Culture, Altruism, and Crypto's Schisms

In this episode of The Crazy Wisdom Podcast, Stewart Alsop talks with Jacob Hall and Kyriakos Skiouris, co-founders of Agingo, about the evolution of blockchain from linear ledgers to volumetric, multi-agent architectures. Together they explore how concepts like sovereignty, auditability, and immutability can redefine trust, governance, and digital agency in both human and artificial systems. The conversation touches on blockchain’s philosophical and technical frontiers—what an “AGI for blockchain” might mean, why immutability will matter in the age of AI, and how decentralization could restore autonomy without chaos. You can learn more about Agingo and their upcoming talks at agingo.com and reach them via support@agingo.com.

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Timestamps

00:00 Stewart Alsop welcomes Jacob Hall and Kyriakos Skiouris of Agingo, setting the stage for a conversation on blockchain as a paradigm shift beyond crypto.
05:00 They explore trust, contracts, and the difference between real-world agreements and smart contracts, questioning how sovereignty depends on auditability.
10:00 The guests reflect on Bitcoin’s origins, Satoshi’s intent, and the ideological fractures that shaped crypto’s culture and early altruism.
15:00 They discuss manipulation, value, and how blockchain technology parallels alchemy—transforming belief into perceived value.
20:00 The idea of social imaginaries emerges, using everyday systems like traffic lanes as metaphors for collective trust and order.
25:00 The talk moves toward digital etiquette, communication decay, and the cultural lag behind technological acceleration.
30:00 Agingo introduces the concept of volumetric blockchain, multi-agent validation, and four-dimensional nanochains replacing linear ledgers.
35:00 They unpack volumetric security, the tesseract metaphor, and blockchain as a living system mirroring consciousness.
40:00 Discussion turns to blockchain as language and history, linking immutability, perception, and meaning.
45:00 Business use cases arise—tokenized films, compliance, and real-world asset representation on decentralized infrastructure.
50:00 They imagine blockchain as infrastructure for AGI, distributed systems modeled after nature’s intelligence.
55:00 Closing reflections on centralization, sovereignty, and the need for open, non-binary conversations about trust and autonomy in the digital age.

Key Insights

1. Blockchain’s next evolution is volumetric, not linear. Jacob Hall and Kyriakos Skiouris argue that traditional blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are “choo-choo trains”—linear systems limited by their own history. Agingo’s model introduces volumetric blockchain, where multiple agents and dimensions of time operate simultaneously, allowing for more secure, adaptive, and physics-like computation.
2. Sovereignty depends on auditability at speed. True digital sovereignty, they suggest, isn’t just owning your data but being able to verify it instantly. If you can’t audit a transaction or vote in real time, you’ve lost control of it. Fast, transparent auditability becomes the foundation of autonomy and trust in digital systems.
3. Language, contracts, and blockchains are all ledgers of meaning. The conversation reframes contracts as linguistic and symbolic structures—records of shared trust. Blockchain, in this light, is not just code but a living language that keeps history intact and immutable, anchoring truth in a world of mutable data.
4. Bitcoin’s promise was idealistic, but its structure is fragile. Hall recalls the early altruism of the Bitcoin community, contrasting it with the dogmatic, profit-driven culture that followed. The failure to evolve past linear design and ideological rigidity mirrors historical schisms in religion and governance.
5. Immutability will become essential in the AI era. As AI systems learn to rewrite their own data, humans will crave immutable records. Blockchain’s permanence provides a safeguard against subtle, undetectable shifts in digital reality—an anchor for truth as models become more autonomous.
6. Volumetric systems mirror consciousness. Their design mimics the distributed, multi-agent nature of the human brain. Just as neurons work in parallel, a volumetric blockchain processes data through overlapping agents that validate one another, creating a kind of digital nervous system with emergent intelligence.
7. Decentralization must include cultural and ethical intelligence. True progress, they conclude, isn’t just technical—it’s cultural. Without new forms of etiquette, communication, and mutual respect, decentralization risks reproducing the same hierarchies it seeks to replace. Blockchain’s next leap must integrate human values with technological sovereignty.