when it comes to talk about bitcoin there are names impossible not to mention considering their knowledge and their contributions to this phenomenon One of them is Andreas Antonopoulos
We had the opportunity to talk with Andreas about bitcoin beyond its technological and economical perspective but instead about freedom democracy constitutional law and rule of law hi andrea yasu hello very good to see you yes see you're a technologist and a lot of people think bitcoin and blockchain mostly from the technological point of view and also economic point of view on the other side, my preparation and my academic studies are dealing with law and more specifically constitutional law and constitutional law is about freedoms and restraining power I would like to hear about your opinions on restraining powers and what bitcoin and what blockchain has to do with it um yes I mean, I also have a very political perspective on bitcoin and related technologies and I also see them as relevant to the application of law and more specifically to personal freedoms civil liberties civil rights and all of the privacy related requirements that are in most constitutions so what bitcoin and the way this technology is related to these things is that it gives power to individuals to assert their rights through technology and that power is less easily infringed by governments that do not respect their own constitutions so uh it's it's one thing to depend on the constraint of power that is part of a legal doctrine um it is another thing to use technology to assert the power and the rights that you have and to control the power of government through technology i think it's a it's a more effective way of asserting those rights see at this moment we are having this special situation of you know being locked down for the coronavirus and the stuff and that technology plays a very important role in this and but the problem on the other side is we could have more police states how could this you know technologies and decentralized technologies could help to avoid those pollution police states um well you know i i don't think that uh this particular technology helps us um in this way um because the the the the issue here is mostly um played out in the physical world so unlike the domain of money or trust or communication which are intangibles that happen online and have to do with digital life restrictions on movement are a physical thing and in that case the ability of governments to impose physical restrictions on people is greatly enhanced and it's very difficult for people to fight back however i would say that you know there's there's also been kind of um an effort to portray this uh in many cases as an effort by government to control the movements of people versus the effort by government to surveil the movement of people i think those two are two very different things so for example if you look at the studies that have happened in the united states what we found is that the restriction of movement of people started before the government orders basically people voluntarily decided to stay at home because they felt it was not safe to go out which is a rational act and a voluntary act um the lockdowns uh really mostly had an effect on people who were not acting rationally and were endangering others with their behavior and they complained a lot rightly so in fact but even after the lockdowns ended in many states in the us we didn't see a huge rush of movement the majority of people at least here continued to voluntarily isolate so the act of isolation was separate from the orders imposed by government neither locking down nor unlocking really had much difference in the behavior of of people other than a very small minority and so you know i think that's a very different issue than the broader issue of um the excuse that governments are using to impose surveillance on location and movement through mobile devices which is a very dangerous phenomenon of course and which has been wholly embraced both by uh very obviously authoritarian governments like the governments in china for example and also supposedly democracies uh with authoritarian tendencies as we've seen for example in india um but for the most part that's uh we see that's a lot less in some of the more open governments out there i see see um with me with two other professors we have this think tank and i have this question from robinson rivas he's the director of the computer science university in the universidad central venezuela and i'm going to read it to you and we think it has you know foundations to talk about something he asks social networking grew up as a new way of expression where people empower themselves around the world in new fresh and free ways but behind mainstream social media there are still big companies such it is facebook google but also governments with specific interests do you believe blockchain driven economy and applications can lead to a new way of expression and freedom for people kind of new social media technologies this time without the shadow of corporate interests um we already have that capability so um it is possible to re-decentralize the web as i call it and to implement applications that offer people um social interaction without centralized control by uh very large corporations but um you know the the capability exists on the internet today there are great applications that people can use there are there is the ability to uh build websites and communicate in a variety of ways and it's actually relatively difficult for both government and corporations to censor what happens on on the internet the the biggest problem however is is is not controls over internet communication or even the power of corporations it's uh individual choice uh you see the problem is that for most people convenience is sought after and comfort is sought after much more strongly than liberty when uh when they perceive themselves to be more or less free and until they're really in the grip of an authoritarian situation um they will consistently relinquish their power in order for uh comfort and perceived safety and we all do that it's it's part of human nature right and so um you know people don't have to use facebook they choose to use facebook there are other platforms available um there are ways to use the internet without these giant corporations and yet people not only do use these but they use them instead of all of the other things that are out there um and um they they do so because of convenience so that that is the the big danger uh it's that uh in my opinion people disempower themselves even when there is better and more free technology out there because of comfort and convenience and of course both corporations and governments ruthlessly exploit that human tendency in order to exert control so we already have the technology for decentralized uh for the decentralized internet we had it since the beginning of the internet we already have the decentralized web um we already have the ability to to build decentralized applications what blockchain technology gives us is a way to achieve better funding of that so that we can build out better infrastructure which is a big advantage um so for example if you're a creator today and you uh need to make a living through your work then you have to go to platforms that support advertising because that's the only way to or that's one of the few and easy ways to to raise money um so one of the things that we're looking at with blockchain technologies and especially bitcoin is the ability to pay creators for their work directly to cut out the intermediaries and to enable new models for expression but also for an economy around creative work that is based on a direct contact between a creator and their audience without intermediaries interesting see talking about bitcoin and blockchain it is you know also leads us to talk about smart contracts and i have this question from rohingya who's also a professor and he asks do you think smart contracts can help to create a decentralized society with a direct democracy and less corruption um yeah i do i mean that's the simple answer yes i absolutely do think that um we can replace traditional institutions hierarchical institutions of trust and governance that we have today which are not scaling which are not representative and which are easily corrupted with better institutions based on network protocols based on smart contracts which scale better which reflect representative governance better and which are more difficult to corrupt absolutely i saw on your books that you refer directly from to the situation we're living here in venezuela so that means that you are very aware of how the money doesn't exist you know the believer it doesn't exist has some money as it should be money and now we see and we have this petrol thing that i also you know call it petro populism because it is being used for some means and some and some you know ideas that they don't match the idea of cryptocurrency like you know neutrality and stuff what is your perspective about the famous or infamous petrol i mean the petrol is a scam totally it's as simple as that it's it's it's um it's a desperate attempt by a failing period it's a scam period i mean but it's a desperate attempt by a failing dictator to put lipstick on a pig and make it fly um and it's not gonna fly because uh the the problem with the petrol the primary problem with the petrol um is is is not the the model of monetization of petrol resources or any of that the problem with the petrol is that it is centrally controlled um and therefore its trust depends on trusting the central institution and that central institution is a failed government that has completely lost everybody's trust and so therefore um it can't work that's the real simple answer the petrol could have worked if it was based on a mechanism that did not require you to trust the maduro government but since that's the mechanism of trust in the petrol and that government has no trust not domestically not internationally the end result is that you have a scam we are in the same direction from the day one we saw it that way even not even all on not only from the political perspective but only only on also technologically in the first attempt they tried to do it on ethereum they did try to do it on them they invented something else but well that's a scam period let's move to another another issue money understood has free movement you know of services and products and this is a mean to do it i consider it a a human right a fundamental right so cryptocurrency it will be considered then and to enhance enhance that right i would like to talk a little bit about the idea of property has a fundamental right and how bitcoin enhances this property has a fundamental right that it is well if you think about it and i i'd like to broaden it a bit and i've talked about this in a couple of my talks what uh an open decentralized blockchain does is it delivers a mechanism by which you can uh you can use um trust as a network service so basically you can build applications of trust on top of a network that is not controlled by anyone so that that trust can't be broken now if you think about trust trust is a means and it's a means to achieving something else and that something else is justice um so from my perspective these networks are mechanisms by which individuals can uh essentially secure justice for themselves as a service that is delivered by a network instead of a state so the primary purpose of a state of a system of law is to deliver justice and um when that system of law or the system of the state no longer delivers justice no longer secures the rights the property the safety etc of its people then it is no longer delivering the service of justice if you think of a state as a service provider um as an institution that delivers justice we see that that's failing in many countries around the world and one of the thing i see is that decentralized blockchains offer justice as a network service justice over ip if you like and so the basic idea here is that you can use these platforms to establish and secure property rights to establish and secure the right of expression and speech the right to freedom of conscience the right of freedom of association the right of freedom of association and the commercial respect or in a professional respect and all of the property rights that come with that now obviously these network-based justice systems can't enforce uh rights that are fundamental to your own physical um bodily integrity because that exists in geographic uh space in real space and and governments can violate that but if you're operating within such a network with other people who are agreeing uh to the rules of that network then within that context your property rights can be secured as can many other rights and so that's a very interesting model i think for delivering the service of justice without the need for the state to act as a guarantor of those rights you're mentioning two main ideas and two great ideas trust and justice any society that is lack of legal certainty in spanish we call it security is not going to move forward at all yes do you think that adopting and really adopting blockchain and really adopting not like venezuela did with the petrol thing could enhance this idea of legal certainty and do you have any experience of seeing any society genuinely generally adopting these technologies yes um i i have seen a society genuinely adopting these technologies that society is called the global internet and it's ironic because a lot of the time we start thinking about what would happen if a nation-state adopts these technologies um and the nation's status into society a nation-state is an institution uh created by a society in order to enforce these rights and and blockchains are are non-institutions created by people uh also to enforce these rights so the idea of um one institution of trust adopting a competing institution of trust to deliver these services doesn't make sense governments won't adopt blockchain to deliver institutions of trust because in the process of adopting these blockchains they change the governance model they change the governance model to put their institution at the center of governance which then completely obliviates uh all purpose of having this alternative governance model and so it's not states or governments or countries that will adopt these technologies it's individuals that will adopt these technologies and through their adoption of these technologies when you adopt one of these technologies you are entering into a social contract with the other people who are participating in this technology and you're placing your own wealth and property on this technology thereby accepting that the rules that govern your property will govern everybody else's property and that gives you uh the power through participation so it doesn't matter what governments do they don't have to endorse adopt um acknowledge um and and at the same time it doesn't matter if they fight resist ban uh demolish uh denounce none of that matters all of that is completely irrelevant what matters is how many of these 75 billion people on this planet choose independently to use these technologies to establish their own property rights and when they do that that system is completely parallel to the existing system of nation-state rights and it exists on the one uh global society of the internet which of course is fragmented and has all kinds of its own problems um but uh it it does exist well you're mentioning things interesting also because of the justice it is a service rendered by the states so this could change definitely the idea that we have about the states so this is more the uh philosophical political question so i mean if you if you think about it the the idea that justice is a is a service delivered by the state is relatively modern um and didn't exist really until i don't know the 15th century um before that it was very clearly that uh justice was a service delivered by the church uh that was the state um and and uh sometimes was the super state so the transition from the church being the source of justice to a secular state being a source of justice a relatively recent transition and it's quite all right to consider an additional transition beyond the state the nation state hasn't existed forever and there's no reason why it will continue to exist forever other than um just the force of tradition see perfect see i heard that i read that you've been visiting argentina so you more or less know the situation in latin america and i heard that you speak a little bit in spanish so it will be good if you can give us some ideas of the perspective and the futures and the challenges of our cultures and our societies towards bitcoin and decentralized systems like uh blockchain well yes i've i've spent um a lot of time actually in argentina i've lived there for months at a time and i've visited seven or eight times now in the past decade and i've also visited many other countries throughout latin america as well as central america and the caribbean um so the the whole um the whole region um suffers from dysfunctional state institutions um not through some natural process of erosion of course uh i i think it's important to note that the reason all of south america and central america suffer from dysfunctional institutions is because those institutions are institutions that were first imposed by colonialism and then repeatedly destroyed by imperialism and manufactured dictatorships um from the united states and other countries so you can't separate the two none of these institutions are native the institutions that were native uh the institutions of states of you know the aztecs the mayas the incas and the other mesoamerican people were deliberately destroyed um so it's not surprising that these um imported state institutions haven't done very well and continue to do poorly under constant interference and it's created a very dysfunctional situation for the people who suffer unnecessarily through no fault of their own so from that perspective uh one of the things that's clear to me when i visit um especially latin america is that we need new solutions and it's really interesting and i i've said this many times before when i go to uh various countries in north america or western europe um the main question i get is why do we need bitcoin and and when i go to latin america nobody asks why we need bitcoin everybody already knows why we need bitcoin i i don't need to say what if the banks fail uh i don't need to say what if the banks confiscate your money i don't need to say what happens if your government becomes a corrupt dictatorship um because all of these things have happened so uh it's very clear why we need bitcoin uh why we need these alternative institutions of money alternative institutions of trust alternative mechanisms of governance the real question that comes up again and again is how when how quickly um what do i do as an individual and that's where the most of the discussions are are happening so decentralization is the key absolutely that's that that is the whole point of everything that we're doing in this space see in order more than closing the idea the main idea do you think that bitcoin is only the tip of the iceberg of a new revolution a new human revolution where civil society has to be the start the starting role in here the protagonism is the civil society yes but i i wouldn't identify bitcoin as um kind of the tip of the iceberg oil if you like the tip of the spear um it's it's more the internet that is the tip um of this spear and and uh bitcoin comes later um and and only makes that um makes that a bigger impact uh and after bitcoin follow many many other things that have been built based on the same mentality the first decentralized um invention i mean there have been many decentralized inventions in humanity but the first decentralized invention in digital communications was the internet um bitcoin is simply a child of the internet that takes one narrow part of the internet which is trust and turns it into an internet protocol so that it can follow communications um and social interactions which have already been uh made possible on a global and decentralized basis by the internet so um i i think it's important to recognize that bitcoin is a product of the internet it's part of the internet it's the next phase uh in the evolution uh after social networking and um political communications and and basic expression and um the reimagining of of news and media and uh political association all of that happened before bitcoin and now with bitcoin we're getting the same thing with trust money and then after bitcoin with other platforms like ethereum building governance and smart contracts and all of these are successive waves of the internet transforming us very very quickly faster than most people are comfortable with into a global interconnected society and that will have a a completely transformational and lasting impact uh on the world you mentioned it you've been visiting a couple times argentina it's a great place good meat and good wine and yes fantastic and and and not just argentina i mean i've spent years visiting uh mexico i've been to chile and peru i've been to um half of central america probably more it's it's actually a pity that i i haven't been able to visit uh venezuela and i don't think i will be able to visit not no not now at the moment at the moment not at the moment but i hope one day yeah i i hope one day i'll be able to visit a free venezuela where i'll be able to um contribute something and and um help people there uh but it's uh yeah i i have quite a few friends and colleagues uh from venezuela and i've hired uh quite a few people from venezuela for various uh bits of work in my business um and you know i've i've gotten to know how wonderful the people of venezuela are together with the rest of latin america i really love um the lifestyle ironically as someone who comes from greece i find the culture of central and latin america to be much closer to the mediterranean lifestyle of southern italy southern spain and greece the food the drink the family the outdoor life the culture the passion the music all of that is very very similar to me um so i always feel very much at home when i visit um spanish-speaking south america yeah yes it feels the same i studied in italy and it feels the same i visited greece and the same andreas i'm really really really happy to have have you here and this conversation and we'll see you soon probably in venezuela and you'll see that we have a better future for sure yes thank you so much bye-bye thanks
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