Welcome to East to East to East to East to East. What's up everybody? We're all back from lunch and full. I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired, so I won't keep you too long. What's up, Aaron?
Hope you're feeling all right. Good. Good. Um, so yeah, let me tell you why I'm so happy to be here. I don't know if you guys were here yesterday for uh Ellie's opening remarks, but uh this whole conference began with her paying homage to peer-to-peer cash and the cipher punk ethos.
And uh that is becoming harder and harder to find in our community. Um I think you said yesterday that there's a conscious effort here to make crypto libertarian again. And uh yeah, I had to come all the way from Florida to find that. So kudos. And hopefully uh yeah, we can do this more often.
We get more libertarian and crypto anarchist back in this space. I remember years ago at like a meet up in New York, this is like 2018, 2019, somebody uh I don't want to call anybody out. I don't know if you guys know the crypto finally girl. She was like hosting a space and she would say something like uh you know it's all finance bros and stuff like that. And she goes, "Well, you know, it started out as all libertarians, but where are those silly libertarians now?"
And of course, I'm in the back. I just put my hand up like, "We're still [ __ ] here, you know. Sorry." Um, okay. So, what is agorism?
Well, what I'm going to tell you is what what what I'm not going to tell you, I'm not going to try to convince you is that politicians are bad people. Right? That should be obvious to everybody. If you can't tell that, turn on the news for a second and look on in the world. They have murdered 20,000 children in Palestine in the last 6 months alone.
Okay. So instead, I would only be speaking to those who already understand that politicians are evil. Um and to you, I would say that agorism is the only game in town. There is no other route to freedom or liberty. Um it is the most radical version of anarchism.
We believe that liberty is uh only achieved through entrepreneurial engagement with the black and gray markets. that is the only possible route. I call it entrepreneurial disruption. Um it was not from the benevolence of politicians that US states began to uh liberalize drug laws. Um it wasn't voting that brought an end to communism in Eastern Europe.
It was the underground market or navo as they call it. Gandhi did not kick the British out by use of arms. He didn't even raise a fist to do it. He did it by encouraging Indians to march to the sea, get their own salt, and deny the British authorities the tax revenue that they were enjoying from their monopoly on salt. And I can go on and on.
We can enumerate examples all day long. But you will notice that in all of the examples, the one common the one constant is that agorism is always and necessarily nonviolent. And it is thus the only logically consistent to which voluntarists can acquies to. All right. This is not the case for the voter by the way who forces a master upon his neighbor right it is not the case for the brute who uh slays the tyrant only so that he or she may become the next tyrant right so as I said agorism is the only game in town if you are interested in non-violence and voluntarism and of all of the tools in the agoris toolbox I think become crystal clear that uh cryptography is the most powerful tool that we have.
If agorists are carpenters, well then uh cryptography is our hammer in 3D printing. Agorists use uh cryptography to transform illicit objects into code and then we can take those take that code across borders much more easily where we transform that code back into the physical object that was prohibited like a gun. Um, self plug real quick. 3D printer go.com where we sell 3D printer supplies for cryptocurrency.
So, you don't have to access KYC payment platforms, right? That's what the whole point of P2P cash is. Um, in operationally secure communications, we use cryptography to protect our fin or our speech from politicians. And in money, we use cryptography to protect our money from politicians. I mean, how many people here, show of hands, want to fund a genocide of children?
Me neither. Me neither. So uh we all know that their crimes are funded uh not through taxation but through inflation. And uh if you want to avoid inflation, you have to minimize your use of fiat currency. So to do that, you need an alternative form of money.
Uh which is where crypto comes in. Unlike fiat currency, most market-based commodities generally tend to rise over time. uh which means you're likely to make a little bit of money if you're in crypto long enough. And if enough people catch on to this trick, well, we can actually have the potential to actually break the banking cartels monopoly. But it is completely irrational for anyone to think that a cartel of banks or anyone else would voluntarily give up their monopoly on the issuance of currency.
If you or I had the ability to print money, would you just voluntarily hand that over? Of course not. So the push back was always inevitable. And a lot of us saw this coming a mile away. All right.
Uh, enter the war on crypto. You know, for the last what, five years, we've all seen tremendous persecution of crypto libertarians and anarchists. Um, numerous highle figures have been persecuted. The SEC has been weaponized to attack everyone from Coinbase, Kraken, um, who else? UniS swap.
Um, yesterday I met Alexi Perzv who is here from Tornado Cash. He knows all too well what I'm talking about. CZ from Binance. Uh, they put him in jail. I mean, uh, Richard Hart just had his case dismissed by the SEC.
Uh, obviously the Crypto6 and Ian Freeman, who are still under persecution to this day. Roger River, my dear friend, who is still being persecuted to this day, not for not paying taxes, but for supposedly giving them the wrong number, which in reality is all because he wrote the book Hijacking Bitcoin, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the the Fed that the Feds, the intelligence community, infiltrated the cryptocurrency space in order to uh agitate for small blocks and uh therefore render cryptocurrency useless as a competitor to the banking cartels. uh monopoly. Um so as a result of this war on crypto, many of us who previously thought that pseudonymity would be sufficient now realize, myself included admittedly, now realize that privacy cannot be optional. It just can't.
Um I think it's that's pretty obvious at this point. And in my opinion, Zeno is the best chance that we have of achieving uh a private and versatile blockchain. As the Zeno ecosystem continues to unfold, I think it's going to be easier and easier for Agorists to integrate these tools uh into their lives to sort of normalize privacy for everybody. Um just recently we've seen things like Zeno Bay which is like a Silk Road like peer-to-peer uh trading platform, Zeno.cash, a self-custodial point of sale cash register and an app to go along with it.
Um, Aaron Day has the Woo Commerce plugin that that he's he's just released. Um, Zenoax.io where you can buy gift cards using Zeno. Um, the Freedom Dollar, the first ever private stable coin. Every time I say it, someone's like, "Well, five years ago there was this project."
Okay, but that didn't work, right? So, now we have the Freedom Dollar, which is like actually stands a chance of actually working. And uh I don't want to steal too much thunder, but I think if you're concerned about CBDC's, you better get you better hold some freedom dollars. Um and there's tons of other projects in the works. Again, we can go on all day like this.
But all of these tools come together to make life easier for people seeking to integrate privacy into their lives, for crypto anarchists seeking to conceal their activities from political parasites. Um yeah. So, I guess just to wrap it up here, what I've done is I've sort of painted a picture of like a war between bankers and a war between freedom fighters, you guys, right? The cryptocurrency space. And in all wars, there will be casualties.
That's that's a a given. But in the end, guys, the market or the agora, same thing, always wins. So, stay optimistic. Don't lose sight of the goal, and don't lose sight of that cipher punk ethos that Ellie started us all off with. All right.
Thank you. God bless you. Thank you. Oh, you're not getting off the stage. I'm not getting off the stage.
No, no, no. Absolutely not. There's um there's a QR code at the bottom uh which leads you to Slido. Really easy. You just put # EAM.
That's the code. This is your moment to ask s anything. Anything. What should they not ask? Those are the good questions.
Everything is on limit. Everything is all right. He said it. What did Zen No. Yeah.
Can you write down the apps? Was it Zeno? No. Why Zano? Okay.
Obviously the end of your talk. Raise some questions. Okay. Okay. Zano.
Trump. Zeno or Zano? I don't know. Andre, is it Zeno? I'm pretty sure it's Zano.
I asked him if it was Zano or Zeno. He said potato. Potato. Um, so yeah, the apps there's a lot of I mean in terms of apps I was really kind of talking about more about the infrastructure surrounding Zeno. So there's Zeno Bay which is kind of like Pirate Bay but for Zeno.
Um, Zeno.cashe which is a self-custodial point of sale cash register. There's an app to go along with it. I'm not sure if that's released yet but I'm pretty sure it is. Obviously Aaron Day will tell you more about his Woo Commerce plugin for Zeno that it facilitates e-commerce.
I mean these are huge. If you think about these tools, we're actually enabling real world commerce in a in a private way that politicians cannot spy on. I mean, think about how huge that is. Like most of crypto, it's very KYC friendly. We're very a lot of people like the maximalist, they they cheer on regulation.
Whenever, you know, some new regulator uh comes down on their side or does something friendly, they they give themselves a pat on the back. I don't want to work with the regulators. I want to defeat the regulators. The whole purpose of being here is not to acquies to their rules, but to make them acquies to us, to sound money, to get them to stop robbing everybody and committing murder and genocide. I mean, it's it's it should be obvious at this point.
Um, oh, and Zano Xano.io, where you can buy gift cards using Zeno. So, you know, if you uh I don't know, you were we were talking about this earlier. I think if you want to get like tickets or something like that, plane tickets, you can get all sorts of things like that. So, check some of those out.
Obviously, there's the Zano app, which has a uh built-in private messenger service, ionic or potentially iconic swaps. Um, built-in decentralized exchange. I mean, it's extremely versatile. This is why I find it so appealing to Agorist because you can do so much with it. I have a question, please.
How did you become an agorist? Actually, I was from at Porkfest where I'll be in June if you guys are going to be in New Hampshire. So, I was an anarchist. I was a I was actually a wararmongering Republican. Okay.
And and I voted for George Bush the first time I ever voted. It was such a disaster. We'll never do it again. Never do it again. She She doesn't want to hear She doesn't George Bush and she starts crying.
She's smart. Here you go. But yeah, I thought to myself, what a disaster. I'll never I'll never vote again. And uh I start I it was like one of the Ron Paul debates.
And I remember thinking to myself, you know, all these people on stage sound like crooks, but the one guy who makes sense is the one who I'm supposed to think is crazy. Sorry, I'm torturing my baby at the same time. It's hard for me to hear how you became an aggressor by voting. So, I voted for George Bush. I learned my lesson.
I found Ron Paul and I found libertarianism. And then I went to Porkfest and I saw people actually living by these principles. They're putting them into practice. And I thought, man, it's actually possible to live free now. I don't have to canvas a neighborhood or work a phone bank.
I can do this right now with a 3D printer, a little bit of cryptocurrency, maybe some gold and silver, and you're you're halfway there. So, all right. O, what is the best tool for organizing local gray market with crypto or precious metals? So, I I honestly think that crypto is better for exchanges because it's it's not confiscable. Precious metal is great because it's very it's it's very stable.
It's not as volatile as cryptocurrency. So, it's great for savings. What I tell people is you have to become your own bank. And you do that by replacing fiat currency with a medium of exchange. Use a a cryptocurrency.
Uh something like a private privacy chain or even like a peer-to-peer peer-to-peer cash chain would would be well, but use precious metals for savings because it's it's it's less volatile. There's a anonymous person in the crowd insisting on you giving a a take on Trump being a Trojan horse for crypto. I know you said politicians are evil earlier. Yeah. What is your opinion on uh uh of course of course he's he's he's a Trojan horse.
These are these are parasites. These aren't people like they're politicians. These are the lowest of the low. Even the cockroach is more noble than the politician because when the cockroach steals food from your cabinet, they don't understand the concept of property rights. Human beings have a rational faculty.
So when the politician robs you, they they lower themselves beneath even the cockroach. So Trump, you know, he will and Aaron and I again, we've spoken about a lot about this, but like he'll allow the hawk to a girl to rugpole her followers, but Ian Freeman and Roger Ver, he he won't stop persecuting them for trying to create real world freedom and and financial sovereignty. So the man's not good for crypto. he's only interested in uh you know he'll he'll trot his sons out at these Bitcoin conferences uh and stuff like that and he'll sell NFTTS and make a bunch of money but when it comes time to actually doing the important work he's nowhere to be found so yeah I think that's of course he's a Trojan horse. Yeah.
All right. Um is losing your seed phrase in a boating accident still a valid method? You got to do what you got to do. Operational security step one. All right.
Um I think we're good. Any other Okay. How can you support centralized exchanges and be sad when their leaders are thrown in jail when algorithm is exactly about eliminating eliminating their kind? I think someone does not like support centralized exchanges and be sad. That's their comment about CC.
So I don't want anyone thrown in jail who's who's done nothing. If if you're a peaceful individual, you have no right to be thrown in prison. has the right to initiate violence on an otherwise peaceful person. So CZ is completely compliant with whatever rules he's got to be compliant with, but he I don't want to see anybody thrown in jail. I mean, you have to make a living, right?
We can't What I try to tell people is be as gray as you possibly can, right? Just minimize your reliance on the state apparatus. Can you do it 100%? Probably not. Probably not.
But you got to do it as much as possible. So I don't I don't knock CZ for uh trying to be compliant if that's what the point was. hijacking Bitcoin. Yes. So, essentially, uh, if you read the book, uh, that Roger wrote, which he was arrested what, a week later, less than two weeks later, um, he essentially proves that, uh, central intelligence agencies, and, this is all backed up.
You, there's even been Twitter threads about it more recently. I was just reading one the other day from Peter Todd. These people infiltrated the cryptocurrency community, and what they do is they agitated for Bitcoin maximalism. They wanted to keep blocks small because they understood the economics of it better than most of the average users, right? They understood that small blocks means that that a coin cannot be used as an efficient medium of exchange, right?
Transaction fees, weight times, we all know the whole deal, right? So, uh, they did this in order to render it a non-competitor to the banking cartels fiat monopoly. And we'd all suspected that, right? But I think in Roger's book, he laid out the case line by line and proved it. And that's why that's the real reason why the the state is persecuting him.
Has nothing to do with paying the wrong number. Roger would be willing to pay what I'm not gonna I can't speak for him, but I'm sure he'd be willing to pay whatever number to end this this persecution so we can get back to living a normal life. So it it's much more about uh his advocacy for freedom and liberty than uh a couple numbers. All right, S, your time is up. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for joining us and crossing here. [Applause]
Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.