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Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
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Mar 11 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The Indo-Israel Independence Initiative

India & Israel should go hard into BTC/web3. Promote decentralized protocols that protect sovereignty, that make money, and that allow all to align behind neutral, globally fair rules.

The new non-aligned movement is economically aligned.
Why India & Israel?

- They have a critical mass of founders
- They already cooperate on counterterrorism & tech
- The combined diaspora has a presence all over the world
- Neither wants to fully rely on the US
- Neither wants to be beholden to China

All the pieces are there.
I wrote about this at length last year, and I think these points still hold up today.

Crypto gives a third paradigm outside either US or Chinese control. It's thus suitable for every country that prefers sovereignty to becoming a colony.
balajis.com/tag/india/
Every country will want national stacks & neutral protocols.

National stacks are domestic alternatives to US or Chinese tech companies.

Neutral protocols are international platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Combined they give sovereignty + free trade.
archive.ph/0wlC2
The US and China are going to play to win, in a global zero-sum cage match.

India and Israel can instead play to win/win. Stay neutral and build decentralized protocols that all can benefit from, including both Americans & Chinese.

See my talk last year:
inc42.com/features/india…
By supporting neutral protocols like Bitcoin, India & Israel obviate many trust issues.

No matter what their respective states say, millions of Americans will trust Bitcoin, as will millions of Chinese.

Orange coin is the new blue jeans: a global symbol of freedom & prosperity.

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More from @balajis

Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Mar 13
The legacy state is becoming a laser pointer. The centralized entity points, the decentralized actors shoot.

But this time it's DC that has the platform risk. They can use TikTok against Russia but not against China.
The laser pointer state is neither traditionally totalitarian, nor calculatingly mercantilist, nor fully anarchic.

What's the closest historical analogy?

Perhaps the Wild West, except with social rather than financial rewards for action against enemies of the state. Image
All the theory about actors on decentralized networks doesn't work if they run the same cognitive software, think the same thoughts. And developing a "cognitive OS", a moral culture, is even harder than writing an OS.

Hence, default to the moral culture of the legacy state.
Read 6 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Mar 13
Dalio's video is good. Worth watching.

But he doesn't model the effects of tech. Yes, China is rising & US state capacity is in decline. Yet US corporations still wield phenomenal digital power, and BTC/web3 are rising, as is India. So it's more complex.
Yes, it takes 20 years to reopen a bathroom in SF
Yes, many cities are nevertheless copying SF
Yes, tech is moving away from SF
And yes, unicorns are being started outside SF

So the long term trend is against both physical & digital power with SF values. But in the medium run… ImageImageImageImage
Put another way, the US is declining in the physical world, as is visible in its major cities, but it's still quite powerful in the digital world. And that digital power is increasingly wielded with a blend of DC and San Francisco values. DC points, and SF shoots. Or clicks.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Mar 12
India is a democracy, not an American colony.

Indeed the only way it can have *true* self-determination is if its citizens can vote, speak, and transact without being vetoed by US corporations.

Hence BTC, hence web3. Otherwise “Rob” will always have the whip hand over Ram.
The answer isn't the fake rules-based order that's really code for US domination.

Nor is it the might-makes-right hierarchy that China wants to impose.

It's about a neutral, verifiable, code-based order based on Bitcoin.

Fair to all, favoring none.
foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/11/bit…
Capitalism is for equals, equal partners in the deal.

The ~80% of the world that is neither American nor Chinese is more than willing to trade with anyone, collaborate on science, work in a positive-sum way.

But that’s about win/win, not who/whom.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Mar 10
The money of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not vanish from this earth.
Yoon's platform:

- make South Korea a friendly business environment
- attract crypto unicorns
- overhaul crypto regulations
- reduce crypto cap gains

Korean web3 founders, start your engines.
sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/conservat… Image
Now all we need is for South Korea to follow @nayibbukele's pioneering example, and make Bitcoin an official currency of the Korean state.

Light up another country on this map!
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Mar 10
No, gold was defeated by the state. FDR seized the gold of US citizens with Executive Order 6102.
theconversation.com/how-the-us-gov… Image
This was just a particularly explicit version of how centralized states expropriated individuals over the 20th century to fund their operations.

Gold was seized at $20.67, then the dollar was devalued so it was $35 per ounce. The state booked the profit.
federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-re… Image
Even Krugman admits it: fiat currency is backed by men with guns.
Read 9 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Mar 6
How do libertarians ward off tyrants without a strong state?

The answer is Bitcoin. Because it is stronger than any state.

War is expensive. If an aspiring Tamerlane can’t seize the gold, they can’t fund the war machine.

A Bitcoin strike.
Noah’s article makes fair points, and in the 20th century I may have agreed with him.

How do you fight off the Nazis or Soviets without a strong state? You couldn’t.

But in the 19th century and the 21st, the need for gold and digital gold constrains states. Makes them all weak.
Why is Russia less able to build planes?

No money, no supply chains.

So, economic war is effective. Though I think *targeted* economic war is much better than the untargeted response we have seen thus far.
Read 5 tweets

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