
“The monopoly of truth is upstream of the monopoly of violence.”
— Balaji Srinivasan
Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) is an angel investor and entrepreneur. Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he was also the co-founder of Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), Teleport (acquired by Topia), and Coin Center.
He was named to the MIT Technology Review’s “Innovators Under 35,” won a Wall Street Journal Innovation Award, and holds a BS/MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering, all from Stanford University. Balaji also teaches the occasional class at Stanford, including an online MOOC in 2013, which reached 250,000+ students worldwide.
To learn more about Balaji’s most recent project, sign up at 1729.com, a newsletter that pays you. They’re giving out BTC each day for completing tasks and tutorials. Subscribers also receive chapters from Balaji’s free book, The Network State.
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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
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SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
If this powerhouse episode leaves you thirsting for more, make sure to check out my first conversation with Balaji, in which we discussed the significance of 1729 as a “not boring” number, decentralizing the state of media, achieving financial independence, why “Balaji was right” might be the most terrifying phrase in the English language, a digital native solution to education that qualifies students to work as they go, the power of micro incentives, shifting establishment dynamics, life-extension and transhumanism, woke capital vs. communist capital vs. crypto capital, what a convince-oriented “crypto” government versus a coercion-focused fiat government might look like, the consequences governments trying to ban crypto face, and much (much!) more!
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
- Connect with Balaji Srinivasan:
- Learn Skills & Earn Crypto | 1729.com
- Balaji Srinivasan on the Future of Bitcoin and Ethereum, How to Become Noncancelable, the Path to Personal Freedom and Wealth in a New World, the Changing Landscape of Warfare, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #506
- Dr. Vivek Murthy — Former Surgeon General on Combating COVID-19, Loneliness, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #417
- Epidemics That Didn’t Happen | Prevent Epidemics
- The President’s Biodefense Strategy (2018) | Homeland Security
- Potemkin Village | Wikipedia
- Biden Defends Afghan Pullout and Declares an End to Nation-Building | The New York Times
- Asia’s Future Is Now | McKinsey
- What Is Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)? | Investopedia
- China’s Top Regulators Ban Crypto Trading and Mining, Sending Bitcoin Tumbling | Reuters
- Total Hash Rate (TH/s) | Blockchain
- The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning | Palladium
- Fall of The Soviet Union Explained In 5 Minutes | The Life Guide
- The Great Awokening | Vox
- The Night the US Bombed a Chinese Embassy | BBC News
- Wolf Warrior Diplomacy | Wikipedia
- Wolf Warrior 2 | Prime Video
- First Blood | Prime Video
- Rocky | Prime Video
- The Battle at Lake Changjin | Wikipedia
- On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War’s Greatest Battle by Hampton Sides | Amazon
- No Time to Die (2021) | IMDb
- Microsoft to Pay $240 Million for Stake in Facebook | The New York Times
- Game of Thrones | HBO
- Legalism | World History Encyclopedia
- The Stratagems of Qin I | Stratagems of the Warring States
- China Can Say No | Wikipedia
- The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals by Shintaro Ishihara | Amazon
- “Keep the Soviet Union Out, the Americans In, and the Germans Down.” -Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay | NATO
- Guide to Social Media in China | Chinese Language Institute
- US and China Enter Dangerous Territory Over Taiwan | The New York Times
- Opinion: Think We Have Military Primacy over China? Think Again. | The Washington Post
- The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare by Christian Brose | Amazon
- 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis | Amazon
- Notice on Further Preventing and Resolving the Risks of Virtual Currency Trading and Speculation | The People’s Bank of China
- Senator Ted Cruz Advocates Bitcoin Mining with ‘Abundant’ Gas Flare Energy | Yahoo! Finance
- Indian Government to Take ‘Progressive’ Steps on Crypto, Sources Say After PM Modi’s Meeting | CoinDesk
- Dave Chappelle Isn’t Canceled. He Just Likes to Talk About It. | The New York Times
- Mad Max | Prime Video
- Is Shoplifting Forcing Walgreens to Cut Back in SF? Data on the Closing Stores Puts the Claim into Perspective | San Francisco Chronicle
- Watergate | FBI
- The My Lai Massacre | The New Yorker
- The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour M. Hersh | Amazon
- Russell Conjugation: What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known? | Edge.org
- Krugman: “Fiat Money…Is Backed by Men with Guns” | Free Advice
- The Russian Revolution: A New History by Sean McMeekin | Amazon
- Investigative Journalism | Wikipedia
- Opinion: How Punch Protected The Times | The New York Times
- Executive Order 6102 | Wikipedia
- Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) | Investopedia
- Bitcoin: Exchange Balance | Glassnode Studio
- DeFi (Decentralized Finance) | Investopedia
- 10 Most Dangerous Commands You Should Never Execute on Linux | TecMint
- Principal-Agent Problem Definition | Investopedia
- Cartesian Plane | Platonic Realms
- Could There Be a Solution to the Trolley Problem? | Philosophy Now
- Factory Physics by Wallace J. Hopp and Mark L. Spearman | Amazon
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt | Amazon
- Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard | Amazon
- 96-Well Plate Dimensions | BRANDplates
- 23andMe Sends Wrong DNA Test Results To 96 Customers | TechCrunch
- Inside The Bloody History Of The White Sea-Baltic Canal | ATI
- The History of the Gulag | Gulag Online
- All the Ways People Escaped Across the Berlin Wall | History
- The Great Resignation Is Accelerating | The Atlantic
- Nexus Mutual
- Smart Contracts | Investopedia
- The Perks of Anonymity: A Must-Read for Emerging & NFT Artists | Medium
- Portland Protests See Clashes between Far-Right, Far-Left Groups | Reuters
- Misleading Reports of Lawlessness after Katrina Worsened Crisis, Officials Say | The Guardian
- Goldilocks Principle | Wikipedia
- Open Source Ecology
- The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm by Lewis Dartnell | Amazon
- How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North | Amazon
- Fall of Civilizations Podcast
- Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? | Smithsonian Magazine
- Top Six Theories about Atlantis | History
- Asteroid Dust Found in Crater Closes Case of Dinosaur Extinction | UT News
- 10 Ancient American Civilizations | ThoughtCo.
- History of Stonehenge | English Heritage
- Why Did the Roman Empire Fall? | The Great Courses Daily
- Christianisation of the Germanic Peoples | Wikipedia
- Anarcho-Primitivism | Wikipedia
- No Death and an Enhanced Life: Is the Future Transhuman? | The Guardian
- Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber | The Atlantic
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham | Amazon
- Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss | Amazon
- Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss | Amazon
- The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal by Desmond Morris | Amazon
- Autarky | Wikipedia
- How to Succeed in Business by Bundling – and Unbundling | HBR
- Ten Minute History: The Thirty Years’ War | History Matters
- TSA PreCheck | Transportation Security Administration
- Prophets of Doom | Hardcore History 48
- Reformation and Counter-Reformation | Britannica
- The Bitcoin Reformation | Tuur Demeester
- 95 Theses | Martin Luther
- Peace of Westphalia | Wikipedia
- The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama | Amazon
- How a Decentralized Exchange Works | Gemini
- Eric X. LI: A Tale of Two Political Systems | TED Global 2013
- Chinese Actress Disappears from Social Media as China Cracks Down on Influencers | NPR
- Coronavirus Contagion Fears in Silicon Valley | Vox
- Bad Math at MSNBC: Bloomberg’s Ad Spending Wasn’t Enough to Give Every American $1 Million | PolitiFact
- Why Facebook Will Never Make a Significant Profit | Quartz
- Amazon.bomb | Barron’s
- Google’s Toughest Search Is for a Business Model | The New York Times
- Opinion: Regulators Everywhere Should Follow Wyoming’s DAO Law | CoinDesk
- Miami to Give ‘Bitcoin Yield’ From MiamiCoin to Its Citizens | CoinDesk
- Will the Texas Electric Grid Be Able to Handle State’s Bitcoin Mining Rush? | CBS Dallas/Fort Worth
- How El Salvador Is Testing Bitcoin’s Promise of Financial Liberty | The New York Times
- School Board Members Face Rising Threats Across the US | The New York Times
- If Texas Leaders Want to Protect Life, Where Are Masks, Vaccines, Resources for Kids? | USA Today
- Explainer: Germany’s Nord Stream 2 Gatekeeper: The Long Road until Gas Flows | Reuters
- Florida Bankers Association CEO Warns Monitoring Americans’ Bank Accounts Could Be Costly | The Capitolist
- Obama’s War on Tax Cheats Gains Ground | The Hill
- Bush Says US Must Spread Democracy | Baltimore Sun
- Map: Sanctuary Cities, Counties, and States | Center for Immigration Studies
- States/Territories with Legalized Marijuana | NORML
- After Afghanistan, the Pax Americana Is Over – As Is NATO. About Time Too | The Guardian
- Tenth Amendment: US Constitution | Legal Information Institute
- Free Ecards & Greeting Cards | Blue Mountain
- Techstars
- Nomad List
- De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum | Wikipedia
- Optima | Collins English Dictionary
- Hill Climbing | Wikipedia
- Let’s Call It Failure: The Shit We’re in by John Lanchester | London Review of Books
- Government-Household Analogy | Wikipedia
- Swiss Cantons: A Guide to Switzerland’s Regions | Expatica
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) | Investopedia
- Singpass
- X-Road | e-Estonia
- Chesterton’s Fence | LessWrongWiki
- Kosher vs. Halal: What’s the Difference? | Greatist
- The Future Of Bioelectricity | NASJAQ
- Order Book | Investopedia
- What is OpenSea and How Is It Used? | Moralis Academy
- The DeFi Matrix | Balaji Srinivasan, Twitter
- What Is a Digital Wallet? | Investopedia
- Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) | Investopedia
- What Is an Automated Market Maker? | CoinDesk
- Google News
- A Guide to NFT Twitter Terminology | ONE37pm
- Miami Mayor Makes Pitch To San Francisco Tech Workers | KPIX
- Marquess of Queensberry Rules | Wikipedia
- Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) | Investopedia
- Gordian Knot | Wikipedia
- NIMBYs vs. YIMBYs | Millionacres
- Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded | Quote Investigator
- Georgism | Wikipedia
- Wash Trading | Investopedia
- HODL | Investopedia
- Backronym | Wikipedia
- USA PATRIOT Act | FinCEN.gov
- Guide to the CARES Act | US Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship
- 28 Years Later: Dramatic Video from the Loma Prieta Earthquake | KCRA
- Cal OES
- What Does ‘Defund the Police’ Mean and Does It Have Merit? | Brookings
- The NYPD’s Robot Dog Was a Really Bad Idea: Here’s What Went Wrong | Scientific American
- Gangster’s Paradise: How Organised Crime Took over Russia | The Guardian
- The Correlation of World Forces: The Soviet Concept | JSTOR
- Opinion: Kill the BitLicense | CoinDesk
- Layer 1 vs. Layer 2 : What You Need to Know About Different Blockchain Layer Solutions | Medium
- “Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To” | BuzzFeed News
- Fiatcoins vs. Flatcoins | Balaji Srinivasan, Twitter
- Plunge Protection Team | Wikipedia
- How Fantasy Triumphed Over Reality in American Politics by Bruno Maçães | New York Magazine
- “I Think Paul Graham’s Thoughts and Mine Both Held Up.” | Balaji Srinivasan, Twitter
- Tensegrity Structures: What They Are and What They Can Be | ArchDaily
- San Francisco Has a Major Image Problem | SFGATE
- Why Wars Start by Josh McConkey | Panalysis
- Magnetic Hysteresis | Wikipedia
- The Start Of Startup Cities | 1729
- Balaji Srinivasan: Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit | Genius
- Software Is Reorganizing the World | Wired
- The Physics of the Fosbury Flop | Stanford University
- Russian Civil War | 3 Minute History
- Second American Civil War – Wikipedia
- The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War by Peter Leyden | Medium
- The Emerging Democratic Majority by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira | Amazon
- Study: Breitbart-Led Right-Wing Media Ecosystem Altered Broader Media Agenda | Columbia Journalism Review
- Zcash
- Spanish Inquisition | Wikipedia
- BitDNS and Generalizing Bitcoin | Bitcoin Forum
- Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto | Bitcoin
- The Principia: The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton | Amazon
- Genesis Block | Bitcoin Wiki
- Newton’s Laws of Motion | Wikipedia
- The Koran | Amazon
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels | Amazon
- Declaration of Independence | National Archives
- Bitcoin Maximalism | Investopedia
- Complete Dune Series by Frank Herbert | Amazon
- Bene Gesserit | Dune Wiki
- English Translation of ? | Han Trainer
- Square Considers Creation of Open Source Bitcoin Mining System | ZDnet
- How a Quantum Computer Could Break 2048-Bit RSA Encryption in Eight Hours | MIT Technology Review
- The Cantillon Effect: Because of Inflation, We’re Financing the Financiers | Foundation for Economic Education
- Space Jam | Prime Video
- How Strong Is the Gravity on Mars? | Cool Cosmos
- When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany by Adam Fergusson | Amazon
- Currently Reading When Money Dies… | Joe Colangelo, Twitter
- If Einstein Had the Internet: An Interview with Balaji Srinivasan | Time Well Spent
- Cross of Gold Speech | Wikipedia
- Babylon Berlin | Netflix
- Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin by Mel Gordon | Amazon
- Finding a Way Out of the Great Depression? Roosevelt’s Brain Trust | History Is Now
- National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 | Wikipedia
- Maybe It’s Time for America to Split Up | New York Magazine
- “Maybe We Should Break Up.” | Sarah Silverman, Twitter
- Psychohistory | Wikipedia
- The Ultimate Guide to Rootstock Blockchain | Blockgeeks
- Diem Association
- Novi
- Oculus
- The Inside Story of How Facebook Acquired Instagram by Sarah Frier | OneZero
- Jon Stewart on “Lame” Instagram: “How in God’s Name Is That Worth a Billion Dollars?” | Uproxx
- Ethereum’s Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Donates over $1 Billion to India COVID Relief Fund and Other Charities | Forbes
- DeSo Launches $50M Fund for Decentralized Social Ecosystem | CoinDesk
- DeepMind
- Boston Dynamics
- Blockchain Explorer
- Etherscan
- StarkWare Industries Ltd.
- Rekt
- Have I Been Pwned
- Epic
- Monero
- Cambrian Explosion | Wikipedia
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding | Amazon
- Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons) | Wikipedia
- AUKUS
- The Unintended Consequences of the AUKUS Deal | Defense News
- Palantir
- Anduril
- Judges Are More Lenient after Taking a Break, Study Finds | The Guardian
- Five Eyes | Wikipedia
- Opinion: Canada’s Exclusion from ‘Three Eyes’ Only Confirms What Was Already the Case | The Globe and Mail
- Fast | Patrick Collison
- How China Builds So Fast | Tech Vision
- Repairs to Stop Millennium Tower from Sinking Made It Sink More | Insider
- China’s Hypersonic Missile Launch Is Close to a ‘Sputnik Moment,’ General Says | Today
- The Quad in the Indo-Pacific: What to Know | Council on Foreign Relations
- Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
- Warsaw Pact | Wikipedia
- The UK-US Special Relationship in the 21st Century | America in the World’s Briefings
- Ghost
- Mirror
- When Software Eats Bio | Andreessen Horowitz
- Teen Vogue’s Evolution from High-Fashion Magazine to a Community of Activism | ABC News
- SI’s 2020 Sportsperson of the Year: The Activist Athlete | Sports Illustrated
- The Athletic
- Best Bollywood Films of 2021 | Cosmopolitan
- South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA)
- DJI | Wikipedia
- Black Mirror | Netflix
- Quantified Self | Wikipedia
- Naver
- Yandex
SHOW NOTES
- Why Balaji believes the combination of administrations over the last three decades has blown the biggest lead in human history — and what this illustrates about the decline of state capacity. [07:22]
- “Asia isn’t really the future, it’s present.”: The forces that guide Balaji’s current worldview, including a comparison of GDP in the East vs. the West over the past 40 years. [12:01]
- Thoughts on China’s 2021 challenges to the cryptocurrency status quo. [15:24]
- The Great Awokening, Wolf Warrior diplomacy, and the changing nature of change itself in China. [22:43]
- “Will the US lose?”: What Balaji foresees as the ripple effects of China’s efforts to solidify its own centralization in a growingly decentralized world, and where India fits into such a world. [32:45]
- OTC in crypto context and the energy considerations of cryptomining. [43:02]
- Plausible things Balaji sees happening with crypto in India and the country’s role over the next couple of decades. [49:41]
- A deeper dive into the woke capital (NYT), communist capital (CCP), and crypto capital (BTC) triangle and how they exercise their power. [51:13]
- The Russell Conjugation and pondering the meaning of “real” journalism. [1:03:15]
- Future projections of a Chinese control/American anarchy scenario and what it might look like if the US government tried to seize crypto in order to “protect” the dollar. [1:06:49]
- Why DeFi (decentralized finance) is able to offer interest rates that make traditional finance laughable, but also how risky it can be. [1:13:07]
- How cryptocurrency solves the principal-agent problem. [1:15:13]
- On automation and eliminating human error. [1:21:09]
- Reluctant sovereignty, the tendency of civilizations to collapse, and other potholes on the road to a utopian decentralized world. [1:29:14]
- Transhumanism versus anarcho-primitivism and the unbundling and rebundling of society in the Bitcoin Reformation and beyond. [1:41:49]
- How Balaji sees the counter-decentralization going down differently in China and the US. [1:55:03]
- What Balaji foresees from the regulatory state’s inevitable collision with crypto. [2:01:26]
- If Balaji had to live in the United States, what states would be given top consideration, and why? In his estimation, what makes some states more “free” than others? [2:06:33]
- “Governments aren’t households.” But maybe they can be subscription or inflation models. [2:12:14]
- What is the DeFi Matrix? [2:27:51]
- What is NIMBY-YIMBY? [2:34:10]
- What the current powers that be stand to lose by overregulation. [2:46:15]
- How a flat coin would work. [2:52:47]
- Bitcoin: better than gold? [2:55:00]
- American anarchy, political actors, tensegrity, and San Francisco as a descending world city. [2:57:42]
- One important lesson learned from COVID: a lot of us don’t have to live where we work anymore — especially if we don’t like it. [3:05:07]
- The problems with a 51 percent democracy, how the conditions for victory in a modern cold civil war differ from those of 1865. [3:07:24]
- The coming conflict: centralization versus decentralization. [3:13:13]
- Has Balaji always said RTed instead of retweeted? [3:20:54]
- BTC or ETH? [3:21:11]
- What is the Cantillon Effect? [3:25:26]
- How do we ensure that the future is governed not by crypto-anarchy, but crypto-civilization? [3:32:49]
- Where Balaji stands on the idea of secession in a less United States. [3:35:24]
- Big tech companies in the US on which Balaji is most bullish [3:38:11]
- On cryptography becoming the new hard truth over once-trusted journalism. [3:40:52]
- On block explorers as the stealth threat to search. [3:47:16]
- Why Balaji believes blockchain will make everything more secure in spite of the hacks we’re seeing today. [3:49:28]
- Social engineering in the anarcho-tyrannical state. [3:53:57]
- Lawful evil China vs. chaotic evil United States. [3:57:50]
- On “tech bros” in politics and the unfairness of judicial discretion. [4:00:26]
- An AUKUS among us and current geopolitical power shifts going on in real-time. [4:04:19]
- Balaji’s thoughts on angel investing in this part of the 21st century. [4:16:38]
- The current state of 1729. [4:23:59]
- Parting thoughts. [4:26:34]
MORE BALAJI SRINIVASAN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
“The monopoly of truth is upstream of the monopoly of violence.”
— Balaji Srinivasan
“Cryptography is hard truth, and corporate journalism has lost control over hard truth.”
— Balaji Srinivasan
“Block explorers are actually the stealth threat to search.”
— Balaji Srinivasan
“Right now we sort of think of companies, currencies, cities, countries, communities as being different things, but they’re all going to become the same thing.”
— Balaji Srinivasan
“The two business models of states in the future will be subscription and inflation.”
— Balaji Srinivasan
PEOPLE MENTIONED
- Antony Blinken
- Joe Biden
- Xi Jinping
- Wang Huning
- Jiang Zemin
- Hu Jintao
- Robert Gates
- George W. Bush
- Barack Obama
- Mao Zedong
- Deng Xiaoping
- Matthew Yglesias
- James Bond
- Steve Ballmer
- Richard M. Nixon
- Shang Yang
- Saddam Hussein
- April Glaspie
- James Baker
- Donald Rumsfeld
- Chris Brose
- Elliot Ackerman
- James Stavridis
- Nirmala Sitharaman
- Ted Cruz
- Dave Chappelle
- Katharine Graham
- Arthur Ochs Sulzberger
- Rupert Murdoch
- The Bancroft Family
- John F. Kennedy
- Seymour Hersh
- Eric Weinstein
- Bertrand Russell
- A.G. Sulzberger
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Paul Krugman
- Joe Weisenthal
- Sean McMeekin
- Vladimir Lenin
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- B. Biddles
- Eliyahu M. Goldratt
- Jason Bourne
- Lewis Dartnell
- Samo Burja
- Santa Claus
- Ted Kaczynski
- Richard W. Wrangham
- Marc Andreessen
- James L. Barksdale
- Martin Luther
- Satoshi Nakamoto
- Dan Carlin
- Tuur Demeester
- Francis Fukuyama
- Eric X. Li
- Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher
- Brian Williams
- Jared Polis
- Tyler Cowen
- John Lanchester
- Richard P. Feynman
- Karl Marx
- Leonid Kantorovich
- Satya Nadella
- G.K. Chesterton
- NASJAQ
- Vitalik Buterin
- Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn
- London Breed
- Francis Suarez
- Henry George
- Noah Smith
- Jean Valjean
- Larry Page
- Glenn Greenwald
- Jack Ma
- Travis Kalanick
- Alan Greenspan
- Bruno Maçães
- Donald Trump
- Paul Graham
- R. Buckminster Fuller
- Josh McConkey
- Dick Fosbury
- Jack Dorsey
- Evan Williams
- Ruy Teixeira
- Jesus
- Hal Finney
- Isaac Newton
- Frank Herbert
- Richard Cantillon
- Joe Colangelo
- Adam Ferguson
- Sotonye
- William Jennings Bryan
- Sarah Silverman
- Hari Seldon
- Jon Stewart
- Jeff Bezos
- Sundar Pichai
- Troy Hunt
- Kevin Mitnick
- Jameson Lopp
- Ben Bernanke
- Peter Thiel
- Palmer Luckey
- Patrick Collison
- Tony Blair
- Matt Taibbi
- Bari Weiss
- Jesse Singal
- Vijay Pande
- Albert Einstein
- Srinivasa Ramanujan
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 900 million downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
As the first one a super interesting and challenging listen.
Couple of thoughts: 3:23 it seems like Balaji treats Bitcoin as a “false God” even going back to it’s own mythological origins.
I can’t reconcile his distributed future from the totalitarian base of the “root” he seems to think it requires: his China or Singapore homerism (not necessarily homerism but discounting mass surveillance/Uygher or cultural destruction). America and it’s leadership is distributed, the rise of states vs federal is further distributed, but we’re to believe freedom/development of a distributed future will be best realized by the root controlled states?
Crypto civilization as sci fi seems to be the best descriptor: I think about this talk parallel to Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan. Balaji has no national pride in a place that allowed a construct for his education/wealth, but humans have always been tied to place/proximity/geography/etc. All these things don’t matter in a cryptoverse: so what is left of us as humans/spiritual beings/everything we’ve evolved to be to date?
Good questions.
When the U.S. dollar (i.e. fiat currency) left the gold standard, it became an abstraction away from the physical realm (i.e. a materially useful thing that must be stored in a place) towards the digital world, where most of our money are just numbers in a database proclaiming who owns it.
A Bitcoin civilization isn’t a huge leap from that – it’s just decoupled from the fiat part, which is a system of governance based on laws that humans can vote or lobby to change (or appoint new leaders, such as Fed Chairman Powell), where that eligibility is based on some residence status inside physical borders.
Thus the only thing dissolving or changing in a crypto civilization are the standards for citizenship such that you can shape the rules (or logic) that govern the monetary system.
In this case, it seems programming knowledge or at least a familiarity with computer algorithms is a basic requirement.
If going from Gold to fiat was a decoupling from the physical reality and going from Fiat to BTC is a decoupling from a false physical reality to a digitized one. Doesn’t any currency still have physical limitations from a resource perspective? In a BCT world we still have to pull physical resources out of the ground and put them into action allocating them to those who need it? From where we are now isn’t Fiat running into major challenges with the resources running out or low? I’ve heard the World economic forum say “in the future you’ll own nothing and be happy about it”. And my thought is who’s version of happy are we talking about? Meaning the only trajectory for Fiat currency to move forward is a form of Totalitarianism. If BTC takes over majority of control doesn’t it still have the same and worsening physical limitations. Making it possibly dead on arrival? We’d just have a new currency but the same totalitarianism outcome?
Hey Tim, would you ever have anyone on that would challenge some of the ideas presented here? There are a lot of smart people out there who have ideas on how to change media who don’t think that the NYT is run by incompetent people who don’t know how to build anything. Or someone who sees the value in crypto understand but also understand the value in Fiat Currency. Finally I know it’s not as much up your ally but maybe a historian focusing on the reasons of the Fall of the Roman Empire who is younger than Gibbons 🙂
This is the first podcast, I haven’t heard one where the discussion has gone almost close towards 5 hrs mark, something incredible. Kudos to the loads of patience of Tim and the overflowing energy of Balaji, so much of subject matter and almost every matter was getting dissected. The depth and diversity of topic, and the relationship between such different subject matter from politics to governace to technology to economy to history to future to investment to startup, you just name it, it was there in the discussion. Deeply insightful and highly intriguing…
Indeed, there is so much on the aspect of what has happened between US and China, and matters of Asia cannot be discussed by keep India out of picture, the decline of China has to have an equilibrium somewhere else, and it is happening in India. Balaji was so bullish about India, and here are some of the figures to corroborate his analysis.
India is the top country by listed domestic companies in the world. As of 2020, listed domestic companies in India was 5,215 that accounts for 13.63% of the world’s listed domestic companies. India is the third in the list of countries having the most unicorns, trailing the US (396) and China (277). India had about 50,000 startups; around 8,900 – 9,300 of these are technology-led startups whereas, 1300 new tech startups were born in 2019 alone, implying there are 2-3 tech startups born every day…
A decentralized conversation by a real life Polymath
Balaji is a
super unique thinker and I don’t always agree but his ideas are the
kind of heterodox thinking we need to keep innovative solutions at the
forefront of people’s minds. His mindset reminds me of how Bret
Kugelmass talks about nuclear. Would love to see a conversation with
both of them sometime.
“Never, before, in the course of Ferriss Podcasting, has one man, made me feel so stupid !!!”
As always just brilliant
I am 77 years old, retired, but read widely. This was an excellent podcast and I am going through the copious show notes with much interest. Thank you so much for providing such viewpoints to those of us who are trying to figure out the world and politics of today. Now more makes sense to me!
Oh, made it (I hang in there) through the 5 hours at Sam Harris’ some time ago.
This man is no doubt smart and has some ideas, but very tiresome, big ego, doesn’t listen and doesn’t capture the nuances of things. There is a lot more to life.
I listened to both of Tim’s interviews with Balaji. That’s a lot of time and overall I get why people liked listening to him. I did and then I really didn’t.
I’ll first say that I don’t ever remember listening to a person that could summarize and articulate such a wide variety of topics as well as try to place them in a broader framework from which he could intuit future events. The centralized vs. decentralized paradigm is completely new to me as was many of is classifications. However, about half way through listening he started to hit some topics that (as a mathematician) I knew a far bit about and noticed that his summaries tended to not be quite accurate or that there were some connection we was trying to make (or fancy words he was using like talking about functional analysis and the Navier Stokes equation) that seemed incorrect or maybe just unnecessary.
After this realization, I started to think that maybe this is how he is with everything. He has a 1 in 100 million ability to retain and access knowledge and make connections. He uses this skill in conversation to completely overwhelm mere mortals (like me) with a constant stream of tangental references to the point were you give up and maybe just stop questioning and take it all in. But, when he gets to something you understand and it’s not quite right! Is the NYT really so bad? Is dictatorship in Singapore really so great (or aspirational)? You can’t throw it all out but it might no be worth the effort (or, indeed, the injury) to wade through this mess.
I have been a long time fan of Tim, his books, and his podcasts. I realize this was his most downloaded in 2021 and I fear he will take this as a lesson moving forward. In all it was more political than Tim’s podcasts usually are and that was disappointing. It also doesn’t do Tim any favors to platform him. Tim is a man of exceptional skill, poise, and intelligence. But, in the presence of a filibustering, ideologue his usually permissive style is insufficient.
Thank you very much for your contribution @Kevin Beanland. I so much agree with you. I am concerned that people like Balaji get so much airtime and are not challenged more thoroughly. Unfortunately, amongst all the accolades we are the minority.
Wow epic, so many thought provoking topics and resources to explore. Thanks Balaji, Thanks Tim, especially for going to the trouble of documenting all of the resources.
I listened several times to this podcast as well as the one from March. Lots of good thoughts that have changed my perspective on the current state of affairs in the US.
One thing that came across is that Balaji equates capitalism to free market and indirectly to the decentralization.
As far as I remember, capitalism is the opposite of decentralization: it is actually accumulation of the capital. Winner takes it all, if you will. Think of the major tech companies mentioned in the podcast.
As far as markets are concerned, Chinees bureaucracy has been creating and running markets in China close to thousand years. Markets have to be created and maintained, just like crypto market.
The talk about mythical beginnings of BTC, and disappearance of its creator sounded like pages from a manga book.
Interesting and annoying. A spaghetti code of a conversation. Constant execution of subroutines without returning to the original flow of execution. Definitely some worthwhile concepts. But please, just answer at least one question without descending into more topics with more questions that never really get answered. At least, that’s how it felt to me.
Brilliant guy, for sure. Many epiphanies while listening. Among so many insights, one thing that’s confusing me is Balaji’s assumption that a higher sovereignty (decentralization) of cities and states would create better entities by spurring competition between them for citizens. He compares this to the state of internet-era media, where many subpar journalism outlets die off, leaving only those that provide better value (implied). At the same time, however, he decries that same media — especially in it’s current state, where only those outlets who have outcompeted the others for eyeballs survive — for having a potentially devastating amount of power over the truth, and for manipulating that truth for their own interests (the top interest being gaining more eyeballs, regardless of whether or not what they provide is in the best interest of the owners of those eyeballs). So is he saying that concentration of the most popular ideas (in cities or in media outlets) would create the best possible outcomes or devastating outcomes? He seems to simultaneously argue for both.
Very thought provoking and for sure intimidating listening to…it is also amusing to hear Tim said “No, I don’t know what it means…” so many times. It makes me feel a little better. hahah
Tim I can’t believe you didn’t know NIMBY and YIMBY!:) Great episode though. You’re very patient with a guy who basically wants to give a long speech and hear himself talk. And let’s face it, that’s what Balaji is excellent at and we all actually enjoy it. I do think you’d benefit from some foreign policy immersion classes or something. To be clear, he mentions a ton of things that even someone well rounded in foreign policy wouldn’t necessarily know, but listeners can hear your lack of confidence on the issue and I think you’d enjoy it.
He said something about secession, slavery, the American south, and anti-slavery at the end. Did anyone catch that?
Hahahahahahahaha – Sovereign right to tax….
Officially, though, India still hasn’t made its mind up about whether cryptocurrencies are even legal.
“[Whether crypto is] legitimate or illegitimate, it is a different question, but I will tax because it is a sovereign right to tax,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in February.
.
While the legality of crypto in India is still a matter of debate….
I really liked the first podcast I heard with Balaji on the show, to the point I went out and researched some of his stuff. But this one was literally the worst Ferris podcast I’ve listened to. Not Tim’s fault – purely Balaji. As another commenter said, incredibly annoying. Didn’t follow Tim’s cues or redirect questions at all – just continued talking about whatever he wanted to talk about for as long as he wanted to talk about it. He should start his own radio show where he can broadcast uninterrupted for 3 hours if that’s what he wants to do (sort of what he did here).