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Balaji Profile picture
@balajis
Feb 4, 2021 • 13 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
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India should support crypto as a pillar of its foreign & domestic policy.

It defends national security by preventing deplatforming, deters fraud via on-chain accounting, and offers a decentralized alternative to a new Cold War. @nsitharaman @narendramodi balajis.com/why-india-shou…
As background:

- Crypto is now a $1T industry
- Bitcoin and Ethereum have enabled >$1T in annual transaction volume
- Decentralized finance has ~$30B in assets
- Coinmarketcap.com is more popular than the Wall Street Journal!

It is now a global phenomenon. ImageImageImageImage
NATIONAL SECURITY

Crypto defends India's national security by foiling deplatforming.

Bitcoin prevents financial deplatforming. Digital gold is a rail of last resort for crises like 2008.

And Ethereum prevents social deplatforming. Create social networks the US can't shut down. ImageImage
FOREIGN INVESTMENT

A favorable crypto policy would attract billions in investment to India, causing capital landing rather than capital flight.

Bitcoin is very popular among CEOs and investors. And at $200k per BTC, an estimated 50% of global billionaires will come from crypto. Image
REMITTANCES & REMOTE

- 400M Indians are newly online
- COVID has created a remote economy
- India earns $150B+ from BPO
- And receives $80B+ from remittances

So: India is poised for an absolutely massive boom in remote work & remittances, with crypto serving as the catalyst. ImageImageImageImage
MONETARY POLICY

Why does India hold 600 tons of gold? Because in a crisis the rupee may need to be gold-backed. By analogy, a digital rupee may need to be *digital-gold backed*.

Gold is not a threat to India, gold has historically been an *asset* for India. Digital gold is too. ImageImageImageImage
TRUSTWORTHY ACCOUNTING

Here's a little known fact: major accounting firms now use blockchains as a gold standard in audits, because they can't be falsified.

India could use on-chain accounting to build a financial system that leapfrogs the world. The next step for IndiaStack? ImageImageImageImage
A FINANCIAL INTERNET

Just like the internet digitized movies, music, and all types of media, blockchains enable a *financial internet* that is digitizing currencies, stocks, bonds, and all types of assets.

It's imperative that India have access to the financial internet! Image
CRYPTO APIS > CORPORATE APIS

India already encourages the use of open source over proprietary code when available.

It should prefer crypto APIs over corporate APIs for the same reason, because blockchains aren't just open source: they're also open state & open execution. ImageImage
FOREIGN POLICY

A renewed non-aligned movement will play a balancing role in the US/China Cold War.

India should reposition it as a *decentralized movement* that advocates crypto protocols as a successor to the rules-based order, starting with finance.
balajis.com/why-india-shou… ImageImageImageImage
BECOME A GLOBAL LEADER

As the world's 3rd largest economy in PPP terms, India could lead a decentralized movement to develop provably fair crypto platforms, neutral systems outside both American and Chinese control that all countries can embrace.

It's time for a bold move. Image
RECOMMENDATIONS

1) Ship digital rupee backed by digital gold
2) Add on-chain accounting + "stockchain" to IndiaStack
3) Attract crypto capital with smart laws
4) Build decentralized protocols for the world

India can use crypto to become a global leader.
balajis.com/why-india-shou…
SAVE TRILLIONS

Crypto is a $1T industry on track to become a $10T industry.

India’s entire GDP is $3T.

A crypto ban would cost India trillions in growth. Economic growth is also a national security issue; whatever the ban hopes to achieve may be done more cheaply another way. Image

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More from @balajis

Balaji Profile picture
Sep 8
Both America and China were invested in the illusion that China wasn't already the world's strongest economy.

Psychologically, it suited the incumbent to appear strong. So America downplayed China's numbers.

Strategically, it suited the disruptor to appear weak. So China also sandbagged its own numbers.

But the illusion is becoming harder to maintain.Image
In retrospect, all the China cope over the last decade or so was really just the stealth on the Chinese stealth bomber.

Hide your strength and bide your time was Deng's strategy. Amazingly, denying China's strength somehow also became America's strategy.

For example, all the cope on China's demographics somehow being uniquely bad...when they have 1.4B+ people that crush every international science competition with minimal drug addiction, crime, or fatherlessness...and when their demographic problems have obvious robotic solutions.

Or, for another example, how MAGA sought to mimic China's manufacturing buildout and industrial policy without deeply understanding China's strengths in this area, which is like competing with Google by setting up a website. Vague references to 1945 substituted for understanding the year 2025.

One consequence of the cope is that China knows far more about America's strengths than vice versa. Surprisingly few Americans interested in re-industrialization have ever set foot in Shenzhen. Those who have, like @Molson_Hart, understand what modern China actually is.

Anyway, what @DoggyDog1208 calls the "skull chart" is the same phenomenon @yishan and I commented on months ago. Once China truly enters a vertical, like electric cars or solar, their pace of ascent[1] is so rapid that incumbents often don't even have time to react.

Now apply this at country level. China has flipped America so quickly on so many axes[2], particularly military ones like hypersonics or military-adjacent ones like power, that it can no longer be contained.

A major contributing factor was the dollar illusion. All that money printing made America think it was richer than China. And China was happy to let America persist in the illusion. But an illusion it was. Yet another way in which Keynesianism becomes the epitaph of empire.

[1]: asiatimes.com/2025/07/thucyd…
[2]: x.com/balajis/status…Image
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Well, it's not the idea, it's the execution.

China can just sit back and let the world be its Xerox PARC. And then become a speedy second mover on anything that's working.

So you need innovations China genuinely can't copy.
One of them is Bitcoin.
Read 7 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Sep 1
The dollar is losing reserve currency status. It’s down to 42% of global reserves, and gold is rapidly rising. Image
Digital gold is becoming the reserve currency of the individual.

Gold is returning as the reserve currency of the state.

Original post below.
Recall the Fed admitted that a “small number” of countries were switching to gold.

But that small number actually included Russia, India, and China: the RIC of BRICS.
Read 6 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Aug 18
On many graphs of the physical world, China is in first place by a wide margin.

But if you look more closely, India is a distant but real runner up. Image
Image
The same pattern holds in nuclear.
China is #1 in reactors under construction.
But India is in second place. Image
Electricity generation is similar.

China’s recent increase is unparalleled in history. But India is increasing quickly, and will flip the EU soon. Image
Read 7 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Aug 6
There are now two kinds of AI retards.

The first kind of retard uses AI everywhere, even where it shouldn’t be used.

The second kind of retard sees AI everywhere, even where it isn’t used.
Usually, it’s obvious what threads are and aren’t AI-written.

But some people can’t tell the difference between normal writing and AI writing. And because they can’t tell the difference, they’ll either overuse AI…or accuse others of using AI!

What we actually may need are built-in statistical AI detectors for every public text field. Paste in a URL into an archive.is-like interface and get back the probability that any div on the page is AI-generated.

In general my view is that AI text shouldn’t be used raw. It’s like a search engine result, it’s lorem ipsum. Useful for research but not final results. AI code is different, but even that requires review. AI visuals are different still, and you can sometimes use them directly.

We’re still developing these conventions, as the tech itself is of course a moving target. But it is interesting that even technologists (who see the huge time-savings that AI gives for, say, data analysis or vibe coding) are annoyed by AI slop. Imagine how much the people who don’t see the positive parts of AI may hate AI.

TLDR: slop is the new spam, and we’ll need new tools and conventions to defeat it.
I agree email spammers will keep adapting.

But I don’t know if a typical poster will keep morphing their content in such a way.
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Jul 25
JP Morgan is updating their p(doom), but for the dollar. Image
Just the fact that JPMC is now admitting this is a big step.

"De-dollarization has increasingly become a substantive topic of discussion among investors, corporates and market participants more broadly."

As the US deglobalizes, the globe dedollarizes.
jpmorgan.com/insights/globa…Image
Yes, but no manufacturing economy can be realistically stood up in time to replace the sheer consumption that money-printing enables.

Example: to make $1T, you can (a) print or (b) sell $1000 phones to 1B people. Obviously, the former is far easier.
Image
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Jun 4
AI PROMPTING → AI VERIFYING

AI prompting scales, because prompting is just typing.

But AI verifying doesn’t scale, because verifying AI output involves much more than just typing.

Sometimes you can verify by eye, which is why AI is great for frontend, images, and video. But for anything subtle, you need to read the code or text deeply — and that means knowing the topic well enough to correct the AI.

Researchers are well aware of this, which is why there’s so much work on evals and hallucination.

However, the concept of verification as the bottleneck for AI users is under-discussed. Yes, you can try formal verification, or critic models where one AI checks another, or other techniques. But to even be aware of the issue as a first class problem is half the battle.

For users: AI verifying is as important as AI prompting.
I love everything @karpathy has done to popularize vibe coding.

But then after you prototype with vibe coding, you need to get to production with right coding.

And that means AI verifying, not just AI prompting. That’s easy when output is visual, much harder when it’s textual.
@karpathy The question when using AI is: how can I inexpensively verify the output of this AI model is correct?

We take for granted the human eye, which is amazing at finding errors in images, videos, and user interfaces.

But we need other kinds of verifiers for other domains.
Read 4 tweets

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