Crossing the Political Chasm: Understanding the perceived ideologies of Web3 and Crypto

Transcript

hello ladies and gentlemen my name is brian norton and uh welcome to crossing the political chasm understanding the perceived ideologies of web 3 and crypto and their impact on adoption yes i am taking notes on that name um we're gonna um uh before we get started uh just a little introduction of me i'm uh uh i'm ceo of my ether wallet if you're not familiar with my ether wallet we are the first wallet interface to ever deploy to the ethereum blockchain we launched about three weeks after um after ethereum went to mainnet

um so if you've been in the space for a while you may remember us as your first wallet and if you're new to the space um you might know us as your current wallet if you know what's good for you uh that will be the end of the shill part of this talk because the the rest of it is going to deal with uh political ideologies and how they affect crypto adoption and like their downfalls and kind of what we can do about it um so let's step on the third rail i want to start off with what this talk is not about this is not an endorsement of any particular political ideology um we um

not on part of myself um or on the part of mew we're just going to kind of be discussing how these ideologies play out in the space um and uh it's not content condemnation of any political ideologies except of course all of the evil ones um and then there we go and any of the projects that i name i i might name drop here we are not affiliated with them um they are not endorsements of those projects they are just projects that um we think um that i i that i think might be illustrative of of these different sort of like uh ideological diversity within

the space um um so yeah we're going to be uh we're going to be doing an overview of the political ideologies surrounding the narratives that affect web3 in popular discourse um the criticisms that are fueled by these narratives and and how these narratives are effective i mean i think you've if you've been in the space over the last year um we've been under increasing scrutiny and a lot of these narratives have been very sticky and so we're going to kind of talk about why that is and then discuss potential remedies that i

see um so this is the overview now there is no like there i don't think anything up here is particularly controversial um bitcoin launches in uh you know uh well over a decade ago um where it is based on uh an austrian economic model it's deflationary this all there was always a libertarian influence in crypto it's kind of where we came from uh it's kind of where we came from um the libertarian ideology has contributed a lot to the development of this space and as a result we see that reflected in who is adopting crypto so um i've taken

this is um from a kind of coindesk overview and i think it's fairly accurate um the center is the the the center here is where we see most of our you know most of our adoption there these are the early adopters um people who came into the space looking for an alternative to fiat people who are interested in getting back to the gold standard these kinds of uh these kinds of uh these kinds of narratives really attracted people into the space um on the left you you get a little bit of like uh a little bit of progressivism but like there's not a whole lot of there's not a whole lot of popular

narratives that are appealing to them directly and so uh people on the the left of center left of center on the spectrum they um they kind of they kind of get left out of it there's like certain narratives around um identity that they can gravitate uh that they gravitate to that have been published in popular media but it really hasn't like broken through in those communities um and then unfortunately we have the evil ones like we're all aware of them they're also like i've only put it even putting them up there because it speaks to like how just how far right

uh crypto's appeal goes where in a way that it doesn't we don't really see corresponding on the left and some people depending upon your own personal ideology you might not consider that a problem but i i i'm going to make the case to you that it is and it's something that we should address for the purpose of the rest of this talk we're just going to assume that this candy dandy uh venn diagram from 2018 from quartz is just true but we are all we're all somewhere on the libertarian spectrum and that's just how it is um because it just makes the whole conversation a lot simpler um

so let's get into the criticisms now i've identified basically three narratives that have emerged like pretty consistently over the like the last year um and you'll all be familiar with this one like the environmental narrative basically you know every everybody on like using bitcoin and ethereum we're we're mowing down the rain forest we're burning it down um and it's too you know so it's we so we can mint our our our monkey pictures like that's the narrative that we keep seeing played out over and over and over again and it plays extremely well these two tweets are from earlier this week and they come

out within a day of each other and they're two left-wing politicians in the u.s um dick durbin and elizabeth warren um they've been attacking crypto on kind of like a number of front fronts but this one gets a lot of traction like the idea that like energy consum like energy consumption is um uh that our energy consumption is outsized and that this is unsustainable and uh aside from it be and aside from it being a threat to the us dollar like we're also just this en environmental bane and it's pretty compelling um

you see it a lot on you know you uh and this uh tweet in particular uh uh from uh dick durbin um talking about the to learn the truth about crypto as if anybody uh like as as anybody who's even heard of crypto in the last year wouldn't be familiar with this like this energy criticism um and it does two things it uh it you know it rallies people around the uh around the narrative um but it also draws out the actually crowd um so in response to this tweet you get a lot of will actually are you familiar with the merge um as if

dick durbin cares about the merge the dictionary is underst understands the merge cares about the merge at all like the idea like the idea of this thing that he doesn't want to exist using less energy doesn't make any difference to him or his constituents and that's why i can continue to play because that actually crowd just kind of makes us all look like like we are the threat that we're being portrayed as being um the second criticism that has it's been around for a while and it's a criticism of like market-based solutions in general you know uh the the financialization of everything this is a

narrative that's been around since the 80s like since the yuppie era uh the the idea that increasingly every part of our life will become monetized and put up for sale and the um uh and web 3 has been characterized a lot in popular media as being sort of like the final manifestation of that the digitalization of the financialization of everything now never mind that like like the internet has been financialized since really since the advent of web 2 and is now being sort of that has sort of been monopolized in that time but now that we're like now actually individual

people are like like like there's this going to be this idea that like we're going like web 3 is going to be gatekeeping the internet and it's a uh almost a toll system and it's just a it's a way for people to extract about like just extract value and rent seek on something that we've all sort of been socialized to believe should be free should be open um one of the things that i think is kind of interesting about this narrative is that um uh is that uh the idea that like this is specifically the solutions that

we are that we are pitching that there are that that the idea of of individuals using the internet as a way of not only like not only uh as a source of information as a source of interaction but also a um a means of of of receiving recompense for their contributions to the internet um that somehow that like that is like uh that somehow that is a um uh to the detriment of like the free and open internet that we've already experienced um

the uh uh in particular um and if nft mania has been part of this like this idea that um uh previously memes were free and like this sort of intersection between financialization and meme culture and art culture um uh constitutes like some sort of paradigm but when in actuality it sort of just mirrors what happens and has been happening in the traditional art world for time and memoriam we just don't see it unless i don't know are there any fine art traders in the honest no no me neither

um and then finally the failure of market solutions this is sort of a shot and fruit you know when like like left-leaning narratives are obviously critical of market-based solutions and uh and so this like this sort of plays well because when we fail it can be catastrophic when we as an ecosystem fail when there are exploits and uh 200 million dollar losses it reinforces the narrative that market-based solutions are not the solution that market-based solutions are not going to

be like the the way forward in creating a more equitable internet and in fact will do just the opposite um and this happens in rap i mean and because it happens in such rapid succession there's a lot of fuel on the fire like we are an experimental space we are a tech space first and we are iterating on this on this in real time with real assets and we see that as a net positive like this is how this is how we build the the financial systems of the future this is how we build the new internet um

but from the outside from the outside for somebody who is interested in economic justice somebody who is interested in the the rights of workers like for whom like for whom like financialization is viewed with skepticism at best this is like like this is really damning evidence that further marketization is not what we need right now um and so uh one of the things that i think is really interesting about this is like the narrative that like

crypto bitcoin in particular but crypto in general is this hedge against inflation but what i think is interesting is that there's actually evidence that like we helped inflation along a little bit we created we like over the last couple of years over the course of the pandemic we created like massive amounts of wealth for a lot of different people and this this statistic i think it was interesting like almost 12 of new home buy first-time home buyers on who bought through redfin reported that they were able to pay for their down payment due to crypto gains which of course drove up hot like like we had a little hand in driving up home prices and uh

and contributing to inflation according to like a few analysts and so that kind of counteracts like our anti like the the anti-inflation narrative that in popular media has been really driven home to a lot of people outside of the ecosystem so why do these these why are these narratives so effective i think that first off they speak to a value set rather than fears like these are not actually like criticisms that are based out of like a fear of these things but it actually is just a demonstration that like a genuinely held

value set that sits left uh left of the center is uh is not being met like these it doesn't fit like these narratives don't fit the criteria of what is considered uh ethical business behavior ethical uh ethical business behavior ethical political behavior um the elimination of one doesn't eliminate like negate the others the merge can drop drop energy consumption down to zero and it won't make a difference because

at the end of the day the idea of you spending any amount of energy so you can mint a monkey picture and sell it for a million dollars is just antithetical to my value set and and they have the benefit of all being partially true at the very least our energy consumption is too high people do lose a lot of money and there is a definite like contingent of web3 applications that contribute to this financialization of everything so um

and so and then the most damning thing is all is like we as a community have done nothing to leverage the idea ideological diversity that i know ex exists in this space so uh the idea that like we are a monolithic community that that we somehow have a dece like a decentralized monolith community that sits at exclusively on the right side of this political spectrum is just kind of fundamentally false but at this point we're not doing enough

to to promote that and and so that's where we get into these uh these kinds of potential remedies and the first one is to admit it's a problem now regardless of whether or not you as a you know i'm sure we all have political opinions and i'm sure uh some of them uh our little you know perhaps a little divorce for mine uh i've been tradition to uh articulate my own my own potential bias i've always been a man of the left generally speaking and so

um and so the so i know because i'm here that there are other people who view some of these things similar to me and that's why i kind of understand why people on the outside don't can't can't see what benefit web 3 has for their lives because they can't see their value set reflected back to them and that's something that we have to change in order to do that we have to admit that this is a problem that needs to be addressed and regardless of our own political opinions we need to leverage that ideological diversity

and so one of the things that i would encourage what i want to encourage people to do um as you start moving your like way through your space you're building your own project of building your own projects you're investing in projects is looking at at it's taking note and educating ourselves on value-compatible projects in the space that are not necessarily left leaning but val like offer a service offer a service that is compatible with that value set by compatible with like publix goods funding as we could see it with like bitcoin and uh

uh i forget what this acronym means retro public goods funding got it um uh uh and coordination and organizing it's sort of like it's like like we are at a point like we are at a point where like coordination and governance is some of the major innovation work that is happening in this space and like there are all there like there are all people all sorts of people on the uh on the left labor unions uh activist organizations that can benefit from pseudo-anonymity uh working within dow structures with a decentralized

governance but because of like these popular narratives they're not getting they're not getting access to that they're not coming into the space they're not contributing they're not built those people are not building um and then universal basic income we're the only space really outside of governments that are experimenting with this sort of uh this sort of thing and um that's not getting out that's not like that's not breaking through the barrier because it doesn't make a sexy headline the way 200 million dollar losses do and so the only the way that we can really leverage these things is by

amplifying and integrating them like finding compatible projects to what we're building and amplifying the uh those so we can leverage it to these new audiences and bring these uh this diversity of voices into the space because it's really only going to help it's really only going to help us build out new economic models new financial models new social models that right now we're not conceiving of because we're not really because we're not uh we're not properly utilizing those resources in those perspectives um

and that is it for me thank you very much i don't know if we have time for questions yeah i don't know if i have answers to them but i'll i'll take them nevertheless so any questions yes uh what do you think of um since we're at a you know web 3 conference we're all into web 3 now what do you think of privacy of personal information data privacy and the choice over sharing your data is kind of a unifying narrative that could you know attract people across the board because recent

you know issues with facebook and google and all that have come to the attention of the left as well uh in different ways probably than the right what do you think of that so it's interesting because across the ideological spectrum there is this sort of disgruntledness with like these web two platforms with in terms of in terms of censorship and there's active debates on like sort of both sides unlike what is okay to censor what is okay not to censor and what is okay for them to mine what is okay for them to sell and i think that um that is a unifying factor particularly for people in marginalized communities who really can't like who suffer have

suffered historic discrimination either in the jobs market and like that that has been overtaken by web 2 platforms um like web 3 offers an uh web 3 offers an opportunity for us to like to uh abstract a lot of that away and give users the choice to preserve their data and protect themselves from that kind of discrimination so yeah that is i think a compelling narrative that is not yet being pushed through and it needs to be are there educational questions hey thanks for the great talk it's very inspiring um i'm going to be broad and

anecdotal with my questions so feel free to disagree with me um and i don't want to be too political either but one of the impressions i get um the differences between let's say the u.s and europe is that public goods funding in europe is typically out of tax dollars overwhelmingly in the us as well but less so and there's much more focus or um reliance on charitable donations from the wealthy one percent um given that we are like it or not globally everyone in this room is part of the global one percent most likely um which side of that kind of line do you think that um web 3 public goods funding sits on i mean effectively what

these protocols are doing right now are donating from the one percent to the many which is admirable but how does it line up with your kind of characterization of public goods funding as being something that kind of would maybe move more toward move the web three world more towards the left if that's an accurate way of descr from a left-leaning perspective like much of public good funding should be coming from tax dollars like from a life-leading perspective and so go ahead yeah no that's pretty much it i'm just we there is no mechanism by

which you can enforce the taxation on on web 3 users right now which is probably probably for the best but that means by definition at least in my mind that any any kind of public goods funding that is that is funded through web 3 is implicit closer to a charitable donation model than it is to a a kind of a more uh ubi or publicly funding that you would expect to see on the left no that's absolutely true so we are not there like we are not there yet and i think that's actually one of the reasons why i think the where where i feel like like in order to get to that point where we're building those kinds of mec uh like

those economic models that uh alternative economic models that can um support public goods funding in a way other than what's happening right now which is like you said much closer to a charitable donation we have to like get it out of our ecosystem that these coordination opportunities um and these distribution uh like these primitives can be used for these kinds of models if somebody if somebody can build them if somebody will come in and build them um who knows how it'll manifest when those people do come in um how successful it'll be how much adoption it'll get um but right now i don't feel like those things are even being truly

conceived of because though like the people who are most incentivized to do that kind of work are not coming into the space does that make sense okay okay so we are unfortunately out of time now um so in case you have additional questions just follow up with the speaker afterwards i guess no i'm going to be hiding thank you