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14 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
The ethical case for crypto:

- privacy
- free markets
- free speech
- decentralized truth
- computational rule-of-law
- economic alignment > polarization

The next rules-based order is made of code: not nationalist or socialist, but internationalist, capitalist, and fair to all.
I’ve been in the space a while.

@bariweiss has put together perhaps the most substantive public discussion yet between the crypto and fiat communities — represented by me and @profplum99 respectively.

Worth your time!
bariweiss.substack.com/p/is-bitcoin-a…
Why do I say it’s substantive? We’re moving from an era where people pronounce crypto a bubble to one where it’s taken seriously.

Tulip mention notwithstanding, this exchange is a step forward in that sense.
2010s: Bitcoin is dead
2020s: Kill Bitcoin
2030s: Long live the blockchain

I don’t know if Bitcoin-the-protocol makes it through unscathed.

I do think Bitcoin-the-ledger never dies, as it can be imported into other chains.

And I know that crypto-the-concept can’t be stopped.

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
8 May
What happens if inflation actually does go vertical?

Digital stays cheap, but physical becomes a premium product. Zoom > flights, Twitter > theaters.

Even more of life would crowd onto centralized tech platforms.

Crypto thus saves us in two ways: BTC and tech decentralization.
The financial crisis & COVID were both stimuli for the digital world.

Printed money & negative interest rates drove funds to higher risk tech stocks.

And the physical world became more expensive (or even inaccessible) thanks to the state.

Inflation will have a similar effect.
The idea that inflation favors the digital world isn’t one I had fully put together till recently.

Basically, a rise in commodity prices is passed through to all physical products. If oil soars, flights are more expensive. But Zoom’s marginal costs don’t increase as much.
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
6 May
Feels like the AI version of this is extremely doable with today’s technology.

The truly personal life coach. Angel (or devil?!) sitting on your shoulder telling you what to do.
Implementation:

- Bootstrap avatar from someone’s photos, audio, and videos
- Implement some kind of speech2text
- Integrate GPT-3 for dynamic conversation
- Add scripts for various moods: working out, focus, etc

Nothing here is impossible, but getting it polished is hard.
Then there’s another version, which is the AI influencer life coach. Train on their podcasts and text and video. Ask for advice at any time.

Maybe the influencer themselves gets a cut for use of their likeness?
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
4 May
Elon is a visionary. Tweets about Woke James Bond and it instantly becomes reality. 😁
There are many who still think the US government has some reserve of competence, that the military is “based” or whatever, that the unreality stops at some unmarked door.

That illusion comes from Hollywood. The reality is that they are woke morons too. And so empire is ending.
“I am a cisgender millennial with generalized anxiety disorder.”
Read 6 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
2 May
I don’t even understand why @elonmusk is bothering with SNL.

If he did Tesla TV or SpaceX Satellite Radio, he’d have his own media arm.

Make @BoredElonMusk the inaugural editor-in-chief. And build an international audience that dwarfs these aging American media properties.
Elon has 52M followers. SNL has 3M. He was doing their corporate parent (Comcast!) a favor.

We need to stop doing these kinds of favors.

Build our own outlets, hire editors-in-chief, make our own movies, tell our own stories, think internationally, and — above all — go direct.
Starlink is a direct competitor to Comcast.

SNL Studios is at least partially owned by Comcast, and is broadcast from the Comcast Building.

So: why should @elonmusk give free content to direct competitors? Give it to Starlink & Tesla customers instead.
corporate.comcast.com/news-informati…
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
2 May
@andy_matuschak Most of @elidourado’s arguments for ETH are good. But it just serves a different purpose than BTC.

Ethereum is programmable finance. Bitcoin is digital gold. Even EIP-1559 won’t change that because it signals that Ethereum *has* a mutable monetary policy.
@andy_matuschak @elidourado It’s like when people used to say that Twitter was just one feature of Facebook, the status update.

Products that appear superficially similar early on develop shared cultures and use-cases and differentiate over time. So too for coins.
@andy_matuschak @elidourado Immutability (BTC) and financial innovation (ETH) are both incredibly valuable, but by their very nature can’t be the same thing.

A constantly changing and improving platform (Ethereum) is culturally different from a finished, reliable, immutable coin (Bitcoin).
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
25 Apr
Don’t let these wokes rewrite history.

Every media corporation that ran misinformation on COVID-19 simply turned on a dime and pivoted to hectoring the public.

Utterly shameless liars. No retractions, resignations, or investigations. Which is why they deserve only disruption.
Here’s me last Jan arguing with BuzzFlu over their legendary banger “Don’t Worry About Coronavirus, Worry About the Flu.”

They got millions of clicks. Turned a little profit. Then stealth-edited the headline weeks later after people sickened & died. archive.is/NyPND
Here’s Recode last Feb with “No Handshakes, Please” which tried to paint tech as paranoid lunatics for taking precautions on COVID.

Never forget that these just-the-flu journalists were the *origin* of memes like “just-the-flu”.

Cooked up in their labs, for clicks and profit.
Read 4 tweets

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