A Bit of Everything

Opens February 5th 2022 back home after quarantining with Omicron, titling the video a bit of everything.

Addresses the SundaeSwap and CardStarter issue people keep dragging him into, noting CardStarter filed a 38-page lawsuit so there is no point commenting during ongoing litigation.

Litigation is the failure of negotiation past mediation and dispute resolution, handing your fate to a judge, and that CardStarter alleges fraud and promissory estoppel asking for around 250 million dollars.

A lawsuit means discovery, subpoenas, and likely a countersuit taking months to years, calling it unfortunate that Sunday and Card chose litigation over mediation.

Calls it a teachable moment for young entrepreneurs on commercial arrangements and expectation management, since young founders negotiate organically over Slack, Telegram, or Reddit.

Recalls negotiating over BitcoinTalk private messages when he started, and how Invictus Innovations began with his Project Invictus thread that Dan Larimer first replied to under the handle Bitmaster.

Urges Cardano's 230-plus dapps to have proper legal hygiene: a God's-eye view of commercial arrangements, founders agreements, NDAs, and written confirmation that everyone shares the same understanding of the deal.

Warns young ventures get millions to hundreds of millions without adults in the room or VC oversight, and that anything with value is a spot for litigation as friends turn quickly when real money is at stake.

Recalls the Ethereum founders meeting in Miami in January 2014 thinking they were best friends then falling out six months later over millions of dollars and titles, noting oral agreements evaporated and Ethereum once had only half a million dollars left.

Pivots to Joe Rogan, whom he is a fan of because the podcast lets experts talk freely, from UFO guys to scientists to controversial figures like Alex Jones.

Rogan rose without a Rupert Murdoch media empire in an age where institutions lack legitimacy, birthing the Lex Fridman podcast and the intellectual dark web.

The age of COVID is not an age of truth or reason where you are told to accept untrue things lest you promote vaccine hesitancy, citing a Johns Hopkins report that lockdowns cut mortality by about 0.2 percent amid the largest wealth transfer in history and vaccine mandates guaranteeing companies billions.

Rogan's decades-old statements only became a problem after he commented on things that make powerful people billions, triggering a surge of censorship and deplatforming.

People come to crypto as the censorship-resistant industry when Joe could be canceled, but crypto is not ready for social media, promising whiteboard videos on what must be solved to replace Twitter or Facebook.

Ideas cannot hurt you, only the people in power, and that a free-thinking listener can use judgment to decide what a situation means, while society lets people arbitrarily decide what goes in your body.

The US national debt crossed 30 trillion dollars, up from four when he started college, while being told to own nothing and be happy, and that people now rent because they cannot afford homes unlike his grandfather who retired a millionaire on a single blue-collar Korean War salary, since fortunate people like him now profit at everyone's expense.

The only way out is to discuss it while people's ability to think and discuss is being taken away, and that the first core of crypto is decentralization, which the industry does not yet have.

Cites Moxie's article that you are sold a false bill of goods since decentralization is not achieved, and says the second core is inclusive accountability, your ability to verify what people tell you, as in booting Daedalus to check a transaction or confirm your vote was recorded.

Any society removing your ability to verify a fact and telling you to trust it is fundamentally wrong, citing a State Department official who could not provide evidence for allegations against Russia beyond the assertion itself.

The third core is governance, your ability to navigate issues, vote, and converge to consensus, and that all three should be present in every rebuilt institution.

Argues you cannot fix institutions by building more centralized ones with new leaders, since no one is more virtuous and humans with absolute power turn bad fast, so you must rebuild on resilient decentralized foundations.

Says rebuilt institutions must let you verify they are not lying and guarantee a voice and vote, reached only through debate and experimentation, and warns that if getting something wrong means cancellation you only get safe experimentation, since ideas and words do not hurt you, only actions and institutionalization do.

He is tired of being told to accept contradictions and that this is as good as it gets, having visited over 70 countries shaking hands with dictators, presidents, and the poorest people living in mud huts.

The common thread across all people is equal human dignity and value, and that they all deserve a world that does not lie to them and gets better over time.

Is his life's mission and why they do peer-reviewed research, which is slow but inclusive and leaves no one behind, focusing on decentralization, inclusive accountability, and governance.

The more important work is the why and the philosophy, since technology is neutral and whether protocols serve good or evil depends on the people, intent, and institutions built from them.

Acknowledges listeners' justified anger at being lectured by someone with so much, offering no flowery words or quick solutions, only a real common understanding of how the world got here and a shovel to rebuild everything into a new world.

Anyone limiting your ability to verify reality, think, or hear other ideas is the enemy, since they want an unelected few who stay in power for life to decide your life, which is not a free society.

Humanity has grown beyond kings, dictators, and popes with absolute power, so for a better world people should be in charge of their own money, democracy, and speech, and vows to fight until they win or he too is taken down and retreats to his ranch with his bison, remaining an optimist who believes they are winning on the moral argument.

Only those who benefit from fear, censorship, and control fight for them, a shrinking few, which is the real meaning of the Spotify and Joe Rogan misinformation fight.