Bankless - ETHDenver 2022 is Scaling Vibes | Andrew Yang, Erik Voorhees, Kevin Owocki

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Few things compare to ETH Denver. It is impossible to fully capture the experience of the crypto community at a massive gathering like this, but these two choice talks provide a snapshot of the vibes and ethos of the 2022 conference. Kevin Owocki and Erik Voorhees join to synthesize the respective merits of individualism and collectivism, and Andrew Yang stepped up to give an impromptu call to action for the community to rally around productive goals. We are scaling out the crypto vibes, and that was abundantly clear this week. Far larger than any previous ETH Denver, this conference truly felt like a Schelling point for folks changing the world via novel, elegant mechanisms. We just can’t wait for ETH Denver 2023. ------ 📣 NOTIONAL FINANCE | DeFi's Leading Fixed Rate Yield https://bankless.cc/Notional  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER:          https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST:                 http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  👀 POLYGON | LAYER  2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask  💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger  🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 12:01 Journey to ETH Denver 16:18 The Panels 22:37 Vibes 34:00 Kevin Owocki & Erik Voorhees 43:28 Pragmatism 50:57 Public Goods Funding 1:00:00 Andrew Yang & Crypto Alignment 1:06:31 Lobby3 1:13:53  Roadmaps & Executive Orders 1:22:14 Action & Optimism 1:27:45 Audience Questions ------ Resources: Kevin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/owocki?s=20&t=O_vNoy9YMBatb8lIbf9ByA  Erik on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees?s=20&t=O_vNoy9YMBatb8lIbf9ByA  Andrew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrewYang?s=20&t=O_vNoy9YMBatb8lIbf9ByA  Lobby3: https://twitter.com/Lobby3D?s=20&t=q417PS_HIJMGmpXqJYhPVg  Take the Green Pill: https://greenpill.party/  ----- 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 

I love that crypto technology has allowed that kind of thing to flourish and for all this creative energy to go to these problems with technology that wasn't around a decade ago. Hey, Bankless Nation. Welcome to another State of the Nation episode. David, we're pre-recording this, and this is all on the back of Heath, Denver. Okay? I'm watching from afar. So I'm the guy with FOMO, like, asking you, deserved FOMO, asking you about all of the highlights I missed at at Heath Denver, and you're the guy who went, spoke at many of these events, and can give me the Heath Denver experience, as if I'm there. That's what today's episode is going to be about, right?

That's exactly right. We are scaling out the vibes that we all experience at Heath Denver across the internet by reflecting and ideating about all of everything about Heath Denver. It was really, really cool. Bank of listeners will know that I show Eat Denver at every single opportunity. And I think the first lesson or first like reflection that I have was that I had this kind of pseudo-oh moment going into East Denver when I realized that this thing is like three times bigger than it's ever been before. And there are so many new entrants coming into this conference. And I didn't know.

Like is this East Denver going to be the same East Denver that I know and love? Or are the new people that came into 2021 going to actually share the same experience? share the same vibes of all the other previous Heath Denver's that I've been to. And the answer was unequivocally, yes. The vibes were not just, we're not diluted, but in much more instead amplified.

It was even more of the same Heath Denver that I know and love. And so I'm so glowing from this whole entire conference because it was such a fantastic experience. That's awesome. So guys, David on Twitter said it was the best week of his life. Hands down. So I want to hear about that. Not even

close. Hands down. So we're going to talk about that. we have some content for you coming up in today's show straight from Heath Denver. So, David, what are we going to be looking at after you and I talk about East Denver for a bit? There's, I think, two clips, maybe two interviews that we thought were worth highlighting, and we wanted to get on the bankless podcast. What are the things upcoming in this episode? Yeah, so there were two panels or interviews that I hosted on the main stage at East Denver. one of them was planned. One of them was not planned, and I'll talk about that one second. The first one was a talk which we titled Transcending Individualism and Collectivism, and that was with Kevin O'Waki and Eric Voorhees. Both of these two individuals are Coloradoians, who are very big in crypto and think crypto can make the future better because of what crypto has to offer. But they think it does that via very different routes.

Forgey's is a very famous libertarian. I think he's perhaps a libertarian thought leader is a way to describe Eric Forgey's in this space. We've had him on the podcast multiple times before, both great episodes. And he's coming in on the side of individualism. And Kevin O'Waqui is coming in on the side of collectivism, saying that it's actually collectivism is how we fund public goods. And so Eric Forhees and Kevin O'Waqui have had friendly Twitter spats. Every now and then, they go back and forth on Twitter and debating about whether how to fund public goods and whether taxation is coercion or how we can fund public goods using crypto.

And this is an ongoing conversation between these two leaders in the cryptocurrency space. And so this was the first time we've had this conversation able to be hosted in person. So I was honored to be able to moderate a friendly debate. Debates not the right word, but a friendly conversation between these two people that are, 99.9% aligned, but disagree on the priorities of how as society we should fund public goods. So that was a fantastic conversation. Do you know those two are, I actually haven't listened to this yet, but those two are the archetypes for this like dichotomy. I see in crypto, you know the political compass thing.

You've seen that. So you've got sort of a quadrant. You've got the top two squares of this quadrant, you know, authoritarian. So the top part is authoritarian. The bottom part is more libertarian. And then you've got like economic left and economic right. Rather than most of our political landscape is people think of left and right. But I also think like there's also the political compass as you're either authoritarian or libertarian.

I think of Eric Voorhees as libertarian right. Most people in crypto are in the bottom part of this box. inherently bottom, yeah. Yeah, inherently bottom because it's inherently anti-authoritarian, but Eric Voorhees lives in the libertarian right square. And Kevin O'Waqi lives in the libertarian left square, right? He thinks that, you know, there are collective goods, there are public goods. And I think at some level, this can also be a dichotomy between Ethereum and Bitcoin.

You often see that breakdown. They see both. So that's why I think it's the perfect conversation because both of those two embody these two ideas in crypto that are unified and being anti-authoritarian but have some, they're a bit at odds, whether we're more collectivist or more individualistic. And I think that's interesting. So I can't wait personally to listen to that. But that's just the first content piece.

What's the second, David? Yeah, the second one is the unplanned piece of content, which I was just shocked that this happened. and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to seize this opportunity. There was a surprise guest going into Heath Denver that was not on the agenda, but as soon as he showed up in the room, we cleared out the agenda on the main stage talk so this man can speak. And that man is none other than Andrew Yang decided to show up at East Denver. A few people kind of had the idea that he would come,

but 99.9% of the people I'd ever had no idea that Andrew Yang was going to be there. And he rolled in, right it through the doors, and immediately just get swarmed by everyone wanting to Oh, God, yeah. It was like a dog pile of people trying to talk to Andrew Yang, myself being one of them. And this is right on the heels of... Andrew, Andrew, look at me. Yeah, it's like, hey, can you, like, can we do it? I lined up and made all the requests everyone else was doing.

this was on the heels of me and bankless content operations editor Luke were going around East Denver with his camera and a microphone and I was just doing these micro interviews, five to ten minute interviews of people's experience that's also coming later on the bankless podcast sometime somewhere or at least on the YouTube. And so we went up to Andrew Yang. It's like, Andrew, can we do just a quick five to ten minute interview about like why you're here and stuff? And one of his posse was like, wait, do you just want to? like have that interview but on the main stage and I was like well absolutely and so we went over to the green room we went over just a quick agenda of what we wanted to talk about and then we just

hop right on stage and had a 40 minutes of just me interviewing Andrew Yang on stage at east Denver and a little bit of a Q&A at the end of it personally an extremely surreal experience because the room got filled up and when I looked out at the crowd it was just what looked like a thousand people watching me and Andrew Yang on stage. And Andrew Yang just absolutely crushed it. He brought the energy. He brought the excitement. Just like every time he talked, there was applause. And so I was just like dumbfounded by this opportunity. And now we get to showcase it on the bankless podcast. That's super cool. And none of this was planned. He was just like a, he decided to come to the Yth Denver conference at a whim just to see what's up, see what the community's doing.

Yeah. Well, he's really found alignment with the crypto people. I think, in the world of politics, Andrew Yang kind of has a tough time because of how middle of the road he is. And so he's like an enemy of both sides. He's not, he's not Democrat enough to be Democrat. He's not Republican enough to be Republican. And he's fine. But the crypto people don't really identify by those terms. And also, Andrew Yang's always been a futurist and also an optimist. And if there's any two qualities that crypto has, it's futurist and optimist. And so he's found resonance with the Web3 community. And so he started what is basically a Dow called Lobby 3, which is what he's announcing on stage, and talks about how he finds alignment with the Web 3 community.

He also, I don't know if this was, this is the first time I've heard about this, but this might be alpha, Ryan, where he talks about, he talked about how the Biden administration in the next two weeks is going to drop an executive order that is going to, I think, force regulatory agencies to actually put into, create clarity about our industry. And so he's got wind of this executive order coming out of the Biden administration that's going to force clarity, which is both scary because it's going to make legislation happen that is going to regulate our industry, but also an opportunity because we also want this. Don't screw it up, guys. Please don't screw it up. I bet we'll be talking about this, though. Yes, 100%. And Andrew Yang, I think, really kicked off

that conversation at East Denver, so a really important conversation to listen to. to. We didn't get this in the video, but this sadly was not included in the interview, but when he walks up on stage, he doesn't even wait for anyone to introduce him. He just walks up on stage and grabs the microphone and goes, it's Andrew Effing Yang! Sadly, I think you might be able to find that on the long, the long, the ETH number live stream on the YouTube account, but sadly, that part didn't make it into the video. Does that work for you when you walk into your room? It's David Eiffin-off.

No, absolutely not. We'll just cringe. Yeah. All right, man. Well, we're going to get into those. So guys, expect a podcast in three parts. First, we're going to talk about some other Eat Denver vibes because I'd still want to pick your brain for a little bit.

Then we're going to get to that Eric Voorhees and Kevin O'Waqi conversation and then the Andrew Yang. But first, Dave, before we get into the meat of this, we've got to talk about our friends at Notional Finance. Look, man, this is a fixed rate loan on DFI. Okay? Was it a week ago? last week the week before blockfi got shut down basically no new blockfi accounts can be created that is

centralized lending and and borrowing products uh notional is a decentralized finance product it cannot be shut down if you still want your crypto fixed rate loan if you want to earn some interest on your usdc on your eth on your uh wrapped bitcoin what else they got die you can do that fixed rate loan so the terms don't change once you lock it in. It's like 7.8% on USDA. A lot of value locked here. So 450 million right now. And I just love these types of products because like how's this compared to a bank account? How are you doing in your Wells Fargo savings account, David? What's your interest rate, buddy? Oh, God, negligible. I don't even know the number just because I don't even think that it exists. If they didn't pay me any interest rate, I would have no idea.

Do you know there? I don't know if you've gotten it, but they send you the, the tax. The tax. tax docs on like the in the it's got a line of interest I made like um 50 cents or something a dollar what's my account what you're going to do with that right I'm gonna I'm gonna file with the IRS and show them that I made that dollar so it's silly anyway notional fantastic product you guys should go check it out there's a link in the show notes uh if you want to earn some stable coin interest go do that go check it out um all right man why don't we start with this davy because you wrote this uh a really cool post. It kind of summed it up.

Some of the things, Eth Denver, the ETH, Denver, we'll talk about those eight content pieces and some of the vibes going in, but maybe it set the stage for us because Eith Denver has changed a lot since 2018,

where you went for the first time. I don't know, did it start before that as well? Was there in Eth, Denver, like, 2017? No, 2018 was the first one. Yeah, I've been to every single one. I've been to every single poet. Yeah. 2018, 3,000 people is what you said.

Now, ETH price was $600. That was before we knew we were deep in the bear market. We're just entering it. ETH Denver, 2019, 4,500 people. That was deep bear market territory. $100 ETH, the contrast point. Eat Denver, 2020, 6,000 people. Okay, we hadn't really recovered, but all the tourists left.

But still, increased attention. by 1,500 to 6,000 people. This was right before COVID. And then, of course, nothing last year in 2021. And now this year. What did we hit this year? How many people? 12,000 people is the estimate.

15,000 people were given tickets and expected that 12,000 people actually showed up. This event was completely saturated. And like I said earlier, I was worried about this just kind of like diluting the experience. but no, it just didn't happen. And what's not listed here because it's kind of hard to quantify is like the energy at each of these events. 2018 had some pretty good energy.

It was my first one. I didn't really know how to compare it. And the energy was infectious to begin with. 8th, Denver, 2018 was why I dropped everything and got into crypto in the first place, like experiencing Ethereum and Ethereum culture firsthand. Did you literally plan to do it at the conference? like coming out of that conference,

where you're just like, okay, this is it, I'm all in? No, I was in 2018, my first ETH Denver, I was planning on going to the conference just to check what's up because this thing is interesting. But on Sunday of the conference, the last day of the conference, I was planning on going up to Boulder, Colorado

to tour of physical therapy school because that was my plan. I was going to go to physical therapy school. Wow. But then Sunday came around, and I was like, you know what? Like, physical therapy school is 45 minutes away. And also this whole, like,

that's a 45 minutes. minute Uber that I'm going to have to do to tour this thing. And also this Ethereum thing is really cool. The conversations I have are really awesome. And you know what? Like I think I'm just going to go all in on this Ethereum thing. And that, and that was, that was, that was it. That was the 2018. Amazing. I literally had this, uh, moment where I was talking with a, uh, one of the, uh, talking with a talker or one of the panelists after I talk and just, just share like, shared brains with him for like 30 minutes straight and just, and he told me, he was like, yo, whatever you're doing, like, you need to get into this space.

And so I went and just, like, sat down and had this reflection moment. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm going into crypto. I don't know. I still don't know what Ethereum is. I still don't know what the hell I'm going to do, but there's no chance I'm going to miss it. Okay, so that was to eat Denver 2018. Right, like you said, right at the cusp of the bear market. And then, eat Denver 2019, was like, you know, everyone was wrecked.

Everyone was broke. Like, there was no tourists. There was, everyone had left. but from from 2018 to 2019 the vibes and the energy of eath Denver was like twice as strong so even though like our portfolios were just like one-tenth the size the energy and excitement about ethereum was like like twice as strong and then that pattern continued the next year it's like it got even stronger like the east price were covered a little bit but definitely was not out of the bear market but the vibes in 2019 were stronger and in 2020 were stronger and then in 2022 this last week

they just absolutely exploded. Like the numbers of people that showed up exploded, the types of content, the number of stages, who we had, Andrew Yang was there. And so like, it's just a complete,

fantastic symptom or a sign of adoption. When you have like 15,000 people get tickets and 12,000 of them actually show up. That's awesome, man. The best week of David's life. Well, let's talk about some of the must watch ETH Denver panels, right?

So I think we're going to be showing two of those panels, two of the panels today. But there are some others to add to your list. Maybe let's just go through them real quick. There's eight of them. What's the first one? Yeah, the first one of it was, of course, Vitalik's keynote speech.

She was on stage for an hour, so it's a long interview, and it's titled Steps to the Digital State, and then also an open AMA at the end of it. And so this was Fatalik's main appearance at East Denver, and it's all about just like kind of where we are in Web3, and also talked a little bit about the city of Denver itself, and Denver's role in instantiating public goods,

there seems to be some sort of connection between Denver and long-haired, bearded people that care about public goods. Kevin O'Waqi and Danny Ryan come to mind. And everyone enjoyed that, of course, because it was Vitalik. And then number two, we have Web 3 in politics and lobby 3. That's the Andrew Yang conversation, am I right? Yeah, this is the one that listeners are about to hear. Yeah.

Okay. Number three, you've got, listed the off-chain internet with Evan McMullen. What's that about? Yeah, Evan McMullen has completely what I call has disco pilled me. Disco is this decentralized identity app that's coming. And I think she has really cracked the nut of decentralized identity. Decentralized identity has been tackled or has been attempted to be tackled by many, many, many people in many, many different routes. But what Evan McMullen is building with her team over at disco, I think she's cracked the nut. And her talk, I think, really illustrates.

rates why NFTs are actually not good for identity. Because think about this, Ryan, like, your Ethereum address is public. Like, everyone can see it. But your identity inherently isn't public. Your identity is you. And you need to be able to have choice about how you express that. And so first, we need to have privacy with regards to who we are in our identity. And that means, like, not putting stuff on chain. She uses this line, the space between the chains. And so it's what we've coined the term the off-chain internet. So everything about properties of trustlessness and immutability and verifiability, but doesn't actually ever become a transaction on Ethereum.

That's what that talks about. That's interesting. I think that's a space worth watching too. Well, here's another ETH2 panel as well. Who are these individuals on the ETH2 panel? This is the road to ETH2. That's number four, David. Yeah, Kamen, Nava, Alex Stokes, and Preston Van Loon,

we're interviewed by McKenzie Sigelos, who I met. McKenzie is a new to me, a new reporter on the scene out of CNBC, specifically covering crypto. And I got introduced to her because somebody told me that, hey, like, there's this crypto reporter out of CNBC who actually, like, knows what she's talking about and is very well-informed about the nuances and the deep dives about crypto. So not only is this a fantastic panel just to talk about where we are in Ethereum 2.0 development,

even though the nomenclature for Ethereum 2.0 is deprecated, so don't use it. But also, McKenzie is somebody that I'm now paying attention to as a source of quality, good crypto information that is coming from a more mainstream news source, CNBC. Does this mean we have to stop making fun of CNBC, David? A little bit. We'll also make fun of it. Ethereum, proof of stake in our solar punk future.

That's number nine with Danny Ryan. What's this about? Yeah, this is all unpacking the nuances of proof of stake. And why proof of stake, why we've as a. Ethereum community elected to go to proof of stake. The strengths that proof of stake has and its security over proof of work, and also just some technical explanations as what's actually happening when we take out proof of work and input proof of stake instead.

And then it just has some great graphics and some illustrations that really help people reason about proof of stake. Danny's actually sent me some of those slides, and so I'm using some of those pictures in a coming article that's going to help debunk Lynn Alden's recent anti-proof of stake tweets. which I think are just inherently wrong. And Danny's talk will is, it's really good evidence for that.

By the way, we're having Lynn Alden on the podcast in the future to talk about her proof of stake article and hopefully have some good back and forth, maybe some good nature debate about that too. So Danny Ryan, of course, is like a primary person responsible for helping bring,

I'm going to call it Ethereum 2, but the next generation of Ethereum 2 to market, or to public. The sixth is the transcending individual and collectivism, individualism and collectivism, which we could skip because you're going to hear that here shortly. The seventh is a self-shill. So you had a conversation, too. Crypto is here to set you free by David Hoffman.

What's that about? We actually don't have to talk too much about that one, because that's actually going to come out as an article on the bankless newsletter on Wednesday. But basically the theme is Kevin O'Walky recently wrote. align. Cryptos aren't here to make you rich, it's here to set you free. Being wealthy, being a prerequisite to being free. So these aren't at odds with each other. But it also talks about how in Web 2 and Tradfai, we have inwardly concentrating wealth, as in things collect towards the center. But in Web 3 and Defi, we have social structures. We have Defi apps. We have Web 3 protocols

that push wealth and value and governance out to the margins. And the key innovation that really unlocked that to happen is to have private keys. because private keys allow for wealth to actually be routed like a mailbox out to the margins. And what does society look like when we have a new equilibrium about how wealth collects and it collecting at the margins versus the center? So that's what that talks about. Number eight, what's this, how to contribute to Dow's by Treyk? Tchaopteryx.

We've had him on the podcast. He's just always using great nature and biology metaphors to illustrate how DOWs organize. And then so he's just taking his experience working with your, and coordinating with Yerne to a talk about how to contribute to DAUs. Eight pieces of content for you guys, two of which are already in this episode. So just stay tuned. You'll knock two out of the way, but six more for you in that. And then some bonus things.

There are some fun vibes. So like, you know, part of going to a conference is always like the conversation that happens, the different themes that are flowing through all of the people you talk to. This was one. So Vitalik became a buffagorn. What's this about? Yeah, so we have a mascot at East Denver. It's Buffy the Buffercorn.

It's a unicorn buffalo, which we made up. And as it turns out, I don't know if he was wearing it 100% of the time, but Vitalik definitely put on the buffercorn suit and walked around East Denver, which I think is just brilliant because, you know, when you, when I had a little bit of this experience as well. So if people know who you are and you walk around East Denver, like you can't actually go anywhere because you get stopped along the way. And Vitalik, you know, it's Vitalik. If it happens to Andrew Yang, it's going to happen like five times more to someone like

Vitalik at an Ethereum conference, right? Yeah, 100%. And so in order, I don't know if he meant to do this to dodge all of those people, but, I mean, it's pretty justifiable. So he put on the Bufficorn suit and, like, no one knew it was him. And so he got to experience East Denver completely invisibly because it was Vitalik inside of the Bufficorn mascot suit, dude. It was so good.

A little sweatier, but yeah, definitely. Look at this. Before and after, I love it. Yeah, so he actually had a panel that he had to attend, and no one could find him, but then the buffercorn showed up, and the buffercorn just sits down, and then it's Vitalik. Inside of the buffercorn. I love this tweet. My entire net worth is in this man's hands.

It's Vitalik, staring down in a clipboard, dressed in his buffacorn suit, half zipped up at this point, because it's got to be sweaty in there. that's cool. All right, another thing that happened is DevCon 7 was announced. So a conference announcing another conference, but what's special about DevCon? Oh, DevCon, I think, is the other most significant Ethereum conference. This one hops around the world. So this one is in Bogota, Columbia. Last time I was in Osaka, Japan. Before that, I can't remember where Prague, I think.

And so finally, after over a year and a half, I think now, of kicking DevCon 7 out because of COVID, it's finally been officially announced October 11th through 14th, 14th in Bogota, Columbia. It is the biggest Ethereum conference of all time every single year. And so if you're interested in that, plan out ahead because now we know the dates. That's cool. First time in South America as well, which is kind of neat. Maker Dow became cool again. The OGD-5 project became uncool for a period of time, but it's cool again?

What's that? Yeah, this is my claim. This is the first ever party that Maker Dow through. And for those that don't know, if you go to a conference, there's just infinite numbers of parties every single day. And Maker Dow threw a party, and everyone was raving about it. It was in this very cool church, very cool venue. The music was great.

And this would not have ever been able to happen when the Maker Foundation, the centralized version of Maker Dow, the Maker Foundation was around because they were so hamstrung by legal and compliance that they just couldn't do anything cool or fun. Sort of ironic for a DFI project, isn't it? Right. Amstrung by compliance. Totally. And that was the big critique of Maker Dow in the first place,

where they had always, they started off very decentralized and very organic, like these 10, 15 people that didn't really have any legal structure. And then they realized like, you know, this is just going to go a lot faster if we just centralized this thing. And so they centralized it under the Maker Foundation, which, you know, paid out salaries, W-2 employees, stuff like that. But then the Maker Foundation was dissolved about a year and a half ago, I believe. And ever since then, Maker-Dow, in my opinion, has started to do some really cool things. I attended the, a dinner of like the 30 to 40 maker people. And every single time I hang out with the maker people,

I'm just overwhelmingly impressed by how smart and convicted they are and loyal they are to MakerDAO, like all of them believe that MakerDAO is the future, which is something that I think the rest of the crypto industry can't really figure out how to wrap their heads around. And I think that's because of the foundation, the centralized foundation has really just limited how awesome MakerDAO has been allowed to be.

but now that the Maker Foundation is gone, I think Maker Dow has leaned into becoming cool again. So this is my claim that Maker Dow is cool again. That's cool. All right. Another one is Alt-Layer 1's Buy in Love. So who's paying for this conference is generally a set of sponsors? And was that alternative layer ones this year?

Were they many of the sponsors? There were many, many sponsors, and a significant number of them were alternative layer ones. Both Harmony and Avalanche, where alternative layer ones are a few others that I'm forgetting that sponsored East Denver. and this has always been a theme with Ethereum conferences is that like Ethereum killers or you know whatever you want to call them alternative layer ones have

always sponsored them because they need to buy access to like eyeballs in community and this is actually something that we learned after DevCon 5 and I remember NLW from the Breakdown podcast made this comment about how alternative layer ones need to bend like have to ask the Ethereum community for legitimacy and in So this is definitely something I saw here at ETHEMB where alternative layer ones were paying their way into relevancy into, in this Ethereum conference to a little bit to the frustration of the Ethereum community who wanted the Ethereum leaders and the Ethereum builders to be on stage where other alternative layer ones had to buy their way into. And we've seen this before and it's happening again, Alt layer ones buying people's love. it's funny i mean somebody's got to pay the bills yet at the same time can you really buy love can you buy a community can you buy legitimacy it's it's hard to do it's hard to do uh it works in the short run it's hard

for the longer term also bankless merch everywhere it's a real photo this is the dowpunks these are the dowpunks bankless merch was absolutely everywhere it's fun it felt like five percent of the people were wearing some sort of bankless merch whether it was the bankless collegiate hoodie or the ultrasound summer shirt or one of the many other derivatives of bankless merch that we had, the Dow Punks were out in force. This photo I just took just because all these people happened to be around me all at the

same time. But there were like three times as many of the, as people have shown in this photo that were actually out and about eat them, we're wearing their Dow Punk t-shirts. For those I don't know, Dow Punks is a project out of the bankless Dow. And it's a profile picture, NFT projects that, you know,

we all know like, like, you know, board apes or Cryptopunks, but specifically built out of the bankless Dow. But the cool thing is, is you get to have a shirt that has your Dow Punk on it. So while they're all Dow Punk shirts, no two shirts are the same, just because no two Dow Punks are the same. Those are the Dow Punks that showed up in absolute force at Heath Ember. That's cool. Reminds me, I got to cash in at least one more of my Dow Punks for a T-shirt.

Lastly, a lot of bankless listeners think I'm Ryan. What? Did that happen? Yeah. At least I think you are Ryan. Yeah, that thought David was Ryan. Yeah. So at least five or six times, people would like, when I, they would walk by me and

they would just like, yeah, like, hey, Ryan, it's great to meet you. I love the podcast. I'm like, nope, David. I'm David. You know what that's funny? I don't know if I saw this on Friday or Saturday, but a tweet showed up in my timeline. And it was like, I'm loving this talk by Ryan at Eat Denver. He's just hopped on the conference stage.

And I look at the picture and it's a picture of you. I don't know how people are mixing this up. I guess we do look a little bit alike. At least not when I have a beer. It's just voices, man. You know, people don't know whose voice is who. Anyways, Ryan, but I thought we had this meme pretty well instantiated. David is the one that goes to conferences.

The real one. And Ryan is the one that stays home because of AI. Like, I thought everyone knew this. Yeah, come on. What's going on? I guess we have to mean that a little bit harder. Well, that's awesome. That's the Denver experience at a high level.

I think we should get into the rest of these panels, these conversations. So should we roll with that? Any other parting words here? No, that's exactly right. Other than the fact that East Denver needs to scale, there were like hour-long lines to get into the conference. So it wasn't a perfect conference. So like you don't have to feel too much FOMO, especially if you don't want, like,

people were waiting in the COVID testing line because you had to get tested to get in for like two hours. So what we've learned with this Heath Denver is that the venue that we've always used, the sports castle is what it's called, is too small. Next year, we've got to do the convention center. There's literally no other bigger conference or bigger venue other than that one. You get into that size. I mean, 15,000 people, that's a pretty big conference, so for sure.

So, guys, stay tuned for the conversations we're about to have with Eric Voorhees and Kevin O'Walky is the first one. and then the Andrew Yang conversation straight from Eith, Denver. Before we get to those, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. The Brave Browser is the user-first browser for the Web3 Internet, with over 50 million monthly active users. Control your digital footprint with built-in privacy and ad blocking. Inside the Brave browser, you'll find the Brave Wallet,

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Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute to the Uniswap ecosystem? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a unique grant at uniswapgrant.org and helps steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring bankless. So, if you guys have been paying attention to both Eric and Kevin on Twitter, every once and a while, they get into a debate around public goods. And if you guys know, Eric is a very big libertarian, and Kevin is really, I guess I'd call him a collectivist, I'm not sure if that's true or not. Anyways, while these two men have done so much for this industry, and they are 99.99% the same. They tend to disagree on one thing.

and that is the priority of individualism versus collectivism. So we're going to unpack this today on this bankless podcast. And so I'm going to start with you, Eric. Eric, why is individualism at its very essence good, and how does crypto enable individualism? All right. Well, first, I want to clarify something that I am only an average size libertarian. I am 5-11, so there are bigger ones than me.

All right, so rephrase your question. why is individualism good and how does crypto enable individualism? All right. So I'm actually a little bit disappointed that even answering why individualism is good has to be a thing now. This used to be understood by most people, at least in America, that all individuals are people with different preferences. And to respect individuals as themselves with their own preferences is like a

really good basis for civilization. Somehow it's become an extreme position to advocate for individualism. And one of my favorite things about the crypto world is that it's starting to bring that back and empower people as individuals. And Kevin, a very, very similar question to you. Why is collectivism good? And how does crypto enable collectivism? Hello. First off, I want to say Shapeshift is awesome. Thank you for everything you've done for this space. Eric, you're a legend. Kevin, a little closer to the mic, please. I love Shapeshift. Thanks, Kevin. Sorry, I love Shapeshift. So your question was, why is collectivism good?

Why is collectivism good? And how does crypto enable it? Yeah, so collectivism is the idea that if we, is that a lot of the value that we get out of society is from things like public goods and things that are in the commons. So things like clean air, like transportation networks. This whole space is enabled by the Internet, which was researched at ARPA through a government grant. And so the idea here is that public goods are good. 80% of the value that we get from our lives is from public goods.

What good is a Lambo if the sky is on fire? And public goods are good. And we tend to take them for granted until we don't have them anymore. You don't realize you don't have clean air until you're breathing toxic air. You don't realize that our digital infrastructure is underfunded until there's a black swan event and there's a huge hack. And so basically the idea is that we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. And even the most successful entrepreneurs in this space have been standing on the shoulders of giants, they've been enabled by the generations before them contributions to humanity

and that we should recognize and respect that. Crypto and Web 3 allows for greater combinations of strength and intelligence to come together and to fund public goods. And I think that that's one of the really great opportunities within the space. Eric, do you think that cryptocurrency enables individualism more than it enables collectivism? Is cryptocurrency inherently an... individualist technology? Yeah, cryptocurrency is absolutely fundamentally an individualist technology.

It provides every individual with sovereignty over their wealth, their finances, and now far beyond finance. So absolutely yes. At the same time, I mean, I agree with a lot of what Kevin is saying. Public goods are very important. I think what we disagree with is like how they should be funded. just because something is a public good doesn't mean you need to steal from your neighbor

in order to fund it. So I think that's where we tend to disagree on things. But yeah, cryptocurrency, I mean, you can tell just from this event, like how individualistic it is, right? There are people here from all different backgrounds, all different places in the world. They see different things

when they look into the prism of Ethereum. And I think that that's a beautiful thing. Eric, I want to make a counterpoint to that. So many people from so many different walks of life are all here. So all the individuals of many, many different flavors are all in the same room sharing the same vibes. Is that not collectivist?

I guess we have to define collectivism, right? There's a definition of collectivism, which I think is the dangerous one, in which groups of individuals are coerced into certain behaviors that they wouldn't otherwise be doing. I think the most dangerous forms of collectivism tend to turn into war. where hundreds and thousands or millions of people are literally murdered under the banner of collectivism. Wars always happen under the banner of collectivism, under the banner of nationalism. I'm completely opposed to that. And so for everything that you can say about how the Internet got funded by the government,

yes, okay, what other things has DARPA funded, right? The same organization literally built the nuclear bomb and murdered 100,000 people in Japan. So personally, I want to find different ways of funding public goods than giving it the money forcefully or taking it from my neighbor and giving it to like the most atrocious organizations on earth. Kevin, do you want to respond to that? I'm happy to respond to that, but I think generally what we're trying to do is create a synthesis, not a tit for tat conversation between me and Eric. I guess I'll just say that there are different ways that collectivists and individualists define each other. So an individualist will, I think, define themselves on the basis of mutualism and cooperation, whereas a collectivist will focus on group goals, what's best for the collective group and the interpersonal relationships in them.

And I think that an individualist would define a collectivist as being willing to accept forced coercive cooperation in order to meet those group goals. and that's the primary sort of like axis of disagreement is whether or not coercion is an acceptable means to an end. And I guess, you know, the real question for me is, would you accept a 20% tax on your income to create a 10,000% better world? Kevin, we started this industry with Bitcoin, which is, I think, the most individualist part of this whole entire industry. But I also kind of think that this Web 3 phenomenon and these, community-based organization phenomenons is much more collectivists. Do you see that the Web3 side of the crypto revolution, as we are currently in that phase?

Is that the collectivist side of things that's coming out? I think that Ethereum, first off, I don't know much about Bitcoin. Is that even still a thing anymore? Rude. Ethereum is a programmable turning complete, global, transparent, and immutable substrate for human coordination. And when something is programmable, you can program your values into your money. And so I think that there will be different parts of the Web3 ecosystem that will program

different values into different monetary systems. And some of them will tend more towards multiplayer games and collectivist type things. And some of them will tend towards more single player games. And I think that that's great. The great thing about crypto is that it's founded in a root of not your keys, not your coins, and that allows you to fundamentally have sovereignty over your bank account, which is fucking cool. And then from there, from that foundation, we can build more non-coercive collectivist systems. And so imagine a global web scale infrastructure for funding public goods that is non-coercive.

I think that that is the synthesis of Eric's value set, my value set, the synthesis of what's possible in this space. And I think that we should reorient the conversation around how to create a synthesis of safer punk values and solar punk values and realize that world together. So in search of that synthesis, you guys, I think, have both articulated a pragmatic argument, but coming from two different angles. Eric said that DARPA made the internet but it also made the nuclear bomb while we can create one good thing out of a collectivist

government efforts 10,000 evils come after that but then Kevin says that what good is your what good is your Lambo if the sky's on fire and so we need some sort of government management or public goods funding to make sure that the sky's not on fire

both of you guys seem to be articulating pragmatism as your arguments. How do you guys square this thing? Eric, can we start with you? I think when I look into the crypto world, I see people ultimately cooperating peacefully with no central coercion.

And I think it's a beautiful example of what public goods actually can be created without coercive funding, right? There are so many things that the public here use in terms of infrastructure, code, mathematics, language. All of these are public goods and they're not, you know, funded coercibly. So I think a lot of people maybe just don't quite realize how much actual spontaneous order

exists around them that isn't coercively funded in the first place. Kevin, you want to answer that same question? Do you want to repeat it? Sorry, could you repeat the question? Yeah, both of you guys seem to make pragmatic arguments to justify why perhaps you should prioritize collectivism over individualism. Eric said that, well, we can produce the internet via collectivism. We might actually produce wars as a result.

And the tradeoffs, Eric, and what I think Eric says, the tradeoffs just aren't worth it. But then you say, pragmatically, it's actually just worth it if the government can take 20% of my money, if they can make my roads not bumpy, and my air very clean, and my water very clear. So how do we square these things when both of you guys are making pragmatic arguments?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess it sort of just depends on what you think the biggest threat to human thriving is. You know, I think that we're in this space to create a thriving of a global citizenry that no matter where you're from, no matter who you are, what your background is, that you can create thriving both economically, emotionally, socially. And so I think that, you know, it really just kind of depends on whether you think the biggest, threat to your thriving comes from coercion of a collectivist actor, or if you think that the biggest threat to your thriving comes from global coordination failures like climate change, underfunded digital public goods, transportation networks, clean air and water, herd immunity, and those type of things. And so depending on which one of those things you think are the biggest

threat to your thriving, I think that maybe that's where the chips fall. All right, guys. In your opinion, what's the best way to find a non-coercive way to fund public goods? How would you prefer it be done? Eric. First, you have to define what public goods should actually be, right? So one of my main issues with government generally is that they simply get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're always providing more and more things under the guise of public good. So there's probably a lot of things that Kevin and I both think are, like, legitimate.

public goods that need funding, but that's such a small portion of what government money actually goes to. So limiting the scope of what is an actual public good, I think, is important first. I think we all know, like, if the only thing the government did was make sure the air was clean and build roads, like there would be no libertarian movement, right? That wouldn't be a thing, but that's not actually what your money goes for. That's just such a tiny piece of it. So, yeah, I'll leave it at that. Yeah. I think the question is how do we coordinate to fund public goods.

And one of the things that I see with, okay, so the government definitely has a large administrative state that is slow and bureaucratic and way less efficient than a lot of the technology that we see in this space and in technology in general. I do think that one of the big opportunities that I see is with Ethereum, we've got a transparent, immutable, programmable substrate for global coordination. So nation states cannot do global coordination around global coordination failures. Nation states, because they don't have a transparent, transparent, incorruptible ledger for you to check on what they're doing, you have an opportunity for this administrative state to really grow and to get really, bloated. And so what if we shifted the foundation of funding some of these public goods onto something that was more transparent and could not be corrupted? A smart contract once it's deployed cannot be changed even if the values of the person who deployed it changed. Whereas with a lot of these

governments, it depends on what bureaucrat is in charge of administering the system. And so I really just think that we've got a foundationally better substrate for human coordination with blockchain-based systems for creating transparency and therefore accountability, and therefore we can build systems to coordinate without a large administrative state, and maybe that's the synthesis of where we're going. I want to lean into the where we're going part of that. Eric, how do you think that the crypto industry's role, how does that our, how does this industry play a role in funding public goods over the long term. We're still in the very nascent phase of crypto,

a lot of experiments going around. Do you think that this industry actually has a role to play with making public goods funded and safe and secure for the long term? I may be stuck in the past, but my generation of crypto people are still focused on sort of the first mission, which is removing money and finance out of the hands of government.

That is a monumental undertaking and is starting to work, but it's going to be like a decades-long process. I love that there are people now in crypto that have different missions and are using this technology in other ways, so, you know, that's great. But when someone says, like, how should crypto be used to fund public goods, that's such an alien concept to me, because it seems like a question that might be appropriate in the future, but today, today we still have the Federal Reserve. Today, someone born in a certain country can't send money to someone else just because of like their background. Today, everyone

here and their fiat currencies are being debased at 10% a year. And until we stop that cancer, I think it's almost futile to start talking about the public goods that also do need funding in some other way. I think what your answer was just that money is a public good and government is ruining that public good for the rest of us by debasing the fiat currency? Is that right? Maybe I'll carry this cancer metaphor a little further. If you're dying of cancer, you don't want to talk about like what clothes should I be wearing right now, right? Like that might be important if you're not dying of cancer, but when you're dying of cancer,

you stop the cancer. I believe that fiat currency is a cancer upon the world, and once that gets solved, I will be the first one to start figuring out other important problems that humanity has to tackle. Is money the meta public good? No, money is not a public good. Money is a private good. It should be a private good. Everyone's money is belonging to them and themselves.

But we all use the same monies. And so, yes, I have my money that's in like that I own, but I only own that money because everyone else also owns that money because it's a global utility system. Do you not consider that the, you know, the instantiation of gold, for example, example, is a system that exists all across the world that we are all collectively using as a utility of transferring value. And so when you say that we're debasing money, I hear that we're ruining a public good. Yeah, gold wasn't instantiated. Gold emerged through the

trading of goods by individual private parties based on their individual self-interest. So this is actually an example of something that is useful, but that is purely private. It does not require government funding. It does not require it to be like it's not a public good. It's just individual commodity that individuals use as in when they see fit. I think something like air is a much more difficult challenge because it is shared among everyone. It's very hard to like limit and contain it. So there's a lot of important questions of like how to keep air clean. I think that's a fair point to debate. Kevin, I want to go back to the question of how crypto can help fund public goods over the long term. And you have a book right there called

Green Pilled talking about regenerative crypto economics. Regenerative Crypto Economics. Is that another word for helping fund public goods? Yeah. I mean, I think yes is the answer. And thank you for shilling this book about how crypto can regenerate the world that I wrote so that I don't have to. The reason why the book is called Green Pilled and not, it doesn't have the word public good in the name, is that you need a lecture in economics to understand what public goods are, but everyone viscerally understands regenerative systems. Systems that recover over time and are anti-fragile when exposed to stress are regenerative. And public goods are a subset of that, but I do not want to be overly technical.

and get into economics and definitions with people when I'm trying to explain how crypto is good for the world, because that is a good way of losing people. So that's why we're talking about green pills and regenerative crypto economics instead of public goods in the book. And the answer to your question is that the atomic unit of how crypto can regenerate the world is an impact Dow. An impact Dow is defined only as something that has a positive externality for the world. world. So basically that positive externality can be financial, like Gitcoin grants, creating funding for open source software. We've funded $53 million worth of open source thus far. Thanks, sir. Non-coercively. And so that is one example of an impact Dow. Another example of an impact Dow is, I think climate down is a really great example of an impact Dow.

that is tokenizing carbon credits in order to allow us to purchase carbon credits using Ethereum and therefore pay down the carbon impact of not only the Ethereum ecosystem, but eventually the entire world using Ethereum technology. And I think another great example is proof of humanity. Identity and the ability to transact as a human is regenerative for the world. there are people in Argentina that because they have civil resistance on proof of humanity are living off of UBI. Fuck, yeah, that is the world that we want to create.

So the impact Dow is the atomic unit of how we build a regenerative crypto-economic system. Impact-dows have positive externalities and they can be on many different vectors. Financial, material, social, intellectual. Shout out to Gregory Landua, who is around here and talks about. eight different forms of capital, of which financial is only one of them. And by stacking these impact dials on top of each other and choosing to invest our financial resources, our intellectual resources into them, that is how we build a non-coercive, regenerative infrastructure for the world. And I really hope to see this community at Heath Denver and beyond investing in creating positive

externalities with the projects that you are all building. Because the book is called how crypto could regenerate the world. And in order to get us to a world where crypto will regenerate the world, we all have to choose it. And that means all of you. Yeah, I love everything that you just said, Kevin, because none of it is coercive. I love that.

And I love that crypto technology has allowed that kind of thing to flourish. And for all this creative energy to go to these problems with technology that wasn't around a decade ago. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Kevin, when you talk about regenerative crypto economics, I picture in my head a mesh network of many, many systems that all have positive externalities upon the world. And you rattled off a bunch of different categories where if we can make impact owls in all these different categories and they can grow to fill the void of the world around us, all of a sudden the engagement in these things start to produce some sort of basal level of funding for the world around us. as this mesh network of Dow's grows out and comes to maturity,

does that strip away some of the responsibilities that governments currently have? We're not there yet, and I don't really speak bureaucrat, so I don't really know. Sorry. All right, guys, I want to close out and change this conversation to something a little bit more topical, which is East Denver. You guys are both veterans of East Denver. Eric, what does East Denver mean for you? So I'm from Colorado, and it's, I mean, for me, it's been really fun to see this branch of crypto, which is Ethereum. It's become a major branch. Like, come back to my hometown and where I'm from, and for all of you to visit this beautiful state is just very special to me. You know, like back in the day when I would go to Bitcoin conferences, it was always in other far off places, and that's great.

but to see it come full circle and come back to Colorado is just kind of just kind of special for me being from here. Kevin, same question. What does Heath Denver mean for you? Heath Denver is a shelling point for us all to come together, commune with our collective possibility, build the future, and we are going to put Colorado on the map as the place to move to when you want to build the future. Miami's got nothing on Colorado, David. All right, I want to thank my two guests, Eric and Kevin. I appreciate both of you guys, are personal heroes of mine. And every time you guys speak, I always listen.

So it's an honor to be able to ask you questions directly face-to-face. Cheers. Thanks, David. Cheers. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kevin. Slingshot is a decentralized trading platform that combines the performance and ease of a centralized exchange with the openness and transparency of DFI.

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And so when I spoke at Consensus a couple of years ago, when I spoke at a blockchain for good conference, I felt that the folks in this community were super aligned with what I was trying to do on the presidential. And it's a thrill to be now here in earnest trying to contribute and help. because I firmly believe that the work that so many people here are doing can help contribute to the end of poverty in our time, which has been my mission for the last number of years.

And I know a lot of people here want to take that mission forward as quickly as we can. Andrew, I think a lot of the one of the differences between you and the average politician is you think in longer terms than the average politician. The average politician is trying to get reelected in two to four years, but you're

thinking about thinking about things. like automation and how do we support every single individual on this planet in an economic way. And I think that's why you find alignment with the crypto community, with the Web 3 community. Can you talk about just the importance of thinking in the long term and how that sets you apart as a politician? Now, I think a lot of you know that I'm something of an accidental political figure. Certainly there wasn't a lot of, you're going to be president in the Yang household when I was growing up. Like that wasn't the conversation. It was more like, you know, keep your head down, get good grades, clean your room, that sort of thing.

So I ran in part because I didn't feel like our current political system was thinking long term, was going to actually champion bigger solutions like universal basic income or some of the things that you all are working on, like the next generation financial system. And I think that there are real parallels to Web 3 and someone who's trying to make a difference in our political system right now. because there's an entrenched system that is doing its thing and is highly resistant to someone who comes along and says, hey, maybe we should do things differently, maybe we can do something that's more bottom up than top down.

So the goal is, in my mind, to take the innovation that's improving people's lives and help the folks in DC understand that this is not something that only will benefit a narrow few. If we do it right, it can benefit millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even billions over time. Andrew, there's a decent amount of incumbency in the world, not just in politicians,

but in our social structures, the corporations. Things just seem entrenched, and that has caused a lot of social strife. And one of the things that I think the Web 3 world is really trying to do is, how do we build out new social systems? But how do we actually convince Washington that we need to turn over new institutions? How do we convince the people of the

the leaders of countries all over the world, that it's time for change. I'm so proud to have announced this week the launch of Lobby3. It's Lobby3.io. And the goal is that we can make a case to the folks in D.C. who are frankly right now in the process of writing these rules to have a fuller and broader understanding of not just the risks, but also the opportunities and rewards. And the fact is right now, if you're in D.C., you tend to think more in terms of one side than the other.

So we can translate the work you all are doing, but it's not going to happen on its own. If you imagine someone sitting in an office building in D.C. And their approach of these technologies, it's not just time zones away

from this gathering. It's like a completely different frame of reference, a different mindset. So we have to invest resources in trying to bring the stories and the opportunities to the folks in D.C. as quick as we can. In my view, the biggest risk to Web3 is that onerous regulations come out of D.C. over this next number of years and push a lot of the development energy, frankly, outside

of the United States. And that's something I would love to prevent. I would love your help in helping me prevent that, because I think that innovation and development should take place right here in the U.S. of A. I want to learn a little bit more about Lobby 3, because I think a lot of the people in the crowd here who might be part of the... a Tao or might be part of some social community might find a lot of familiarity with what's going on with Lobby 3. What is Lobby 3 and what's a day in the life of being a part of Lobby 3 like? I'm going to do my best to summarize the way you try and approach politics here in this room today, which is you try and ignore it. Honestly, right? Like you're building

things, you're making these go faster, and then politics seems irrational and tribal and inefficient, and you're like, oh, please let me not have to deal with that stuff. Is that about right? Yeah, that's very reasonable. I was right there with you before I made the decision to run for President of the United States, circa 2017. So that's the world that you'd like to operate in, but you also sense on some level that there are now forces that are pushing towards

much more direct regulation and oversight of Web3 technologies and digital currencies that are going to be written not three years from now, but in my opinion, it's going to be measured in weeks and months. The Biden administration is likely going to have an executive order that gets issued in the next one to two weeks, charging the different agencies with a coordinated regulatory approach to Web3 technologies. So even if you'd love to acknowledge that, even if you'd love to ignore this stuff and you know you want to just like let it someone else deal with this it's going to end up impacting your work at some point in this next little while probably so the goal has to be to try and make it so that to the extent these regulations are formulated they're reasonable

they're transparent they're done in coordination with industry leaders and people who are just trying to build from the from the bottom up here in the industry and that's what we're going to do with Lobby 3. We're going to build a coordinated effort. We're going to have professional lobbyists in D.C., yes, but we're also going to be doing grassroots efforts in congressional districts where they

just need to see this technology in action. There are so many misconceptions about the people that benefit from these technologies that if we can show people in real life folks who are benefiting from digital wallets, from next generation of financial services, it can help to ship the perception that right now is

in danger of congealing into rules and regulations. One of the lines that always resonated with me, and I think this is rampant throughout Washington, is that if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And so we all have a responsibility in this industry to be at the table. And I think that's what Lobby 3 is doing.

It's giving everyone else, everyone here in this room of voice, to speak about what are our values and how can we get Washington to align with them, rather than just stamp out what the innovations that we have here are today. For everyone listening, everyone in this room and everyone listening on YouTube, what's like the easiest thing that they can do to help move that needle forward,

either with Lobby 3 or just helping having Crypto be represented in Washington? Well, within Lobby 3, join our Discord. You can go to Lobby3.io. We've made it so it's very, very accessible to be able to join Lobby 3 Dow. It's going to be something that if you want to participate, you should be able to do so. and bigger picture let people know that look there's a caricature going on around the communities that benefit from Web 3 that isn't accurate the use cases go well beyond what do you all think that the DC conception of use cases for digital currencies are money laundering drug deals human trafficking you know that if you were to ask someone in DC like what are the top uses like those three things

would probably pop into their list, top five. And you all know that there are millions of other purposes and transactions that the technology is used for every single day. So in addition to getting involved with Lobby 3 directly, the single biggest thing you can do is spread the word about the fact that look, there are creators that are being empowered in totally different ways, there are organizations that are able to govern themselves in whole new ways. a technology that can allow us to get away from, frankly, having these mega-corps

have control over our lives, in part because we're not able to interact with each other with trust and transparency. And so if you introduce that, and you can see why in some ways that there are folks that have a kind of resistant attitude very early on. I mean, a lot of political figures might talk about a particular version of the world or values, but when they're presented with the actual possibility that that world, could exist, they don't embrace it. They actually sort of, you know, like shy away from it. So it's a fascinating challenge and it's something that I would love your help with undertaking

because I'm going to go on a limb and say the future of Web 3 depends upon what we do collectively in the next 12 months. Is Lobby 3 a Dow? Yeah, Lobby 3 Dow, it's in the name. So, you know, it itself will be a decentralized autonomous organization, when someone asked me what the priorities of the Dow will be, I respond to ask the Dow. Who are the other leaders of the Lobby 3 Dow? So I have a team that I've worked with for quite some time that are part of Lobby 3 itself. You're all not going to believe this. Well, maybe you will. You probably believe it.

So I actually hired a bunch of D.C. lobbyists back in 2020 to advocate for cash relief and the child tax credit and anti-poverty measures. and I did it in part because it was based on an onion article I'd read in 2011 that said the American people hire lobbyists to fight for interests on Capitol Hill. Think about that for a second. I thought it was the funniest thing. I was like, you know, the fact that we'd have to hire a lobbyist, but I was like, oh, we probably should hire a lobbyist.

And so in 2020, I hired a bunch of lobbyists to advocate for anti-poverty measures, and now that team is going to be spearheading our conveying the reality, of the opportunities around Web 3, two folks in D.C. In D.C. right now, there's the message and the messenger. And I want you to imagine if you were, let's say, a Democratic member of Congress in that office. And then someone comes to you and says, hey, these technologies can really help people. If the messenger that's bringing it to them is a bipartisan think tank or an anti-poverty organization, that's like a different conversation than if they have something like professional,

like industry association in their name. You know what I mean? Like, that's the reality of what's happening in D.C. right now. So I'm proud to say I've been working on anti-poverty initiatives in D.C. for the last two years. And in my mind, Web 3 could be the biggest anti-poverty initiative in the history of the world. Andrew, when you ran for president, you moved the Overton window on a lot of things. And you were the figurehead that spoke a lot of reason about new issues and new ways. and it really changed the whole entire democratic platform,

regardless of whether you won or lost. But you are just one man. And you have actually spun off and inspired many other people who are also running for elected official offices in different states. Erica Rhodes comes to mind. And if this movement of what you inspired, whatever this movement is, it needs to have other leaders.

It needs to decentralize. Because decentralized networks are impossible to stamp out. And all that's needed for a decentralized network to exist is for people to believe in it. And I think the Dow model is allowing people to rise up and allow this movement to be spearheaded by more and more people. Is that the goal? That's 100% the goal, David. And Erica Rhodes, raise your hand if you know who Erica Rhodes is. All right, so I want you to imagine a member of Congress, let's call him Brad Sherman, who,

really hates crypto. Boo. He's an incumbent that really no one likes, honestly. He's like one of those unliked members of Congress who's been hanging out for a while. He is unabashedly anti-cryptocurrency, anti-Web3. He has a lot of backers in the, frankly, like the banking system. Now, his opponent is Erica Rhodes, who's completely pro-Web3, and she also is a

compelling personal story. She's an elementary school teacher. She's half black, half Asian. She was a volunteer in my campaign who's now running for Congress, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, had a Twitter space with Jack Dorsey the other day. So if you want someone like Brad Sherman to know that being against this industry is a political loser, then you should back his opponent, Erica Rhodes. You can look it up. It's Erica for Congress. It's spelled A-A-R-I-K-A. So there are different candidates like this around the country that in my mind, the community should be getting behind. Now, this is not Lobby 3's work. Lobby 3's work is going to be go to D.C. and talk sense to the regulators, but there are other people who are putting political energy behind folks who are fighting for

this industry, and I think that we owe them our support, honestly. For those of you that happen to live in California 30th District, that's your race. So, I'm sure there's some of you in there. Andrew, a lot of DAOs in the Web 3 world have roadmaps. Does the Lobby 3 Dow have a roadmap? Yeah, if you go to Lobby3.io, there is a roadmap. One of the things I would suggest, though, is that the priorities of the Dow will probably shift in real time as the agencies actually put forward draft rules and a bunch of other things.

So you're going to want to be adaptable and responsive in real time. For those of you who want nothing to do with D.C., maybe some of you actually could find some enjoyment and learning about this process. Maybe. I don't know if that's too far a bridge. One of the things I describe it to people as you can actually gamify lobbying, maybe. You could say like, hey, here's a member of Congress, here's an agency, here's a this. So the roadmap of the Dow, I'm sure, will end up shifting as different priorities emerge because this is very much a right now concern. The Biden administration has announced

that an executive order is going to come out probably again in the next one to two weeks. Do you know more details about that executive order? What do you know about that? That seems actually a really big deal. So what I've heard is that the executive order will say to the agencies, let's come up with a coordinated regulatory response,

but it will not put forward the response itself just yet. So what it is to me is the starting gone. It's like, okay, these agencies are then going to draft these rules, and we need to have a direct line with them so that they don't write rules that are, frankly, very, very onerous, very heavy-handed, prioritized, managing the risk well over innovation and development and growth. So I'm happy to say that we're relatively optimistic

about the executive order announcement itself, but it should be a massive call-to-action for the Web3 community. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. It really is. I want you to imagine a world where eight months from now, a bunch of rules come out of D.C. that end up pushing a lot of energy overseas, reducing the enterprise value of folks who've been working on projects for years and years. This is all very much a realistic possibility. I also want you to imagine a world where rules come out that you might not love, but actually allow you to operate and build for the long term. And I dare say that if you were to have a world where rules come out that you might not love, but actually allow you to operate and build for the long term. And I dare say that if you were to have a world, this latter scenario, you might see the energy in the industry shoot up because right now there is an overhang of this regulatory risk. Like no one knows exactly what the approaches are going to be, what the regime's going to be, what the rules are going to be, even who the regulator is necessarily going to

be. So if you get clarity on those things, then you can imagine as glorious as this gathering is here today in Denver, you can imagine the future of this just multiplying over and over again because everyone will know what the rules of the road are. That's a vision I'm willing to fight for, and I hope you'll join me in it. So can you model out what we need to do as an industry to turn this opportunity into a W? And what would also happen if this would actually turn into an L? Like how could we drop the ball here?

What would we fail yet? And also what do we need to do to make sure it's a dub? I think the single biggest thing we have to do is know that as much as you might dislike politics, a lot of you might even think like, hey, I hate the idea of any regulation. regulation. In my mind, some form of regulation is going to have to be accepted and somewhat inevitable for the industry to mature. But the path of least resistance, and there are people in the industry that are in direct touch with the folks in D.C., like the blockchain association and others. So there are folks who are advocating, but the single biggest misstep would be

someone else will take care of it like I'm doing my thing let me just focus on this for the time being because someone in this community has to make the proper investments and resources and energy and time and commitment to try and keep these regulations on the right side

are reasonable and I am I'm not sure if you can tell from my tone of voice like I am kind of concerned I'm actually going to pose this thought question to you all how much do you trust Washington, D.C. to just get things right. So if that's a relatively low level of confidence, then I want you to think about what would need to happen for you to have a higher confidence level.

And generally speaking, the gap between where you are now, that higher confidence level involves resources, investment, ingenuity, time, energy, passion, narratives, storytelling, broadening people's conception of what is possible. It's one reason why I love Web 3 so much is like this is a group of people that's legitimately building a better version of the future. And unfortunately there are so many Americans who right now are struggling with like

this boot of scarcity on their throat. And then when you say to them, it's like, hey, these great things are possible, they're unable to envision them. You know what I mean? Like that has to be the biggest thing that we change together is if we help them see

what's possible and maybe even get that boot off their throats, then we can live in a version of future that we'll be proud of. Andrew, you talked about time, energy, attention, resources. These are all things that DAO's need. So when you are growing the Lobby 3 Dow, you and the other Dow leaders in there, the organizers, what talent or what resources does Lobby 3 Dow need the most? Does it need capital? Does it need foot soldiers? Does it need developers? What could it use the most. Everything you just listed there, David, for sure. I'm not going to pretend,

like, we are going to need probably some significant institutional resources who will come in, and I'm happy to say that many of them seem very excited about this effort. But then we're also going to need people who are helping us identify the stories to amplify, who are reaching out directly to folks in a particular community saying, look, members of Congress will respond to their constituents.

so there are folks that you know that are in particular parts of the country that could end up being very, very crucial. It's going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort, and this is the single thing I would say is like if you think this is a problem that just some like industry heavyweight with a lot of money can solve,

that's probably not quite what we're facing right now. You know what I mean? You have to think about, again, that Democratic member of Congress in Ohio or Michigan or another part of the country, like what did they care about? What is going to make them go

from being very skeptical or dubious about cryptocurrencies and Web 3 to being neutral and maybe even positive? And sometimes it's the kind of thing where if you just threw your weight around DC, like maybe that moves some people, but what would be most effective? And this is actually in some ways

a cause for optimism. It would be people in their community benefiting from Web 3. And then if they are actually shown that, if like a local community leader or an activist or a nonprofit says, hey, look what it's doing for this neighborhood that you represent, that's the single most powerful way we can help turn this negativity around among Congress members. I think the Web 3 community, traditionally crypto has been very anti-government.

We can do it ourselves, no government. But the Web 3 community, I think, is a little bit more reasonable, at least in my opinion, that we want to be able to be better than the government, but we'll accept government regulations at the end of the day. And we've seen different leaders show up and actually lean into politics. Ryan Selkis, I saw him over there not too long ago, is taking a leadership position. What advice do you have for people that might actually want to lean in

and be representatives of Web 3 in Washington or in their local communities or in other regulatory bodies? There are a number of organizations that are now advocating for sensible regulations, blockchain association I just mentioned is one. Lobby 3 will be a new member of this system. But certainly

if there is someone who wants to lead on this charge, just get in touch with me or Kristen Smith or one of the other people that's actually talking to the folks in D.C. Because we need you. We need you to lean in and help lead. And I will suggest that this is something that's

going to help everyone here. It's going to help everyone who could potentially benefit from these technologies. I pride myself on just trying to be, frankly, like, intelligent about how you invest time and energy. Like, right now, this is maybe, arguably, the most important area of investment for Web 3, in my opinion, because you're looking at a legislative window and a regulatory window that's, like, very much open right now.

And if you rewind a couple years ago, this was not on anyone's radar. You know what I mean? If you were to say, hey, we need to shape this. It's like, yeah, it's not really there. It's there now. This is very much on the front burner for a number of people in D.C. So we have to get after it right now.

All right, Andrew, I got one last question for you. And then we're going to open up to questions. So if you have a good question, you can line up at the microphone. And we're going to get there in a second right after I asked my last one. Andrew, one of the things I think we align most with between you and the Web3 community is we're all optimistic about the future because we think we can build it better. Why are you optimistic about the future?

What makes you optimistic? Why am I optimistic about the future? I'm optimistic about the future because of entrepreneurs who are solving problems in front of them every day. That's what's made me tick. That's what led me to run for president. Believe it or not, I just saw a giant problem.

I thought I could help solve it. And we need that approach and orientation and energy more than ever. Because like I said before, there are so many Americans who are struggling right now, not just Americans, but around the world. I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is kind of going to shit. I mean, I don't know if you all sense that. So you have my causes for optimism, it's that things can change really quickly, both positively and negatively, so we have to take advantage of the positive as well as the negative. We can't

just say, like, oh, things are going to get worse. I'm going to do my everything over here. That's actually my challenge to the folks here together in Denver today. And if you're watching a YouTube, fine, whatever. Let's make it so that people can see the benefits of these technologies in the real fucking world as quickly as possible. All right, we just got about two minutes left, so we're going to take a few quick questions, ideally simple ones. Can you take it away for us? Right. Hi, I'm Dr. Kelly Page from Digital Promise, the National Center for Research in Emerging Tech in Education and Learning. I'm curious your thoughts on the decentralization of learner and employee data that we have in our institutions, both across the country, as well as

our organizations, and the emerging trend towards LER's, learning and employment records being decentralized. Do you have any thoughts on that? Thank you for the work you're doing. I'm a huge believer in anything that helps create alternate paths to employment that don't involve four-year degrees or traditional credentialing. You know, right now, like so much of it operates. You know, in an antiquated system. It's not serving people well. People are doing what they think they're supposed to do, incurring massive debt loads, they're not finding the opportunities that they need. So if there is a way that you can actually translate your value and data to potential employers that's independent of our current educational system and even to some extent like the professional

advancement system that exists, I would be 100% supportive and we need to do more in that area. Andrew, my question is about the Forward Party, and if you plan on leveraging Web 3 within your campaigning or once you have members get into office, what the stance for legislation might be. Thank you. So the question's about the Forward Party. I don't know how many of you know,

but I started a third party in the United States of America. And I did that in part because the duopoly is not working. It's actually turning people against each other more than anything else. and the forward party wants to be the party of technological advancement and progress. So we're going to use Web 3 technologies at every, every stage, hopefully. My goal is that there's a Dow, and again, the joys of it is that we may have nothing to do with the Dow that looks up and tries to find the best opportunities for independent political candidates, for people who are running as Democrats or Republicans who are aligned.

And we put our energy and ingenuity behind this, because you have a failing political, system. You have failing systems of different kinds in America, but the failing political system is one that is right in front of everyone. Sixty-two percent of Americans want to move on from the duopoly. They just don't know how to do it. And I'm going to suggest that the people here in this room can show them how we can move on. Say, look, it doesn't need to be that you have no choice but to slump and accept the lesser of two evils. You can actually invest in a positive alternative. Thank you. I believe we just have time for one last question. So take it away.

Cool. Hi, Mr. Yang. I'm wondering if you can lay out kind of what are the gaps in Washington that the community can help with. So is it knowledge? Is it, yeah, analysis? Like, what do they sort of not understand about tokens or innovation that might happen that we can all kind of help with? Yeah, what are the gaps?

Oh, good. Thank you for the question. The reason I'm laughing is because, like, the gaps are not gaps. The gaps are essentially a gulf or a chasm. So the average member of the House of Representatives is approximately 59 years old. The average U.S. Senator is approximately 64 years old. The average member of Congress who's been in Congress has been in Congress for 10 to 12 years. So I want you to imagine that human.

And then if you ask them, hey, cryptocurrencies, tokens, like digital assets, what do you think? Like they have no idea what you're talking about. and so right now they're looking around saying what do I think about this they ask their policy team what is our stance on this the policy team then looks up and says what is our stance on this

and then they will ask a few people hey like what's a reasonable place to land on this the people they may ask include people in their constituencies it may include bipartisan policy councils who are known for having like an even hand-handed approach. One group that they may or may not want to take guidance from

would be like the industry itself. Because the industry itself, they'll be like, okay, like, I kind of know what you're going to tell me. You're going to tell me that, you know, like we should do next to nothing. And so that's the state of affairs right now. But if you were to try and put yourself into the head of the average member of Congress, just imagine total confusion and you are there. Like that's where it is among the vast, vast majority.

of them. Now, that confusion can then be tilted negatively, very easily by, for example, a press story about scams. You know, if that's the only thing they see, then they can head in that direction pretty quick. So we have to balance some of the things that are out there in the media ecosystem with some accounts of, again, creators having their lives transformed for the better, people having new access to digital services, like financial services they wouldn't have otherwise. I'm going to pose this to you all. How many of you think that the negative stories about Web 3, outnumber the positive stories, let's call it

5 or 10 to 1. Right? So that is the landscape that these lawmakers are forming their opinions in, and it's up to us to try and lead them to a more realistic picture. Don't blame them. Just imagine

that there's 50 to 60 year olds who might only know about this stuff because one of their children or like a nephew or niece has been trying to explain it to them unsuccessfully. Andrew Yang, everyone. Thank you, Denver.

Let's go. Let's build a future. It's not going to build itself. Am I right? Thank you all.