AMA 04/22/2021

Opens the AMA live from Colorado and previews Thursday's Africa Special, covering deals across the whole continent, not just Ethiopia.

Filmed segments and a panel moderated by a Financial Times journalist, plus a Cardano360 episode folded into the Africa Special.

Software development is accelerating with more code shipped in April 2021 and more resources being added.

Gives a status update on the Plutus Pioneer Program, now with 1500 participants in week three and a lot of feedback on documentation.

Eight development companies are gearing up for the Plutus testnet, and that Catalyst and Voltaire are both still moving forward.

Vents about proposed US capital gains and offshore corporate tax hikes, saying his own personal tax rate could nearly double.

Criticizes Washington DC statehood proposals as ignoring the original constitutional purpose of the district.

Questions why citizens pay taxes at all when the government can print trillions and military spending never falls.

A panicked viewer not to overreact to a price dip, since markets are unpredictable and capital gains hikes could hit them harder.

The kinetic sculpture with vibrating feather-like elements sitting in the wooden frame behind him.

Debunks a claim that Cardano only has eight nodes in Africa, clarifying that figure might describe relays, while real node counts are far higher.

Shows off his bookshelf, including Knuth's Art of Computer Programming and a new book on the philosophy of mathematics covering set theory and infinity.

Predicts the capital gains tax increase will pass because divided government under a political monopoly forces bad compromises through.

Plans for a from-scratch JavaScript and computer science course, covering a headless browser scraper, a chatbot, and algorithmic music.

Confirms he has been invited back for more TED talks in 2022.

Explains where he finds hope in hard times by comparing today to far worse historical periods, like the plague and famine of 536 AD.

A modern epidemic of lost meaning, as traditional rites of passage like marriage and steady careers have disappeared.

Suggests the antidote is returning to first principles: reading stoic philosophers, studying ikigai, Buddhism, and Taoism.

Warns that postmodern cancel culture's death of veneration erases nuance, discarding a person's great deeds over one flaw.

Uses Genghis Khan as an example of how the greatest people combine enormous good and enormous evil in the same life.

Purpose can be as simple as improving your own small town, citing his ranch community of Wheatland, Wyoming as an example.

Reflects that the criticism he receives usually comes from a lack of empathy or maturity, and says he mostly feels pity for his critics.

Greets a viewer from Hawaii and mentions he was born on Maui.

Ron Paul inspired him through sheer consistency, always doing exactly what he said he would do.

Breaks down Ron Paul's core message of liberty, sound money, and a humble foreign policy without endless overseas military bases.

Praises Ron Paul's refusal to compromise on principle and says his presidential run permanently shaped his own worldview.

Explains why Cardano chose Haskell over alternatives like Idris, Agda, or OCaml, to make it easier to translate scientific papers into working code.

Haskell developers tend to come from academia, making them far more likely to correctly implement dense, peer reviewed research.

Points to the Rust implementation built by Vincent Hanquez and Nicolas Di Prima, who read and translated the Haskell reference code.

Argues the upfront cost of Haskell is now paying off as a competitive advantage that lets Cardano accelerate despite protocol complexity.

Confirms he is really 33 years old, born November 5th, 1987.

His longest extended water fast, three weeks, and the precautions needed to avoid headaches and refeeding syndrome.

Shares his history playing StarCraft and StarCraft 2, rating Wings of Liberty the strongest entry and Legacy of the Void a letdown.

His Legends of Valor game studio plans stalled after his brother's retirement led them to start a biotech company together instead.

Crypto Bison, a CryptoKitties-style collectible game concept named after the bison on his Wyoming ranch, developed with his CTO Ramon.

Outlines 86 pages of design work for a Skyrim-style Legends of Valor RPG, including plot, NPCs, and advice from a former Gary Gygax collaborator.

Wants to resurrect the classic Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons game engine, rebuilt inside the more permissive Pathfinder game system.

Would like to license Warhammer 40K to make RTS games in the style of Dawn of War, tied to on-chain tokenomics.

Wants to research experimental game mechanics like hyperbolic geometry and GPT-3 driven NPC dialogue with a French university partner.

Is scouting a possible hundred thousand square foot aquaponics and tilapia facility in Wyoming after touring Puerto Rico's largest operation.

On the Armenian genocide that great nations must have the capacity to admit the horrible things in their own history.

Argues dehumanization and genocide are universal human patterns, citing the Nazi regime, Stalin, and American slavery as examples every nation must own.

Clarifies no one alive today is to blame for the Armenian genocide, but recognizing it prevents society from repeating the same patterns.

Connects the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Rwanda, and the current treatment of Uyghurs in western China as the same underlying pattern.

He is deeply skeptical of any nation that punishes people for acknowledging its past rather than confronting it honestly.

Compares the GameStop squeeze to speculative surges common in crypto, like Dogecoin, calling it a different animal from insider trading.

As a libertarian he doesn't mind people trading their own money as long as there's no information asymmetry between sides.

Predicts GameStop's speculative surge will fade on its own and doesn't see a need for SEC intervention in a case with no insider asymmetry.

Gives a Hydra update, expecting news by end of month or the next Cardano360, with a new academic paper due in May submitted to CCS.

Reports strong progress on NFT marketplaces, with interest from Wolfram and several celebrities, hinting more announcements are coming soon.

He doesn't miss his six stressful months at Ethereum at all, and would have skipped the project entirely with the benefit of hindsight.

Criticizes an arrogant, entitled attitude he sees from hardcore Ethereum community members during hiring and business conversations.

Argues Cardano's roadmap delays were engineering bottlenecks after peer reviewed papers, unlike Ethereum's unproven promises like optimistic rollups.

Cardano works better alongside rigorous chains like Harmony, Algorand, Avalanche, and Tezos than with Ethereum's culture.

Admits he still doesn't understand ICO mania, sky high gas fees, or unrealistic DeFi valuations in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Clarifies he never received his Ethereum pre-mine of 293,000 ETH, which he gave away, and only first held ETH after selling old tweets.

How he tackles a difficult decision depends on whether the context is personal, economic, or spiritual, each needing different tools.

Breaks down business decisions into existential versus non-existential cases, weighing time horizon and whether the call needs to be collective.

A value at risk approach to non-existential decisions, including his rule to only lend family money he can afford to lose entirely.

Personal decisions come down to your value system, whether grounded in virtue ethics, religion, or consequentialism.

Setting hard red lines in relationships and having cut people out of his life over addiction and self-destructive behavior.

Reframes ethics as a practical framework for how to live, and says spiritual decisions ultimately come down to reconciling with mortality.

Cites Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, describing how humans construct immortality cults, afterlives, or reincarnation to cope with finiteness.

Uses the example of a religious value system condemning homosexuality to illustrate the internal conflict between inherited beliefs and identity.

Most people inherit their spirituality from their parents, and changing it can mean excommunication from family and community.

Concludes that between a life of social consensus and a life of genuine happiness, happiness ultimately wins out.

Jokes about converting to Judaism just to make Jewish jokes, riffing on a Larry David bit.

Responds to a question about relocating to Puerto Rico for the Act 60 zero percent capital gains exemption, calling it a common crypto tax move.

He'd rather stay in Colorado and Wyoming and simply earn more to offset any tax increases than relocate for tax purposes.

Shares a friend's story of his car being broken into 19 times in San Francisco as an example of why people are leaving California for safety, not just cost.

Andreas Antonopoulos has been asked to write a Mastering Cardano book, and Jim Caldwell is expected to teach at the University of Wyoming blockchain lab.

Local 3D fabrication of tractors and homes as a solution to the supply chain and maintenance problems facing African agriculture.

Jokes with a viewer requesting a coin burn, offering to send them a burn address for their own coins.

Recalls being an alpha tester for Minecraft and emailing Notch directly, plus playing old gun mods in version 1.2.5.

Pairing a Wyoming DAO LLC with a Cayman Star trust is a phenomenal legal model they're exploring for the DCF.

Demonstrates the Apollo Neuro wearable he uses for heart rate variability and relaxation, alongside the Muse 2 headset for meditation.

Explains why biometrics alone are unsafe for securing private keys, since fingerprints and face scans are left behind everywhere and can be copied.

Hardware enforced YubiKey support for spending passwords is a high priority, combining a static password option with a long press.

Recommends anyone serious about crypto eventually get an inexpensive hardware wallet, since it massively reduces the risk of theft.

Defends George Washington as a nuanced figure, arguing statue-burning culture ignores that his choice to become president over king enabled the nation.

Gives a brief update on formal verification and the Yellow Paper, noting a roughly six month backlog of work under the Alpha Frontier program.

Jokes about what shotgun is in his office safe, favoring a Benelli self-defense shotgun loaded with a rotation of bird shot, buckshot, and slugs.

Gives his take on anarchism, pointing to Michael Malice's philosophy while arguing survival of the fittest isn't an ideal governance structure.

Explains why Wolfram beats Chainlink as an oracle partner, since Wolfram controls a computable universe of underlying data via its own language.

The oldest thing he owns is a mosasaur jaw, tens of millions of years old.

Recommends starting from first principles with Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book when asked for a reading suggestion.

Teases that viewers will just have to visit to see his farm, praising IOG commercial strategy lead Nick Nafak.

He's more excited for Diablo 2 Resurrected than Diablo 4, and plans to play it with old childhood friends as a druid.

He doesn't believe in a coordinated New World Order but does believe politicians never let a crisis go to waste, and suspects COVID likely leaked from a Wuhan lab.

His physician brother treating COVID patients in Gillette, Wyoming, and the lasting lung damage seen in long COVID cases.

Cites CDC data showing roughly 71 deaths and only 5,800 breakthrough cases among 77.6 million vaccinated Americans as evidence vaccines are working.

Complains about inconsistent COVID rules, contrasting a half empty, capacity limited restaurant in Colorado with unmasked, unrestricted dining in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Warns that vaccine passports will create a two-class citizenship and that governments may keep freedom of movement restricted indefinitely.

Notes mRNA vaccine platforms can be rapidly updated each year, and argues reopening should be based on vaccinating at-risk groups rather than blanket restrictions.

Argues developed nations should mandate a buy-one-donate-one vaccine program, enough to cover India and all of Africa, calling the failure to do so pure avarice.

Slams inconsistent enforcement, like beach tickets while packed resort pools stay open, and blasts constant media fear-mongering over COVID.

Argues there's a real human cost to fear-driven isolation, touch deprivation, and teaching children to see each other as disease vectors.

Puts the pandemic in historical context, comparing it to the Black Death and the smallpox epidemics that killed the vast majority of Native Americans.

Turns the ethics argument back on critics, pointing to child labor in battery and textile supply chains behind everyday consumer goods.

Herd immunity may never arrive since variants will keep emerging from the unvaccinated developing world, leaving no clear end to restrictions.

Climbing the cliffside Abuna Yemata Guh church in northern Ethiopia, a two hour barefoot climb along a narrow, deadly ledge.

Calls Ethiopia one of his favorite places in the world, praising its ancient history and pilgrims who walk for days barefoot to holy sites.

Demos his Kiva microfinance portfolio, reviewing loans across Togo, Senegal, Cambodia, Mexico, Kenya, and Peru.

Reads the story of Annalisa, a Filipino pig farmer, and funds her new loan live on the show.

Envisions bringing microfinance lending onto Cardano and allocating a slice of company treasury to it as a better-than-bonds investment strategy.