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6 Jun, 6 tweets, 3 min read
If this is true, then a small country like Tuvalu (which gets a big chunk of revenue from the .tv domain name) could declare #BTC (and ETH!) to be legal tender.

The benefits would easily be worth billions.

So: could we legally crowdfund a prize for the first country to do this?
$5M isn’t that much money in crypto!

“Under the current deal…Verisign pays Tuvalu around $5 million per year for the right to administer .tv. For a nation whose annual domestic revenues tend to hover around $60 million, this is a substantial benefit.”
washingtonpost.com/video-games/20…
Looks like Tuvalu uses the Australian dollar to peg their currency.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvaluan_…
Tuvalu only has 12000 people, but it’s a full UN member state too. The 189th country, recognized in 2000. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Na…
They do deals like this physical coin deal for revenue, in addition to the domain deal. So a crypto legal tender recognition deal may be in the cards.
abc.net.au/news/2020-05-3…
I don’t know if the answer is El Salvador, Tuvalu, or another state that has the right combination of size & moxie to drive recognition of crypto as legal tender.

But if we compare budgets of the smallest countries to (say) DAOs, it absolutely looks like a deal is possible...

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
5 Jun
The Protocol is the Parent.

Two years later, headquartering in Silicon Valley and incorporating in Delaware is now the old school choice.

The new model is full remote with the protocol as the parent. That’s Ethereum, that’s Bitclout, that’s DAOs.
For example, the buildout speeds of the @solana and @0xPolygon ecosystems are incredible.

Nail the on-chain APIs, issue an asset, and the system self-organizes. Platforms have always been around, but ownable APIs are new.

Digital property rights are the best distribution deals.
The name of the game now is to find the best spot in the world to set up your bootloader, the entity that creates your decentralized asset & APIs.

What’s the right base of the space elevator? Where do you set up that legacy terrestrial entity? Switzerland and Wyoming stand out.
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
5 Jun
Thinking about how to express this quantitatively, but mass pseudonymity is a stable equilibrium in the internet age in a sense that mass publicity is not.
If you're familiar with the inverted pendulum from control theory, the equilibrium is unstable. The pendulum will swing all the way to one side or the other without constant, costly balancing.

This is a metaphor for the real name internet environment. Too hard to stay balanced.
Here's a visual of getting a pendulum up into the inverted position, and then keeping it stable despite the gravitational force that keeps swinging it to one side or another.

That stabilization is expensive. Eventually energy runs out.
Read 7 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
4 Jun
Buy Miami, short SF.

Or, if you believe in the turnaround, go long SF.

Citycoins will express people's faith in city policy. As does emigration. Vote with ballot, and now also with wallet and feet.
Municipal bonds have existed forever. But they are traded in inaccessible venues and don't use modern tech.

The concept of municipal equity, or a natively digital cognate thereof, is new.

What if city residents, working together, could build value & share upside?
The advantage for every city to legalize citycoins is simple: they are a new source of funds for a city.

Figure out the split. The city government gets X% of the coins. Then allow N private operators to build competing city coins with different features. And let market decide.
Read 11 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
3 Jun
Russia is reportedly de-dollarizing. Here's the new portfolio.
As outlined in this series of articles, every country that's not the USA or PRC will shift to national stacks & neutral protocols over the 2020s.

National stacks for domestic trade & communications.
Neutral protocols for international access to the same.
balajis.com/tag/india/
BTC is akin to digital gold, and cannot be frozen or seized by any state. It is this property that makes BTC so precious for safeguarding national security.

A network that cannot be shut down by any state can be relied upon in time of conflict. balajis.com/why-india-shou…
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
3 Jun
Crypto makes security tangible. When an account is hacked, the funds are withdrawn right away.
Not all hacks have pecuniary motivations. National security hacks are in a different class.

Still, the capture-the-flag aspect of crypto — where an attacker has a strong incentive to instantly use the private keys, lest funds are moved — is a sharp contrast to silent compromise.
You know who isn't good at security? Government IT developers.

You know who needs to constantly think about security? Crypto developers.

The predator/prey aspect of crypto security is creating a generation of engineers who know how to harden systems. digitalguardian.com/blog/top-10-bi…
Read 13 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
3 Jun
If you missed yesterday's crypto conference with @FrancisSuarez, me, @chamath, @APompliano, @iam_preethi, @CamiRusso, @bunsen, and more, here's the YouTube link where you can watch the whole thing.

Kicks off with my chat with the mayor!
Here's one of the books I referenced, which should be handed out at Miami airport.

Now that I think about it, if @depalman can get a Kindle edition, we might even do a mass purchase. An electronic bookdrop: first 1000 copies free if you write a review? amazon.com/Man-Who-Invent…
You can read it online for free if you sign up at the Internet Archive, though there may be some kind of rate limiting in terms of the number of simultaneous users. archive.org/details/manwho…
Read 5 tweets

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