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Welcome back to Bitcoin Study Sessions.

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My name's Lucas.

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Over there is Grant Reichert.

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And today we are going over Crypto Sovereignty by Eric Kaysen, one of the more interesting

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books that we've read.

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Grant is super excited about this and he's holding that book up.

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We're going to let Grant take it from here.

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Sir, lay it down.

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I mean, we were excited because we've done some lead into this.

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when you get to the last two chapters of Eric Kaysen's Crypto Sovereignty,

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he says, you really need to read Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology before you go

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further. And we heeded that admonition. We talked about Heidegger's The Question Concerning

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Technology. If you're interested, check that out. I think it will be helpful for some of the later

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material we talk about today. You don't need to listen to that first necessarily, but it's all

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related. And so this book is a work of political philosophy. The subtitle is The Encrypted

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Political Philosophy of Bitcoin. So Crypto Sovereignty, the title, it bears within it

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some sort of encrypted political philosophy and discusses Bitcoin. And then Eric Kaysen,

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he's done a lot of podcasts. He's an incredible public intellectual, talked about his ideas in

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this book a lot hopefully we can bring out something new or you know just talk about it

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from a different perspective so we've heard case and talk this is kind of like a secondary resource

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talking about case and um there's also an experience to reading this book it's so case

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and writes with a sort of a lot of parts in his books the prose is kind of like nichi coming down

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from the mountain where you think he's a madman it's kind of a bit wild-eyed like someone who's

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just experienced something very, very important, and he wants to tell the people.

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And he's speaking in a very particular register that's adjusted to the event that he's experienced,

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which is an almost religious revelation, as we'll see, into the nature of politics.

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And it's not something we need to know a lot of background philosophy, but that helps.

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So we're going to go into a bit of the background philosophy in order to kind of bring out a

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lot of what Kaysen is talking about, but again, a very beautiful prose style in here and very

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distinct. So we'll begin with the subtitle, The Encrypted Political Philosophy of Bitcoin,

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Encrypted, Hidden. This book is about a new way of seeing and understanding what Bitcoin is

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as a form of political philosophy. We know it as a monetary protocol, as many things,

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and this is Bitcoin as political philosophy. Bitcoin is inherently political, Kaysen says,

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and it changes the nature of not just politics, but political theory itself.

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In this book, a case that engages with some of the heavy hitters of philosophy like Heidegger,

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but also Agamben, Carl Schmitt, Thomas Hobbes, and others.

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The book, in engaging with those philosophers, is indeed not about money and more to do with being in our fiat world,

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being in a sort of Heideggerian sense of what is revealed to us when we see things correctly for the first time.

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The whole enterprise, very intricate.

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He capitalizes certain words to give them new import, new meaning, a new approach with language,

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to language in this topic, just as Heidegger did, which can seem, you know, kind of you have to adjust your ear to it.

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But he's saying something in this style for a reason. I hope we're going to get into that.

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So let's start with some of the underlying political philosophy.

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And then Lucas and I are going to kind of hash that apart. So start with Thomas Hobbes. Cason repeats one of his phrases that Carl Schmitt later made a big deal out of, that authority, not truth, makes legitimacy.

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So Thomas Hobbes, an early political philosopher, had this idea that authority, not truth, makes legitimacy.

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So Hobbes' idea is kind of that the state, through its power and laws, determines what is legitimate and legal.

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That's not determined by what is simply true.

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It's the state saying what is the case.

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The state emerges, in Hobbes' estimation, from a state of nature, a war of all against all, bloody and tooth and nail.

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The state of nature is like anarchy, Mad Max, people kind of going around killing and taking.

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And everybody's kind of completely horrified by that state of nature, that war of all against all.

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So we come together, enter into a social contract to give up our complete freedom to act as however we would will.

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And instead, we collectively, through this social contract, leave the state of nature to live under the order of a sovereign whose authority makes legitimacy for us.

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That's kind of the general Hobbesian idea.

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But how the sovereign actually operates is a bit different.

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The nature of the sovereign is actually to put itself in a state of war against the population through something called the state of exception.

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This is an idea elaborated later on by Carl Schmitt, the philosopher Carl Schmitt, who was a Nazi jurist, almost executed at Nuremberg, but he wasn't actually sentenced to execution for his role, but he was kind of barred from later teaching positions.

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He described the way that the modern sovereign operates, which is through the state of exception.

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So the sovereign is kind of he who decides when an exception from the law can be made.

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We consider the law to be universal, right?

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It applies to everybody. That's the nature of law. But is actually the sovereign the one who has the authority to ultimately say not this time and make an exception from the law?

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Many examples abound, of course. We could look at the COVID lockdowns, an extended state of emergency where the sovereign declares exemptions from constitutional guarantees.

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And even certain people within that framework are granted further exemptions from the COVID lockdown.

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The sovereign then in the state of exception is above the law. The subject, all of us humble folk are below the law. Everyone is subject to the sovereign state of exceptions, including kind of the bare biological life of the subject.

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The liberal order itself, in that sense, according to Carl Schmitt, is fascist in that we're kind of always and constantly in a state of emergency in which exceptions to liberalism are constantly being made by those in power.

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The Constitution is something that doesn't bind the sovereign. The sovereign can always make an exception to it. And that, Cason's going to focus on, is really the nature of sovereignty as it arrives to us in political philosophy.

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Does that make sense, Lucas, as far as kind of an outline of political philosophy from Thomas Hobbes, us exiting the state of nature through social contract, but then kind of realizing that the social contract is actually something in which the sovereign is able to declare exceptions for itself from that social contract?

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Yeah. Yeah. So the nature of, of civilization is that people get together and they choose to cooperate and collaborate and compromise and they choose to favor, I guess. Right. They choose to favor. These are my people. This is my tribe.

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Yes. And and we will favor these people over other people so long as these people. And you know that these are my people because they are the ones who are believing in the same thing. They are giving up the same thing. They are sacrificing the same thing. They are following the same path.

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they are in a word assimilating i guess to the culture that has been predetermined that this

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is going to be our people right so yeah they're accepting yeah yeah yeah so then you yeah so this

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yeah it makes perfect sense i think that you end up in that instance what you do is you you give

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overpower to a higher authority. And that higher authority is an institution. And that institution

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in this example is the state. The state is then charged with creating the rules. I won't call them

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laws. I think physics is law. Code is law. Everything else is a rule because these rules,

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like laws, laws are things that can't be broken. These rules, they can be broken.

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These are the rules of how we organize. These are the rules set out in the Constitution.

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And yet, you're right, we find that whenever it is convenient for the sovereign, for the state, that the state grants itself or grants its most favored loyalists, I guess, exception to those rules and says, well, you know, rules for thee and none for me or at least none for my friends, right?

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Friends, and just to seize on that, that's exactly what Carl Schmitt talks about next as Cason explores his philosophy.

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Essential to the state of exception is the friend-enemy distinction.

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The state of exception depends on exactly what you're describing, which is a politicized identity.

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Whether you are friend or enemy depends on how you are defined according to the prevailing emergency that provides the basis for the state of exception.

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in-group and out-group. You said loyalist. That's a perfect synonym, too. We label friends for those

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who are allies who we work with. Enemies are those that are set for the camps and for death,

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right? That's the political, the nature of the political, to create friends who are part of

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society and enemies who are declared outlaws outside of society. The state, in that way,

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It controls identity.

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The sovereign expropriates the political being of people, also thereby all else, because the political is kind of universal at this point.

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They're biological being forcing vaccinations, maybe things like that, leaving people as kind of a vacant and empty machine to be operated on by the state.

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Privacy then is central to the state of exception in that it's kind of abhorrent to it, right?

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Because the state needs to be able to find, identify, locate and identify people so that it can label them as friend or as enemy.

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Yeah, so that's that key. I mean, that's key to the political philosophy that Kaysen wants to say Bitcoin reacts against is that friend enemy distinction.

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Yeah, so that's interesting. So to the state, privacy is counter to what it desires because what it desires is to label people as friend or enemy so that it knows who it needs to offer exceptions to.

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Yeah.

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Or maybe not needs to offer exceptions to, but who it can curry favor from by offering exceptions and who it can punish by excluding them from exceptions.

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And that creates a draw, a magnetic draw for people to be close to the state that they are, you know, to prove their loyalty, to be a good upstanding party member, to be a, you know, a dyed in the wool, a straight line voter such that their loyalty is never questioned because they believe that is the way to get them close.

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to favor, which I think is actually wrong, right?

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The only way that you get close to that is to have something of power that threatens the

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state, and then the state wants to curry your favor because you have power, not because

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you offer loyalty.

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Or steal that power from you, steal the thing from you, and give it to its supporters.

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Does that not seem, though, just like totally psychologically correct as far as how you experience politics?

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Like people on the left, people on the right, as soon as they learn that somebody is of a different political orientation, there's an enmity that arises.

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I just see this.

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I mean, the culture war and everything like that is so divisive.

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And you just feel that like it destroys friendships.

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And there's just like you can only be a friend or an enemy.

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And it's determined within politics by what you believe.

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Today, yes.

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Yeah. In populist times, yes. When we were growing up, it wasn't that way. I know. Like, I remember, you know, somebody maybe saying, oh, that guy's a Democrat, but it wasn't said with, like, hate. It wasn't said with disgust.

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It was more so said with, I don't even know how to say it, but, you know, like there wasn't the vitriol that is, because now we don't say Democrat or Republican anymore.

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Not as much, yeah.

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You know, we say woke or MAGA.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And that doesn't really represent the—

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It almost might have been like the political consensus was more we were all kind of the friend was a bigger encompassing category.

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Like left and right were not that far apart between like Bush and Clinton or whatever, as they are nowadays.

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But when Trump comes to power, there is I don't want to overestimate kind of the revolution that happened, but there was a populism that was inserted into politics that makes the division more stark.

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Well, yeah.

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And I think, I actually think that has to do more with the fact that we were just blissfully unaware to the propaganda.

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Maybe that we, we as a, you know, we as a nation, we as a people, and I'm not speaking just about people in the United States, but worldwide, we had a much higher level of faith in our institutions.

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and as such we found less to less to fight over i guess yeah but yeah that mainstream media that

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kind of unified us under one message drilled into us at the end of the exactly yeah yeah you've got

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you know three channels that say the same thing and so um now you have 4 000 channels that say

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4,000 different things or 4 million channels, maybe, that say 4 million different things.

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And yeah, it is the complex system that is no longer working and it's exploding.

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So Bitcoin as encrypted political philosophy is about rethinking the nature of this political

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philosophy from its roots.

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So that's kind of, I think, the overarching theme of Kaysen's project here.

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It's a new way of doing political philosophy.

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He comes back to this quote from Michel Foucault, who was a French theorist.

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I'll read the quote here and we'll talk about it.

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Foucault said, political theory has never ceased to be obsessed with the person of the sovereign.

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Such theories still continue today to busy themselves with the problem of sovereignty.

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What we need, however, is a political philosophy that isn't erected around the problem of sovereignty

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nor therefore around the problem of law and prohibition.

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We need to cut off the king's head.

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In political theory, that still has to be done.

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So it's a really interesting thing because Foucault is saying,

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there's been many revolutions in the past.

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You cut off the king's head, a new party comes to power, they are the king.

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But the underlying political philosophy stays the same.

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We still have, we need a sovereign since Hobbes,

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that authority who's going to declare what is legitimate.

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That's never really been disputed.

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We just cut off the king's head and installed the new king.

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But Foucault was saying, and Cason is going to elaborate on, we need to cut off the king's head kind of abstractly as an idea.

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The whole idea of a king, the idea of a sovereign needs to change.

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I'm going to change what that means.

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So crypto-sovereignty, again, that's the title of the book, is going to invert Hobbes' construction.

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Hobbes said authority, not truth, makes legitimacy.

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and crypto sovereignty is going to say truth not authority makes legitimacy um crypto sovereignty

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then is going to be an attempt to give political theory a political theory of sovereignty that is

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not based on the sovereign as we've kind of been talking about and thinking about it but again to

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cut off the idea of the king the idea of the sovereign from political philosophy um yeah and

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So crypto sovereignty, one tentative approach to a definition as we move towards it then is going to be kind of the taking of military cryptographic tools and turning them into tools of personal freedom.

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Do you have anything to add?

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Like that's the overall project.

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I just, I cannot help myself but be reminded of the abstract power-based hierarchies that Jason Lowry talks about in software in that, you know, in the institution or in the sovereign world, that authority is what determines power.

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It's not truth that because I have this office, because I have this title, because I have these stripes on my shoulder or these ribbons on my chest, then I am bestowed with power that I can wield over people at will.

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yet he he makes the point in his book he makes the point you know that you take those things off

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you take that title away you take that jacket off and those ribbons and those medals that

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you're looking at a person and that person is no different than the person over which they are

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trying to wield power and so now we we step more into the realm of truth is power because power is

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truth. And that's kind of what Bitcoin is showing us, is that the most powerful is the most truthful.

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Yeah. And Kesa has a really funny image. So he talks about the king behind the curtain,

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you know, Wizard of Oz. That's a great image of the sovereign, kind of robed in a mystical

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authority. We believe that they have this authority from God themselves. And they,

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from behind the curtain, make these laws that we all abide by. Then you rip the curtain back and

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And Kaysen kind of says, as an aside, like the king is there and probably touching himself.

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I mean, Kaysen has a way to kind of, you know, puncture the, I don't know what you would say, the false solemnity of power and show us for what it is.

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Humans and all their perversity trying to control other humans.

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So, yeah, go ahead.

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Well, I was just going to say one thing that I've never forgotten and it's always served me well.

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When I was like six years old, for the first time in my life, I met someone who was famous.

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And to this day, I actually don't even remember who that person was.

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And I remember the hype and the hubbub and everything.

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And then I met the person and I walked away.

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And I just remember thinking like, that's just a guy.

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Like, it's just a person.

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And I think we would all do well to remember that I think we would all do well to remember that regardless of what you think of of the stature and the and the status of people you know everybody poops everybody you know deep human truth

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Everybody looks funny naked. And we all share this frail humanity that is both empowering and insecure.

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Yeah. And crypto sovereignty is about that. It's a destituent power, Kaysen says. So a constituent power would be a power that constitutes authority or government, the robes, the crown that the kings wears and the military authority would give them.

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A destituent power is ripping off those robes. It destitutes a thing of something else. Destituent power removes power's arrogance instead of letting it constitute itself, make it into something.

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cryptography is that destituent power because it removes violence which is used as a constituent

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force by the state the state constitutes itself through the threat of violence over all the

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subjects um cryptography at the heart of bitcoin a military-grade technology military and intent

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but destituent by evading violence removing the possibility of a state of exception you

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you gestured towards this earlier, code as law permits no exceptions. Decentralized operation

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has no king in the sense of a sovereign. No one controls it. Crypto sovereignty, in a sense,

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then allows the individual to have the power of exception over the state. I mean, think about it.

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We have a power to declare a state of emergency regarding the state to say, it's an emergency for

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you state, we're going to buy and use Bitcoin. We're going to take a power away from you to

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economically control us, to surveil us through our currency by withdrawing from that system.

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That's a state of emergency for a state that depends on that. And it's a state of exception

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that the people have to declare themselves above and beyond that created system. To quote Kaysen,

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people put their economic, social, and political rights into a new digital commonwealth that is

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inviolable and beyond the power of any and all government to violate. We force the state of

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emergency against that government by refusing to use its money. We use Bitcoin then as a

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destituent power through its cryptographic element. Bitcoin is about that capacity and demand

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for law to remain neutral and accessible to everybody, or as you phrased it, just to be

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law and not just a rule that's enforced with violence without regard to class, race, religion,

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political identity. And remember, when you remove identity, you cannot identify somebody as the

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enemy. The state loses its power to create that friend-enemy distinction. The real state of

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emergency begins when you choose Bitcoin, which is like saying to every state, come and take it.

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yeah because you can no longer discriminate so yeah when it i i use bitcoin because i believe

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in america not because i don't right right i yeah i think that it is important that the ideals of

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America, which Balji accurately describes as internet values are American values. These are,

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you know, fairness, equality, diversity. These are the things that were hijacked for racist reasons.

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But it is the truth of the way that this country was ideally founded, which is that we believe

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that everyone should have an opportunity to, an opportunity, not a guarantee, but an opportunity

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to do their best and to be rewarded for that. And if we live in a world where we can identify

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people and we can say, well, that person is undeserving because of this thing, be they're

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undeserving because of who they voted for, because of where they were born, because of the color of

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their skin, because of their gender, their political aspirations or such, then we end up

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with the instance of the reason why, and we'll look back on this as the trigger of de-dollarization

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across the world, but when the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian oligarchs and they

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just froze their money, that was a moment across the world that everyone realized that,

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oh, yes, there are exceptions.

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And those exceptions are that if you're favored, then you're allowed to play the game.

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If you're not favored, then you're not allowed to play the game.

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And what we all, I think, kind of inherently realize is that if everyone is allowed to

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play the game, it's a better game.

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And so Bitcoin is a better game that everyone is allowed to play.

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It does not discriminate.

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It allows us to move forward without the high handedness of sovereign choice of exception.

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Yeah, that's such a great example.

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The sanctioning of Russia through freezing, using the dollar kind of as a weapon and freezing.

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it's like the state of exception the dollar had become a force exerting itself as sovereign

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u.s sovereignty over the world the world reserve currency imparted to the united states a special

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privilege over the rest of the world a sort of sovereignty um and with that with sovereignty

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always comes that power to declare the state of exception if you are the sovereign um and that's

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exactly what happened. The United States declared an exception to the constitution of the dollar.

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The constitution might have said, everybody can use this to transact. The sovereign comes in and

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says, not you. It has the ability, if you reveal your identity to it, to say, you are an enemy,

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Russia, and therefore we define you as such. You're outside of the order of the dollar.

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A state of exception is declared. And that's exactly what Bitcoin does not allow in the

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protocol is it's borderless and people can transact on it regardless of who they are,

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where they're from. Friends and enemies don't make sense. Everybody's a friend to the protocol.

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All hashing power goes to the same result. And as a result, you know, the numbers,

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no one ever knows the true numbers, but we can confidently say that when that happened,

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greater than 80%, close to 90% of the world's trade was conducted in dollars.

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It's steadily moved down to the point now where I think it's in the 50s, 50% range, high 50s, low 60s, something like that.

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And BRICS has arisen, right? Brazil, Russia, India, China.

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And this just started as, oh, here's four countries that are somewhat powerful on their own.

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And if they come together, then maybe they can trade a little bit amongst themselves.

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and now there's over 20 countries that are involved in BRICS.

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So again, we've talked about this before,

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but the position is way less important than the trajectory.

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And the trajectory is that dollar, it's so unique,

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or not unique, but it's so revelatory to see

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how weak of a weapon the dollar actually is

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because it can only be used as a weapon as a threat.

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when they actually use it as a weapon, when they actually say, oh, you're not allowed and we're going to take your money, we're going to freeze your money,

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then what they did was they showed the weakness of it.

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That is a weakness, right?

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The weakness is that you can discriminate and you can choose who to allow exceptions to.

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And as a result, that weakness is being exploited.

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All the central banks around the world are accumulating gold.

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They're accumulating Bitcoin. They're accumulating silver for some absurd reason. But what they're doing is they're proving that, you know, the bully took a swing and it didn't kill them. And they realize that what doesn't kill them makes them stronger. And they can come together and form something that is powerful.

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Yeah, reasserting their own, attempting to reassert their own sovereignty, still operating within the Hobbesian paradigm where they want to be the one, the authority that declares legitimacy.

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Yes.

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So another aspect I want to zero in on that's really fascinating in the way the case in talks is the subtitle, the encrypted political philosophy of Bitcoin.

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So encrypted, consider the root word of crypto.

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He goes back and looks at the Greek roots as Heidegger does, right?

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Looks at the language we use.

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It means hidden.

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Cryptocurrency, cryptography, a cryptic statement.

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You don't really know what the person is saying.

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A crypt is hidden under the church to store sacred remains, hidden and concealed.

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Kaysen writes, crypto has always been about the form of power which is now enshrined within the modern science of cryptography.

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It has always been about the capacity to conceal and to hold secrets for oneself and how such secrets generate their own intrinsic power from their being as a secret.

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So crypto, again, this is I think a really important point.

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is military technology, this power of concealment of information, the power to make secrets,

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to keep them secret.

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We saw cryptanalysis breaking codes in World War II.

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Military-grade technology at the heart of Bitcoin, although its power is as a destituate

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sort of power, not constituting through violence, but removing the possibility of violence in

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certain instances.

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As a political philosophy, crypto-sovereignty is, as Kaysen kind of works it out, a type of anarchism, crypto-anarchism.

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Anarchism, Kaysen defines it generally, radical freedom of individuals to choose how to self-organize through decentralization and the diffusion of power through various non-state organizations.

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organizations. There are many types of anarchism, left anarchism, right anarchism,

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anarcho-capitalism, but Cason kind of focuses on what unites or should unite all forms of true

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anarchism, which is a revolutionary struggle against any and all states. Again, the idea is

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not to cut off the head of the king, but to cut off the idea of a king to subtract that from

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political philosophy. It's a revolutionary struggle against the state as such, which is,

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I mean, Cason says he's even more important than Bitcoin. He's not a maxi in that sense.

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He recognizes the possibility of compromise failure of any particular protocol.

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But the goal remains the same. You need a way to have a destituate power against the state.

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So crypto anarchism, I think is really interesting the way he kind of works it out,

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hides the ideology from the people who advance it.

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So, you know, rather there is a way,

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so crypto anarchism is a type of anarchism.

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You may have heard people use phrases like

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crypto fascist and crypto communist.

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That's when somebody conceals their own political views

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so they can operate and kind of spread them on the sly.

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But crypto anarchism is different.

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It's when the philosophy conceals itself

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even from its own adherence,

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kind of the Trojan horse idea,

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Bitcoin offering new truth

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to replace authority

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without people even

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consciously articulating it as such.

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If you're participating in the protocol,

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you are, in a sense,

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advancing crypto anarchism.

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As a silent revolution.

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Yeah.

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Right?

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This is...

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Well, I was just to expound on that

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just a tad bit.

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It doesn't require marching.

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It doesn't require war.

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It doesn't require voting.

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It doesn't require moving, even though I know he talks about exit over loyalty.

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But this is exit not from a geography, but exit from a political system to a different political system.

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Yeah, exit from a political philosophy to a different.

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Yeah, political philosophy, you're right.

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to a different type of philosophy and a philosophy grounded on the idea of

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of scarcity and on power and on truth verifiability yeah um openness while being anonymous um and so

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allowing

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yeah it's just

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I think it's a

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testament to how early

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how early we are to the

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understanding of

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this part of the idea

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I don't think anyone can truly say

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that they really understand the implications

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of Bitcoin but

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if this is one of them

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then simply the idea that there are countries sovereigns that continue to either turn a blind eye to or support Bitcoin is I think telling because they don't probably quite understand the power of it that it it undermines the political philosophy that gives them power in a way.

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That seems like it can be impossible for them to ever regain power.

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Yeah.

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Once you lose power over the money, over how value is created and exchanged, you lose a lot of power.

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This discussion of power is incredibly relevant to you mentioned it a bit earlier.

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Truth as power.

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Kacen talks about the relationship of crypto sovereignty to power.

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So even though it's destituent, it is a destituent power. He calls, I think he borrows his term from somebody else, but the ciphernet, the name of crypto systems that are counter to state power. We have state money, state identity, state commerce, which is state crony capitalism, state education.

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you might say Skynet versus Cyphernet, right? Absolute surveillance and control versus a

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Cyphernet, a way of operating within cryptography to conceal the body, which is that thing upon which

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the state exerts its power, to conceal identity, that thing that the state needs in order to define

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a person or a demographic as the enemy or outlaw. It is then a new social contract. If Hobbes said

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You can get out of the state of nature by joining with other people to give your power to a sovereign.

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That's the old Hobbesian framework.

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We all agree to give up freedom to the sovereign in order to get out of the state of nature.

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The blockchain is the new social contract.

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We can enter into agreement with others for peace without a sovereign by putting our value on the blockchain, which bears a truth that is not bound by the state.

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um yeah there's more to that but is there anything on that

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well truth is power power is truth might is right right is might yeah that's lowry's idea again back

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to the what you were saying there the true power is power and not kind of the false

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regalness of the king the the god king that claims to have a sort of divine connection to

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power and then we all abide by it as they operate behind a curtain the new social contract is based

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on a new oath and this is also something that case and dials in on from the philosophy of giorgio

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gambin um the idea of the oath um from his gambin's book the sacrament of language which i'm not going

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to claim to be an expert on a gambin's philosophy which is very intricate but the idea i think is

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kind of the oath has been used since ancient times to invoke gods in a sort of performative

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speech act.

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The oath names a god, makes them presents, gives the authority of the god to try to make

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our words have value in order to secure performance of what we say we're going to do.

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Words are so cheap.

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Humans lie.

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We're deceitful.

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But maybe you make people place their hand on a Bible, swear an oath on the Bible, invoke

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the name of their God. That's kind of what the oath has been trying to do over time is to make

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our words have value. Bitcoin makes words a true oath. Once again, Kaysen points out,

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there's kind of a liturgy through open source code in the form of mathematics, which is divine

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in the sense of it's not created by man, it's already here. Maybe you could even say it's given

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to us by reality itself, or God, if that's how you view things, the private password that you have

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becomes like the holy name of God that we swear on. It's mathematically impossible to break it.

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Your oath is your word, is your private keys. To quote Kaysen, it is this spectacular,

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seemingly unbreakable power found in crypto that is the very proof of the eminence of God,

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of a God who loves humanity so spectacularly that he left a secret for us to discover that

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is the power of cryptography in a fallen world.

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And to quote Cason again, each and every crypto transaction is a statement of truth regarding

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the production and social ownership of coins.

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So with cryptography, then wealth is no longer tied to material objects, whether a paper

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dollar or gold or, you know, the military that backs the dollar.

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So it's now, you know, when wealth is material, the state has control over it, the ability

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to control it through violence.

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But now property adheres in the oath itself.

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There is a new social commons around immaterial wealth.

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It is an oath that is freely chosen.

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We can choose to swear on the blockchain, essentially, whereas fiat, the oath is forced

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on us.

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00:39:40,530 --> 00:39:46,470
that, you know, the access to the dollars we've talked about is permission based.

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You have to be allowed into it, but you also kind of have to use it.

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So the oath is something that is without value because the state can constantly declare exceptions to it and print as much money as it wants.

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Whereas Bitcoin, again, the oath is not. It's different.

394
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yeah by the nature of your geography where you live where you do business you have no choice

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but to under the threat of punishment and violence use that use that dollar use that

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yen use that yuan yeah that real or that bolivar and

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this is there are so many things about bitcoin that are fascinating but the thing And one of the things that I think is truly fascinating is that it voluntary is that this is a voluntary adoption that people choose

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And we can compare things, but.

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It's like a true social contract.

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The Hobbesian social contract was always a fiction.

401
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We never all actually got together in state of nature to exit it.

402
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We were born into it.

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We were born into it.

404
00:40:57,481 --> 00:40:59,061
But Bitcoin, it is a choice.

405
00:40:59,061 --> 00:41:19,940
Yeah. And so to think that there's this thing that we can choose to participate in that has garnered, you know, 100, 200 million people who are believers now in 17 years.

406
00:41:19,940 --> 00:41:33,400
yeah it just gives you i think overall it gives me a lot of faith in the ability of people to

407
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:38,981
rationally choose the thing that is best for not just them but for the people around them for

408
00:41:38,981 --> 00:41:46,920
humanity um which is another thing that's fascinating right because the uh everyone

409
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:52,740
choosing Bitcoin for themselves, the selfish act, is also the best thing for humanity.

410
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:59,440
But there are certainly people that are in a position where choosing fiat for themselves

411
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:05,860
is a better choice than choosing Bitcoin, at least short term, but worse for humanity.

412
00:42:05,860 --> 00:42:12,460
And so we come back to this, you know, we no longer are living in a scarcity mindset.

413
00:42:12,460 --> 00:42:25,340
We're no longer living in this idea that if you have, I must take because there is collaboration and cooperation instead of competition.

414
00:42:25,541 --> 00:42:38,900
Yeah. And, you know, I don't know how much of this is just me romanticizing it, but the increasing adoption of Bitcoin, being able to go to a merchant that has Square for the point of sale and then using Bitcoin.

415
00:42:38,900 --> 00:42:43,021
I did that yesterday at the local coffee shop and it just felt different.

416
00:42:43,260 --> 00:42:46,940
And again, maybe that's I'm pretty steeped in the political philosophy of Bitcoin, but

417
00:42:46,940 --> 00:42:51,460
it just like it felt more intimate that it was the giving of value directly.

418
00:42:51,620 --> 00:42:52,260
It wasn't as weird.

419
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:56,541
I usually give a credit card and the credit card has always seemed to me like this fantastic

420
00:42:56,541 --> 00:42:56,920
thing.

421
00:42:56,981 --> 00:43:01,160
I'm spending credit like I have no idea what's going on, but it just it just felt different

422
00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:05,120
to spend like an oath was being executed immediately.

423
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:12,541
I swore on that Bitcoin, the blockchain, and I immediately transacted it over to them with that intermediary.

424
00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:17,880
And again, Bitcoin is something of a Trojan horse, so not everybody's going to feel that.

425
00:43:17,981 --> 00:43:23,420
But I think once you learn a little bit about Bitcoin, it does feel different even to use it like that.

426
00:43:24,420 --> 00:43:29,460
There's something very psychological about credit, too, because you go and you pay for that coffee.

427
00:43:29,460 --> 00:43:31,880
yet in your mind

428
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:32,660
you know that

429
00:43:32,660 --> 00:43:35,100
the rent has yet to come due

430
00:43:35,100 --> 00:43:36,081
on that coffee.

431
00:43:36,380 --> 00:43:36,420
Yeah.

432
00:43:36,660 --> 00:43:37,640
That you know

433
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:38,140
you know

434
00:43:38,140 --> 00:43:39,680
and I think about this

435
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:41,180
every time that I pay a bill

436
00:43:41,180 --> 00:43:42,700
every time that I buy food

437
00:43:42,700 --> 00:43:44,220
I just think

438
00:43:44,220 --> 00:43:45,021
oh you know

439
00:43:45,021 --> 00:43:46,120
that's going to be

440
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:47,860
a bigger credit card bill

441
00:43:47,860 --> 00:43:48,820
at the end of the month.

442
00:43:48,860 --> 00:43:49,061
Right.

443
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:50,740
And it's constantly

444
00:43:50,740 --> 00:43:51,860
hanging over you

445
00:43:51,860 --> 00:43:53,501
especially if you're in a state

446
00:43:53,501 --> 00:43:54,940
where you're

447
00:43:54,940 --> 00:43:55,380
you know

448
00:43:55,380 --> 00:43:56,920
like financially insecure.

449
00:43:58,260 --> 00:43:58,800
But

450
00:43:59,460 --> 00:44:03,140
When you pay with Bitcoin, it is done.

451
00:44:03,541 --> 00:44:04,620
It's behind you.

452
00:44:04,720 --> 00:44:05,300
It's gone.

453
00:44:06,780 --> 00:44:08,120
You've made the choice.

454
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:17,800
And now you get to move free without that residual weight of that debt hanging over you.

455
00:44:18,660 --> 00:44:22,680
This is why Dave Ramsey has such a big population following him, right?

456
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:27,501
Like, yeah, he gives he gives the worst economic advice you could give people.

457
00:44:27,581 --> 00:44:32,001
Yet he gives the best psychological advice you could give people, which is don't have debt.

458
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:49,640
And it's it's fascinating, you know, because people, despite it being the less prudent thing to do in terms of economics, it is the correct thing to do in terms of psychology.

459
00:44:49,640 --> 00:45:00,561
And how you feel is a way better determinant of your life experience than what's in your bank account.

460
00:45:00,561 --> 00:45:12,340
Yeah, we talked about that in relation to Heidegger, that maybe sometimes you experience like an incoate sense of violation as you interact with modern technologies and you can't quite put your finger on it.

461
00:45:12,380 --> 00:45:15,840
But sometimes it's helpful to really explore the psychology of that.

462
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:23,320
Why does it feel false or filthy or degrading in some way when something happens through technology?

463
00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:26,420
It's not a failure or defect of the person.

464
00:45:26,420 --> 00:45:30,120
It's something new that technology is doing to us.

465
00:45:30,561 --> 00:45:35,940
And yeah, I think there is a possibility of Bitcoin to have a healthier relation in that way.

466
00:45:37,061 --> 00:45:37,200
Yeah.

467
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:38,240
So.

468
00:45:38,501 --> 00:45:40,840
And we're just giving, we're giving away, right?

469
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,900
Like every time we use facial recognition, every time we use a thumb parent.

470
00:45:45,240 --> 00:45:45,541
Right.

471
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:54,680
It, we know, even if we just think that it's so convenient, we also know that we're giving something up.

472
00:45:54,860 --> 00:45:54,981
Yeah.

473
00:45:55,380 --> 00:45:57,541
We're giving a part of ourselves away.

474
00:45:57,541 --> 00:46:06,920
away and we're not giving it away to a benign overseer we're giving it away to someone who

475
00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:16,400
for for lack of a better term weaponizes that information uh in order to extract more value

476
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:21,300
yeah it's part of our identity and identity to the state is something upon which it can hang

477
00:46:21,300 --> 00:46:26,440
that friend enemy distinction so this new oath then brings us out of the friend enemy distinction

478
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:32,880
which causes Bitcoin itself to be kind of declared enemy of modern states by freeing wealth from the

479
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:41,460
state. Kaysen mentions that other cryptos are not the enemy. They are kind of reformist at best with

480
00:46:41,460 --> 00:46:46,100
regards to the state. They don't have this radical encrypted political philosophy at their heart.

481
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:53,260
Bitcoin though removes the distinction friend-enemy because it removes identity from individual users

482
00:46:53,260 --> 00:46:55,600
so they can't be classified in that way.

483
00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:58,220
Satoshi provides the perfect example of this, right?

484
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:00,620
He would have been public enemy number one.

485
00:47:00,700 --> 00:47:03,180
He would be rotting at a dungeon if he had an identity.

486
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:06,100
He'd be the subject of numerous lawsuits,

487
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,920
people trying to claw some sort of value out of him.

488
00:47:09,521 --> 00:47:11,380
But he exists without a state identity.

489
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:13,920
He has no head to cut off.

490
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:16,340
And he was a philosopher too.

491
00:47:16,340 --> 00:47:20,880
He kind of comes across as very careful in his words, and he was.

492
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:39,420
And Kaysen has a quote from him. He mentions a couple of times. So Satoshi says, someone kind of says, you will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography. And Satoshi says, yes, but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

493
00:47:39,420 --> 00:47:43,521
governments are good at cutting off the heads or no so that's not part of his quote but is

494
00:47:43,521 --> 00:47:48,981
the idea that we can win a new territory of freedom is something that satoshi explicitly

495
00:47:48,981 --> 00:47:58,360
formulated and through case and talks about the figure of satoshi um and the messianic potential

496
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:05,800
of bitcoin and when he talks you know uses words like oath and messianic he's it's kind of a

497
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:11,400
religious terminology, which can make some people rubbed in the wrong way. But what he's doing is

498
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:17,380
taking seriously that he's having a conversation about political power and sovereignty, which has

499
00:48:17,380 --> 00:48:21,920
always been enmeshed in theological concepts, whether we like that or not. The idea of the

500
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:27,880
state as wielding kind of the temporal power of this world and also authority from God is just

501
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:34,420
like intimately wound up into concepts of modern theory about the state. They're kind of secularized

502
00:48:34,420 --> 00:48:41,521
theological concepts um schmidt talked about how um there's at least two ways that the state is kind

503
00:48:41,521 --> 00:48:47,300
of a secularized theology a political theology with just first the historical development the

504
00:48:47,300 --> 00:48:52,340
actual way that it happened from theology to god kings into politics the new nation state

505
00:48:52,340 --> 00:48:58,521
an omnipotent god to an omnipotent lawgiver and there's also kind of an analogical similarities

506
00:48:58,521 --> 00:49:04,220
and systems where um exception in law that ability of the sovereign to declare exception is like

507
00:49:04,220 --> 00:49:09,160
God's power to declare, to do a miracle, which is like an exception from natural law.

508
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:13,340
And there's a quote from Wittgenstein, if the person has any residual kind of

509
00:49:13,340 --> 00:49:17,780
uneasiness about talking in theological terms in order to get to the root of the matter.

510
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:20,200
Wittgenstein, the philosopher, said at one point,

511
00:49:20,620 --> 00:49:25,920
I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.

512
00:49:26,340 --> 00:49:30,501
I think that that really gets at the heart of it. You know, you might not be a religious person,

513
00:49:30,501 --> 00:49:42,601
But man is religious in a deeper sense in that our, you know, sociology or anthropology or whatever, our history has been built on relationships to the divine, including our political philosophy.

514
00:49:43,501 --> 00:49:48,720
And so kind of as a jumping point from that, Cason says Bitcoin is messianic.

515
00:49:48,820 --> 00:49:49,640
It gives hope.

516
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:58,581
The state is about wedding violence to the sacred, declaring who can be killed, wedding violence to an idea of God through the oath.

517
00:49:59,300 --> 00:50:10,101
Bitcoin does that through its own oath, through which it assumes a authority that is inviolable, a new relation to truth, and in that way brings hope.

518
00:50:10,101 --> 00:50:21,160
It's also messianic in that Satoshi is kind of the first prophet of the digital age, without body, anonymous, so perfectly digital, nobody to kill or sue.

519
00:50:21,601 --> 00:50:26,101
And he reveals something new to us and also does something else.

520
00:50:26,101 --> 00:50:32,440
he gives us a model, we can also walk away in the same way that Satoshi walked away.

521
00:50:34,140 --> 00:50:41,101
So, I mean, does that sound with you, I guess, Lucas, that if we want to talk deeply about

522
00:50:41,101 --> 00:50:46,900
what Bitcoin is in relation to political philosophy, in relation to human nature,

523
00:50:46,900 --> 00:50:50,800
we're going to necessarily be talking in theological terms?

524
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:51,160
Yeah.

525
00:50:56,101 --> 00:51:09,001
I certainly know of people that are fervent believers in Bitcoin that do not talk about it in theological terms.

526
00:51:09,001 --> 00:51:33,300
However, in those people, I also see less overall belief in the things that Bitcoin does and more of an opportunistic, more of a number go up type of mechanism for their belief.

527
00:51:33,300 --> 00:51:35,581
As an investment thesis, kind of.

528
00:51:35,581 --> 00:51:58,101
Yeah. And I was talking about this with a couple guys the other day. And I was trying to describe why I feel it's important for people to understand Bitcoin. And I gave the example. It's like there are fit people and there are fat people who don't believe in Bitcoin.

529
00:51:58,101 --> 00:52:02,360
but people who understand Bitcoin,

530
00:52:02,940 --> 00:52:04,320
they're pretty much fit

531
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:06,021
or they're trying to get fit.

532
00:52:07,140 --> 00:52:08,300
And there are religious people

533
00:52:08,300 --> 00:52:09,541
and non-religious people

534
00:52:09,541 --> 00:52:12,840
but people who understand Bitcoin,

535
00:52:13,081 --> 00:52:14,680
they're pretty much religious

536
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:20,041
and there are people that value deep work

537
00:52:20,041 --> 00:52:22,240
and there are people that value distraction

538
00:52:22,240 --> 00:52:25,400
but if you understand Bitcoin,

539
00:52:25,700 --> 00:52:27,920
those people pretty much value deep work.

540
00:52:28,101 --> 00:52:36,061
And you can argue over the merits of the power of a meme and the power of a seven-second video.

541
00:52:36,220 --> 00:52:36,440
Yeah.

542
00:52:36,860 --> 00:52:41,640
But we all, deep down, we know what is right.

543
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:44,981
We are always pointed in the direction.

544
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:50,120
As a child, how many times did I hear that from my mom?

545
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:52,940
You know what's right.

546
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:55,880
And I remember thinking, no, I don't.

547
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:57,501
But, of course, you have a feeling.

548
00:52:58,101 --> 00:53:02,160
You always have a feeling when you're doing something, whether it's the right or the wrong thing.

549
00:53:02,541 --> 00:53:08,001
And that is perhaps your conscience speaking to you.

550
00:53:08,081 --> 00:53:11,440
And perhaps that conscience is a collective conscience.

551
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:16,180
And perhaps that collective conscience is a spirit that is greater than we all are.

552
00:53:16,460 --> 00:53:16,581
Yeah.

553
00:53:17,041 --> 00:53:27,160
But I do believe that all the good things, if you look at the community of people that are

554
00:53:28,101 --> 00:53:35,940
true believers and understanders and students of Bitcoin, there are through lines of similarity

555
00:53:35,940 --> 00:53:44,180
and those through lines pass through religion. So just for myself, I just went to church today

556
00:53:44,180 --> 00:53:50,300
for the first time in over a year, I think. And it's because I've been thinking more and more

557
00:53:50,300 --> 00:53:56,760
about this, less about Bitcoin and more about the things that Bitcoin have pushed me to think about.

558
00:53:56,760 --> 00:54:10,101
Yeah. So, yeah, it's been I would agree. I don't think that you can frame it without thinking of it in those ways. Like it's something that is true that we know is right.

559
00:54:10,101 --> 00:54:25,521
Yeah. And I mean, you also don't have to be religious. I think you just have to maybe acknowledge that religious concepts are so intertwined with the way that we think about the sovereign, the way that we think about political philosophy.

560
00:54:25,521 --> 00:54:30,960
it's like the religious vocabulary is simply unbeaten and enable us to grapple with certain

561
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:38,581
ideas that are abstract and so it's you know if you want to understand reality more even if you're

562
00:54:38,581 --> 00:54:44,240
not religious learn about the religious perspective the religious vocabulary and then you're going to

563
00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:52,940
understand a lot of terms that are being used and also have a fuller grasp i think on um yeah

564
00:54:52,940 --> 00:54:58,640
things like political philosophy. So, but we might ask then why is the messianic hope of

565
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:04,601
kind of like revealed to something like Bitcoin, right? A form of money, like that's the messianic

566
00:55:04,601 --> 00:55:11,280
hope. But of course, you know, anybody who is a Bitcoiner sees that, you know, what Bitcoin does,

567
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:15,920
it reveals what fiat always was, which was a form of theft, something very immoral.

568
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:22,501
It forces questions upon us about what wealth means to us, what it means to be fair.

569
00:55:22,940 --> 00:55:37,340
Really, again, religious ideas, you put it out, we all have a conscience, whether its origin is religious or some other thing. And Bitcoin forces into our conscious reflection certain ideas about morality.

570
00:55:37,340 --> 00:55:43,680
um it's not you know we all know if you've been studying it long enough bitcoin is not about money

571
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:49,800
but about you know other things related to value including accepting a power greater than the state

572
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:54,960
and that it requires the exercise of certain virtues even like free will to accept it to

573
00:55:54,960 --> 00:56:01,840
take the oath put your money in that form of verifiable form and also kind of humility to

574
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:05,700
walk into it at whatever point you're at, not having walked into it earlier.

575
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:12,800
So Bitcoin kind of begins a theological struggle over the wealth, over the meaning of wealth

576
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:13,481
and value.

577
00:56:15,180 --> 00:56:20,140
Sovereignty being a religious question, Bitcoin imparts a new form, crypto sovereignty.

578
00:56:20,501 --> 00:56:25,240
So again, that's also going to have a religious sort of vocabulary associated with it, even

579
00:56:25,240 --> 00:56:26,180
if you're not religious.

580
00:56:26,180 --> 00:56:35,700
yeah there's a quote here i want to read because i like it here it's talking about big case and

581
00:56:35,700 --> 00:56:40,200
talking about bitcoin's relation to truth from the outset of the creation of the time chain of

582
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:45,240
satoshi bitcoin has been nothing more than a mechanization of truth telling of what address

583
00:56:45,240 --> 00:56:51,820
owns what bitcoin and how many joules of energy were used to produce those bitcoins i like that

584
00:56:51,820 --> 00:56:53,740
because we talk about Bitcoin as truth.

585
00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:55,680
And, you know, there are,

586
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:58,521
these are the kind of propositional truth claims

587
00:56:58,521 --> 00:56:59,420
that it makes.

588
00:56:59,981 --> 00:57:02,340
And one of the biggest ones

589
00:57:02,340 --> 00:57:05,640
that Kaysen calls a theological promise

590
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:09,380
is that there will never be more than 21 million units.

591
00:57:09,720 --> 00:57:11,601
That's kind of almost,

592
00:57:11,700 --> 00:57:13,780
it's a quasi-religious claim maybe

593
00:57:13,780 --> 00:57:14,840
in that it's declaring

594
00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:18,660
that value will always be constructed in this way

595
00:57:18,660 --> 00:57:23,501
if you give this oath and place your value on the blockchain, I guess.

596
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:27,160
Hmm.

597
00:57:29,740 --> 00:57:30,300
Yeah.

598
00:57:30,820 --> 00:57:34,061
I mean, it breaks down for us what is truly important,

599
00:57:34,420 --> 00:57:40,440
is that going back to what Lynn Alden taught us in Broken Money,

600
00:57:41,041 --> 00:57:42,300
is that money is a ledger.

601
00:57:42,300 --> 00:57:50,001
and then we learned more about what a ledger can be.

602
00:57:50,101 --> 00:57:51,601
A ledger can be a physical ledger

603
00:57:51,601 --> 00:57:53,240
or it can be an abstract ledger.

604
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:59,300
And Bitcoin is a way,

605
00:58:00,300 --> 00:58:03,180
through the use of the mining mechanism,

606
00:58:03,180 --> 00:58:10,640
to make both a physical and a digital marker

607
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:18,521
in that in that ledger there's a there's a digital abstract a digital abstraction of real power

608
00:58:18,521 --> 00:58:27,940
um marked in that ledger um but it doesn't get there without power um and it's tied directly to

609
00:58:27,940 --> 00:58:35,360
it there is not a there's not a break in the chain of custody i guess of power there um

610
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:43,200
yeah provides us with this truth-telling mechanism this only truth-telling mechanism

611
00:58:43,200 --> 00:58:53,400
that we've ever had that to our knowledge can't be violated um you know the encyclopedia can be

612
00:58:53,400 --> 00:59:04,200
rewritten the laws of nature as we know them um are are they're temporary until proven otherwise

613
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:16,061
Yeah. You know, but yeah, we have this thing that for 17 years, it's told the truth. Yeah. And we can't say that about anything else.

614
00:59:16,061 --> 00:59:20,240
We can say, I'm going to give you this money in exchange for this item.

615
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:22,280
And then if you have a credit card, do it charge back.

616
00:59:22,420 --> 00:59:24,960
I'm going to give you this money for your bank account.

617
00:59:25,041 --> 00:59:28,660
And if you're the state, you can seize that bank account, declare a sovereign state of exception.

618
00:59:29,101 --> 00:59:32,001
With Bitcoin, settlement is final, near instantaneous.

619
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:34,180
And so the truth in here is in the act.

620
00:59:34,300 --> 00:59:36,460
You swear that the transfer value will happen.

621
00:59:36,541 --> 00:59:37,180
You make an oath.

622
00:59:37,860 --> 00:59:43,800
And there, by God or code or both, or the divinity of math or something like that, there it goes.

623
00:59:44,541 --> 00:59:45,021
Yeah.

624
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:45,420
Yeah.

625
00:59:45,420 --> 00:59:50,880
so yeah casein is engaging with a lot of different thinkers here that's one of the

626
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:55,981
really exciting parts of this book um if you're kind of a philosophy nerd or if you just want

627
00:59:55,981 --> 01:00:01,840
more engagement with other areas of thought and how bitcoin engages with us with it um

628
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:06,760
or how you can use those to engage with bitcoin this book is an excellent model for that and he

629
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:13,981
talks about another thinker paolo frere um he had a book called pedagogy of the oppressed and so

630
01:00:13,981 --> 01:00:18,541
So Kaysen kind of considers Bitcoin through that framework.

631
01:00:18,760 --> 01:00:28,900
Pedagogy in this sense that Paolo Freire is using it is about learning in a broad sense that includes the ways that we learn,

632
01:00:28,900 --> 01:00:37,320
in which you include the social, political, philosophical context in which we learn, in which learning itself is kind of an act of empowerment.

633
01:00:37,320 --> 01:00:46,180
so pelo friar's idea was kind of like um the oppressed and the oppressor are both trapped

634
01:00:46,180 --> 01:01:03,911
in different learning systems the oppressed segment learns to see themselves through education as stupid lazy unable to help themselves the oppressors learn a different set of kind of values beliefs self They learn that they have the right ideas

635
01:01:03,911 --> 01:01:06,050
They need to preserve and create structures

636
01:01:06,050 --> 01:01:12,131
in which the oppressed are taught to emulate the oppressor

637
01:01:12,131 --> 01:01:12,851
because they're right.

638
01:01:13,490 --> 01:01:16,631
And so pedagogy considers how education in this sense

639
01:01:16,631 --> 01:01:20,251
is kind of a system of control, you might say,

640
01:01:20,251 --> 01:01:23,571
or consciousness creation of the oppressor and the oppressed.

641
01:01:25,731 --> 01:01:26,831
But if we go ahead.

642
01:01:26,831 --> 01:01:27,671
Absolutely, right?

643
01:01:27,831 --> 01:01:29,351
I mean, entirely.

644
01:01:29,351 --> 01:01:36,050
We're currently living in this world where we have two generations,

645
01:01:36,450 --> 01:01:42,631
three generations really, of people that are coming to the realization

646
01:01:42,631 --> 01:01:52,930
that everything that they were taught was basically a diversion, that it was a distraction

647
01:01:52,930 --> 01:02:00,251
from learning something real, that you were encouraged to go do some white collar job

648
01:02:00,251 --> 01:02:09,071
that essentially, when you look at them, when you boil all of that stuff down, what it truly

649
01:02:09,071 --> 01:02:17,831
is is political maneuvering within an adult daycare system in order to extract value from

650
01:02:17,831 --> 01:02:27,071
people with real skill who have no choice but to trust you or have no choice but to

651
01:02:27,071 --> 01:02:33,751
give you their value even if they don't trust you that there's this extraction economy

652
01:02:33,751 --> 01:02:40,111
that is the majority of, you know, accounting,

653
01:02:40,851 --> 01:02:44,010
a lot of legal, a lot of medical,

654
01:02:45,710 --> 01:02:47,710
basically everything in media.

655
01:02:51,210 --> 01:02:54,651
You think about, like, insurance, all of these things.

656
01:02:54,891 --> 01:02:59,131
Like, God, who would have ever, by choice,

657
01:02:59,311 --> 01:03:03,591
if you're six years old and you go and somebody does a,

658
01:03:03,751 --> 01:03:09,831
you know, bring your dad to work day. And there's one guy, and this guy is the dude that's out

659
01:03:09,831 --> 01:03:17,631
climbing poles to, uh, to work on power lines. And he's got the knowledge of how electricity works

660
01:03:17,631 --> 01:03:21,710
and he's fit and he's buff and why he gets outside. And yeah, it's tough. Cause sometimes

661
01:03:21,710 --> 01:03:28,710
you go out in a blizzard and then you've got the fat guy with the stains on his shirt and the wide

662
01:03:28,710 --> 01:03:36,331
tie and he's like well i'm a insurance guy i basically scare people into giving me money

663
01:03:36,331 --> 01:03:39,811
in exchange for telling them that i'll have their back at the end of the day

664
01:03:39,811 --> 01:03:44,571
and you're like i would never want to be that guy i would never in a lifetime

665
01:03:44,571 --> 01:03:50,331
i always i used to make the joke that what do strippers and insurance agents have in common

666
01:03:50,331 --> 01:03:57,851
and it's that nobody grows up wanting to be either one of them but you put how much you put a number

667
01:03:57,851 --> 01:04:03,831
above them. And that number is how much they take home. And here's the small town insurance agent

668
01:04:03,831 --> 01:04:08,510
making half a million dollars a year. And here's the guy climbing poles making 80 grand a year.

669
01:04:08,510 --> 01:04:12,771
Yeah. But the management of risk is an important enterprise, right? I mean, we need to,

670
01:04:12,831 --> 01:04:16,571
if you're going to do anything, you need to mitigate risk. And that's what insurance does.

671
01:04:16,651 --> 01:04:19,591
I mean, like there's always going to be the petty bureaucratic element, but.

672
01:04:20,111 --> 01:04:25,831
The way to think about that is to look at the size of the insurance economy

673
01:04:25,831 --> 01:04:31,831
and to realize that that is the value that is being extracted, right?

674
01:04:31,931 --> 01:04:40,271
Because the profit, the value there is not, it's taken from the customers, right?

675
01:04:40,291 --> 01:04:41,450
They give it, yeah.

676
01:04:41,450 --> 01:04:42,670
Insurance, right?

677
01:04:42,811 --> 01:04:51,251
And so it is, we talked about this actually when we talked about the Bitcoin cover story on Farm Journal,

678
01:04:51,251 --> 01:04:57,351
which is guys realizing that, oh, if instead of paying for insurance, I just bought Bitcoin,

679
01:04:58,210 --> 01:05:05,450
I'd be better ahead. Now, sure, you might want to pay for some catastrophic type insurance. Maybe.

680
01:05:07,271 --> 01:05:16,091
Maybe there is something about that. But the average every day, right, if you put dollars to

681
01:05:16,091 --> 01:05:22,170
it and you look at it, then it's a, it's always a loss for the consumer because it's a profitable

682
01:05:22,170 --> 01:05:28,111
industry. And that profitable industry is, I believe the most profitable industry in the

683
01:05:28,111 --> 01:05:35,271
United States. So, um, it is based on extraction and it preys upon the lack of the ability of

684
01:05:35,271 --> 01:05:40,771
people to do math. It prays because they were not taught to do math. Like you're not taught to,

685
01:05:41,050 --> 01:05:44,351
you're not taught to take into account risk. You're not taught to learn.

686
01:05:44,351 --> 01:05:59,331
I don't think that it's just an ignorance of math. I mean, I think part of it is we have a very rights-oriented system, legalistic rights, where you can sue other people for infringements of your rights and get big judgments for that.

687
01:05:59,331 --> 01:06:07,030
So people then need to ensure every endeavor they do so that if there's a slip and fall or something like that on the property, that somebody is going to cover it.

688
01:06:07,131 --> 01:06:17,411
And so part of having a rights-based legal system in that sense is people are going to need to ensure themselves against other people's claims that might arise because those claims.

689
01:06:17,411 --> 01:06:19,670
Yeah, I can't remember.

690
01:06:19,851 --> 01:06:23,351
I think it's in the fourth turning, but I'm not sure.

691
01:06:24,490 --> 01:06:25,450
Maybe it's the fourth turning.

692
01:06:25,550 --> 01:06:26,791
Maybe it's a sovereign individual.

693
01:06:26,791 --> 01:06:37,131
I can't remember one of them, but there's a line in one of those early books that I read when I was early on my Bitcoin journey that really made this apparent to me.

694
01:06:37,131 --> 01:06:44,071
And it was that the way that states maintain control is they trade rights for freedoms.

695
01:06:45,331 --> 01:06:47,811
Is that you have the right to do this.

696
01:06:47,891 --> 01:06:49,510
You have the right to go into that bathroom.

697
01:06:49,690 --> 01:06:57,490
You have the right to participate in that sport, even though you don't have the, you know, whatever, the plumbing for it.

698
01:06:58,530 --> 01:07:01,450
You have the right to do this and the right to do that.

699
01:07:01,911 --> 01:07:04,950
But what you give up or what you give up is your freedom.

700
01:07:04,950 --> 01:07:07,331
You give up your freedom of movement.

701
01:07:07,591 --> 01:07:09,331
You give up your freedom of anonymity.

702
01:07:10,010 --> 01:07:12,911
You give up your freedom of choice, really.

703
01:07:13,411 --> 01:07:18,791
And so the thing about rights is they can always, they just disappear.

704
01:07:18,911 --> 01:07:23,611
Like you just trade those rights to whatever group that you're trying to curry favor from at the moment.

705
01:07:23,731 --> 01:07:23,851
Yeah.

706
01:07:23,931 --> 01:07:34,010
I mean, that's kind of, I think, Agamben's idea as he explores Schmitt's state of exception is when you declare a right, you're also kind of acknowledging that the sovereign has the ability to suspend that right.

707
01:07:34,010 --> 01:07:43,731
So when you move a new area of human conduct into that area of rights, you, again, are just acknowledging there's a moment where it could, in a state of emergency, be taken from you.

708
01:07:43,891 --> 01:07:47,251
That said, I mean, it's good that we have a strong constitution.

709
01:07:47,591 --> 01:07:51,190
It's worked somewhat decently that we have a Second Amendment that's functioned.

710
01:07:51,271 --> 01:08:00,371
The freedom of press is stronger here through policing and private lawsuits, partly because of that, than it is in Europe, Great Britain, things like that.

711
01:08:00,371 --> 01:08:17,670
So it's a I mean, yes or no. Like you and I, I know I know that we kind of go around on this, but that's kind of like a that's a survivorship. To me, that's a survivorship bias. Look at things in that saying, well, because I can own a gun, the Second Amendment works.

712
01:08:17,670 --> 01:08:27,130
Um, but I, I can't own a silencer without making, you know, without basically giving

713
01:08:27,130 --> 01:08:28,730
up DNA to the state.

714
01:08:28,971 --> 01:08:35,130
I can't own certain guns in certain places because somebody decided that having 30 rounds

715
01:08:35,130 --> 01:08:39,070
instead of 10 meant that you were going to shoot up a post office.

716
01:08:39,670 --> 01:08:45,511
Um, you know, I guess there's always, there's this heavy caveat to those things, which is

717
01:08:45,511 --> 01:08:56,991
just to say that this is the place where we have the shortest distance to travel in our collective

718
01:08:56,991 --> 01:09:08,150
memory to what freedom is though we don't have it anymore um i i don't know i i guess that's yeah

719
01:09:08,150 --> 01:09:12,751
i see what you're saying i just don't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good it definitely

720
01:09:12,751 --> 01:09:17,551
is a compromise and not ideal that we have the constitutional order we have and protect rights in

721
01:09:17,551 --> 01:09:21,630
the way that we do with the compromises we make. But it's just one of my kind of running

722
01:09:21,630 --> 01:09:27,411
disagreements with most forms of anarchism is that they do embrace the perfect at the expense

723
01:09:27,411 --> 01:09:33,431
of real, solid, concrete political gains you can make in the here and now if you're willing to

724
01:09:33,431 --> 01:09:38,610
compromise. We live in a dirty, messy world. Compromise happens. But the real winners are

725
01:09:38,610 --> 01:09:43,610
those who are able to work within the frameworks we have, even as they embrace new frameworks

726
01:09:43,610 --> 01:09:45,331
like Bitcoin as they come along.

727
01:09:47,391 --> 01:09:48,710
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

728
01:09:48,831 --> 01:09:50,070
Don't hate the player, hate the game.

729
01:09:50,270 --> 01:09:50,730
That's right.

730
01:09:51,090 --> 01:09:57,751
So to sum up on Paolo Freire, then the pedagogy of the oppressed, I mean, that's an excellent

731
01:09:57,751 --> 01:10:02,511
example that, you know, we're socialized into insurance forms of consciousness and where

732
01:10:02,511 --> 01:10:04,471
you think you have to have certain things or whatever.

733
01:10:04,471 --> 01:10:15,610
The idea is kind of that crypto sovereignty is a new form of consciousness within ourselves that is outside and beyond the approval or power of any state or external power that exists.

734
01:10:16,210 --> 01:10:17,590
We know what state education is like.

735
01:10:17,710 --> 01:10:19,251
We know that it has certain ends.

736
01:10:19,751 --> 01:10:27,931
Crypto sovereignty is about imparting, encouraging certain views and consciousness that are outside of the system.

737
01:10:28,491 --> 01:10:31,431
So the question concerning Bitcoin.

738
01:10:31,851 --> 01:10:33,931
So the book moves on to this.

739
01:10:33,931 --> 01:10:45,650
I noted at the beginning that Cason advised us before proceeding onward, traveler, beware, you should read the question concerning technology by Heidegger first.

740
01:10:45,891 --> 01:10:48,431
And he also kind of counsels a broader understanding of Heidegger.

741
01:10:48,551 --> 01:10:51,530
But the question concerning technology is kind of sufficient to get going.

742
01:10:52,431 --> 01:10:54,411
And that's kind of a form of pedagogy, too.

743
01:10:54,891 --> 01:10:57,690
The essence of technology is nothing technological.

744
01:10:57,951 --> 01:10:59,391
Heidegger kind of started from that point.

745
01:10:59,391 --> 01:11:02,551
If you want to learn, you want to know the essence, the true meaning of technology.

746
01:11:02,551 --> 01:11:07,670
You don't look at the airplane, the car, the internet, the specific forms of technology,

747
01:11:07,670 --> 01:11:10,650
but you kind of have to look at something deeper.

748
01:11:10,871 --> 01:11:16,770
So don't look at Bitcoin as a type of crypto to compete with others that needs to change

749
01:11:16,770 --> 01:11:21,371
in its technological aspects in order to stay technologically up to date.

750
01:11:21,551 --> 01:11:22,931
That's not the essence of Bitcoin.

751
01:11:23,070 --> 01:11:29,251
The essence of Bitcoin is not its math or function or purpose as money or value.

752
01:11:29,251 --> 01:11:37,030
it's our relationship to it and what it enables in ourselves each questioning that bitcoin enables

753
01:11:37,030 --> 01:11:42,690
in relation to the nature of state the nature of political philosophy um the nature of fiat money

754
01:11:42,690 --> 01:11:49,851
lifts the veil a bit further on the nature of reality reveals certain things to us we begin our

755
01:11:49,851 --> 01:11:57,451
thinking um be kind of begin as you begin thinking on bitcoin you begin from a state of capture

756
01:11:57,451 --> 01:12:03,210
of in framing as heidegger would say where the true meaning is encrypted except to those who

757
01:12:03,210 --> 01:12:08,011
kind of prepare themselves for the true meaning when we understand when we misunderstand bitcoin

758
01:12:08,011 --> 01:12:15,090
as crypto then we get caught in in framing in that mindset where you think what's important is

759
01:12:15,090 --> 01:12:21,810
bigger block size maybe faster throughput whatever um where what kind of matters is learning about

760
01:12:21,810 --> 01:12:27,770
things like the importance of decentralization, immutability, those other things.

761
01:12:29,310 --> 01:12:35,331
Yeah, so that's kind of part of what I think Kaysen is getting at, approaching the essence

762
01:12:35,331 --> 01:12:38,911
of Bitcoin through kind of a Heideggerian perspective.

763
01:12:39,070 --> 01:12:39,751
Does that make sense?

764
01:12:40,931 --> 01:12:46,911
Yeah, I love that you're bringing us back to that too, because that essay, Heidegger

765
01:12:46,911 --> 01:12:50,630
really got me, it really changed my state of being, you know?

766
01:12:50,630 --> 01:12:58,610
So like right now I'm out in the middle of nowhere with a dog and no internet.

767
01:12:59,451 --> 01:13:00,511
Well, not now.

768
01:13:00,590 --> 01:13:01,831
I came to town to use the internet.

769
01:13:02,130 --> 01:13:04,871
Coming to town to use the internet is the way it should be.

770
01:13:04,971 --> 01:13:07,070
We should go to a place where the internet is.

771
01:13:07,251 --> 01:13:08,150
Yeah, that's so great.

772
01:13:08,251 --> 01:13:08,411
Yeah.

773
01:13:09,150 --> 01:13:15,670
And just to like be able to sit in silence and sit in peace and get up and see the sunrise

774
01:13:15,670 --> 01:13:25,991
and to see the sunset and to cook dinner slowly without anything in the background and no TV blaring or anything.

775
01:13:28,331 --> 01:13:34,831
It gives you such an interesting perspective because I go back and I realize that's how I grew up, right?

776
01:13:34,831 --> 01:13:41,831
And I don't remember being bored. I don't remember being anxious.

777
01:13:41,831 --> 01:13:51,710
anxious. I don't remember having these feelings that I now attribute to some form of technology,

778
01:13:52,090 --> 01:14:03,210
which basically all boil down to some form of comparison. And so, yeah, it just, yeah,

779
01:14:03,270 --> 01:14:07,991
it frames your mind in a different way. And there's something a little bit terrifying about

780
01:14:07,991 --> 01:14:19,891
it too because the uncomfortableness of it makes you worry that perhaps this is a skin that you

781
01:14:19,891 --> 01:14:28,070
grew out of that you can't go back to. That perhaps that peace and that contentment and that

782
01:14:28,070 --> 01:14:36,971
okayness, just general okayness, is something that is going to remain elusive so long as the

783
01:14:36,971 --> 01:14:44,791
technology you know you are foregoing exists yeah yeah technology always forces itself upon you

784
01:14:44,791 --> 01:14:51,570
just its mere existence is do you adopt it or not you know in the total absence of technology

785
01:14:51,570 --> 01:14:55,951
nobody's forced to the question but once the technology is there the question is present and

786
01:14:55,951 --> 01:15:01,971
you can't live as if it's not but you can live healthier and i i totally envy the moment in which

787
01:15:01,971 --> 01:15:09,230
you are in right now, that a bit more slowness, being outside of the internet, unable to access

788
01:15:09,230 --> 01:15:15,831
it is, yeah, that's an incredible, I just, even when I go off Twitter for a second, you know,

789
01:15:15,891 --> 01:15:24,931
deactivate, I feel less permeated by an outside presence that there's a conversation happening

790
01:15:24,931 --> 01:15:31,491
that I need to participate in. Once you really remove the thing from you having ability to access

791
01:15:31,491 --> 01:15:36,951
it, it is almost like you're out of the water breathing again. You're not immersed in something.

792
01:15:37,170 --> 01:15:40,570
Even when I'm not on Twitter, I feel the possibility of being on it. If you, you know,

793
01:15:40,630 --> 01:15:45,770
have a, if it's not deactivated and that type of relationship, the technology is incredibly

794
01:15:45,770 --> 01:15:50,351
oppressive. You're, it's always waiting for you. It's always waiting. Yeah. It's always,

795
01:15:50,351 --> 01:15:59,051
it's always waiting. And that wasn't, that wasn't the case growing up, right? Where like we were,

796
01:15:59,051 --> 01:16:06,650
we were using that technology as it came out you were it was just that the technology was not

797
01:16:06,650 --> 01:16:17,610
moving so quickly um that you know during my throughout my entire childhood um vhs was like

798
01:16:17,610 --> 01:16:24,951
you could get a video cassette and then basically in the time just that i went to college like true

799
01:16:24,951 --> 01:16:34,210
But like truly just in like the four years of college, it went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to streaming.

800
01:16:34,951 --> 01:16:37,871
And we stepped into these four different modes.

801
01:16:38,770 --> 01:16:49,491
And I mean, now there's, you know, everything else has progressed that way to it hits that nth state, that final state of complete digitization.

802
01:16:49,491 --> 01:17:05,110
And so other things, you know, dating has moved into that realm where it's reached the in minus one state, basically, where almost the entire relationship is conducted through a phone.

803
01:17:05,291 --> 01:17:08,630
Even after you have the relationship established, right?

804
01:17:08,650 --> 01:17:16,810
If you're not a good texter, then it's going to be difficult to carry on a relationship with a modern person.

805
01:17:16,810 --> 01:17:17,251
Yeah.

806
01:17:17,251 --> 01:17:22,650
Yeah. And so, yeah, these are these are all different things to think about, different skills.

807
01:17:22,791 --> 01:17:38,070
Yeah. Kalbadev mentioned that in the conversation when he talked about going off social media, that it improved or changed the relationship with his girlfriend, his partner, that they would otherwise just be together on TikTok separately, sharing videos, stuff like that.

808
01:17:38,070 --> 01:17:43,670
Whereas once you're outside of that, then you have to talk about something else. You have to.

809
01:17:43,670 --> 01:17:49,730
Yeah. Pointing that, you know, the, the digital pointing and grunting, you know, sharing TikTok

810
01:17:49,730 --> 01:17:55,530
videos. And, and I, you know, I, I personally know Kalvadev and, and, uh, and his partner and

811
01:17:55,530 --> 01:18:02,091
they're wonderful together. They're perfectly at peace and they're both strong and they're both

812
01:18:02,091 --> 01:18:07,011
capable and neither one of them struggles. I'm sure they have their own, but you know,

813
01:18:07,051 --> 01:18:11,591
if you see them as a couple, then you think, well, this is, these are two people that have

814
01:18:11,591 --> 01:18:15,051
learned how to navigate the world together.

815
01:18:15,551 --> 01:18:16,030
That's great.

816
01:18:16,270 --> 01:18:23,451
And this, so cryptosovity kind of ends on a nostalgic, melancholic note in this direction.

817
01:18:24,251 --> 01:18:30,451
Technology always changes our relationship to other people in ways we don't predict for

818
01:18:30,451 --> 01:18:31,490
better and worse.

819
01:18:32,270 --> 01:18:39,130
And so, Kaysen notes kind of that it is sad to know that maybe you will only know certain

820
01:18:39,130 --> 01:18:45,331
people through their digital signature. You know, once we do make identity, withdraw it from the

821
01:18:45,331 --> 01:18:53,331
state, not face to face, that does change. But he notes that what has happened in meatspace,

822
01:18:53,530 --> 01:18:58,310
the ability of the state to use our body and identity as a way to impose friend-enemy

823
01:18:58,310 --> 01:19:05,210
distinctions, liquidate certain populations and people, suspend rights, has made it necessary to

824
01:19:05,210 --> 01:19:10,630
anonymize pseudonymize in certain moments where we can strip out roles and identities

825
01:19:10,630 --> 01:19:18,170
in order to make something new through as again satoshi through the example such a beautiful

826
01:19:18,170 --> 01:19:22,110
example i don't know that we ever that we can't focus on that sufficiently enough

827
01:19:22,110 --> 01:19:28,371
how somebody could walk away in the way that satoshi did um but in any case like that's kind

828
01:19:28,371 --> 01:19:33,951
of the conclusion to my crypto comrades you know a little bit of melancholy but resoluteness noting

829
01:19:33,951 --> 01:19:41,051
that this is where we are at and this is the way forward yeah if you believe in something set it

830
01:19:41,051 --> 01:19:47,451
free right here we go yeah if you love something i mean that yeah that's what it took it it took

831
01:19:47,451 --> 01:19:56,310
it took a revelation of you have to make a choice and that choice is to put aside ego and to put

832
01:19:56,310 --> 01:20:03,670
aside well but it was also as as we talked about like it was a wise choice for physical safety

833
01:20:03,670 --> 01:20:05,451
It's very prescient.

834
01:20:05,451 --> 01:20:07,990
Like someone would have killed that person.

835
01:20:08,331 --> 01:20:19,810
Like that person would have been put in jail or they would have been silenced somehow.

836
01:20:20,891 --> 01:20:24,451
And so, yeah, kudos.

837
01:20:25,030 --> 01:20:25,291
Yeah.

838
01:20:25,331 --> 01:20:26,091
Kudos to the hoodie.

839
01:20:26,490 --> 01:20:30,530
So that is crypto sovereignty, the encrypted political philosophy of Bitcoin.

840
01:20:30,530 --> 01:20:35,431
Again, an incredible engagement with really heavy-hitting philosophers.

841
01:20:35,770 --> 01:20:44,431
If you want a really deep take on how Bitcoin is more than a monetary protocol, this is an excellent book to begin that discussion.

842
01:20:44,971 --> 01:20:47,511
Also, listen to Kacen Talk.

843
01:20:47,610 --> 01:20:57,070
He's phenomenally articulate, really good, and also not pretentious in the way that he considers philosophers that sometimes people kind of see as forbidding.

844
01:20:57,070 --> 01:21:05,810
He makes it real, makes it digestible, is humorous and all these good qualities and kind of a masterful talker.

845
01:21:07,270 --> 01:21:11,911
Wonderful. We have reached the end of yet another wonderful book about Bitcoin.

846
01:21:12,791 --> 01:21:14,431
And I look forward to the next one.

847
01:21:14,511 --> 01:21:14,831
Absolutely.

848
01:21:15,710 --> 01:21:17,051
All right. Later.