The Blockchain Socialist

While I was in Lisbon a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet in person and interview Amir Taaki (@Narodism), one of the first Bitcoin core developers and a part of the original team building Ethereum. For a long time Amir has been involved in left wing activism including volunteering in Rojava and is a big digital privacy advocate. While at Liscon, Amir also presented his latest project called DarkFi, an anonymous DeFi network.During the interview we spoke about his thoughts on the current state of the left and crypto, why he believes anonymity to be fundamental to democratic organizing, and what DarkFi plans to achieve. You can also see his talk and demo of DarkFi at Liscon here. Get involved in DarkFiDarkFi ManifestoDarkFi Telegram groupDarkFi TwitterIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this interview I spoke with Alexandra Elbakyan (@ringo_ring) the founder of Sci-Hub, the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of academic research papers for absolutely free. As you can imagine, what she's doing is illegal and has had countless issues with government and privately owned journals that paywall science funded by the public. This means that she cannot create a bank account to accept donations to continue her work and only accepts cryptocurrency. DONATE SOME CRYPTO TO SCI-HUB BECAUSE SCIENCE SHOULD BE FREEAlexandra is also a Russian speaker but can understand English so I was lucky enough to get a translator to help me with this interview. You'll notice that I edited out the majority of Alexandra speaking since I assume most people who listen don't understand Russian and fade to the translator. During the interview we spoke about the difficulties she's faced upkeeping the project,  why she considers Sci-Hub to be a communistic project, and why she thinks the left should be taking cryptocurrency more seriously as a tool.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this week's episode I spoke with Ethan Buchman (@buchmanster), the founder of Cosmos and the CEO of  Informal Systems, a worker-owned cooperative helping build the infrastructure of the Cosmos Network. Cosmos is a particular blockchain with the goal of creating the internet of blockchains by creating a layer that facilitates interoperability between different blockchains. During the interview we talk about Ethan's own heterodox political views, synthesizing the works of the Austrian school and Karl Polanyi among others for creating what he calls "sustainability existentialism." We also talk about how these politics influenced the creation of Cosmos, his fears of the current state of the crypto ecosystem, and  the difference between DeFi degens and regens.Here are some more sources to learn more about Ethan's heterodox political views:Reconsidering the Factors of ProductionThread on AustriansDistributed StateIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke with Maryam Monalisa Gharavi (@wcncnd), an Iranian-American artist, writer, and theorist whose work explores the interplay between aesthetic and political valences in the public domain.. She conceived of the Oil Research Group, a one woman collective exploring the relationship between oil, data, and bitcoin."Data is the new oil" was coined by the British mathematician Clive Humby in 2006 and since then has become a bit of a cliché phrase in the business world. While there may be some ways the metaphor works, there are clearly some big differences, like oil being a finite source and data being seemingly an infinite one. However, the digital scarcity introduced by bitcoin potentially changes this dynamic. During the interview Monalisa and I talk about the goals of the Oil Research Group, the pros and cons of frictionlessness, and the preciousness of data.“Every new technology necessitates a new war” - Marshall McLuhan.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this interview I spoke with Rhea Myers (@rheaplex),  an artist, hacker and writer originally from the UK now based in Vancouver. Her work places technology and culture in mutual interrogation to produce new ways of seeing the world as it unfolds around us. She’s been involved in the blockchain art world probably for as long as it has existed and has had her art recently featured in Sotheby’s first NFT auction sale. What I've found incredible about her work is how prescient it was around art and includes the first writings attempting to synthesize blockchain with left politics. For example, her piece Crypto 2.0 and DAWCs: Dawn of Decentralized Autonomous Workers Councils  was published in 2015, right at the start of the discourse around DAOs, and already she had the foresight to see the implications this could have for left organizing. She is also a longtime collaborator with Furtherfield, a not-for-profit international community hub for arts, technology and social change in London, and you can find much of her work with them here.  She is one of the authors who contributed to the Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain book published by Furtherfield which is a must read for anyone, not only artists, who want to rethink blockchain. I previously also interviewed Ruth Catlow, one of the founders of Furtherfield on the podcast if you want more context.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

Bailbloc is a cryptocurrency scheme against bail through The New Inquiry, in which you can  download the app and a small portion of your computer's unused processing power is redirected toward mining Monero. At the end of every month, Bailbloc exchanges the Monero for US dollars and donates the earnings to one of the bail funds in the National Bail Fund Network on a rotational basis. Due to changes in the US legal system around bail, the project is in the process of being phased out, however all of the code is open source and can potentially be used for other purposes.For this interview I spoke to Grayson Earle (@graysonearle). He is an artist in residence at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Center for Art and Urbanistics) in Berlin and one of the creators of Bail Bloc. During the interview we talk about how an why he created Bailbloc, the lessons learned from it, and his suggestions for people who would want to do something similar. We also talk a little bit about Breadchain and the similarities it has with how Bailbloc approached cryptocurrency to collectivize gains for good.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

This is a teaser of a patreon exclusive episode. As a patron you have the ability to vote on the topic / question of a monthly patreon exclusive podcast. For this month the topic voted on was about the connection between blockchain and cooperatives.Get the full version on Patreon.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

The Drivers Cooperative is a ride-hailing platform similar to Uber except owned by the workers not venture capital starting in NYC. They are currently having a fundraiser here where you can invest in and support the workers' movement in the US directly while receiving potentially a 2.5x return. For this interview, I spoke with Jason Prado (@jasonpjason), an ex-Silicon Valley developer and startup founder who left the Silicon Valley dream to  assist the 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and current Chief Technologist of The Drivers Cooperative. He also has a Substack called Venture Commune.During the interview we discuss his journey from techno-utopian thinking to socialism and his thesis for how tech workers should be helping other workers build power. Hint: go where workers are and organize with them rather than try to build tech in a vacuum.  We also talk about some potential future ideas for leveraging crypto for The Drivers Cooperative similar to a DAO. If you're interested in joining the Drivers Coop  as a software developer, they are hiring! You can find open positions here.If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

It has been reported lately in the news about how the country of Iran has been using bitcoin to get around sanctions imposed by the United States and how the population is using it as a hedge for inflation. To get a better understanding on the situation, I spoke to Salman Sadeghi (@salman_sadeghi), a Masters student at GCAS studying cryptoeconomics based in Iran.During the interview we discuss what is the experience on the ground for Iranians that are suffering under these sanctions, how he was personally effected by these sanctions, and his favorite left philosophers for understanding cryptocurrency. He also gives very interesting insight as to why the government recently banned bitcoin mining in the country purportedly because of the strain on the energy grid (hint: that wasn't the reason). These sanctions are economic terrorism against innocent people and a form of imperialism by the United States and as Lenin once said, imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. More SourcesMy interview with  the founder of GCAS, Creston DavisCryptocurrency Update from GCAS by Salman SadeghiIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this week's interview, I spoke with Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain), reporter at The Intercept focused on Foreign Policy with an interest in cryptocurrency. The past year Murtaza has been researching and learning more about cryptocurrencies specifically because of the its anti-imperial potential. During the interview we spoke about how the United States specifically uses US Dollar hegemony as a weapon against countries that don't conform to its desires, the implications of countries sanctioned by the United States using bitcoin as a tool for subverting the sanctions, and how silly it is for some on the left to completely disregard the potential of cryptocurrencies for anti-imperialism and developing alternatives to the big banks that caused the Great Recession. SourcesMurtaza's article in CoinDeskCurrent Affairs on BitcoinLatest Breadchain Blog on the Breadchain Crowdstaking ProtocolPodcast Platforms:SpotifyiTunesStitcherPodcast AddictDeezerIf you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.Send me your questions or comments about the show and I'll read them out sometime. Support the showICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking. The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.