[MUSIC PLAYING] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] JOHN MARTIN: Agafia Lykov is one
of Russia's Old Believers, an ultra-orthodox sect of
Christianity that still exists in small communities around
the world today. Fearing oppression and death
at the hands of Stalin, Agafia's father Karp fled with
his family into the Sayan Mountains of Siberia in 1936. Agafia was born into this harsh
wilderness in 1944. The Lykov family lived
undisturbed for 40 years, building a life in an
environment where the winter temperatures commonly dipped
to minus 30, the summer growing season is short,
and bears and wolves roam in abundance.
However, food was
always scarce. And in 1961, Agafia's mother
Akulina starved herself to death so that her children would
have enough food to eat. The area they settled in is
currently over 160 miles from the nearest town. In summer, it's possible to
reach the Lykov's cabin by a seven-day canoe trip.
In winter, while we had heard
rumors of a treacherous snowmobile route, it is
virtually inaccessible by anything other than
helicopter. In 1978, a team of Russian
geologists spotted the Lykov's hillside farm from
their helicopter. They later hiked in
to meet them. It was the first contact with
outsiders that the Lykovs had in over 40 years, and
it marked the end of their isolation.
Since that initial visit, the
Lykovs have become famous in Russia as the family of Siberian
hermits who didn't know that World War
II took place. They also suffered unspeakable
tragedy when the three elder children all died within weeks
of each other, presumably from pneumonia contracted from a
visit by the geologists. Agafia's father Karp later died
in 1988, 27 years to the day after his wife
passed away. Despite sporadic visitors over
the years, Agafia lived alone until 1997, when one of the
geologists, a man named Yerofei Sedov, moved to a cabin
down the hill from her.
So now, 35 years after their
first contact, Agafia is the only Lykov left, living the same
way she has since she was born and the only way she knows
how, off the land, in one of the most inhospitable
environments on Earth. Our journey to meet Agafia began
with a 10-hour red-eye flight from New York
to Moscow. Arriving in the morning, we met
up with Gleb Lisichkin, the editor of Vice Russia, who
would act as our host and translator. We then hopped on another flight
to the city of Abakan, which is right in the middle of
the country, just north of the Mongolian border.
Abakan is the capital the
Khakassia region, and with 165,000 residents is modern,
but by no means a teeming metropolis. We then met Igor, an employee
of the Parks Department, who would be accompanying
us to see Agafia. JOHN MARTIN: We used this time
to check out the town. Whew.
Ouch. The call finally came, so we
jumped in a van and drove several hours south to
the Shushenskoye. JOHN MARTIN: However, by the
time we arrived some severe weather came and grounded our
helicopter for another night. The unexpected delay gave us
time to buy some things that were on Agafia's wish list,
namely a goat and rooster.
On the third morning, the
weather had slightly cleared, and we were able to board
the helicopter. Despite some technical
difficulties, which made us second guess our choice of
aircraft, by that afternoon we were finally in the air on the
final leg of our journey. As civilization dropped away and
the taiga grew, we made an unexpected stop in a
snow-covered field to pick up Sergei, a Parks Department
official who spends most of his time living in the mountains
and has grown to know Agafia over his
years there. Siberia is a region in the
middle of Russia, covering about 5 million square miles, an
area nearly one and a half times larger than the
United States.
The area is sparsely populated,
with few major cities like Abakan, and is
mostly comprised of large swaths of untouched land called
taiga, a subarctic forest known for extreme
cold and massive amounts of wildlife. It was into this taiga that
Agafia's father led his family in 1937. We landed on the frozen river,
unloaded our gear and gift animals, and went to meet
Agafia and Yerofei. -[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] JOHN MARTIN: The helicopter left
and would only return in several days time if the
weather was good.
Hiking out wouldn't
be an option. AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] SERGEI KHLEBNIKOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] JOHN MARTIN: Despite
being 70 years old, Agafia is energetic. She gardens, fishes, forages,
cuts and stacks firewood all by herself. But it does take a lot to keep
up with her daily chores.
So she put Gleb to work. SERGEI KHLEBNIKOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] YEROFEI SEDOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] YEROFEI SEDOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] SERGEI KHLEBNIKOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] SERGEI KHLEBNIKOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] YEROFEI SEDOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] IGOR EGOROV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] AGAFIA LYKOV: [SPEAKING RUSSIAN] YEROFEI SEDOV:
[SPEAKING RUSSIAN] JOHN MARTIN: Agafia has
lived her entire life in the remote taiga. Aside from a handful of times
going into the city, she's never left. She has survived, alone and off
the land, with untarnished optimism and even taking care
of another person in this harshest of environments.
Despite the sporadic intrusion
of the outside world in the form of visitors, government,
media, and falling rocket debris, Agafia's daily life
remains mostly unchanged. Her continued existence proves
that it's possible for humans to live alone in environments
as difficult as this. There were once many Old
Believers living in the Siberian wilderness. And as we flew over the vast,
empty taiga, it was not hard to imagine that somewhere there
may well be more people like Agafia.
[MUSIC PLAYING].
Friday, March 30, 2018
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Why NY Daily News Employee Disagrees With Paper's Endorsement
TODAY THE NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS ENDORSED HILLARY. CLINTON. FOR THE PRESIDENCY, I SAY THAT
YOU SHOULD READ THEIR EDITORIAL. BECAUSE IT IS BOTH POSITIVE FOR
HILLARY CLINTON, IT IS ALSO ONE.
OF THE MOST ANTI-BERNIE SANDERS
PIECES I HAVE EVER READ. A LOT. OF PEOPLE DON'T LIKE IT,
INCLUDING SHAWN KING WHO IS A. WRITER FOR THE SITE.
HE TOOK
ISSUE WITH SOME OF THE CLAIMS. THEY MADE IN THAT EDITORIAL AND
WROTE HIS OWN PIECE WHICH IS NOW. ALSO ON THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. OUR REPORTER JORDAN CAUGHT UP
WITH HIM TO SPEAK ABOUT THIS.
HERE IS SOME OF THAT. >> BERNIE WAS RIGHT WITH WHAT HE
SAID ABOUT HOW BIG BANKS COULD. BE BROKEN UP. THERE WAS A
FUNDAMENTAL MISUNDERSTANDING.
HERE ABOUT WHO HAS THE POWER TO. DO THAT. NOT THAT BERNIE WAS
WRONG, BUT BERNIE WAS ACTUALLY. RIGHT, ACCORDING TO
ROBERT WRIGHT.
THE PRESIDENT HAS THE POWER. >> THERE YOU SEE SHAWN KING
TALKING ABOUT ONE OF THE THINGS. THAT WAS BROUGHT UP IN THE
EDITORIAL, THAT BEING WHAT THEY. THOUGHT WAS IN AN ADEQUATE
PERFORMANCE ON THE PART OF.
BERNIE SANDERS WHEN IT COMES TO
SOME OF HIS ANSWERS THAT HE GAVE. IN AN INTERVIEW WITH THE NEW. YORK DAILY NEWS. IT HAS BEEN
DISSECTED AND DIGESTED BY EVERY.
MEDIA OUTLET OVER THE PAST
COUPLE OF WEEKS. I PERSONALLY. THINK THE EXPECTATIONS AFTER THE
FACT THAT THE MEDIA HAS PLACED. ON BERNIE SANDERS, IN TERMS OF
THE LEVEL OF DETAIL HE WAS.
SUPPOSED TO PROVIDE FOR. TECHNICAL POLICY, AND ONE
PORTION OF ONE ANSWER, IS. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. BUT THEY TOOK
IT VERY SERIOUSLY AND THEY SAY.
THAT IT'S ONE OF THE REASONS
THEY HAVE TO VOTE FOR HILLARY. CLINTON. WHICH I FIND IRONIC. HILLARY
CLINTON ALSO SAYS THAT SHE WOULD.
BE WILLING TO BREAK UP BIG
BANKS. DID SHE HAVE A BIG. SITDOWN INTERVIEW WITH THE DAILY. NEWS? DID SHE PROVIDE IN-DEPTH
DETAILS ABOUT HOW SHE WOULD DO.
THAT? NO. THAT NO EVIDENCE IS
ENOUGH FOR THE NEW DAILY NEWS TO. ENDORSE HER. >> I KNOW WE HAVE MORE FROM
SHAWN KING, HE IS A BAD ASS.
HE MAKES A LOT OF REALLY
GOOD STATEMENTS. >>HERE IS MORE ABOUT HIS VIEW OF
BERNIE SANDER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE. SPECIFICS WHEN IT COMES TO
BERNIE SANDERS. >>I WAS FLABBERGASTED AT THE
NOTION, AND I SEE THIS IN MY.
PIECE, PEOPLE WERE MAKING IT
OUT LIKE SHE HE HAD NO IDEA. WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT. >> RIGHT. >>HE LIVES AND BREATHES THESE
ISSUES AND HAS DONE SO FOR OVER.
30 YEARS. IT WAS A SHORT
INTERVIEW, A 45 MINUTE. INTERVIEW, WHERE I THINK HE HAD A TON OF. GROUND HE WANTED TO COVER.
I SAY
THAT WITH COMPASSIONATE EARS, LIKE, I HEARD THE INTERVIEW WAS
RUSHED. HAD HE KNOWN THAT HE WAS. GOING TO GET KILLED ON IT ON THE
BACKEND, HE WOULD'VE SPENT THE. WHOLE INTERVIEW UNPACKING, YOU.
DO THIS AND DO THAT. HE IS KNOWN FOR BEING A GUY
THAT IS INTO THE MINUTIA. >>THAT IS TRUE. >>THE FINAL PIECE WE WANT TO
SHOW YOU FROM JORDAN'S TALK.
WITH SHAWN KING HAS TO DO
WITH HIS POSITION AS THIS. ACTIVIST WHO DISAGREES WITH THE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, BUT. ACTUALLY WORKS THERE FULL-TIME. >> I AM A YOUNG TURK INSIDE OF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.
THIS IS IN. ESSENCE. I GET A LOT OF FREEDOM
TO TALK ABOUT REVOLUTIONARY. THOUGHTS AND MOVEMENTS AND.
STRUGGLES, BUT BY AND LARGE, IT
IS GOING TO BE INDEPENDENT. MEDIA SOURCES THAT DRIVE
THIS CONVERSATION. >> YES. I MEAN, THAT IS PRETTY
COURAGEOUS TO SAY ESPECIALLY.
WHEN YOU ARE IN SOME WAYS
CRITICIZING THE VERY PUBLICATION. YOU ARE WORKING FOR. THAT IS. EXACTLY WHAT A YOUNG TURK WOULD
DO.
THAT IS WHAT CENK DID WITH. MSNBC, THAT IS WHAT WE HAVE DONE
WHEN IT COMES TO CALLING OUT ANY. TYPE OF MEDIA ORGANIZATION. I
RESPECT SHAWN KING'S WORK.
I. HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING HIS WORK FOR
A WHILE. I LOVE THIS INTERVIEW, I THINK IT'S GREAT. WITH THAT.
SAID, THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
OBVIOUSLY HAS SOME INTEREST IN. MAKING BERNIE SANDERS LOOK BAD.
REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU THINK OF. BERNIE SANDERS, OR THE MEDIA
COVERING HIM, THERE IS A VERY. SIMPLE WAY TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER.
OR NOT A CANDIDATE HAS THOUGHT
THROUGH HIS POLICIES OR EVEN. WHETHER OR NOT HE IS ON THE
RIGHT SIDE OF AN ISSUE. ALL YOU. HAVE TO DO IS LOOK ON HIS
WEBSITE.
WE HAVE THESE. DISCUSSIONS ABOUT POLICIES ALL
THE TIME. WHILE HE IS GETTING. CRITICIZED, YOU CAN JUST GO TO.
HIS WEBSITE AND SEE EXACTLY HOW
HE WOULD FIND THE HIGHER. EDUCATION PROGRAM HE HAS IN
MIND, HOW HE WOULD GO AFTER BIG. BANKS. HE IS SO DETAILED ON HIS.
OWN WEBSITE THAT MAKING IT SEEM
LIKE HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE IS. TALKING ABOUT IS JUST LUDICROUS.
THAT IS RIDICULOUS. HE IS A VETERAN
POLITICIAN. HE HAS BEEN IN THE.
SENATE FOR DECADES. >>75 YEARS. >> HE HAS BEEN ON THE RIGHT SIDE
OF THESE ISSUES FOR A LONG TIME. HE IS VERY EDUCATED AND AWARE OF
WHAT THESE ISSUES ARE AND HOW WE.
NEED TO FIX THEM. THE SPIN
MACHINE CAN CONTINUE SPINNING, BUT THE MOST EDUCATED PEOPLE
THE MOST AWARE PEOPLE KNOW WHAT. THE TRUTH IS WHICH IS WHY YOUNG
PEOPLE WHO WERE NOT DETERRED. FROM BERNIE SANDERS SIMPLY
BECAUSE THE NEW YORK DAILY.
NEWS WANTED TO MAKE
HIM LOOK BAD. >> I READ HIS RESPONSE WHY HE
DOESN'T AGREE. IT'S JUST CRAP. I.
AM NOT SAYING THE NEW DAILY NEWS
IS CRAP, ALTHOUGH THEIR. HEADLINES ARE CRAP. I AM SURE
THERE ARE A LOT OF GREAT PEOPLE. THAT WORK THERE, BUT THAT.
PARTICULAR EDITORIAL SUCKS. IT
DOESN'T SUCK BECAUSE IT ENDORSES. HILLARY CLINTON OR IS AGAINST
BERNIE SANDERS, IT SUCKS BECAUSE. IT READS LIKE EITHER A PERSON
WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES.
OR TWO PEOPLE WERE
FIGHTING OVER A KEYBOARD AND. GOING BACK-AND-FORTH EVERY OTHER. PARAGRAPH. IT LAYS OUT A VIEW OF
WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA.
THE. ECONOMY IS RIGGED AGAINST THE. WORKERS, OUR INCOME IS
NOT RISING, IT DOES ALL OF THIS. BEFORE LEADING IT TO HOW HILLARY.
CLINTON IS THE PERSON THAT
RECOGNIZES THAT MORE THAN BERNIE. SANDERS. THEN IT GOES THROUGH-
MOST OF THE EDITORIAL IS NOT. ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON,
IT'S ABOUT BERNIE SANDERS.
IT. GOES THROUGH EACH OF HIS
POSITIONS AND THEN TALKS ABOUT. HOW HE IS WRONG, AND DESPITE
THEM UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEMS, EVERY ONE OF THEIR OPPOSITIONS
TO BERNIE SANDERS POLICIES IS. BASED ON SOME INSANE RIGHT-WING.
FRAMING OF WHAT REGULATION DOES,
WHAT TAXATION ACCOMPLISHES, ALL. OF THAT. THEN IT IS NOT EVEN
INTERNALLY CONSISTENT TO THAT. DEGREE BECAUSE THEY SAY BERNIE
SANDERS WOULD PUT TOO MANY TAXES.
ON AMERICANS. AND THEN THEY SAY
WE ARE VOTING FOR HILLARY. CLINTON BECAUSE SHE WILL TAX THE
WEALTHY IN AMERICA. IT'S THE.
SAME BACK-AND-FORTH ON HEALTHCARE.
EVERYTHING THAT THEY ATTACK. BERNIE SANDERS ON, THEY THEN
TAKE HILLARY CLINTON'S SIDE, REGARDLESS OF THE FACT THAT THEY. HAVEN'T RECEIVED ANY DETAILS
FROM HER ON HOW SHE WILL PAY FOR. THAT.
EVERYBODY GOES CRAZY OVER. THE FUNDING OF BERNIE'S FOUR
YEARS OF PUBLIC FREE COLLEGE. HOW IS HILLARY CLINTON GOING TO
PAY FOR HER EDUCATION? I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE SHE HAS
NEVER BEEN ASKED ABOUT IT. >> FOR ANYONE WHO GOES TO HER
WEBSITE AND READS HER POLICY.
IDEAS, YOU CAN SEE THAT THE
REASON WHY SHE IS NOT GOING TO. HAVE A HARD TIME PAYING FOR IT
IS BECAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO. CHANGE IN HOW THE SYSTEM IS SET. UP RIGHT NOW.
HER DEBT
FORGIVENESS PLAN ACTUALLY ENDS. UP BEING EARNED INCOME AFTER
THOSE 20 YEARS THAT SHE. SPECIFIES. SO YOU GET TAXED BY
THE IRS.
IF YOU HAVE $150,000 OF. STUDENT LOAN DEBT, AND ALL OF A. SUDDEN YOU GET FORGIVEN AND YOU
GET A 1099 FOR THAT AMOUNT, YOU. ARE FUCKED.
THAT IS NOT A GOOD
SYSTEM OF DEALING WITH STUDENT. LOAN DEBT IN THIS COUNTRY.
INSTEAD OF GOING THE FEDERAL. GOVERNMENT ROUTE IN THE FORM OF
A FEDERAL STUDENT LOAN, YOU WILL. OWE THE IRS IN THE FORM OF A TAX.
DEBT. AGAIN, IT IS NOT ABOUT WHETHER
OR NOT WE CAN PAY FOR PROGRAMS. THE PROGRAMS ARE FULL OF SHIT. WORRY ABOUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO
PAY FOR IT BECAUSE IT IS.
INCREMENTAL CHANGE OR
NO CHANGE AT ALL. >> A BIG PORTION OF THAT IS SHE
IS GOING TO EVALUATE YOUR FAMILY. AND SEE HOW MUCH YOUR FAMILY CAN. CONTRIBUTE.
THEY TOLD MY FAMILY
HOW MUCH THEY CAN CONTRIBUTE. IN REALITY WHAT MY FAMILY. COULD CONTRIBUTE WAS ZERO WHICH
IS WHY I HAVE SO MUCH STUDENT. LOAN DEBT.
AS I HAVE RIGHT NOW. THAT IS NOT
A SOLUTION. IT'S JUST PLUGGING. IN RANDOM VARIABLES ABOUT HOW MUCH
PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO.
CONTRIBUTE. THAT IS NOT A
SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM WE HAVE..
DAILY NEWS ENDORSED HILLARY. CLINTON. FOR THE PRESIDENCY, I SAY THAT
YOU SHOULD READ THEIR EDITORIAL. BECAUSE IT IS BOTH POSITIVE FOR
HILLARY CLINTON, IT IS ALSO ONE.
OF THE MOST ANTI-BERNIE SANDERS
PIECES I HAVE EVER READ. A LOT. OF PEOPLE DON'T LIKE IT,
INCLUDING SHAWN KING WHO IS A. WRITER FOR THE SITE.
HE TOOK
ISSUE WITH SOME OF THE CLAIMS. THEY MADE IN THAT EDITORIAL AND
WROTE HIS OWN PIECE WHICH IS NOW. ALSO ON THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. OUR REPORTER JORDAN CAUGHT UP
WITH HIM TO SPEAK ABOUT THIS.
HERE IS SOME OF THAT. >> BERNIE WAS RIGHT WITH WHAT HE
SAID ABOUT HOW BIG BANKS COULD. BE BROKEN UP. THERE WAS A
FUNDAMENTAL MISUNDERSTANDING.
HERE ABOUT WHO HAS THE POWER TO. DO THAT. NOT THAT BERNIE WAS
WRONG, BUT BERNIE WAS ACTUALLY. RIGHT, ACCORDING TO
ROBERT WRIGHT.
THE PRESIDENT HAS THE POWER. >> THERE YOU SEE SHAWN KING
TALKING ABOUT ONE OF THE THINGS. THAT WAS BROUGHT UP IN THE
EDITORIAL, THAT BEING WHAT THEY. THOUGHT WAS IN AN ADEQUATE
PERFORMANCE ON THE PART OF.
BERNIE SANDERS WHEN IT COMES TO
SOME OF HIS ANSWERS THAT HE GAVE. IN AN INTERVIEW WITH THE NEW. YORK DAILY NEWS. IT HAS BEEN
DISSECTED AND DIGESTED BY EVERY.
MEDIA OUTLET OVER THE PAST
COUPLE OF WEEKS. I PERSONALLY. THINK THE EXPECTATIONS AFTER THE
FACT THAT THE MEDIA HAS PLACED. ON BERNIE SANDERS, IN TERMS OF
THE LEVEL OF DETAIL HE WAS.
SUPPOSED TO PROVIDE FOR. TECHNICAL POLICY, AND ONE
PORTION OF ONE ANSWER, IS. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. BUT THEY TOOK
IT VERY SERIOUSLY AND THEY SAY.
THAT IT'S ONE OF THE REASONS
THEY HAVE TO VOTE FOR HILLARY. CLINTON. WHICH I FIND IRONIC. HILLARY
CLINTON ALSO SAYS THAT SHE WOULD.
BE WILLING TO BREAK UP BIG
BANKS. DID SHE HAVE A BIG. SITDOWN INTERVIEW WITH THE DAILY. NEWS? DID SHE PROVIDE IN-DEPTH
DETAILS ABOUT HOW SHE WOULD DO.
THAT? NO. THAT NO EVIDENCE IS
ENOUGH FOR THE NEW DAILY NEWS TO. ENDORSE HER. >> I KNOW WE HAVE MORE FROM
SHAWN KING, HE IS A BAD ASS.
HE MAKES A LOT OF REALLY
GOOD STATEMENTS. >>HERE IS MORE ABOUT HIS VIEW OF
BERNIE SANDER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE. SPECIFICS WHEN IT COMES TO
BERNIE SANDERS. >>I WAS FLABBERGASTED AT THE
NOTION, AND I SEE THIS IN MY.
PIECE, PEOPLE WERE MAKING IT
OUT LIKE SHE HE HAD NO IDEA. WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT. >> RIGHT. >>HE LIVES AND BREATHES THESE
ISSUES AND HAS DONE SO FOR OVER.
30 YEARS. IT WAS A SHORT
INTERVIEW, A 45 MINUTE. INTERVIEW, WHERE I THINK HE HAD A TON OF. GROUND HE WANTED TO COVER.
I SAY
THAT WITH COMPASSIONATE EARS, LIKE, I HEARD THE INTERVIEW WAS
RUSHED. HAD HE KNOWN THAT HE WAS. GOING TO GET KILLED ON IT ON THE
BACKEND, HE WOULD'VE SPENT THE. WHOLE INTERVIEW UNPACKING, YOU.
DO THIS AND DO THAT. HE IS KNOWN FOR BEING A GUY
THAT IS INTO THE MINUTIA. >>THAT IS TRUE. >>THE FINAL PIECE WE WANT TO
SHOW YOU FROM JORDAN'S TALK.
WITH SHAWN KING HAS TO DO
WITH HIS POSITION AS THIS. ACTIVIST WHO DISAGREES WITH THE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, BUT. ACTUALLY WORKS THERE FULL-TIME. >> I AM A YOUNG TURK INSIDE OF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.
THIS IS IN. ESSENCE. I GET A LOT OF FREEDOM
TO TALK ABOUT REVOLUTIONARY. THOUGHTS AND MOVEMENTS AND.
STRUGGLES, BUT BY AND LARGE, IT
IS GOING TO BE INDEPENDENT. MEDIA SOURCES THAT DRIVE
THIS CONVERSATION. >> YES. I MEAN, THAT IS PRETTY
COURAGEOUS TO SAY ESPECIALLY.
WHEN YOU ARE IN SOME WAYS
CRITICIZING THE VERY PUBLICATION. YOU ARE WORKING FOR. THAT IS. EXACTLY WHAT A YOUNG TURK WOULD
DO.
THAT IS WHAT CENK DID WITH. MSNBC, THAT IS WHAT WE HAVE DONE
WHEN IT COMES TO CALLING OUT ANY. TYPE OF MEDIA ORGANIZATION. I
RESPECT SHAWN KING'S WORK.
I. HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING HIS WORK FOR
A WHILE. I LOVE THIS INTERVIEW, I THINK IT'S GREAT. WITH THAT.
SAID, THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
OBVIOUSLY HAS SOME INTEREST IN. MAKING BERNIE SANDERS LOOK BAD.
REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU THINK OF. BERNIE SANDERS, OR THE MEDIA
COVERING HIM, THERE IS A VERY. SIMPLE WAY TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER.
OR NOT A CANDIDATE HAS THOUGHT
THROUGH HIS POLICIES OR EVEN. WHETHER OR NOT HE IS ON THE
RIGHT SIDE OF AN ISSUE. ALL YOU. HAVE TO DO IS LOOK ON HIS
WEBSITE.
WE HAVE THESE. DISCUSSIONS ABOUT POLICIES ALL
THE TIME. WHILE HE IS GETTING. CRITICIZED, YOU CAN JUST GO TO.
HIS WEBSITE AND SEE EXACTLY HOW
HE WOULD FIND THE HIGHER. EDUCATION PROGRAM HE HAS IN
MIND, HOW HE WOULD GO AFTER BIG. BANKS. HE IS SO DETAILED ON HIS.
OWN WEBSITE THAT MAKING IT SEEM
LIKE HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE IS. TALKING ABOUT IS JUST LUDICROUS.
THAT IS RIDICULOUS. HE IS A VETERAN
POLITICIAN. HE HAS BEEN IN THE.
SENATE FOR DECADES. >>75 YEARS. >> HE HAS BEEN ON THE RIGHT SIDE
OF THESE ISSUES FOR A LONG TIME. HE IS VERY EDUCATED AND AWARE OF
WHAT THESE ISSUES ARE AND HOW WE.
NEED TO FIX THEM. THE SPIN
MACHINE CAN CONTINUE SPINNING, BUT THE MOST EDUCATED PEOPLE
THE MOST AWARE PEOPLE KNOW WHAT. THE TRUTH IS WHICH IS WHY YOUNG
PEOPLE WHO WERE NOT DETERRED. FROM BERNIE SANDERS SIMPLY
BECAUSE THE NEW YORK DAILY.
NEWS WANTED TO MAKE
HIM LOOK BAD. >> I READ HIS RESPONSE WHY HE
DOESN'T AGREE. IT'S JUST CRAP. I.
AM NOT SAYING THE NEW DAILY NEWS
IS CRAP, ALTHOUGH THEIR. HEADLINES ARE CRAP. I AM SURE
THERE ARE A LOT OF GREAT PEOPLE. THAT WORK THERE, BUT THAT.
PARTICULAR EDITORIAL SUCKS. IT
DOESN'T SUCK BECAUSE IT ENDORSES. HILLARY CLINTON OR IS AGAINST
BERNIE SANDERS, IT SUCKS BECAUSE. IT READS LIKE EITHER A PERSON
WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES.
OR TWO PEOPLE WERE
FIGHTING OVER A KEYBOARD AND. GOING BACK-AND-FORTH EVERY OTHER. PARAGRAPH. IT LAYS OUT A VIEW OF
WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA.
THE. ECONOMY IS RIGGED AGAINST THE. WORKERS, OUR INCOME IS
NOT RISING, IT DOES ALL OF THIS. BEFORE LEADING IT TO HOW HILLARY.
CLINTON IS THE PERSON THAT
RECOGNIZES THAT MORE THAN BERNIE. SANDERS. THEN IT GOES THROUGH-
MOST OF THE EDITORIAL IS NOT. ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON,
IT'S ABOUT BERNIE SANDERS.
IT. GOES THROUGH EACH OF HIS
POSITIONS AND THEN TALKS ABOUT. HOW HE IS WRONG, AND DESPITE
THEM UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEMS, EVERY ONE OF THEIR OPPOSITIONS
TO BERNIE SANDERS POLICIES IS. BASED ON SOME INSANE RIGHT-WING.
FRAMING OF WHAT REGULATION DOES,
WHAT TAXATION ACCOMPLISHES, ALL. OF THAT. THEN IT IS NOT EVEN
INTERNALLY CONSISTENT TO THAT. DEGREE BECAUSE THEY SAY BERNIE
SANDERS WOULD PUT TOO MANY TAXES.
ON AMERICANS. AND THEN THEY SAY
WE ARE VOTING FOR HILLARY. CLINTON BECAUSE SHE WILL TAX THE
WEALTHY IN AMERICA. IT'S THE.
SAME BACK-AND-FORTH ON HEALTHCARE.
EVERYTHING THAT THEY ATTACK. BERNIE SANDERS ON, THEY THEN
TAKE HILLARY CLINTON'S SIDE, REGARDLESS OF THE FACT THAT THEY. HAVEN'T RECEIVED ANY DETAILS
FROM HER ON HOW SHE WILL PAY FOR. THAT.
EVERYBODY GOES CRAZY OVER. THE FUNDING OF BERNIE'S FOUR
YEARS OF PUBLIC FREE COLLEGE. HOW IS HILLARY CLINTON GOING TO
PAY FOR HER EDUCATION? I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE SHE HAS
NEVER BEEN ASKED ABOUT IT. >> FOR ANYONE WHO GOES TO HER
WEBSITE AND READS HER POLICY.
IDEAS, YOU CAN SEE THAT THE
REASON WHY SHE IS NOT GOING TO. HAVE A HARD TIME PAYING FOR IT
IS BECAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO. CHANGE IN HOW THE SYSTEM IS SET. UP RIGHT NOW.
HER DEBT
FORGIVENESS PLAN ACTUALLY ENDS. UP BEING EARNED INCOME AFTER
THOSE 20 YEARS THAT SHE. SPECIFIES. SO YOU GET TAXED BY
THE IRS.
IF YOU HAVE $150,000 OF. STUDENT LOAN DEBT, AND ALL OF A. SUDDEN YOU GET FORGIVEN AND YOU
GET A 1099 FOR THAT AMOUNT, YOU. ARE FUCKED.
THAT IS NOT A GOOD
SYSTEM OF DEALING WITH STUDENT. LOAN DEBT IN THIS COUNTRY.
INSTEAD OF GOING THE FEDERAL. GOVERNMENT ROUTE IN THE FORM OF
A FEDERAL STUDENT LOAN, YOU WILL. OWE THE IRS IN THE FORM OF A TAX.
DEBT. AGAIN, IT IS NOT ABOUT WHETHER
OR NOT WE CAN PAY FOR PROGRAMS. THE PROGRAMS ARE FULL OF SHIT. WORRY ABOUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO
PAY FOR IT BECAUSE IT IS.
INCREMENTAL CHANGE OR
NO CHANGE AT ALL. >> A BIG PORTION OF THAT IS SHE
IS GOING TO EVALUATE YOUR FAMILY. AND SEE HOW MUCH YOUR FAMILY CAN. CONTRIBUTE.
THEY TOLD MY FAMILY
HOW MUCH THEY CAN CONTRIBUTE. IN REALITY WHAT MY FAMILY. COULD CONTRIBUTE WAS ZERO WHICH
IS WHY I HAVE SO MUCH STUDENT. LOAN DEBT.
AS I HAVE RIGHT NOW. THAT IS NOT
A SOLUTION. IT'S JUST PLUGGING. IN RANDOM VARIABLES ABOUT HOW MUCH
PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO.
CONTRIBUTE. THAT IS NOT A
SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM WE HAVE..
Who Was the YouTube ShooterNYT News
The YouTube shooter,
Nasim Aghdam, was widely known on
Iranian social media as Nasim Sabz, which
means Green Nasim, because of her advocacy for
animal rights, healthy living and veganism. Her specific style of videos
made her relatively famous among Irans growing
YouTube and Instagram influencers. For instance, one showing
a rabbit where she explains the differences
between vegetarianism and being vegan. In another video,
she explains the benefits of eating a papaya.
One of her most
well-known videos here is one where shes
wearing a revealing purple dress. Dont believe what
you see, is a message appearing in the video screen. Im being discriminated,
and filtered on YouTube, and Im not the only one. And if you go and
check my videos, you see that my
new videos hardly get views.
She also criticizes YouTube,
and makes a physical protest, a year ago, by going on the
streets, posting what she claims to be a picture of herself
holding up a sign saying, YouTube dictatorship. And then there is a video that
gives more insight, if you will, into the life of Ms. Aghdam. She had fled her native
Iran decades ago.
In that video, she explains
that even though she was a member of
the Baha'i faith, which is a persecuted
faith in Iran, she doesnt really like
life in the United States. And she literally says:
In Iran they kill you by axe. But in the United States
they kill you with cotton, an Iranian expression
for saying that she is dying a slow death
in the United States. She was also repeatedly being
teased online for her comments.
Many Iranian users
in social media would ridicule her, would
tell her that shes crazy. And in one video she
actually explains that she's doing very well, and that it's actually the people who are making those comments
who are mentally ill. She also criticizes Instagram,
by saying that her followers are all real. She actually has several
Instagram accounts.
She also had a Telegram channel. Before she attacked
the YouTube office, and subsequently
killed herself, one of her last posts there
is a childhood photo of herself posing between flowers,
with one flower stuck in her hair..
Nasim Aghdam, was widely known on
Iranian social media as Nasim Sabz, which
means Green Nasim, because of her advocacy for
animal rights, healthy living and veganism. Her specific style of videos
made her relatively famous among Irans growing
YouTube and Instagram influencers. For instance, one showing
a rabbit where she explains the differences
between vegetarianism and being vegan. In another video,
she explains the benefits of eating a papaya.
One of her most
well-known videos here is one where shes
wearing a revealing purple dress. Dont believe what
you see, is a message appearing in the video screen. Im being discriminated,
and filtered on YouTube, and Im not the only one. And if you go and
check my videos, you see that my
new videos hardly get views.
She also criticizes YouTube,
and makes a physical protest, a year ago, by going on the
streets, posting what she claims to be a picture of herself
holding up a sign saying, YouTube dictatorship. And then there is a video that
gives more insight, if you will, into the life of Ms. Aghdam. She had fled her native
Iran decades ago.
In that video, she explains
that even though she was a member of
the Baha'i faith, which is a persecuted
faith in Iran, she doesnt really like
life in the United States. And she literally says:
In Iran they kill you by axe. But in the United States
they kill you with cotton, an Iranian expression
for saying that she is dying a slow death
in the United States. She was also repeatedly being
teased online for her comments.
Many Iranian users
in social media would ridicule her, would
tell her that shes crazy. And in one video she
actually explains that she's doing very well, and that it's actually the people who are making those comments
who are mentally ill. She also criticizes Instagram,
by saying that her followers are all real. She actually has several
Instagram accounts.
She also had a Telegram channel. Before she attacked
the YouTube office, and subsequently
killed herself, one of her last posts there
is a childhood photo of herself posing between flowers,
with one flower stuck in her hair..
Watch Highlights From Zuckerberg's Testimony, Day 2NYT News
You and your co-founders started
a company in your dorm room thats grown to be one of
the biggest and most successful businesses in the entire world. While Facebook has
certainly grown, I worry it may not have matured. I think its time to
ask whether Facebook may have moved too fast
and broken too many things. Who do you think owns an
individuals presence online? Who owns their virtual you? Is it you or is it
them? Congresswoman, I believe that everyone
owns their own content online.
And thats the first line
of our terms of service, if you read it, says that. After this new algorithm was implemented, that there
was a tremendous bias against conservative
news and content and a favorable bias
towards liberal content. Was there a directive
to put a bias in and first are you
aware of this bias that many people have looked
at and analyzed and seen? Congressman, this is a
really important question. There is absolutely no
directive in any of the changes that we make to have
a bias in anything that we do.
Well, you have a long
history of growth and success. But you also have a
long list of apologies. In 2003, it started at Harvard. I apologize for any harm
done as a result of my neglect.
2006: We really
messed this one up. 2007: We simply did a bad job. I apologize for it. This is proof to me that
self-regulation simply does not work.
Are you aware of other
third-party information mishandlings that have not been disclosed? Congresswoman, no, although we are currently going through
the process of investigating every single app So youre not sure? That had access
to a large amount of data. All right, but I only have four minutes. Was your data included in the data sold to the
malicious third parties? Your personal data? Yes. If you don't,
youre not listening to us on the phone, who is, and do you
have specific contracts with these companies
that will provide data that is being
acquired verbally through our phones
or now through things like Alexa or other products? Congressman, were not collecting
any information verbally on the microphone, and we dont
have contracts with anyone else who is.
Facebook has
detailed profiles on people who have never
signed up for Facebook. Yes or no? Congressman, in general,
we collect data from people have not signed up for
Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of
scraping that you were just referring to. As C.E.O., You didnt know
some key facts. You didnt know about major court
cases regarding your privacy policies against your company.
You didnt know that the F.T.C.
Doesnt have fining authority and that Facebook could not
that have received fines for the 2011 consent order. You didnt know what
a shadow profile was..
a company in your dorm room thats grown to be one of
the biggest and most successful businesses in the entire world. While Facebook has
certainly grown, I worry it may not have matured. I think its time to
ask whether Facebook may have moved too fast
and broken too many things. Who do you think owns an
individuals presence online? Who owns their virtual you? Is it you or is it
them? Congresswoman, I believe that everyone
owns their own content online.
And thats the first line
of our terms of service, if you read it, says that. After this new algorithm was implemented, that there
was a tremendous bias against conservative
news and content and a favorable bias
towards liberal content. Was there a directive
to put a bias in and first are you
aware of this bias that many people have looked
at and analyzed and seen? Congressman, this is a
really important question. There is absolutely no
directive in any of the changes that we make to have
a bias in anything that we do.
Well, you have a long
history of growth and success. But you also have a
long list of apologies. In 2003, it started at Harvard. I apologize for any harm
done as a result of my neglect.
2006: We really
messed this one up. 2007: We simply did a bad job. I apologize for it. This is proof to me that
self-regulation simply does not work.
Are you aware of other
third-party information mishandlings that have not been disclosed? Congresswoman, no, although we are currently going through
the process of investigating every single app So youre not sure? That had access
to a large amount of data. All right, but I only have four minutes. Was your data included in the data sold to the
malicious third parties? Your personal data? Yes. If you don't,
youre not listening to us on the phone, who is, and do you
have specific contracts with these companies
that will provide data that is being
acquired verbally through our phones
or now through things like Alexa or other products? Congressman, were not collecting
any information verbally on the microphone, and we dont
have contracts with anyone else who is.
Facebook has
detailed profiles on people who have never
signed up for Facebook. Yes or no? Congressman, in general,
we collect data from people have not signed up for
Facebook for security purposes to prevent the kind of
scraping that you were just referring to. As C.E.O., You didnt know
some key facts. You didnt know about major court
cases regarding your privacy policies against your company.
You didnt know that the F.T.C.
Doesnt have fining authority and that Facebook could not
that have received fines for the 2011 consent order. You didnt know what
a shadow profile was..
Russell Peters - Adventures in Saudi Arabia - This Is Not Happening - Uncensored
- I made fun of them for--women
weren't allowed to drive to drive in Saudi Arabia,
and I was going in on it. I'm like, "Well, maybe you
should let the women drive, 'cause you guys drive like
shit," you know, "And that"--so I was like, "Oh,
my God. "This is payback.
I'm gonna lose my head, and they're gonna blame fucking
ISIS or some shit," right? [Dark electronic music] - Oh! Ahh! Ugh! Oh! Ahh! Augh! [Cheers and applause] Super stoked to get this guy. Everybody fucking loves him.
One of the biggest comics
in the world, to be honest. Please give it up for
Mr. Russell Peters, everybody. [Cheers and applause] - I've been doing stand-up
for 27 years, so when you're doing it
this long and you start to progress,
things in your life change.
Like, my situation changed from
being this broke brown kid in Canada to a doing-okay kid
in L.A. Now, right? Or old-ass man,
but whatever. And I get to go around
the world. That's the beauty of
what I do for a living is I get to go around the world,
and I go to places that the American media
tells you not to go to because they want you
to be scared and keep your moustache
like that.
[Laughter] So recently I was in
the Middle East. I can't say which country
because I signed an NDA, but... [Laughter] But I was there. I did a show in
this place in the Middle East.
Well, I can say this. I was in Saudi Arabia, and--
and it was very different. I'd never been to Saudi Arabia
before, because I was always scared to
go to Saudi Arabia. Everybody was like, "Saudi
Arabia." I'm like, "Fuck you." And that's based on watching the
news in America, and I'm like, "Well, you better not go
to Saudi Arabia "or they'll tie you
to two different camels and they'll make them run away,"
you know what I mean? That's all you ever hear about
Saudi Arabia is that torture and beheadings
and they'll kill you and watch what you say.
That's all true. [Laughter] But--but you don't see it. In the Middle East,
it's very quiet. It's like, "No, don't tell
anyone what we do.
Just..." So anyway, I do the show there,
great--had a great time. There's 10,000 princes is Saudi
Arabia, so there's a lot of fucking
royalty just running around Saudi Arabia. So I do a show. I'm tripped out because
when I get onstage, the audience is segregated.
Not--not like this. Not like hipsters on one side
and, you know, like-- but it's, like, it's women on
one side and men on the other. And--because they're not allowed
to be together. And I was like, "Why can't
the women be together with the men?" And this is the honest
answer I got.
I thought it was
fucking hilarious. I go, "Hey, why can't the women
and the men be together?" "'Cause they'll go crazy,
want to fuck everybody." I'm like--
[laughs] You're--it's not the men that
are gonna go crazy, just so you're aware of this. These women are lunatics
apparently, and they're just
gonna fuck everybody, right? So I go, "All right.
Good plan." Right? And so we do the show, and then one of the other
princes who was a little more
higher up, I guess, in the prince hierarchy,
hears about the show and tells the other prince--
I guess, who's his cousin--and he goes, "I want a private show with
Russell." And then he comes to me at
the--they have this little after-party for me, and you
would think, like-- you're like,
"All right." You know, 'cause it's
Saudi Arabia, you're gonna be like,
"There's mad bitches. They got the doors closed." Fucking two chicks
in the whole room, and they're, like, sisters of
somebody in there, right? You're like, "Ah, come on, guy." And then there's guys--
guys are dancing with guys.
It's not--it's weird. It's not, like--
but it's not like here. You know, 'cause over--here in
America, we've lost the idea of what dancing is, you know? White people have won
the dancing war. I mean, let's be honest.
Like, when you go to, like,
an EDM thing, everybody's just jumping up
and down, and nobody's dancing anymore. That means white people won. [Laughter] And it's either that
or you're just fucking ass fucking everybody all night,
know what I mean? [Laughter] So when I say the guys are
dancing on each other, they're not like,
"Hey, bro, do it." You know, like,
they're just-- I'm not exaggerating. There was a dude doing
a dance-- [laughs] It looked like a camel.
That's what--that's what his
dance--his dance was this. [Laughter] He was fucking--I was like,
"Is that how you pick up chicks over here?" "One hump or two?"
You know? And then--
[laughter] So anyway the other prince calls
this prince and he's like, "Private show tomorrow,"
and then my brother, who's my manager, is like,
"All right, well, "let me talk to him, and then we can sort the details
out." And I go--I go, "I'm scared
about this, 'cause we're already here, and, you know, we already
don't know enough about these people, but..." And then he
comes over, and he talks to him, and he's like, "Oh, shit.
That's a lot of money." [Laughter] So I go, "Uh, yeah, we'll do
that show, right?" And then my brother goes, "Okay,
well, we're gonna need lights. "We're gonna need the cameraman.
We're gonna need the DJs. We're gonna need
the opening act." And he's like, "No.
Just Russell." And I'm like, "Oh, fuck.
All right." And he goes,
"Has to be private event." And I go, "All right.
Well, can you give me
any information?" "No information." I'm like,
"Well, how many people?" He goes, "It's a very small
party for the prince." And I'm like, "Okay." And I'm thinking small,
all right? Private thing. Maybe 50 to 100 people, right? I've done worse. 27 Years of stand-up,
I've done shows where there's two people
in the audience. I literally put the mic down
and just sat with them.
I was like,
"All right, listen. "It's--it's fucking stupid
for me to try and-- uh, what do you do?" You know, so... So... So I go, "How many people?" And they go, "Maybe 10 to 12." I'm like, "Oh, come on, guy,"
right? "This is ridiculous." And then my brother goes,
"Doo-doo-doo," and I go, "That's a lot of money.
Yeah, you're right.
Let's--let's do it." So I go to the palace the next
day, right? And I get there, and they put us
in, like, a waiting room, and then this guy comes in,
he goes, "Mr. Peters, please." And my brother and I--'cause,
you know, obviously he's got the same last name--we both get
up, and he goes, "No, no. You stay.
Just him." And--and I'm thinking, "Great,
I'm gonna get beheaded or some shit," right? 'Cause I talked mad shit the
night before, right? I mad fun of them for--women
weren't allowed to drive in Saudi--it's illegal for women
to drive in Saudi Arabia, and I was going in on it. I'm like, "Well, maybe you
should let the women drive, 'cause you guys drive like
shit," you know, "And that"--so I was like, "Oh,
my God.
"This is payback.
I'm gonna lose my head, and they're gonna blame fucking
ISIS or some shit," right? So--so I go into this room,
and it's a little-ass room with a 110-inch TV,
and I walk in, and I figure 'cause the TV--
say this is the TV behind me-- I walk in the room and I'm like,
"All right, I guess "I'll just stand in front of
this TV and do my little jokes for these 11 people
that are here." And I walk in, and then the
prince is sitting in the middle of the room, and he gets up, and
he goes, "Hey, thanks for coming." He doesn't sound like how you're
thinking. He's not like, "Please, please,
entertain my friends," you know. He's like, "Hey, thanks for
coming," and I'm like, "What the fuck is happening
right now?" [Laughter] Like, Ashton Kutcher's gonna
come out. Ha-ha!
You've been punked! You know.
And then-- so he goes--he goes, "Sit down.
Russell, please sit down." So I sit down, and I just start
making fun of everybody in the room.
Literally, like, I'm like, "You,
bam, you, bam," and then--and then the prince
is, like, feeding my lines. "That guy owns camels." And I'm like--and I'm like,
"You, fucking camel guy," and... "How's it going?"
And then-- I don't know if that's the
greeting or the dance, right? So... You know, the prince,
I'm making fun of him.
I start making fun
of the prince. I got a little fucking
carried away. And I knew when I was getting
carried away 'cause everybody went, "Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm." [Laughter] "Mm-mm. Everybody else,
no problem, but him? Mm-mm." And there's--then the prince
says to me--there's a guy sitting beside me, and he goes,
"Hey, Russell, that guy has one of the only brown diamonds
in the world." And I go, "What the fuck
is a brown diamond?" He goes, "Show him, show him." The guy takes off his ring
and he's got this little tiny-ass brown diamond
on a ring, right? And I go, "Oh, cool," and I go
to put it on my hand, and it wouldn't go past
my pinkie nail.
And I'm like, how
small are your hands? [Laughter] And I look at the prince
and I go, "This guy's got
child-like hands." And the prince starts laughing,
and then as a joke, I grab the guy's wrist, right? And I have friends that are
magicians, and they taught me how to take a watch off
somebody's wrist, so I grab his wrist, and I unlock his watch,
and I pull it off, and I go, "How small are your wrists?" And then I go, "Oh, wow.
Nice watch." I go, "What is that, a Richard
Mille?" He goes, "No, it's Hublot." And I go, "Oh, nice. I go, "Here." He goes, "Oh, keep it." And I'm like, "Okay, buddy," so
I put--I put the watch on, and I'm doing--I start talking
again, and about ten minutes later, I go,
"Hey, man, here's your watch." He goes, "No, no.
I give to you." And I'm like,
"What the fuck?" [Laughter] So I start getting comfortable,
right? 'Cause now I feel like
I've done my job. Everybody's laughed in this
room, and then the prince goes, "Come on, let's eat." And I go, "All right,
let's eat." So we go to this other room to
eat, and I'm sitting there, and I go, "Hey, man, where's the
guy that gave me the watch?" He goes, "Oh, he left." And I go, "But I've got his
watch." And he goes, "He gave it to
you." And I go, "All right." And he goes, "That's how it is
in Saudi Arabia. "If you like something we have,
and you say, 'I like that,' We have to give it to you." And I go, "Wow." [Laughter] "This it the best palace I've
ever been in." Didn't work.
Doesn't work on
real estate apparently. I should've complimented
the Rolls-Royce they sent to pick me up in though. - Whoo!
- God damn it, I fucked that one up, right? So--so I start, you know,
the prince is really cool, so I start talking to him. I'm like, "Yo, did you know
Osama bin Laden?" 'Cause he was from Saudi Arabia.
And I go, "Hey, did you know
Osama bin Laden?" He goes, "Well, I didn't know
him, but I know is family." I go, "Really?"
He goes, "Yeah." I mean, he was much older
than I am. I go, "Oh, yeah, I guess
that makes sense." He goes, "Yeah, but his family
is a very prominent family here in Saudi Arabia." They're--they built
Saudi Arabia. They were the construction
company that built it. He goes, "He went crazy.
"He went that way
and the family was this way, "and he was mad at Saudi Arabia
and he was mad at his family, so he went a little
fucking cuckoo." And then I was like,
"That's amazing," 'cause he's very--if you think
about the breakdown of Osama bin Laden,
he's very similar to Donald Trump. [Laughter] He's--he's the spoiled brat billionaire son of a developer who's fucking mad at everybody,
you know what I mean? - Oh, my God. [Laughter] [cheers and applause] So I go--I go--he goes, "Yeah, his family's very nice,
actually." And I go, "Really?" He goes, "Do you want to meet
his brother?" And I'm like, "Fuck yeah,
I do!" I was like, "I so want to meet
his brother!" So... So goes, "Okay," and he
says to some guy...
[Speaking gibberish] Random, like, "Oh, I don't know
what he's saying, but okay, sure," right? And then--so the next day I get
this call at my hotel and they send the car--
the prince sends a car for me, and I go, "What's this for?" He goes, "Oh, you said you
wanted to go see Saudi Arabia, so he sent a car so you can go
around and see everything." And he walks out with me,
and he's on his phone, and he's like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh." And he goes, "Hey, Russell, do you still want to meet
Osama's brother?" [Laughter] And I'm like, "Fuck yeah, I do!" And he goes, "Okay.
One second. Here."
And I go, "What's this?" And I won't say what--the guy's
first name, 'cause, you know, that'll give it away, but--but
it says blank "bin Laden" on the phone, right? And I'm like--I go,
"What's this?" He goes,
"It's Osama's brother." And I go, "Holy shit." So I go, "Uh, hello?" And he goes--
this is exactly-- here's what you're expecting,
right? Osama bin Laden's brother to get
on the phone, be like... [In deep voice] "Russell, what
are you doing, infidel?" Right?
So-- [laughter] I go, "Hello?" And this is what I hear
on the other end. "Hey, Russell."
I go...
[Laughter] "What the fuck is going on
here?" [Laughter] He goes, "Yeah, it's--yeah, I'm
blah, blah, blah bin Laden." I go, "Yeah, and I see that
on the phone." He goes,
"First of all, let me tell you, a big fan of your stuff,"
and I'm like, "What the-- what the good fuck is going
on over here?" Right? And he's like, "How long are you
in town for?" I go, "I'm leaving today." He goes,
"Yeah, I'm flying back tonight. "Oh, man, I'm gonna miss you. "Hey, stay in touch with me. Take my number." And I'm like, "What?" "Yeah, take my number." And I go, "All right." And I go, "Just so you know,
your name's going in as Dave Smith on my phone." [Laughter and applause] Thank you, guys.
You were great.
[Cheers and applause] .
weren't allowed to drive to drive in Saudi Arabia,
and I was going in on it. I'm like, "Well, maybe you
should let the women drive, 'cause you guys drive like
shit," you know, "And that"--so I was like, "Oh,
my God. "This is payback.
I'm gonna lose my head, and they're gonna blame fucking
ISIS or some shit," right? [Dark electronic music] - Oh! Ahh! Ugh! Oh! Ahh! Augh! [Cheers and applause] Super stoked to get this guy. Everybody fucking loves him.
One of the biggest comics
in the world, to be honest. Please give it up for
Mr. Russell Peters, everybody. [Cheers and applause] - I've been doing stand-up
for 27 years, so when you're doing it
this long and you start to progress,
things in your life change.
Like, my situation changed from
being this broke brown kid in Canada to a doing-okay kid
in L.A. Now, right? Or old-ass man,
but whatever. And I get to go around
the world. That's the beauty of
what I do for a living is I get to go around the world,
and I go to places that the American media
tells you not to go to because they want you
to be scared and keep your moustache
like that.
[Laughter] So recently I was in
the Middle East. I can't say which country
because I signed an NDA, but... [Laughter] But I was there. I did a show in
this place in the Middle East.
Well, I can say this. I was in Saudi Arabia, and--
and it was very different. I'd never been to Saudi Arabia
before, because I was always scared to
go to Saudi Arabia. Everybody was like, "Saudi
Arabia." I'm like, "Fuck you." And that's based on watching the
news in America, and I'm like, "Well, you better not go
to Saudi Arabia "or they'll tie you
to two different camels and they'll make them run away,"
you know what I mean? That's all you ever hear about
Saudi Arabia is that torture and beheadings
and they'll kill you and watch what you say.
That's all true. [Laughter] But--but you don't see it. In the Middle East,
it's very quiet. It's like, "No, don't tell
anyone what we do.
Just..." So anyway, I do the show there,
great--had a great time. There's 10,000 princes is Saudi
Arabia, so there's a lot of fucking
royalty just running around Saudi Arabia. So I do a show. I'm tripped out because
when I get onstage, the audience is segregated.
Not--not like this. Not like hipsters on one side
and, you know, like-- but it's, like, it's women on
one side and men on the other. And--because they're not allowed
to be together. And I was like, "Why can't
the women be together with the men?" And this is the honest
answer I got.
I thought it was
fucking hilarious. I go, "Hey, why can't the women
and the men be together?" "'Cause they'll go crazy,
want to fuck everybody." I'm like--
[laughs] You're--it's not the men that
are gonna go crazy, just so you're aware of this. These women are lunatics
apparently, and they're just
gonna fuck everybody, right? So I go, "All right.
Good plan." Right? And so we do the show, and then one of the other
princes who was a little more
higher up, I guess, in the prince hierarchy,
hears about the show and tells the other prince--
I guess, who's his cousin--and he goes, "I want a private show with
Russell." And then he comes to me at
the--they have this little after-party for me, and you
would think, like-- you're like,
"All right." You know, 'cause it's
Saudi Arabia, you're gonna be like,
"There's mad bitches. They got the doors closed." Fucking two chicks
in the whole room, and they're, like, sisters of
somebody in there, right? You're like, "Ah, come on, guy." And then there's guys--
guys are dancing with guys.
It's not--it's weird. It's not, like--
but it's not like here. You know, 'cause over--here in
America, we've lost the idea of what dancing is, you know? White people have won
the dancing war. I mean, let's be honest.
Like, when you go to, like,
an EDM thing, everybody's just jumping up
and down, and nobody's dancing anymore. That means white people won. [Laughter] And it's either that
or you're just fucking ass fucking everybody all night,
know what I mean? [Laughter] So when I say the guys are
dancing on each other, they're not like,
"Hey, bro, do it." You know, like,
they're just-- I'm not exaggerating. There was a dude doing
a dance-- [laughs] It looked like a camel.
That's what--that's what his
dance--his dance was this. [Laughter] He was fucking--I was like,
"Is that how you pick up chicks over here?" "One hump or two?"
You know? And then--
[laughter] So anyway the other prince calls
this prince and he's like, "Private show tomorrow,"
and then my brother, who's my manager, is like,
"All right, well, "let me talk to him, and then we can sort the details
out." And I go--I go, "I'm scared
about this, 'cause we're already here, and, you know, we already
don't know enough about these people, but..." And then he
comes over, and he talks to him, and he's like, "Oh, shit.
That's a lot of money." [Laughter] So I go, "Uh, yeah, we'll do
that show, right?" And then my brother goes, "Okay,
well, we're gonna need lights. "We're gonna need the cameraman.
We're gonna need the DJs. We're gonna need
the opening act." And he's like, "No.
Just Russell." And I'm like, "Oh, fuck.
All right." And he goes,
"Has to be private event." And I go, "All right.
Well, can you give me
any information?" "No information." I'm like,
"Well, how many people?" He goes, "It's a very small
party for the prince." And I'm like, "Okay." And I'm thinking small,
all right? Private thing. Maybe 50 to 100 people, right? I've done worse. 27 Years of stand-up,
I've done shows where there's two people
in the audience. I literally put the mic down
and just sat with them.
I was like,
"All right, listen. "It's--it's fucking stupid
for me to try and-- uh, what do you do?" You know, so... So... So I go, "How many people?" And they go, "Maybe 10 to 12." I'm like, "Oh, come on, guy,"
right? "This is ridiculous." And then my brother goes,
"Doo-doo-doo," and I go, "That's a lot of money.
Yeah, you're right.
Let's--let's do it." So I go to the palace the next
day, right? And I get there, and they put us
in, like, a waiting room, and then this guy comes in,
he goes, "Mr. Peters, please." And my brother and I--'cause,
you know, obviously he's got the same last name--we both get
up, and he goes, "No, no. You stay.
Just him." And--and I'm thinking, "Great,
I'm gonna get beheaded or some shit," right? 'Cause I talked mad shit the
night before, right? I mad fun of them for--women
weren't allowed to drive in Saudi--it's illegal for women
to drive in Saudi Arabia, and I was going in on it. I'm like, "Well, maybe you
should let the women drive, 'cause you guys drive like
shit," you know, "And that"--so I was like, "Oh,
my God.
"This is payback.
I'm gonna lose my head, and they're gonna blame fucking
ISIS or some shit," right? So--so I go into this room,
and it's a little-ass room with a 110-inch TV,
and I walk in, and I figure 'cause the TV--
say this is the TV behind me-- I walk in the room and I'm like,
"All right, I guess "I'll just stand in front of
this TV and do my little jokes for these 11 people
that are here." And I walk in, and then the
prince is sitting in the middle of the room, and he gets up, and
he goes, "Hey, thanks for coming." He doesn't sound like how you're
thinking. He's not like, "Please, please,
entertain my friends," you know. He's like, "Hey, thanks for
coming," and I'm like, "What the fuck is happening
right now?" [Laughter] Like, Ashton Kutcher's gonna
come out. Ha-ha!
You've been punked! You know.
And then-- so he goes--he goes, "Sit down.
Russell, please sit down." So I sit down, and I just start
making fun of everybody in the room.
Literally, like, I'm like, "You,
bam, you, bam," and then--and then the prince
is, like, feeding my lines. "That guy owns camels." And I'm like--and I'm like,
"You, fucking camel guy," and... "How's it going?"
And then-- I don't know if that's the
greeting or the dance, right? So... You know, the prince,
I'm making fun of him.
I start making fun
of the prince. I got a little fucking
carried away. And I knew when I was getting
carried away 'cause everybody went, "Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm." [Laughter] "Mm-mm. Everybody else,
no problem, but him? Mm-mm." And there's--then the prince
says to me--there's a guy sitting beside me, and he goes,
"Hey, Russell, that guy has one of the only brown diamonds
in the world." And I go, "What the fuck
is a brown diamond?" He goes, "Show him, show him." The guy takes off his ring
and he's got this little tiny-ass brown diamond
on a ring, right? And I go, "Oh, cool," and I go
to put it on my hand, and it wouldn't go past
my pinkie nail.
And I'm like, how
small are your hands? [Laughter] And I look at the prince
and I go, "This guy's got
child-like hands." And the prince starts laughing,
and then as a joke, I grab the guy's wrist, right? And I have friends that are
magicians, and they taught me how to take a watch off
somebody's wrist, so I grab his wrist, and I unlock his watch,
and I pull it off, and I go, "How small are your wrists?" And then I go, "Oh, wow.
Nice watch." I go, "What is that, a Richard
Mille?" He goes, "No, it's Hublot." And I go, "Oh, nice. I go, "Here." He goes, "Oh, keep it." And I'm like, "Okay, buddy," so
I put--I put the watch on, and I'm doing--I start talking
again, and about ten minutes later, I go,
"Hey, man, here's your watch." He goes, "No, no.
I give to you." And I'm like,
"What the fuck?" [Laughter] So I start getting comfortable,
right? 'Cause now I feel like
I've done my job. Everybody's laughed in this
room, and then the prince goes, "Come on, let's eat." And I go, "All right,
let's eat." So we go to this other room to
eat, and I'm sitting there, and I go, "Hey, man, where's the
guy that gave me the watch?" He goes, "Oh, he left." And I go, "But I've got his
watch." And he goes, "He gave it to
you." And I go, "All right." And he goes, "That's how it is
in Saudi Arabia. "If you like something we have,
and you say, 'I like that,' We have to give it to you." And I go, "Wow." [Laughter] "This it the best palace I've
ever been in." Didn't work.
Doesn't work on
real estate apparently. I should've complimented
the Rolls-Royce they sent to pick me up in though. - Whoo!
- God damn it, I fucked that one up, right? So--so I start, you know,
the prince is really cool, so I start talking to him. I'm like, "Yo, did you know
Osama bin Laden?" 'Cause he was from Saudi Arabia.
And I go, "Hey, did you know
Osama bin Laden?" He goes, "Well, I didn't know
him, but I know is family." I go, "Really?"
He goes, "Yeah." I mean, he was much older
than I am. I go, "Oh, yeah, I guess
that makes sense." He goes, "Yeah, but his family
is a very prominent family here in Saudi Arabia." They're--they built
Saudi Arabia. They were the construction
company that built it. He goes, "He went crazy.
"He went that way
and the family was this way, "and he was mad at Saudi Arabia
and he was mad at his family, so he went a little
fucking cuckoo." And then I was like,
"That's amazing," 'cause he's very--if you think
about the breakdown of Osama bin Laden,
he's very similar to Donald Trump. [Laughter] He's--he's the spoiled brat billionaire son of a developer who's fucking mad at everybody,
you know what I mean? - Oh, my God. [Laughter] [cheers and applause] So I go--I go--he goes, "Yeah, his family's very nice,
actually." And I go, "Really?" He goes, "Do you want to meet
his brother?" And I'm like, "Fuck yeah,
I do!" I was like, "I so want to meet
his brother!" So... So goes, "Okay," and he
says to some guy...
[Speaking gibberish] Random, like, "Oh, I don't know
what he's saying, but okay, sure," right? And then--so the next day I get
this call at my hotel and they send the car--
the prince sends a car for me, and I go, "What's this for?" He goes, "Oh, you said you
wanted to go see Saudi Arabia, so he sent a car so you can go
around and see everything." And he walks out with me,
and he's on his phone, and he's like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh." And he goes, "Hey, Russell, do you still want to meet
Osama's brother?" [Laughter] And I'm like, "Fuck yeah, I do!" And he goes, "Okay.
One second. Here."
And I go, "What's this?" And I won't say what--the guy's
first name, 'cause, you know, that'll give it away, but--but
it says blank "bin Laden" on the phone, right? And I'm like--I go,
"What's this?" He goes,
"It's Osama's brother." And I go, "Holy shit." So I go, "Uh, hello?" And he goes--
this is exactly-- here's what you're expecting,
right? Osama bin Laden's brother to get
on the phone, be like... [In deep voice] "Russell, what
are you doing, infidel?" Right?
So-- [laughter] I go, "Hello?" And this is what I hear
on the other end. "Hey, Russell."
I go...
[Laughter] "What the fuck is going on
here?" [Laughter] He goes, "Yeah, it's--yeah, I'm
blah, blah, blah bin Laden." I go, "Yeah, and I see that
on the phone." He goes,
"First of all, let me tell you, a big fan of your stuff,"
and I'm like, "What the-- what the good fuck is going
on over here?" Right? And he's like, "How long are you
in town for?" I go, "I'm leaving today." He goes,
"Yeah, I'm flying back tonight. "Oh, man, I'm gonna miss you. "Hey, stay in touch with me. Take my number." And I'm like, "What?" "Yeah, take my number." And I go, "All right." And I go, "Just so you know,
your name's going in as Dave Smith on my phone." [Laughter and applause] Thank you, guys.
You were great.
[Cheers and applause] .
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Watch Highlights From Zuckerberg's Hearing, Day 1NYT News
Mr. Zuckerberg, would
you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the
hotel you stayed in last night? Um no. If youve messaged
anybody this week, would you share with us
the names of the people youve messaged? Senator, no, I would probably not choose
to do that publicly here. I think that may be
what this is all about.
In 2015, we heard the report
that this developer Aleksandr Kogan had sold data to
Cambridge Analytica. Did you or senior
leadership do an inquiry to find out who at Facebook
had this information and did they not have
a discussion about whether or not the users
should be informed back in December of 2015? Senator, in retrospect, I think we clearly
view it as a mistake that we didnt inform people. And we did that based
on false information that we thought that
the case was closed, and that the data
had been deleted. So there was a decision
made on that basis not to inform the
users.
Is that correct? Thats my understanding, yes. I assume Facebooks
been served with subpoenas from the special
counsel Muellers office. Is that correct? Yes. Actually, let
me clarify that.
I actually am not
aware of a subpoena. I believe that there may be. But I know were
working with them. Thank you.
If I buy a Ford and it
doesnt work well and I dont like it,
I can buy a Chevy. If Im upset
with Facebook, whats the equivalent product
that I can go sign up for? The average American
uses eight different apps O.K. To communicate
with their friends and stay in touch with people O.K. Ranging from text apps which is to email.
Which is the same
service you provide. Well, we provide
a number of different services. Is Twitter the
same as what you do? It overlaps with a portion of what we do. You dont think you have
a monopoly? It certainly doesnt
feel like that to me.
O.K. [Audience laughs] Do you need to look
behind shell corporations in order to find
out who is really behind the content
thats being posted? And if you may need to look
behind a shell corporation, how will you go
about doing that? How will you get
back to the true, what lawyers would
call beneficial owner of the site that is putting
out the political material? So what were going to do is require
a valid government identity and were going to
verify the location. So were going to do that, so that way someone sitting
in Russia, for example, couldnt say that
theyre in America and therefore able
to run an election ad. But if they were running
through a corporation domiciled in Delaware, you wouldnt
know that they were actually a Russian owner.
Senator, thats thats correct..
you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the
hotel you stayed in last night? Um no. If youve messaged
anybody this week, would you share with us
the names of the people youve messaged? Senator, no, I would probably not choose
to do that publicly here. I think that may be
what this is all about.
In 2015, we heard the report
that this developer Aleksandr Kogan had sold data to
Cambridge Analytica. Did you or senior
leadership do an inquiry to find out who at Facebook
had this information and did they not have
a discussion about whether or not the users
should be informed back in December of 2015? Senator, in retrospect, I think we clearly
view it as a mistake that we didnt inform people. And we did that based
on false information that we thought that
the case was closed, and that the data
had been deleted. So there was a decision
made on that basis not to inform the
users.
Is that correct? Thats my understanding, yes. I assume Facebooks
been served with subpoenas from the special
counsel Muellers office. Is that correct? Yes. Actually, let
me clarify that.
I actually am not
aware of a subpoena. I believe that there may be. But I know were
working with them. Thank you.
If I buy a Ford and it
doesnt work well and I dont like it,
I can buy a Chevy. If Im upset
with Facebook, whats the equivalent product
that I can go sign up for? The average American
uses eight different apps O.K. To communicate
with their friends and stay in touch with people O.K. Ranging from text apps which is to email.
Which is the same
service you provide. Well, we provide
a number of different services. Is Twitter the
same as what you do? It overlaps with a portion of what we do. You dont think you have
a monopoly? It certainly doesnt
feel like that to me.
O.K. [Audience laughs] Do you need to look
behind shell corporations in order to find
out who is really behind the content
thats being posted? And if you may need to look
behind a shell corporation, how will you go
about doing that? How will you get
back to the true, what lawyers would
call beneficial owner of the site that is putting
out the political material? So what were going to do is require
a valid government identity and were going to
verify the location. So were going to do that, so that way someone sitting
in Russia, for example, couldnt say that
theyre in America and therefore able
to run an election ad. But if they were running
through a corporation domiciled in Delaware, you wouldnt
know that they were actually a Russian owner.
Senator, thats thats correct..
Senior Bernie Advisor says Bullshit to Cuomo Campaign Claim Its Lockstep with Sanders
PAUL JAY: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. On Monday a thing broke out between Bernie
Sanders' camp and Governor Cuomo and such. Cynthia Nixon, who's running in a primary
against the Democratic Governor Cuomo in New York.
It came out, according to The New York Daily
News that Bernie Sanders was not going to endorse Cynthia Nixon. Well, Cuomo then came out with a statement,
said, well, why would Sanders endorse Cynthia Nixon, because we're in lockstep with Senator
Sanders on all issues. Well, then a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders
came out with this tweet. Ari Rabin-Havt, I hope I'm pronouncing it
right, writes: The idea that Andrew Cuomo and Bernie Sanders are lockstep on policy
is 100 % Grade A American bullshit.
Well, so just what is Bernie Sanders' attitude
toward Cynthia Nixon, and why is Cynthia Nixon running against Cuomo, when apparently, according
to another senior adviser in the Sanders office, Cuomo actually has passed and supports some
progressive legislation, like a $15 minimum wage, and easier access to college, and so
on. So now joining us to talk about this is, first
of all, from Wallingford Connecticut, Alexandra Rojas. She's the Campaigns Director for Justice Democrats,
a progressive political action committee founded in January of 2017. Moumita Ahmed is a grassroots organizer with
People for Bernie Sanders and co-founder of the group Millennials Revolution, previously
known as Millennials for Bernie Sanders.
And Moumita is actually doing some digital
campaign work for the Nixon, Cynthia Nixon campaign, but I should stress is not here
speaking for the campaign. And Eugene Puryear. Hes a journalist, author, and activist. He's co-founder of Stop Police Terror Project
D.C., And a member of DC's Movement for Black Lives steering committee.
So first of all, let me go to Moumita. So you're kind of closest to all of this thing. What do you make of this, first of all, what
went on with is Sanders endorsing, not endorsing, and such. MOUMITA AHMED: I think Bernie Sanders is busy
campaigning around the country for Medicare for All and college for all, and other progressive
issues.
So to drag him into a very local race, and
asking him for an endorsement so early on, it puts everybody in a very difficult position,
including Bernie Sanders. But I will say this. Andrew Cuomo is not aligned with Bernie Sanders
in any way. And he is, in fact, quite the opposite.
99 Percent of his campaign donations come
from super PACs, and the majority of his donors have given him over $200 worth of campaign
donations. Maybe like 1 percent of that out of all of
that, in the entirety of the donations that he receives. Which is quite, which is opposite of Bernie
Sanders, whose average donation was $27. PAUL JAY: Alexandra, Bernie Sanders has to
walk a fairly fine line in these kinds of races.
He's encouraging, and the organization Our
Revolution, which he helped give birth to, although he's not involved in the day to day,
as far as we know, is really promoting primary-ing conservative and corporate Democrats, as they're
called. On the other hand, Sanders really can't afford
to alienate the whole Democratic Party establishment. He needs some of them to win if he's going
to run the primary in 2020. How do you think this Cynthia Nixon-Cuomo
thing fits into this, and Sanders' problem in this? ALEXANDRA ROJAS: I think, I think Bernie can
play a big role here.
I know that he has to be careful, but him
challenging the establishment last time showed that he's willing to go up against the machine. And I think that's why people like him, right. He was able to get as far as he did even without
establishment support, and I totally agree that he's going to need some just to push
things forward, but he's the most popular politician in the country. People know, he went from being virtually
unknown last year to being a household name.
And he should leverage a lot of that power,
I think, to get even more involved in some of these primaries. He's been doing it with candidates like Marie
Newman, who ran against Dan Lipinski, and I think he really should, you know, consider
endorsing again another Democrat. You know, fighting another corporate Democrat,
especially when they're so in contradiction to his principles on not taking big corporate
money, and having that fund your race. You should be beholden to your voters instead
of your donors.
And as a progressive movement we should lean
into, I think, the biggest asset that we have, which is our integrity, is running on our
values. And I think that's the way that we win moving
forward. PAUL JAY: Eugene, Chuck Schumer, about a year
ago, he was on a, being interviewed. And he said that he's fully, he didn't use
the word lockstep, but more or less, fully on board, fully in agreement with both Warren
and Sanders.
Given Sanders and Warren's critique of Wall
Street and Schumer's role as the Wall Street Democrat that's a little rich. Here's Cuomo saying he's in lockstep with
Sanders. How do you, let's go to two issues. One, them wanting to cozy up to Sanders says
something about moving the Democratic Party, at least in rhetoric, closer, closer to Sanders.
On the other hand, if Sanders is really going
to deliver a message he has to not just critique the oligarch in the generality or abstract,
he has to really take on some of these individual politicians that clearly are allied with finance. EUGENE PURYEAR: Yeah, I think those are important
points. And I think you look at these politicians,
I would say mostly the Cuomos, the Schumers, I mean, they're just lying. I mean, just a couple of years ago Andrew
Cuomo wrote a book saying that the progressive left was the biggest problem in the Democratic
Party.
But you see what happened in the primaries,
and even if you look at states like Mississippi, and you look at the exit polls where Clinton
dominated, you can see the vast majority of people who voted said in the CNN exit poll
that they would be fine if Bernie Sanders was the candidate. I'm talking about 75-80 percent of people. So the reality is is I think most rank and
file people who consider themselves Democrats, Democratic-leaning progressive people, even
if they're not 100 percent with Sanders aren't out put out by the things that he's saying. And so the Cuomo's of the world, the Schumers
of the world, have to do something to tack to the left a little bit here.
I agree with the point you're making in terms
of the need to turn this real. I mean, I think the biggest problem that Cynthia
Nixon has, I would say, is Bill de Blasio, who was backed by many of the same people
who are backing her, who was supposed to be a progressive, transformative mayor. He ran on the issue of dealing with the police
and mass incarceration. He has actually completely failed at that.
He has not ended stop and frisk. He's backed the police officers in a number
of extraordinarily criminal shootings of black people in New York. He's pushed a massive gentrification plan
under the guise of rezoning, claiming that it's producing affordable housing. So no wonder that you have low voter turnout,
because I think consistently what you see, and what I think people in New York see, is
that even a lot of the so-called progressive organizations aren't willing to aggressively
challenge the status quo once they actually get in office.
And I think that in places like New York,
in places like D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, we continually see this, where the
Democrats claim to be so progressive, but when they actually get in office they're essentially,
you know, really essentially outsourcing a significant amount of their policy to the
corporate status quo, and just doing enough to superficially appear to be better than
Republicans in states like Oklahoma. PAUL JAY: Moumita, unions on the whole are
not supporting Cynthia Nixon in this fight against Cuomo. What is going to happen with Our Revolution? Our Revolution is fairly decentralized. I guess there's one in New York.
Is Our Revolution going to support Nixon? MOUMITA AHMED: Yes, they already have, actually. The Our Revolution group in New York City
is called NYPAN, New York Progressive Action Network. And they just endorsed Cynthia Nixon this
weekend. And there are grassroots chapters across every
borough for NYPAN, and we will be all fighting to help her get elected.
So even though Bernie himself has not endorsed,
his grassroots community in New York, which made thousands and thousands of phone calls
for him during the 2016 primaries, I think it came in second next to California for the
number of phone calls made across the country. Well, that well-oiled grassroots machine is
backing Cynthia right now. So even if Bernie hasn't quite made that leap
yet, I believe the fact that his grassroots, the entirety of his grassroots from the Working
Families Party, to NYPAN and other progressive organizations that also endorsed Bernie during
the campaign are behind Cynthia speaks volumes about where the grassroots, where the wind
is blowing in terms of-. PAUL JAY: Why, why do you think the unions
aren't supporting her? Or I should say, at least the majority of
the unions.
MOUMITA AHMED: I think the unions, I can't
really speak for the unions, but I believe it is because Cuomo has a very, he's very
vengeful. And we've already seen him start threatening
these community organizations that are funded by unions, that help provide legal support
to people of color. And he has threatened them, threatened to
defund them, because they endorse Cynthia Nixon. And that, this is this a behavior of Andrew
Cuomo that has existed for years.
Like even when we ran Zephyr Teachout against
Andrew Cuomo, he created a ballot line called the Women's Equality Party, led by him, a
man. Just to put Working Families Party in its
place because they even, you know , fathomed to challenge Governor Cuomo, or just because
they, because they suggested to him that we are going to run Zephyr if you don't, you
know, give us A, B, and C. So you know, this is, this is what I believe. Again, I can't speak for the unions.
But when you have a governor who has publicly
said in the past that he is waging a war against the unions, it puts them in a very difficult
place, especially when they have to look out for their members and, you know, working class
people who are part of their membership, and to stay at the bargaining table. The last thing they would want, I assume,
is a governor who is this vengeful with real estate developers, all these powerful people
in [inaudible] backing him. PAUL JAY: All right. Thank you very much, all my guests.
And thank you for joining us on the Real News
Network. We'll continue to follow this race in New
York, as well as primaries across the country, and then as we head into the elections. Thanks for joining us on the Real News..
Sanders' camp and Governor Cuomo and such. Cynthia Nixon, who's running in a primary
against the Democratic Governor Cuomo in New York.
It came out, according to The New York Daily
News that Bernie Sanders was not going to endorse Cynthia Nixon. Well, Cuomo then came out with a statement,
said, well, why would Sanders endorse Cynthia Nixon, because we're in lockstep with Senator
Sanders on all issues. Well, then a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders
came out with this tweet. Ari Rabin-Havt, I hope I'm pronouncing it
right, writes: The idea that Andrew Cuomo and Bernie Sanders are lockstep on policy
is 100 % Grade A American bullshit.
Well, so just what is Bernie Sanders' attitude
toward Cynthia Nixon, and why is Cynthia Nixon running against Cuomo, when apparently, according
to another senior adviser in the Sanders office, Cuomo actually has passed and supports some
progressive legislation, like a $15 minimum wage, and easier access to college, and so
on. So now joining us to talk about this is, first
of all, from Wallingford Connecticut, Alexandra Rojas. She's the Campaigns Director for Justice Democrats,
a progressive political action committee founded in January of 2017. Moumita Ahmed is a grassroots organizer with
People for Bernie Sanders and co-founder of the group Millennials Revolution, previously
known as Millennials for Bernie Sanders.
And Moumita is actually doing some digital
campaign work for the Nixon, Cynthia Nixon campaign, but I should stress is not here
speaking for the campaign. And Eugene Puryear. Hes a journalist, author, and activist. He's co-founder of Stop Police Terror Project
D.C., And a member of DC's Movement for Black Lives steering committee.
So first of all, let me go to Moumita. So you're kind of closest to all of this thing. What do you make of this, first of all, what
went on with is Sanders endorsing, not endorsing, and such. MOUMITA AHMED: I think Bernie Sanders is busy
campaigning around the country for Medicare for All and college for all, and other progressive
issues.
So to drag him into a very local race, and
asking him for an endorsement so early on, it puts everybody in a very difficult position,
including Bernie Sanders. But I will say this. Andrew Cuomo is not aligned with Bernie Sanders
in any way. And he is, in fact, quite the opposite.
99 Percent of his campaign donations come
from super PACs, and the majority of his donors have given him over $200 worth of campaign
donations. Maybe like 1 percent of that out of all of
that, in the entirety of the donations that he receives. Which is quite, which is opposite of Bernie
Sanders, whose average donation was $27. PAUL JAY: Alexandra, Bernie Sanders has to
walk a fairly fine line in these kinds of races.
He's encouraging, and the organization Our
Revolution, which he helped give birth to, although he's not involved in the day to day,
as far as we know, is really promoting primary-ing conservative and corporate Democrats, as they're
called. On the other hand, Sanders really can't afford
to alienate the whole Democratic Party establishment. He needs some of them to win if he's going
to run the primary in 2020. How do you think this Cynthia Nixon-Cuomo
thing fits into this, and Sanders' problem in this? ALEXANDRA ROJAS: I think, I think Bernie can
play a big role here.
I know that he has to be careful, but him
challenging the establishment last time showed that he's willing to go up against the machine. And I think that's why people like him, right. He was able to get as far as he did even without
establishment support, and I totally agree that he's going to need some just to push
things forward, but he's the most popular politician in the country. People know, he went from being virtually
unknown last year to being a household name.
And he should leverage a lot of that power,
I think, to get even more involved in some of these primaries. He's been doing it with candidates like Marie
Newman, who ran against Dan Lipinski, and I think he really should, you know, consider
endorsing again another Democrat. You know, fighting another corporate Democrat,
especially when they're so in contradiction to his principles on not taking big corporate
money, and having that fund your race. You should be beholden to your voters instead
of your donors.
And as a progressive movement we should lean
into, I think, the biggest asset that we have, which is our integrity, is running on our
values. And I think that's the way that we win moving
forward. PAUL JAY: Eugene, Chuck Schumer, about a year
ago, he was on a, being interviewed. And he said that he's fully, he didn't use
the word lockstep, but more or less, fully on board, fully in agreement with both Warren
and Sanders.
Given Sanders and Warren's critique of Wall
Street and Schumer's role as the Wall Street Democrat that's a little rich. Here's Cuomo saying he's in lockstep with
Sanders. How do you, let's go to two issues. One, them wanting to cozy up to Sanders says
something about moving the Democratic Party, at least in rhetoric, closer, closer to Sanders.
On the other hand, if Sanders is really going
to deliver a message he has to not just critique the oligarch in the generality or abstract,
he has to really take on some of these individual politicians that clearly are allied with finance. EUGENE PURYEAR: Yeah, I think those are important
points. And I think you look at these politicians,
I would say mostly the Cuomos, the Schumers, I mean, they're just lying. I mean, just a couple of years ago Andrew
Cuomo wrote a book saying that the progressive left was the biggest problem in the Democratic
Party.
But you see what happened in the primaries,
and even if you look at states like Mississippi, and you look at the exit polls where Clinton
dominated, you can see the vast majority of people who voted said in the CNN exit poll
that they would be fine if Bernie Sanders was the candidate. I'm talking about 75-80 percent of people. So the reality is is I think most rank and
file people who consider themselves Democrats, Democratic-leaning progressive people, even
if they're not 100 percent with Sanders aren't out put out by the things that he's saying. And so the Cuomo's of the world, the Schumers
of the world, have to do something to tack to the left a little bit here.
I agree with the point you're making in terms
of the need to turn this real. I mean, I think the biggest problem that Cynthia
Nixon has, I would say, is Bill de Blasio, who was backed by many of the same people
who are backing her, who was supposed to be a progressive, transformative mayor. He ran on the issue of dealing with the police
and mass incarceration. He has actually completely failed at that.
He has not ended stop and frisk. He's backed the police officers in a number
of extraordinarily criminal shootings of black people in New York. He's pushed a massive gentrification plan
under the guise of rezoning, claiming that it's producing affordable housing. So no wonder that you have low voter turnout,
because I think consistently what you see, and what I think people in New York see, is
that even a lot of the so-called progressive organizations aren't willing to aggressively
challenge the status quo once they actually get in office.
And I think that in places like New York,
in places like D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, we continually see this, where the
Democrats claim to be so progressive, but when they actually get in office they're essentially,
you know, really essentially outsourcing a significant amount of their policy to the
corporate status quo, and just doing enough to superficially appear to be better than
Republicans in states like Oklahoma. PAUL JAY: Moumita, unions on the whole are
not supporting Cynthia Nixon in this fight against Cuomo. What is going to happen with Our Revolution? Our Revolution is fairly decentralized. I guess there's one in New York.
Is Our Revolution going to support Nixon? MOUMITA AHMED: Yes, they already have, actually. The Our Revolution group in New York City
is called NYPAN, New York Progressive Action Network. And they just endorsed Cynthia Nixon this
weekend. And there are grassroots chapters across every
borough for NYPAN, and we will be all fighting to help her get elected.
So even though Bernie himself has not endorsed,
his grassroots community in New York, which made thousands and thousands of phone calls
for him during the 2016 primaries, I think it came in second next to California for the
number of phone calls made across the country. Well, that well-oiled grassroots machine is
backing Cynthia right now. So even if Bernie hasn't quite made that leap
yet, I believe the fact that his grassroots, the entirety of his grassroots from the Working
Families Party, to NYPAN and other progressive organizations that also endorsed Bernie during
the campaign are behind Cynthia speaks volumes about where the grassroots, where the wind
is blowing in terms of-. PAUL JAY: Why, why do you think the unions
aren't supporting her? Or I should say, at least the majority of
the unions.
MOUMITA AHMED: I think the unions, I can't
really speak for the unions, but I believe it is because Cuomo has a very, he's very
vengeful. And we've already seen him start threatening
these community organizations that are funded by unions, that help provide legal support
to people of color. And he has threatened them, threatened to
defund them, because they endorse Cynthia Nixon. And that, this is this a behavior of Andrew
Cuomo that has existed for years.
Like even when we ran Zephyr Teachout against
Andrew Cuomo, he created a ballot line called the Women's Equality Party, led by him, a
man. Just to put Working Families Party in its
place because they even, you know , fathomed to challenge Governor Cuomo, or just because
they, because they suggested to him that we are going to run Zephyr if you don't, you
know, give us A, B, and C. So you know, this is, this is what I believe. Again, I can't speak for the unions.
But when you have a governor who has publicly
said in the past that he is waging a war against the unions, it puts them in a very difficult
place, especially when they have to look out for their members and, you know, working class
people who are part of their membership, and to stay at the bargaining table. The last thing they would want, I assume,
is a governor who is this vengeful with real estate developers, all these powerful people
in [inaudible] backing him. PAUL JAY: All right. Thank you very much, all my guests.
And thank you for joining us on the Real News
Network. We'll continue to follow this race in New
York, as well as primaries across the country, and then as we head into the elections. Thanks for joining us on the Real News..
NY Foreign Press Center Briefing on Blockchain Technology Explained
MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone. Were so glad youre here. Id like to welcome Michael Casey, who is
the chairman of the CoinDesk Advisory Board and senior advisor at the MIT Media Labs Digital
Currency Initiative. And we also have Peter Rizzo, who is the editor-in-chief
of CoinDesk, and were so pleased to have both of them here.
Just a few housekeeping items before I start. Please take a moment to silence your cellphones. At the conclusion of our speakers remarks,
well open the floor to questions. Please wait for the microphone before you
ask your question.
Id ask as a courtesy that you state your
name and your media affiliation. Todays briefing is on the record, and with
that, let me turn it over to Pete. MR RIZZO: Great. Yes, thanks for having us.
Can you hear me? Is this mikes good? Great. So I guess a little bit more about myself. My names Pete Rizzo, editor for CoinDesk.Com. Were the global leader in blockchain news.
Were also the organizer of the upcoming
conference Consensus, which will be in New York this May from the 14th to the 16th. Thats part of New York Blockchain Week,
which is a series of about seven or eight events now that will all focus on blockchain
technology. So I think for our talk were going to start
pretty high-level: What is blockchain technology from 10,000 feet? But I guess from our vantage point, were
dealing with an industry thats very multifaceted, all these events that break it into all these
different segments for different audiences of different people. So thats a little bit about me and my work.
Mike, do you want to talk about your -- MR CASEY: Yeah, sure. Okay, great, thanks for having us, everybody. So I wear two hats, this one with CoinDesk
where Im the chairman of the advisory board. We have a board made up of a number of experts
representing industry and academia helping us sort of shape the narrative around essentially
what matters with this technology as it goes forward.
And the reason why people like Simon Johnson,
for example, who is a MIT Sloan professor gets involved in this is because a lot of
us see this technology as this enabling platform for a very different economic model going
forward, and that the more that it develops, the more important it is that a lot of these
different segments and these different structures get evolved. So my other hat is as a senior advisor at
MIT Media Labs Digital Currency Initiative, where, similarly, were working on trying
to sort of build out the underlying infrastructure of this technology and look at a lot of the
use cases, especially those that apply in a sort of social impact context, some of which
deal with the UN and deal with kind of international contexts for this. So really, this is a very broad topic. Blockchain is just a technology, but because
of what its sort of tackling in terms of record keeping and in terms of the way in
which we prove out and get consensus around facts, it has extremely broad applications,
because the kind of veracity of information the question is fundamental to how
civilization works, basically, and how economies evolve.
And Im going to make one little sort of
very shameless pitch: Just wrote a book. Its called The Truth Machine; its the
sequel to a previous book with my coauthor from The Wall Street Journal, Paul Vigna The
Truth Machine, The Blockchain, and the Future of Everything. So its a good kind of explainer, and some
of the ideas that Ill be talking about today draw from the themes that we work through
in that book. MR RIZZO: Great.
Well, I think I want to focus in and hone
on something you said there, that blockchain is a technology. I think thats something that, dealing with
many people coming to this from many walks of life, theyre oftentimes hearing about
blockchain in very strange contexts. They see this wall of numbers, they see these
coin prices going up and down, they see these funny-named startups raising billions of dollars,
so maybe lets just unpack that a little bit. What makes blockchain a technology, I guess,
and how do you explain it or introduce it as a technology? MR CASEY: Yeah, so, I mean, essentially, it
to me is a mechanism for allowing a network of computers to arrive at consensus.
And so theres this -- MR RIZZO: And what is consensus? MR CASEY: So consensus is the kind of
effectively an agreement, right? So the idea that there is a record in
this case, its a ledger that is a record of transactions. The first use case is the best way to explain
that: bitcoin, which is a currency in which transactions are recorded, and every single
transaction is essentially recorded in this ledger. What needs to happen for that ledger and,
therefore, the currency itself to function in a fully decentralized way a manner
in which nobody has any sort of central control over what happens is that there has to
be a mechanism by which all of the computers that are separately maintaining the ledger,
independently maintaining the same ledger, can arrive at consensus and then upgrade that
ledger on an ongoing basis. And thats -- MR RIZZO: I think its yeah, I think
its important that blockchain is a software.
MR CASEY: Right. MR RIZZO: I think thats one of the things
thats often undersold about it. So you see these images of coins, of gold,
but this is a computer program. People are running it on real computers, and
but its able to create this huge economic or sort of network effect.
When you see that, how do you explain those
two? MR CASEY: Yeah, actually, its quite useful,
I think, to do what I think I did when I first got into this space. I was a journalist myself at the Wall Street
Journal, and the first thing that most people do when they hear about bitcoin is they just
think of a coin or a piece of paper or something digital, so thats a digital representation
of this physical thing. And its actually the wrong way to think
about it. Its actually when you go down the rabbit
hole, you discover that money itself is not actually these tokens either; its actually
those just represent what money is, which is this process by which we keep track of
our exchanges and our records, right? So thats when you when you do that
and you see that, then you can start to say, well, what is bitcoin? Well, bitcoin is a software, is a technology
that allows us to better maintain that record.
And then when you go down that further
down that hole, you start to realize, well, actually how could we apply this recordkeeping
function, this decentralized way of tracking transactions to all sorts of other things? And if you think about it, much of our exchanges
of value with people are essentially transactions. When you write a post on Facebook, right,
youre effectively transacting. Youre transacting in data, and data is
valuable. So what we now have is the capacity to keep
track of all many, many other forms of data that take to take something valuable,
and the value part, I think, is really important as well.
MR RIZZO: Yeah, Id like to start a little
bit, even a step back from that, I think its important to also realize its a software,
but were here because this is a computer science innovation, right? So we all communicate via protocols and algorithms
today. We send data through, essentially, these complex
computer programs. The difference with bitcoin in terms of it
being a computer science innovation is it operates differently than the other protocols
we use today. An example I like to use is SMS, right? So if you send a text message if you send
20 text messages or 40 text messages, the protocol doesnt care.
It doesnt need to know how much youre
using. Those texts are the same to everybody. If you send an email, you dont necessarily
need to know who sent that email where, right? Were all using the sort of common protocol
but we dont necessarily have a need to understand how much other people are using
it. Whats interesting is with money, thats
totally different.
If I send you money and I send the same money
to someone else and you both try to use your monies, well, only one of you can really have
the money. So again, just backing up, I think its
helpful to view blockchain broadly. Its an innovation in computer science. It essentially governs and moves data in a
different way than weve seen before and its, in many ways, like a lot of the things
we use but sort of take for granted today, whether its HTTP or SMS or the Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol.
Theres all these ways that govern data. This is a new way of governing data. I think what becomes hard, then, as Mike alluded
to, is just how do you make this tangible, right? I think the ways that people do it, its
maybe this visualization of coins, but youre bringing up the UN itself has done some
tests as sort of -- MR CASEY: Yeah. MR RIZZO: -- proof how these protocols can
be put into a real-life context.
MR CASEY: Yeah, theres actually theres
so many different UN cases. One of the before I mention the UN cases
I think its a really important way to look at but that one that I think
is interesting, right so what Petes talking about in terms of this need to assure
that data thats transferred in some cases cannot be replicated and money is the
classic case can be applied in lots of other realms as well. So his point is like, yeah, SMS messages it
doesnt matter. Its like theres no real value attached
to the message, per se.
Once we place value on it, its important. Think of one area that might be useful
to think about where this happens is voting, right? So we cant if youre going to be
voting, which is a form of sending a message, and you want to do that electronically, you
obviously dont want the person to be able to send multiple votes. So what we call the double-spend problem when
it comes to bitcoin, right we dont you cant be allowed to double-spend
the same bitcoin or the same dollar or the same anything else that has value. You cant double-spend a vote, right? So thats how we start to think about data
structures where its really important that there is this integrity and the lack of replicatability
to that data, it becomes really important.
So I think thats a good one to voting as
and there are people working on interesting voting applications around this. Theres even a test being done, a pilot
with absentee voters for a Massachusetts one particular Massachusetts county. And the reason why thats kind of interesting
is because these absentee voters have never had a secret ballot before. The whole point of mailing in the ballot required
that there had to be a third party to the so now, you can through this protocol,
potentially its a pilot, well see what happens.
But in theory, the idea would be that you
can vote on your phone, and whereas that would have seemed like a sort of a really risky
thing in the past because the person could double vote, because of this protocol we now
have the potential to both create single one person, one vote functions on the phone, and
give them the secrecy of being able to vote on their own, right. So these are the kinds of ideas that are coming
up. Shall I weigh in on the UN, I mean MR RIZZO: Well just I think its just
important to have tangible examples. MR CASEY: Yeah, exactly.
MR RIZZO: I think the voting one was good,
and I think what you were saying is this can be applied in a lot of contexts, and I think
one of the great narratives around the space right now is or the technology itself
is theres this great R&D that is happening globally to try to figure out, where can this
be applied? What are the specific problems that this solves? You might hear that blockchain is a solution
looking for a problem, and to an extent thats partly true. But its also important to remember that
the reason its a solution is that it solves a real problem in computer science. And it is put forth in the market in a similar
way to other things that you are used to, right; theres all these protocols, now
there are new financial protocols, maybe nonfinancial protocols. MR CASEY: Well, the World Food Program, right,
is a really good example of this.
They have a pilot its fairly large
in fact in Jordan, in a Syrian refugee camp where theres this fundamental concern
if theyre going to be delivering food. And they deliver food in a kind of a token
basis, right, so its a youre not delivering food. MR RIZZO: Whats a token, is a its
a -- MR CASEY: A token that represents a right
to a food distribution of some sort, and they can spend that token at different at different
places. But theres this traditionally, in these
camps, thereve been sort of a lack of control over it, its theyre not well policed,
there are crooks who get in there and do all sorts of things, theres violence around,
taking charge of peoples tokens.
But now theyve got a control over it, because
only they have the right, they have the private key that gives them the access to that. In this case, the private key is a biometric
model, which has other questions, but nonetheless its only them that can do this, right. So thats that level of it, but the other
part is it tracks every food distribution transaction so that they they can sort
of, at any given time, have a universal record of where how much food is being spent. And so even though theyre using multiple
different vendors, different little grocers, the WFP is able to actually keep track of
this.
MR RIZZO: Well, I was just going to say, bouncing
off what you were saying, one of the reasons I think people are looking to deploy this
the technology in these contexts is, again, blockchains are software, and software is
fairly cheap. As weve seen with other software solutions,
you can think about the web and mobile boom in startups, right, that its really easy
to have a new startup, to have a new software and to try to apply it in a certain context,
and then again, thats what were seeing is this great R&D. But there are sort of limitations to what
the technology can do today, and that speaking of another narrative, is theres a lot of
overstatement about what the technology is capable of. Theres a lot of people who are maybe looking
to exploit.
And journalism I guess at CoinDesk, one
of the things we deal with a lot is people who are saying things that are incorrect in
the market or that may cause market harm. So I guess I maybe wanted to ask you I guess,
what advice would you give to people who are coming to the space maybe new? How do they delineate how do they make
sense of these what may seem like a wild claim, right, the ability we can send value
anywhere in the world now at a fairly low cost, right. That may seem like a ridiculous claim, and
you have other ridiculous claims like how do you kind of figure out -- MR CASEY: Yeah. So, like, having coming from journalism, and
academia I think, I can speak to both of those.
One is keep the I supposed its
okay to just use the acronym, right, the BS. Meter should be held kept on strong strong
force. Because theres a lot of people when you
come to this phase where (a) not a lot of people understand it, (b) there are there
is the capacity to overstretch and overhype what it can be, and (c) theres a lot of
money to be made because of the sort of this money raising thats going on in the cryptocurrency
market. So you do get scammers, lots of them, who
will come in and make these wild claims and raise money quickly.
So first of all, just to be skeptical. And I would heres a pitch Ill put
in for MIT Media Lab: one of the reasons why the digital currency initiative was established
by Joi Ito, who is the director of the Media Lab those of you from the Japanese media
probably know about Joi, hes quite a personality in Japan was to recognize that just as
the internet needed this buildout of the protocols before wed be ready to add all the applications
on top of it, theres still an enormous amount of work that needs to go into what
we call the base layer, right. So the internet works on TC/PIP, and not many
people know about it. Its like the internal combustion engine,
if you like, of the internet.
And many of us dont even know about it,
but its absolutely critical that transmission control protocol and the internet protocol
the combination of those two gave us the structure of the internet that allowed
information to be shared in a distributed way. Getting that right took 30 years, it was just
done in quiet by DARPA and at Stanford. Now unfortunately, we have to build out the
similar kind of idea for bitcoin and for blockchain with the whole world watching it and throwing
money at it, and its much harder. So institutions like MIT, but also I would
be remiss to talk about Cornell and Princeton and others, Stanford who are really working
hard on these things.
Were very much focused on this buildout
of the infrastructure, to make sure it works, and to make sure its scalable, because
one of the challenges that we face is some of these things work in a very small context,
and even bitcoin has serious challenges in terms of how many transactions it can do per
second. If we want to roll this out and make this
a solution for the entire world, we really need it to be more robust and more scalable. And so one of the things thats happening
at MIT is this development, something called the Lightning Network. So I dont want to get too geeky here, but
its a its sort of a middle layer or a second layer solution.
If you think about what software does, its
a stack. It starts off with this base layer, and then
you add the middle layer, middleware, and then you get software and you get applications. So Lightning is kind of like a middle layer
or middleware, and it it takes a lot of the pressure off all of the processing thats
needed in bitcoin. And thats one of the things thats being
developed at MIT.
We have the lead architect of that project. So these are the kinds of things that need
to happen. And so when youre looking to bring
it back to the point about what a journalist should be looking for just know that a
lot of work needs to happen, seek out the experts who are working on that base level. Its not to say that the people who are
doing work on impressive applications arent also valid, and in many respects its their
work that helps inform the work that happens at the infrastructure level.
But you need to think about it as the evolution
of a big ecosystem. The one last thing Ill say it picks
up on what Pete was saying this R&D process is fascinating, because unlike technology
that is run by, say, IBM when its in its closed house, or GE or any company for that
matter who has its own R&D outfit, its all proprietary and its all controlled
by their own mindset much of this technology is open-source. So its a hive mind, its -- MR RIZZO: What do you mean by open source? MR CASEY: Right, so these are open licenses. You write the code, you develop the code,
and it can be used by other people.
Bitcoin and others have certain controls as
to who can actually commit code to that, but theres a process by which others can all
contribute to it. But just as importantly, you can take that
code, you can copy it without any legal ramifications and create a fork, create a different version
of it, work on top of it. All these things make for a much more vibrant
and open and innovative ecosystem of invention and R&D. So when people say, Well, bitcoin can only
do seven transactions a second and it cant scale, and so forth, thats all true
in the moment, but I think its unwise to assume that theres not a really good chance
that this massive there are literally thousands and thousands of developers around
the world who are working on this stuff will come up with solutions one way or another.
Its very hard to predict what those are,
but there is this is a very dynamic environment, and I think its one of the most important
aspects of whats going on. MR RIZZO: Yeah, I think the important balance
here is between short-term thinking and long-term thinking, right. In the short-term, its easy to undervalue
everything. In the long-term, a lot of that stuff comes
true, right.
You couldve said that the internet oh,
is it really going to allow us to communicate instantly via applications is something
like Twitter, which the 140-character message is that going to have political
implications, right. What you see with technology over time is
it starts as something really small, its used by a few people, its hard to use,
and then it evolves. So I guess from my perspective at CoinDesk,
right, I think for my journalist hat, so I. Need to skeptical to make sure the information
and news on our platform is accurate, up to date, and that ultimately theres no market
harm being done.
But someone whos trying to recruit the
next generation of journalists who devote their time and energy to this. I also encourage them to use their imagination
a bit, right. I think as Mike was saying, the technology
is limited today. It can do small things, but those things are
really powerful, right.
You have bitcoin, the example of this global
currency software that people are using. You have innovative concepts like Ethereum
which you might have heard of, where people think that they can launch applications that
behave differently without censorship. You do have to sort of I caution a little
bit against over-skepticism, because I think with technology, its easy to sort of criticize
everything and then to think, Oh, its useless, it doesnt do what its supposed
to do today. You do kind of have to live between these
two realities.
And the fact of the matter is, just like the
internet in the early 90s, we dont use pets.Com. Does that mean we dont buy pet food online? The answer is no, right. So were kind of living between these two
realities where, one, we see this future; why do we see this? Because we have this innovation. And we also have to live with the short term,
which is that the programs that Mike is doing at MIT, where people are exploring how do
you just evolve the base layers, thats going to evolve and grow over time, but probably
very slowly or thats so theres some difference between these two -- MR CASEY: Yeah, absolutely.
I want to pick up on the reference to the
90s, because I think its a useful one to think about. What we just went through and kind of are
still going through in the cryptocurrency world, youre probably aware that the price
of bitcoin soared it got up to $19,000 its now down actually, it had a
big jump up today, but, like, its a very volatile marketplace. And broadly, cryptocurrencies, ICOs, this
whole idea of the initial coin offering and I quite frankly believe it was and probably
still is a bubble, and a very kind of extreme and crazy one. But I think its worthwhile to really,
the way that people described it, actually, to think about these two things -- MR RIZZO: I think people saw my eyebrows when
you said that.
MR CASEY: Oh, yeah. (Laughter.) The beauty of this space is there can be differences
of opinion quite comfortably. MR RIZZO: Your opinion, yeah. MR CASEY: Inside of these organizations.
But look, I think it and certainly when
it and I but I think when I talk about a bubble, I talk about bubbles as being sort
of transitional things, by the way. Because we were in the middle of a bubble
at the end of 2013 when we got to $1,000; we came down. So who knows where bitcoin ends up, right. But my point is rather that the whats
going on underneath it is the most interesting thing.
So the dot-com bubble is really quite informative. We all tend to think about pets.Com and these
crazy ideas that just raised all this money, and then immediately went bust and people
lost loads of money, right. And thats what everyone talks about. They forget the fact that when youre when
speculation is unleashed and capital is unleashed, it goes to all sorts of places, some of which
in fact, a large amount of which, goes into infrastructure.
And that infrastructure sticks around and
it gets used by people in the future. So what happened during the dot-com bubble
was a lot of this money went into fiberoptic cable. It went into the development of 3G mobile
technology. It went into things like big data centers.
And all of that was then available when the
dust settled after the collapse of the boom, for the big players to come along the
Facebooks, the Amazons, the Googles, and others to give us this whole new realm of search,
social media, cloud computing all the stuff that we now take for granted was built
upon the foundation that was laid during the madness of the dot-com bubble. I think something similar is underway right
now. And this is, again, just my vision. I dont know this for sure.
But because of this sort of collective collaborative
pool of people who are being brought together around these ideas, theyre being incentivized
by these tokens, theres money being thrown at ideas. And theres this sort of like a social infrastructure
thats being developed. And the ideas theyre coming up with are
being laid down in a new form of foundation, and that foundation is open source code, right. Because those ideas get codified, and then
in sort of two or three years time, somebody comes along and says, Thats a great
idea.
I can take that code, and I can add some more
code here and build something else. Which is pretty much what Satoshi Nakamoto
did with bitcoin. He found a whole lot of ideas that were lying
around, cobbled them together, and came up with this incredible system. So I think that we need to think, again, about
the bubble.
To Petes point, be skeptical, because people
are making ridiculous amounts of money on what we often call vaporware theres
nothing there. But on the other hand, the broad kind of ecosystem
thats evolving around and including all this speculation is actually collectively
building something that could be very, very powerful in the future. MR RIZZO: Maybe we wanted to go to questions
now, or -- MODERATOR: Yeah, with a room full of journalists,
maybe that time has come. And well ask well have journalists
ask questions.
MR RIZZO: Sure. Great. QUESTION: Hi. Im Widad Franco with NHK, Japanese public
TV.
My apologies because I understand this very
little and its going to be a very basic question. MR RIZZO: Oh, great. QUESTION: So you hear a lot about and
even at the UN when they talk about using blockchain, they say that it because things
are trackable, it gives an opportunity for openness and transparency. In many ways, same as you were saying with
the WFP projects.
But so if its so trackable, why is
it used so much in the dark web or like, thats the part that I dont understand. How can it be accountable and then youre
using it for all these other things that you dont want to be tracked? So maybe theres something I dont understand
thats MR RIZZO: Yeah, I think the best way to answer
that is, like, everything is relative, right. So there is some things we choose to make
public online in certain ways and then might not be visible elsewhere. So I think when people say that blockchain
is blockchains are transparent, that means that they can be transparent if they are created
that way, and the people involved are maintaining that standard, right.
So these are open networks. And its not a guarantee that theyre
all going to evolve in the same way. Im struggling to think of, like, a really
good example for that. But -- MR CASEY: Well, bitcoin itself is a good way
to think about it, right.
Because so what bitcoin achieves that
is, the protocol bitcoin, the software itself is a public ledger that all these participants
can look at to assure themselves that the transactions are being sort of recorded accurately. So theres a certain amount of public information
thats required in that process. And thats whats public. Whats not public is the identity and
this is actually the key word of the individuals who are acting on that thing.
What bitcoin has actually, whats interesting,
a lot of people, and not only just sort of the anarchists and libertarians, but also
people who care about privacy for even business reasons say is a flaw of bitcoin is that even
though your identity is pseudonymous that is, you are identified by addresses that are
sequences of numbers and letters that actually reflect a unique address on the blockchain
that can be traced. And eventually, that tracing can find out
can link you to a real name, right. MR RIZZO: And thats not different from
concepts that we have today, right. Your phone number, if I found it on the street,
I wouldnt know that its yours necessarily.
But if I want to find out who you are based
on that information, I can. MR CASEY: Right. So some people are taking advantage of the
pseudonymous nature of that, and sort of funneling money around, because regulators cant see
that its you and so forth, right. But theyre also finding that sometimes
theyre getting caught.
And if you look at what Katie Haun, who was
formerly at the Department of Justice and worked on this, a famous case with the FBI
discovered she was able to identify ironically these two thieves were actually from the FBI,
who were supposed to be tracking down the perpetrator of the Silk Road stuff. But they were able to trace them all the way
down, and that became a bit of a use case that shows how bitcoin is not necessarily
the best way to hide money. It might be better to just get a big suitcase
full of Swiss francs or dollars, in fact. But that said, I mean, its that contrasts
the two.
And there are some people who are working
on privacy protocols, which actually make it much harder to trace the individuals, but
still give this sufficient amount of public information to prove the veracity of the information. And some people see that is going to be, yet,
another dark web problem, but others, including big banks on Wall Street, are happy to see
those developments with this technology because it means that when theyre entering into
market deals, they dont have to show their book, right, which is an important aspect
of business. So privacy is always this regulators and
law enforcement want to have everything public, but its not just crooks who want privacy,
right. Weve had a big discussion around privacy
lately.
So theres real benefits in trying to get
this balance right. QUESTION: Thank you. Martin Suter, I work for several Swiss newspapers. Since theres a lot of hype, I wonder sometimes
what can go wrong.
And I have two questions here, really. I mean, Im fascinated by the increasing
energy requirements to mint new bitcoins. Is there kind of a limit to that? I mean, it doesnt sound really scalable. And the other question is: What can go wrong
as far as when the government authorities kind of step in and kind of try to shut down
these systems? MR RIZZO: You want to -- MR CASEY: Two big questions.
You want -- MR RIZZO: The big question is lets
we can start with the energy requirement. So I guess to unpack that for people who are
unfamiliar, so blockchain is a software. In order to operate the software, you have
to run it on a computer, which requires some sort of hardware. In the case of bitcoin, the way the software
works is that the everyone is devoting their computer power to securing it, and the
protocol produces a reward for people who do that proportionate to how much computing
power they provide.
So theres a huge incentive for people to
provide more computing power. So hence you hear these things that bitcoin
mining and cryptocurrency mining takes a ton of electricity, which it does, right. So the innovation has been so great in the
sector that there are now specialized computers that only mine. They just use as much energy as possible to
try to put as much energy to securing the protocol and maximizing the rewards.
And theres some controversy about whether
that is good or bad, which I think, again, is a societal question that I think people
have to come to, right its like What is the value of the service that this provides? I think its an interesting question because
we dont ask that about things like the internet, right, or we dont ask about the
energy requirements of, like, running these softwares because we all accept that their
value is greater than the cost, right? So we you dont hear green energy people
talking about how much energy the internet takes, or if you do maybe Im not reading
the right newspapers. But I think we have this conception that energy
should be proportional to value. I think right now, the reason that theres
a lot of criticism here is the energy, maybe people dont think is proportionate to the
value. Maybe thats because they dont understand
the value that bitcoin provides or that, as a society, we havent accepted that yet,
or maybe as a society well never accept that, right? Well just say that this is too much electricity
for this cost and well never do it.
But I think thats important to remember
that thats a choice that we all make, right? We made the decision at some point that we
were going to make cars. Cars require a massive amount of resources
that need to be taken from the Earth, assembled, and they burn energy. Like, theres all right so the energy
question, I think, is fascinating because we often dont unpack just how wasteful
the systems that we use are, and when we see a new system, we sometimes dont evaluate
it on a what I think is, like, maybe a rational basis. MR CASEY: I think thats the best answer
that you can give to this, but I will just add something else, and that its like its
also useful to step back and think about how incentives work in this process because at
the end of the day, all of that energy thats being consumed is costing the miner money,
right? They have to pay for this.
Theyre not actually incentivized I
mean, there was a bit of an alarmist article today about this coal-fired power plant being
restarted to do bitcoin, which is terrible PR for it. But for the most part, what theyre looking
for is cheap energy, and the reality is that cheap energy is now last year, in much of
the world renewable, right? And so theres actually an incentive for
them to seek out renewable energy. Now, you can then throw that back and say,
Well, hang on a second. Thats going to displace the rest of us
who are using that renewable were going to have to start using dirty fuel.
So the point is, though, regardless of all
of that, that there is this constant incentive process built into it. And I would argue that because of this, there
will eventually if bitcoin reaches the level where we can truly start worrying about
its impact on the world, it will become so important that there will be incentives for
people to build the most efficient energy systems we have for renewable energies to
be developed and so forth. Yes. QUESTION: But isnt there something fundamentally
wrong if you have the technology that that needs increasing energy the longer you use
it? I mean, typically, what we want is something
I mean, the more it is used, it is needing less energy, more efficiency.
But here, this whole mining process becomes
ever more energy-dependent. I mean, it needs much more all the time. MR CASEY: But if we unpack what Pete said,
right so its about, like, what is the value of it, right? So if I mean, you just have to get speculative
about this. MR RIZZO: Yeah.
MR CASEY: But, like, if we were to push this
thing to the very end where bitcoin takes over the entire worlds recordkeeping system,
then presumably that would be the point at which we would no longer need to add any more
because its value its value will be determined, right the price of bitcoin will be determined
by its value to society. Weve continually increased the production
of all sorts of other things. This is a form of the production. The real question is and again, were
open about this.
Were not saying that necessarily bitcoin
is the right way to go, but that it is it that it be weighed against whatever other
costs it is displacing, right? So this expansion is at least I think
at least a bet on the idea that bitcoin will expand. Ill just say one quick thing about what
when people say because again, the answer most people say is, like, that bitcoins
useless, right? So therefore, why would we be wasting all
this energy on something thats useless? Well, thats obviously a value judgment,
but I think its very important for people to understand why a decentralized form of
value exchange is fundamentally valuable to society, right? It really gives peoples it is a very
empowering thing and it starts to sort of create a much more reliable foundation of
information upon which we can start to act. So its just that the point is its
a very complex question because we need to think about what is the value, and I know
thats hard to distill into a 400-word piece because its much easier to say coal-fired
plant bitcoin bad, but theres this much bigger, bigger question about value and what
were displacing. MR RIZZO: Yeah.
I think a lot of times, you have to ask a
question and then ask another question, right? So is the communication of information across
the globe worth the cost of the internet today? Maybe the answer is yes now. Is the uncensorable communication of value
worth the cost that bitcoin brings? Well have to decide that. MR CASEY: Yeah. MR RIZZO: Sure.
I dont know if were picking. MR CASEY: I dont know. Well let them pick here. QUESTION: Hi, Im Sara.
Im a reporter for The Nikkei, which is
a Japanese business newspaper. MR RIZZO: Oh, cool. Yeah. QUESTION: I have a question about ICOs.
MR RIZZO: Sure. QUESTION: So as you said, a lot of money is
coming into the market, even though there is limited tangible use cases, and especially
for ICOs, they allow people to raise money quickly and develop the technology. But when I talked to people who are doing
ICOs, they dont even have any they are they have good intention, but they
dont have actual technology right now. And do you think its still a good idea,
good tool like, ICOs is a good tool for people to be able to raise money at this point,
even though when like, there are, like, years of -- MR RIZZO: Yeah.
Thats a tough one. So just to unpack that a little bit I
dont know if people are familiar with ICOs. Theres this concept called the initial
coin offering. So what it is is, as you were saying, people
who want to build the software, they will go out to the community and they will say,
We will sell you the data that will run on the software and if you buy it, we will
make it, and itll do what we say, right? So theres this inherent promise where they
want to make something, theyre going to sell the thing by which it runs, and you hope
that they return that.
And I think in your case, this is one of those
things where its skepticism versus long-term imagination, right? So the long-term imagination is is it do
we want a system where anyone who has an idea can go to the open global internet community
and post their idea even if they dont have the infrastructure and allow people to invest
in their idea, whatever it is, as long as its a software-based blockchain-type system? Do we want that sort of ability of capital-raising? Or and but we and if we do, we
also have to accept the short term in which this is going to be a horribly abused thing
by people with no intention of ever delivering a software. This is what happens when new things are created. I think the short answer is a lot of the ICOs
are bad; a tremendous amount of them will produce nothing. I think that the reason for that is just that
its early, right? We dont really, as a society or a community
of intellectual, like, people who are looking at it is we dont really super-understand,
like, what this is, right? I think but that said, its important
to note that there have been cases in the past where this has been effective.
I think Ethereum is one of the most notable. So its the second-largest cryptocurrency
and it's called Ethereum, started by this now 24-year-old Canadian named Vitalik Buterin. He saw this vision that bitcoin was an uncensorable
valuable value protocol and he said, I. Want people to be able to build applications
to really have an app or a game or some type of service like I have on the internet, but
that cant be censored as well.
So he went out to the community, he raised
this money. The difference between him and the other people
who have done ICO-type fundraisings is he delivered the product, right? Ethereum is now something where all these
ICOs are even occurring because he built his original vision with this fundraising tool. So I think again, were its another
example where were living between the short-term reality and this long-term vision. Do we want to in the future empower more people
like this young computer scientist who had a vision that sounded very crazy at the time? A lot of people doubted him.
Do we want to empower him to be able to do
that and unlock that value, and then whats the cost? And I think in the short term, the cost is
always going to be that people will lose money, people will get scammed, and I think its
an unfortunate learning process, yeah. MR CASEY: Im going to weigh in just very
quickly because I know we want to get some more questions in, but I just want to say
as well that lessons of history are useful here. The first limited stock companies in The Netherlands
that emerged massive scams, massive hype. This always happens and what happens is society
then says, Oh, oh, oh, oh, how do we how do we deal with this? And we can deal with it in two ways.
One is it could be a top-down regulatory solution,
and theres a lot of that already happening and Im not passing judgment. I think thats one way to go about it. So the SEC and obviously, and Japans
addressing it, China has already banned ICOs. Theres a variety of regulatory reactions
you can have to that, but theres also this internal self-regulatory function that emerges
in these marketplaces.
So you look at the stock market, there are
ratings agencies, there are sort of stop-loss measures that get built into exchanges. Theres all these rules about segregated
accounts and theres rules about what minorities rules protecting minority investors. And some of that is, again, regulatory and
some of it is just best practices. And you know who plays a vital role in all
this, the development of these ecosystems, is the press, right? So a well-informed press that takes on a role
as being the BS radar capacity to ask questions actually is a critical part of the evolution
of this of this thing.
So we are very early days in the ICOs, but
in the future I think that its quite possible that these sorts of token issuances will be
just considered a very respectable way to issue things but precisely because society
is going to make it much harder for people to run off with their money. Theres always going to be scams, but well
get to a kind of a near-enough-is-good-enough type position where there is enough confidence
in the system. And we have to go through these waves of volatility
and bubbles and so forth until we get there, but I think this stuff is here to stay. I mean, I personally think that right now
if youre going to buy kind of cryptocurrencies, and we are definitely not here to give investment
advice, but theres a lot more safety in what we would see as mined coins that where
there is a decentralized system that well, theres okay, youre going to say
otherwise.
(Laughter.) MR RIZZO: I think I dont know if I
would go there. MR CASEY: Wouldnt go but okay, fine. But I -- MR RIZZO: I would just say that like theres
there are still email scams, right? Thats there are still social media
scams. I think technologies are always capable of
being abused.
Its just as they get older that theres
just less I didnt mean to -- MR CASEY: No, but I mean its just an interesting
point that if you like if you have a bunch of coins, tokens, and you sell them to the
public and theres nothing there, its quite different from a process by which there
is this decentralized network who are all competing to gain access to those things. MR RIZZO: But kind of tying back to you
were trying to tie it back to mining, I think, a little bit. MR CASEY: Yeah, thats what Im saying. Thats what mining is, right? So mining is a different way to get hold of
those coins.
QUESTION: One quick follow-up question. You mentioned about the voting system thats
been pilot like theres a pilot program thats been implemented. Is it done using ICOs or, like, is it ICO
necessary? Like are there any ICOs cases that close to
what the voting system achieves? MR CASEY: I dont this one Im talking
about is not doesnt use a cryptocurrency. Its a on a permissioned system, right? So thats a whole other conversation we
can have, but theres a very different -- MR RIZZO: Theres different flavors, yeah.
MR CASEY: -- different kind of blockchain
that doesnt require a cryptocurrency to be the incentive. In their case theyre looking to build out
its called I guess its called Voat, V-o-a-t, but it might be Voting, but
V-o-a-t is the name of the startup, something like that. They basically have a permission system where
they whereby theyre going other have a range of different actors. It might be the Republican party, the Democratic
party, the Federal Commission a variety of actors validating the network for their
own purposes.
Theyre not incentivized like bitcoin minors
are to carry out this validation work, to do this to do all that computation. So theres no presence of a coin in that
environment. But there are people looking at staking and
using coins. Theres a whole other conversation we can
have.
MR RIZZO: I just want to unpack some of the
terminology that youre using, because I. Think we as internet users so my whole
life Ive used the internet. Were very divorced from like how it functions,
right. So theres modems and theres fiber optic
cables, and then we use browsers which are on PCs, right? Theres this very innate understanding we
have of the delineation of, like, how it works, right? No one if you cant get online on your
computer, your instinct is not, Oh, the internet has crashed.
Like you are able to understand and have some
relational understanding of where you are and what the system is. Your first inclination might be I should
I check my modem? Is my phone dead? Does it am I even on a cellphone network,
right? You know how to ask questions that in this
current environment with blockchains its very difficult, because you dont have an
awareness of the topology of it because its hard to place yourself in relation to it. So even what Mike was saying with why it makes
sense to have, like, maybe a miner in the system, these are all just parts of the system,
and like, you dont always need all the same parts. They can be rearranged.
And part of the problem is we frankly just
dont really know what the best combinations are. And right now the R&D and the interest in
finding the right solution is so great that people are literally putting together every
combination that they can think of, right? Its like when you look at the pictures
of old flying machines. Its like one of the things in the space
youll see these old airplanes that like bounce, they literally bounce up and down,
right? Like you wouldn't get in one of those and
fly today because we understand that, like, rocket-propelled planes are better. And that took a lot of plane crashes, unfortunately,
yeah.
MODERATOR: So lets go to the Washington
Foreign Press Center, and then well come back to Barbara and to Ali. Go ahead, Washington. QUESTION: Okay, thank you. Thank you for the briefing.
I have two questions. My first question is about attitude of the
government lawmakers, and is it regulated or pushing it forward or just let it go without
any interferences? My second question is about how the blockchain
technology merged with the other (inaudible) technologies such as AI, IoT? And so thank you. MR RIZZO: The first one was regulation -- MR CASEY: Regulation, how are governments
approaching it. MR RIZZO: You want to take that? Youre the government -- MR CASEY: I love the government.
Definitely not the government. But I think that theres a variety of ways
in which governments are definitely taking an interest and more than an interest. They are acting now, and theyre approaching
it as governments will, I think, from the framework of their own existing policy topology. Its kind of like the law is framed by language,
and so at the moment, for example, there is a lot of focus on whether or not ICOs represent
securities.
And under the way that U.S. Law is framed,
whether it is appropriate or not, many people now believe that many of those ICOs are securities
and that the SEC will one way or another its taking a very long time and its taking
a very cautious approach is going to start making rules which will effectively retroactively
make a lot of those ICOs have to pay some sort of a price for the fact that theyve
actually issued unregistered securities. Thats a widely held view, at least its
an emerging view. Thats one area.
One another area where governments all
around the world and by the way, these positions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction,
and that makes it very interesting because its a global, borderless technology. Startups who want to form new ideas can very,
very easily, compared to other technologies, go and set up somewhere else. So ICOs, for example, are looked upon much
more favorably in places like Gibraltar and Malta, these sort of smaller jurisdictions. Singapore has another position thats a
little more flexible than the one that the SEC is likely to have.
All of this is happening on that. Other areas are what happens with tax, and
thats become more universal around the world. I think people are starting to see that bitcoin
and cryptocurrencies should be regarded as property. That doesnt mean that from the eyes
of the tax, right, not necessarily from the eyes of other areas of the government.
But the IRS views bitcoin as property, so,
therefore, you need to report your capital gains if you buy and sell currency. So thats another way to think about it. And then theres this whole question about:
Is it money? So the money transmission laws are being applied
largely around the areas of identity and know your customer so that whether or not exchanges
those that sort of buy and sell bitcoin for dollars, thereby moving people in and
out of the official financial system should be regulated as if they are money transmitters
and therefore be required to get identification of all their users and so forth. And theres another great variety of ways
in which different jurisdictions are applying that different barriers, different rules
and things.
And its quite interesting to see when somewhere
like New York introduced something called the BitLicense a few years ago. It did have an impact because it was seen
by many as being pretty onerous and fairly restrictive on the capacity of startups to
actually bootstrap their operations, because they had to come up with a lot more capital
to comply with the BitLicense laws. So New Yorks laws because again, this
another area. Weve got state-run jurisdictions and federal
jurisdictions.
It gets very complicated triggered quite
a bit of an exodus, so a lot of companies ended up going elsewhere or having to shut
down operations. And so this feeds into this whole conversation
about regulatory arbitrage where there is sort of all this globally competing operations
jurisdictions and therefore what that will do to the technology. So thats the first question. MR RIZZO: I think that was a great answer.
Im just going to add something small to
that, which is that as someone who is trying to encourage more people to do journalism
in this space, I think its unfortunate to me that theres so much emphasis in the
initial questions on regulation. It is really a rich tapestry of things that
are going on in terms of technological development and ideas, and if you are new to the space,
I would encourage you to think beyond those sort of easy questions, right? Its easy to kind of ask, like, about the
tax implications and the regulatory implications. And theyre very important; I dont mean
to undercut what Mike said. I think his answers were very good.
Its just that as someone who has kind of
dealt with a lot of introductory questions, I find that people sort of gravitate to this
one. And I keep asking myself why like why
is it that when we hear about blockchain we immediately ask if its, like, legal or
regulated. Theres something like psychological thats
kind of interested in it. And I think, like, did we really ask that
when people showed you a telephone? Did you think is it like okay other use this,
or did you spend all day like or did they spend all day trying to, like, reach other
people who had the telephone? And I sort of find myself wishing that more
people who ask questions just asked it about the technology rather than the rules around
it.
I just do think its because the technology
has the ability to produce money and value, theres it has triggered something in
us where we as journalists we ask these sort of questions that, I think if you applied
it in other contexts, they just like wouldnt be the first thing you think of, and I would
just implore you to go beyond that. MR CASEY: There was a second question, but
this is such a rich vein that I want to tap it a bit further, and it only because
I agree entirely with Pete. I wish people as well would ask other questions. But I think its interesting to also speculate
on the way we ask those questions.
Like, Is it a security? Is a question
thats framed by an existing set of laws, when in fact the technology may or may not
fit into that, right. In the prior book that we wrote, we had a
section where we wrote about regulation. We called it, square peg, round hole,
because weve established laws around the financial system, around what is money and
what are those things, and really once you have a decentralized record keeping system
in which tokens are a new form of money, it actually is not necessarily clear and
Ill say not necessarily, I dont know for sure, Im not a lawyer whether some
of these really should apply to any of these things. Sometimes it just doesnt apply.
This concept of custody, for example, which
is one that is applied for securities laws, is problematic when people talk about think
of a multisig custody, where two parties, both the user and the custodian, have control
over the bitcoin, and neither one can steal it. The custody questions becomes a different
one, right, its an example of how much it changes. MR RIZZO: And the way that I ask this in a
different way is that I think a lot of people, like, they ask the question like, Why is
bitcoin going up and down in value? And the better question is, Why does it
have value at all? And I think, like, thats the really interesting
thing, and its amazing to see people pass over it. Its like, how does this data system how
does this software how is it capable of even having value? That is a far more interesting question, but
people kind of fixate on this oh its up a thousand dollars, its down fifteen
thousand dollars it is behaving as money.
This is like a this is a data system that
behaves like systems have only been able to create in the way where governments issue
paper money. So its Im not sure, but I would
just encourage more people to look beyond that, right. Sometimes the question that you ask like
think about that question and what it means. It means that youve overseen youve
skipped over so much in just asking why is the price up or down.
Its the question is, why is the price,
why is it at all? I dont know. MR CASEY: Yeah, and we could thats
another one we could go down. Whats the wait, theres a second
question. MR RIZZO: Oh, the second question was AI -- QUESTION: (Off-mike.) MR CASEY: Okay, so theres a lot of AIs
Im not so sure about AI, I think thats way too complicated to think of how the blockchain
would interact with that.
There are lots of people trying to build systems
to keep track of all of the different interactions of data that are required to build AI systems,
and the idea that every single data entry could be logged in a way that we would have
a greater capacity to prove the veracity of that, might give us greater confidence in
the underlying information thats feeding the AIs. And so AI as blockchain is something that
enables AI is an interesting idea. And in a similar way, I think theres probably
even further advances being done on IoT, because in the same way that if you think about
a system of money whereby peoples transactions with each other need to be verified to allow
us to enter into economic exchanges, in an IoT world you will have multiple devices that
will need to exchange value. And that value can be money, but it can also
be data.
All of that is also going to need some sort
of decentralized logging system. Are we just going to have AWS or Google be
the mastermind ledger keeper of our entire Internet of Things? I dont think thats a great idea. We can think about a much more decentralized
architecture that would allow these things. But having said all of that, for both AI and
IoT, this is one of these moments when you especially have to put your BS radar on, because
is the technology ready? Because theres an enormous amount of data
that is going to be generated in these environments, and certainly none of the decentralized, purely
permissionless blockchains have the capacity, at the moment at least, to handle that, right.
MR RIZZO: I think thats a good answer,
yeah. QUESTION: Yeah, Barbara, from ISunTV in Hong
Kong. Council on Foreign Relations recently issued
paperwork its basically about the foreign policy advice paperwork and talking about
how United States should strengthen their position in the digital economy in terms of
this, the era of artificial intelligence. And I think thats a good paper because
its provide a lot of very down to earth advice on how to provide more educational
training opportunities for American people.
However, it is little bit disappointing to
find that theres no animation about this decentralized economy, which has been regarded,
especially by the technology field, as an inevitability of the future in the coming
decades. And meanwhile, we see that the the SEC
adopted a very over-heavy regulation adoptions afford this ICOs, and the lot of people,
and one of the most how do you say, the popular topics in the investment industry
now is talking about how to go to other Asian countries like Singapore, or European countries
like Switzerland, to go public, to get ICO. So yeah, so this is my question: since here
today we are in the Foreign Press Center in New York, I think probably I would like to
hear some sort of advice from the speakers. MR RIZZO: Well, I just think what youre
noting is that so it sounds like youre asking about the regulatory environment and
how do regulators respond when you can always go somewhere else where the rules are a little
bit better? QUESTION: Yeah, things like how to reform
the domestic -- MR CASEY: In the interest of promoting innovation,
right? Yeah.
QUESTION: Yeah. MR RIZZO: Oh, thats a little bit different
one, so -- MR CASEY: Well, no but I think that I
agree. I think certainly the Council on Foreign
Relations not mentioning blockchain technology and decentralized architectures generally,
is an oversight without a doubt. I mean, I share your disappointment.
I think that that that they need to be
confronting this. And I also think that that its absolutely
appropriate and important that government agencies and regulators think very hard about
what what their actions do in terms of promoting or discouraging innovation. And its not to say that they shouldnt
regulate some things, but there is this real concern, and I think that a starting point
would be to your original point that recognize that this is an important technology, and
therefore at least come up with a position and make sure that that position is informed
by the risk of innovation. I will I will challenge a little bit you
saying that the SEC is coming out with some very strict regulations.
Thats not its not quite right. The SEC has made a lot of signals about the
way its thinking; it hasnt actually acted very aggressively yet. It hasnt certainly hasnt written
any regulations. What its done is made a number of pronouncements
about how it views ICOs and these things in the context of existing laws.
And my concern with what theyre doing is
not that they dont have every right or that they shouldnt be doing this, but that
they might signal too much of their heavy-handed, draconian stuff, and not really try to recognize
that theres a lot of really innovative ideas. I worry, for example, that if all we talk
about with ICOs is the money thats being raised, and not this other idea of tokens,
which is called a utility token, which is a very, very interesting idea of how we use
our medium of exchange to actually change the governance of communities that use those
tokens, and start to resolve huge questions about resource use and efficiencies. That by just focusing on how much moneys
raised and therefore the ICOs, and whether its a security, were just not letting
this narrative emerge, and then the innovators are saying, Well, Im getting all the
wrong signals from here. Whether or not its true or not, the SECs
not signaling me right.
Im going to go off and do this in Singapore,
right. So, look, I think thats a very legitimate
concern, and I think that to the most part, when you do talk to U.S. Regulators, they
generally get the right message and they say, Were supportive of innovation, we want
to do this. I think they need to be aware that this is
a very different environment than the previous ones, precisely because its global and
open sourced.
And the understanding of what that messaging
is needs to be a bit more nuanced, I would say that much. MR RIZZO: Me? Yeah, I dont have any -- MR CASEY: Okay. Well give another one to MODERATOR: Lets go to Ali. QUESTION: Hi.
Ali Bekthaoui, I work for the newswire AFP. I had a question on value of bitcoin. Im sorry. Peter.
MR RIZZO: Its okay. QUESTION: Its own value. I just wanted to know that we went from
around $20,000 at the end of the year for bitcoin. Now we are around seven or eight thousand.
Is there whats the state of mind in
the bitcoin community? Is there some disappointment? Is there has bitcoin has bitcoin become
a boring asset like some other assets? And also, whats what are the reasons
why we have now a range around 7,000 for the bitcoin that has not really moved since two
months? MR RIZZO: Hmm, are you sure you dont want
to -- MR CASEY: This is you -- MR RIZZO: Im the value guy all the sudden? MR CASEY: You got all the market coverage,
youre -- MR RIZZO: So your question was why is it down
and how does the community view that, right? I think the people who are technologists,
they view it as, obviously an achievement, right? The fact that the money you can I
guess theres a few ways to view it, right? Think of how much money came out of the system,
and the exchanges are still up, people have been ostensibly getting their money and being
able to withdraw it. I think in some ways the bubble is a big achievement. The last time we had a bubble this big in
2013, exchanges went down, people werent able to claim money. In this case, we actually had a software system
escalate in value substantially, and then people got their money.
They may have gotten less money than they
put in, but thats a fact of all markets. But in terms of the actual design and structural
integrity of the bitcoin economy and I. Guess you can debate its relation to the regular
economy and like how sound it is. I dont think anyones going to argue
that the cryptocurrency market is sound, but it is functional above what it was four years
ago, right? If you look at what happened four years ago,
there was a huge spike in value, but the drawdown of that was not safe.
People lost money; people got hurt. In this case knock on wood minus a
few obvious soft spots in the system, it seems like we might have drawn down $500 billion
out of this technology system without any significant loss. Thats a big if. We might not know for some time if that was
successful.
In a lot of ways thats an achievement. I think its important to recognize thats
a -- is a legitimate technological achievement. And so the actual value of it, is $7,000 a
rational number? Ive been looking a lot at like old computer
advertisements, like PCs like once cost like $6,000. Like, so you have a calculator in your pocket
and everyone has a cell phone here that can perform calculating functions.
Someone used to charge $150 for that. So theres kind of two schools of thought
here, I guess. It depends on how you see the value of these
systems. Is the value that bitcoin provides today going
to become something thats so accessible that it isnt worth as much, right? Calculation its still the same as it
was in 1970.
Theres just we dont pay for it anymore. Its so basic to what we use, or is it going
to be something where it becomes more and more valuable over time and it becomes $50,000,
a million dollars? I dont know. I think theres two ways to look at it. One is that definitely technology improves.
Where that technology creates lasting value,
those are two separate things. QUESTION: But as an asset class, as an investment,
there is some disappointment on what it could have been, what some expectations -- MR CASEY: Well, I think it depends on who
youre talking to in the community. I mean, clearly, people who have been in this
for a while are just saying whatever. I mean, $8,000 is still significantly higher
than it was at the beginning of last year, right? So theres people who are still sitting
on massive gains even if they had entered the market in early 2017.
MR RIZZO: If you think about it, its like
if you even if you entered the market last May and it was $2,000 and it went up
to $20,000, it was possible for you to have captured, like, a ridiculous amount of the
total percentage returns of the asset. MR CASEY: Right. I mean, this so thats that perspective. Now, what is interesting is the fact that
you used the word asset class is interesting because that phrase has started to emerge
toward the end of 2017 and it was specifically focused on the professional investors.
So yeah, there might be a bunch of guys, the
hedge funds and others, who got in at 19,000. Actually, a lot of them might have been the
ones that were shorting it as well. We dont know. But the thing is theres definitely some
disappointment, one would think, for the newcomers, and those might have been mom and pop investors
and so forth.
Again, thats not very different from other
bubbles and things like that. I think your question though was specifically
the community, and I tend to think of the community as being folks whove been in
this for a while. This is like wow, this is just a slightly
more exaggerated in absolute terms, but certainly not necessarily in percentage terms, event
that looked weve been through this a number of times. Certainly we did it in 2013 and 2014.
MR RIZZO: I mean, I started reporting in 2013,
probably around the same time you did. I mean, some of the stuff you look at how
much value is in these systems. You can debate whether thats real value
or what those numbers represent. I think its definitely sobering and its
definitely an achievement even at this current price, yeah.
MR CASEY: I mean, its very volatile. And its one of the reasons why its hard
if you just think about bitcoin as a pure currency play to buy your cups of coffee with
and so forth, all of that is problematic, but theres a whole other conversation we
can have about what what a sort of a functioning cryptocurrency would look like for the purposes
of that. But I think Petes point about like just
I think the test that the market was put to through this is really important, and also
what is the value? I think really important to just say the very
fact that it has value, I tend to think that it comes down to the very existence of a censorship-resistant
record of transactions. That very fact, in and of itself, is incredibly
powerful.
MR RIZZO: Yeah, so bitcoin isnt just value. It is also a way to communicate value. So all cryptocurrencies are that, right? So you get into, like, theres all these
shady cryptocurrencies. Theres like thousands of them.
They all can be traded. Thats like another thing that I think people
pass over a lot, is like the worst cryptocurrency, like you can go down the bottom of the list,
scroll down to the absolute bottom of CoinMarketCap or whatever data service, its like it still
can be sent to someone else. You can hand over the keys to those assets
to someone else. At the worst of the worst of the technology,
there is it still provides utility.
It still is able to capture the spark of value. MR CASEY: You might not want to own it yourself. MR RIZZO: Yeah, you might not want to. (Laughter.) But theoretically you can.
MR CASEY: Yes, exactly. Its that functionality thats actually
the most interesting aspect of it all. MODERATOR: So we have time for one last question. MR CASEY: That one in the front here, I dont
think I think this MODERATOR: (Off-mike.) QUESTION: Thank you.
Im Weier Ge with China Business Network. So my question is: How soon can we see a real
application in, like, daily life from blockchain technology? And if you would like to predict it, it could
be in what area? MR CASEY: I think we already have them in
the same way they just dont have the word blockchain on the front of them. Blockchain is going to be a back-office solution,
right? Its not the thing that sits when you
get in your car, you are not driving an internal combustion engine, right? Youre driving the application, which is
the car. Weve already bitcoin is an application
of blockchain, right? That WFP, the World Food Program, still its
a pilot but its an actually ongoing, functioning, real pilot in real life for those refugees,
right? There are supply chain applications that are
being used, and I think to answer the second part of your question, I think supply chains,
for the time being largely on permissioned blockchains, are a real potentially a useful
use case because you have this problem of multiple parties who have a common interest
of wanting to sell more and more of the final good but dont necessarily trust each other.
So this is a technology that grapples with
the core problem of human mistrust, and in a supply chain thats a problem with a common
goal, and thats whats interesting about that. So I think supply chains are theres
a lot of energy going into developing supply chain applications largely on permissioned
which is not quite decentralized systems. But yeah, there are already stuff not
a lot. Thats absolutely true.
And the skeptics who say show me this show
me my hoverboard, wheres the magical blockchain solution, are right to suggest that its
not pervasively in society. But this is a massive change, this technology,
an enormous it requires an enormous amount of development. It took 30 years for the internet to get to
the level where it could be applied. Were dealing with something very similar.
Its incredibly complex. Were talking about the way human beings
share value with each other. Weve been using centralized recordkeeping
for 2,000 or maybe 6,000 years. Since the beginning of civilization weve
had somebody that keeps the record.
Shifting that process, that core function
of civilization to a decentralized architecture isnt going to be easy, right? So its inevitably early days, and I think
its important to step back and say, to be actually quite wowed by the fact that bitcoin
is doing what bitcoin is doing. And we joke about if we only really one
of the most one of ICOs are a proven use case on Ethereum. I would also say that. That is actually a fundraising vehicle that
works on Ethereum.
One of the other Ethereums is cryptokitties,
and cryptokitties is joked about as a kind of a useless thing. People made nonreplicable versions of these
digital avatars, right? Theyre cats and they could breed with each
other and come up with a different cat. And that seems completely pointless, and thats
one narrative you can say is, like, this is the most ridiculous waste of energy and effort. But what were talking about is something
really powerful, a digital creative work that is able to be MR RIZZO: Traded.
MR CASEY: -- traded. And it cant change. Its a unique digital work. Think about photos.
Think about how think about the pirating
of anything, right? So theres stuff being built thats pretty
powerful, and we need to MR RIZZO: I have those Topps baseball cards. That would be called cryptokitties tomorrow,
right? Youve been able to create a finite thing
that people can trade digitally Going back to your question, I think, about
predicting when things will happen, I have said this a few years ago and I think its
true: Its likely that this technology will produce the stupidest things for, like, a
very long time. MR CASEY: The internet was pretty good at
doing that at from the start. MR RIZZO: Until their usefulness is, like,
at a huge scale where its actually somewhat awe-inspiring you go through Twitter and
like YouTube and like all these things where the initial use cases, like, are sometimes
like, how different is Twitter versus people spamming each other on message boards
in 1990? The difference is one impacted an election
one can impact elections, and one doesnt.
And I think its very unlikely that we maybe
get tons of new things. I think blockchains are already things. There are already very varied, and I think
theyll just be exceedingly dumb until theyre not. Yeah, I dont know.
MR CASEY: Exceedingly dumb. More dumb than you can imagine. (Laughter.) MR RIZZO: But like thats how innovation
starts, right? People just make MR CASEY: Yes, it is. I mean, the internet began with porn, right? We all know that.
(Laughter.) MR RIZZO: Maybe your idea. (Laughter.) MODERATOR: So were officially out of time
and we want to thank Michael Casey and Pete Rizzo very much for coming today. Todays briefing was on the record. I will be sending out some information on
how to get a press pass for Consensus, but Thomas Hannaford in the back as well can ask
can answer any questions.
And again, thank you so much..
the chairman of the CoinDesk Advisory Board and senior advisor at the MIT Media Labs Digital
Currency Initiative. And we also have Peter Rizzo, who is the editor-in-chief
of CoinDesk, and were so pleased to have both of them here.
Just a few housekeeping items before I start. Please take a moment to silence your cellphones. At the conclusion of our speakers remarks,
well open the floor to questions. Please wait for the microphone before you
ask your question.
Id ask as a courtesy that you state your
name and your media affiliation. Todays briefing is on the record, and with
that, let me turn it over to Pete. MR RIZZO: Great. Yes, thanks for having us.
Can you hear me? Is this mikes good? Great. So I guess a little bit more about myself. My names Pete Rizzo, editor for CoinDesk.Com. Were the global leader in blockchain news.
Were also the organizer of the upcoming
conference Consensus, which will be in New York this May from the 14th to the 16th. Thats part of New York Blockchain Week,
which is a series of about seven or eight events now that will all focus on blockchain
technology. So I think for our talk were going to start
pretty high-level: What is blockchain technology from 10,000 feet? But I guess from our vantage point, were
dealing with an industry thats very multifaceted, all these events that break it into all these
different segments for different audiences of different people. So thats a little bit about me and my work.
Mike, do you want to talk about your -- MR CASEY: Yeah, sure. Okay, great, thanks for having us, everybody. So I wear two hats, this one with CoinDesk
where Im the chairman of the advisory board. We have a board made up of a number of experts
representing industry and academia helping us sort of shape the narrative around essentially
what matters with this technology as it goes forward.
And the reason why people like Simon Johnson,
for example, who is a MIT Sloan professor gets involved in this is because a lot of
us see this technology as this enabling platform for a very different economic model going
forward, and that the more that it develops, the more important it is that a lot of these
different segments and these different structures get evolved. So my other hat is as a senior advisor at
MIT Media Labs Digital Currency Initiative, where, similarly, were working on trying
to sort of build out the underlying infrastructure of this technology and look at a lot of the
use cases, especially those that apply in a sort of social impact context, some of which
deal with the UN and deal with kind of international contexts for this. So really, this is a very broad topic. Blockchain is just a technology, but because
of what its sort of tackling in terms of record keeping and in terms of the way in
which we prove out and get consensus around facts, it has extremely broad applications,
because the kind of veracity of information the question is fundamental to how
civilization works, basically, and how economies evolve.
And Im going to make one little sort of
very shameless pitch: Just wrote a book. Its called The Truth Machine; its the
sequel to a previous book with my coauthor from The Wall Street Journal, Paul Vigna The
Truth Machine, The Blockchain, and the Future of Everything. So its a good kind of explainer, and some
of the ideas that Ill be talking about today draw from the themes that we work through
in that book. MR RIZZO: Great.
Well, I think I want to focus in and hone
on something you said there, that blockchain is a technology. I think thats something that, dealing with
many people coming to this from many walks of life, theyre oftentimes hearing about
blockchain in very strange contexts. They see this wall of numbers, they see these
coin prices going up and down, they see these funny-named startups raising billions of dollars,
so maybe lets just unpack that a little bit. What makes blockchain a technology, I guess,
and how do you explain it or introduce it as a technology? MR CASEY: Yeah, so, I mean, essentially, it
to me is a mechanism for allowing a network of computers to arrive at consensus.
And so theres this -- MR RIZZO: And what is consensus? MR CASEY: So consensus is the kind of
effectively an agreement, right? So the idea that there is a record in
this case, its a ledger that is a record of transactions. The first use case is the best way to explain
that: bitcoin, which is a currency in which transactions are recorded, and every single
transaction is essentially recorded in this ledger. What needs to happen for that ledger and,
therefore, the currency itself to function in a fully decentralized way a manner
in which nobody has any sort of central control over what happens is that there has to
be a mechanism by which all of the computers that are separately maintaining the ledger,
independently maintaining the same ledger, can arrive at consensus and then upgrade that
ledger on an ongoing basis. And thats -- MR RIZZO: I think its yeah, I think
its important that blockchain is a software.
MR CASEY: Right. MR RIZZO: I think thats one of the things
thats often undersold about it. So you see these images of coins, of gold,
but this is a computer program. People are running it on real computers, and
but its able to create this huge economic or sort of network effect.
When you see that, how do you explain those
two? MR CASEY: Yeah, actually, its quite useful,
I think, to do what I think I did when I first got into this space. I was a journalist myself at the Wall Street
Journal, and the first thing that most people do when they hear about bitcoin is they just
think of a coin or a piece of paper or something digital, so thats a digital representation
of this physical thing. And its actually the wrong way to think
about it. Its actually when you go down the rabbit
hole, you discover that money itself is not actually these tokens either; its actually
those just represent what money is, which is this process by which we keep track of
our exchanges and our records, right? So thats when you when you do that
and you see that, then you can start to say, well, what is bitcoin? Well, bitcoin is a software, is a technology
that allows us to better maintain that record.
And then when you go down that further
down that hole, you start to realize, well, actually how could we apply this recordkeeping
function, this decentralized way of tracking transactions to all sorts of other things? And if you think about it, much of our exchanges
of value with people are essentially transactions. When you write a post on Facebook, right,
youre effectively transacting. Youre transacting in data, and data is
valuable. So what we now have is the capacity to keep
track of all many, many other forms of data that take to take something valuable,
and the value part, I think, is really important as well.
MR RIZZO: Yeah, Id like to start a little
bit, even a step back from that, I think its important to also realize its a software,
but were here because this is a computer science innovation, right? So we all communicate via protocols and algorithms
today. We send data through, essentially, these complex
computer programs. The difference with bitcoin in terms of it
being a computer science innovation is it operates differently than the other protocols
we use today. An example I like to use is SMS, right? So if you send a text message if you send
20 text messages or 40 text messages, the protocol doesnt care.
It doesnt need to know how much youre
using. Those texts are the same to everybody. If you send an email, you dont necessarily
need to know who sent that email where, right? Were all using the sort of common protocol
but we dont necessarily have a need to understand how much other people are using
it. Whats interesting is with money, thats
totally different.
If I send you money and I send the same money
to someone else and you both try to use your monies, well, only one of you can really have
the money. So again, just backing up, I think its
helpful to view blockchain broadly. Its an innovation in computer science. It essentially governs and moves data in a
different way than weve seen before and its, in many ways, like a lot of the things
we use but sort of take for granted today, whether its HTTP or SMS or the Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol.
Theres all these ways that govern data. This is a new way of governing data. I think what becomes hard, then, as Mike alluded
to, is just how do you make this tangible, right? I think the ways that people do it, its
maybe this visualization of coins, but youre bringing up the UN itself has done some
tests as sort of -- MR CASEY: Yeah. MR RIZZO: -- proof how these protocols can
be put into a real-life context.
MR CASEY: Yeah, theres actually theres
so many different UN cases. One of the before I mention the UN cases
I think its a really important way to look at but that one that I think
is interesting, right so what Petes talking about in terms of this need to assure
that data thats transferred in some cases cannot be replicated and money is the
classic case can be applied in lots of other realms as well. So his point is like, yeah, SMS messages it
doesnt matter. Its like theres no real value attached
to the message, per se.
Once we place value on it, its important. Think of one area that might be useful
to think about where this happens is voting, right? So we cant if youre going to be
voting, which is a form of sending a message, and you want to do that electronically, you
obviously dont want the person to be able to send multiple votes. So what we call the double-spend problem when
it comes to bitcoin, right we dont you cant be allowed to double-spend
the same bitcoin or the same dollar or the same anything else that has value. You cant double-spend a vote, right? So thats how we start to think about data
structures where its really important that there is this integrity and the lack of replicatability
to that data, it becomes really important.
So I think thats a good one to voting as
and there are people working on interesting voting applications around this. Theres even a test being done, a pilot
with absentee voters for a Massachusetts one particular Massachusetts county. And the reason why thats kind of interesting
is because these absentee voters have never had a secret ballot before. The whole point of mailing in the ballot required
that there had to be a third party to the so now, you can through this protocol,
potentially its a pilot, well see what happens.
But in theory, the idea would be that you
can vote on your phone, and whereas that would have seemed like a sort of a really risky
thing in the past because the person could double vote, because of this protocol we now
have the potential to both create single one person, one vote functions on the phone, and
give them the secrecy of being able to vote on their own, right. So these are the kinds of ideas that are coming
up. Shall I weigh in on the UN, I mean MR RIZZO: Well just I think its just
important to have tangible examples. MR CASEY: Yeah, exactly.
MR RIZZO: I think the voting one was good,
and I think what you were saying is this can be applied in a lot of contexts, and I think
one of the great narratives around the space right now is or the technology itself
is theres this great R&D that is happening globally to try to figure out, where can this
be applied? What are the specific problems that this solves? You might hear that blockchain is a solution
looking for a problem, and to an extent thats partly true. But its also important to remember that
the reason its a solution is that it solves a real problem in computer science. And it is put forth in the market in a similar
way to other things that you are used to, right; theres all these protocols, now
there are new financial protocols, maybe nonfinancial protocols. MR CASEY: Well, the World Food Program, right,
is a really good example of this.
They have a pilot its fairly large
in fact in Jordan, in a Syrian refugee camp where theres this fundamental concern
if theyre going to be delivering food. And they deliver food in a kind of a token
basis, right, so its a youre not delivering food. MR RIZZO: Whats a token, is a its
a -- MR CASEY: A token that represents a right
to a food distribution of some sort, and they can spend that token at different at different
places. But theres this traditionally, in these
camps, thereve been sort of a lack of control over it, its theyre not well policed,
there are crooks who get in there and do all sorts of things, theres violence around,
taking charge of peoples tokens.
But now theyve got a control over it, because
only they have the right, they have the private key that gives them the access to that. In this case, the private key is a biometric
model, which has other questions, but nonetheless its only them that can do this, right. So thats that level of it, but the other
part is it tracks every food distribution transaction so that they they can sort
of, at any given time, have a universal record of where how much food is being spent. And so even though theyre using multiple
different vendors, different little grocers, the WFP is able to actually keep track of
this.
MR RIZZO: Well, I was just going to say, bouncing
off what you were saying, one of the reasons I think people are looking to deploy this
the technology in these contexts is, again, blockchains are software, and software is
fairly cheap. As weve seen with other software solutions,
you can think about the web and mobile boom in startups, right, that its really easy
to have a new startup, to have a new software and to try to apply it in a certain context,
and then again, thats what were seeing is this great R&D. But there are sort of limitations to what
the technology can do today, and that speaking of another narrative, is theres a lot of
overstatement about what the technology is capable of. Theres a lot of people who are maybe looking
to exploit.
And journalism I guess at CoinDesk, one
of the things we deal with a lot is people who are saying things that are incorrect in
the market or that may cause market harm. So I guess I maybe wanted to ask you I guess,
what advice would you give to people who are coming to the space maybe new? How do they delineate how do they make
sense of these what may seem like a wild claim, right, the ability we can send value
anywhere in the world now at a fairly low cost, right. That may seem like a ridiculous claim, and
you have other ridiculous claims like how do you kind of figure out -- MR CASEY: Yeah. So, like, having coming from journalism, and
academia I think, I can speak to both of those.
One is keep the I supposed its
okay to just use the acronym, right, the BS. Meter should be held kept on strong strong
force. Because theres a lot of people when you
come to this phase where (a) not a lot of people understand it, (b) there are there
is the capacity to overstretch and overhype what it can be, and (c) theres a lot of
money to be made because of the sort of this money raising thats going on in the cryptocurrency
market. So you do get scammers, lots of them, who
will come in and make these wild claims and raise money quickly.
So first of all, just to be skeptical. And I would heres a pitch Ill put
in for MIT Media Lab: one of the reasons why the digital currency initiative was established
by Joi Ito, who is the director of the Media Lab those of you from the Japanese media
probably know about Joi, hes quite a personality in Japan was to recognize that just as
the internet needed this buildout of the protocols before wed be ready to add all the applications
on top of it, theres still an enormous amount of work that needs to go into what
we call the base layer, right. So the internet works on TC/PIP, and not many
people know about it. Its like the internal combustion engine,
if you like, of the internet.
And many of us dont even know about it,
but its absolutely critical that transmission control protocol and the internet protocol
the combination of those two gave us the structure of the internet that allowed
information to be shared in a distributed way. Getting that right took 30 years, it was just
done in quiet by DARPA and at Stanford. Now unfortunately, we have to build out the
similar kind of idea for bitcoin and for blockchain with the whole world watching it and throwing
money at it, and its much harder. So institutions like MIT, but also I would
be remiss to talk about Cornell and Princeton and others, Stanford who are really working
hard on these things.
Were very much focused on this buildout
of the infrastructure, to make sure it works, and to make sure its scalable, because
one of the challenges that we face is some of these things work in a very small context,
and even bitcoin has serious challenges in terms of how many transactions it can do per
second. If we want to roll this out and make this
a solution for the entire world, we really need it to be more robust and more scalable. And so one of the things thats happening
at MIT is this development, something called the Lightning Network. So I dont want to get too geeky here, but
its a its sort of a middle layer or a second layer solution.
If you think about what software does, its
a stack. It starts off with this base layer, and then
you add the middle layer, middleware, and then you get software and you get applications. So Lightning is kind of like a middle layer
or middleware, and it it takes a lot of the pressure off all of the processing thats
needed in bitcoin. And thats one of the things thats being
developed at MIT.
We have the lead architect of that project. So these are the kinds of things that need
to happen. And so when youre looking to bring
it back to the point about what a journalist should be looking for just know that a
lot of work needs to happen, seek out the experts who are working on that base level. Its not to say that the people who are
doing work on impressive applications arent also valid, and in many respects its their
work that helps inform the work that happens at the infrastructure level.
But you need to think about it as the evolution
of a big ecosystem. The one last thing Ill say it picks
up on what Pete was saying this R&D process is fascinating, because unlike technology
that is run by, say, IBM when its in its closed house, or GE or any company for that
matter who has its own R&D outfit, its all proprietary and its all controlled
by their own mindset much of this technology is open-source. So its a hive mind, its -- MR RIZZO: What do you mean by open source? MR CASEY: Right, so these are open licenses. You write the code, you develop the code,
and it can be used by other people.
Bitcoin and others have certain controls as
to who can actually commit code to that, but theres a process by which others can all
contribute to it. But just as importantly, you can take that
code, you can copy it without any legal ramifications and create a fork, create a different version
of it, work on top of it. All these things make for a much more vibrant
and open and innovative ecosystem of invention and R&D. So when people say, Well, bitcoin can only
do seven transactions a second and it cant scale, and so forth, thats all true
in the moment, but I think its unwise to assume that theres not a really good chance
that this massive there are literally thousands and thousands of developers around
the world who are working on this stuff will come up with solutions one way or another.
Its very hard to predict what those are,
but there is this is a very dynamic environment, and I think its one of the most important
aspects of whats going on. MR RIZZO: Yeah, I think the important balance
here is between short-term thinking and long-term thinking, right. In the short-term, its easy to undervalue
everything. In the long-term, a lot of that stuff comes
true, right.
You couldve said that the internet oh,
is it really going to allow us to communicate instantly via applications is something
like Twitter, which the 140-character message is that going to have political
implications, right. What you see with technology over time is
it starts as something really small, its used by a few people, its hard to use,
and then it evolves. So I guess from my perspective at CoinDesk,
right, I think for my journalist hat, so I. Need to skeptical to make sure the information
and news on our platform is accurate, up to date, and that ultimately theres no market
harm being done.
But someone whos trying to recruit the
next generation of journalists who devote their time and energy to this. I also encourage them to use their imagination
a bit, right. I think as Mike was saying, the technology
is limited today. It can do small things, but those things are
really powerful, right.
You have bitcoin, the example of this global
currency software that people are using. You have innovative concepts like Ethereum
which you might have heard of, where people think that they can launch applications that
behave differently without censorship. You do have to sort of I caution a little
bit against over-skepticism, because I think with technology, its easy to sort of criticize
everything and then to think, Oh, its useless, it doesnt do what its supposed
to do today. You do kind of have to live between these
two realities.
And the fact of the matter is, just like the
internet in the early 90s, we dont use pets.Com. Does that mean we dont buy pet food online? The answer is no, right. So were kind of living between these two
realities where, one, we see this future; why do we see this? Because we have this innovation. And we also have to live with the short term,
which is that the programs that Mike is doing at MIT, where people are exploring how do
you just evolve the base layers, thats going to evolve and grow over time, but probably
very slowly or thats so theres some difference between these two -- MR CASEY: Yeah, absolutely.
I want to pick up on the reference to the
90s, because I think its a useful one to think about. What we just went through and kind of are
still going through in the cryptocurrency world, youre probably aware that the price
of bitcoin soared it got up to $19,000 its now down actually, it had a
big jump up today, but, like, its a very volatile marketplace. And broadly, cryptocurrencies, ICOs, this
whole idea of the initial coin offering and I quite frankly believe it was and probably
still is a bubble, and a very kind of extreme and crazy one. But I think its worthwhile to really,
the way that people described it, actually, to think about these two things -- MR RIZZO: I think people saw my eyebrows when
you said that.
MR CASEY: Oh, yeah. (Laughter.) The beauty of this space is there can be differences
of opinion quite comfortably. MR RIZZO: Your opinion, yeah. MR CASEY: Inside of these organizations.
But look, I think it and certainly when
it and I but I think when I talk about a bubble, I talk about bubbles as being sort
of transitional things, by the way. Because we were in the middle of a bubble
at the end of 2013 when we got to $1,000; we came down. So who knows where bitcoin ends up, right. But my point is rather that the whats
going on underneath it is the most interesting thing.
So the dot-com bubble is really quite informative. We all tend to think about pets.Com and these
crazy ideas that just raised all this money, and then immediately went bust and people
lost loads of money, right. And thats what everyone talks about. They forget the fact that when youre when
speculation is unleashed and capital is unleashed, it goes to all sorts of places, some of which
in fact, a large amount of which, goes into infrastructure.
And that infrastructure sticks around and
it gets used by people in the future. So what happened during the dot-com bubble
was a lot of this money went into fiberoptic cable. It went into the development of 3G mobile
technology. It went into things like big data centers.
And all of that was then available when the
dust settled after the collapse of the boom, for the big players to come along the
Facebooks, the Amazons, the Googles, and others to give us this whole new realm of search,
social media, cloud computing all the stuff that we now take for granted was built
upon the foundation that was laid during the madness of the dot-com bubble. I think something similar is underway right
now. And this is, again, just my vision. I dont know this for sure.
But because of this sort of collective collaborative
pool of people who are being brought together around these ideas, theyre being incentivized
by these tokens, theres money being thrown at ideas. And theres this sort of like a social infrastructure
thats being developed. And the ideas theyre coming up with are
being laid down in a new form of foundation, and that foundation is open source code, right. Because those ideas get codified, and then
in sort of two or three years time, somebody comes along and says, Thats a great
idea.
I can take that code, and I can add some more
code here and build something else. Which is pretty much what Satoshi Nakamoto
did with bitcoin. He found a whole lot of ideas that were lying
around, cobbled them together, and came up with this incredible system. So I think that we need to think, again, about
the bubble.
To Petes point, be skeptical, because people
are making ridiculous amounts of money on what we often call vaporware theres
nothing there. But on the other hand, the broad kind of ecosystem
thats evolving around and including all this speculation is actually collectively
building something that could be very, very powerful in the future. MR RIZZO: Maybe we wanted to go to questions
now, or -- MODERATOR: Yeah, with a room full of journalists,
maybe that time has come. And well ask well have journalists
ask questions.
MR RIZZO: Sure. Great. QUESTION: Hi. Im Widad Franco with NHK, Japanese public
TV.
My apologies because I understand this very
little and its going to be a very basic question. MR RIZZO: Oh, great. QUESTION: So you hear a lot about and
even at the UN when they talk about using blockchain, they say that it because things
are trackable, it gives an opportunity for openness and transparency. In many ways, same as you were saying with
the WFP projects.
But so if its so trackable, why is
it used so much in the dark web or like, thats the part that I dont understand. How can it be accountable and then youre
using it for all these other things that you dont want to be tracked? So maybe theres something I dont understand
thats MR RIZZO: Yeah, I think the best way to answer
that is, like, everything is relative, right. So there is some things we choose to make
public online in certain ways and then might not be visible elsewhere. So I think when people say that blockchain
is blockchains are transparent, that means that they can be transparent if they are created
that way, and the people involved are maintaining that standard, right.
So these are open networks. And its not a guarantee that theyre
all going to evolve in the same way. Im struggling to think of, like, a really
good example for that. But -- MR CASEY: Well, bitcoin itself is a good way
to think about it, right.
Because so what bitcoin achieves that
is, the protocol bitcoin, the software itself is a public ledger that all these participants
can look at to assure themselves that the transactions are being sort of recorded accurately. So theres a certain amount of public information
thats required in that process. And thats whats public. Whats not public is the identity and
this is actually the key word of the individuals who are acting on that thing.
What bitcoin has actually, whats interesting,
a lot of people, and not only just sort of the anarchists and libertarians, but also
people who care about privacy for even business reasons say is a flaw of bitcoin is that even
though your identity is pseudonymous that is, you are identified by addresses that are
sequences of numbers and letters that actually reflect a unique address on the blockchain
that can be traced. And eventually, that tracing can find out
can link you to a real name, right. MR RIZZO: And thats not different from
concepts that we have today, right. Your phone number, if I found it on the street,
I wouldnt know that its yours necessarily.
But if I want to find out who you are based
on that information, I can. MR CASEY: Right. So some people are taking advantage of the
pseudonymous nature of that, and sort of funneling money around, because regulators cant see
that its you and so forth, right. But theyre also finding that sometimes
theyre getting caught.
And if you look at what Katie Haun, who was
formerly at the Department of Justice and worked on this, a famous case with the FBI
discovered she was able to identify ironically these two thieves were actually from the FBI,
who were supposed to be tracking down the perpetrator of the Silk Road stuff. But they were able to trace them all the way
down, and that became a bit of a use case that shows how bitcoin is not necessarily
the best way to hide money. It might be better to just get a big suitcase
full of Swiss francs or dollars, in fact. But that said, I mean, its that contrasts
the two.
And there are some people who are working
on privacy protocols, which actually make it much harder to trace the individuals, but
still give this sufficient amount of public information to prove the veracity of the information. And some people see that is going to be, yet,
another dark web problem, but others, including big banks on Wall Street, are happy to see
those developments with this technology because it means that when theyre entering into
market deals, they dont have to show their book, right, which is an important aspect
of business. So privacy is always this regulators and
law enforcement want to have everything public, but its not just crooks who want privacy,
right. Weve had a big discussion around privacy
lately.
So theres real benefits in trying to get
this balance right. QUESTION: Thank you. Martin Suter, I work for several Swiss newspapers. Since theres a lot of hype, I wonder sometimes
what can go wrong.
And I have two questions here, really. I mean, Im fascinated by the increasing
energy requirements to mint new bitcoins. Is there kind of a limit to that? I mean, it doesnt sound really scalable. And the other question is: What can go wrong
as far as when the government authorities kind of step in and kind of try to shut down
these systems? MR RIZZO: You want to -- MR CASEY: Two big questions.
You want -- MR RIZZO: The big question is lets
we can start with the energy requirement. So I guess to unpack that for people who are
unfamiliar, so blockchain is a software. In order to operate the software, you have
to run it on a computer, which requires some sort of hardware. In the case of bitcoin, the way the software
works is that the everyone is devoting their computer power to securing it, and the
protocol produces a reward for people who do that proportionate to how much computing
power they provide.
So theres a huge incentive for people to
provide more computing power. So hence you hear these things that bitcoin
mining and cryptocurrency mining takes a ton of electricity, which it does, right. So the innovation has been so great in the
sector that there are now specialized computers that only mine. They just use as much energy as possible to
try to put as much energy to securing the protocol and maximizing the rewards.
And theres some controversy about whether
that is good or bad, which I think, again, is a societal question that I think people
have to come to, right its like What is the value of the service that this provides? I think its an interesting question because
we dont ask that about things like the internet, right, or we dont ask about the
energy requirements of, like, running these softwares because we all accept that their
value is greater than the cost, right? So we you dont hear green energy people
talking about how much energy the internet takes, or if you do maybe Im not reading
the right newspapers. But I think we have this conception that energy
should be proportional to value. I think right now, the reason that theres
a lot of criticism here is the energy, maybe people dont think is proportionate to the
value. Maybe thats because they dont understand
the value that bitcoin provides or that, as a society, we havent accepted that yet,
or maybe as a society well never accept that, right? Well just say that this is too much electricity
for this cost and well never do it.
But I think thats important to remember
that thats a choice that we all make, right? We made the decision at some point that we
were going to make cars. Cars require a massive amount of resources
that need to be taken from the Earth, assembled, and they burn energy. Like, theres all right so the energy
question, I think, is fascinating because we often dont unpack just how wasteful
the systems that we use are, and when we see a new system, we sometimes dont evaluate
it on a what I think is, like, maybe a rational basis. MR CASEY: I think thats the best answer
that you can give to this, but I will just add something else, and that its like its
also useful to step back and think about how incentives work in this process because at
the end of the day, all of that energy thats being consumed is costing the miner money,
right? They have to pay for this.
Theyre not actually incentivized I
mean, there was a bit of an alarmist article today about this coal-fired power plant being
restarted to do bitcoin, which is terrible PR for it. But for the most part, what theyre looking
for is cheap energy, and the reality is that cheap energy is now last year, in much of
the world renewable, right? And so theres actually an incentive for
them to seek out renewable energy. Now, you can then throw that back and say,
Well, hang on a second. Thats going to displace the rest of us
who are using that renewable were going to have to start using dirty fuel.
So the point is, though, regardless of all
of that, that there is this constant incentive process built into it. And I would argue that because of this, there
will eventually if bitcoin reaches the level where we can truly start worrying about
its impact on the world, it will become so important that there will be incentives for
people to build the most efficient energy systems we have for renewable energies to
be developed and so forth. Yes. QUESTION: But isnt there something fundamentally
wrong if you have the technology that that needs increasing energy the longer you use
it? I mean, typically, what we want is something
I mean, the more it is used, it is needing less energy, more efficiency.
But here, this whole mining process becomes
ever more energy-dependent. I mean, it needs much more all the time. MR CASEY: But if we unpack what Pete said,
right so its about, like, what is the value of it, right? So if I mean, you just have to get speculative
about this. MR RIZZO: Yeah.
MR CASEY: But, like, if we were to push this
thing to the very end where bitcoin takes over the entire worlds recordkeeping system,
then presumably that would be the point at which we would no longer need to add any more
because its value its value will be determined, right the price of bitcoin will be determined
by its value to society. Weve continually increased the production
of all sorts of other things. This is a form of the production. The real question is and again, were
open about this.
Were not saying that necessarily bitcoin
is the right way to go, but that it is it that it be weighed against whatever other
costs it is displacing, right? So this expansion is at least I think
at least a bet on the idea that bitcoin will expand. Ill just say one quick thing about what
when people say because again, the answer most people say is, like, that bitcoins
useless, right? So therefore, why would we be wasting all
this energy on something thats useless? Well, thats obviously a value judgment,
but I think its very important for people to understand why a decentralized form of
value exchange is fundamentally valuable to society, right? It really gives peoples it is a very
empowering thing and it starts to sort of create a much more reliable foundation of
information upon which we can start to act. So its just that the point is its
a very complex question because we need to think about what is the value, and I know
thats hard to distill into a 400-word piece because its much easier to say coal-fired
plant bitcoin bad, but theres this much bigger, bigger question about value and what
were displacing. MR RIZZO: Yeah.
I think a lot of times, you have to ask a
question and then ask another question, right? So is the communication of information across
the globe worth the cost of the internet today? Maybe the answer is yes now. Is the uncensorable communication of value
worth the cost that bitcoin brings? Well have to decide that. MR CASEY: Yeah. MR RIZZO: Sure.
I dont know if were picking. MR CASEY: I dont know. Well let them pick here. QUESTION: Hi, Im Sara.
Im a reporter for The Nikkei, which is
a Japanese business newspaper. MR RIZZO: Oh, cool. Yeah. QUESTION: I have a question about ICOs.
MR RIZZO: Sure. QUESTION: So as you said, a lot of money is
coming into the market, even though there is limited tangible use cases, and especially
for ICOs, they allow people to raise money quickly and develop the technology. But when I talked to people who are doing
ICOs, they dont even have any they are they have good intention, but they
dont have actual technology right now. And do you think its still a good idea,
good tool like, ICOs is a good tool for people to be able to raise money at this point,
even though when like, there are, like, years of -- MR RIZZO: Yeah.
Thats a tough one. So just to unpack that a little bit I
dont know if people are familiar with ICOs. Theres this concept called the initial
coin offering. So what it is is, as you were saying, people
who want to build the software, they will go out to the community and they will say,
We will sell you the data that will run on the software and if you buy it, we will
make it, and itll do what we say, right? So theres this inherent promise where they
want to make something, theyre going to sell the thing by which it runs, and you hope
that they return that.
And I think in your case, this is one of those
things where its skepticism versus long-term imagination, right? So the long-term imagination is is it do
we want a system where anyone who has an idea can go to the open global internet community
and post their idea even if they dont have the infrastructure and allow people to invest
in their idea, whatever it is, as long as its a software-based blockchain-type system? Do we want that sort of ability of capital-raising? Or and but we and if we do, we
also have to accept the short term in which this is going to be a horribly abused thing
by people with no intention of ever delivering a software. This is what happens when new things are created. I think the short answer is a lot of the ICOs
are bad; a tremendous amount of them will produce nothing. I think that the reason for that is just that
its early, right? We dont really, as a society or a community
of intellectual, like, people who are looking at it is we dont really super-understand,
like, what this is, right? I think but that said, its important
to note that there have been cases in the past where this has been effective.
I think Ethereum is one of the most notable. So its the second-largest cryptocurrency
and it's called Ethereum, started by this now 24-year-old Canadian named Vitalik Buterin. He saw this vision that bitcoin was an uncensorable
valuable value protocol and he said, I. Want people to be able to build applications
to really have an app or a game or some type of service like I have on the internet, but
that cant be censored as well.
So he went out to the community, he raised
this money. The difference between him and the other people
who have done ICO-type fundraisings is he delivered the product, right? Ethereum is now something where all these
ICOs are even occurring because he built his original vision with this fundraising tool. So I think again, were its another
example where were living between the short-term reality and this long-term vision. Do we want to in the future empower more people
like this young computer scientist who had a vision that sounded very crazy at the time? A lot of people doubted him.
Do we want to empower him to be able to do
that and unlock that value, and then whats the cost? And I think in the short term, the cost is
always going to be that people will lose money, people will get scammed, and I think its
an unfortunate learning process, yeah. MR CASEY: Im going to weigh in just very
quickly because I know we want to get some more questions in, but I just want to say
as well that lessons of history are useful here. The first limited stock companies in The Netherlands
that emerged massive scams, massive hype. This always happens and what happens is society
then says, Oh, oh, oh, oh, how do we how do we deal with this? And we can deal with it in two ways.
One is it could be a top-down regulatory solution,
and theres a lot of that already happening and Im not passing judgment. I think thats one way to go about it. So the SEC and obviously, and Japans
addressing it, China has already banned ICOs. Theres a variety of regulatory reactions
you can have to that, but theres also this internal self-regulatory function that emerges
in these marketplaces.
So you look at the stock market, there are
ratings agencies, there are sort of stop-loss measures that get built into exchanges. Theres all these rules about segregated
accounts and theres rules about what minorities rules protecting minority investors. And some of that is, again, regulatory and
some of it is just best practices. And you know who plays a vital role in all
this, the development of these ecosystems, is the press, right? So a well-informed press that takes on a role
as being the BS radar capacity to ask questions actually is a critical part of the evolution
of this of this thing.
So we are very early days in the ICOs, but
in the future I think that its quite possible that these sorts of token issuances will be
just considered a very respectable way to issue things but precisely because society
is going to make it much harder for people to run off with their money. Theres always going to be scams, but well
get to a kind of a near-enough-is-good-enough type position where there is enough confidence
in the system. And we have to go through these waves of volatility
and bubbles and so forth until we get there, but I think this stuff is here to stay. I mean, I personally think that right now
if youre going to buy kind of cryptocurrencies, and we are definitely not here to give investment
advice, but theres a lot more safety in what we would see as mined coins that where
there is a decentralized system that well, theres okay, youre going to say
otherwise.
(Laughter.) MR RIZZO: I think I dont know if I
would go there. MR CASEY: Wouldnt go but okay, fine. But I -- MR RIZZO: I would just say that like theres
there are still email scams, right? Thats there are still social media
scams. I think technologies are always capable of
being abused.
Its just as they get older that theres
just less I didnt mean to -- MR CASEY: No, but I mean its just an interesting
point that if you like if you have a bunch of coins, tokens, and you sell them to the
public and theres nothing there, its quite different from a process by which there
is this decentralized network who are all competing to gain access to those things. MR RIZZO: But kind of tying back to you
were trying to tie it back to mining, I think, a little bit. MR CASEY: Yeah, thats what Im saying. Thats what mining is, right? So mining is a different way to get hold of
those coins.
QUESTION: One quick follow-up question. You mentioned about the voting system thats
been pilot like theres a pilot program thats been implemented. Is it done using ICOs or, like, is it ICO
necessary? Like are there any ICOs cases that close to
what the voting system achieves? MR CASEY: I dont this one Im talking
about is not doesnt use a cryptocurrency. Its a on a permissioned system, right? So thats a whole other conversation we
can have, but theres a very different -- MR RIZZO: Theres different flavors, yeah.
MR CASEY: -- different kind of blockchain
that doesnt require a cryptocurrency to be the incentive. In their case theyre looking to build out
its called I guess its called Voat, V-o-a-t, but it might be Voting, but
V-o-a-t is the name of the startup, something like that. They basically have a permission system where
they whereby theyre going other have a range of different actors. It might be the Republican party, the Democratic
party, the Federal Commission a variety of actors validating the network for their
own purposes.
Theyre not incentivized like bitcoin minors
are to carry out this validation work, to do this to do all that computation. So theres no presence of a coin in that
environment. But there are people looking at staking and
using coins. Theres a whole other conversation we can
have.
MR RIZZO: I just want to unpack some of the
terminology that youre using, because I. Think we as internet users so my whole
life Ive used the internet. Were very divorced from like how it functions,
right. So theres modems and theres fiber optic
cables, and then we use browsers which are on PCs, right? Theres this very innate understanding we
have of the delineation of, like, how it works, right? No one if you cant get online on your
computer, your instinct is not, Oh, the internet has crashed.
Like you are able to understand and have some
relational understanding of where you are and what the system is. Your first inclination might be I should
I check my modem? Is my phone dead? Does it am I even on a cellphone network,
right? You know how to ask questions that in this
current environment with blockchains its very difficult, because you dont have an
awareness of the topology of it because its hard to place yourself in relation to it. So even what Mike was saying with why it makes
sense to have, like, maybe a miner in the system, these are all just parts of the system,
and like, you dont always need all the same parts. They can be rearranged.
And part of the problem is we frankly just
dont really know what the best combinations are. And right now the R&D and the interest in
finding the right solution is so great that people are literally putting together every
combination that they can think of, right? Its like when you look at the pictures
of old flying machines. Its like one of the things in the space
youll see these old airplanes that like bounce, they literally bounce up and down,
right? Like you wouldn't get in one of those and
fly today because we understand that, like, rocket-propelled planes are better. And that took a lot of plane crashes, unfortunately,
yeah.
MODERATOR: So lets go to the Washington
Foreign Press Center, and then well come back to Barbara and to Ali. Go ahead, Washington. QUESTION: Okay, thank you. Thank you for the briefing.
I have two questions. My first question is about attitude of the
government lawmakers, and is it regulated or pushing it forward or just let it go without
any interferences? My second question is about how the blockchain
technology merged with the other (inaudible) technologies such as AI, IoT? And so thank you. MR RIZZO: The first one was regulation -- MR CASEY: Regulation, how are governments
approaching it. MR RIZZO: You want to take that? Youre the government -- MR CASEY: I love the government.
Definitely not the government. But I think that theres a variety of ways
in which governments are definitely taking an interest and more than an interest. They are acting now, and theyre approaching
it as governments will, I think, from the framework of their own existing policy topology. Its kind of like the law is framed by language,
and so at the moment, for example, there is a lot of focus on whether or not ICOs represent
securities.
And under the way that U.S. Law is framed,
whether it is appropriate or not, many people now believe that many of those ICOs are securities
and that the SEC will one way or another its taking a very long time and its taking
a very cautious approach is going to start making rules which will effectively retroactively
make a lot of those ICOs have to pay some sort of a price for the fact that theyve
actually issued unregistered securities. Thats a widely held view, at least its
an emerging view. Thats one area.
One another area where governments all
around the world and by the way, these positions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction,
and that makes it very interesting because its a global, borderless technology. Startups who want to form new ideas can very,
very easily, compared to other technologies, go and set up somewhere else. So ICOs, for example, are looked upon much
more favorably in places like Gibraltar and Malta, these sort of smaller jurisdictions. Singapore has another position thats a
little more flexible than the one that the SEC is likely to have.
All of this is happening on that. Other areas are what happens with tax, and
thats become more universal around the world. I think people are starting to see that bitcoin
and cryptocurrencies should be regarded as property. That doesnt mean that from the eyes
of the tax, right, not necessarily from the eyes of other areas of the government.
But the IRS views bitcoin as property, so,
therefore, you need to report your capital gains if you buy and sell currency. So thats another way to think about it. And then theres this whole question about:
Is it money? So the money transmission laws are being applied
largely around the areas of identity and know your customer so that whether or not exchanges
those that sort of buy and sell bitcoin for dollars, thereby moving people in and
out of the official financial system should be regulated as if they are money transmitters
and therefore be required to get identification of all their users and so forth. And theres another great variety of ways
in which different jurisdictions are applying that different barriers, different rules
and things.
And its quite interesting to see when somewhere
like New York introduced something called the BitLicense a few years ago. It did have an impact because it was seen
by many as being pretty onerous and fairly restrictive on the capacity of startups to
actually bootstrap their operations, because they had to come up with a lot more capital
to comply with the BitLicense laws. So New Yorks laws because again, this
another area. Weve got state-run jurisdictions and federal
jurisdictions.
It gets very complicated triggered quite
a bit of an exodus, so a lot of companies ended up going elsewhere or having to shut
down operations. And so this feeds into this whole conversation
about regulatory arbitrage where there is sort of all this globally competing operations
jurisdictions and therefore what that will do to the technology. So thats the first question. MR RIZZO: I think that was a great answer.
Im just going to add something small to
that, which is that as someone who is trying to encourage more people to do journalism
in this space, I think its unfortunate to me that theres so much emphasis in the
initial questions on regulation. It is really a rich tapestry of things that
are going on in terms of technological development and ideas, and if you are new to the space,
I would encourage you to think beyond those sort of easy questions, right? Its easy to kind of ask, like, about the
tax implications and the regulatory implications. And theyre very important; I dont mean
to undercut what Mike said. I think his answers were very good.
Its just that as someone who has kind of
dealt with a lot of introductory questions, I find that people sort of gravitate to this
one. And I keep asking myself why like why
is it that when we hear about blockchain we immediately ask if its, like, legal or
regulated. Theres something like psychological thats
kind of interested in it. And I think, like, did we really ask that
when people showed you a telephone? Did you think is it like okay other use this,
or did you spend all day like or did they spend all day trying to, like, reach other
people who had the telephone? And I sort of find myself wishing that more
people who ask questions just asked it about the technology rather than the rules around
it.
I just do think its because the technology
has the ability to produce money and value, theres it has triggered something in
us where we as journalists we ask these sort of questions that, I think if you applied
it in other contexts, they just like wouldnt be the first thing you think of, and I would
just implore you to go beyond that. MR CASEY: There was a second question, but
this is such a rich vein that I want to tap it a bit further, and it only because
I agree entirely with Pete. I wish people as well would ask other questions. But I think its interesting to also speculate
on the way we ask those questions.
Like, Is it a security? Is a question
thats framed by an existing set of laws, when in fact the technology may or may not
fit into that, right. In the prior book that we wrote, we had a
section where we wrote about regulation. We called it, square peg, round hole,
because weve established laws around the financial system, around what is money and
what are those things, and really once you have a decentralized record keeping system
in which tokens are a new form of money, it actually is not necessarily clear and
Ill say not necessarily, I dont know for sure, Im not a lawyer whether some
of these really should apply to any of these things. Sometimes it just doesnt apply.
This concept of custody, for example, which
is one that is applied for securities laws, is problematic when people talk about think
of a multisig custody, where two parties, both the user and the custodian, have control
over the bitcoin, and neither one can steal it. The custody questions becomes a different
one, right, its an example of how much it changes. MR RIZZO: And the way that I ask this in a
different way is that I think a lot of people, like, they ask the question like, Why is
bitcoin going up and down in value? And the better question is, Why does it
have value at all? And I think, like, thats the really interesting
thing, and its amazing to see people pass over it. Its like, how does this data system how
does this software how is it capable of even having value? That is a far more interesting question, but
people kind of fixate on this oh its up a thousand dollars, its down fifteen
thousand dollars it is behaving as money.
This is like a this is a data system that
behaves like systems have only been able to create in the way where governments issue
paper money. So its Im not sure, but I would
just encourage more people to look beyond that, right. Sometimes the question that you ask like
think about that question and what it means. It means that youve overseen youve
skipped over so much in just asking why is the price up or down.
Its the question is, why is the price,
why is it at all? I dont know. MR CASEY: Yeah, and we could thats
another one we could go down. Whats the wait, theres a second
question. MR RIZZO: Oh, the second question was AI -- QUESTION: (Off-mike.) MR CASEY: Okay, so theres a lot of AIs
Im not so sure about AI, I think thats way too complicated to think of how the blockchain
would interact with that.
There are lots of people trying to build systems
to keep track of all of the different interactions of data that are required to build AI systems,
and the idea that every single data entry could be logged in a way that we would have
a greater capacity to prove the veracity of that, might give us greater confidence in
the underlying information thats feeding the AIs. And so AI as blockchain is something that
enables AI is an interesting idea. And in a similar way, I think theres probably
even further advances being done on IoT, because in the same way that if you think about
a system of money whereby peoples transactions with each other need to be verified to allow
us to enter into economic exchanges, in an IoT world you will have multiple devices that
will need to exchange value. And that value can be money, but it can also
be data.
All of that is also going to need some sort
of decentralized logging system. Are we just going to have AWS or Google be
the mastermind ledger keeper of our entire Internet of Things? I dont think thats a great idea. We can think about a much more decentralized
architecture that would allow these things. But having said all of that, for both AI and
IoT, this is one of these moments when you especially have to put your BS radar on, because
is the technology ready? Because theres an enormous amount of data
that is going to be generated in these environments, and certainly none of the decentralized, purely
permissionless blockchains have the capacity, at the moment at least, to handle that, right.
MR RIZZO: I think thats a good answer,
yeah. QUESTION: Yeah, Barbara, from ISunTV in Hong
Kong. Council on Foreign Relations recently issued
paperwork its basically about the foreign policy advice paperwork and talking about
how United States should strengthen their position in the digital economy in terms of
this, the era of artificial intelligence. And I think thats a good paper because
its provide a lot of very down to earth advice on how to provide more educational
training opportunities for American people.
However, it is little bit disappointing to
find that theres no animation about this decentralized economy, which has been regarded,
especially by the technology field, as an inevitability of the future in the coming
decades. And meanwhile, we see that the the SEC
adopted a very over-heavy regulation adoptions afford this ICOs, and the lot of people,
and one of the most how do you say, the popular topics in the investment industry
now is talking about how to go to other Asian countries like Singapore, or European countries
like Switzerland, to go public, to get ICO. So yeah, so this is my question: since here
today we are in the Foreign Press Center in New York, I think probably I would like to
hear some sort of advice from the speakers. MR RIZZO: Well, I just think what youre
noting is that so it sounds like youre asking about the regulatory environment and
how do regulators respond when you can always go somewhere else where the rules are a little
bit better? QUESTION: Yeah, things like how to reform
the domestic -- MR CASEY: In the interest of promoting innovation,
right? Yeah.
QUESTION: Yeah. MR RIZZO: Oh, thats a little bit different
one, so -- MR CASEY: Well, no but I think that I
agree. I think certainly the Council on Foreign
Relations not mentioning blockchain technology and decentralized architectures generally,
is an oversight without a doubt. I mean, I share your disappointment.
I think that that that they need to be
confronting this. And I also think that that its absolutely
appropriate and important that government agencies and regulators think very hard about
what what their actions do in terms of promoting or discouraging innovation. And its not to say that they shouldnt
regulate some things, but there is this real concern, and I think that a starting point
would be to your original point that recognize that this is an important technology, and
therefore at least come up with a position and make sure that that position is informed
by the risk of innovation. I will I will challenge a little bit you
saying that the SEC is coming out with some very strict regulations.
Thats not its not quite right. The SEC has made a lot of signals about the
way its thinking; it hasnt actually acted very aggressively yet. It hasnt certainly hasnt written
any regulations. What its done is made a number of pronouncements
about how it views ICOs and these things in the context of existing laws.
And my concern with what theyre doing is
not that they dont have every right or that they shouldnt be doing this, but that
they might signal too much of their heavy-handed, draconian stuff, and not really try to recognize
that theres a lot of really innovative ideas. I worry, for example, that if all we talk
about with ICOs is the money thats being raised, and not this other idea of tokens,
which is called a utility token, which is a very, very interesting idea of how we use
our medium of exchange to actually change the governance of communities that use those
tokens, and start to resolve huge questions about resource use and efficiencies. That by just focusing on how much moneys
raised and therefore the ICOs, and whether its a security, were just not letting
this narrative emerge, and then the innovators are saying, Well, Im getting all the
wrong signals from here. Whether or not its true or not, the SECs
not signaling me right.
Im going to go off and do this in Singapore,
right. So, look, I think thats a very legitimate
concern, and I think that to the most part, when you do talk to U.S. Regulators, they
generally get the right message and they say, Were supportive of innovation, we want
to do this. I think they need to be aware that this is
a very different environment than the previous ones, precisely because its global and
open sourced.
And the understanding of what that messaging
is needs to be a bit more nuanced, I would say that much. MR RIZZO: Me? Yeah, I dont have any -- MR CASEY: Okay. Well give another one to MODERATOR: Lets go to Ali. QUESTION: Hi.
Ali Bekthaoui, I work for the newswire AFP. I had a question on value of bitcoin. Im sorry. Peter.
MR RIZZO: Its okay. QUESTION: Its own value. I just wanted to know that we went from
around $20,000 at the end of the year for bitcoin. Now we are around seven or eight thousand.
Is there whats the state of mind in
the bitcoin community? Is there some disappointment? Is there has bitcoin has bitcoin become
a boring asset like some other assets? And also, whats what are the reasons
why we have now a range around 7,000 for the bitcoin that has not really moved since two
months? MR RIZZO: Hmm, are you sure you dont want
to -- MR CASEY: This is you -- MR RIZZO: Im the value guy all the sudden? MR CASEY: You got all the market coverage,
youre -- MR RIZZO: So your question was why is it down
and how does the community view that, right? I think the people who are technologists,
they view it as, obviously an achievement, right? The fact that the money you can I
guess theres a few ways to view it, right? Think of how much money came out of the system,
and the exchanges are still up, people have been ostensibly getting their money and being
able to withdraw it. I think in some ways the bubble is a big achievement. The last time we had a bubble this big in
2013, exchanges went down, people werent able to claim money. In this case, we actually had a software system
escalate in value substantially, and then people got their money.
They may have gotten less money than they
put in, but thats a fact of all markets. But in terms of the actual design and structural
integrity of the bitcoin economy and I. Guess you can debate its relation to the regular
economy and like how sound it is. I dont think anyones going to argue
that the cryptocurrency market is sound, but it is functional above what it was four years
ago, right? If you look at what happened four years ago,
there was a huge spike in value, but the drawdown of that was not safe.
People lost money; people got hurt. In this case knock on wood minus a
few obvious soft spots in the system, it seems like we might have drawn down $500 billion
out of this technology system without any significant loss. Thats a big if. We might not know for some time if that was
successful.
In a lot of ways thats an achievement. I think its important to recognize thats
a -- is a legitimate technological achievement. And so the actual value of it, is $7,000 a
rational number? Ive been looking a lot at like old computer
advertisements, like PCs like once cost like $6,000. Like, so you have a calculator in your pocket
and everyone has a cell phone here that can perform calculating functions.
Someone used to charge $150 for that. So theres kind of two schools of thought
here, I guess. It depends on how you see the value of these
systems. Is the value that bitcoin provides today going
to become something thats so accessible that it isnt worth as much, right? Calculation its still the same as it
was in 1970.
Theres just we dont pay for it anymore. Its so basic to what we use, or is it going
to be something where it becomes more and more valuable over time and it becomes $50,000,
a million dollars? I dont know. I think theres two ways to look at it. One is that definitely technology improves.
Where that technology creates lasting value,
those are two separate things. QUESTION: But as an asset class, as an investment,
there is some disappointment on what it could have been, what some expectations -- MR CASEY: Well, I think it depends on who
youre talking to in the community. I mean, clearly, people who have been in this
for a while are just saying whatever. I mean, $8,000 is still significantly higher
than it was at the beginning of last year, right? So theres people who are still sitting
on massive gains even if they had entered the market in early 2017.
MR RIZZO: If you think about it, its like
if you even if you entered the market last May and it was $2,000 and it went up
to $20,000, it was possible for you to have captured, like, a ridiculous amount of the
total percentage returns of the asset. MR CASEY: Right. I mean, this so thats that perspective. Now, what is interesting is the fact that
you used the word asset class is interesting because that phrase has started to emerge
toward the end of 2017 and it was specifically focused on the professional investors.
So yeah, there might be a bunch of guys, the
hedge funds and others, who got in at 19,000. Actually, a lot of them might have been the
ones that were shorting it as well. We dont know. But the thing is theres definitely some
disappointment, one would think, for the newcomers, and those might have been mom and pop investors
and so forth.
Again, thats not very different from other
bubbles and things like that. I think your question though was specifically
the community, and I tend to think of the community as being folks whove been in
this for a while. This is like wow, this is just a slightly
more exaggerated in absolute terms, but certainly not necessarily in percentage terms, event
that looked weve been through this a number of times. Certainly we did it in 2013 and 2014.
MR RIZZO: I mean, I started reporting in 2013,
probably around the same time you did. I mean, some of the stuff you look at how
much value is in these systems. You can debate whether thats real value
or what those numbers represent. I think its definitely sobering and its
definitely an achievement even at this current price, yeah.
MR CASEY: I mean, its very volatile. And its one of the reasons why its hard
if you just think about bitcoin as a pure currency play to buy your cups of coffee with
and so forth, all of that is problematic, but theres a whole other conversation we
can have about what what a sort of a functioning cryptocurrency would look like for the purposes
of that. But I think Petes point about like just
I think the test that the market was put to through this is really important, and also
what is the value? I think really important to just say the very
fact that it has value, I tend to think that it comes down to the very existence of a censorship-resistant
record of transactions. That very fact, in and of itself, is incredibly
powerful.
MR RIZZO: Yeah, so bitcoin isnt just value. It is also a way to communicate value. So all cryptocurrencies are that, right? So you get into, like, theres all these
shady cryptocurrencies. Theres like thousands of them.
They all can be traded. Thats like another thing that I think people
pass over a lot, is like the worst cryptocurrency, like you can go down the bottom of the list,
scroll down to the absolute bottom of CoinMarketCap or whatever data service, its like it still
can be sent to someone else. You can hand over the keys to those assets
to someone else. At the worst of the worst of the technology,
there is it still provides utility.
It still is able to capture the spark of value. MR CASEY: You might not want to own it yourself. MR RIZZO: Yeah, you might not want to. (Laughter.) But theoretically you can.
MR CASEY: Yes, exactly. Its that functionality thats actually
the most interesting aspect of it all. MODERATOR: So we have time for one last question. MR CASEY: That one in the front here, I dont
think I think this MODERATOR: (Off-mike.) QUESTION: Thank you.
Im Weier Ge with China Business Network. So my question is: How soon can we see a real
application in, like, daily life from blockchain technology? And if you would like to predict it, it could
be in what area? MR CASEY: I think we already have them in
the same way they just dont have the word blockchain on the front of them. Blockchain is going to be a back-office solution,
right? Its not the thing that sits when you
get in your car, you are not driving an internal combustion engine, right? Youre driving the application, which is
the car. Weve already bitcoin is an application
of blockchain, right? That WFP, the World Food Program, still its
a pilot but its an actually ongoing, functioning, real pilot in real life for those refugees,
right? There are supply chain applications that are
being used, and I think to answer the second part of your question, I think supply chains,
for the time being largely on permissioned blockchains, are a real potentially a useful
use case because you have this problem of multiple parties who have a common interest
of wanting to sell more and more of the final good but dont necessarily trust each other.
So this is a technology that grapples with
the core problem of human mistrust, and in a supply chain thats a problem with a common
goal, and thats whats interesting about that. So I think supply chains are theres
a lot of energy going into developing supply chain applications largely on permissioned
which is not quite decentralized systems. But yeah, there are already stuff not
a lot. Thats absolutely true.
And the skeptics who say show me this show
me my hoverboard, wheres the magical blockchain solution, are right to suggest that its
not pervasively in society. But this is a massive change, this technology,
an enormous it requires an enormous amount of development. It took 30 years for the internet to get to
the level where it could be applied. Were dealing with something very similar.
Its incredibly complex. Were talking about the way human beings
share value with each other. Weve been using centralized recordkeeping
for 2,000 or maybe 6,000 years. Since the beginning of civilization weve
had somebody that keeps the record.
Shifting that process, that core function
of civilization to a decentralized architecture isnt going to be easy, right? So its inevitably early days, and I think
its important to step back and say, to be actually quite wowed by the fact that bitcoin
is doing what bitcoin is doing. And we joke about if we only really one
of the most one of ICOs are a proven use case on Ethereum. I would also say that. That is actually a fundraising vehicle that
works on Ethereum.
One of the other Ethereums is cryptokitties,
and cryptokitties is joked about as a kind of a useless thing. People made nonreplicable versions of these
digital avatars, right? Theyre cats and they could breed with each
other and come up with a different cat. And that seems completely pointless, and thats
one narrative you can say is, like, this is the most ridiculous waste of energy and effort. But what were talking about is something
really powerful, a digital creative work that is able to be MR RIZZO: Traded.
MR CASEY: -- traded. And it cant change. Its a unique digital work. Think about photos.
Think about how think about the pirating
of anything, right? So theres stuff being built thats pretty
powerful, and we need to MR RIZZO: I have those Topps baseball cards. That would be called cryptokitties tomorrow,
right? Youve been able to create a finite thing
that people can trade digitally Going back to your question, I think, about
predicting when things will happen, I have said this a few years ago and I think its
true: Its likely that this technology will produce the stupidest things for, like, a
very long time. MR CASEY: The internet was pretty good at
doing that at from the start. MR RIZZO: Until their usefulness is, like,
at a huge scale where its actually somewhat awe-inspiring you go through Twitter and
like YouTube and like all these things where the initial use cases, like, are sometimes
like, how different is Twitter versus people spamming each other on message boards
in 1990? The difference is one impacted an election
one can impact elections, and one doesnt.
And I think its very unlikely that we maybe
get tons of new things. I think blockchains are already things. There are already very varied, and I think
theyll just be exceedingly dumb until theyre not. Yeah, I dont know.
MR CASEY: Exceedingly dumb. More dumb than you can imagine. (Laughter.) MR RIZZO: But like thats how innovation
starts, right? People just make MR CASEY: Yes, it is. I mean, the internet began with porn, right? We all know that.
(Laughter.) MR RIZZO: Maybe your idea. (Laughter.) MODERATOR: So were officially out of time
and we want to thank Michael Casey and Pete Rizzo very much for coming today. Todays briefing was on the record. I will be sending out some information on
how to get a press pass for Consensus, but Thomas Hannaford in the back as well can ask
can answer any questions.
And again, thank you so much..
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