Bankless - SotN#21: POLITICAL! w/ Tyler Whirty (ELECTION DAY! Repubs, Dems, Crypto, and YOU)

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: http://bankless.substack.com/ ✊ STARTING GUIDE BANKLESS: https://bit.ly/37Q17uI ❤️ JOIN PRIVATE DISCORD: https://bit.ly/2UVI10O 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 👕 BUY BANKLESS TEE: https://merch.banklesshq.com/ ----- 📢 DEVS OR BUILDER? APPLY TO FILECOIN ACCELERATOR FOR $20K GRANT  ----- GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️LEDGER - BEST HARDWARE WALLET TO SECURE CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/ledger-20 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith 🚀ARGENT - OUR MOST RECOMMENDED DEFI WALLET https://bankless.cc/argent 🤖YEARN - YIELD-SEEKING MONEY ROBOT THAT FARMS DEFI FOR YOU http://bankless.cc/yearn ------ SotN#21: POLITICAL! w/ Tyler Whirty (ELECTION DAY! Repubs, Dems, Crypto, and YOU)   Joe Biden or Donald Trump… - How these two outcomes with how it relates to crypto? - How does this decision impact our industry? - Is there a partisan divide between the two parties and their stance towards our industry? Assuming the answer is somewhere around ‘it doesn’t really matter’... - What are the political decisions that are going to be made in the near-term that will impact our industry - What are the characteristics, features of Crypto, DeFi, Bitcoin that are at stake due to political decisions in government? - What do we have to lose in this fight? - What does crypto have to gain from a successful regulatory relationship with the US? LINKS Tyler's Election prediction https://twitter.com/twhirty_/status/1323640068469379074?s=21 Real-time odds on Ethereum https://polymarket.com/market/will-trump-win-the-2020-us-presidential-election Bankless Market Monday: The Fight Yet to Come https://bankless.substack.com/p/the-fight-thats-yet-to-come-market Ryan Twitter Poll: Have we already lost the fight for privacy? https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1323371459230814212?s=20   ------ Don't stop at the video! Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program http://bankless.substack.com/ Visit the official Bankless website for resources http://banklesshq.com/ Follow Bankless on Twitter https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ Follow Ryan on Twitter https://twitter.com/ryansadams Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/TrustlessState Follow DeFi Dad on Twitter https://twitter.com/DeFi_Dad ----- 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 we may add links in this channel to products we use. We may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. We'll always disclose when this is the case.

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21. David, I've got a feeling we're going to talk about politics today. What about you? Yeah, just a little bit, you know? It feels like a good day for that. Happy election day. I voted this morning. I did it. I did my part. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Washington is a mail-in vote state, so I voted a few weeks ago. Oh, that's cool. That's smart. I was like, I was up, bright and early doing it. There's already a line. So I'm not sure. Maybe that bodes well for turnout, but, you know, everything's different.

Okay, we should talk about what we're going to do today. So State of the Nation, if this is your first State of the Nation, David and I record these every Tuesday. So it goes live on YouTube. So if you're watching YouTube now, you're watching it live. What we try to do is pick a topic, bring in an interesting guest, relate that topic to some things that are going on in crypto in the bankless nation during the week. And then drop some insights and action items. Relate these to the topics that we talk about on the podcast. So every Tuesday, you can get it on YouTube.

Every Wednesday, it comes out on the podcast stream. So if you're more audio-centric, and that's the way you digest. this content, we do that as well. David, what are we going to be talking about today? Talking about a number of things all related to the election. And I kind of wrote about this in the Market Monday piece yesterday. Who's better for crypto, Biden or Trump? That's what I feel like a worthwhile conversation to have. But I also feel like everyone in the world of crypto is like, it doesn't really matter. Crypto is crypto. But I also think that that is a dangerous thought to have because, you know, as the saying goes, you might not be interested in politics, but politics

is interested in you. And so maybe today is not our fight as the crypto industry, but there is a political fight that we are going to have. And we're going to have to fight for our right to crypto. And that is going to happen. Yeah. And so I'm super excited to have a guest on that can talk about that. And we'll introduce him in just a minute. But he is a crypto lobbyist, basically. He's in D.C. He talks to members of Congress about these issues can really shed some light into the question. Democrats or Republicans who hates crypto less. Maybe that's the way to phrase it. But like, seriously, we got to know what the politicians are thinking about crypto.

And this is going to be the episode to do that. Before we get into the goods, David, we've got some special things going on, as always, in the bankless program, in the bankless nation. Phil Bonella, we had a great episode. with him that got released on Monday about something I think both of us are passionate about. That's the sovereign individual thesis. And he talks specifically about the investment thesis. Can you give folks a preview of that episode? Yeah. And I think that's actually a fantastic conversation to have because it is pretty decently adjacent to politics, right?

We were chewing on a title for that piece, crypto is political in the sense that crypto is a political stance of anti-authoritarianism and pro-individual, right? But then we decided to go with the title Crypto is Empowering, talking about all the way that cryptography, not necessarily cryptocurrency, but the concept and institution of cryptography is empowering and changing the world landscape, which is relevant to politics that we might talk about in this episode. But that episode with Phil was just a fantastic gamut of topics about many different ways that cryptography is really putting the power in the hands of the individual and away from hierarchical institutions. And so it's a worthwhile concept to understand and to learn about. And Phil did a really fantastic

job helping us walk through that subject matter. Yeah, absolutely. So check out that episode while you're at it. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, you should do that because next Monday we have Raoul Paul. So on the podcast, we recorded this episode yesterday. It is fire. Heat. I think he said after the episode, he talked about whole new, fresh new content that he's never talked about before. Maybe because we made him. I don't know. I feel like he challenged us as much as we challenged him, certainly. But we got him to talk about D5. We got him to talk about ether too. And like questions like, we'll leave it to the podcast, but what assets, what crypto assets does Raoul hold in his portfolio? We found the answers to those questions. So a little tease for you

guys, check that out on Monday. Lastly, David, we should mention something that that you're involved in. You're actually going to be a mentor to the Filecoin accelerator that Longhash is putting on. So this is really a shout out to you. We've got Defy developers, entrepreneurs, builders who are listening to Bankless. You've got to check out what Filecoin is doing with this Long Hash accelerator. It's the opportunity to build on the Filecoin stack. That's a decentralized storage layer. So if you got, you know, bankless application built on Ethereum, that's that's defycentric. But the servers behind that, they might be an Amazon. They might be somewhere else. To get fully decentralized, you could deploy that in file coin. And if you do it through this accelerator, they're providing a 20K grant and some follow-up

funding potentially. But you got to apply by the 15th. I think that's how it works. Right, David, you're the mentor. Yeah. So you probably know more. Think about this as like an East Denver hackathon, but happening on the internet and specifically with Filecoin, right? And I think this is actually an insanely relevant subject matter to exactly what we were talking about on the Phil Bonello podcast, where we talk about how cryptographic systems like Filecoin promote the sovereignty of the individual, right? Imagine if humanity can just come together to build out this like library of knowledge that we all deem is worthwhile to keep stored in a way that is World War III resistant. right like that's that's that's really the through line i think about file coin and why i'm excited to be a mentor to this program uh and so if you are a developer team and that is interested in money uh go and

apply to the file coin accelerator program and and get a 20 000 grant for building something on file coin link in the show notes guys so check that out uh david let's start this episode man are you ready i'm i'm ready well all right so all right well let me start with the question i ask you every episode of State of the Nation. David, what is the state of the nation this week, my friend? The state of the nation is political. We are political. So it's such an easy one. It's like I was also thinking about chewing on the we are activists because I think one thing that we want to come out of this podcast is, you know, some actionable items for individuals who want to represent the world of cryptocurrency in their local politics and and maybe national politics. What can people

do to make sure that crypto is well represented. And that's why crypto is political today. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, folks listening, they're a citizen of their respective nation states, right? But they're also citizens of the crypto nation state. We've talked about these digital nation states before. You might be a citizen of the bankless nation. Of course. You might be a citizen of Ethereum. You might be a citizen of Bitcoin. And as such, if you want that vision and that value system of the world moving forward, you've got to get involved in politics, either politics of your network, right? There's certainly Bitcoiner and Ethereum politics and bankless politics, but also in your nation state because all of this is one social experiment. I guess that's

what humans are doing these days, right? There's one big civilization social experiment, and you've got to get involved in order to get your value system out into the world. So, David, with that, we should introduce our fantastic guest. Want to introduce to the nation Tyler Wirti, who is a venture capitalist and advisor at the Tacoma Group. He's also the founder of Hoddle Pack. So this is a PAC, political action group that is specifically focused on crypto. He was formerly of the Cato Institute where he was a researcher, studied crypto, put out and research papers on crypto at Cato. He is in Washington, D.C. He talks to legislators and lawmakers

about these issues. Tyler, welcome to Bankless. I'm hopeful you can shed some light on some of these questions here. But how are you doing today, sir? It's election days. D.C. going crazy. I'm doing well, and thanks so much for having me. I've told you guys this before, but I'm a huge fan of Bankless, and it's exactly because of your your what you guys touched on in the introduction there i thought that's that's uh you know we we are activists uh hodel pack is a is a activist uh more than a lobbyist i say and i'm i'm also on the mission to find people to uh help take part in in these nation state politics on behalf of uh behalf of crypto so it's great to be here thanks for having me tyler i hope after this episode

is done we can help recruit a few more activists to help join the cause that'd be great That would be great. You know, Tyler, we just got to start here. Do you mind, David, if we start here? I want to start with predictions, election predictions, all right? Because it's a dangerous. We have to start. Tyler, who's going to win Biden or Trump?

What's your hot take? All right. Well, so I don't know is the best answer to that question. I did tweet out a 270 to win chart this morning with my, with my predictions, with the caveat, however being that my fantasy football team isn't very good this year, so I haven't been good at this time in 2020. But my chart has Biden 271 and Trump 267, final electoral college that I stamped it this morning. That's my prediction.

We're looking at it right now. Is there a hash of this on the Ethereum blockchain? So that's notable and you can't delete it if you're wrong? Unfortunately not. No, you caught me there. However, a couple other predictions, I think we're going to have record turnout. I think I think that's been widely expected this year, given all the increase in absentee ballots and mailing ballots. And besides from that, I think we're going to see a lot of partisan bickering. I think that's a good safe prediction as well. Oh, boy, yeah, I'll bet on that.

Speaking of bets, I was fascinated by this. I don't know if you saw this, Tyler, but like there's all of these new prediction markets, of course, in crypto, in Ethereum. This is a polymarket. We've talked about a little bit before. And I, you know, it's, I, it's, the polls are one thing. And Nate Silver is one thing, right? That's one piece of the predictive puzzle here. But when people start putting money on it, that's when I start paying more attention.

Right now, this has been an interesting graph to watch. a prediction market on will Trump win the 2020 U.S. presidential election. So 61 say no, he will lose. So Biden wins. 60% are saying Biden wins. About 40% are saying Trump wins. And they're betting money on this. The tune of there's been about 3.5 million in trading volume. Lots of trading volume. That's a high number for prediction markets, especially in a cryptocurrency context. Yeah, like pretty impressive, pretty interesting. I guess it mirrors your prediction. But I'm going to be watching this actually myself for the rest of the day because it goes up and down based on new information coming in kind of interesting. All right. I think I do so real quick though I think that

I think is super interesting. I'm very I'm primarily interested in seeing what obviously whether it's right you know I think this is like our first like we're having finally we're having liquid prediction markets. Yes. And probably not as liquid as they need to be. They're like really truly be, you know, predictive or trust, like, you know, we can trust it to be predictive. Who knows whether people are hedging their positions or doing, you know, who knows what the people that are participating in their prediction markets are, like, what their motivations are. So I think it will be interesting to see how that shakes out compared to the polls later this evening.

Well, hang on. I do want to bring up a point there, because it's not a job of a prediction market to be right. It's only a job of a prediction market to illustrate probability, right? And so Trump can still win the election, even though he was, quote, unquote, the underdog for a prediction market because it's just about the probability of the winning rather than the actual what's going to happen or not. That is actually, that's a very good point. Very good point. That's why you host Bankless and I don't. Fair enough.

Well, I do think that what's going to be interesting is like how quickly this market response to new information coming in, right? So if one candidate at the other starts, we. winning states, you'd expect the favorability to increase or decrease, like in one direction and another based on information coming in. Anyway, fascinating. We should get to the main event here, Tyler. It's great to have you on. So can we ask about like Joe Biden versus Trump? All right. So these are our two alternatives, at least in the U.S. How are you thinking about these outcomes as they relate to crypto? Is Biden better than Trump? Is Trump better than Biden? What's better for our bags, Tyler? That's what we want to know. Well, so that's a very good question. I think you mentioned in your

intro, you know, some people say it doesn't matter because, you know, politics doesn't touch Bitcoin or in crypto generally. I think your point in refutation of that is a very good one. But some people think it doesn't matter just because, you know, what actually matters is the bigger picture. What happens in the election overall? What happens in the, you know, in the House and the Senate? What happens after the election, whether Trump or Biden wins, you know, depending on who they staff in their, you know, at the agencies and in the administrative state, if you will, that matters a lot, too. So whether it's Biden versus Trump, you know, obviously has repercussions, and I'd love to get it, and I plan to get into those with you,

but it's a bigger question, right? It's a, what happens in the overall picture of our, of government, you know, post-post-election. But that, really quick, that, that staffing thing is important, right? Because so it does the executive branch, correct me if I'm wrong, but they pick a lot of the, probably the administrators that we hear of a lot in crypto, like the SEC, the folks that are SEC chairman and women like Hester Pierce, it's kind of a crypto mom known in the space, that would be an executive branch pick, is that right? That would be the presidential pick,

as well as CFTC chair, like the folks that recently brought enforcement against Bitmex. I mean, these are things that are impacting our industry. And is this all coming from the executive branch, essentially, the president? Absolutely, yeah. So there's the saying in Washington, and maybe your listeners have heard, before, but, you know, personnel was policy, right? And I think, um, yeah, stamp that,

everybody take notes. The, uh, you know, that has a lot to do on the regular, when it comes to, you know, the pertinent regulators to crypto, um, you know, who, who the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, Biden or, you know, Trump, second term Trump administration appoints, uh, to head these agencies have a, have a, have a, has a big impact. Um, you know, I think the, the, there's a, and you mentioned a, and you mentioned a few of them. There's the SEC, which, you know, deals with securities laws. There's the OCC, which we've heard a lot about recently with Brian Brooks as as comptroller of the currency, who's been doing a lot of, and he's, you know, he's pretty bullish Ethereum. Last quote. So I think you're thinking of CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert there. He said he said he was,

he was bullish Ethereum by by name, which was great. Brian Brooks on the OCC side has issued a lot of guidance in recent months. He's been very active since coming on as comptroller. He's basically giving the green light in some ways for banks to get into crypto, which is very pertinent to your guys's thesis. Giving them the green light to custody crypto assets. That was a big thing, right? Is that what he used to do?

Custody crypto assets. There's also guidance related to stable coins and stuff like that, too. there's so yeah so the you know the the alphabet soup of financial regulators as they say you have the SEC the OCC the CFTC the CFPB which is a consumer financial protection bureau all these things all of these places you know will have either new new appointees in a Biden administration or they'll have you know possibly new or continuing on from from a Trump administration the last last four years of the Trump administration real quick I I want to get back, we want to get back to like which one's better and that's the thing in a second.

But real quick, FinCent, is that all executive? Is that one of the acronyms you just threw out there? So, so FinCent. FinCen is actually, FinCEN is within Treasury. Okay. Now that I'm live, you know, I'm hoping that I'm not wrong on that. But FinCin is, is part of his treasury. That is actually not a politically appointed position.

That is, that's administrative. But of course, obviously, you know, Treasury is. Treasury is, right. Treasury Secretary is. There are plenty of political appointments in Treasury that decide basically the priorities of Treasury. Yeah. Yeah, so so so I'm glad you brought FinCen up.

I was going to mention them later. Also Department of Justice, I guess, you know. Yeah, William Barr has had more to say about this kind of thing lately. Absolutely. This is what, you know, this is what happens. The administrative state has, you know, bloated to it's a big weapon that either side can pick up and point at the other. That's why elections have consequences and we're going to see what happens in the, you know, hopefully the next few hours

or days rather than weeks. Yes, hopefully. Yes. So, Tyler, I think your answer was more or less like the actual people of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, those two individuals don't really have a lot of implications, but it's the party that they bring along with them and it make appointees. That's where really the fulcrum relies on. And so do you have an opinion as to maybe it's, maybe the real question is, you know, Democrats are Republicans, who would be the more crypto-friendly political party? Do you have an answer to that?

Yeah, well, so I think you can look at that in two ways. One is the, I'll split my answer up into two buckets. One is the regulatory state, which was exactly what we were just talking about. And one is in the legislature and in the House and Senate. So taking the regulatory, you know, agencies first, you know, there, it's, it's hard to say exactly how the Democrat appointees will, you know, either will react to some things that have happened under the Trump administration. For example, you know, will the new OCC person on the Democrat side undo things that

of Brian Brooks has done, or will they leave those in place and then maybe, you know, add on to them or whatever else? It's hard to say. Again, personnelist policy, it's going to come down to, you know, whether there's a huge, huge democratic wave, right? Maybe they get a mandate to do, to be a little more progressive in certain agencies. And then we might see, you know, different than if there was a slight Biden victory versus where moderates are more in charge. And so all these things are going to be, you know, watched very closely by people in D.C. On the legislature side, you know, I hesitate to say whether Republicans or Democrats are better. HodelPack is explicitly nonpartisan. We like to, you know, make friends on both sides of the aisles and support the existing, the champions

that do exist on both sides of the aisle. I think if I were to press to say which one is better, I think Republicans have a slight edge just because, you know, they're, I think, in the United States, instinctively a little more, you know, pro-innovation, less regulation. And so far as that helps crypto develop. And, you know, the Democrats are, of course, the party of Brad Sherman, which I'm sure your listeners know, you know, is not the biggest fan of crypto in the house. So we have crypto. Does he have a nickname, by the way?

I don't know. Probably. Yeah, crypto-hater. He's the anti-crypto dad. Crypto stepdad. Yeah. That might be a good one. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. But I guess philosophically, are there wins for both parties here, right? If you think about the platform of the things that Democrats historically care about and the platform of the things Republicans care about, are there ways to paint crypto in, you know, in both. of those lights. I guess that's part of the job of, you know, something like the PAC that you run. Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, I didn't, I didn't really finish my answer there on the legislature. Yes, the Democrats, you know, maybe I give the slight edge of the Republicans, but there are champions on both sides. It is, it, it really is a

nonpartisan issue at this point. I think it's more about education and outreach for, for our industry. the you know you know to name names there's Darren Soto from Florida has has sponsored a Democrat has sponsored a bunch of you know great legislation pertaining to crypto we have you know Sean Maloney from from New York is another great Democrat on these issues you know and even you know there's actually you know I've heard rumors that you know a Democratic Financial Services Committee in the House might actually be motivated to do some crypto asset specific, you know, legislation or crypto asset related, rather, legislation if they retain their leadership position. So, you know, I think both sides, there are champions on both

sides. It's really a non-political issue at this point. I think that's a good thing for us, because if it does become a political football, then, you know, it gets caught up in the partisan and dysfunction that we're also familiar with. And then it becomes something that, you know, one side has to, you know, jam down the other's throats, frankly. And we don't want that. We want that to be something that everybody kind of works together and realizes this is something, you know, like the internet in the 90s or something that we need to try to, you know,

you know, promote and make U.S. a friendly jurisdiction for. So, Tyler, what would you say does crypto need to fight for? Like what are the issues that are at stake that like maybe, maybe all of us in the in the crypto world just sit on our hands and we don't become activists? What do we, what are we leaving on the table? What are we losing? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think there's a few, you know, hot button issues, obviously. And I think you and your listeners are probably familiar with them.

There's the, you know, there's securities laws and how they apply to, you know, tokens. And I think that's something that's gotten of a lot of attention in crypto. though, that's something that's also been addressed in a few bills that haven't really gone anywhere in the House and Senate. You know, that's something that if we don't, you know, keep pushing, might not go anywhere in itself. There's also things that are easy, that things that, like, it's almost unbelievable that haven't been dealt with yet, like the, like a de minimis tax exemption, right?

Where people need to, you know, for to be fully tax compliant, technically need to, like, track, you know, the smallest transactions. Your gas fees. Yeah. If you pay gas on ether, right? Technically, you have to track the cost basis of that ether that you just spent with like the five cents you spent on gas, right? That's how silly it is. It's very silly.

And also things like transferring from die to tether to USC. Yeah, who knows what that is? Based off the rate changes. I can see the, you know, the reaction. of the people in DC, their minds are spinning as you just try to tell them, like, describe something like that to them. The crazy thing about it is like most people in crypto, they're like, yeah, we'll pay our taxes. Just like tell us.

Don't make us guess. It's kind of like the IRS, you're like filling this stuff out and it's like, yeah, guess. Guess what you owe us. And you're like, okay, I'll guess. And if you're wrong, we'll throw you in jail. We'll find you. Like it's not a fun game to play. No, it is not.

And those are, so it's, or, uh, I, excuse me, it is those things that, you know, are at risk for not, you know, engaging with with our policymakers. It's very, I think it's very important for the crypto community broadly to, you know, despite our differences, whether you're a Bitcoin or an Ethereum or whatever you call it, you know, these are all things that, you know, affect us all. So it's good to get in hold. What's holding those things back? Is there some, maybe let's talk about some of the fears, right, the concerns, right? So I think. I think I've heard maybe Brad Sherman's, he's a congressman, I think maybe in California somewhere.

Yeah, he's a Los Angeles basically. Okay. I've heard him say that, like, his main, one of his main concerns is U.S. loss of reserve currency status, which I'm like, okay, well, maybe you actually understand, like, what crypto is a little bit if you're articulating it in that way. But like that's one concern that I've articulated. Is that the common concern? Is it more, you know, terrorists and rogue countries and we can't monitor?

Or like, what are the common concerns coming out of Congress that prevent just really simple things like this? Like, we just want to something to clarify how we pay taxes on crypto. Right. Yeah. So I guess to answer that, so I think there's the main thing that's preventing like these types of, you know, we can call it simple. I guess, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a legal scholar. It might not be, you know, these, these things might not actually be simple to change, even though I, you know, there are proposals on the table and people have been debating the merits of, anyway, the thing

that is preventing those things from happening, frankly, just, you know, political dysfunction. As, as Representative Emmer said, who's, I believe, a co-chair of the blockchain caucus in the, in Congress. what he said in our, the Hodelpack interview with him was, you know, Congress is just name and post office these days. They're not doing much. And I think that, so that, that's, that's the main obstacle. It's, it's really hard to get the repop, the red and the blue team to work together. I think that's the main one. You mentioned specifically Brad Sherman's objection about, you know, the dollar, the dollars reserve currency status. I think, actually, I don't know if I've heard that, that, you know, point brought up much other than, other than that, that hearing that

or a couple of hearings that he's brought that up. I don't know if that's, I think that's in the background and I know that definitely, it definitely influenced the Libra discussion. But I don't know if that's like the main motivator for, you know, somebody being like antagonistic towards crypto, you know, regulatory clarity or whatever you want to call. all it broadly. There are, however, some serious concerns, I think, you know, another, just to go back to your previous question, like those are, we went over some of the easy ones. Some of the harder ones are some of these things that, you know, concerns about hosted versus unhosted wallets when it comes to money laundering. Like these things are, these things are huge issues. And you mentioned

FinCEN and, you know, previously, this is directly related to that, is that, you know, If we don't engage with policy makers and, you know, as a community say that, you know, we want to be using these products and we want a bankless future rather than having, you know, do we work with the banks, then, you know, we could very well see a future where, you know, unhosted wallets, anybody's metamask on their browser is, you know, prohibited. usage of that is prohibited or severely restricted. And obviously, that's an existential type of threat to crypto. And we don't want to see that happen either. So, Tyler, that seems to me like the issue, right? The number one issue. And because there's a ton of incentives here at play, a bankless world where we can all

have our own infinite number of metamask wallets and we don't have to ask permission to, you know, send money between each other, that is cutting out middlemen. and that is middlemen that exist in the legacy system that have funding dollars and lobbying efforts and want to retain the status quo and could perhaps likely push narratives such as money laundering and criminals in order to say like, hey, you know, crypto is dangerous and we need to babysit our citizens by making walled gardens that protect them, right? And so we can make sure that, you know, when you have your PayPal BTC that you only ever send it to another PayPal individual. What I'm worried about is that when it comes to lobbying, which is kind of basically how you get what you want in the political landscape, the status quo and the legacy institutions have all the capital in the world to lobby.

And the crypto world doesn't seem to be very well organized in order to get this lobbying efforts done to retain some of these core principles that underpin our entire industry. How do you think about these things? Yeah, that's a great point. So a couple of things come to mind. You know, first, shout out to organizations like Coin Center in Blockchain Association and in the Chamber of Digital Commerce as well that have been fighting this fight in D.C. It's been, you know, it's great to have representatives like them, you know, trying to, you know, maybe counteract the dollars of the, you know, the bank lobby or the other, you know, other lobbyists in,

in DC. You know, I think in why we started Holdupac in a way was to try to be a, you know, an alternative to that complex. I think, you know, obviously there are companies within crypto that, you know, are getting more active in terms of, you know, trying to put money to work in D.C. And it's in their interest to do so. But I think what it's really powerful is, is like a, is a basically a grassroots political organization like Hodelpac aspires to be where the people, you know, the listeners of your, of your podcast and content and the members of bankless nation, you know, can, you know, can make their voices heard and, you know, maybe not donate a ton of money, but, you know, put some skin in the game. And then, you know, you can see that we have a

grassroots organization of real people using these products and wanting to see. you know, the, you know, this future come to, come to fruition. So that's why we start a whole pack. And I think you're right. It's a, we're up against big, big, big enemies in that sense. But in some ways, actually, one way to think about it is, you know, the PayPal's of the world, maybe they're not, they're not necessarily, you know, aligned with the banks 100%, right? So it's almost, I like to think of it.

And I don't know if I've fully fleshed out. thought yet is that when in this battle versus like fintech versus banks right and this is this is very relevant to the OC what's been happening in the OCC in the last few months is that in this battle versus with fintech versus banks the this idea of like what is a bank might kind of get lost in the in the you know it just it might become irrelevant and in that in that you know scrum if you will there might be a path open for, you know, public blockchains and crypto networks to find a way to, you know, exist within that, within that world where, you know, we kind of are in a bankless world because, you know, banks don't really mean anything. They're largely a regulatory invention in a lot of ways. And, you know, if crypto is all it's cracked up to be and all the we think it is, then, you know, that will rise to the top and be chosen by the market. That's kind of like a little bit of the protocol sync thesis, right? It's like when you have all of these parties that can't agree, right, PayPal's not going to want to settle on JP Morgan's whole transaction network or private blockchain and vice versa, right?

JP Morgan's not going to look fondly on Libra or whatever big tech Silicon Valley comes out with. So what do they do? They throw up their hands and say, well, let's all pick this one, this credibly neutral settlement layer that none of us control because that's the only fair way to do it. And hopefully that's that's some of the glimmer of hope for something like an Ethereum. For instance, that is the settlement layer that no one controls. David, I think you're like I guess one thing before we get to a next point actually is another glimmer of hope. It seems to me, Tyler, is that we did this in the U.S. in the early 90s, right, with the internet. And somehow we got to an internet that wasn't perfect, but was reasonable.

Like it worked. Like all kind of 90s and 2000s tech was built on this thing. It was reasonably permissionless. It was reasonably credibly neutral. Oh my God. We even somehow got away with cryptographically secure transactions using HTTPPS and TLS. And that used to be. that sort of cryptography used to be like military grade tech. If you went back in the 1940s or something,

he said, hey, we've got this new protocol thing and it's going to allow citizen A to send something to citizen B. And by the way, government, you can't open the mail and read any of the transactions. Big Brother government would have been like, oh, I don't know. But somehow we got it through in the 90s, which gives me some hope. Is there some like path there that we can take to start applying to crypto? and like this is the new internet. This is the internet of money. Paint that picture for legislators. Yeah, I hope so.

I hope there is. I think there's, you know, there, I don't know if you guys might have crossed your radar back when it came out. But, you know, Hester Purs at the SEC has come out with like a safe harbor proposal that I think is a kind of speaks to that, that at least that motivation that you're describing, right, which is to kind of create a light touch. kind of regulatory environment where, where, you know, things can be experimented with without fear of, of, you know, getting caught up in laws in the,

in, you know, these laws have have jail times in many ways associated with them, which is not something that, you know, we want to subject any entrepreneurial crypto developer to, right? So I think there are some, there's hope there. I think, you know, maybe, the problem is, is it really gets back to, you know, there needs to be the political will to try to, you know, try to, you know, create, to do something similar to like to the 90s, as you're describing with the internet. And who knows whether that will ever be there? I certainly hope so, and I certainly

hope, I know that, you know, the organizations that I listed off, like Coin Center and in Blackchain Association in HodelPack will be working to try to get people there. But I guess there's only, we'll see, right? It's up to us to try to engage and get our representatives one by one to that point. So Tyler, we asked about like what do we have to lose. And that kind of illustrates a game of versus rather than a game of collaboration, right? So what happens when the world of crypto, our industry, thinks about collaborating with the nation state and we actually work together, right? What do we have, and then we also win our political battles?

Like, what do we have to gain that makes the world of crypto a more fun place to live in? Like, it's less costly to, it's less a separated world, right? We have the bankless nation and we have the legacy nation state. What happens when these things come to meld because we won a lot of the political battles? What can you kind of illustrate that kind of world? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I'm not thinking about this. I'm not sure there's necessarily like a silver bullet that like is going to, you know,

create the utopia that we're like, that we're hoping for. But I do think, I mean, maybe this is not really what you had in mind, but I'd like to take the question in this direction. And you can feel free to shoot me down if not. But I think there are a lot of things that the crypto industry community, whatever you want to call it, you know, can teach and help government with. For example, like the biggest thing that comes to mind is this, you know,

emerging debate around like the digital dollar, right? Like people in D.C. have been talking about this forever or enough forever, but this year a lot. And, you know, frankly, there's not a lot of, depending on who you talk to, you get different definitions of a digital dollar. One, you know, is, you know, something like a Fed account, right? and everybody has accounts with the Fed. And I don't think that's a lot,

I don't think that really appeals to crypto people very much. But, you know, the other thing is, you know, along the sovereign individual thesis, along the bankless nation thesis, is, you know, are token-based digital dollars that, you know, people, that give people financial privacy and, you know, don't subject them to the type of surveillance that the banking system does now,

especially with the attention to the travel rule stuff that's come out from fincen recently that's going to lower the threshold for information gathering on transactions follow Jake Trevinsky and Jason Somensato on those issues they're very good. Quick plug for my friends but the but you know the the question a lot in DC I guess the best discussions about digital about the digital dollar come back to like how do we enshrine what are supposedly American values in this new form of money that might exist, right? And I think the crypto community has a lot to teach in DC, frankly, about that, about, you know, what they care about.

And I think what crypto cares about are the things that I just mentioned in that, I think, appeals to a larger audience, especially when you kind of juxtapose it with the Chinese, you know, digital currency initiative. and how that's kind of basically the opposite of what we're talking about. So, you know, I don't know if that was quite your answer or question, David, but that's kind of, in my mind, in the optimistic world where government and the crypto community are working well together, like that's what comes out of it. Tyler, we have so many more conversations that we want to get to.

I'm particularly interested in Hoddlepack because I hear that you guys use quadratic voting to figure out how to allocate funds. We want to get into conversations like that, but we're going to have to take a break and talk about some of our sponsors that make this show possible. Great. If you want to live a bankless life,

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We are back with Tyler Wirti, and we're talking all things politics, particularly on this day, the Biden versus Trump election. We covered a lot so far. Tyler, when we left off, we were just talking about central bank digital currencies. And I think you indicated that that sort of could be a catalyst for some movement. If it feels like Congress is in sort of a stalemate, isn't doing a lot of things. Sometimes it takes this shot across. about this catalyst to get them moving.

China is moving full steam ahead on their central bank digital currency. At what point does a U.S. Fed coin, some sort of a central bank digital currency, just break through the impasse and sort of the status quo and become top of mind? Are we getting close to that, do you think? Are there mumblings? Are there rumors in D.C. that, you know, the U.S. needs a strategy for central bank digital currency? Yeah, so like I said, like when you say digital dollar in D.C.

It depends on who you're talking to and is to where they take it, right? So I think there is a, if you're to do like the Google trends of D.C. conversations, right? Like the digital dollar would have had a spike in 2020. Like people are talking about it more. Where that goes is a great question. And, you know, there are a better aspect. than I to kind of hash out all the different directions. But, you know, I think there is an increasing chatter about it.

There's increasing chatter about, you know, things like Libra and like how that's going to play in, you know, Libra famously or, you know, I guess famously, you know, changed from a basket of currencies to a dollar-based one, I think to appease regulators and policymakers on the Hill, especially with that that kind of you know because because that was a chief that was a big concern of them was was dollar supremacy and you know the role of the dollar in the in the global economy you know uh in in threats to that um but i do think there is potential for it I think unfortunately you know again it depends on like what happens today the you know with the Democrat I think the Democrats are more on board with something like a Fed account-based digital dollar,

at least if you're going to take some of the bills that have been introduced in the last few months, COVID relief-related bills to, you know, if you're going to take that as their position, then, you know, the thing that's getting the most attention is that type of digital dollar. And what's their intent with that type of digital dollar? is part of the appeal for on the Democrat side, hey, this is a way to distribute maybe some sort of UBI, you know, another $1,200 check to the people, directly to the people, to their account that seems to be popular in some aspect of the Democratic Party. Is that part of the carrot there? Well, I think a lot of it, it's, you know, it's motivated by, you know, financial inclusion goals, right? So it's hard to get bank accounts when, you know, in certain, you know, underprivileged communities, rural communities, it's hard to get access bank accounts. So a lot of this digital dollar stuff with the Fed has been introduced

alongside of like postal banking legislature to make post offices offer banking services. You know, it's been indefinitely motivated by COVID relief related, economic relief related effort, which could technically, you know, you said UBI set the, you know, set the infrastructure for UBI in the future. That is, that is, that would, I would presume that to be, you know, compatible. There is also, you know, groups in D.C. that are talking about digital dollar, like the digital dollar project, which is headed by former CFTC officials, Chris John Carlo and Daniel Gorman. That's a big name. Those are big names. Big names. Yes, absolutely. And so, and they have, you know, political weight in D.C. as well.

They, in there, they've been, you know, advocating for something different, something like more of a token-based digital dollar with roles for, you know, private industry, you know, having some type of role in that, in that, you know, arrangement, if you will. So, so, yeah, it's, I guess the, to sum it up, like, it's very to be determined. government. A lot of the air has been sucked out of the room with, with, you know, first COVID relief and just trying to figure that out. Of course, this is somewhat related. And then the election this year. So, you know, real discussion hasn't maybe hasn't necessarily taken place. I don't think

we've had a full-throated, like, civic discussion about the digital dollar. But what's good, I guess, and from my perspective is that, you know, private innovation continues to trudge on, right? You see stable coin growth this year has been tremendous. It's a digital dollar. I don't know the number. That in itself is in very much, you know, a digital dollar. And I think it's very important that within this broader, you know, discussion as it relates to government involvement in the digital dollar, that private innovations and, you know,

all the all the things that are caught up in that are you know are allowed to you know take place and thrive here as well because I think choice is good for the consumer at the end of the day absolutely Tyler I want to turn the conversation to hoddlepack because there are some interesting things going behind the scenes there at hoddle pack based on some pretty interesting crypto economic permittives maybe you could intro us into what hoddle pack is absolutely yeah so So as we discussed, no, the idea there was, you know, to create like a grassroots political organization to engage the crypto community in D.C. and to add a fundraising element. Pax are political action committees, which are basically, you know, nonprofits dedicated towards donating and supporting

candidates for public office. So HodelPack is, and HodelPack, HodelPack, you know, tomato's tomato. I think I've said that on every, every podcast I've been on. Everybody pronounces it differently, but I'm not going to change at this point. But the, you know, I think what was missing from the, you know, the crypto policy advocacy space was something like this. So we wanted to fill that gap. And in, yeah, so the way it works, you mentioned, you know, quadratic voting. So the, we, you know, I was thinking of. about how to create, you know, one of these things for the, for the crypto community.

And of course, I want to make a crypto native and I want to make it, you know, so thusly, you know, make a community governed. And obviously there's, there's, you know, laws, FEC rules around, around PACs and how to do things. So we can't go full, full board in the crypto native direction quite yet. But one of the things that we experimented this year was, you know, anybody who donated or signed up for our email list in our in our substack newsletter received total vote tokens in exchange so uh these were tokens on the rinkabee test net to avoid gas fees and all those and all that stuff uh i was sending out you know rinkabee eith to people so they could vote in our vote in our in our community ballot but we held one community ballot

where, you know, there was a list of 10 candidates to choose from. Those were provided by, you know, myself in the in the Hodel Pack board, but eventually we want to, like, have the community curate those as well. So basically the way it works is there was 10, 10 candidates to choose from. The people who had Hodel votes were able to, you know, connect their Metamask to the community ballot page. And then we use quadratic voting for how to buy the votes for those candidates. So, you know, if you had whatever, however many total votes and the way quadratic voting works is the first vote cost one, the second cost four, third cost nine.

So we thought that was a good way to kind of level the playing field between, you know, the whales that were donating a lot and those in the people who, you know, frankly, we want to engage people who are just giving, you know, 20 bucks here and there. where quadratic voting helps to level the playing field between those two groups. And then it also just exposes more people to some of the cool stuff that crypto, that's going on in crypto. So yeah, that was a lot of fun. It was really cool to see people, you know, got some DC people on MetaMask, got people using tokens and stuff. And it was a lot of fun. So, you know, this is just the first iteration. We want to keep building it out and we want to engage the, you know, community to help us do so.

Another quick plug, sorry, is we used, another like, another crypto-native thing that we did was was to have a token permission discord by our friends at Abridged and Collabland. Shout out those guys. And, and yeah, so, so like I said, you know, we're just trying to create like a crypto-native political organization, trying to experiment with what that looks like. And that was the first iteration this year. This is something that I get really, really excited about. And so for our listeners, I want you to take Molok Dow and Gitcoin and kind of put them into

one, right? And so what I think you guys are doing at Hoddle Dow is you are figuring out a way to build a more scalable organization using cryptocurrency infrastructure and cryptographic primitives, right? The whole concept of quadratic voting is generating a system that is more inclusive, that allows people to have more say. And if that is achieved, then in theory, Hoddle-Dow can incentivize more donations, right? And so it's using cryptographic infrastructure

to create a bigger tent for allowing more people to express their political opinions. PACs, political action committees are super powerful because it's a way to focus and converge people's attentions and values and energies by just delegating into a few people, And you are using quadratic voting. You're using the Ethereum blockchain or TestNet.

And you're using a Dow-like system, kind of like Moloch, to really try and see how many people can we get involved to direct funds and also use the principle of quadratic voting, which is market-based incentives to allocate funds to people that we deem the most appropriate to receive those things. And I think when we compare legacy systems versus crypto systems, To me, this is just one of the things that is why crypto is always going to win, you know, cross my fingers. That's just a theory.

But it's because we are able to do the same things, but in a better form, a more inclusive form, a bigger tent. And if you guys have been following what we've been talking on the bankless program, bigger tents win. Bigger tents always win. And is that, that's my take. Did that resonate with you? I mean, hey, you're hired. Let's go. Yeah, let's do it.

That was perfect. Exactly right. And I think, you know, part of the, I said, I mentioned this before, but I'll just reiterate it is like, you know, yes, we were trying to fill a gap in the crypto policy advocacy space to get, you know, grassroots and fundraising operation off the ground. But also wanted to, you know, we want a HodelPak to be an example for D.C. to learn from the power of these things. These community owned and run, you know, digital first organization. I want DC's brains to start, you know, to start turning and thinking about the potential of these things. I think both, you know, so, so yes, couldn't have said a better, David. Thank you. It's kind of cool because, you know, what is a PAC, if not a capital pool, right, that influences policy? And what's a Dow? Ethereum in crypto, yeah, what's a Dow? I mean, we happen to be pretty good in defy and Ethereum that capital pools.

So global capital pools. There's one thing we know how to do. Like we do know how to do that. So it does seem like a perfect marriage. I guess as long as you can get sort of the PAC regulation sort of straight side of things, because it does have to have a foot, I guess, in the legal meat space world to make sure that people aren't giving too much or they're identified or whatever the PAC rules are. I don't quite know them.

But super interesting stuff, Tyler. Hey, one last question for you. before you let you go. So thinking about all of this stuff that we've heard today, what can the bankless nation do today to help? You know, David talked about the city of the nation is political and he used the term activist. What's our role? What can we do right now? Yeah. Well, thanks for asking. I am happy to plug Holdupack again. So, you know, I think, first of all, let me say that as I am, you know, as I kind of thought through HodelPack and what I wanted it to be and what I wanted it to, you know, kind of represent and stuff, the ideas of bankless

nation, you know, we're top of mind. So you guys, you know, have already had influence over a HodelPack in that way. But, you know, to think about, you know, how bankless nation can get involved, you know, I, there's two, there's two main ways right now, uh, I guess three. The first is, you know, just sign up on our website and subscribe to our newsletter. That'll earn you hold of votes and we'll send you those and you'll be a part, you'll be a whole pack member at that from that point on. The second is, uh, you know, if you are able, please donate. Uh, you know, we're, again, packs are just, uh, pools of capital. And so we need capital to be able to do our job, well. And then, you know, the third is, you know, I know there's a lot of developers and

tech-minded people here, product people, you know, listening. We, you know, I am, my DMs are open on Holdupac's page on Twitter as well as my personal page. If you want to get involved and to help us build the next gen of Holdupac for, for 2022 and beyond, you know, please, please send me a message or reach out at Hello at Holdup. That's also entirely. Any of that will work. And on that donation piece, if someone is interested in donate, they want to donate, they can't do it in crypto today, as I understand, but I'm sure that's coming soon. But what does, what do the funds go to? Are you pushing the agenda of crypto, everything we talked about today in D.C.? So it'll go, so the donations go to,

well, they go to Holdupac, and then they are dispersed. to candidates based on the, you know, the decisions of the community. There's some portion of the funds that will go, that go to just kind of running Holdupac. We're basically over that, over that hill, though. I think that a lot of our founding donors kind of set us up well for that. So some portion will go to like things like compliance, like monthly, you know, compliance costs. But we really, we're striving to get as much as, you know, as high a percentage of

every dollar that's donated to Holdupack back into donations to candidates to try to build build a coalition in Congress to do all the things that we've been talking about today. Okay, very cool. Interesting. I don't know all the subtleties of how that sort of works, donations to candidates, but I'm sure money, I do know that money makes politics go around. And if crypto wants a place in the political sphere and meat space, we need to be at the table. Tyler, it has been fantastic to have you on bankless state of the nation. Thanks so much for joining us, sir. Thanks so much for having me on. And keep going with

with Bankless Nation, you know, hopefully we can get as many of the ideas that you guys talk about translated into, you know, D.C. and they can catch on there as well. So thanks, guys. Awesome. Tyler, thank you for being the vehicle to which that we can actually get that done. Great. All right. Bye, guys. Take care. David. Wow. That's pretty eye-opening, man. Like, lobby stuff is very, very interesting, I think. I do wonder about the future of this. I we we definitely need to be involved in some way in these conversations in DC and it seems like you know, PACs and having representatives in DC is a way to do that.

What are you some of your takeaways from that? Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway is like and I think I learned this lesson in 2016 where like you don't really get to opt out of politics, right? Like you don't get to just sit on your hands and say, you know, you know, politics isn't for me. I'm not really interested in it. Because like I said at the beginning, it doesn't matter if you're not interested in politics because politics is interested in you. And so if you're a listener to the bankless YouTube, to the bankless nation, bankless newsletter, bankless podcast, that means you're interested in crypto. And that means you're interested in crypto growing into its maximum potential.

And if you're interested in that, therefore you're interested in protecting crypto from, you know, people that might not have the same incentives as you are. And again, like, that's why PACs exists in the first place. Maybe it's not, maybe crypto's not your deal. Maybe it's, I don't know, and insert your political interest here. There's a pack for that, right? And the reason for that is because it's more efficient and more scalable to just send money to a pack and make them do the labor for you, right? That's what a pack is, is it coordinates and centralizes labor and focuses it, right? It's like a lens of influence.

And crypto is going to have its packs too. And so, you know, Hoddlepack, I think, is a great mechanism. to figure out how can we make crypto aligned with the rest of the world and not against the rest of the world, right? Yeah, yeah, I agree. You know, there's a part of me that's a little divided on this because money and politics, I would argue, is certainly not ideal. But this is also the world that we live in, right? So we are post-citizens United Cases. This is how things happen in D.C. So we have to be pragmatic about it as well. And speaking of being pragmatic, David, wrote this great piece on Monday talking about the election outcome. And I do think it's worth

talking about really briefly. But you basically made the argument that, hey, like, the question of on everyone's mind in crypto is, is Biden or Trump going to be a good thing or bad thing for crypto? And you kind of changed the dichotomy a little bit. And you said, well, it's less about who wins and more about certainty versus uncertainty, right? And they, you know, it's it's almost the way in which the candidate wins or loses could lead to more uncertainty. And I think part of what you're saying is sort of uncertainty bad, like generally bad for markets. But also you're, you're kind of making the claim to you that there's an element of crypto does thrive on a little bit of global uncertainty. It can thrive in the chaos. But I think the large.

larger point of the article, and maybe that's where the title came from, is that while this chaos is going on, the eye of Soron, like that being sort of the government in this case, is not pointed on crypto. And it's probably a good thing for now, because crypto is just a baby. It's, you know, it's a small little hobbit for using our Lord of the Rings. It's got to grow up into a big, strong hobbit before it can like take on, you know, Soron and his tower here. Yeah, you want to talk about some of the themes from this article? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, just to reiterate, like, again, I don't think Biden or Trump is really the focal point here. And I don't even think it's really a focal point of the election. When you vote Biden or you vote Trump, you're voting

for the team, not the person, right? And that's kind of what we were getting into with Tyler just now. But like you said, like, the crypto thrives in volatility. Crypto thrives in chaos. And I think one of the reasons, like the BTC price is extremely volatile. But Bitcoin is like the bane of the dark night of Batman. Like it was born in chaos. It was born in volatility. It knows how to live in a volatile world, right? And the legacy system doesn't know how to do that.

The legacy financial markets look towards the election and hopes for stability and hopes for certainty. But in crypto, we don't give a shit about certainty. We don't care about stability because our whole entire industry goes and boom and bus cycles every three to four years. There's no foundational substrate to our industry. So it doesn't matter for us. Chaos is actually one of our best friends because the longer and more that Ethereum and Bitcoin can develop and mature before the nation state tries to top-down control it, the better.

Yeah, I have a friend who's a financial planner, right? And he's like, you know, sometimes I'll talk to him. He's like, oh, brutal day, you know, market was down, 4%. I'm like, oh, 4%. Yes, do tell me more. I mean, there's an element of like, wow, crypto, 4%. I mean, that can happen in a few seconds, right? And we are very used to this chaotic world.

one of your main points too is that whatever outcome happens today, it's basically this is not really like there's no clear candidate that supports crypto or doesn't support crypto. Both candidates probably support modern monetary policy and money printing. So I guess that's a boom to crypto either way. You could argue one more than the other. We'll see. But tomorrow or today now, it's not really crypto's battle. Like it's not our fight yet. But our fight will come at some point when the eye of Soron starts to turn its eye onto the crypto industry. And maybe we got a flavor of what that could look like with Tyler.

And maybe we need to start preparing now. Yeah. And here's how I think this election is relevant to crypto because everything is connected, right? In my opinion, the radical. left, the very loud left, kind of has the Democrats, they've kind of control the Democrats, right? And the radical left wants stimulus, right? The left is running on being the pro-stimulus party. But we even saw Donald Trump like flash an anti-stimulus tweet like two weeks before the election and then immediately backtracked and was like, no, we're definitely doing stimulus.

Just kidding. I wasn't, that that tweet was a mistake. we're definitely a pro-stimulus party as well. And so I think the populace of the American or the government, the parties, the political parties are held hostage by the people who want stimulus because we gave them a little bit, like they got a taste of stimulus and they're like, well, why can't we have more of that? And the parties are like, don't have an answer to that question, right? And that is how we think that we are converging on an MMT, a pro-MMT environment no matter what. The MMT is coming, right? And this, This means bullishness for Bitcoin. And it doesn't matter.

I've been having this conversation with a couple of Ethereum people who are very, not very, but like don't see the value in Bitcoin that Bitcoiners do or I necessarily do. Bitcoin doesn't need to do anything other than be alive because MMT makes it really difficult to allocate capital, right? The equity markets are really highly priced. Like Amazon shares $3,000. That's insanely high priced. And so people are looking at like with all of this.

this MMT going on, where do I park my capital? And that's what Bitcoin offers a vehicle for. You don't have to be bullish on Bitcoin the technology. You just have to be bullish on Bitcoin the 21 million meme, right? And if people are taking their stimulus and they're buying Bitcoin, that is going to make the nation state jealous. And that's what I finish up with in this article, right? The nation state, if you are taking the money that you don't want to hold, which is the dollar because it's being printed and you are buying Bitcoin with it, the United States nation is going to have to print more money to achieve the same ends previously, right? We talked about this in the second episode of bankless ever, where we talked about like how people spend bad money and hoard good

money. And bad money is money that's being printed. And if the people of the United States nation are taking their stimulus checks, are taking their quantitative easing, and they're buying Bitcoin and putting Bitcoin on their balance sheets, that's going to make the nation state really jealous. And that's what that's a lot of what we were talking about with Tyler just now, about wild gardens around crypto as being one of the biggest things in our political fight ahead of us. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you keep saying Bitcoin because I think you're bullish Bitcoin. It's the shell-in-point. Right. So like I would definitely broaden that to say non-sovereign assets, right? And I'm personally more bullish ether in these dark times of MMT. But yes, both can serve as a

non-sovereign, unaffected by MMT policy kind of shelling point asset. And definitely, I mean, Bitcoin is the first that people, the dude on the street hears, right? Can we talk about something else that's? Hang on. Hang on. So since you brought up ether, yeah, here, so ether plus EIP-1559, think about this. When you get inflation and issuance of money, are you, are you trying to redeem yourself with the ETHs now? Yeah, I'm trying to do myself. Okay, okay, carry on. answer. So inflation and money printing makes the velocity of money go up. You know, and we all know the stories of people in Argentina or Venezuela who got their paycheck,

and they got their paycheck in, like, plastic bags full of cash, and then they immediately went to the store, and they bought all the groceries that they could, regardless of they needed them or not, that's the velocity of money. The money is moving around the nation really, really fast. And that's what happens when you print a bunch of money. And so think about the combination of EIP. 1559 on Ethereum, which burns Ether as a function of the amount of transactional volume on Ethereum and an increasing velocity of U.S. dollars, which there are a ton of on Ethereum. And so I think

people, the reason why I speak about Bitcoin as the anti-MMT assets, because that's the shelling point. But when people get okay with Bitcoin, they're going to look elsewhere in the crypto world, and they're going to see Ether the asset, which grows commensurately scarce as the growth of the Ethereum economy grows, but it also is getting deleted by the velocity of U.S. dollar stable coins going around the Ethereum network. And they're going to see Bitcoin as a disinflationary asset, but they're going to see Ether as an actively deflating asset that is actually becoming more scarce as a function of the money printing of dollars. That's my thesis. Gateway drug to understanding Ether right now, good or bad, is definitely Bitcoin. Bitcoin

has had a 10-year history to show the world what digital scarcity looks like. Ether's had a five-year history. And EIP 1559 and sticking hasn't even kicked in yet. So agree with you there, long-term horizon. Did I redeem myself? Am I? I don't know, man. You tell us in the comments.

I'm okay with your takes, David. As always. All right. Hey, let's talk about something else I've been thinking about. I know we're going a little long here, but this, I was thinking about this poster, a Raoul Paul episode. And Raoul Paul, like his perspective, I don't want to put it any spoilers here,

but part of his perspective that's probably different from our own was basically this, if I could distill it down. Like, we were talking little bankless, right? And he, I think he understands, he values the permissionless open layer of all this innovation, all of these free markets, right? but I don't think he quite understood the self-sovereign kind of aspect of going bankless, right? I think Raul Paul, his answer to why use compound versus a like a coinbase or a bitmax or something, it's like, well, I'll just use whatever gives me the best rate.

I don't really care. And whatever is the most, like I don't care about the thesis of self-sufferone. sovereign bankless bankless money because I think his take was basically guys we've already lost the battle for privacy and freedom right he said at one point during a conversation with him David it stuck with me it's like look they're already tracking everything you do on Google like they already you have an Amazon Alexa device like in your home it's it's listening to your conversation you think there's anything you can hide from Big Brother you're certainly not going to hide your like banking activities, unless they give you the ability to use a defy protocol, they can simply

strip that ability away from you. We've already lost the battle for privacy and freedom is what Raoul Paul says. And therefore, he thinks about the space with a little bit of a different lens than you or I might. I'm sorry, I tweeted this out, like just a poll. Have we already lost the battle for privacy and freedom in the digital age? 40% of people said, yes, we lost is just Twitter informal poll 60% said no there's hope what do you think i think i think that i'm surprised that the yes we lost is so high 40% think that we've already lost that's pretty high um i i do think that you know we just have more information about the intricacies of ethereum and defy than i think raoul does uh and i think rowell's counterpoint however was that you know we are perhaps a little bit more

like revolutionary than the typical individual right Like we are on the bleeding edge of defy. Like we try all the defy apps. We drink the defy Kool-Aid. We drink the bankless nation Kool-Aid of being completely self-sovereign and the most, you know, to the endth degree. And I did appreciate his take where he said, you know, he kind of alluded to like not everyone is going to be that far on the spectrum of being a revolutionary, right? And so I appreciate that. However, I think also Raoul perhaps under-euf,

estimates or maybe doesn't even think about the creeping authoritarianism of the nation state, right? And, you know, America, land of the free, home of the brave, you know, based on, you know, values of freedom. I think people don't think that that's possible in America. But like I said at the end of that Market Monday piece, like when there's a bunch of MMT going on and people are using that freedom to sell their dollars and buy Bitcoin, that's going to make the nation state pretty upset. And so I think the jury's out on how much America can really retain its freedom meme, freedom, freedom brand, because it's already been, like you've said, it's already been lost, right? So we only, I think the trend has to actually stay the same for the

bankless thesis to play out. So I agree with you, of course, all of that in like, I skew revolutionary. And that's why we're hosts. That's why, that's why we're wearing the shirt, man. That's why. That's why this works. But like, you know, Raul puts his hat on it. It's like, I'm the pragmatic traitor perspective and he has a different take. But I want to ask you this, right? For all, let's say I agree with you. But like Raoul's point is like, we're already too far gone. Right. Like there's even if we want to, even if there are enough revolutionaries, we just, they're, the, the incumbents have an asymmetrical advantage, right? They own big tech. They own, you know, like the nation, like, the battle's lost and we just don't know it yet. We're still here fighting the revolution.

The battle's already lost. What do you think about that? It's a little despondent, I guess. Yes. Actually, I think I have a pretty salient opinion on this. Brandon Quidam, who's a Bitcoiner, he's the Bitcoin Mushroom guy, wrote about how Bitcoin is mycelium, which a fantastic article. Recently wrote an article connecting the book called The Fourth Turning, which talks about the generations of history and how each generation has a relationship with the past generation, right? The way that your parents raised you was impacted by the way that their parents raised them, and we impact the generations going forward. And part of the thesis of his article in that book is that currently we are in a time of high chaos and low order. And we are looking for more order,

right? We are looking for bigger institutions to put our trust into. And our current institutions are failing us, right? Like, and this is where maybe what we were alluding to with like big tech and big banks and, you know, the government. These are institutions that aren't providing us with the order that we're looking for. There's, everyone talks about how there's no trust in institutions anymore. And, and I think that's what Raoul is kind of illustrating. It's like, yeah, we've already lost because the institutions, we don't trust them and they've already captured all of our data, all of our privacy. We don't get to have. There's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing we can do about it. What Raul, I think, is discounting or not including in his thesis,

is our ability to make new institutions that we can trust, that we can leverage. And I think you're also pointing to like a generational shift to those new institutions, right? It's like the existing incumbents who run the institutions of today won't always be in power. Right. That's exactly right. And the way that we, the way that our generation and the people of our world look to discover order by relying on institutions is going to be different than Raul's generation, right? Like, I don't think Raul knows about tornado cash or Aztec or other privacy implementations on Ethereum. I don't think he understands how close privacy is to anyone with a Metamask account on Ethereum, because this privacy is just one transaction away, and it's only getting better.

I'm not sure Raul has gotten to that point about Ethereum and Defi yet. Absolutely. Well, that's reason to be optimistic, David. That's cool stuff. I like that take and it's a good counter. But folks, definitely tune into that podcast on Monday and you'll hear sort of his take and a little back and forth on that. Hey, David, last thing, because we should wrap it up before the government shuts us down

again. BAP sales. Okay, so what's happened? Like, it was last week around this time, we reintroduced BAP sales on Bancor. I think it was Wednesday, maybe not Tuesday. And this was an auction on balancer. what's the price as of today? I guess while you're talking about this, I could go look it up.

Yeah, so actually, I think we should start about what the price was last week. And so last week when we started this thing off, we started the BAP price at the highest price that it was sold at at Uniswap before the price got too high. And that was $1,200. And that's what we started the balancer pool at this time around. And for those that are just tuning in, the way that this is different with Uniswap, the price starts at a threshold and then it moves up as people buy more. That's how uniswap works. With Balancer, the price starts high and actually moves low. But it still has that uniswap element where if there's more buyers, then the price will go up. But over time, the price ticks downward.

So it's a little bit of a game. We started the price at 1,200 die and it's currently 649 die. That's cool. So yesterday, somebody poked it yesterday. It was like in the 500s or something. Yeah, it was 538. And so now that it's at 650, it looks like somebody, somebody was, went and bought one. So somebody bought, it goes up, and if you wait enough time, it slips down, right? Just on that pricing curve for 30 days. What's the last day of this again? Thanksgiving is the last day of the sale is on Thanksgiving, right? And so there's a little bit of a game, right? So like the theory is the price, according to the smart contract, will trend towards zero. But the game theory behind this is like at some point before it reaches zero,

it's going to, people are going to buy them all because these shirts are awesome and they're definitely worth more than $0.00. And so some point between $1,200 and $0, all the BAP tokens sell out, right? But there's also a little bit of gain. Like, say the BAP price goes down to $400, and then someone buys one, and it goes back up to $480. But then someone buys another one and goes up to $5.50. So while it trends downwards, it can still go up because of the way, you know, AMMs work. It's a combination of AMM and Dutch auction. It's super cool. It's going to be cool to see other tokens released in this fashion. We're just kind of like using it very early paving the way. But this is a really cool shirt.

There's a price point, David, where I want to pick up number two. I'm not going to tell you what that is because you're my game theoretic adversary and you're going to front run me. But there is a price point where I'm swooping in and I'm going to grab another eathscape shirt. I'll tell you, I'll go ahead and leak this alpha because as soon as it hits roughly the cost of shipping, I'm buying all of them so I don't have to go shipping anymore. There you go. So there's our guessing game.

somewhere between zero and that price and where I swoop in and buy my second is where you should be buying if you're listening to this. All right, David, we've gone on long enough. This has been State of the Nation. Guys, we've talked all about kind of politics and being

an activist in the political systems and it's been fantastic to talk to Tyler. Thank you so much for joining us on this special Election Day edition of State of the Nation. As always, risks and disclaimers. Ether, Bitcoin, the assets we talk about are risky. You could lose what you put in if you are playing with Defi.

Be careful. But thanks for joining us on the journey. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us and going bankless together. Thanks a lot.