AMA 06/05/2020

Broadcasts live from Colorado reflecting on a chaotic 2020 and thanks the community for years of support.

Announces the Cardano virtual summit for July 2nd and 3rd with special guests Vint Cerf and Stephen Wolfram.

Reveals a summit panel reuniting the original 1985 Haskell committee including Simon Peyton Jones, Phil Wadler, Kevin Hammond and John Hughes.

Vents frustration with crypto journalism reducing nuanced work to simple price narratives and calls for better quality reporting.

Recalls the origin story of choosing the hardest path with Haskell, formal methods and peer reviewed research starting in 2015.

The project stands at the threshold of decentralization and that early critics who called it just a wallet will be proven wrong.

Celebrates the talent and diversity the community has attracted and the global reach the project has built.

Looks forward to Voltaire unlocking treasury funds so the community can build and pursue its own projects.

Reflects on wanting the news to focus on positive, uplifting stories instead of constant negativity during a hard year.

Points to the SpaceX launch as proof that big problems are solvable with the right people, ideas and trust in each other.

The plan to balance IOHK's leadership with handing meaningful governance to the community through CIPs, CRCs and a growing decentralization team.

The personal goal of making himself obsolete by eventually stepping off the podium and becoming just one voice among many.

The NeoRhythm device was unimpressive compared to fasting and confirm recent medical scans came back normal.

Hanging out with Stephen Wolfram, who is working on rewriting the laws of physics based on computation.

Promises to visit Japan for meetups in Kyoto and Osaka once pandemic travel restrictions lift.

Argues wealth does not bring happiness and describe dealing with SIM swapping, identity theft and threats since getting rich.

Cites Viktor Frankl's logotherapy and the idea that you cannot control what happens but can control your reaction and perspective.

Compares quantum computing fears to the Y2K scare and says post quantum VRFs and signature schemes will be solved within three to five years.

Supports the right to protest but not the right to destroy private property, noting rioters often hurt minority owned businesses.

The story of a no knock police raid on a family growing tomatoes to illustrate how little recourse victims of bad policing have.

Argues the deeper problem is a culture of militarization and no accountability rather than simple racism.

Lays out how to actually fix policing at the municipal level: real conduct standards, demilitarization and ending the drug war.

Systems cannot rely on exceptional or moral people and need proper incentives and accountability tools like body cameras.

Warns that protest movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street get co opted once money and power get involved.

Argues crypto is inherently a political movement because it takes control of money out of government hands.

Rejects any push to ban encryption or build backdoors into Cardano, refusing to give any group the power to freeze funds.

Invites a critic to publicly list specific ways he has been all talk and no action.

Pushes back on scam accusations by pointing to the confirmed Shelley shipping dates of June 30th and July 7th.

Agrees to do a joint interview with Kaizen Crypto and Hash Rate if they want to set it up.

Jokes about wanting to get alpacas and put a hat on a llama.

Trades playful banter about being called the sexiest man alive.

Teases that a secret project will only be revealed years from now, when it needs to be known.

Reveals new Cardano organization branding and marketing material launching at the summit, led by new marketing director Miriam.

Confirms the summit will have a VR component and send love to the Venezuelan community.

Trades jokes about fishing and confirm having three barn cats.

Names Bertrand Russell and Albert Camus, combined, as a favorite philosopher.

The Shelley date was known internally since March but withheld until certainty, and expect Goguen to move faster than people think.

Growing hydroponic jalapenos and herbs in the home garden.

IOG now has 240 people, with more than half of the company working almost exclusively on Shelley.

Akon's blockchain city project in Africa and the difficulty of building real traction versus just launching a coin for publicity.

Dodge a question about Skinwalker Ranch.

Calls announcing the Shelley shipping date the happiest moment for Cardano so far, finally answering years of scam accusations.

Supports legalizing cannabis, noting he lives in Colorado.

Shares his father's advice to stay calm and slow down in emergencies and his mother's example of fighting for what you believe.

He never got to meet Hunter S. Thompson but would have loved to.

Refuses to answer price prediction questions and rule out any buyback or burn event, criticizing Stellar's token burn as a wasted gimmick.

Ethereum is finally doing the hard research work Cardano did years ago and that there is no shortcut around protocol development.

Recalls a favorite trip to Amsterdam including running into Wim Hof eating waffles at 3am.

Praises a valued community and team member and credits the culture that keeps top talent staying and passionate.

Jokes about becoming best friends with Elon Musk and compliment his brother Kimbal's style.

Confirms stablecoin development is being taken seriously with input from Bruno Palea and an active skunkworks effort.

Wants Daedalus to show fiat prices and gain loss tracking via API to make crypto tax reporting easier.

Keep the plans for the incentivized testnet close to the chest but hope to confirm a community airdrop by the end of June.

Ethereum will never adopt Ouroboros because of the strong cult of personality around its own approach.

Outlines plans for human readable Bech32 addresses with custom prefixes like exchange branded or user issued token addresses.

Jokes about aging into a Hugh Hefner look and quip that keeping expenses low is the real key to happiness.

Trades a Game of Thrones shame joke about a walk of atonement.

Praises Stanley Kubrick as a directing genius.

Teases a coming Hyperledger enterprise announcement and confirm the Sonic zero knowledge proof system is finished and being open sourced.

Jokes about being personally autistic when asked if Cardano is autism friendly.

Vow to keep building encryption even if it were made illegal, saying he would rather go to jail than compromise on principles.

Identify his headphones as Master and Dynamics.

Confirms he was very poor before Bitcoin made him wealthy.

Playing games from Riot Games and confirm he is quietly working on building his own video game.

Recalls meeting Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax and rate third edition as the franchise's peak.

A Ledger hardware wallet firmware update for Daedalus is expected in the July or August timeframe, pending Ledger's approval.

Estimates his passion project video game, Legends of Valor, will personally earn him three to five million dollars over four to five years.

Lists his two trucks, a Chevy 2500 diesel and a GMC 1500 Denali.

The formal methods toolkit used in Cardano research including temporal logic, process calculus and the K framework's reachability logic.

Names okonomiyaki as a favorite food from Japan.

Welcomes Ultima and Unreal developer Jason Caron and his family into the Cardano ecosystem.

He skipped the Michael Jackson documentary because Jackson is dead and it no longer matters to him.

Details owning a Lamborghini Huracan received as part of a consulting deal and how expensive the maintenance turned out to be.

Argues rich people should stop pretending to be poor, own their wealth, and use it to hire people, invest and buy things that support middle class jobs.

Uses his Lamborghini's engine builder as an example of how luxury spending lets skilled craftsmen live their dream jobs.

Recommends Japanese whiskeys like Yamazaki and Hibiki as affordable alternatives to pricier Scotch brands.

Recalls working at the Grand Palace for the Satoshi summit and having dinner with William Shatner.

Declines to name a favorite Dragon Ball Z character, calling the topic too controversial.

Confirms the next major testnet milestone is still on target.

He is restarting a weekly water fast after pausing his quarterly fast for medical labs.

Confirms summit attendees can just sign up as observers with nothing required beyond watching.

Laments the Denver Broncos since Peyton Manning left and mourn the XFL folding due to the pandemic.

Credits Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, first read at age 12, for inspiring his path into computing.

The dry year, wet year drinking cycle a fellow CEO recommended to avoid alcoholism, now in a dry year despite 2020's chaos.

Choosing mathematics over medicine for the joy of working toward a eureka moment and the satisfaction of teaching others.

Argues mathematics has grown too fragmented and abstract, and champion homotopy type theory and computer checked proofs to rebuild its foundations.

Recounts experiencing discrimination growing up as a haole in Hawaii and facing threats as a white person in South Africa.

Tattoos can bar entry to certain Japanese restaurants and bathhouses.

Stephen Wolfram has his own computational project and hasn't shown interest in building on Cardano.

Ramanujan's raw genius versus his lack of formal mathematical rigor, which G H Hardy helped fill in.

He would only deserve a Nobel Prize for rebuilding the foundations of mathematics through homotopy type theory, a hundred million dollar, hundred man year effort.

Recalls meeting several Fields medalists including the late Maryam Mirzakhani and Vladimir Voevodsky.

Calls the Nobel Prize a popularity contest and laughs off his girlfriend's question about why he still lives in his current house.

Rules out ever running for president, arguing real change requires a new constitutional convention with term limits and tax reform instead.

Closes the AMA thanking the community and urging everyone to stay calm, meditate and remember that everyone is in this together.