GM, GM everybody, how are we doing today? It's a GM, indeed, here at Megaopolis. - Hey, you guys. - Hey, you guys.
I had you guys a little bit nervous because I didn't start a dozen, a couple minutes early, didn't I? My palms were sweaty. They used were weak. Oh, vomit on your sweater already.
Yeah, yeah, yeah mom spaghetti indeed scared Yeah, I was reading Your walk rings receipt No, no, no, I was I was reading
An article on mine about money. Good morning Jeremy, how are you doing today?
Good morning. You're black tea. No black tea today yet. I'm gonna do coffee yet again. I'm a coffee band nowadays. I'm all about the coughs.
Really? You're a coffee man. Really?
Listen, it's black gold. It is. I agree. Hey, you're preaching to the dark, dark choir, sir. I love me to come.
Happy. Yeah, like cool to the soul. Coffee is good for me.
Wow, we've just chasing them off right away. Right away. So everybody, so we're going, making our way through the Bank of Skull Cube. Is that what we're doing today?
That's the one. That's the one. Yeah, so when I was looking at the Thinkless Skill Cubes,
So, I guess everybody's perspective. So, first of all, once I started reading it, where you started at the base level, which is money. So, if you really want to understand cryptocurrency, and
and DeFi in general, you really gotta be able to understand money. And a lot of times I think that it's easy for me and for people who have, I don't know, I've grown up with the idea that
Money is just a trading tool and it doesn't matter what trading tool it is, as long as the other person finds it valuable, then that's what you have to trade, right? So when I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of money, but I did have a lot of time and I don't have to or audio, but it just
got way better. I hope you guys can hear me. So I had a lot of time and we lived out in the middle of nowhere so land was there, cheap to my parents also had a little bit of land and also we had a little bit of property that came with my dad's job. Weirdly enough.
go and how would we do this? I mean, well, so first of all, we have our own garden and stuff like that. Second of all, we had friends with cattle and sometimes they would butcher and we could barter some stuff from them usually time. And then if we ever wanted anything like lamb or
I'm actually here's what I usually did. I usually go get, I work for one of the ranchers and I get them to pay me in beef because for them beef was really cheap. And then we take some of that beef and we drive all the way back out towards
the other side of the mountains and we'd help the sheep herders take care of the sheep out there and then at the end of the day I'd trade some of my beef out of my cooler to the Greek sheep herders and I honestly I couldn't even speak the same language as they were speaking they literally came to the United
and they lived in literal tiny wagons, sheep wagons, and they took care of the herds of sheep out in the middle of the red desert. And I would trade them beef and they got so excited because they were usually just surviving on a
diet of land. And they in turn would, if they ever saw any lands that the mom wouldn't take them, which happened very often with sheep, sheep can be lousy mothers sometimes, or something happened to the mom
They would save me those lambs and then I would take those lambs back home and raise them until they were adults at which point I would sell them again.
Because I didn't have money, money just became part of the system of which trade happens. It became part of the system of which I want, when I turn 16, I want to buy my trade.
How am I going to buy my truck? Well, I got to have money to do that and I have no money right now. Mostly what I had at the time was time. But then once you realize that other people have things that other people want,
you can use your time to move these things back and forth. Now, this is just basic trait. It's very obvious to see why a Greek sheep herder might want some beef when he's been living on lamb in the
the red desert for the last six bucks. It's pretty obvious. But why might somebody want some ethereum or some crypto or some bitcoin or you know all of these other things? And also a lot of people don't necessarily look at money
like that. You know, a lot of times money is just... I think that there's some people out there that have not put a lot of thought into the concept of money other than I get paid it.
And that's what we use to buy things.
And that's kind of as far as currency that's all they've ever thought about money. You guys agree with that?
Yeah, I really like that actually. I mean, I think the first like historical currency ever was livestock, you know, so like Makes a lot of sense. Currency is a funny word, you know, it means as like a currency
it to it, it's flowing around. It's just value exchange. It's moving and the sounds like value exchange to me. Treating, deep and cheap and all that. Yeah.
like a good good takeser. It's indeed money. It is indeed money. I think that maybe money and currency are different things like gold would be an example of money in the US dollar
would be an example of a currency, a semantics, semantics, semantics. But yeah, I really like to take that. Yeah, but the further we go into a subject, semantics. In my opinion, always semantics become very important. If you want to actually understand
a subject, then you're going to have to dive deep enough to figure out why the semantics are there in the first place, you know? So I've never had a problem, matter of fact,
Since I was a wee little lad, one of the things that I can remember the most about my mother is her always saying to me, "You just want to arse semantics."
That's amazing. Oh, it was not. No, Mike. You were wrong. There was no one in your business about the situation. Anyway, brother, bear with me. What are your thoughts on money?
Yeah, I think money is one of the most important things that we've done. Obviously, like, so the world can't exist this way without our ability to trade. Yeah, I can't, I just can't accept enough sheep from you and take enough cows to you.
You really just hit the nail on the head, right? Because here's the idea, right? When I was going through all that as a child, as a kid, I would go and spend a day of my time. That's very expensive.
I would then spend travel time back to my house. I would have to rest because that's a whole part of the equation. And then I would have to travel an hour out, work for a day, and then do trade, and then come back. I got a cough, give me a minute.
I'm back. Sorry. I didn't want to be glad to have everybody here. So, that's very kind. So, some of those times I was literally training vegetables, right? Dude, growing vegetables is freaking hard and it
takes a lot of time. Did you ever grow potatoes? Actually, getting potatoes to grow is very easy. But digging potatoes is work. It's freaking work, man. Tomatoes take a lot of freaking care, you know?
It's not something that's easy. It doesn't just happen overnight. All of these things take so much time. Here's where currency or the money actually inside of it, actually what we use today, what we're exchanging today, whether it be the fiat
like the dollar bill or you know tied by for Chinese one whatever wherever you are that current that fiat currency it literally saves you time and energy of trade
you don't have to go back and forth to this one, to that vendor, to this vendor. And I mean, how are you supposed to do what I did back then as a kid, trade and sheep, you know, baby sheep raising baby sheep up to go get a cow and to do this and to do that?
If you're in a normal living situation, right? I was in the middle of Wyoming, so there was a thing that made that possible for me. Currency makes that possible. You can trade your time
And withhold that with inferencing without actually having to go and then like I did with the animals I literally had to go and care for those animals to like even trade them again and find somebody who wanted to trade them You know like that's another thing like if you have
You know it was a dollar bill, but now if you have the East again to you if you have an East and you need something trip to trade for something you can get something to take that East The currency is brilliant and I agree Jeremy. It's one of the most beautiful amazing things that we've ever invented
It's given people, I think that it's given people.
more freedom than almost any other invention.
More freedom, yes, but also sometimes more controlled than ever. It's interesting how like, yeah, and then you can kind of get into the conversation of centralization and decentralization.
Very exciting, which is actually the first thing on the Banclas Guild cube, right? It's just holding the currency. Holding it has a lot to do with it. You know, like who is custodializing?
the monies and what the hell does that mean anyways? You know, it's like if you hold your fiat, your fiat's value is being backed by this government. We hope that your government likes you and is
good to you, no matter what, you know, that they're always good to you and that it's not like they're good to you this year, but next year they, you know, have a new Congress or Senate or president and now they hate you, you know,
know, it's like, "Go but it works out for you." But then additionally, it's not just who's issuing it, but can that issuing entity control you? The US has this separation of church and state where you have the
Federal Reserve, you have the central bank and that is separate from the elected governing body. There's a separation and then also the US has these laws
calls around how the central bank has to work through bank banks, like private consumer banks, so that there's a degree of separation and control. So you have
this but then you have like examples of China where that's not true. It's just those central banks controlling everybody. Let's have a look. Yeah, well let's talk about some of the mechanisms of control. I mean because now we know the baseline of what money is.
have to understand how it works and you're completely right. The difference between central and decentralized finance is where this all comes down to and breaks up next obviously, fall in the skill cube. But you know a lot of people don't understand that like
Like a lot of people don't understand that the government will literally print more money if too many people keep money in savings accounts. Like if the government sees or they'll raise interest rates or they'll do something, they will literally do something to get
people to spend money that's in their savings accounts. And over time if you just leave money like via currency in your savings account it will over time become less and less and less value and that is by design and they want it to be like that.
This is some of why I separate money and currency. Like to me, like, you know, things like, things like say, I'm just going to say gold because like, nothing go by gold. I'd rather you go by East. But for sake of everyone,
understanding. There's a reason if I'm like gold. Yeah, I mean, it's the original money, you know, like it's cool, whatever. I'm not going to recommend buying gold today. I don't really get the point of a pretty rock that's hard to transfer. But
you know, like gold, if you couldn't just go print more. So like it has like a more like money aspect to it. Whereas as like currency, you know, they need a current to it. So it's like, oh no, there's a clog in the system. People are holding it and there's
savings accounts, they're scared. We need to control consumer spending. There needs to be currency, you know, current team around out there. It's like, was print more money, right, or encourage spending in some way.
Because with currency, one person's spending is another person's income. You end up with what they call "stagflation" if people are not spending. The cost of things are going up because people are
They're not producing things, but then also people are not buying things because the cost of things are going up. Governments deal with this. This is a big problem. Big problem. The government needs
money to be circulating because whenever money is not circulating the government cannot tax it and if the government cannot tax it the government has no income so they literally will
do things to encourage your spending, whether it is a steady rate of inflation, which once again is done on purpose, or whatever they will find ways to make you spend your money. They control it. It's a US dollar. It's not a U dollar. It's a US dollar. So by putting your money in Ethereum,
The market's more controlled by the market as opposed to being controlled by a single entity who's controlling your property. And that's the difference essentially between centralization and decentralization, correct?
Yeah, I'll go with that. I mean the physical, practical thing that makes it different is that there is a bunch of people keeping the ledger, the ledger
is the balance sheet, the unit that takes account of, you know, whom has what? That is what a ledger is. And, you know, like,
Normally the bank has that and they could control that if someone, if they were asked by the government to release information on your transactions or to freeze your account to
to turn your account over to the government. They would have to do that and they could totally do that. What's different, of course, about the decentralization is that there's just thousands of people that are jointly keeping up with the ledgers.
So if one of them becomes nefarious and wants to fiddle with your account, all of the other ones will not approve this. And this mini kind of like protecting the few
is really what changes the game. You're not just being picked on by a government, there's now all of these people who are hoping to make sure that your stuff is your stuff. That's beautiful. Big fan.
to play devil's advocate. So yes, I agree with a lot of that. I also want to use more precise terms like when we say the government which government, you know, when like, can
Governments exist. I'm not yet here. I think governments exist without money, right? Or without directly controlling finance. Can we just set up a government and fund it at, you know, some other, uh, through some other function? Like we can.
Right, a government assembly, you know, a body that we put in place, right? What do you mean? What do you mean fund it through some other function? Then taxes, I mean. Well, I mean, okay, I mean, sure, we can reimagine the future, but there's not been anything in the past. Hmm.
Like I'm 100% here. Absolutely. I am bad is what I'm here for buddy. I'm here to re imagine the future. I love this idea. Tell me more. But I don't think we have an example of the past, do we?
No, that doesn't work like that. Governments have money. That's what they have. There's no government without money, right? I mean, not all of them issue their own, but they all
They all use money. They all use money. But there's a question of issuing and controlling that sense, right, like through taxation, right? Versus, you know, like I imagine we could have like a small government where we just do a
a set of donations, and the government either gets funded or not, and it's just a body of arbitration or something. So we've tried other things like that, at least at smaller levels, but yeah, at a larger level, government need a government
If we're going to see the authority needs some amount of control if we don't see the authority there's questions of like how do we move as smaller groups of people right within this decentralized now do you keep something balanced like that and this is something I'm still
I guess that's not as clear on how all of this works, right? Like in a world where we move, post,
You know, like, I don't know as you call it this world. Where governments don't exist the way they currently do, where nation states are kind of set aside from, from, we're at, and we have this more decentralized world. You know, I still don't quite understand.
concretely where that goes.
I think that we have to separate the ideas of government and authority, first of all.
because I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Just because, and I mean, now once again, kind of like your imagination of the life.
of a government that doesn't have to do taxes like show me an example, right? So I don't have an example necessarily. But I mean some of the ideas around how the United States is counted, right? George Washington
and famously did not necessarily want to be the first president of the United States. He was reluctant to that. The idea, however true or not that it may have been or not has been,
The idea that people, you should almost have to force people into government as opposed to getting them like they're so excited. They will do anything and everything to get there.
This is a sign that the authoritarian or not the authoritarian, I'm sorry, that was wrong with the corruption has started to seep in, you know, anytime that I think that anyone in government has quote unquote authority.
That's where the lines really start to get dangerous. And that's where you have to have more accountability. And I'm not saying these places aren't necessary because cops have to have authority. I don't know how to run a society without something
sort of police. Maybe not what we have now, but I don't have an idea of how to do it without police. So, you know, I can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah, I guess.
What I don't know, and I need to read a little bit more into this, like, you know, check out, you know, walkie and some of these other people that are talking about it. But, you know, like, what happens when we blur these lines? I don't quite understand.
the long-term goal of breaking down societies and having groups, you know, that where borders aren't
the point. Right? Like I don't know where we go. I don't know how this happens. I love the idea. Right? I don't think borders being these arbitrary points just are not particularly effective. But when we break this down, when we have governance through ideal
some type of AI assisted, you know, dows and things like that, that's great. But we're still going to need, like, you know, my mind boggles at the idea of how to arbitrate that, right? Like, so, borders break down and we just have different groups and I'm in group.
you know, A in your own group B and then like how do we deal with landownership? How do we deal with, you know, I don't know, even like clean air and things like that. Like governments do a lot of that. That's what we've set them up to do. And we can argue that they're in a
efficient, right? And I think that's what we're kind of arguing that they don't work that well. Oh, second, yeah, and we don't work that well, but I just I'm waiting to see more of what this alternative is and how we how we get our foot in the door and get halfway there.
I'm making a tweet. So there you go.
I heard one time America described
as the best of all of the bad ideas. Jeremy. And I kind of agree with it, right? And the idea behind it was that, you know what, like America is not perfect. We have room for improvement.
But the system that we have set up here might be, and I'll say might be, the best of all of the bad ideas. And how do I relate that to what you're saying? I guess just the idea that
But first of all, I'm not one of the types of people who thinks that all borders are going to be necessarily eliminated. Like this is a utopian idea. And borders are the differentiation between ideologies, right?
There is, there's an ideological difference between Canada and the United States. And there's a border to determine which laws you need to follow based on the ideologies of that
In that sense, I think that there's always going to be, and there even needs to be, and there's a lot of great things.
about borders in territories. On the other hand, if there's ways that we can reach beyond the territories to make the world a better and more inclusive place, while still giving
the territory themselves, the autonomy and the security that they need to be a society and a civilization. I think that these things have to work sympathetically.
Right? So I don't, in my opinion, I've never heard a convincing argument to make in government go away. Also, there's good luck. Right? So I mean, I agree with you.
Where's your tweet, Rob? - It's shared in this space.
It's talking about a apologies network state, right? Yeah, I mean, have you guys read the network state? I have not. Yeah, I know I've read it. I've heard numerous discussions on it and I've read some articles related to it. Would recommend it's the thing you're talking about.
like the future of nations. And I mean like, you know, like before we needed our nations to be made up of people who were close and proximity to us as we shared resources and we built walls around cities and thought
often vading hordes, right? Like there was a need for that. But all the people in a geographical area doesn't mean that they agree with each other just because they are geographically close to each other. You know, like, I don't know what that means. So
I think that what you have is just people want to be associated with groups that are like them. And also people change and they want to be able to change what
TV subscriptions they have and their diet. The nation they subscribe to. But being able to subscribe to a certain nation is kind of like a privileged thing, right? Like you have to be so wealthy to be able to
Move yourself out of your country, you know, and you see this like an immigration, you know people with money easy for them to immigrate somewhere people without money like Yeah, we build a hundred mile walls talk about how they're friends
from less than prestige countries, right? Like, it's problematic. And at the end of the day, all that people want to do is to be in groups of people that are like them, think like them and invest like them, grow like them.
they want to do it. So the idea as the world becomes more connected and we don't need to be so close to each other to share resources and to fight off invading hordes, right? Like as this becomes less of a thing,
people want to subscribe to you know monetary systems and and whatnot that are in alignment with with their values right like some people may want to pay taxes to have free health care other people may not want to pay taxes to have free health
health care. And with blockchain technologies, it's like you can easily just say like, "Hey, I'm subscribing to the government plan that taxes all of my transactions and gives me health care." And in the same breath, someone else could say like, "Yeah, I'm not
subscribing to that and I'm going to instead, you know, join this co-op to get access to health care. And that's beautiful. People have those do whatever the hell they want. So, and like digital nations make a lot of sense to me. I feel like I'm already part of
digital nation. I mean, I have an Ethereum tattoo. I don't have an American flag tattoo. You know, I show up every day and build here in the Ethereum ecosystem and all of my fellow East people benefit from that, right? Like, it all makes sense.
Yeah, I like a lot of what you're saying. I enjoy this idea that, you know, a lot of what we're doing in Opelus, right? This is a concept of using, you know, building a group to support the individual. And I love this, right? Get involved, do. But what I don't know is how
Beyond that point these things integrate and we move from our current world into those right like I see some of it right we just create these other groups and they're just groups of you know of buying power and voting power and we just get together and and lobbying and do what do as we do but when you're talking about building
structures and collecting land under these territories. I guess I'm struggling to see how that part happens. Why is Bermuda going to give up land to
to, you know, toads, you know, collective. I mean, why wouldn't it be, right? Like, if I'm going to bring value that they couldn't bring to some remodeling,
I'm out of place or if I'm going to pay taxes to them or any other reason that any other country would have a relationship with any other country.
I mean, it's just about reciprocal value, right?
- Well, there it is, like if the group is powerful enough, and they may be capable of delivering reciprocal value.
And I think that these decentralized units are becoming more and more powerful every day.
I think you're going to have a hard time going to the CCP or Russia and arguing reciprocal value. I mean, they'll do what they can as long as they can control China at least. We'll do what they can as long as they can control it.
but once it doesn't serve their purpose. I mean, they're not. That's how's that going to happen, right? This is exactly why we need to make it work. Oh, I know it's why we need to make it work, but...
Read the book read the book. It's a good book. I'm just freaking smart With the exception of his his million dollar bet. Oh, I mean that was just a
I mean, he knew that wasn't a cost to a million dollars. I mean, he said, like, I'm going to spend a million dollars so that you know that they're printing trillions. And he's got a million dollars to lose.
You know, I gave it to a good call. Sure. So whatever. I struggle. I saw some of his tweets. And again, like it, I think one of the things that we lose in the space is credibility when
Crazy wild things are done predicted or said. I think certain things can be said that seem wild that are amazing. Perhaps like network state could be one of them.
But then when you say other Atlantis things that are verifiably false, it's a struggle to take you seriously.
people who I love some of what you're doing, but you're also just raging at all the politicians in like a non-productive way. You lose some credibility with the things you're doing that are great, right?
Yeah, I don't know, dude, Blake.
I don't have a problem with the logic, you know, I don't have a problem with his million dollar bitcoin bet. Like, I don't think that it discredits him. He held good on his word. He came out and I mean, if you watch his announcement, like he says, like,
Yeah, I'm spending a million dollars, you know, it's marketing. It's fine with me.
You know, yeah, I don't know. If you have a problem with it and subscribe to a different nation, that's the fricking point, you know.
We lost a Brock over here. Down bad. Yeah, sorry, I don't know if it's like this is one of the things the Muncher ends up being all that interesting and may derail
the conversation and the point of like chatting in the open. So slap me from wrong. But yeah. I don't know if we're talking about DeFi anymore. Like we're talking about the network state, which is cool. Like that is I guess maybe like
I think my biggest interest in Diffy like I love this underlying idea that we can have finance done in the open in a way that is understandable.
and transparent like that's beautiful that is like this