Dec. 5, 2023

Blockchain, Meet AI. AI, Meet Blockchain.

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More Media & Events

I’m taking a break from additional media and events for the next three weeks while interviewing over 100 founders alongside some Techstars colleagues, mentors, and investors to build the Techstars Web3 class of 2024. Don’t worry though, we’ll be back in 2024 with more virtual and in-person events to bring to life the topics we riff on! 🎸

This Week’s Podcast

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Money Talks with Mai Santamaria

This week I’m joined by guest co-host Mai Santamaria, the Head of the Financial Advisory Unit for the Department of Finance in Ireland. Mai and I met in February 2018 at a meeting of the Irish Blockchain Expert Group which later became the industry group now referred to as Blockchain Ireland.

She’s one of the most helpful people I know and always has a uniquely incisive insight or two on what’s going on at the crossover of finance and emerging tech when she and I catch up. Mai originally featured on episode 5 of MoneyNeverSleeps back in 2018, she made a cameo on our 200th episode last year, she’s a Techstars mentor, and has received a ton of shout-outs from Eoin Fitzgerald and me on this podcast over the years.

In this episode, Mai and I riff on where crypto exchange Binance goes from here after pleading guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act in the US and being fined $4.3bn, with co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zao stepping down. We also look at the new crypto-friendly Argentinian president, Javier Milei, and what he might do with dollarization and crypto adoption, and then finish up with Mai’s mind-opening counterpoint on Ethereum co-founder Vitalk Buterin’s new manifesto.

What did we cover?

Vitalik's Techno-Optimism Manifesto

📰Everyone Needs a Manifesto (CoinDesk, 28-Nov-23)

📰My techno-optimism (Vitalik Buterin, 27-Nov-23)

Last week, Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum) published his manifesto and CoinDesk analyzed the manifesto with an opinion piece. Within the CoinDesk piece, they quoted Camila Russo who wonderfully summarized it in The Defiant.

“Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin introduced a novel philosophical approach to technology, termed 'd/acc' - Defensive (or Decentralization, or Differential) Acceleration, in a blog post published Monday.
“Buterin's 'd/acc' philosophy advocates for a deliberate and balanced path in technological development, focusing on technologies that ensure defense, decentralization, and human flourishing.
“The concept emerges as a counterbalance to the unbridled techno-optimism espoused by figures like Marc Andreessen and challenges the e/acc (effective accelerationist) movement.”
Camila Russo, The Defiant

So, I went a bit deeper into the manifesto, and what stood out to me immediately was Vitalik’s view on the path on which humanity travels today:

I talked through this with Mai on the podcast, doing my best to paint the picture of the child on three different paths. Vitalik is saying that we have an opportunity - technology acceleration and decentralization can lead us down a path toward a good place, or toward a bad place.

“We need active human intention to choose the directions that we want, as the formula of "maximize profit" will not arrive at them automatically.”
Vitalik Buterin

🔎Mai got it immediately, and here is her take:

“I read the opinion piece, and my personal view was heavily influenced by the fact that I've been reading Scary Smart by Mo Gawdat.

“My first reaction was this: he's totally missing the point, he's missing AI.

“The manifesto reminded me of Scary Smart because, in the book, Mo Gawdat equates AI to a child. AI today is a six to eight-year-old child, and we’re teaching them. That’s how we’ve taught AI to date, we give it something and it figures it out. The perfect example is the little box with, square, triangle and round pegs and the child picks it up and figures out which peg is going to fit into which hole.

“That's how AI has evolved. It takes the data, trial and error, looks for those historical patterns and it learns from them. We're feeding that six to eight-year-old child with information today.

“The equivalent to this box that we have with round, square and triangle pegs is all the data that's online. If the data we’re feeding AI with from a humankind perspective - negativity, riots in Dublin, blowing things up, war, terrorism - that's what that child is going to learn to be the norm.“

🎙Here’s where I took the mic back, but just for a second, as Mai was on a roll:

“Whoa, that’s deep, Mai - I’m looking at those three pictures in Vitalik’s manifesto of the child on the different paths. I was looking at that from the perspective of the child on the different paths being society and humanity, but is that child on the different paths actually AI?”

🔎Mai’s response on if the child on the different paths is AI:

“Yeah, it is, but if we are surpassed by AI, it doesn't matter.

“It will be technology deciding the future technology. AI is clearly more intelligent than us, and how technology evolves, that future path, that castle will not be up to us.

Whether that castle at the end of the path is bright or it’s dark, it will not be up to us, it will be up to AI.”

🎙Digging away at my mind for the last six months or so has been the intersection of blockchain and AI, but I always feel like I was missing something until now, and here’s the path I’m headed down:

“That’s deep. What you're saying here, Mai, is getting me thinking about the digitally unique entity, the intelligent entity that could be proven to be its own unique entity, like Neuromancer and Wintermute in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

“Like Gibson said, ‘The future is already here, it’s just not that evenly distributed.’”

So that was my missing link at the intersection of blockchain and AI, even if it’s just the key to unlock deeper thought, and that’s what happens when friends riff on emerging tech! 🙏 Thank you Mai Santamaria!

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Binance and CZ

📰Binance CEO Resigns, Part of $4.3 Billion Settlement With US (Sporting Crypto, 27-Nov-23)

🔎Mai’s response when I asked her if Binance will become boring:

“Binance could become boring, but I do not think this will be the end of it. The SEC were not party to these multi-agency agreements, and that pretty much shows us there's an action still ongoing.

“So there's more to come, but now what's going to happen is under this monitoring arrangement, the SEC will have access to information that is only going to feed into the action that they have underway.

“John Reed Stark worked for the SEC for many, many years, and I know he's always been super critical of crypto overall. But he equated the Binance agreement to what he called a ‘financial colonoscopy’.

🔎Mai’s thoughts when I called out the “reckless driver” context of CZ’s position at the helm of Binance and the same for SBF at FTX .

“I would never endorse any of that behavior, most particularly with SBF doing what he did and so willingly trying to obfuscate and lie. I would never be able to support, condone, or accept any of that. But I always say that it's also important to have perspective, and we need to be coherent as well.

“And we're specifically talking about crypto and not broader digital assets and blockchain on a wider perspective. What I said about coherence is this: why do we demand 100 percent, top-notch, excellent, premium, 10 out of 10 behavior all the time when it comes to the crypto world, but we don't have that same filter when it comes to the rest of our financial transactions. Why are we not coherent?

“I 100 percent do not condone the behavior, but I'm just saying, can we be a little bit self-critical here as well? If I want the premium, top-notch, 10 out of 10, 5-star behavior, I will demand it for everything, not just for some.”

Argentina's New President

📰Argentina Has a New Pro-Bitcoin President—Who Is Javier Milei? (Decrypt, 20-Nov-23)

📰Elon Musk Sees A Bright Future For Argentina Under Its New Pro-Bitcoin President (Binance Square, 21-Nov-23)

🔎Mai’s take on new Argentinian President Javier Milei’s stance on Bitcoin:

“There's been a lot in the news about Mr. Milei saying that he's pro-Bitcoin, but I’m not sure how much more pro-Bitcoin he is than his fellow prime minister in El Salvador.

“I think Mr. Milei’s been more against central banking than pro-Bitcoin, if that makes sense. But the dollarization of the economy in Argentina would have a huge impact. It would be great if they were able to stabilize inflation, which is 150, 148 percent at the moment. It’s been higher than that, as I think it was a thousand percent or something when they pegged the Argentinian peso against the dollar a few decades ago.

“Even though dollarization sounds like one of Mr. Milei’s proposals and certainly one of his election promises, he can't print his own dollars, and I don’t think the IMF will be lending them any more cash.”

“It seems as though extreme political views are linked with strange haircuts.”
Mai Santamaria

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