09-29, 19:00–19:45 (Europe/Prague), Studio 1
Crypto has spawned an entire industry. Today, we command $1T in capital with which to pursue the depoliticisation of money and the creation of a decentralised financial system. Fifteen years on, the political formula that underpinned crypto's rise – with its origins in libertarian, extropian, and cypherpunk ideals – remains largely unchanged. In the absence of political thought development, we remain unable to understand the true nature of blockchain-based orders. In this talk, Jarrad views crypto through the lens of Bertrand de Jouvenel’s political works and those of other elite theorists. By casting the space as a new centre of power, he hopes to shed light on who we are, and what our futures may hold.
Jarrad came to Bitcoin in early 2011 through agorism, counter-economics & crypto-anarchy, seeing that Bitcoin could operate a monetary policy in a hostile environment, he began to view public blockchains as a voluntary social order, one that didn’t depend on a monopoly of violence. From there he participated in early attempts to generalise the bitcoin script to advance institutional libertarianism, ultimately becoming an early contributor to Ethereum. While Jarrad advances privacy technologies through developing an e2e and p2p private messaging client & super app, Status, he realised that privacy technologies are not enough and now is advocating for self-sovereign crypto-networks, the realisation of a latent cypherpunk dream, the crypto-state.