Tim Ferriss

July 4, 2022

Balaji S. Srinivasan — 5–10-Year Predictions, How to Start a New Country, Society-as-a-Service (SaaS), Bitcoin Maximalism, Memetic Warfare, How Prices Are Born, Moral Flippenings, The One Commandment, and The Power of Missionary over Mercenary (#606)

“A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.“
— 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.

His new book is The Network State: How To Start a New Country. You can also read it for free at TheNetworkState.com.

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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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#606: Balaji S. Srinivasan — 5–10-Year Predictions, How to Start a New Country, Society-as-a-Service (SaaS), Bitcoin Maximalism, Memetic Warfare, How Prices Are Born, Moral Flippenings, The One Commandment, and The Power of Missionary over Mercenary

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Want to hear Balaji’s last time on the podcast? Listen to our conversation here, in which we discussed “real” journalism, DeFi risks and rewards, potholes on the road to a utopian decentralized world, transhumanism versus anarcho-primitivism, Bitcoin versus gold, the problems with a 51-percent democracy, angel investing in the twenty-first century, COVID lessons learned, and much more.

#547: Balaji Srinivasan — Centralized China vs Decentralized World, The DeFi Matrix, Ascending vs Descending Trends, Bitcoin Mining as Energy Storage, Reputational Civil War, and Maximalism vs. Optimalism

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Balaji S. Srinivasan:

Website | Twitter | 1729.com

SHOW NOTES

[06:39] The current state of crypto and overall markets
[14:41] Market depth and the Overton window
[20:54] The challenges of identifying possible trends
[24:25] Does transhumanism need rebranding?
[27:13] Augmented reality glasses: the next big thing?
[38:10] Rethinking Icarus from a transhumanist, pro-innovation perspective
[59:20] DALL-E 2 as a compact programming language
[1:02:03] Peter Turchin and cliodynamics
[1:03:30] What is a network state?
[1:17:49] Humans like to fight over borders—even when they’re invisible
[1:26:04] American anarchy
[1:46:55] Bitcoin vs. gold as an inflation hedge
[1:52:59] What needs to happen for Bitcoin to behave in the way Bitcoin holders would like it to behave?
[2:24:29] Society as a service: how the establishment of a network state could succeed—without devolving into a cult
[2:49:25] Chinese control; missionary over mercenary; innovation over top-down control
[3:00:57] India’s upward trends
[3:05:57] Establishment disdain for tech interlopers (the feeling is mutual)
[3:11:40] Parting thoughts

MORE BALAJI SRINIVASAN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“The worst thing to do is buy an asset when it’s in the news and sell it when it’s in the news.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“Super soldier serum is real.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“The Wright Brothers were right. Icarus is a myth.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of stability, an integrated cryptocurrency, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population income and real estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“Democrats will only marry Democrats to a higher percentage and Republicans are tending to only want to marry other Republicans. That has been growing. The thing is that you iterate that out one generation and what happens? That becomes ethnicity. Ideology becomes biology.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“They see a border, they fight over it. And you can see, for example, the Franco-German border between France and Germany. The border you can’t see is the border between Twitter and Facebook.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“Only those assets that can’t be frozen or seized are your assets. And Bitcoin has a root system that extends way outside the United States to hundreds of millions of people around the world [who] value it. And that is not the case for your frozen assets on a stock exchange, for your valueless dollars.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

“If, in the 2010s, social media became what all politics is about, by the end of the 2020s, cryptocurrency becomes what all politics is about. You will not be able to fund your government without it.”
— Balaji Srinivasan

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That's how we're gonna be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you're rude, we'll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)

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Aaron

3 years ago

I appreciate Balaji’s speculative and analytical ability however he never seems to be participating in conversation. Every podcast with him gives off a raving monologue feeling – even Tim speaking momentarily is interrupted by Balaji trying to guess what Tim is going to say.

Dannielle

3 years ago

Ok! Really enjoying the largely reasonable discussion of contentious topics, thank you. Need to point out that conflating #BLM with nonwhite people burning nonwhite businesses is unreasonable, some rioters burned businesses, that’s not a tenet of #BLM. Unreasonable repeated assertion. Thank you, Tim, for recognizing people stay in communities, families, relationships for complex reasons, some very sad, and voting with your feet is fraught. Finally, democracy can be reconfigured thru proportional representation as the Europeans do it but I’d argue that 51% democracy is a false premise, the 49% agree within a democracy to a 51% winner. It’s not forced on them, it’s NOT as described, a tyranny. That’s malleable, get on it! No whining

Sefa

3 years ago

Thank you 🙂

Steven

3 years ago

Interesting podcast and made me think about a few things. A while ago I wrote a blog post for my business that mentioned cryptocurrency being based upon the carbon produced by that business or energy production in that region.

I think a cryptocurrency that is personal based and made up of a basket of cryptocurrencies make up your overall wealth. A charity currency, a currency based upon your occupation, a currency about how much give you time to charity or social good, and a carbon currency. This would all be weighted to make your personal wealth and be traded on a market that would make up a standard currency that could be traded, or you could trade the individual currencies to some one who needs it for what ever reason.

I think Tim did a good job keeping the questions coming for the guest and brought up legitimate questions. I think the guest has a good idea but is leaving behind how a society based upon a network moves society in a positive direction. I do think we are an election or two away from problems in the united stated, but blaming “woke” companies for the discourse when our government was almost overthrown by the vary people the guest seemed to think would host a network society. Not a place I want to live or be part of, I want a free society that can share ideas and respect other peoples opinions.

CrystalGravy

3 years ago

how are there only 4 comments on this amazing discussion? thanks Tim and Balaji! I’ll come back an post an intelligent comment when I’ve got some intelligent feedback. 🙏

MikeA

3 years ago

Love these wide ranging discussions. Lots to think about.
For a fascinating and very grim view of quite a few of topcis discussed including starting a new “country” and montary crash, check out The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver. It’s from 2016 but the author was imagining quite a few of the same scenarios.

Bill

3 years ago

Balaji is quite intelligent and thought provoking but often confuses his confident opinions with the truth or facts. Assertions are not proofs. Also I don’t think he has a sense of humor, he kind of just goes on and on from one assertion to the next. If Tim let him, Balaji could talk for 24 hours without taking a breath.

Dylan

3 years ago

Three things I wished Tim would have asked:
1. Why will augmented reality glasses work this time when Google glasses failed so miserably? Instead of a ‘Glass’-hole, you’ll get ‘aug’-holes.
2. What happens when one network state organizes around the destruction of another network state? (E.g. We are the Paleos and our purpose is to infiltrate the Carbs and destroy their network.) For that matter, where do you move (geographically) when you belong to three networks?
3. What prevents governments from (eventually) giving the okay to crypto currency with the stipulation that the govt. has backdoor access to your wallet? (For law enforcement purposes only, of course!)

Rugilė

1 year ago

Thank you both very much. It was very insightful conversation about topics that I am interested in. Long podcast. I am glad that I listened to all of it.