Panel | Crypto & NL politics | ETHDam III - 2025

Welcome to Ethan to Ethan to Ethan to East to Eg. All right. To follow up with uh with after T's presentation, I I couldn't help myself but thinking we should make the most of it and have a discussion to talk about crypto in the Netherlands and the politics around crypto. So to that point, I would like to invite Justin Bonce, Stave Pater, and Robert Valentine to join us on stage for this panel discussion. Thank you.

[Applause] Join. Yeah. Going to be tight. We'll make this happen. Yeah, of course.

All right. First of all, thank you all for joining this panel. I wanted to make this a conversation really where we could just have an open conversation because we know there's a lot of things going on. You talked about totalitarian state, Robert, you talk a lot about it on your podcast. St.

I want to hear more about Monflow and your opinion on this and Justin as well. Let's dive into it. What are your opinions currently? What is the state of Dutch politics and link to cryptocurrencies today? I know big question but let's jump into it.

Um, I think that at this moment there's not much politicians uh indulging in crypto except maybe for Cherry and for democracy. So, it's still very niche. I think um um I think people don't know. I think politicians don't care. I don't think they even know what blockchain is.

So there's I think we're far away from um what you might now see in the US where you see there's strategic resource being bills being um put forward. I have no knowledge of anything like this happening in uh in the Netherlands or in Europe. So I think it's um we we're far away. We're very far away. I'll say also I'll speak as someone who runs a um cryptocurrency fund in the Netherlands, the the oldest fund in Europe now.

Um, a lot of the regulations makes our lives so much more difficult. You know, it's so much more expensive to operate in a country like this. The amount of we pay in taxes, the amount of admin, the the all the extra rules and regulations have made our lives so much more difficult. And certainly since if we're talking about the state of Dutch politics, I mean it has to be said uh Alexe that they put one of our people, one of our coders in jail for over a year and he's still fighting that battle is a travesty. That makes a lot of us feel very unsafe in this country.

Dave. Okay. Um in politics knowledge is indeed very very limited. Uh I also work a lot with part of Monflow is being developed in Cambodia. Okay.

And the funny thing is at the moment knowledge about crypto is more advanced in Cambodia, Vietnam than in the Netherlands. So as a comparison we can say we are rich people, healthy people but they are doing the job. Uh secondly uh I'm very happy by the way that in this panel now we have a politician and my background is banking. I've been 15 years in banking so I'm one of those stealing guys uh getting very rich had a beautiful car and house and everything from your money. Thank you very much.

um it even made me professor and then later on in the face let's say about 25 years ago I started not uh I kept on libertarian because I started in ' 68 in the re revolts in that period but I found out that technology would gave us possibilities and everybody is always complaining about regulations but sorry guys I am a CRO I'm the risk officer of Monflow. I am now in the process of getting an official license for Europe to offer crypto services. And yes, it is a pain in the ass. But the funny thing is the only way to change something is to eat it up from inside. If you just kick from the outside, nothing will happens.

I mean they are like stone institutes big companies like ABNRO like politicians the guys working with him when you talk to them the next day they do exactly the same so it's no use so the only way I always have changed banking was from inside and I'm doing that again with Monflow and yes is there tax problems uh do you need some measures all that kind of stuff yes but you just have to do it. Sorry. I think I would like to respond to that because I think it's an interesting uh stance and I I think I disagree. Beside being a podcaster, I've been the chairman of the Libertarian Party in Netherlands for almost seven years. I've been uh the front runner for the parliamentary elections twice in 2021 and 2017.

Uh I've worked for the city of Amsterdam for nine years, worked on deregulation, worked on cutting spending. Um um and I noticed that trying to change it from the inside is not working for me. I mean I quit politics. Um I I don't envy you and your and your job because I do know this also during campaigning people they have no idea like they have no idea about basic fundamental economic principles. So to ex explain them that our system is wrong like it's it's it goes over their head.

And I think the beauty of blockchain and crypto is that it's it is intelligent from outside of the system, from outside of politics, from outside of government. And I think it will change it um from the outside actually. Um if you want to change from the inside, you will hit roadblocks. Um I tried for 9 years uh in the government and I tried for seven years in politics and no I don't think this is the way to go forward. Actually, I'm going to somewhat agree with you there, Robert.

Um, my experience in crypto is that a lot of crypto's success has come from the grassroots actually and I I feel like a lot of the banking institutions, a lot of the government world are really just playing catchup to what we're us crypto natives are doing in this space. And I think that's important to understand. And I I'll use this opportunity also just to add and it's actually somewhat echoing your speech from earlier um Trey that I that I really do think that cryptocurrency is somewhat the natural extension of the tradition of uh western political philosophy in that like if you think about the divisions of powers decentralization really is the natural extension of the division of powers. So cryptocurrency really is about freedom. This is a freedom money movement and it is a way to um peacefully and voluntarily opt out of current systems and if enough people do that nonviolently then we can absolutely change everything and we don't need the banker's permissions we don't need the government's permissions to do this it's very important to remember this but still you have to get the people adapt to it correct and I fully agree the funny thing about the whole blockchain what I see happening for example in Kombucha to give you an example five years ago they had 40 banks all those banks had their own systems and were transferring money in between by their own the central bank made the decision to implement the blockchain and they added an app for the population on the blockchain so that everybody individually could move money around like it it might be a blockchain but it's not a cryptocurrency right like that's not the revolution solution.

It's just a central bank solution. It's not the same thing. Let me finish. Now they implemented gold and the discussion already has been made and we are ready for it to enter the stable coin in there. No, no, what I mean is that if the government can censor transactions, if the government can monitor No.

Yeah. Oh. Ah, this is where we get into the you are defining something else. Then you say whether is it monitoring or is it made to monitor or is it something that people can use to crypto and then the next phase will be that you make it independent of the government. The government won't do that though, right?

Like people don't disempower themselves. It tends to be a rule in history. When you look at history, if you're ever in a situation where you rely on people to give up their own power, it won't happen. It's incentives. There's rare uh uh cases where there's like an emperor or or a dictator that maybe step down, but those are the exceptions to the rule.

To to to have a plan that relies on people's giving up their power, I think is not a very realistic plan. But let's applaud Cambodia for implementing blockchain, right? We do it centralized. We we know from a get-go that there's someone there coordinating it and that could censor transaction between these 40 banks. like blockchain, but it's not the blockchain.

There's a saying or something that I'm at least saying to my friends often. We're never going to get such a great lockdown anymore. And the thing is that that was actually that was an an opportunity that I think we missed because that during co during the lockdown and the and you couldn't the curfew you couldn't leave your house and and you had to get all these that was a fantastic opportunity fantastic moment to push for mass adoption of a privacybased cryptocurrency. We could have we could have done it then we missed it but I think this is the kind of thinking that we need. We need to think in terms of okay there is going to at some point an opportunity is going to arise and we need to be ready for it.

We need to be we need to be there to get people to to download such an app somewhere or have a a particular other type of hardware that enables us to make these payments to one each other one to one another and and transfer from the from the fiat system to the blockchainbased crypto system and and and I I you know maybe maybe there are brilliant people here that that are seeing other opportunities is arising shortly. But well, I I can add to that. I miss the lockdowns, guys. I miss them. Let's not wish for that.

Yes, I can add to that that everybody is now talking about this financial area. But one of the areas we are now developing in Cambodia as well is the education area. The reason is that certificates and all that kind of stuff uh is now being used mostly in central stations, education institutes making a lot of money out of it. That's not necessary. So we are building up based that's why we first made Monflow as a kind of payment structure based on crypto.

The next phase will be that we link it to self-suffering identity agents in your telephone also containing your human capital. So all the certificates and information which is now being stored in LinkedIn and all other platforms get it out. So so the government can know everything. So it sounds like an amazing honeypot to me. Oh yeah, it is.

No, no, I'm uh it's like I love 4chan on steroids and then Exactly. No, I love honeypots because immediately they were jumping on me because they saw that the market was being disrupted. Uh and they said we are not going to allow you to store all those certificates and things like that. But I said there sorry but there is no law against it. So I just will continue.

And then later on when I have a payment system and I have a system that I can determine what kind of education I would like to have independent of you in industry or what then we are really going to a self-suffering I mean it it strikes me as a bit ironic because if you do a good job educating people they'll stop using that permission system right if if I really do a very good job for permission they will not need that system anymore of certificates and all the other stuff you can agree on that yeah yeah fully but it's can this how can I get the adoption because at the moment every crazy American or even Asian company asks for certificates and they collect it and here's the thing not in crypto see in crypto no no in crypto hold on your identity is a key if if you're talking about native crypto you don't need to have a real world identity your identity is on the blockchain and you can interact with any financial protocol on these blockchains without permission without identity without censorship that's part of the power of the system. That's part of what makes these systems so efficient and so free and and so liberty preserving. I think once we start layering I look I'm all for some compromises in some context. But I mean we we're speaking at a crypto conference here and I think it really needs to be understood that crypto fundamentally is permissionless. Crypto fundamentally should be private.

Crypto as the correctly put it is democratizing. It is supporting a freedom and it very much sits in that tradition. Okay. Fully agree. Right.

Yes. No. The only thing is how do we get to that point that everybody has this unique key in the blockchain? We've been working on that question. We've been doing this for a long time, right?

Like uh that it's but it's true. It's it's a fair question, right? Right. It's a fair we talked about it earlier in the privacy panel as well. We're talking about all these different privacy cryptocurrencies, different we have different solutions and it's difficult and we're still hashing it out literally and we're ch still trying to figure out what is the best plan forward and I think T when you're talking about when COVID happened and and maybe some adoption happened.

I think some people maybe we didn't have the biggest wave of new people coming to crypto and it was just dark times and people were afraid but I think at at the same time I think it it woken up a lot a lot of people from that point now know not to trust authority or maybe that that has that has changed that gave me hope it's maybe a slither of hope but it gave me hope that maybe in the future when we mentioned that when we mentioned that COVID and those lockdowns were possible we're not now so crazy as crypto people to say, "Oh, don't trust the government. Be careful." Da da da da. Now, there's a concrete moment in time in history where everybody can relate to that feeling of an authoritarian government and system locking down people. So, that's a common metaphor sadly that we can use for the future.

So, but to go back and and also but mean people forget very quickly. So, COVID now feels like a bad dream, right? PTSD. You memory hold. It didn't actually happen to you.

Yeah. It's just a dream that you had. It's something you imagine could have happened to you, but it didn't because look, we live in freedom. Yeah. Right.

And the same is true with uh freedom of speech generally. I think this is one of one of the things that we're uh we're not talking enough about. If if Elon Musk hadn't opened up Twitter, we would still not be we I mean, we wouldn't have yay, right? And we would we wouldn't we wouldn't know about the a lot of things that came out about COVID and about so many other things. So and and this is just a tiny fraction.

I mean Elon is one foot out of the system and one foot definitely in with all the subsidies that he gets for his uh rather fake companies and all these. So it's it's a very it's a limited hangout. It's it's it's not an actually completely free marketplace of ideas, but already that tiny bit of freedom we got, boom, it had an immense effect. And so and and this this is not there to last. The government is not will it's not enthusiastic to continue to protect freedom of speech at that level.

And I think this is this is the other thing that um that that that we should that we should be concerned about. and and earlier there was a little bit of talk about privacy coins and freedom of speech platforms but I do think there there could be an overlap with regards to that and we we should think about developing them. Yeah, platforms like that. Yeah, I'll just add because we talked about what is the solution. I actually think the solution is very simple and I'm going to keep it short.

We because you're also right when you said most people don't care. We need to build products that people actually want to use because it benefits them in their lives. If we're not building usable products that are better than the current status quo, this revolution is not going anywhere. I just wanted to just drive that one home. And the point I made about Yay and and and other things is that freedom of speech is is is only something that a tiny minority actually cares about like privacy.

And it's and and in that sense there's an analogy with high art which was the most important thing for me most important motivating thing to go into politics because I'm an an an an aesthetically sensitive person and I felt incredibly bad about the horrors of modern architecture and I thought we have to get into politics to change that but it's high art is both the essence of civilization and also something that is interesting only for a tiny percentage of the people and the same is true with privacy and freedom of speech. These are naturally elite phenomena and this is the great paradox that we we're dealing with. Democracy is a is a system that is about the masses. Yet the fundamental ideals of democracy are interesting and important only for a tiny percentage of the population that ultimately of course the rest of the population benefits from but it's not something that they would want to fight for. I would like to steal the conversation with something that you mentioned Justin earlier about let's going bringing it back to the Netherlands.

Alexi Perzv was arrested in August 2022. It created a crazy massive chilling effects where I had people not wanting to come to ETHAM because they were afraid of being arrested, developers telling me they were stopping projects that they were building because again I don't want to go to jail. Like that became kind of a a weird awful meme. I considered maybe we should not stay in the Netherlands. This is not a a a country that welcomes innovation and freedom.

from your perspective like different perspective um how did this land of supposed innovation um how could this happen here and how can we prevented and keep in mind that Alexi is now released uh on uh on not bail but like he's still fighting his appeal he's free of movement here in the Netherlands but this is not over yet um can we make the case here or not for the Netherlands for for crypto Um the four of you can I did you read the book why nations fail from ace goal? No that he's got a nobel prize for it. Uh it's quite clear when political institutes start working together with economic institutes and really closely work together that they are making the regulations together and the laws together. It's the end of a nation. uh he has shown it with uh in Korea and all kind of areas they took the data they analyzed it and that's exactly what's happening now in the Netherlands what we see is that economic institutes the bigger companies and everything else and the politics are working so close together that innovation in fact stops and that's the end uh it's so sorry but it happens and it happened with the Greece and it happened with the Romans and it happened with presumably also with the Americans pony capitalism/corporatism, right?

That's well yeah and you can call them economic nations or there are all kind of terms for that. Um so that's why I went to a kind of Southeast Asia where everybody is saying corruption is there but the nice thing about corruption is that economic influence and politics influence are separated because economics is much more important than the politics itself. I found and I teached in China. I had the same feeling there. I've been there teaching for 10 years and the students said please professor don't use that site because they listen to you and they record everything.

I said okay but how can you live here? Innovation in China doesn't happen from state level but in family level still. And that's what we in the Netherlands is gone. It's completely gone. In the United States when I teach there, it was gone.

Whole California Stanford area is the same method all over and it's slowly squeezed because economic and politics is coming together. So innovation is stopped. So when you have to find out where to go, Netherlands is not the best place for innovation. No, I mean I would rather be in the Netherlands than CCP control China if I'm being honest here. I there's a big difference in terms of actual civil liberties between those two places still right.

We can at least appreciate that here, right? Well, it depends where you are and how you operate and and and things like that. I had a wonderful time there and a lot of freedom with my students. I am not comfortable in that country myself, but yeah, it's easy to own, I suppose. Well, uh, in order the in order to preserve, uh, or to recreate some kind of innovation enthusiasm in the Netherlands, I think it's important to understand how politicians think think.

Uh, because um they are they are interested in society to the extent that they can benefit or control it. Benefit from it or control it. that that's the those are the two categories that can mo motivate politicians in in a democratic age exceptions left alone but left aside but this is this is the the general pattern. So the again I think if if the crypto space would be able to develop real life applications of their technology that might be of interest to either of these uh activities that politicians are interested in these motivating factors then you'll have their ear then they'll they'll they'll move along. So this is what happened with like for example Facebook uh when it became something that ordinary people actually cared about Zuck had a seat on the table and that's that's the thing that that I think something like Monflow or another like your your capital firm or something like that if it becomes something that is has a role in society that normal people use that normal care about then that's when democratic politicians will become interested in it and not before.

Okay. But for now we realize that in crypto we don't want to give more control or benefit politicians. No, but but imagine there's something that uh if if there's 500,000 if if this wouldn't be uh 80 people, but it would be 5,000 people with another 30,000 people watching on a live stream, then politicians would think, hey, these are voters. you. So it's it's very nerds like us are inclined to think what is the truth and then I'm going to speak the truth and people will be convinced by the truth.

Right? Because arguments this is not how normal people operate. It's not how politicians operate. There are other there are other things that make them take certain decisions and we have to understand that. I have I have an idea just real quick.

um legalize political campaign contributions in crypto. That might change the tune of some politicians at least. Yeah. So, uh we were the first to open that, but it but it's Yeah. The the KYC on the on the back side is very very complicated and you know, how do you know what the the source of the funds is?

And because if it's a proper blockchain transaction, you on the, you know, if there's an exchange in between you, you might be able to know because then the exchange has done the KYC, but otherwise you're you're not allowed to accept the funds and you have to donate them to the government. Yeah, that that that's not what I mean. We've legalized. So I think we still have a bit of a way to go then therefore. Yeah.

But maybe I can make another proposal. Is there anybody here who has a pension? When we make pension funds really controllable by yourself, wow. Then something is going to happen because then politicians are getting very very much afraid because the amount of money in the Netherlands in the pension funds is so enormously high. It will have an immediate impact when part of the pension fund is self-controlled and in crypto.

So I can speak to that. I speak to a lot of pension funds as a uh fund and uh they have zero interest in investing in crypto anytime soon. That pension funds are going to be like the last people that are ever going to invest in crypto based on my anecdotal experience. That's why it has to be individually steered. I mean now pension funds are always either your employer or it's some other organization.

But the new law allows you to start steering your pension fund yourself. So just make your own just make your own fund and make it a pension fund which is completely steered by and is in blockchain. Is Monflow going to do that anytime soon? Safe strikes again with I am building it. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm building it. Um I'm having discussions now even with the administrators and everybody else. Uh because I think this will really well have some impact. Yeah. Another time where you want to disrupt and another place, right?

Uh, I will I will continue disrupting. I I really love disrupting. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard that one yet.

Decentralize your pension fund. So, that would be a maybe someone here will build it. All right. Um, Robert, you want to say something? No, I was just actually wanted to ask a question about um um being interesting to politicians.

So should we organize our own lobby groups or NOS's with our crypto funds and and start uh addressing our interest to politicians? Is that what you're proposing just now before? Well, that's part of it, but also politicians need to see that there's some power behind it. they they I think they they would want to see some massive adoption of something and then they will start listening to what the crypto community actually wants what they put to the table because before that it's just it's just a nuisance it's just something that they don't understand is like what technology difficult Russia blah blah blah Russian money scary never mind so you have to you have to get to a point where people act from societ they start using it. They're like and and then politicians will move.

I think it's always the other way around. I've never in my political life encountered something that is even remotely resembling of an intellectual exchange in politics. It does not exist. They're not interested in it. They and and if they would recognize one, they would walk away from it.

they would be disgusted by it because that is not why they went into politics. They went into politics because they're interested in power and and and arguments and positions and ideological standpoints are instrumental for them to that power. They're not interested in the ideology. They're not interested in the arguments. They're not interested in ideals.

They're not even interested in the country. They couldn't care less because then they become international politicians and they'll have an international salary and an international status. So we have to understand we guys are interested in arguments but we are exceptions. We are a rare anomaly amongst normal that that or next year normal pattern in society that or next year we have 10,000 people here and we can discuss how to make that happen. Uh because I like where this is going in terms of like flipping the Netherlands.

I would like to open the slido please because we have a few minutes left and I want to see and take some questions from the audience. Uh code is speech and should be protected. Yes, thank you. Um all right, no new questions here. Let me see.

And I think don't don't underestimate the stifling effect of censorship. It's been horrendous for people really. I just wanted to say that again. Yeah, we'll be talking about it more as well with Aaron Day coming and the next panel as well. Um maybe some closing remarks then for you guys.

How can we from each of your perspective? We've touched on many different things right now. Adoption, not trusting politicians, CFI, this mix of old finance and touching on crypto. What What can we do to make uh the Netherlands great again? Yeah, that's a good one.

You have two. Um, yeah, I mentioned Silk Road and I think the wonderful thing about it was that it created a use case, an everyday use case with a very clear-cut argument. Lots lot of lots of drugs, lots of substances are illegal for rather ridiculous reasons. Here is a way we can exchange them. Lots of people want them.

It's a viable economic model. It's something that lots of people started using. And somebody here says like, "What would you like to say that you cannot say? What would you like to do that you cannot do?" These are um the relevant questions of course, but they're also they're questions that the masses ask themselves.

They're they're the same kind of questions that people would say, "Are you really so obsessed about beauty? I mean, normal high-rise buildings, they're fine, right? But then we would never have Paris. We would never have the old city center of Amsterdam. It's something that only a very few people are interested.

But all of us benefit from it. And that is uh that that is what all of us I think have to think about real life use cases of something that is ultimately only intelligible to a very small amount of people. And I'm I'm sure that if we dedicate a day or an afternoon to that, we would be able to think of many many such examples and cases. Uh and and and I'm sure I think that there's a great future for crypto. I really believe in it and I would just want to urge you all to keep pushing.

Thank you. St. Go. There's one question about direct democracy and that kind of stuff. Uh I would recommend to go back to the French philosophers Delo and Fuko who made an experiment around 68 in prisons for direct democracy.

There was no hierarchy at all. Everybody was equal, had equal voting in there. they had no blockchain but the whole setup was already based on that direct democracy model. So if you have the technical possibilities for that it could be but you still have to wonder whether from an intellectual point of view it's still a democracy. It's a voting, it's a representation kind of system, but it's they didn't had representatives in the sense that they would then have power to make decisions over you.

And that's the the big problem about democracy that as soon as you vote for somebody, then this person has this power to do things in your name. And how do you get that away from the whole system? That's that's a huge difficulty. Secondly, econ everybody is always linking economy and politics together, but they are different. Uh Hayek already said it quite clearly.

There's a difference between dominium, which is politics, and imperium. Uh yeah, sorry, the other way around. Imperium is really politics. Dominium is economic. We are economic people are acting differently from politics.

Voting is everybody is just happy when they can give the vote to some idiot who wants to sit in the in one of the parliaments. I mean wonderful. You take all the problems. You you you make the solutions. I don't give a damn anyhow.

I will do my own life. So, but you cannot do it from an economic point of view because if you have nothing else in your supermarket anymore or you have money but the money is inflated so you can't buy anything anymore, everybody feels it and that's a completely different story. So please separate that and and at when at the top they come together and start seeing then it goes wrong. That's what I explained to you. But yes, I believed in direct democracy.

But it will not be a kind of democratic system when you start using blockchain. It will be much more an influencing uh on what are we doing. There was one question that was marked as that I marked as answered. But this will be my last question. Can I uh make the case and ask all of you to speak for Alexi within whatever sphere of influence you may have to make the case for him to make sure that when his appeal takes place that I can reassure people that the Netherlands can still be a place for developers and for privacy builders to be in.

Okay. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. 100%.

Thank you. I think all of us here will continue to support Alexi and uh Tornado Cashache and privacy and all of the good that that stands for because by supporting crypto we support freedom and by supporting freedom we support prosperity and innovation and that makes us all better off. Thank you. Thank you everyone.