AMA 12/12/2020

Opens the December 12 2020 AMA broadcasting live from Colorado.

Recaps a packed month of releases including Daedalus 3.0 mainnet and new Ledger and Trezor hardware wallet support.

Plans to open source the cold storage key management scripts built with Sam.

Catalyst Fund 2 finally opens for voting after months of preparation.

Expects the Catalyst voting process to rapidly mature month over month toward Fund 3.

Reacts to the Cardano Effect podcast announcing its final episode after IOG funded its first 76 episodes.

Targets a KEVM devnet for mid December 2020 after reusing the 2020 Mantis code base.

Celebrates the new Mantis release and the Sagano testnet launch for Ethereum Classic.

Praises Mutual Knowledge Systems' progress building the Glow smart contract language.

The holiday code freeze after December 15 with a skeleton crew until January.

Expects a Trezor and Ledger firmware update in January after some delays.

Lists upcoming Daedalus features including identity, multisig, paper wallets, hybrid wallets and partial delegation.

Confirms the d parameter is on track for full decentralization by March alongside peer to peer networking.

Wants Ledger Live staking support but says commercial negotiations with the Cardano Foundation have been slow.

Teases an upcoming Africa special episode with new deal announcements.

Jokes about his poncho before answering a multisig question.

Details work on a multisig coordination server and a Daedalus interface, plus hardware multisig plans with Ledger and Trezor.

Vents about Coinbase's inconsistent internal communication after an Ethereum killer article ignored Cardano.

Rosetta is Coinbase's open source framework for custody and listing integration.

Gives an update on the Ergo stablecoin project with Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo.

He prefers sitting over standing desks.

Predicts Mayweather beats Logan Paul and calls it a sign of boxing's decline into exhibitions.

Reveals he is hiring a veteran tabletop game designer who worked with Gary Gygax to help revive Legends of Valor.

Has the new hire cataloging everything outdated in Legends of Valor's original game mechanics.

Plans an enhanced edition modeled on Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition to backfill missing journal, quest and level systems.

Disassembled the original code with Ghidra and found almost none of it reusable beyond the plot and art assets.

Will build the enhanced edition in JavaScript with Babylon.js for browser, mobile and desktop.

Envisions an open source project with six to eight week sprints and eventual non fungible asset integration.

Outlines a longer term plan for a full triple A remaster using a middleware engine with cross platform release.

Adaptive algorithmic music could fit the enhanced edition since the original game never had a soundtrack.

Remembers Gary Gygax as one of the greatest minds in role playing game history.

Dr Pierre Kory's FLCCC findings on ivermectin as a potential COVID treatment.

Praises pulmonologists as the front line workers hit hardest by the pandemic.

Criticizes censorship of ivermectin advocates despite a 28 page dossier submitted to the FDA.

Questions why the FDA fast tracked remdesivir at 5000 dollars a dose over a cheap generic antiparasitic.

Argues there is no such thing as a medical cure, only causal evidence gathered over time versus circumstantial coincidence.

Weighs mRNA vaccine side effects like chills and fatigue against the far greater risk of severe COVID for older people.

Confirms his Africa strategy runs local and in parallel with the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo's separate efforts.

Early talks with the European Banking Authority and UK's FCA and EU Horizon 2020 grant funding.

Greets the Ghanaian community and recalls falling for the country at a reggae bar in Osaka.

Reaffirms the push to get the KEVM devnet out before the Christmas break.

Plans to refresh his security foundations video once the new key management environment is ready.

Denies rumors that a high listing fee is blocking Coinbase from adding Cardano.

Shares that he comes from a family of physicians and nearly became a doctor himself.

Teases a few more partnership announcements before year end.

The institutional trend of moving from bitcoin as digital gold into a proof of stake portfolio like Cardano.

Reveals the framed album behind him is Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.

Confirms he regularly talks to billionaires about Cardano.

Assesses his own low personal COVID risk given his age and health.

Criticizes media fear mongering that exaggerates COVID's danger for most people.

Argues for proportional precautions like masks and avoiding large gatherings rather than draconian lockdowns.

Calls out the double standard of political gatherings being exempt from COVID restrictions.

Vaccinating everyone over 55 alone could prevent 92 percent of deaths per CDC figures.

Argues COVID mortality statistics conflate dying of COVID with dying while COVID positive.

Acknowledges long COVID is a real and serious problem for a meaningful minority of patients.

Proposes pre made vaccine platforms so future pandemics can reach market in three to four months.

Frames vaccine hesitancy as partly foreign disinformation exploiting a broader collapse in institutional trust.

Traces distrust in government back to lies like the Iraq WMD claims and Obamacare promises.

Traces society's arc from religion through the Enlightenment to a post Enlightenment world too complex for anyone to grasp alone.

Warns that without trusted institutions people regress to black and white thinking about complex problems.

Restoring faith in institutions is essential to humanity's survival, or the alternative is dictatorship.

Cardano's mission as upgrading the world from a split developed and developing financial system into one unified system.

Pushing power to the edges with self sovereign identity, money and governance for everyone.

Rebuts a YouTube critic's claim that Ouroboros Chronos relies on a centralized clock.

Notes federation via OBFT nodes still exists until March, argues YouTube critics ignore roadmap tradeoffs, and says Chronos will roll out with Genesis and fast finality.

Clarifies Mantis was always a proof of concept, never a production release, and is now being productized for Ethereum Classic.

Every system, including the internet and hardware itself, ultimately requires some baseline of trust.

Calls artificial intelligence an existential technology on par with nuclear weapons.

Reviews historical pandemics from the Black Death to Spanish flu as context for pandemic risk.

Warns CRISPR could let a small team engineer a virus as lethal as Ebola with measles like contagion.

Flags gene drives and nanotech as additional 21st century existential risks.

Cites Stuart Russell's work on the AI control problem.

Argues humanity has overinvested in COVID relative to the far larger threat of unaligned AI.

Asteroid mining and transhumanist brain computer interfaces to the list of destabilizing future technologies.

Is buying an atmospheric water generator and installing solar because he no longer trusts government supply chains.

Is building a ferromagnetic fluid sculpture for the IOG Colorado office.

Responds to another vaccine skeptic caller as another example of eroded institutional trust.

Plans to start beekeeping and learn honey mead making from his father's contacts in Wyoming and Ethiopia.

Pushes back on exaggerated vaccine death claims, noting most vaccines cause no serious problems.

Compares unquestioned trust in cars, food and alcohol to the scrutiny applied only to vaccines.

Is researching lion's mane mushroom supplements and notes how lightly regulated the supplement industry is.

Rejects burning ADA since every coin in circulation already belongs to someone.

Debates a physician caller over vaccine side effects versus everyday drug risks like insulin for diabetes.

Contrasts the FDA's fast track of the 5000 dollar remdesivir with its dismissal of cheap over the counter treatments.

Standard vaccine trials already track autoimmune conditions for years without finding significant links.

Blames rising autoimmune disease rates on diet and lifestyle changes rather than vaccination.

Reflects on Gavin Wood as a brilliant but polarizing collaborator whose Polkadot draws on Ouroboros research.

Polkadot took inspiration from Cardano's research but made genuinely original contributions.

Argues movements need a different kind of polarizing leader to break through before handing off to a custodial one.

Contrasts the ruthless Bill Gates he once knew with the guarded humanitarian persona of today.

Argues Bill Gates fuels conspiracy theories by staying inaccessible and unaccountable like a shadow government agency.

Contrasts Elon Musk's public complaining and follow through with Gates' polished corporate distance.

Living in the shadows without transparency invites suspicion, citing George Soros and the Koch brothers.

Speculates that leaked UFO footage and Space Force could be slow disclosure priming the public for alien contact.

Predicts autonomous vehicles, service robots and trade augmentation will erode employment within 20 years.

Warns automation could destroy 50 million US jobs and concentrate wealth without the usual trickle down.

Supports universal basic income only when funded by a sovereign wealth fund, opposes wealth taxes as theft.

Recalls meeting Jacque Fresco and finds his Venus Project resource based economy ideas ahead of their time.

Praises DeepMind's protein folding breakthrough as a template for AI accelerating regenerative medicine.

Sees blockchain fixing filmmaking royalty disputes and crowdfunding after citing the Wolf of Wall Street financing scandal.

Believes Jeffrey Epstein worked for an intelligence agency compromising powerful people and did not kill himself.

Argues media silence on Epstein shows complicity among powerful media owners.

The MICE tradecraft framework intelligence agencies use to recruit and compromise assets.

Cites the Eric Swalwell case as an example of a Chinese intelligence honeypot operation.

Mocks World Economic Forum elites preaching climate sacrifice while flying private jets to Davos.

Laughs off Coinbase reportedly calling him a pothead.

Choosing Ethiopia over Nigeria for African operations due to the African Union base and agricultural tech fit.

Ethiopia's prime minister is a former cryptographer who can discuss the research directly.

Confirms John O'Connor remains stationed in Ethiopia despite the civil war, with a private security extraction plan on standby for staff.

He would never associate with the Clintons or join elite groups like the Bilderberg Group.

Regrets the Cardano Effect's funding rejection and wishes they had asked Catalyst for a smaller, better justified amount.

Argues big podcasts like Rogan and Shapiro prove funding requests just need value proportional to the ask.

Reminds critics that Joe Rogan also started as a niche show before becoming culturally dominant.

Hasn't watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix yet.

Recommends a Great Courses series on secret societies and notes many founding fathers were Freemasons.

Clarifies he is not a Freemason himself.

Calls Scientology a dangerous cult built to enrich its founder, unlike Mormonism which evolved into a mainstream religion.

Credits psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins for treating depression and PTSD, expects wider decriminalization.

Names Bertrand Russell and Albert Camus as his favorite philosophers.

Reviews Baldur's Gate 3 as promising but hampered by fifth edition rules and wishes the trilogy had been remastered as one project.

He stays guarded and sticks to facts rather than pushing raw opinions, valuing nuance over hot takes.

Godot is a solid open source engine for small indie games but can't match Unity or Unreal for AAA titles.

The Hellraiser lament configuration puzzle boxes decorating his desk.

Looks forward to watching the Lord of the Rings 4K remaster.

Gave up trying to engage the Hollow Chain team after an unfriendly reception, prefers welcoming communities like Ergo.

Expects Denis Villeneuve's Dune remake to be phenomenal.

Floats adding an in game currency or non fungible assets to Legends of Valor down the line.

Confirms he is still in touch with Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov.

Open source game engines still lag Unity badly on VR headset support.

Gives an update on Lars Brunjes writing papers and pushing Plutus toward mainnet with new graduate students.

Predicts the US and China are headed for a Thucydides trap style conflict.

Calls Caitlin Long a badass after her long range marksmanship feat.

Hasn't seen HBO's Silicon Valley.

Confirms intelligence agencies already build veracity agents to detect truth and lies with AI.

Banters with a viewer about his new tankless propane water heater.

He hasn't heard of Tesnix's open source hydrogen engines but will look them up.

Managing his gout with allopurinol after finally giving in to medication.

Refuses to give up red meat for his gout and blames shellfish purines instead.

Doubts Joe Biden personally understands crypto and flags Janet Yellen as incoming Treasury Secretary.

Cardano's staking economics were designed so slashing penalties like Polkadot's are unnecessary.

Argues Biden won mainly by being the not Trump option rather than through a strong campaign.

Defends the right to debate contested issues like a bill on transgender athletes in women's sports.

Is intrigued by an Israeli study linking hyperbaric oxygen sessions to lengthened telomeres and plans to buy a chamber to test it on himself.

Predicts Mike Tyson will dominate an exhibition bout against Evander Holyfield.

Modern boxing at the top level has become entertainment built on narrative rather than pure sport.

1.5 million pay per view buys and Snoop Dogg's commentary made the Tyson Jones exhibition a hit.

He already owns a float tank and plans to get another.

Recommends a Wisecrack video on kayfabe to understand why pro wrestling works.

Mike Tyson reportedly earns a million dollars a month from his marijuana plantation.

Points aspiring game designers to Coursera's Michigan State specialization and Penn State's gamification course.

Demos his collection of brain computer interface devices including Muse, NeoRhythm and Brain Tap.

Confirms he holds a large bitcoin stash from getting in early.

Plans to reschedule Wim Hof method training in Amsterdam after COVID delayed it.

Recommends Harvard Extension's affordable software engineering certificate over a full master's for career changers.

Hadn't heard of Hemi Sync or the Monroe Institute but adds it to his research list.

Highlights the strong South American Cardano team, including the Buenos Aires firm that built Coinbase's Rosetta library.

Signals time for one last question before wrapping the AMA.

Drops an old all your base are belong to us meme reference.

Advises an aspiring mobile developer to work through a Big Nerd Ranch book and free Udemy or Coursera courses end to end.