Presentation delivered at keynote session of Stamford Innovation Week - Blockchain Day

1. FREE SPEECH MONEY
An update on the state of cryptocurrency as a tool for human liberation, ten years on

2. Hello! I’m Preston Byrne.
• Gab: @pjb
• Twitter: @prestonjbyrne
• Lawyer dual-admitted in England and America
• Blockchain fabulous, as founded Monax Industries in 2014
• Monax == first non-cryptocurrency/“enterprise” blockchain
• Represent libertarian-leaning technology companies and
entrepreneurs, with a decent cryptocurrency practice

3. Structure of the talk
1. WTF is today about?
2. Ten years in history
3. Ten years in needs
4. Looking ahead

4. WTF is today all about? (Agreeing definitions)
• Bitcoin, but also think about other types of distributed consensus
• Bitcoin is “a Blockchain”
• “Blockchain technology” == 
• Blockchain is a method of using technology, not a technology
• Network database
• Peer to peer
• Usually not encrypted
• Digital signatures (PKI) authenticate messages
• Batches transactions into blocks and records all transaction history as a hash-linked
chain of blocks
• “Consensus” and the quality of security  depends on your design assumptions and
preferences

5. Assumptions
• Bitcoin is currently the dominant cryptocurrency/blockchain platform
by a considerable distance
• Bitcoin’s current limitations prevent it from serving as a credible
mainstream challenger to existing mainstream technological solutions
• This does not mean that Bitcoin will not adapt with the passage of
time
• Present-day Bitcoin does not represent the end-state of distributed
consensus tooling which apply these principles, or of Bitcoin itself

6. Part 2: What ten years can do

7. Bitcoin is ten years old
• The automobile in 1895
• The airplane in 1916
• Manned spaceflight in 1968
• The modern computer in 1953
• The telephone in 1886
• The Internet in 1979
• The iPod in 2011
• The iPhone in 2018

8. It’s still early
Junckers J-1, world’s first all-metal aircraft (1916)
Benz Omnibus; world’s first gas-powered bus (1895)
IBM Model 701 (1953)

9. Ten years in cryptocurrency
• 2009: White Paper published on the Cryptography Mailing List
• 2010-2012: Nerd Era, Silk Road
• 2013: Mt Gox Bubble
• 2014: First Altcoin Boom
• 2015-16: “Blockchain without”
• 2017: ICO Boom
• 2018: Regulatory awakening
• 2019: “DeFi” and deplatforming

10. Ten years in cryptocurrency: bro version

11. Ten years in cryptocurrency: better version

12. Ten years in geopolitics: the slow unraveling
of the post-Cold War world order
• 1990-2007: Hunky-dory unless you lived in the Balkans or the Great Lakes
region of Africa
• 2008-2012: Global Financial Crisis, quantitative easing
• 2013: Maduro
• 2014: Grexit
• 2016: Brexit, Trump
• 2017: Lulz
• 2018: Salvini, Bolsonaro
• 2019: Yuan-settled oil futures, Libra, Abqaiq, Hong Kong, quantitative
easing…

13. Ten years in brain dead venture capital
narratives
• 2009: White Paper published on the Cryptography Mailing List
• 2010-2012: Replace cash
• 2013: Replace all banking everywhere
• 2014: Replace Bitcoin
• 2015-16: Replace SAP
• 2017: Fat Protocols/Ethereum!!!111!! Cryptokitties1!one!!eleven!!
• 2018: Why are we being subpoenaed?
• 2019: “DeFi”/Replace all banking everywhere

14. Part 3: Who needs Bitcoin?

15. Ten years in needs
• 2009: Nobody needs it
• 2010-2012: Drug dealers need it
• 2013: Drug dealers need it
• 2014: Drug dealers need it
• 2015-16: Venezuelans need it
• 2017: Venezuelans need it
• 2018: Venezuelans, Hong Kongers, Americans need it
• 2019: Venezuelans, Hong Kongers, Americans, Argentinians…

16. Ten years in needs: 2009

17. Ten years in needs: 2010-2012

18. Silk Road was responsible for most of Bitcoin’s
real world transaction volume at the time

19. Crime doesn’t pay

20. Ten years in needs: 2013

21. Ten years in needs: 2013

22. Ten years in needs: 2013

23. Wow such 2014

24. Operation Choke Point

25. 2015-16
• Fairly boring on the crypto side of things, a lot of Series A-level stuff
• Early enterprise blockchain; slow adoption; low bank budgets
• Building phase
• Gradual increase of transaction volumes
• Trump, Brexit, Ukrainian war
• Milo Yiannopoulous banned from Twitter

26. 2017

27. 2017

28. 2018: awakened regulators
• US SEC publishes “Dao Report” in Summer 2017
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission settles with
• ParagonCoin (ICO issuer)
• Etherdelta founder (unregistered national securities exchange)
• ICO Store
• U.S. CFTC opens investigation into Tether
• New York Attorney General’s office opens investigation into Tether
• U.S. Department of Justice indicts Crypto Capital Corp. leadership on
money laundering charges

29. 2018: woke corporations
• Alex Jones banned from YouTube, Facebook, Google, Apple, Spotfy, Stitchr, MailChimp,
Linkedin, Vimeo, Twitter – over the course of several days
• Milo Yiannopoulos banned from Coinbase, Facebook, Patreon
• Patreon, Visa/Mastercard cut off payments to the David Horowitz Freedom Center
• Paypal bans 34 groups and companies at the behest of the Southern Poverty Law Center
• Facebook/Instagram bans Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones,
Paul Joseph Watson; among others
• Gavin McInnes banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Paypal
• Laura Loomer banned from GoFundMe, Venmo, Uber, Lyft
• Gab.com banned from nearly every service under the sun, including BitPay and Coinbase
• First National Bank of Omaha, Citigroup ban firearms business
• Cloudflare makes its first of only two ideological bans made to date

30. 2019: angry regulators
• FinCEN reaffirms that money transmission is still money
transmission
• SEC settles with Bitqyck, SimplyVitalHealth
• SEC sues Kik
• SEC sues ICOBox
• SEC rejects several ETF applications
• DOJ indicts Crypto Capital Corp
• DOJ indicts early Ethereum adviser
• Blockstack issues first Regulation A+ Offering
Angry marmot

31. Not just politics: platforms are being
deplatformed!

32. 2019: No-platforming is now a global
phenomenon
• 1776.shop (US)
• Live Action (US)
• YouTube
• Adpocalypse/Comment disabling:
Legitimate law enforcement purpose, but a
very wide net (tens of millions of videos);
review automated rather than manual
• Carlos Maza/Steven Crowder;
• SumofUs/Tommy Robinson (UK)
• Rollout of Social Credit (China)
• Li Xiaolin

33. 2019: trolling the communists
• Bitcoin used in Venezuela as
inflation hedge
• Bitcoin used in Hong Kong to
facilitate resistance vs
government
• Bitcoin used in Argentina
following the imposition of
capital controls
• Bitcoin used in the United
States to circumvent de-
platforming bans

34. 3. Looking ahead

35. Sources of financial censorship
State
MobCorporations Outrage
Hypersensitivity
tailored to
criminal code
Informal
pressure,
subjective
regulations
State
MobCorporations Deplatforming
(mob-driven
extra-judicial
denial of service)
Investigation
and/or arrest
Risk-driven
extra-legal
denial of
service
Expression Result

36. Sources of financial censorship (continued)
State
MobCorporations Based CEO,
gradual
cultural
inoculation
Bill of Rights
Elimination of
subjective
regulations e.g.
reputation risk in
CAMELS score
State
MobCorporations Global
UK, Europe,
China
U.S.
Non-Bitcoin Solution Current problem hotspots

37. Solving real world problems increasingly more
people care about
State
MobCorporations Honey Badger
Don’t Care
Circumvents social credit
scoring
Circumvents platform
bans
Bitcoin has no
cognizance of risk
Provides payment
processing for legal
businesses
State
MobCorporations Alex Jones
Milo Yiannopoulos
Laura Loomer
Li Xiaolin
Count Dankula
Lauren Southern
MakeLoveNotPorn
Operation Choke Point
Backpage, CraigsList

38. My personal views
• Until about 2017-18, outside of a hyperinflation or capital controls
scenario there was no reason that a person should require Bitcoin
• Silk Road’s “need” was never going to drive global Bitcoin adoption (a)
because the growth potential for illegal activity is highly constrained
and (b) because using Bitcoin is a really stupid way to break the law
• 2017-18 saw the emergence of legally legitimate uses of Bitcoin to
circumvent mob-driven extrajudicial denial of service (MEDoS) in
Western democracies
• Increased polarization will continue this trend

39. Tl;dr: eat your heart out, Carlota Perez
Source: Hacker News user dleslie, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18366040

40. Thank you for your time.