Turning Degens Into Cypherpunks panel @ Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress

hi my name is in Tong um I used to work at the zcash project um um on applied cryptography Zer knowledge proofs um since then I've worked with geometry and right now I'm an independent researcher right now I'm interested in multi party computation I think I'm not Dent at all um and I'm I think like being Punk is about caring and it's about talking to people so I'm fully on the cipher well yeah let's define those terms later maybe I identify yeah I identify Mars with the cyer punk s from Cypher Punk to DJ yeah uh yeah I'm Alan uh I'm a contributor to uh the rail gun privacy project um it's a really cool priv thing on ethereum allows you to do cool private defi stuff um if that is a spectrum that can be defined um I would say that uh I am a um recovering [ __ ] coiner um I mean that's kind of how I got started in 2017 originally uh my background is in finance and so I was just after a lot of beta I wanted a lot of move uh in a chart and look no further than the Ico craze of 201 you know 17 and defi summer and all that stuff um I think what made me like woefully aware of that was being in like different like telegram groups where people were you know sharing Alpha and things like this right and um what made me uh really super aware of like the Privacy problem in crypto was someone dming me out of a telegram group I was in and saying hey how did you get into shitcoin X I'm like man how did you know that you know and you know he kind of walked me through like how these kind of things work you know he gave me my ether scan link and um um at that point I was like man damn this is a huge issue um that was 2020 and now I've been rallying to the the dark side the Light Side ever since thanks alen hi everybody my name is Shady I'm one of the co-founders of Hall andm um my interests are primarily in act recovering academic and [ __ ] coiner I started off uh really interested in uh doing my PhD and thinking about how do we have better patient privacy data rights uh which led to some of the work that we're doing with uh ZK identity and uh uh NPC networks for for management derivation so in terms of I think on the DG Spectrum do you guys know dgen score has any yeah yeah I was uh D score I think rip I don't think it exists anymore they took it down um I think I was like 80th percentile or something so pretty D it's pretty dgen because like you know the the tales of the distribution are very very wide it's not a normal distribution um uh yes so invested in yams invested in dick butts invest invested in all sorts of stuff and uh I've mostly lost money the most amount of money I've lost uh was shorting World coin uh I got wiped out unsuccessful dgen I mean it's a down only token like what the [ __ ] like I don't understand um on the cipher Punk side I would say I'm an Apple user yeah that's all I can say I'm sorry um I'm Lis I work with a company called brainbot on sh Network which is a a threshold encryption uh dkg so um encryption decryption mechanism for commit revealed schemes especially sort of um against censorship resistance against front running and also we encrypt Dow VT so so with it integrated into snapshot um yeah and live on nosis chain in this meev and sensorship resistance encrypted mol um form uh and um um yeah similar to some of the others here somewhere in between so I I don't consider myself as a the the GM D gen I would say that that type of D gen but if you maybe there's two two groups there's two aspects to it I don't like the gambling aspect of it so so I hope I'm not a gambler kind of but I consider myself a gamer so like on this playful like gaming aspect I uh I like that so I think and that's super important for for crypto I think the playfulness gaming that's better than the gambling side of it yeah um hi my name is Manu and I've been contributed to the space since the the da um I've been um let's say exploring a lot of uh privacy preserving tools since uh we are we have been organizing um a community called The Block ravers where we experiment a lot with um trust and let's say with u reputation and yeah sadly um we currently don't have the tools for doing um we for doing what we're thinking that uh should be let's say like a way of having a social graph that is completely private and that is per is permission based and that you basically can remove access and so on uh so yeah super interested in the in the Privacy space and also I've been an activist um back in Venezuela I'm a year from Venezuela and has been I have been using tools since I'm like 15 15 years old justed to try to um let's say um coordinate with friends um and come out uh in the streets in Venezuela and organize some some riots there and I say expressing ourselves um when it comes to let's say um let's say the weight of expressing and also the private property and all of that hello everyone I'm PG uh core at web Pro privacy now since let's say day two uh I came into crypto web tree fascinated by the sociopolitical aspect of it so I came in for the values I stayed for the values um and actually the trying to turning the digan perspective the Deion approach into something more like you know uh true to the founding values of this movement is something that I really uh care about we really care about and before that I've organized some privacy acons and conferences throughout Europe like the Rome uh we created a community in our country that was nothing was there before uh as well as eth dam contributing to several Dows and I actually experienced that a lot of people that join the space doesn't have the time or the fortune to uh get into reading some document or to understand what is the real history or are the founding values of this movement and some of them when they got into it they got really fascinated by them so I think we didn't be enough kind of good or clear or open or welcoming enough these newcomers to understand what all this is about the values yeah um yeah I don't want to take much time but I have a lot to say about this because it's really close to my heart um and I'm very happy about what today has happened nice I think it sounds like we have a very wide range of people on the Spectrum um one so I forgot to introduce myself but also I'm Josh DAV I have a podcast called blockchain socialist um and it's very funny because the reason that I got into crypto was because I think this is relevant is that um I was broke um when I got out of college and so yeah so I think and so like I remember if I look think back about that time I mean I was broke throughout College before college and then a bit after college um but crypto was like this kind of um potential key to moving out of the uh uh yeah the the abyss of poverty um and I remember like trying to yeah just like thinking about like this ethereum thing and like if I bought some money a little bit then maybe in like 10 years I'll finally be able to like pay off my student loan debt um so like one of the things that I think is probably true of probably most people who are who would we would I guess broadly Define as degens or people who like to trade stupid tokens to make a lot of money on um is probably that a lot of them come from come from a place of like socioeconomic anxiety or a place of like having particular economic conditions in which it incentivizes them to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible because that's what like everything is telling them to do not much is telling them to uh to be a cipher Punk and advocate for privacy because that's hard and that's uh potentially very dangerous um so yeah so I'm I'm curious if anybody has any thoughts so I'm just going to go I'm just going to ask questions and then whoever wants to answer them because I also don't want to do it like you know one one one that's a really boring panel PR tight yeah so um I guess for me I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts about like the um yeah socioeconomic conditions that creates a dgen uh and how do we pull how do we pull that out yeah yeah uh I absolutely agree I do not think like making money making profit is opposed um in opposition to being a cyber Punk at all um and so my former colleague Dara Hopwood um always used to tell us like yeah basically um for in order to have privacy you need financial privacy cuz um in order to exist as a citizen in order to make purchases like get a mortgage take got a loan access like all kinds of financial services um you need financial privacy um and that is um even more true for marginalized people like disadvantaged people um and I think Financial Services includes like the ability to invest the ability to make yield um take out loans um and I think like the Privacy aspect of it it comes in when for examp for example you need to pay for an abortion in a state where it's not legal for example you're like a sex worker you need to receive payments um without exposing your identity so like basically like access to financial services for people who are vulnerable for people from marginalized groups like I think is absolutely consistent like it's with Cipher Punk and D I think like yeah there's no there's no inconsistency in my mind maybe maybe one thing I just wanted to to slip in there is that um you know I I did a I did a video essay on this but um you know we saw the election happened and we saw like a pretty big increase in like ethnic minorities in the US voting for Donald Trump um and I think in part this had to do with um there is potentially an argument that since crypto is actually more popular amongst ethnic minorities in the the US AKA largely people who struggle more socioeconomically they probably have more positive views about crypto and so Trump being the crypto president for some uh yeah anyways yeah you want to say something yeah yeah I think I was going to say something a little bit about how yeah like your risk profile kind of changes with the situation you're in right and there's even evidence that suggests that the brain rewires itself and how it's sensitive to dopamine and risk and reward and risk-taking and look up the marshmallow tests so it's I think you know when it comes to uh socio economic uh I guess like descriptors of the demographics of uh let's say like the average djen I think that's on point I think that makes a lot of sense uh another bit there is you know with degens there it's kind of like an Information Network where you know you're kind of moving in this like digital herd where information is transferred right and then that's how you find the next thing and you both you know you all collectively double down or triple down on a particular meme or idea it's kind of this Grassroots optimization and like for many folks it's like Outsiders right hear about it and then they're pretty much pumping this but uh it depends on this kind of like Core nucleating group of shared values and I think um I think I think it's just really interesting actually because in a way it provides kind of resilience because it brings people together right where you can quickly coordinate around these you know stupid memes or whatever but uh in a way it's also kind of dangerous because all this stuff is public and onchain so kind of like a citadel situation where you can see which Dow is trying to buy which valuable piece of property and be able to sweep the rug out from them so it does feel like that there's this Mega Cosmic push and pull of forces between you know um these like adaptable information Networks works and perhaps these top- down systems that are using their transparency uh perhaps against them or to you know for their own benefit uh if I can touch it uh actually I feel that the people that are moved by the money are more difficult to kind of um not educate but just shift their attention or their need um okay their Need is Another discourse but let's say their attention rather than something then touched uh was was mentioned by Juan Bennett protocol Labs today like now we have the chance to redirect funding from you know all these big startups project whatever to people who actually care about the common good the public good want to you know uh enhance and uphold the civil liberties uh it's not easy of course but we have the chance to do it and I think that this could be a very interesting point to you know further investigate and push uh forward because actually there is I mean today if you commit for the public good either you are Gandhi or you know you're not going to take a money like artists like you know uh a lot of people a lot of nice people that really care and commit uh strive to pay the bills because actually is not on the competitive on the market you know if you don't do kind of job that the system recognize you're just going to leave you know I don't know doing another another job or whatever so I feel this is a very good opportunity to actually help these kind of people welcome these people that are Maybe since 20 30 years doing research doing super nice projects helping local communities helping them through R redirecting these funding mechanisms um yeah so are you on the side of like uh is say cultivating the dgen Dynamics to put money into privacy preserving Technologies I feel that actually if we would manage to put more attention on all those projects and use cases that actually real touches the real people in the real world for humanitarian causes and stuff and you you have for sure to mention something here and you as well for example you use of crypto Anonymous cryptocurrency during Wars where you have dictatorship where have AER inflation so real use cases uh broader communities more people would actually get what is the real values of this Technologies for the people uh and it would be more easy to you know take further these kind of new economics models and incentives to really do something meaningful and impactful that would be actually understood by a wider audience that maybe is committed for human rights politics Academia that could help and this is I feel the most impactful thing that we do like coming together because there are a lot of small niches like human rights internet Feld movements open source software activism and we don't talk to each other because of multiple reasons that I can I can understand but at the end we are all shooting for the same North Star so if we make actually this kind of ecosystem uh better working we all win and actually we use slightly different tools but at the end we have all the same goal so if we manage to build up like vocabularies to understand each other and to work together I think that there we can have an impact because otherwise we will remain small bubbles so I don't know if this is like tangental or within the same vein I'm I'm kind of hoping it is but uh I think there's something to be said that we can you know as like privacy enthusiasts and activists can learn from the uh like memetic nature of like the like the DJ movements right um you know you know it's kind of weird and obtuse to think about it but you know roaring Kitty did a lot for people to get interested in like Finance in general which is really quite important for like the individual right like investing in being interested and like how do you save for the future and buy stocks and all these different things right and so um you know even before that you know in various uh Wars right you know people did a lot of uh uh you know cartoons at the time you know but ultimately were memes right to take and um you know drive a mission to get people's point across Uncle Sam he needs you right um and I think that this is like a really uh you know beautiful thing that like DJ culture has really kind of tapped into you know people uh you know find ways to make like really fun memes and things like this and you can go and look at them on pump uh and bet on various animals and things like this and you know ultimately this is like a form of culture that is like collecting souls and um I I think it's something that um you know privacy uh can sort of uh you know capture again uh it certainly did early in the 90s uh with like various uh you know Wired Magazine uh articles and you know really cool like uh I thought it was cool [ __ ] anyway you know like these white masks these like kind of like nerdy dudes like with white masks and it look real cool and like you know punks with the cause and this sort of thing and so like tapping into that like um yeah like mtic movement like kind of driving and leaning into like meme culture um I think is something that we can we can definitely strive for and do a bit more of in like the Privacy movement it's kind of like we need a V for Vendetta moment you know when they're all in the street and like they all like have their masks on or you can't really tell if they really do or if it's you know it's yeah yeah I think that would be that direction is the postive direction I like this this idea of kind of channeling the the D for sort of for the better yeah and I think that one of the one of the problems is just that the I think that the the easiest user experience is the investing and the gambling kind of so we made it I think it's actually in some ways too easy sort of now to to buy I mean buy some shitcoin on on binance right where centralized exchanges have have have um made it very easy right whereas on the kind of operator side or on the operating um kind of nodes or something like this we haven't progressed right so so I think um originally people came to crypto because it was extremely easy to so I for example I I just downloaded this Bitcoin QT Right double click boom window I'm not a developer right and and I can't can't operate couldn't at the time operate a server so for me it was extremely simple to just install a Windows application let it run mines Auto just starts mining when you click on it and you have the payment thing inside of it and you have the the node operation aspect also inside of it yeah and then back then it was really easier to operate a Bitcoin node than it was to invest than to sign up for like more GS right at the time um so I think that that's kind of a a good challenge to think about how can we get back how can we make it E as easy as that kind of just just want to highlight sort of dep node right I think they they're doing an extra strong job um also shout out to Olas I think is really interesting with this Pearl they have a they you can operate your own autonomous agent um Al same same kind of Bitcoin QT thing where you just just install it on not on a server but on on your on your laptop essentially yeah so I think that that's one maybe one on angle to make make the DJ gamblers to operators I I agree with what you're saying I think that DJing is very easy while act while let's say um running your own servers or um trying to remain private is really really really hard um because actually like if you want to really really remain private like there's so many uh points of failure across the across the whole board um so you have to be first you have to have knowledge um and also another thing that I've realized is that most people that do really care about privacy is because they have experienced something bad when it comes like to uh having let's say um governments that oppress or uh so I think that a lot of the people that are necessarily Deen that don't care about privacy is because uh they haven't realized the privilege that they have most of the time um so yeah it's I think it's it's something related to First the how easy it is to be a Dean against how difficult it is to uh remain private and also again um uh acknowledging like the the type of lifestyle or where we live and so on and how oppressive the government might be against us or not I will I really I was just going to say one quick thing which was um I think there is a special class of djen though that's really motivated if you guys know the AL Alchemist project has anyone missed yeah yeah like with a flask and all of that like to get in on it you had to download you had to like you know use a hard hat you had to use hard hat generate the key um you had to like do all the stuff to stake and you know if you got and early you're were doing really well I think it was like a Reb was it a rebasing token I can't remember it was uh it was actually a a token that allowed you to ask for loans um with over collateralize but yeah but the way that the the way that they were giving you the loan was with a revas token that's correct oh I see yeah so that's alchemix uh Alchemist um yeah yeah that that one's also interesting but Alchemist was uh I don't know like a super Niche D gen thing it had like a little flask and anyways so what was interesting though was like how you know an early Community gathered around using very difficult to use tools and I don't know what it was about that anthropological snapshot in time that led to those people doing that you know it's interesting yeah I really love that point because um often times the most privileged the most Deen Traders are the ones most invested in their privacy um could you repeat that please uh the the people most motivated to keep their traits private are exactly the same as the most privileged Traders um when I mean privileged I mean privileged that nobody's going to attack you so when these people that you're mentioning they start caring about privacy because they start understanding that they have a Target in their FA in their face if they don't protect themselves no absolutely yeah so if it's for example um if you're making a huge trade like you want to keep that private so that people don't like Arbitrage you um so you use like Iceberg orders you like keep you use like a private order book um so the most privileged players that are um the most sophisticated Traders are trading in private um yeah like the biggest blocks of stocks are traded in dark pools absolutely like dark pools like so honestly a lot of the a big question for a lot of the dart pools or private trading protocols is like who are you benefiting and oftentimes the answer is Wales is Wales um yeah so I think this is a really interesting point because um like I don't know one of the main arguments against privacy is that oh it'll make it harder to like catch criminals to detect money laundering but if nobody had privacy then the like rest assured the the people who are most motivated and most well-placed to get privacy precisely those like sophisticated traders who are like well informed who are like well resourced so yeah I I I I love that point like um the the fact that if you don't have privacy by default then you converge to this case very naturally when you only have privacy for the privileged yeah just just to add to that I think it's very interesting that the the private rpcs right private me pools are actually kind of the exclusive me pools yeah so so it's actually so it's kind of sad that they were able to capture that privacy wording even sort of for for something that's that's not yeah it's exclusive it's private but it's exclusive yeah so I think we need to be moving to um public public but encrypted so I think public encrypted meol is better than uh private exclusive essentially yeah but it's kind of sad that even the wording is captured by yeah so um so I think the thing that we're getting at here is that by and large there is privacy but it's privacy for capital or privacy for those who have the means and the wealth to do so so right now we're in a kind of like almost two-tiered system some people get privacy because they are in the privileged position and most other people don't and you know I think there so there's there's I think a a sort of a risk here where Cipher Punk means just like you know um I'm I get I can do money laundering wherever I want um but I do think at least I have maybe a slightly different uh uh desire for cyppher Punk to mean something more Broad and that it's like privacy as like the default he said um I think one thing to keep in mind maybe is as well I don't know if people know this does anybody know where the term Cipher Punk comes from or like yes a couple people yeah it comes from uh St Jude Milan who was like a it was a woman that actually uh um created this term she was like one of the early software developers and it was she was talking about privacy much more in the context of like of yeah feminist thought around um being able to yeah protect one's identity to be able to um access abortions whenever uh a woman needed it um and now unfortunately I think uh there is often times this modeling of the term where now it means like I can put my buttcoin monies into you know wherever I want without having to pay taxes um so like where I guess where I'm getting uh I'm not I don't really know what question I'm getting at with this but I guess does anybody have any thoughts on like cuz I have to I have to disagree with like um you like trying to learn from from degens and their memes I think that's like the wrong place to learn lessons personally because it's sort of it's financialized propaganda is I guess how I would see it versus and then like you know versus like there are many other types of propaganda but like um in particular this is one that you make money off of and trying to find ways to actually maybe do propaganda I don't think it's a bad word but like in uh which is probably what you meant but like yeah exactly yeah I mean I don't think I was you know trying to get us to to make like a shitcoin or something like that um um it was more to like how like um you know powerful memes can be ultimately to like convey a message right uh like the distillation of like really lofty ideals uh is something that's really quite important right and if you can do that in a single image or uh in a hashtag or something like this whatever it might be right um I'm not an expert marketer but um suffice it to say I think that like if we can like better distill the image um uh it could not be a bad thing and memes are democrati memes are inherently Democratic right they come from the from the internet not from like top down some yeah what I think about it maybe so maybe I think I don't know how much more time we have actually we Clos closing it down maybe we can do um if you all right what is the best privacy meme that we should be pushing each one whenever you whenever you have it go still think z uh uh sorry ZK for Vendetta me maybe uh uh V for Vendetta I still think that's like one of the best privacy memes guy Fox memes yeah the guy Fox mask yeah it is kind of cool yeah that's a tough cookie to top honestly um yeah I have to think about it wait Did you write a book I did okay I just started reading your book I bought it on Amazon it's a really good book Thank you thank you I I love how like the you radical get it whatever I have signed copies yeah buy his book it's really good right on the plane here well part of it you know I've been trying to think after you you ask the question and I think that's why we're failing because we're not being able to like really mimy it um not you asked that question and nothing comes up to my mind like what is like a super nice meme about privacy that I can give you right now there's many unfunny memes right about sort of tornado cash and um yeah people behind bars kind of not not really funny but I mean that's that's that could be that's a meme yeah I mean I think like you brought up it's there's a lot of not funny memes right and I think that's a totally acceptable thing to have right I think like uh mtic culture has kind of been drowned in humor and like sort of like edgy um um hyperbolic statements that are like supposed to be funny um but I don't think they have to be funny um just by default you can have like uh disant that's a meme and it says something powerful that's serious one thing I am a little bit worried about is like what happens when K start like hitting your Twitter inbox and are like you know we got privacy memes like you know $500 for 10 packs like let us know U so it's like you know kind of like the finan financialization of privacy memes and kind of using that to wrap other maybe disingenuous uh forms of the technology just something to worry about a little bit but I think um kind kind of related to memes is um a powerful concept of metaphors um recently I've been finding like privacy in and of itself to not be the most meaningful framing um uh because it's vague because it makes no statement about use case about the end user um so recently I've been interested in um just more specific metaphors for instance purpose limitation um so the sort of prevailing um Paradigm in a lot of privacy preserving applications has been data minimization so like reducing the amount of data you collect um but that does not account for the fact that after you collect the data you can still use it for anything you want um including like let's say let's say like Co contact tracing like you could then use for example in Singapore they said like we would maybe use it to track the location of criminals yeah like since we have it anyway um so like when faced with sort of a a situation like that I think what's been interesting to me is a reframing so if you reframed it as purpose limitation uh if you designed your application um such that you could not use the data for anything else uh besides the original purpose I think that sort of frame of mind as a developer uh as a designer is way more useful so yeah I think um I don't know I I don't consume memes I have a very little patience for them but I think like yeah what what's powerful about them is like they sort of introduce a paradigm like a Common Language frame of mind um and I think metaphors have that same power too um so yeah I think better metaphors in privacy um I think we we need to do better than privacy uh we need to get more specific and we need to be talking with application developers with designers with users uh I love memes uh we came up with this mematic world you can find here in the corridor I will publish on Twitter as well uh because actually I feel that through memes you can convey deep philosophical political sociological Concept in a playful way which is the same way that children communicate which is super interesting and actually again many people could get that meaning with just through like laughing which is super powerful actually and I think that uh fighting or confronting a challenge through play rather than with guns I feel that is more powerful at the end so uh I think that Mims are uh something very powerful and nice um besides that um to go back to Dent cyber punks I feel personally that cyber punks were trying to confronting or let's say redistributing power because the power structures that they were seeing at the time projecting to the Future were like a scary dystopian scenario that actually happen 100% so they were right um but they were confronting actually social political system Financial system and of course in the digital Dimension um I want to brought here uh an example um because actually I feel that we should address D not just in crypto like we all are so much focused on crypto about crypto but dents and Cypher punks you can find it also Beyond crypto you know uh and uh what cyer punks were challenging were trying to break Some Loops that are continuously reating and actually ate the [ __ ] out of crypto um which are for example I was mentoring one of the top tier University in Italy uh people doing a master in decentralizing governance um Innovative startups disruptive Technologies and they were they were coming super nice people uh coming super committed yeah yeah we want to do this project blah blah blah blah blah and when you were like okay what's your aim ah I want to do exit you know blah blah blah blah because my teacher said this and that okay but why are you doing this they didn't have the why they didn't care about what they were doing they were just aiming for what our social political economical Financial system teach us since when we are in high school and I felt this personally because I studied economics and it took me years to understand that Silicon Valley was not the best things ever that could happened to me uh so I think that Cypher punks um should face and break this Loop regarded uh like how you and where you invest money how you bring values to younger Generations how you actually through um thoughtful leadership through practical examples you can actually show them that it's possible to invest to do a company to do whatever you want in an alternative way in a better way and I think that here crypto is a powerful tool to do this in many different ways in the digital Dimension so I would approach cyer Punk and digion seeing this in a broader way again so that more people would actually understand how to shift from Dent to cypher punk in terms of how you approach your work commitment in society uh yeah yeah I really like that framing actually uh it's really interesting because like if you're providing the why right um so DG are raw untapped energy uh you know they're not really caring about the permanence of their actions that they have on the space and what happens they just in it for the kind of like pump and dump um and you know the experience that comes with that but onchain reputation is something that exists it's there and if you provide a why and a strong motivation for what it means to leave a legacy behind or be part of something bigger that's a really quick way I think to get people to pay attention um when I think of my why I would love to hear what you guys think um but when I think of my why just because of what I think about I guess in general um for me I see that privacy is really important to preserve agency not just because AIS are going to feed us information but there is this convergence towards putting technology in our bodies in our brains and what happens when you give your iPhone rewrite access to your thoughts that should be illegal or at least if not illegal we should have technology that prevents it from being something that should be illegal yeah and um also I think it helps to to frame it kind of also positively kind of the everything that we privacy is the thing that preserves kind of your Edge your information Edge right uh so in trading why why are you being successful in tra or why a trade as successful is because they have some information that others don't don't have right so so in that way just adding to the importance of privacy from a business perspective right is essentially it protects your the value of your trade essentially yeah so so in that sense it has it's not just like something nice that nice to have or something that is like we should have as Society but essentially it protects your trade secrets so your and your yeah so in that that way has a really positive business value way I think what I think for me I think we're Maybe we can uh we start Clos we have five minutes still as long as we want I mean for me I think the the the the so I I was looking through my phone because I found I took a picture of this uh the back of this girl's shirt she was working at a crypto conference I won't say which one but on the back of it it said wealth in web 3 wrapped in privacy money laundering no it was like to me it was like really incredible how it was twisted like using the term privacy but specifically for like keeping your wealth you know or whatever um and doing money laundering essentially is what they were advertising so publicly um of course this is like uh you know this is crypto and I guess there's a lot of people who are into that um I guess maybe I'm less so but I guess one of the things that I'm interested in or the only way that I would feel comfortable in saying that like yes we've reached a cypherpunk future or something like that is one where we can say that privacy has been achieved for people and not for Capital and that's something that is like maybe a more difficult job but probably is one that is more um yeah we we'll give the actual benefits that everyone thinks that privacy will give um so yeah I don't know I don't know what when you guys um is that something you guys agree with or do you think or are you guys are you guys like Pro money laundering not pro money laundering but um I think it always helps to yeah think in this kind of information symmetry or information asymmetry and sometimes sometimes we need to have information um symmetry Al often times by default I I think we should have information symmetry that everyone has kind of the same access and then but then um in some other in some other instances we need to Pres sort of the information asymmetry but not unfair information asymmetry but essentially if somebody worked hard for some information on data they should be the one benefiting from from that information and then yeah then that should be protected yeah can I make comment on that really quick yeah um yeah I think that's interesting but I think that's assuming like a a controlled close system approach where there's only so much information available and so you're configuring information a symmetry to drive like you know Innovation and all that I think if we treat it from like a thermodynamic approach where information asymmetry is available like it's just like there always will be information asymmetry if we just expand our Horizons enough uh but if we seek information symmetry on faster time scales then we can actually innovate more quickly and the market can be driven more efficiently is what I would I don't know that's like really he and like yeah but I think then open up the access to uh some tools that as of now just who has money and power can use uh and giving this to the public is something that I like totally and all this [ __ ] around uh you know terrorist and stuff is not what scares me because if you look at the amount of money that has been lered by whatever drug dealers politicians uh Mafia whatever nowadays every day through banks actually uh the amount of just to be a little bit politically correct here um is not you know even comparable to what has been done through crypto or other Technologies and tools and I feel that the benefit that the broader Society could have with these tools is a lot is a way more important than this like you know whatever Koreans uh want to money laundering I okay this I won't I won't say this but uh yeah I'm for free markets and opening access to these tools so I think like um you know one of the biggest challenges in like privacy Tech that I see um is we spend a lot of time in Academia uh in this space uh I feel like every other week there's like a new PL derivative white paper that comes out to talk about like some new way to do like a folding scheme that like uh is so esoteric that maybe like 10 people who read the white paper would understand in the first place um and I would love to just see like more just general applications that are being built that have like very simple privacy enhancing functionality uh even things that are like simple like uh a way to onramp and off-ramp uh into maybe a private zcash uh address or something like this right uh it doesn't have to be um you know [ __ ] crazy like we can we can do just simple stuff right you know a crawl walk run Theory you know uh when it comes to like just in user applications we're we're definitely still barely in the crawl phase um and um that would be my answer to like how do we like I don't know accomplish the cipher Punk dream I guess right which I think was kind of Quasi what your question was yeah kind of yeah [Music] um I I still I just I don't even know what time I'm supposed to end the panel to be honest is it time for me to end the panel PG yeah yeah let's end the panel we have a little surprise for you all all right well thank you guys so much for sharing your thoughts on Deens and Cipher punks I disagree with some of the things said but I respect your opinions and I won't report you to the [Applause] authorities so uh I ask you to not leave because actually we now have a little surprise for you it will be very quick uh I introducing here actually a living meme uh I lately call him uh super saan of Love he's a super nice human being close friend uh core contributor of we privacy now he was involved in a lot of super nice um initiatives uh in crypto and Beyond in the last 40 maybe even 50 years I guess uh his name is Michael parenti he's going to read uh exiled Surfer in Twitter uh we call him elixir because I will explain this one to one if you want um and actually he's going to read this ethereum Cypher Punk transition Manifesto that we uh lately um written down which is actually a collection of practical takes about how we can help each other making better questions and having again a practical impact on how to transition digent into Cypher Punk and how to make ethereum let's say Cipher Punk Cipher Punk again whatever ever let's say focusing on values having an impact uh uh yeah I don't want to make it too long let's enjoy this video and then maybe I will tell you some more about this [Music] Manifesto hello Bangkok Exile Surfer here to share with you the etherium cipher Punk transition meow meow meow ethereum is more than just a protocol it's cultural movement millions of people educate research code fundraise and spread the message of decentralization in a broad impactful sense whether one calls it web 3 or Society in the digital age ethereum's Cipher Punk culture should produce an actionable path for the liberated future in equilibrium between social political and Tech technological needs so I'm going to cover those three points social political and technological social privacy is the non-negotiable principle for any free Society we should focus on empowering self- Sovereign individuals with humanfriendly PTP Technologies we should support and promote positive and constructive communication as an alternative to polarized stiff and pessimistic thinking we should seek the right incentives to unite and cooperate for the common good we should embrace interdisciplinarity as the key to have a real impact in the world by exchanging knowledge tools and vision with social scientists ethicists designers activists artists and other non-tech people number two political privacy is the reason why crypto has been developed in the first place we need to protect freedom of speech and freedom after speech both in code we need to promote Global collaboration to overcome State agendas imperialistic desires ecological blindness and surveillance capitalism we need to uphold open source culture and distribute software for free we need to host events that incorporate crypto founding principles and educate the community number three technological robust privacy practices Balance power between individuals and the state or cooperations crypto should stand for both cryptography and crypto economics it should prioritize accessible privacy enhancing tools it should cooperate more with developers from open source culture and internet Freedom movements and most of all it should ban it should demand privacy by Design now this social techn this socio techn political movement is deeply connected to both Global and local Dimensions it's woven into the relationships between individuals communities and States we've been incredibly successful at putting our footprint into the world we haven't been so successful at convincing the world that our way is the better way so I hope everybody's going to have a great time at the ethereum cipher Punk Congress in Bangkok shout out to all my friends and colleagues and peers and amazing people that are there I wish I could be there with you I'm stuck here in Vienna um but reaching you via video have a great conference and a great week at Devcon [Applause] [Music] this is actually a collective statement so any feedback is welcome you can give it to us through uh real life through Twitter our channels email whatever you want um I would like to thank you all for coming I know we are all tired so I will be very quick in just telling you that we are throwing a rave a cipher Rave tonight from 9:00 a.m. to 9900 p.m. till 4: a.

m. we are going to have 10 DJs two rooms a very nice sound system uh DJs that that uh played at um The Burning Man in Berlin resident in very popular clubs so I drinks of course of course free drinks there is open bar there is already amazing beer I just tasted them that I have amazing Session IPA double apas please just reach them through this door um and what can I say I'm truly amazed by the people that came today uh because actually this is a very important stepstone for us as a community to come together to meet in real life and to uh talk about the values that are at the Cornerstone of this movement so thank you all for coming for joining for participating uh and see you tonight and at future events