Unchained - Crypto Philanthropy: How to Donate to Make Real-World Impact - Ep.296

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Some of the biggest names in the crypto industry discuss their personal giving philosophies, how blockchain technology could change the dynamics of giving to charity, and which crypto projects are mak...ing a lasting real-world impact. Guests include Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital; Caroline Ellison, co-CEO of Alameda Research; and Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos. Show topics: the definition of effective altruism  why Haseeb thinks crypto is the best industry for effective altruism how Haseeb and Arthur differ in their philosophy of doing good why blockchain technology is less important than liquidity when donating money across borders whether Axie Infinity is making a real-world impact why Arthur thinks Axie’s impact will be short-term and not sustainable whether people should donate now versus later Haseeb’s and Arthur’s thoughts on how giving changes people what people working in crypto can do to give back Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021     Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ     Brave: http://brave.com/Unchained    Episode Links   GiveDirectly https://www.givedirectly.org/unchained — all donations made here will be matched! There are $50,000 in matching funds available!    https://www.givedirectly.org/crypto-for-good-2021/   Guests Caroline Ellison https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-ellison-309216a7 Haseeb Qureshi https://twitter.com/hosseeb  Arthur Breitman https://twitter.com/ArthurB    Miscellaneous Effective Altruism https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism/ Code to Inspire https://unchainedpodcast.com/crypto-actually-fixes-this-how-code-to-inspire-uses-crypto-in-afghanistan/  Pineapple Fund https://pineapplefund.org/ BitGive https://www.bitgivefoundation.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Give Directly is a nonprofit that lets you send money directly to people living in extreme poverty, and it's now raising crypto funds to support a basic income program in Liberia. Just $33 will fund a year of basic income for a recipient. This panel I moderated, which you'll hear in this episode, helped raise over $900,000, which will support 27 villages with a basic income for a year. year. To try to get to $1 million, I'm working with them to offer a special match for unchained listeners. When you donate any cryptocurrency to give directly this month, it will be matched, which means doubled. There are $50,000 in matching funds. So if we use the whole match, that's $50,000 times
Starting point is 00:00:50 two, plus the $900,000 from the event, equaling $1 million in crypto, supporting a basic income for thousands of households in Liberia next year. Visit givdirectly.org slash unchained and your crypto gift will be deviled. Again, that's give directly.org slash unchained. And now on to the show. The Nodalcash app makes earning crypto on your smartphone as easy as turning on your Bluetooth. Notalcash is private, secure, and available on iOS and Android. Visit nodl.io slash unchained.
Starting point is 00:01:24 That's NodLE.0.io slash unchained to start earning. earning nodal cash. Buy, earn, and spend crypto on the crypto.com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first 30 days. Download the crypto.com app and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Brave wallet is the first secure wallet built natively in a Web3 crypto browser with no extension required.
Starting point is 00:01:54 You can store, manage, and grow your crypto portfolio all from a safer wallet. at brave.com slash unchained to get started. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. And I would like to introduce Haseem Qureshi, managing partner at Jack and Fly Capital, and Caroline, who is co-CEO at Alameda Research
Starting point is 00:02:19 and Arthur Brightman of Tazos. Haseep, I guess you could maybe give your views on effective altruism. Yeah. So I do consider myself an effective altruist, which makes maybe less interesting answer. Why do I consider myself an effective altruist? So effective altruism is kind of a bundle of ideas, but the core of the idea is basically the notion that we should try to think scientifically and rigorously about how to do the most good.
Starting point is 00:02:51 And it kind of points to the fact that a lot of people, when they think about doing good, whether it's doing charity or trying to be impactful in your sort of your, personal life or your community engagement, most people kind of, they approach it in just sort of doing things that feel right or that feel good to them. And effective altruism is a sort of framework of thinking about, sure, it's good to do good things, but you should try to apply the same level of importance that you apply to things like, you know, to business or to technology or to, you know, the things that we think are really important. We should take the same standard of care toward thinking and making sure we do things right when we're trying to do the most good. That's effective altruism
Starting point is 00:03:31 in a nutshell. And I think to me, as somebody who spends a lot of my time working on really difficult challenges, I think helping the world and improving the world is one of the most important things that we do. And therefore, it should require the highest level of thoughtfulness and rigor around making sure that we do as much good as we can when we're trying to accomplish that. And Caroline, do you have an opinion on this? Yeah, totally agree with everything, has Eve said. Yeah, I guess I've been kind of involved in effective alterism for a while.
Starting point is 00:04:05 I think I first spent out about it in like freshman year of college. And I was kind of like, oh, well, yes, of course. Like, this all makes total sense that you should, you know, be thinking about cost and benefits and, you know, adding it all up and trying to maximize your impact when you're, you know, doing philanthropy, just like anything else. And, yeah, I think overtime I've kind of only been become more. convinced for the most part that the effective altruism movement is kind of like onto something good and we're definitely still like figuring a lot of stuff out and and i feel quite uncertain about a lot of
Starting point is 00:04:37 things uh but i think like it's you know goals and intentions are uh overall quite admirable arthur phyntropi wonderful thing and a chart will give you like helping the that's fortunate wonderful thing and obviously if you're going to do it you don't want to be ineffective so you know in In some sense, you say, you say, effective altruism, it's almost unimpeachable. But, you know, if you go in detail, I think the movement is very, very tied to a view of ethics. And I think it would reject utitarianism as an ethics framework. I think that, you know, eventually you cannot ground ethics in anything else, but human intuition. You know, there's no, you can't derive ethics from reason.
Starting point is 00:05:20 And so ultimately, the best thing you can do is get some sort of. logic closure over human ethical intuitions. And I think that deontology is a better match than utilitarianetics. So I do think that you can be cognitive about it, but I would say there's a tinge of scientism when you try to compute DLY on their saying and try to compare things, which I think are a bit incommensurable. I'm being pedantic here, I think, you know, overall, they're very well aligned with the overall goals, you know, saving lives as a one. wonderful thing. This is, you know, this is more of a full disclosure in the sense of like, okay, this is how I'm thinking about this. I'm not fully on board with the whole quality Dali program,
Starting point is 00:06:04 all of that. But, you know, I think these are more goals overall in general. Okay. And actually, before we continue, because it looks like Haseeb wants to maybe rebut or something. Oh, no, no. I, so I think, well, first of all, I don't think that this panel is. Well, wait, but Haseeb, before you, before you do that, Arthur, can you just? just defined deontology because like you just threw out a bunch of big words but I don't know if everyone even knows what they all are. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, you could in broad strokes, you could look at three different principles of edicts. Utitarianism essentially tries to say, let's do the most good for everyone. You know, pain and suffering are bad things. We want people
Starting point is 00:06:46 to be happy. So whatever reaction we can take that make most people happiest is a good one. The ontology is more, there's a list of things that you can do, which are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. And primarily, you should not be doing bad things, like hurting people. So even if, for example, hurting people could, you know, eventually cause a lot of happiness, you should not be going out and, you know, hurting people. And virtue is now what makes you a good person is more about intrinsic virtue. It might be your intentions, how you're thinking, how you behave, not directly your actions and not directly is. consequence. There are many other sources of edicts that exist, but these are the
Starting point is 00:07:27 broad, these are the main broad ones, I would say, and definitely there's a utilitarian bend to affect the altruism. I would say a lot of people recognize themselves more in the ontology or probably in some mix between the two depending on a situation and depending on context. And I think it's, I think it's okay. I think it's okay that obviously of edicts might, might have some internal conflict. It's something that we've evolved. It's not, it's not, it's not a truce of, you know, ethics is not a truce of the universe that we go out and discover, it's something that's intimately tied to human nature. And so, you know, to that respect, I would reject what Peter Singer is saying when saying like,
Starting point is 00:08:06 oh, yeah, you know, we reach the conclusion that everyone is doing something bad at all times. If you're doing that, then, you know, that compares to what, you know, in some sense, you have to ground ethics in something and that's saying is human nature and not some external objective reality. Okay, here's see. Yeah, so I'm a little lath to turn this into a debate on the philosophy of ethics, because I think that, you know, this is ultimately a crypto giving panel. But I guess what I'd say as a kind of somewhat mild defense of effective altruism is I think,
Starting point is 00:08:39 you know, crypto is actually probably the perfect place to encapsulate the difference between utilitarianism and deontology. Because, so just to just to re-articulate, right? Like, utilitarianism is the idea is that, you know, as long as you get the right outcome, then it's all good, right? Whatever you do, just get the right outcome. And that's really what matters. And the deontology says there are some things you should never do, even if it gets the right outcome, right?
Starting point is 00:09:02 Like, even if it makes everybody better off, don't do this because it's wrong in some just deeper fundamental sense. And, you know, crypto is exactly the place where the way that we look at everything in crypto is through the lens of game theory, right? We look at the incentives. And we say, look, we don't say they're good in. incentives and bad incentives and this kind of incentive is evil and this kind of incentive is virtuous, and that's why you should only give these ones. We say, look, the important thing is we want the protocol to be secure. We want miners to do the right thing. We want people not to get hacked. We want to create this like global property system. And if you're looking at that lens and that
Starting point is 00:09:36 comports with the way that you think the world ought to be, the way that people design these crypto ecosystems is really kind of this utilitarian kind of effective altruist sort of mindset, which is let's design the system that improves the outcome for the most people. And in that way, I think for a lot of people in crypto, certainly not everybody, but for a lot of people in crypto, this, you know, utilitarian approach to thinking about what creates the best possible world really resonates because it resonates with the way that crypto designers create these economic systems. And of course, if you look in the regular world, nobody designs economic systems the way
Starting point is 00:10:12 that crypto designers do, right? There is no top-down view where we write a white paper where we like show. We write these math proofs that show how we're maximizing utility for every party. Like the real world is full of deontology. Right? The real world is like, no, no, no, you never do this. You have to give subsidies to farmers. You have to like make sure that you have a, you know, child care subsidy and blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 00:10:31 And it ends up being this big, distorted massive incentives that maybe get it right, but like most of the time, though. And it's kind of, I mean, I think like COVID is a good example where a lot of deontology stuff just goes out the window because you're like, look, we're about to die. There's a pandemic coming. We've got to lock things down. We prevent you from leaving your house. We're going to force you to go get a vaccine.
Starting point is 00:10:51 You know you're not allowed to work. I think the last couple of years and living in crypto, I think, is a good way to test your intuitions of which of those two sides you tend to fall on, whether you're more utilitarian or more deontological. And I think, you know, Caroline and I are definitely more on the utilitarian side. Arthur, much more on the deontological side. But again, we could go out. This is the oldest debate in ethical history. So we're probably not going to resolve it on this Zoom panel. Well, but I love how you related it to how, yeah, crypto networks, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:24 like they only function well if the game theory has been designed right, right? So to that end, I mean, like if, so obviously we do already have some crypto organizations that are trying to do philanthropic things like BitGiv or give crypto. And so what do you think would be the best way to kind of like, design these for, you know, whatever your desired outcome would be. And Caroline or Hussib or Arthur, any of you can answer this. Well, so give directly is a great example of this, right? It's actually a really elegant sort of economic expression of how to make giving better.
Starting point is 00:12:05 So before give directly, most, there was always a perception that if you just give money to poor people, they'll go spend it on dumb things, right? They'll go spend it on booze or just, you know, random. them crap and like they don't know what's good for them. And so that's why the charities that traditionally did the most work in very poor countries would be like, great, we're a chicken charity and we're going to give them chickens and they'll grow the chickens and it's going to be great. And the idea is like, look, we'll buy you books or we'll give you clean water or we'll find some specific thing and we'll create this really complicated supply chain to get it to you.
Starting point is 00:12:38 And generally speaking, people from first world countries love these kinds of charities because it's easy to imagine, like, look, if I just give them money, who knows what they'll spend it on, but if I give them books, you know, they'll read, they'll get educated, like, that's wonderful, right? So they send them tons and tons of books. And, you know, as was mentioned in the previous panel, a lot of times what happens with these charities is that one, they're very expensive to administrate, and there's, you know, there's just a lot of costs that gets lost in the middle. But also, you know, a lot of times what happens is that people get the books or the chickens
Starting point is 00:13:09 or the whatever, and they go sell them because they don't need chickens. because they don't need books. They need like this other thing that only they know they need. And it, you know, there's this, there's this classic economic argument of why gifts are very inefficient and instead you should just give cash. And give directly is the, it's the, it's the charity instantiation of that argument. It's like, look, we let's assume that people are rational actors, which, you know, welcome to crypto, right?
Starting point is 00:13:32 Assume that people are rational actors and they know what's good for them. They understand their situation better than you do. And if they have a bunch of money, they're going to go spend it in the thing they actually need, whether it's like their roof is leaking. or their kids are sick or some other thing that they are, you know, you'll just go spend it on food. And it's very difficult for us to anticipate that. But the people who actually are in need know exactly what they need.
Starting point is 00:13:53 And so you should just give them money and they'll figure it out. That's precisely what Give directly does and has demonstrated through their own randomized controlled trials that they end up having more positive impact per dollar transferred than the other comparable charities that might just give people medicine or clothes or books without actually knowing what they in particular need. And we, but also what about, I'm curious about give crypto because that one is obviously different. They're giving crypto and I, you know, of course, hopefully this is not too negative of a question. But my obvious question is the people on the ground there, what if they can't turn it into their local currency or otherwise use it?
Starting point is 00:14:35 You know, then what good does it do? So, you know, and I'm not going to pretend to be some. expert on give crypto. So maybe they have some way to make sure that it is useful to people. But is that kind of like, like, is it, is the best way to effectively use crypto in philanthropy to just adopt the give directly model, but do it for crypto? Someone else want to take that? Yeah, I guess I don't, I could say something, though I don't know a ton about give crypto. So I can't really speak to their model in particular. Yeah. I mean, I think like, yeah,
Starting point is 00:15:10 I'm not really sure in practice, kind of how useful it is to give crypto to people in developing countries. I think that like we have seen, like I see the same, give directly that direct cash transfers are a great way to help the global war. Yeah, I also think that crypto is potentially an exciting way to sort of democratize finance and to kind of, yeah, basically make it easier, remove a lot of the frictions that people experience. with, I don't know, banking systems, with, yeah, countries, with potentially oppressive regimes, stuff like that, and kind of just, yeah, put people in charge of their own many. So, yeah, I don't really know how useful it is right now to give people crypto, but I can see it as kind of a potentially useful thing someday, at least. Yeah, I would say the potential of crypto to transforms things here is mostly more in terms of, like,
Starting point is 00:16:07 bringing cheaper transfers or bringing cheaper access to financial infrastructure overall. But that's something that has yet to happen or to continue happening. And so if the matter is making it direct gifts, then, you know, if you expect that once a person receive, you know, cryptos are going to start converting it to fiatts to pay for whatever they need, then you might as well send cash directly. You know, it's not, there's nothing magic in sending it in crypto versus any other form of payment to add to what I see what I was saying about living directly. I like to compare it with basically it's the index fund strategies of charity.
Starting point is 00:16:46 You could try to pick stocks and do all sorts of trade, and you're going to end up paying a ton of commission. And a lot of people like doing this because they feel that they're doing something and they're optimizing and so on so forth. But at the end of the day, having low fee and just going straight to the point is a lot more effective. And this is the same thing. It just cuts out a lot of the impression.
Starting point is 00:17:05 of like doing some, you know, like really doing, you know, oh, you know, if only we do that and this and that. But at the end of the day, it's, it's a lot more direct and a lot more effective than a most agree on other intervention. And as Steve, did you, you said earlier, you had some thoughts to you on that question. No, I mean, I agree with it. And I think it's a, it's a good example of the effect of altruist approach and action. But in general, you know, I think the question of giving crypto versus giving dollars, my understanding, I'm not super familiar with Give Crypto, but my understanding is that within Give Crypto, they run these trials within like an entire village.
Starting point is 00:17:45 And in that village, there are some money changers or basically people who can facilitate the transfer of crypto into the local currency. But I'm not an expert, so I can't speak to it any more than that. I think the idea is that it lowers some of the infrastructure costs to do these transfers directly in crypto. And of course, you know, there's just a lot of people with a lot of money. crypto who can send money. Yes, as we are seeing now in the whole NFT craze. So there is a question from YouTube that is probably relevant here to this give crypto discussion,
Starting point is 00:18:21 whether we're talking about the charity or just anybody who's giving crypto directly. Is there a blockchain that seems best set up for cross-border transfers, particularly to poor countries. And that is from Alexander Wannel. Do you guys have an opinion on that? I guess, yeah, I don't know anything about sort of something that would make that particularly the case. I would imagine probably just blockchains that are generally better, faster and cheaper would be better for this as well. I would say it's less function of the technology of the blockchain as it is a function of liquidity in the local market. Yeah, I was going to say since Bitcoin is the most liquid. It would probably need, but well, I guess maybe ether is a close second, but both of
Starting point is 00:19:07 those chains have, you know, a lot of high transaction fees at the moment. So probably for Bitcoin Lightning and then for Ether, one of the, oh, shoot, I was going to say one of the layer twos, but that opens a whole other can of worms too. So yeah, I don't know if anybody has another suggestion for something that's kind of like liquid but also less expensive. Apparently in the Philippines, if you play Maxi Infinity, you can actually turn smooth love potion directly into Philippine pesos I have heard now. So that's super interesting. One other question that I wanted to ask you was, I mean, so this is like slightly parallel maybe to the philanthropic question. but crypto has long touted its ability to democratize finance.
Starting point is 00:20:00 And I wondered if there are any ways that you're seeing that crypto is already having the kind of positive impact that philanthropy typically aims for. Like, are there any particular crypto projects that you feel are having the kind of real world impact that typically like charities are trying to accomplish? I mean, I would raise my hand and say Axi Infinity is probably the most obvious in that it's kind of like a giant give directly for the Philippines, where essentially it's this giant transfer from speculators to, you know,
Starting point is 00:20:34 poor Filipino people who are playing the game, which I've heard at least, I mean, I think it's gone down recently, but that, you know, the average Filipino is playing Axe Infinity is making twice their average wage, which I think is actually quite quite high for a direct transfer program.
Starting point is 00:20:51 So it's, it seems really good. But I've heard that those numbers are going down a lot because the inflation for SLP has kind of hurt the economics of later. Nerey says this is not a sustainable. This is not a sustainable. As long as people are donating, it's sustainable. There's no values that's being brought to the other player by the presence of like these, you know, it's just like well farming with crypto. So it doesn't really bring value to the other players.
Starting point is 00:21:23 so at the end of the day, I think, you know, in a transition period, these kind of transfers can happen, but then they get out completed away. So, you know, it's like, okay, this is great for the Filipino players who need this for a while. But when I hear, oh, it's a new paradigm, like, ah, no, it's really not. You know, there's a lot of them, there's a lot of innovations that happen in crypto from a technological standpoint. Even new financial primitives have been invented like a perpetual cost. contracts, for example, that's an innovation of the crypto space. But it is not like changing
Starting point is 00:21:58 economics. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a bad beef. So it's not going to a magically need poverty because people are going to pay, are going to farm gold in the, uh, in a video game. And is there a way to kind of keep that from happening where it's sort of, you know, the benefit just peters out and it only ends up accruing to a small number right at the start? You have to look if, you know, are, when they playing the game, are they making the game experience more fun for other people? You know, it's like when I engage with the game, you know, do I engage with other characters who, for example, maybe played by people in different countries, in which case, you know, if they're really
Starting point is 00:22:35 real value for the other players, like making the game experience more enjoyable, then sure, then maybe you have something to sendable. But otherwise, you are just talking about a transfer from early adopters to, to early adopters, in which case, it's completely zero sum. And so, you know, no, that's not going to be a stable. If you want something sustainable, you have to bring value in a sense of like those players are making the game more engaging, more fun for other people, which is not what's happening here. So Axi Infinity is just one of like, you know, a ton of crypto things that are happening in general. And it's kind of like you could sort of say it's new. I guess it took off kind of about a year and a half ago.
Starting point is 00:23:21 But are there any other crypto projects that you feel are accomplishing the types of things that philanthropy tries to typically accomplish? Well, I'd say one of the things that we see a lot in crypto is the attempt to fund public goods. Because, of course, crypto, you know, traditionally the way that public goods are funded is through the government. Because the whole point of calling something a public good is that it's for the public, meaning that no individual private actor takes on most of the benefit from a public good.
Starting point is 00:23:54 So it's very hard to have these be provided by just people doing their own thing in the marketplace. And of course, crypto doesn't have governments. It has, I mean, it sort of has DAOs and foundations, which sort of are like pseudo-governments. And as a result, there has been a lot of experimentation among these DAOs and foundations or even more informal organizations than that to try to solve for the problem of how do we solve public goods. Now, most of these are constrained to the public goods within a particular ecosystem. And of course, like most of the people who are in the global poor, who have the most need for help around the world, they're not hanging around on blockchains right now. And so you're not going to find them on, you know, on Bitcoin or on Tazos or on, you know, any of these platforms.
Starting point is 00:24:38 And so it's probably the wrong place to look for them right now in the same way, you know, like you think of the early internet. Eventually, everybody found their way to the internet and found it really valuable. and like almost, you know, they're, what, four or five billion people now who are online. So tons and tons of people in the world, including the global poor, use the internet. But it took a while for them to get on. I think you'll probably see the same trajectory for crypto, looking to the early adopters for crypto as a place to try to, you know, engage in philanthropy, especially if you're treating the global poor.
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Starting point is 00:28:00 A lot of these people, I think, are trying to think about how to give back. You guys might remember back in 2017, we had that anonymous Bitcoin person who donated $86 million, which they called the pineapple fund. How should people be thinking, people in crypto be thinking about how best to donate their money? Are there like particular frameworks that you think are useful? And obviously there are certain considerations like taxes and stuff that probably come into play here. Yeah, I can respond, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really hard question.
Starting point is 00:28:37 It's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about and still feel very uncertain about. Plent to spend a lot more time. I mean, I think like one sort of question is, I guess, donating now versus later is a big one, whether there's kind of the options of donating now or like investing and donating later. And that's kind of, I think there's like, yeah, to answer that, you have to sort of think about what sort of return on capital you're getting from your investments at the moment and what sort of returns you might expect to be getting from charities. And, you know, how how uncertain you are about charity and how much you think you might change your mind about what the best charities are in the future. Yeah, in terms of actually sort of thinking
Starting point is 00:29:18 about places to donate, I think like it has to start largely with like thinking about what you value and like, you know, do I value, you know, reducing the suffering of people or I don't know, empowering people or, you know, people, you know, in our country or other countries or animals, people in the future, kind of, yeah, think about what's most important to you and all that. And then I think, like, there are various kind of organizations
Starting point is 00:29:49 and people who have, like, done a lot of looking into charities and trying to, like, determine their effectiveness. I think, like, if well, was, like, really good kind of charity evaluator for looking at sort of global health and global poverty interventions. I think a lot of, like, people in effective altruism, like, center for effective altruism
Starting point is 00:30:08 have kind of like more sort of broad recommendations as well. The one thing that I would say, which I think maybe is not just a, you know, complete recapitulation of Caroline's point, is that I do think that you should have a very strong bias toward giving now as opposed to giving later. I think a lot of people have this belief that, okay, I'm going to kind of go Bill Gates style. I'm going to like make a bunch of money. And then, you know, at some point in the future, I'll know that I've made enough money,
Starting point is 00:30:36 which for a lot of people in crypto is, you know, It's like there's never enough money, but I think I imagine when they started their trip, I'm like, oh, I'll just make a couple million and that'll be enough. And then I'll, you know, I'll be happy. So one thing that I think probably all of us who've been in the space, you know, I think the three of us in this panel have been very fortunate that we've done very well in crypto. And we know a lot of people who've done extremely well in crypto. And the one thing that's really obvious is that there is no special amount of money that's going to make you happy. happiness is just totally orthogonal from how much money you make.
Starting point is 00:31:10 And when you realize that, the other thing you realize is that what you do, especially with respect to giving, also changes who you are. It really does affect over the next five to ten years of your life. If you try to go, I'll call it Bill Gates style, okay, I'm going to make as much money as I possibly can, and then when I'm 55 and, you know, I need to repair my reputation, then I'll go start, you know, giving it all away. And I think it's sort of much better. for the person who you become in the process of that, for you to give along the way, because
Starting point is 00:31:40 it, I think it's a little bit of a fallacy to think that even if when you are just kind of young and bright-eyed and kind of at the, at the, you know, early stages of your career, if you believe like, yeah, yeah, when I make all this money, I'm going to go give it away. I'm going to be this awesome person, but not right now. There's a good chance that by the time you make all that money, you're not going to be that awesome person anymore. And that's why I think it is actually really important just to kind of, maintain your own virtue as a human being to give along the way, even if it's not crazy,
Starting point is 00:32:12 you know, 50% or some huge amount of money, but just keep giving along the way and keep thinking actively about how to make your life about something bigger than just yourself. The way I would appreciate is that I would say don't give out of a sense of duty. Give because there's change you want to see in the world and, you know, hopefully it's positive change and think about, you know, what is the change you want to see in the world and how can you this enact it with giving? And, you know, to one of the point that was many in the earlier panel, very quickly you reach a level where your lifestyle is not going to change that much with more money. And so there's been a positive change, I would say, in the world, which is that
Starting point is 00:32:54 a lot of Western people used to buy these silly positional goods, like, you know, buying a lot of Gets and some sort of course. And in some sense, philanthropy has become, I mean, it started in the 19th century, but more and more and more and more it has become a positional good that people spend on. And it's more about, you know, it's about self-actualization. It's about saying like, okay, this is a change I'm going to make. I'm going to eradicate this disease or, you know, I'm going to make sure that people don't go hungry or, you know, this is a change I want to make. And I would say that's a, I would recommend approaching it through this lens rather than a lens of saying, like, what is my duty? What do I have to do?
Starting point is 00:33:31 I think it's a health. I think it's the health here to do it. But at the end of the day, it might lead you in the same direction anyway. All right. So we only have a few minutes left. I'm going to ask one question that actually came through in the suggestions that were pre-submended. And I think I tweet this to have my own take.
Starting point is 00:33:51 But somebody asked how NGOs and Dow's could work together, which I thought was interesting. But then it had me thinking, I wonder if NGOs kind of maybe are like this sort of of intermediary that crypto was trying to eliminate. So, you know, how would you figure out if an NGO kind of is like part of a bureaucratic problem or if, you know, they're actually maybe the on-the-ground experts who know better what to do with the money than a crypto person might? So I'm curious, you know, how you think of that. Well, at the expense of monopolize, go ahead and give my thoughts here is that.
Starting point is 00:34:27 I think asking the question of like, you know, are NGOs good? and do they belong in the future vision of the world where DAOs are a huge thing? It's almost like asking, like, do companies belong? Which, like, NGOs are just such a broad category. Like, there's so many different kinds of NGOs. And some of them are boring intermediaries who just kind of get in the way. And others of them are fantastic. And they do the on-the-ground work.
Starting point is 00:34:51 And they are the sort of last mile, which a DAO, almost by definition, cannot be because DAOs are not physical. They're not physically located anywhere or at least so far. So I think, you know, if anything, it seems like there's a natural cooperation that can't happen between DOWs as a way of sort of digital coordination of human beings and of capital, whereas NGOs, I think at their best, are ways to sort of tap into local knowledge and know-how and build local infrastructure in a way that requires you to be local, right? Like NGOs, almost by definition, are in a certain place. they're a non-governmental organization in a certain country, not associated with that government.
Starting point is 00:35:34 And some of them are great and some of them are awful. Same as Douse. There are some awful Dows and some great ones. I do think, you know, hopefully we see fewer or linear organizations involved, you know, to the point that Hesse was making earlier. At the end of the day, a lot of people know best what they need. And, you know, if you can get them cash and they know how to use it,
Starting point is 00:35:54 then sure you might still, you know, have some sort of organization involved and it might be an NGO on the last mile to distribute it. But I would say the amount of managerial overhead or discretion that's involved in these organizations can be a lot smaller than it is today. Okay, so we're going to close out. We have one minute. So try to think of something quickly off the top of your head. But this question came in from YouTube from James Hartley.
Starting point is 00:36:22 He asks, for people working in the crypto industry looking to move into a more impactful slash. altruistic role or company, what advice or opportunities or projects would you share? So looking for, you know, like one word to one sentence answers. Go work for FDX. Yeah, very great answer. Yep. Or come work for Alameda. Arthur.
Starting point is 00:36:48 There's two ways you can do. And again, I'm going to use some of some of your terminology here. You know, you can earn to give. So try to get a very high-paying job and give a bunch of money. And for some people that might be the most effective thing to do. do. But if you directly through your work, want to enact exchange, they are millions better things you can do
Starting point is 00:37:03 than work in crypto. And I love and I love crypto and I love this industry and everything about it. But you know, you'll have more, you know, you'll save more life. You'll serve more lies working on, you know, I don't know, better ways of fixing nitrogen to plants, you know, the impact or even self-driving
Starting point is 00:37:20 cars. Like the impact is just it's just a lot more massive. And I see this, you know, thinking that there's so much proper. like going to work for crypto exchange is not, is not it. I'm sorry, with all respect to the law for FDX is just, no. I had a feeling Arthur was going to go in that direction. So I'm not a panelist, but I will say I did mention a couple of the groups that are working
Starting point is 00:37:46 in this area that give and give crypto. There are others that are more like kind of focused in one area. I featured some of them on my show, like Code to Inspire, founded by Foreshda Furo. They do coding academies for girls in Afghanistan, and they accept crypto and teach their students to code solidity and things like that. So you can check them out. Yeah, I'm blinking on some of the names of the other ones that have been on my show. But you can actually just maybe scroll through Unchainedpodcast.com and kind of try to see what are some of the more on the ground type organizations that are working. Otherwise, this has been a super fun panel.
Starting point is 00:38:32 You know, it's like a really important topic, but I'm glad that we were also able to have a bit of spicy takes on both sides. So thank you so much to all of you panelists.

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