, Eric? It's an interesting perspective. I don't think you should feel any responsible. for the sins of other people, period. Yeah, that's not on you guys. You guys are individuals, bankless is its own projects, and you should be very proud of what you're building.

It's not our responsibility to find every sin that others are committing. And indeed, there are so many in the ecosystem that that would be a fool's errand anyway. There's a lot of noise in crypto. And to call out all the noise is not that useful, because there's so much of it. Calling out the virtue where you see it, I think, is the goal. When you see profoundly important projects built soundly and with good principle, highlight those.

But don't beat yourself up just because you missed one of the many sinners. Well, Eric, let me ask you then. So just your practical thought. So we had SBF on the bankless podcast. I know you were there for one of those episodes, but we did a previous episode with SBF in March. I think it was March, David, of last year. And so this was an interesting episode.

We had done an episode with Brian Armstrong from Coinbase. We were scheduled to do one with CZ from Binance. We kind of want to get, we think it's important for the crypto community to get in the head of all of the biggest exchange leads, right? I mean, Jesse Powell's important voice in this to hear how they think. And when we had Brian on the podcast, he was like very much talking about values, and talking about, you know, building, and our impression going into our episode with SBF was, in coming out of that, was different, right?

That he had built this exchange, was a fast mover, really didn't care about the values of our industry, but if he doesn't care about the values, it appeared at the time, like the FDX exchange was successful. And, you know, we have this mantra on bankless. If they adopt crypto protocols, they adopt crypto values. So even if he doesn't believe it, as long as he's building on top of crypto systems, that could be a good thing. A lot of people in the aftermath of all of this have said, why did you bring that scammer on the bankless podcast in March? Why did you give him a voice?

You have an important platform in the space. You gave him a voice. What do you think about that? Like, is there an element of we should hold ourselves again? Like, obviously we didn't know at the time. No one did that he was stealing depositor funds. Okay. That would be a different. story had we known this, but like, what do we do? Like, I'm kind of like leaving 2022. You absolutely should do that. Bring people on who are important in the industry. Unequivocally, Sam was important. Unequivocally, like, he built something big and meaningful. And at the time, we didn't know that meaningful meant horrible or fraudulent. But part of what you guys do, you know, as media in the space is like pulling these voices up for the community to see.

and people can make their own judgments. It doesn't serve anyone to just let people, you know, wander around in the darkness. So those people who are getting mad at you weren't out there saying, you know, Sam's been stealing customer money back in March. So I just, I think they're like the men that are not in the arena, you know, and they're going to lobby insults after things happen. and that's just part of the noise, you know, see through it and bring people on and vet them

and ask good questions and promote the principles that matter. Like another, I guess another comment on this is the focus on individual people is somewhat of a trap. You know, like if you bring 10 people on and focus on them as individuals, that can be useful and important, but what's more important is like what did they build and how is it structured and why is one structure better than another, right? So, like, if you bring on Hayden from Uniswap and you bring on Brian from Coinbase, it's interesting to learn about both of those people as people, but it's more important to learn about why Uniswop and Coinbase are different, right?

And those principles of what they've built, I think, are what we should be focusing on, especially because we're never going to know before it happens who the evil people are. but we can know how things are designed. And that's part of the whole premise of cryptocurrency is that you can know how things are designed without having to trust the people and without having to get behind their reputation. Well, thanks for opening this up.

And I guess it turned into a little bit of a therapy session for David myself. But we really appreciate your guidance and thoughts on this. David, I think you've got a question about the aftermath of the whole SBF, FTX thing for Eric, because he was a player in that. I'm not going to say, Eric, that you were the cause of that necessarily, but it sort of led into a very interesting chain of events.

Yeah, so Eric, we had our conversation. You had your debate with Eric, or excuse me, with SPF on October 28th. FTCS paused withdrawals on November 6th and then filed for bankruptcy on November 11th. Very quickly after you had your public debate with SPF, while you were watching these events unfold, just put us into the mind of Eric Forhees. What was that like for you watching all of this fallout happen just so recently after you had this debate with SBF?

Yeah, I think of all the calamities I've seen, this was the biggest calamity that has ever befallen, crypto. Not on all metrics. Like Mount Gox was more existentially dangerous, but in terms of the speed with which this unfolded, and just the just the story of hubris and like that character arc of Sam

and how quickly it changed was really, really profound. And I certainly had no suspicion that anything untoward was going on with that exchange. And during that debate, you know, one of the things I was trying to do is like give, you know, I was going to try to tear Sam apart on the principles,

but I wanted to give him the credit of being like, a successful entrepreneur and building something really important. And I think I said that multiple times in that debate. And then to learn just like a week later that not only is he trying to bring down all this horrible regulation on the industry, but is actually the one causing the biggest fraud ever was, yeah, it was surreal. I just watched the debate again a few days ago and the whole thing was really surreal. I wonder how threatened or uncomfortable he was from,

from the fraud that was going on during the debate, because he definitely seemed off. Yeah. And during the debate, I was like, man, I'm really getting him. You know, like, I've made him so uncomfortable. And I was taking a little bit of pleasure in that, but I guess a lot of it might have been because he was sitting on a $10 billion fraud.

Right. The way I think about this conversation, because SBF was talking most of the time. He had the microphone, like, maybe like 90% of the time of that debate. and you were only saying one or two or three very sharp sentences. It felt like watching a soccer game where one team had the possession of the ball for 90 minutes, for like 90% of the time. But the team that had the possession of the ball for 10 minutes scored like eight goals. Yeah, well, that's like how you get a good message across has to do with the message and in how few words you can do it.

And he was just like all over the place. And I think he was struggling because he didn't have like, any foundation of principle on which he was arguing for these things. Yes. That's something that I'm really taking away from this is that he was flustered. He was confused. He was erratic and chaotic. Agitated, right?

And you were, like, stoic and poignant and just so sharp. And it's, like, looking back in hindsight, this is one of the big years of 2020 where, like, hindsight is really playing out. Like, in hindsight, Sam Bankin-Fried was spraying millions of dollars into political Day Nations, real estate in the Bahamas, an arena, like an attempted Taylor Swift sponsorship. And in hindsight, I think if anyone just, like, added those numbers up, you could probably come to some reasonable conclusion that something's not great over on the other side of FTX, because the numbers were so high.

But then when you add that up with, like, the agitation, like, everything, like, the puzzle pieces are all there. It just, like, took the actual fraud for us to put them together. Yeah, I don't know. I think that might be backfitting the story a little bit. He had raised tons of money and FTX was a wildly successful and profitable exchange. Most of the really visible things that he did in terms of sponsorship and PR absolutely were compatible with a legitimate business. You know, one that is spending a ton on PR, but that stuff itself wasn't caused or enabled by himself.

stealing customer money. Like the, or put differently, the big expense that his whole empire suffered wasn't the FTX arena. It was that Alameda lost billions of dollars trading poorly. That dwarfs any of the outward symbols that we saw. So if you focus, I think, even too much on things like the arena, you still are missing that what the crime here went on behind the scenes and wouldn't have been known unless you were in the books of these private companies watching it.

Yeah, I do agree. Going to that episode, very much my impression was of Sam Bankman-Fried. I think the industry impression was like, this is a very successful exchange operator who has just moved fast, out-competed some of his peers to get ahead. But the difference in my mind, if you abstract values between an SBF and a C-Z or something like this from Binance or like a you know some of the other large exchanges was not stark i mean like from all appearances it was just kind of like uh you could be the same thing i guess one thing that i

can't resolve and um after this episode it um you know surreal was a word used because it was surreal when all of this stuff came at first i didn't believe it then when it started to become obvious i just started thinking back to this episode and uh trying to get into the mind space of sb So he knows he's short. Like, first of all, my first mind was like, like, that really happened, right? Like, genuinely, this was a question for me. And I know the two of you were there and it really happened. Like, this is kind of, you know, I'm not going down a simulation theory alley.

But like, that was, that was seriously a moment for me. But then after that, acknowledging that it really happened, what was the mind space of SBF in to actually, number one, engage with, engage with regulators and put out a post that is clearly going to be seen as a complete betrayal of crypto values when you start talking about defy front ends having to kind of register with nation state governments all over the world clearly a betrayal clearly we would have a problem with that if you've paid any attention to crypto for any monochrome of time you know that we're going to have a problem with that and then getting the headspace to actually come on and have a debate So, you know, Sam was open to coming on the podcast when we scheduled at the time.

And then we said, you know, who would be great to actually talk to you about this, Sam, after you put your post out in response to him, is Eric Forhees. Are you willing to do a debate with him? And he said, yes. And then he came into that conversation, in my mind, completely unprepared to take a reasoned approach against your post, which he had to have read in advance, which was a principled take on crypto and defy, and then came into that so utterly unprepared, why would you do this? Like, this is what does. It still doesn't make sense to me. And it dovetails with, I guess,

kind of the media tour after, like before he, now he's in jail, before he was actually arresting. When Good Morning America, this media tour, why would you go and have a very public debate on crypto values when you yourself are $10 billion plus short? And, And like, I just, I don't understand the mind space of it. And I'm not asking for like a psychology, you know, expose. But like, does that strike you as weird? Have you been able to make any sense of this, Eric? What has certainly been weird was his media tour following the collapse.

Very weird. But I think when we had the debate, I don't know that he was feeling like everything was falling apart. I think he was probably stressed that like the situation was a little tenuous. But I think even for a week after that, I mean, until the CZ tweet about selling the FTT token, until that, I think Sam thought it was all under control. And it kind of, it makes more sense when you think of it like that. And if you read his own messages leading up and immediately after CZ's tweet, they sound like someone, who doesn't really feel like it's going to fall apart. You know, because he said things that if you knew things were falling apart, you wouldn't say.

So I think he had, you know, supreme hubris up until, up until that morning when it was announced that he was selling FTX to CZ. You know, that was like the capitulation of, okay, now he knows horrible things have happened. So he didn't know how bad it was at the time. That makes sense. But like, was that delusion? Was that? No, if you think about it differently, so like,

From what I understand, the FTT token was collateral backing the loan of customer funds to Alameda. If in a different world, we had hit a bull market, you know, back then, and FTT doubled or tripled over a few months, the problem of that customer money not being there, it gets less and less. Right? It only becomes a problem if a bank run starts and if the price of cryptos are falling generally, especially the FTT token. but he didn't know that that was that was going to happen so he he certainly justified in his head that like there's a a very plausible and maybe likely chance that all this is fine he did not appreciate what a true bear marketing crypto is you know this is one problem with being a tourist is like like you've

never actually been through that um so he did not have a an emotional appreciation for what many of us have dealt with and um he just had that hubris that that leads so many people astray So in an alternate reality, you're saying, Eric, maybe this didn't happen. It didn't have to play out like this. And he managed to skirt by and like continue. And everything on paper at least is still sort of solvent, even though you're operating some sort of fractional reserve scheme of some sort. There's a world out there where all of this, he gets past this bump and he gets through it and he's absolutely fine. Can you talk about that? that world. So like, that's also scary to me that such an individual would be able to accrue maybe more power in that alternate world, be able to skirt by and, you'll make it through this it's very touch and go situation and continue to do the sort of things that he was doing. That was another reflection post that surreal ordeal as well. Do you have any thoughts on that, Eric, is it like, are you glad that the cancer, not necessarily of the individual, but like the

cancer of this corruption has been cut out of crypto, what would happen if that tumor was allowed to grow? Yeah, so one possible path is that if the market had really rallied, Sam would have resolved all the issues with some time and then like gone on the up and up. That's probably very unlikely. right especially someone someone who's first of all willing to commit that kind of atrocity and then gets away with it is probably not going to have a come to Jesus moment and change their beliefs so it's very possible that if that happened he would have just you know doubled down and

continued risking customer money in a bigger and bigger way and it could have been a blow up of you know five X the size a year later so it's good that it was rooted out for sure but yeah he probably thought he had a path to to making this all work out and certainly if that token had gone 10x over the next year, there's numerous ways he could have been solvent and no one would have been the wiser. What do you think of the other sort of soft power he appeared to be accruing in D.C. as well?

So this interfacing, working on legislation with lawmakers, and that was a repeated articulation that I remember from the debate was this comment that, like, Sam, if you're going to be at the table, like, you have to represent crypto values. Like, please, please do this. And the fact that he was engaged at this level, what does this tell you? Or there's this line in the debate where you talked about going to the land of Mordor. You're talking about D.C. at the time. But, like, that's who was representing crypto in the land of Mordor. What are your reflections on that? Well, for many, many years, I've lamented.

that people seek protection from the state in principle. Like, I think this is a sickness in society. It's like a new form of religion in which people see problems that are real, and they have this appeal to this thing called, you know, democracy or government. And kind of everyone knows that politicians are slimy. No one's happy with how Congress actually acts. And yet they continue giving them larger and larger and larger budgets and continue thinking that at the next election

we'll just get the right people in. And if we just make a new bill and a new law, that will be the one that cures it. It's some kind of like psychological sickness. And so this was such an incredible example of an advocate of that world who used the slogan, you know, the safe and regulated exchange

or the safe and regulated way to buy Bitcoin. That was FTX's slogan. and he's going to get new rules written for the industry. And an observer before all this happened, you know, from the outside, if they saw like who I am and what I advocate and who Sam is and what he advocates, I would be the villain, right? Because I'm here advocating that like markets handle the problems of the world better than coercive governments do.

But that's a very minority position. Most people looking at this would have praised Sam He said he's working within the system He's the upstanding citizen here And Eric is just like this radical Extremist who you know No one should take him seriously Can I can I say Eric that was actually the reaction on Capitol Hill

We heard from some people who are plugged in that Yeah Eric had some good points But Sam overall won the debate in Capitol Hill To watch and I'm biased here right Because I want people to think I won the debate but if I put on my most dispassionate objective hat and watch that debate from a pure debate and ideas discussion perspective, it is impossible to say that I lost that debate. I think you could be a non-English speaker and just listen to the debate and the tone and be like

yeah, Sam did not win that. Yeah, regardless of political ideology, just like as a debate, that's an absurd statement. but it certainly shouldn't surprise anyone that people in D.C. want D.C. to have more power. Like, that's why they're there. That's what they do. It's on us in the crypto world to push back against that and to stop making these appeals to regulation. One thing that has dismayed me since this whole fallout

is, you know, like after this occurred on various podcasts, many companies changed their marketing pitch to be more about how they're really safe. and so many of them went to the appeal of how many licenses they have and how regulated they are and all this stuff. And it's just like the same mistakes over and over again. Like our salvation is in open source immutable code, period. It is not in any kind of blessing or anointment from D.C.

Eric, I want to start to zoom out a little bit because one of the main reasons why we wanted to talk to you today is just to kind of get out of the bull market tunnel vision. because now we're definitely out of the bull market for sure and kind of just want to zoom out and help go from focusing on 2020 to 2020 and start focusing on the whole crypto project as a whole. And in order to start that conversation,

I kind of want to ask you, as someone who's been through every single market cycle in this industry, 2013 to 2017 to 2021, all the peaks of the ball markets. You forgot 2011. That was the most painful of all. Well, okay, I didn't actually think that there was a cycle there. But again, that's just my naive 2017 cycler. Before the birth of the universe, it's like dark to me.

I didn't even know that time here. The middle of the Big Bang, yeah. Was this cycle exceptional in any way? Was this cycle unique? Or was this just a logical extrapolation of the craziness of the peaks and the depression of the troughs? Like, was this cycle unique in any way? It was unique in the shape of the curve.

There wasn't a blow off top this time. Like the prior bubbles all had like a very, a very traditional speculative bubble that built up and then turned into like an absurd blow off top. This one didn't. Like it had kind of a muted bull market that took Bitcoin up around 60K. And then we had like a recession for six months. And then it kind of got back up to that level and then fell again. So that was a little weird.

That caught me off guard. but in general the same phenomenon is there. People get excited about things and it gets a little ahead of itself. And then when it falls apart, everyone walks away and thinks the whole thing's dead. So that's all very normal and traditional. In 2022, we saw the destruction of a set of individuals that all kind of carry the same common denominators behind them.

Doquan, the Three Hours Capital Squad, SBF, were all, they all had their egos about them, some more than others, but there was just a common denominator of hubris behind so many of the stories of destruction of 2022, which led to so much of the contagion, right? Was this also true in other cycles? I don't really necessarily remember this happening in 2017, but like, what has been the story of personalities and hubris as, as bull markets go on? This one was definitely more focused on some specific people. and their failures. And certainly, like, as numbers get larger, you tend to get more hubris.

There was no hubris in the 2011 bubble because the whole thing was just so small. And, like, you know, the wealthiest person in crypto had $15,000. But now things are getting big. And we're talking about billions of dollars. And especially when people make money very quickly and very, you know, it just arrives fast. And if their moral character is not great going into it, it, they'll get carried away and the hubris sets in very quickly. Like, if all the hard things there is to do in a good life or to build a company or to navigate

the crypto waters, one of the easiest things to do is just not be a dick, right? Like, just being humble. It's low hanging fruit. It's low-hanging fruit. It's low bar. Just realize, you know, all your own flaws that some good portion of anything good you've done has been due to luck or circumstance and that probably the good things you've done have been because other people were helping you and you were working with them

and to just like be humble. It's important, like it's needed for the industry. Our ambition is to take over how the entire financial system works. Like our ambition speaks for itself. And as we succeed in that, if it's paired with an ego or hubris, at best it just doesn't live. look good and speaks poorly of our character, but at worst, leads people astray and causes

these kind of catastrophes. Hubris and ego is definitely a theme of 2022 for sure. What other lessons for the bull markets and bear markets that many of us missed? Are there any other lessons that stand out in historical market cycles? I mean, this lesson that people keep meaning to learn is the dangers of custodial exchanges, custodial wallets. This is not. not a new lesson. That's the one that we need to keep teaching. And I don't expect that brand new people to crypto are going to hop right over to self-custody.

But certainly anyone who's in the industry for a little while and learns about some of this stuff needs to understand how to use basic self-custody. Metamask, I feel, has actually done the most to help people into self-custody of anyone. And they do it without talking about self-custody. they just made a great product and got millions of users into self-hosted wallets. That's fantastic. But that lesson is really the one. Because if people, if the majority of crypto funds and crypto wealth reside with intermediaries,

A, we will never escape the regulation that this stuff is meant to escape. And B, we will never escape the need to trust humans. And like if we look back at even the Bitcoin white paper and, Satoshi's writings. Not that he's a god or anything, but he made a very important point, which is that the problem with traditional finances, all the trust that's required to make it work. Bitcoin removed trust from money itself. And that principle is so core, is so relevant for all the technology that we're building,

for every blockchain, and that message above all needs to continue to be repeated. Is there an element, Eric, that from what you've seen is that every, generation that enters crypto actually has to learn this lesson. And the only way that they learn this lesson, like learn it, really learn it, is by going through something like this. I mean, part of me wonders if there's going to be, we'll remember this for the next five years, maybe, maybe that's generous. But class of 2027, 28 is going to go repeat the same mistakes that the Mount Gawks class did or that the class of 2022 and the FDX debacle did and just it will keep happening to the same population. Yeah, what's your take on that, given everything you've seen?

I think the risk of that is very real. That's what's happened thus far. Ironically, one of the best elements that might push against that is that governments make these regulated entities so shitty. They put up so much friction and they harm the user experience to such a degree that as the defy apps get better and better in their UX, a lot of people are just going to flow to defy and self-custody through UX alone. And it won't be based on principle. It won't be based on learning the lessons of FTX or Mount Cox. It'll be just because the UX of one is like this wide open meadow of beauty and the other is this like decrepit prison that no one wants to be in. that's also my hope for like the best antidote against CBDCs is that if you experience using

a free and open and permissionless blockchain versus a CBDC and all the horrible restrictions that will be there regardless of your ideology you'll move to the former simply because it's the path of least resistance and that's where capital likes to flow yeah I completely agree with that take people people forget that the ux of banks is absolutely terrible and by the way hasn't changed in like 30 years. Like I still have checkbooks and occasionally I will have to write a check for some things. I still have to show up,

show my ID in order to wire fun. Don't get me started on this, Eric. Banks suck. And what's happening in contrast, like, defy is like getting so much better at an exponential right because it's open like the internet. And I don't know if anyone listening remembers the days of like Waldgarten AOL type experience for the internet

where you have a separate, You have a set of AOL apps. When you broke out of the AOL Walt Waldgarden, you went to the real internet. It felt so organic and natural. It was improving all of the time. It had paced the AOL couldn't. It felt chaotic. It felt free.

It felt good. That's kind of the difference that we're talking about here. The great analogy. I have no doubt that Defi and the open permissionless ecosystem is going to beat the hell out of anything that banks can produce, CPDC or otherwise. Let me ask you another question, though. And this is more of like maybe a kind of a philosophical question. Crypto didn't get a bailout.

FDX didn't get a bailout. People lost money, not just big names and VCs with SBF, but average retail everyday investors. Some of these investors, sorry, retail, not investors, but just depositors even. Some of these depositors had their funds in companies that were disconnected from F-TX. Everybody in BlockFi, for example, completely wiped out. Not necessarily BlockFi's direct fault, but because they were linked into the whole FTX risk pool. Gemini, Gemini earned, status unknown. When are you going to be able to withdraw? Unknown. TBD. It's all frozen.

If I were to take the position right now to say that this is healthy, this is good, this is how we learn through the pain. I think people listening to that statement, those statements, would say, yeah, Ryan, you're a psychopath and a sadist because a lot of retail lost a lot of money this year. And it's cool for you that you didn't or you can afford it or whatever else. But like, we can't have this kind of pain. This volatility is not good. And this is the reason we need more government regulation and oversight.

So there's these contracting, contrasting ideas. one says that, hey, pain is necessary. That's how we learn. The other idea says, but does it have to be this painful? Can we like make it less painful? Can we make sure that grandma doesn't get scammed in this crypto ecosystem? Is that a possibility? What's your take on this?

Great question. So, yeah, I would never say that it's like good when something like this happens. And I have heartfelt sympathy for the people that lost money. Like there are a million victims, something in that order. And that emotional human side of it needs to be kept in mind. There's a million stories there of despair. And we should not forget that. And we shouldn't say it's good just because, you know, one more centralized intermediary got wiped out. So that's all true. Also true is that like if you look in nature at how things improve,

it's a very violent and difficult process to evolve. The reason that humans exist, that we evolved out of whatever animals came before us and that those evolved out of what came before them

is just like violence and carnage and blood and like the tearing of flesh over hundreds of thousands and millions of years. And yet, through that process, we see life that has become more diverse, more advanced. We're sitting here with all this technology having this call because of that, you know,

miserable for the individual creatures that came before us, that process. That's a little bit of like a Zen way of looking at it. But in a market, you have a similar process. Those things which make bad decisions will get weeded out over time. and what remains are stronger, heartier, more fit for purpose, more fit to the environment, and that we don't have to see the misery as good, but we can see that process as leading to better and better things, and we can embrace that. Yeah, is that a little bleak or does that help?

It helps. I think it's reality. The question is, can we have a little bit, can we have both? Or do you really have to make this decision? How do we optimize? Well, yeah, I mean, there's always going to be this pain, but every, every entrepreneur in this industry is trying to overcome that pain, right? It's trying to build something that protects people. That was the whole point of shape shift when we built it was let's minimize this pain.

Let's stop having exchanges that are holding customer funds and we'll build something better. So any individual actor or company should absolutely be trying to solve this problem. That's how we get better with it. Will government regulation make any of this stuff better? Of course, I'm going to say no to that. I mean, government regulation causes complacency and causes stagnation. And we only need to look at the banking industry itself to see that. No innovation in the banking industry in certainly my lifetime or decades prior.

They're all heavily regulated, right? They just become complacent and static. And in the way, they have already died. Let's never let crypto lose that kind of fire and that passion. and let's never let it become this highly regulated, you know, quagmire of mediocrity. This is the first principles, Eric, that we all know and love and something I want to get more into here next. I want to just like start fresh as a listener and with this question, as if somebody might be coming into this industry, and this might be the first question that they hear.

Why is it important to empower individuals more than, anyone else. Why is individual empowerment correct? So I think there's several answers to that. If you look at a system in which the power is concentrated, you'll tend to see that it gets abused and that it becomes brittle. You can see this in nature. You can see it in markets as they get co-opted by governments. If you are able to decentralize power, you can get a much more dynamic world. You get individuals that are free to make their own decisions, which is more fulfilling as humans. And you get a system that is more adaptive. And when errors inevitably happen, they happen on a smaller scale. So like, you know, the great example of the danger of

government, everyone appeals to government for protection from the robber down the street. And we end up with these entities that are so large that they cause World War II, where like literally millions of people are slaughtering each other on open battlefields for no good reason. And that only is able to be done at that scale and that level of murder because of the centralization of power. So just as a principle for like civilizational governance, the degree to which you can keep power, small, local, decentralized is a really good one and absolutely true in the realm of money. So how does the idea of a social structure fit in?

And so government is a social structure that helps coordinate us. We are also looking to some of our protocols. It's a generous euphemism for forcing people at gunpoint to do things. Sure, sure. We also have our crypto protocols, however, where Ethereum, Bitcoin, humans can coordinate around these social structures. Religion, for example, is a social structure that is a story that people can adhere to and coordinate by. And that creates, those, these things creates a collective, right? And so how do we balance the freedom and autonomy of the individual to be the best

version of themselves while also having this like social structure that we must all be coordinated by? Like how do we, how should we think about the balance between these two things? Yeah, coordination and order are very important, right? Like we we want hierarchies, we want order, we want coordination, we want collaboration. I think all that stuff ends when you bring a gun into it and force someone to do something or else you'll shoot them or throw them in a cage. Like that's the line that I draw in terms of what's permissible behavior as a person.

As soon as you've left the boundaries of collaboration and you've turned to violence, you've broken something important. And so the goal should be to advocate systems which avoid that kind of violence and avoid that kind of coercion. You mentioned hierarchy in that as like hierarchy is important, like structure is important.

Hierarchy is centralization. So what you're saying is like we're allowed to have some sort of like hierarchical systems, but you're saying that these hierarchical systems need to maintain their product market fit, if you will, without forcing product market fit through violence. Is that another way to say what you said? Yeah.

So like the extremes of centralization and decentralization are both bad. So the extreme of centralization is, you know, like one world government that has all power. And I probably don't need to get into why that would be horrible. The opposite end is extreme decentralization, which first of all is impossible and very unnatural. But if you take it to the extreme, it means like even the organization of the cells in your body is invalid

and that you should just like go out into space and explode into a gazillion pieces to decentralize your matter across the universe. Right? So like the structure of planets, the structure of individual animals and plants, that is all hierarchy, that is all order, that is all centralization to a certain degree.

and that's all good, you know, but there's this tendency in human society to continue seeking higher and higher centralization with this appeal to coerce of government. That's like a bias in human society. And you can see it like in America where this country was created, you know, the most free that it ever happened at scale

with a whole bunch of really good and valuable founding principles and a culture of individualism and yet only two or three hundred years go by and you see that it has now turned into this empire with the government so vastly more powerful than what the founders would have ever envisioned that it's kind of sickening

and yet people continue clamoring for more government every year the budget gets bigger right it doesn't matter what parties in charge more regulations come out not not fewer if you were to count the number of pages of active laws on any given year it's it only goes up It's like this ratcheting function because people keep appealing to this coercive entity. And the only way that process resolves is in some kind of horrible revolution.

That's been the history of humanity. And so I guess first step in fixing that is just recognizing that bias and trying to fight against it. Yeah. I think this is a moment to actually connect this back to 2021 and 2022. I can't remember who said this quote, but it's something along the lines of the people that seek power to seek to grow their power and ultimately find themselves in positions of power because of how they seek it are not the people that you want to be in power. And in contrast, there are people who are humble and rational and, you know, operate on first

principles and are good. And those people tend to not seek power. They tend to not centralize power around themselves. And when you say there's this bias towards power, I think of Sam Bankman-Fried trying to take in as many customer deposits as possible, trying to raise as much money as possible, like bailing out BlockFi to get BlockFi to dump their yield into FTX. And one of the lessons that I learned throughout 2021 and 2022 is like how centralizing the concept of yield actually is. Because yield tends to actually like centralized over time.

And really the bull market that we all went through, was a bull market in yield. It started off with compound governance yield farming, liquidity mining, which was good, perhaps. We also had the yield arbitrage out of GBT, and then Genesis kind of let that scale out beyond that. Three hours capital took advantage. All of this yield over time, we had all these pool ones and pool twos from defy farms. All of this yield started to like coordinate and centralize. And then it was Sam Bankman Freed, like the most egotistical maniac of them all who managed to capture all of the collecting pools of capital that were growing and growing and growing under his FTX black box.

And so as one is like, yeah, go ahead. I think this term power needs to actually be two different terms that we just don't have in English language. There's two very clear distinct types of power. One is like the voluntary power or influence that you have in your social circles. Like, you know, when I was running ShapeShift, I have power to fire someone. right, that is a certain degree of power. But it's not coercive power.

Coercive power is something else. Coercive power is where there's not like some voluntary accord being followed, but you're forcing someone or defrauding someone or lying in some way where you've actually coerced behavior. These are very different things. And a lot of people look at like big government and big corporations is the same. It's like two sides of the same evil coin where they're both just examples of centralized power. But Amazon.com has never thrown anyone in prison.

Right, like Amazon.com has never bombed people and, like, blew their limbs off. To me, that's a distinct difference between even the most powerful company in the world and what even a small central coercive government will do. And in Sam's case, his sins weren't sins of trying to centralize non-coercive power. There's nothing wrong with trying to build. the big company and get lots of influence and get lots of money, that's all fine. His sin was in the fraud, was in, like crossing that line into coercion, stealing billions of dollars of customer money. That was the sin. And it's so, I don't know what words to use here, but these two types of

power are important to keep distinct. Kind of zooming back out to talk about the first principles of crypto. And when we talk about trying to find the optimum balance between centralization and decentralization, right where extreme centralization if you want to keep on going with like the uh the the space and stars analogy extreme centralization is like the center of a black hole and it just crushes you uh and then the opposite is like the microwave cosmic background where it's so incredibly decentralized that you are dust and you can't even think because you know so boring and we're trying to find this optimal middle ground where there's like biodiversity and life and culture and expressiveness and all this great things how do you see crypto protocols as um

supporting structures to help create the biodiversity that we see here on Earth, on the planet that we live on. Great question. So first, it's important to just realize, like, how complex this point is. There's not, like, an ideal degree of centralization across everything, right? It's not like it's 50% centralization is appropriate for everything. Some systems and structures can be very decentralized and some need to be very centralized. It depends on the scale. It depends on what they're trying to do.

So people shouldn't worry too much about that. But just to understand that the scale exists and to always trying to be seeking out that optimal point for you and your projects is what people should focus on. Like anyone who's running a company deals with this every day, trying to figure out how much power to leave in the hands of the executive team versus how much to try to distribute out to the employees. and that's different in different companies and depends a lot on what they're trying to do. But just thinking in that way, I think, is important, not that there's some ideal that's universal. Eric, I want to ask a question

that might seem like it's coming out of the left field, but I think relates. What do you think of the Constitution? The U.S. Constitution, I'm talking about. The Constitution. Think about that. My kind of frame of reference is, earlier in the conversation,

we were talking about this idea of having your cake and eating it to. You're able to do the getting the benefit of UX centralization type stuff, all of that benefit, while also getting the benefit of decentralization. And when I look at the Constitution, I've always thought of that as a protocol, if you will. It's a set of rules, right? It's kind of like analog version of code. It was in legal code.

And we look at, you know, some might say the Constitution, if you're probably on the extreme maybe libertarian side of things. You might say, well, any government is just too much structure for me. That's too much structure. The interesting thing about the Constitution to me is that that went from a monarchy, which was complete centralization. We had a monarchy and you had the lords and you had a court to, and it took a rebellion for this to happen,

to outsourcing some of that power to something that was more decentralized and better. And we set up this protocol called the Constitution in the United States that guaranteed some freedoms. Now, there was still coercion in there, of course. But then you had kind of like all of these amendments, which protect individuals' rights. And I would certainly argument that that is a massive improvement from the system that we left. But the secret here is we were still able to get the coordination potential of a nation state, but we didn't have to sacrifice and make tradeoffs and, you know, make tradeoffs.

and have the centralization and potential corruption of a monarchy. And I see some of these same principles being applied in crypto, where to the extent that we can design better protocols, we're talking about the way out, and give our power to those protocols instead, and that keeps it decentralized, that really is the way out. That's how we can get the collaboration, the organization,

without falling prey to sort of the nation-state coercion or the traps and the perils of centralization. That's what I see Bitcoin as, right? It's kind of a way to do that with money using this assetism. That's what I see Ethereum as. It's non-coerative technology that still allows us to coordinate. So what do you think about that idea? What do you think of the Constitution, Eric?

Is this part of the way out where we can get the tradeoff right? Yeah. So the Constitution was an amazing development in that it was like an affirmative, of declarative attempt at institutionalizing decentralization. Right? So it was coming out of a world of kings and basically saying those problems we don't want to keep perpetuating. So we're going to decentralize power and we're going to state lots of things that

the government cannot do. Like that's the whole goal is to put limits on the centralization of power. And it was reasonable. effective. So as a historical document and project, you know, huge respect to it, at the same time, we see

that even when done so well, it has still been degraded almost to the point of meaninglessness over two or three hundred years. And this gets to why laws that are made by a man are always kind of squishy, right? They're written in language,

which itself is squishy. People's culture changes over time. And this desperate desire to have the government do more things has overridden any protections that the Constitution has or many of them. So, you know, hopefully we are moving now into a world where we don't need to rely on the written laws of men as much. And we're at this new age where we actually have immutable code that cannot be degraded with time. like an Ethereum smart contract will operate according to its rules forever as long as the blockchain is operating.

There's no interpretation because it's written in code it is objective and we now have these powerful systems that can operate over the long term without that kind of interpretation or degradation and that's what we should be embracing. So like written laws were a cool technology for a few hundred years.

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sign up with Cracken at crackin.com slash bankless. Eric, do you think there are limitations to what we can do with the code that will never be able to kind of solve on the squishy legal human layer of things? Yeah. Yeah, code enforces things that happen digitally. It can't enforce things that happen in the analog world. So that's a huge, that's a huge point. code can't really govern like human relationships with each other. So it's not like smart contracts should suddenly be looked at as the provider of all order in society, especially in Meetspace.

But where it really shines is anything digital. And all of cryptocurrency is a digital scarce good. And so that is a perfect realm in which to realize that the power of code, as law, or as better than law, where that can be realized. So, Eric, sum this up for us. Why are we here? Why are we doing this crypto thing? So each person's different, right?

And again, this is a diverse industry, and not everyone agrees with this point I'm going to make. But the reason I'm here, the reason I'm doing this crypto thing and have been for 11 years, is because I want to separate money and state. I think money is one of the money. important technologies in society. It's something we interact with every day. The flows of money direct and govern human action everywhere at every scale. And something so important needs to not be under a monopoly provider, period. If you believe in markets and yet you let the money of

markets be a non-market phenomenon that is created and managed. by a central government, you're living at odds with the principles of what the markets can do. And arguably the most important good of all to be handled by the market is money, because it's the most important good in an economy. So I'm here to separate money in state. And every technology, every blockchain, every app that helps further that is something that I'm going to be supporting. This is why I didn't stick around with only Bitcoin and remain a Bitcoin and Maximilist because there's amazing other technologies outside of Bitcoin that are helping those same principles be moved forward. So that's why I'm here. Certainly some people are here

to just like make a bunch of money, but I'm here for the principle of decentralizing money away from the hands of the state. You said that again, really emphasizing the point that we're all here, we're a diverse group of people, we're all here for different reasons. And the reason why you're here is because you want to see the separation of money in the state. But don't you also think that a lot of the protocols that we coordinate around, Bitcoin especially on this regard, but also Ethereum, and maybe blockchains as a whole, as a technology as a whole, have this value baked into them. As in, I'm not sure it's actually possible to be in crypto without believing in the separation of money and state. And then the whole point of like expressive

smart contract layers is you also want to separate finance and state. Do you agree that there are some principles, some values that are actually baked into this industry at their very core and actually aren't negotiable. You can't really strip. There is no blockchain without, there's no crypto without the separation of money and state. Do you agree with this? Not quite. Like the blockchains themselves don't have values, right? The values are human subjectivity principles that we decide are important. The blockchains don't care at all about our values. The blockchains are tools. Their machines are. architected in certain ways that have certain effects and can do certain things. And if we have

principles, we might see certain blockchains that help express or advance those principles, but the blockchains themselves don't. It is always curious to me when I meet like an absolute statist who's also a big fan of crypto. You know, like I want to ask them, do you realize where this is going? Wait, those exist? Sure. Yeah. I mean, certainly the radical libertarian. Types are a minority of crypto holders. In 2011, it was most of them. But today, I'm the minority. Lots of people really love government, you know, and they really wanted to be powerful and do all the right things and they'll vote in the right people next election. And still many of those people like Bitcoin, like Defi. So like my take on it, so I wouldn't call myself or label myself

a radical libertarian. I mean, we don't talk a lot about, you know, politics on bankless in general, except we always talk about politics on bank lists in every single episode, because this is a movement that is not necessarily left or right, but it's certainly anti-authoritarian. It's certainly more decentralization back to the people. And so, yeah, there is an element where isn't some of this baked into our, like, very protocols? I get that there's a social contract that we're all kind of implicitly signing by opting into these systems. But at the same time, aren't some of these protocols like shaping our, shaping our values?

Like, I would broaden it. I definitely believe in kind of the separation of money and state. And I would even broaden it to say, well, we're also separating the property rights layer from the state too. And that's an interesting thing that we've not done yet. And that sort of even expands if you think of money as one aspect of property, but not the only digital property we might have. That's even more expansive.

I guess my overarching question is maybe as we go into 20, 23 and beyond, how do we preserve some of the core crypto values that make this industry what it is and so important? How do we not F up this whole thing along the way of inviting more and more people to the table? Because I do want this thing to be for the world. I do want everybody to come in the same way that they're into the internet. And yet what I saw last cycle, Eric, was like, as a result of that, we lost, we diluted some of the core values that make this industry so important. And how do we prevent that moving forward while inviting everyone in? So we keep talking about it.

We keep talking about the principles over and over and over and over and over. And it becomes part of the culture. That's something that's like an active thing. you have to continue on. Just like if you build a company, you can't just declare the culture in the beginning and then it will forever be that. It requires active management and active influence.

There's also just a recognition that a lot of people won't share those values and that's okay. One of the reasons I was so in love with Bitcoin was because I realized it was going to work without convincing everyone that like a world of small government is a better one.

Like I don't have to have to have, that debate with anyone, right? I've become less political post-Bitcoin because I don't have to care about convincing people of anything. I can simply help encourage this technology to take over the world and through that will be more effective than like any set of voting. So there's part of me that like doesn't quite care what people's values are and a recognition after, you know, decades of trying to convince people of certain ideological principles that I don't need to convince anyone of anything. There's this Bitcoin tool that works, and as it grows, it will separate money from state regardless of anyone's intentions. That's why it's so powerful. That's why it's so exciting.

And we can focus on the building and enabling of that technology instead of having, you know, debates with people who are just going to dig in their heels. And we don't need to do that anymore. I'm reminded of a fantastic quote from a co-host of mine. When you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. And it's kind of nice just to, I think all three of us here have a pretty good level of confidence that eventually society will ultimately become coordinated around crypto protocols. And eventually that future state of the world

will align with the values that I see embedded into these things, embedded into the particular constructions of these crypto protocols that we are creating. So it's a little bit of just like a waiting, game for, you know, adoption to slowly, slowly win out. And the nice thing, David, is because it's opt-in, we only get that adoption if we deserve it, right? People have to choose crypto. And that's important.

We can't lose sight of that. And they can opt out. Yeah. Yep. Like that's what makes this a noble cause. Right. Is that none of it is based on coercion, right? No one holds Bitcoin who doesn't want to hold Bitcoin.

It is not forced on any person. They opt into it and they can opt out just as easily at any time. If it doesn't further their interest, they can leave and it's fine. That's what's so cool about it. And that's what puts it in stark contrast to Fiat. If your idea or your technology or your product is so good that you have to force people to use it, that might be an indication that it's not that great. And crypto never has that.

It has to win every single user. Eric, you said that you label yourself as a as like radical, right? Like you put yourself in the radical libertarian camp. But when I talk to you, I'm talking to a very rational, like grounded seemingly. I'm getting, I get the vibe that you don't get angry often. Do you feel radical? Like, why did you use that word? I think rationality is a radical thing these days.

So it's society that's radical. Yeah. Yeah, nothing's wrong with me. society. Yeah, I mean, it is funny because, like, objectively, I am radical in my beliefs. But all I believe is that, like, people should be peaceful with one another. That's really my fundamental belief. And everything is simply like a logical or rational extension of that principle.

In my Twitter profile, like, it says toward peace as the first, the first snippet, because that's, that's the point. it is really sad in telling that holding that as my fundamental moral principle makes me a radical. You know, like that that to me indicates something is really, really sick with society generally. Or at least is unexamined. You know, because most people, if you ask them if they're pro-peace, would say yes. But they haven't really gone through the exercise of thinking logically about what that means. How do they define that? how is that applied? Because they'll say that in one sentence and then the very next sentence,

they'll advocate for taxation, which is a breach of peace, right? It's a taking of property from one person by force. So they hold these kind of views that are at odds with each other. And I think that's why a lot of people, maybe like Sam in that debate, just had no, no structured, logical, consistent framework to think about the rules that should be borne down on society. I think the way he thinks about it is what is expedient or what is helpful for FTX or what some senator advocated, but they're not, there's no unified sort of theory of how humans should be. And that's what really caught him up when confronted with just a rational, clear foundation. And do you see crypto protocols as tools to help scale out towards peace?

do crypto protocols help move us as society towards peace? Yes, because they provide an alternative from monies that are not based on peace. So fiat currency is not based on peace. People are forced or legally benefited in using it in certain ways. And some people are legally permitted to do things with it that others are not. So it's a system based on coercion. And crypto is that alternative. It's a peaceful, purely market-based money.

And that's a beautiful thing. And for every person out there that gets distracted by the Lambo's, you know, what they're actually helping to further when they talk about crypto is a machine of economic peace. Like, that's ultimately what we're building. And I think that's a really profound and important cause. Kevin Milwaukee's line from DGens into regens comes to mind. So I'll give him a little shout. Kevin's great. Kevin is someone who like, him and I agree on a lot of stuff, but he's also like a dirty statist. And so we have good debates about that. But I very much respect him and he's a good dude. I love your back and forth, by the way. But just this idea of radical to me is just like, so David, I think that some people would think that you are radical and that I am radical. Why? Because we believe in on-chain privacy. You think that it shouldn't be.

illegal for a U.S. citizen to use tornado cash privacy mixer, right? You think that? Yes. I personally like to use it again. Because it's against consensus of you, I would expect. And the thing that that caught me from the debate with Eric in SBF is Eric was talking about, you know, 85 million Iranians, they should have access to an open financial system, shouldn't they? Well, that doesn't necessarily play very well in Capitol Hill, does it. But when you go back to base principles and you're talking about an open, you know, permissionless system to help all people across geographies all over the world, why shouldn't it? I guess that's a radical idea as well. But it's not if you're grounding these things on

base principles and you're starting from the bottom up. Eric, we've talked a lot about like why we're here, you know, the principles, what we lost sight of, not we. Maybe I'll edit that word, but some in crypto lost-sidiv in 2022, and how we can get back to that. Let me ask you this question, though. So every time at this point in the cycle, I can't say every time because I haven't been in all the cycles, but I can imagine and I've been through enough to know that

at this point in the cycle, everyone, people go back to, even if they're in crypto, it's sort of a, okay, crypto's not dead. All right? Previous cycles, people say crypto's not dead. I'll submit to you that crypto's not dead this cycle, Eric. but give me a reason it shouldn't expand beyond the small little niche of core believers and this weird little podcast called bankless in some corner of the internet. It'll forever remain a niche.

Kind of like the gold bugs or kind of like other technologies that didn't really take off in the past. What do you think about this, Eric? Do you think that that we'll get another bull run, that will get another adoption wave? Or are those days behind us, is crypto kind of, is there a possibility? that crypto is just forever doomed to this niche of hardcore believers and doesn't ever go mainstream the way the internet has. Yeah, well, first response is that it's funny to keep hearing that because that's the same allegation that was levied at us in 2011.

That like this will never take off. It'll never be meaningful. It's just this niche of these, you know, radical anarchists and it has no place in the normal world. And some of us dreamers would be like, you know, what? Someday, like, a real corporation is going to accept this stuff, man. And lo and behold, you know, here we are only a decade later. And many companies accept it. You know, it is a major financial asset. Like, one of the most, Bitcoin's one of the most liquid financial assets in the

world, objectively. And so it's working. But people keep, people keep wondering during the entire adoption curve, if it'll step any further on that adoption curve. And like when I ask myself this question, the proper answer to it is always to look at the fundamental economic mechanisms behind it. The reason that crypto will take over the world is because it is a more fertile ground for capital. Capital flows to where it does not get destroyed. It does not get infringed. Capital flows to where it can be built into more capital. This is like an economic law. And so while it doesn't happen in a straight line, over time, more and more value will be held in these transparent, open, immutable forms of value instead of these analog ones that decay, you know, by 2 to 10% every year that people are used to holding, and which have all sorts of restrictions and borders on them. To go back to your AOL analogy, right, like the internet obliterated AOL, which was this, you know, walled garden, because

creativity and communication and economics doesn't like walls, right? It expands. Markets expand, and they expand in the paths of least resistance. Crypto is that path of least resistance. So I have no worry that, like, value doesn't flow into these systems. It doesn't mean I know which system will benefit the most, but those that are frictionless and useful to people will be the benefactors. So that's kind of like a first principle's thinking on just why this actually takes over the world. And just to add one more comment on that, capital is highly interested in not decaying, as in that is a very good carrot for people to not lose their money.

And so while the internet absolutely obliterated AOL, it did that without the incentive of money behind it as well. So it's got an extra little power. The parallel is that like money, information wants to be free, right? Information doesn't like walls. and really money and information are not so different from each other. Money is like a specific form of information. And these things like to spread, and they will spread, and like a liquid, you know,

they find their way through every crack and they overcome every mountain. And we don't know how long it takes, but that's the inevitable phenomenon that you can count on. Poetic. Love it. Love it. Eric, my last question for you, we started to touch on some of these answers, like the commonalities behind all the bull markets. when you look forward, I know that 2011 to 2013 was only two years, but, you know, every four

years since then, 2013, 2017, 2021 always seem to be some sort of peak. So perhaps 20, 25, no guarantees, but during the next bull market, during the next bull run, what are the common denominators that you've seen every single bull market, every single bull run, every single bear market, too, that we should be prepared for? Like, what have you seen almost every single time as the massinations of the crypto cycles move forward. There are largely lessons that you see in any kind of speculative cycle. So it's not unique to crypto. But these are lessons like when the bullishness is happening,

people's skepticism and judgment falls way too low. They're willing to accept anything, right? And all the stupid ideas get just as much money as the good ones. There's no discretion. And everyone's making money doing everything. So during the bull market, remembering to stay sane means ask yourself if this thing is actually useful or if it's just stupid. And if your mind says it's just stupid, it might actually just be stupid. And so don't follow the crowd because they'll go into everything.

And then the inverse is that in the bear market, people are far too bearish. And they dismiss the whole thing. Like your earlier question is like, you know, the sentiment that, oh, well, crypto ever. even turn into a real thing or is it just constrained to the niche? You know, that is bear market thinking, right? That is like this technology which didn't change in the last two years, the blockchains didn't change from the bear to the bull. If it was going to work during the bull market, it's just as likely to work during the

bear market because the technology itself, the machines haven't changed. And so during the bear market to realize that you're probably too negative on stuff and that things which you feel like aren't a great idea actually might become really important and useful. And to just check yourself on both of those extremes. When you're feeling really great about everything, try to add a little more skepticism. And when you're feeling horrible about everything, you know, go touch some grass and realize that we're actually building profound systems here and to be proud of that. So what should we do during the bear market that's ahead of us however long it lasts? Is it really that simple?

Buy and build? Those are the two bees during the bear market? Yeah. And also just remember to live your lives, right? You know, crypto is not everything. Spend time, build relationships with people, stay healthy, stay sane, get outside as much as you can. All these kind of good human advice is totally relevant. And then just like step back and be proud of what you're part of.

No revolution that worked during that. revolution were all the people confident that it would work, right? Like you step forward through uncertainty the entire time. And then one day you might wake up and realize like, oh, it worked, but I missed it all because I was so worried that it wasn't happening. So just recognize that like you're in the middle of the revolution right now, full or bare market. You're in the middle of that. And a decade, two decades, three decades from now, like when you're talking with your children or your grandchildren, and they ask you about this time, you'll realize that you were there.

And so while you're here, don't let it go by without that recognition. And Eric, if you did have to guess on when the market will start to turn around and when we'll see another bull market of some sort, breaching all-time highs, what would your guess be? I mean, do we have to wait 10 years or does this happen every four years always? It won't be 10 years. And I wish I could pretend that me and my, like, crypto-OG friends, don't talk about like when the bull market will return.

But we do. You know, we have our barbecues and we talk about, you know, and what do you think? What are they saying? We're just always wrong. It's so hard. It's so hard. It won't be 10 years.

Like if it takes 10 years for the bull market to happen, probably the whole thing failed. So I'm happy bounding it in that way. Yeah, I would guess it's sometime in the next like, you know, six to three, six months to three years. You know, I think that's generally how long it takes people's minds to start changing and speculative cycles to return. It also has a lot to do with the macro environment. Right.

So as long as interest rates are held high and monetary conditions are tighter, it's going to be a headwind. But I think we may, you know, that'll start changing in early to mid next year. So I wouldn't be surprised if Bitcoin was at like 40K in by the same. summer, that wouldn't surprise me at all. And that's like two and a half X from here. So it's a great return. There you have it, guys. Some thoughts from Eric Forhees near the end. Even got some price predictions on a podcast that was not at all about price predictions. Everything else I said today can be like debated, but I said a time. Everything else will be a price now. Yeah, time tested, except for that last piece. But yeah, you heard it here. Guaranteed by 2026, we'll have a full

steam ahead, bull market, Eric Voorhees. Just kidding, guys, of course. Eric, look, man, I just want to give my personal thanks to you, and this is from David and myself in the bankless community, having your voice in the space throughout 2022, and especially your voice coming in at a pivotal time to debate Sam Bankman-Fried will forever go in history as one of, I think, crypto's finest articulation of our values and one of our finest. movements. So I'm so grateful we just had the opportunity to hit record on that episode and for everything that came out. We'll be deeply disappointed to the documentary makers. If that doesn't make it in the documentary, okay? Netflix, Amazon Prime, if you guys are listening,

needed to be talking about Voorhees. So anyway, thank you for everything that you've been doing. And we appreciate you coming on today. Yeah, well, you guys made that opportunity. So you made it happen and I was proud to serve and that was that was fun ultimately this is like a battleground of ideas and so we need to just keep talking about them thank you guys for always being a source of signal I appreciate it and I'm a big fan of the show as always honored we go bankless nation into 23 I think this is probably the first episode that you're going to hear from us in 2023 we fit this recording in right before the holidays with Eric Forhees and I hope you enjoyed them but happy 2023 to you. Some action items for you. Of course, go watch the SBF and Eric Vorhees episode. That stands the

test of time. Remember, that's Eric with the K. Spell it right. Also, go read a response to SBF and principled crypto regulation that is the post that Eric put out prior to all of this. Another action item for you, great blog post called The Sophistry and the Savior that came out from Eric after all of the things with SBF came out. We'll include a link to that in the show notes. And if you want to ignore all this SBF stuff all together, and you want to go for the bankless deep cut, we've included an episode called Exploring the Frontier.

This is way back in episode 24, number 24. We were just in double digits territory there. We recorded with Eric, and you'll find a lot of, I think, the same themes he was talking about today. You can get the deep cut on that. As always, Bankless Nation, risks and disclaimers, I think Eric's going to do them for us this time. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier.

It is not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a bankless to get the most out of your bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the bankless community is where you want to be.

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