Episode 13: Neha Narula on Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and the Future of the Internet
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- Опубликовано: 27 окт 2024
- Blog post with show notes: www.prepostero...
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For something of such obvious importance, money is kind of mysterious. It can, as Homer Simpson once memorably noted, be exchanged for goods and services. But who decides exactly how many goods/services a given unit of money can buy? And what maintains the social contract that we all agree to go along with it? Technology is changing what money is and how we use it, and Neha Narula is a leader in thinking about where money is going. One much-hyped aspect is the advent of blockchain technology, which has led to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. We talk about what the blockchain really is, how it enables new kinds of currency, and from a wider perspective whether it can help restore a more individualistic, decentralized Web.
Neha Narula is the Director of the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT. She obtained her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, and worked at Google and Digg before joining the faculty there. She is an expert on scalable databases, secure software, cryptocurrencies, and online privacy.
another great podcast with another fascinating guest. keep up the good work Sean.
This was a fantastic podcast. I've been listening to blockchain/cryptocurrency videos and podcasts for months but this lady has broken it down in a very understandable way
I notice a notification and see Sean's talking about Cryptocurrency. I feel like I'm minutes away from droppin a like
Edit: Sean just said he's gonna ask dumb questions and play the idiot. Here's your like.
This was a very good episode. Thank you Sean!
I am now a patreon too, first time ever. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Much respect and love!
Sean, Neha was an excellent guest. Your conversation about crypto-currencies and the like was quite informative.
the concept of money is directly tied to the notion of trust not necessarily value
It is tied to value, but that value is rooted in trust. I think at least
Would have like to have heard Neha's thought on some of some the alternatives to blockchain (hashgraph, Holochain, etc), that attempt to solve some of the issues of blockchain/bitcoin/ethereum.. things like scalability/speed.
I don't recall exactly where I heard it* but it was mentioned that the amount of energy needed to compute/verify blockchain transactions has grown exponentially, yet the number of transactions is the same!
The AfterOn podcast had a great episode with Fred Ehrsam, where they talk about smart contracts and how Distributed Autonomous Organizations can revolutionize democracy!
*The Hidden Forces, a16z, and Dave Asprey's podcast had great episodes on Leemon Baird's Hashgraph.. and Kevin Rose's Block Zero podcast (Antonopoulos/ZenCash) also had some fantastic cryptocurrency discussion.
Thanks for another great podcast!
Great guest. Nice job.
Time is actually worth something to us and anything with value is better cuantified in the time it takes to obtain that particular value. And this is actually universal. Gold has value because it is difficult to extract and refine, but it all comes down to time.
Great episode, but I found it disappointing that the immense negative environmental impact of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) wasn't even glancingly mentioned.
I got the notification at work, Sean + blockchain. Now, this shit is bookmarked. Gotta listen to it once at home.
What does she mean when she says it's difficult to hack paper? The paper is produced by a machine, presumably hack-able. Are paper re-counts actually a feasible thing that can be done? What does the manpower look like in such an event? How is that even possible? And even if it were possible then couldn't someone produce a machine that prints one name to the user while a separate name is printed to the official recount box? Does anyone understand how this system works? I am genuinely curious. I am a software developer and I cannot conceive of a paper system that is not hack-able.
Last time I voted, I filled out a piece of paper and fed it into a machine. The machine scanned the piece of paper, but kept the original. So a recount would presumably just look at the original piece of paper.
paper money can't be traced, counted, or tracked. if you pay the garage in cash for car repair it's up to them to declare it for tax, if they put it in their pocket, no one is any the wiser. this might sound like a great way to conduct crime, and it is, but without cash transactions the country would fall apart. here, i'll cut and paste a little story for you:
through no fault of my own (timing really) i fell into heavy debt three years ago, so bad i got tossed out of my bank (the bank that claims to "be by your side no matter what") i had all my credit cards taken away (two gold, two platinum, one black) so if it weren't for cash i would be homeless now, i had no way to pay or buy other than cash.
the hypocrisy is i went to the bank next door to the one that threw me out and opened an account with them no trouble, and, because banks don't actually lend you money (they permit you to create NEW money when you "borrow", i haven't had to "pay back" a penny of my credit card "debt", cos it isn't debt at all.
Will quantum computing affect cryptocurrencies? They could mine instantly in theory.
It would but it would also effect the whole internet and current financial system. Everything connected to a computer would be effected. Mining still has to reach consensus so it wouldn't effect that as far as I'm aware.
Thanks sean this was interesting. As someone who has been into cryptocurrency and the blockchain since late '10, it felt a little surface but its such a complex "chain" of topics I think this made a perfect introduction.
As for crypto media platforms, ive heard of one for a while called LBRY which is hoping to be like a micropayment decentralized youtube. Dont think its ready uet but you might find it interesting to research
Also, personally im anticipating a huge revolution of the friction in the charity pipelines. I have had some ideas about how to integrate the blockchain tech into non-profit industries. From reward systems built to incentives socially concious action to making it easier to manage foundations or grants or a myriad of other purposes
Lastly, if I were to recommend another guest for the future or someone you might find interesting that comes from the develop side of crypto... Charlie Lee. Former Google employee, works for Coinbase. Created Litecoin, one of the earliest cryptocurrencies. Funny and interesting fellow. Bit of a troll :P
52:30 We need to be concerned how we quantify value in the economy. Cryptos are just tools. We need to go beyond the ease of making payments. We need to expand the definition of material wealth to include forms of labor unrecognized now, and to punish forms of wealth accumulation that destroy the common good (financial derivatives, fossil fuels, market speculation etc). How about a smart contract that creates cryptos for x Kilowatts of renewable energy created?
Already exists - Solar coin. If you are producing solar energy you can register with the founder and you will receive solar coin based on you contribution. I'm sure there are other 's set up but I'm personally only aware of this one. It's been around for about 4 years I believe and is currently trading at around 9 cents per Solar coin.
Thanks. The convertibility of cryptos to traditional currencies is a flaw, not a quality. It links the cryptos to the vices of capitalism, and to volatility. The moment you make them convertible you diminish their revolutionary potential. We need cryptos that create a New Economy that obliterates the vices of Late Capitalism.
Sorry I don't agree with your views on capitalism but being rewarded for alternative uses of energy I can get on board with.
@@RareshVladBunea i don't see capitalism going anywhere, it#s not ideal but it's the democracy of money, imperfect but all we've got.
At no point anyone mentioned the waste of energy and the disastrous environmental impact, wtf?
you tou I haven’t heard the podcast yet but I hope this wasn’t overlooked
This is not the market for crypto currencies. Seasonal time is January to April. Focus on MJ market. It is going to 2000 level.
excellent.
You forgot to mention the most important thing about paper money; it's backed by the government.
Like the gov in Venezuela or Turkey.
lol.
the most important thing about paper money is it can't be traced, tracked, witheld or counted. through no fault of my own (timing really) i fell into heavy debt three years ago, so bad i got tossed out of my bank (the bank that claims to "be by your side no matter what") i had all my credit cards taken away (two gold, two platinum, one black) so if it weren't for cash i would be homeless now, i had no way to pay or buy other than cash.
the hypocrisy is i went to the bank next door to the one that threw me out and opened an account with them no trouble, and, because banks don't actually lend you money (they permit you to create NEW money when you "borrow", i haven't had to "pay back" a penny of my credit card "debt", cos it isn't debt at all.
Money is the root of all evil. It's what breaks our hearts, regularly. Cryptocurrencies are the last ditch effort of the great disaster that is a competitive, point-scoring approach to organizing ourselves. We're slowly letting that deadly virus/meme go extinct, so that we can finally (again) be free, like all healthy individuals in an organism.
That'll never happen, bucko. And it's the love of money, not the money itself. So, whatever we find valuable, there will be a minority of jerks who don't care about others and will make it hell on earth in order to have their drug.
It's happened before, and it's how evolution always moves life: towards more freedom, diversity, and collaboration for a shared goal.
You just focus on doing what you love, freely, whenever possible, and let evolution worry about everyone else.
You're right about the last part. That's some high hopes on the first part though. I feel like we've actually succeeded classical evolution. And we are our biggest threat. So, to consider our future we have to consider our sycophants, sociopaths, psychopath, and just selfish tendencies we have for what's best for the individual. As long there is conscious, there will be a battle against tyranny. But people like you, who have your attitude, will be the real saviors for all of us, by minding their own gardens instead of sticking your nose in your neighbors or trying to get your neighbors to take on your responsibilities. Those are, and have always been, the real heroes.
Humans, as all other biological organisms, were made to be free, to create, explore, and share the best possible stuff for life.
Only when we are conned into thinking that we shouldn't be free, and instead compete against ourselves for points (money, grades, votes), do we become evil. This con game is something we're slowly waking up to, as the viral meme of "life is a Monopoly game" starts to lose it's affect on us, and we become healthy again due to evolution's memetic immune system kicking in.
It's just that evolution, even on a memetic level, works really friggen slowly.
What you need is a surplus of energy where costs reduce to zero through efficiencies. AKA I have robots that can replicate using only renewable energy sources. Soon everyone has robots for free at no cost. Robot A builds mining robot B who achieves the raw material to build robot C who creates solar collectors that provide the energy to robot A and B and C. A completely autonomous society funded by the sun. Wait...didn't we have that for a few billion years already?
3:04
19:00 There this guy in Nigeria, maybe he is a prince, and he has some money he made somehow, maybe trusting people sent it to him over the internet, and he needs to get it out of the country so he uses bitcoin. Isn't bitcoin great : )
People want contradictory things, they want to be private, safe, secure, easy to use and they want it to be free.
One of the problems with bitcoin is it isn't easy to use. So if bitcoin becomes a universally accepted way to do business there's going emerge service companies that will securely hold your private keys, maybe let you borrow against them using sort of card for credit etc... Basically just another bank but maybe with less government controls.
if money is a history then perfect currency are best moments of you life, so until we have brain recorder and neuralink we stuck with paper and powerwaste
Dr. Sean, the first block produced by Satoshi had an image of a newspaper mentioning 2008-2009 bailouts, bitcoin has an agenda and this interview missed it completely, except some hints to the exact opposite of that agenda!
If it would interest you, maybe try to talk to someone about stateless money!
20:00 Bitcoin
23:40 Blockchain - didn't help me in the slightest.
27:40 Blockchain. Take two.
OK, I give up. I think this would have been better if Sean explained how it works and Neha just gave us the history and the future.
10 cents per podcast? I'm not made of pennies Shawn. 😒
To the moon!
Decentralized system is less efficient, or more expensive. I think the guest did not expand enough on this. There is no free lunch. I think crypto currency promised way too much, much more than it can deliver. Simply put, solving these complex mathematical problems costs money, and the cost is going up fast once more people are using it (unlike mining real gold).
Greetings and thank you for excellent contributions to the world of science communication.
Money is a semi-unique subject to analyze. A sister subject that is also semi-unique to study is sex. Both of these subjects evoke an instinctual response designed by the forces of evolution. These instinctual responses can and do alter the perception of reality and override some decision processes of the conscious mind. This is true for both a person living life or a person contemplating these subjects.
Neha Narula is focused on the aspect of money that is the counterfeiting problem. The crypto currencies are basically using a cryptographic signed audit trail as proof that each unit of currency is not counterfeit. Because of this the entire transaction history of each unit of currency is recorded and maintained (full audit trail). I may be wrong here but I believe that there are two basic flaws in the operation of crypto currencies. The first is that the energetic transaction cost which limits the smallest viable transaction amount will always rise to a level that will prohibit all but the largest of transactions. Ex. Crypto transaction expends 100 joules energy. The transaction was the purchase of 100 joules energy delivered to crypto transaction server. In this case the “Pot rake” is not going into the coffers of the bankers but is going directly into the entropy ledger of the universe. The second is the ever increasing time required for the completion of a transaction. The time cost of a discrete transaction will cause a systemic failure when a certain threshold is reached. What ever the breaking point is on the currency some level of economic trust in a group of institutions would have to exist in order to facilitate any future structural corrections. Because the advertised benefit of crypto currencies is that there is no need for a group of institutions existing with a level of economic trust there is no value in the proposition of a full economic implementation of crypto currencies. This leads to all crypto currencies being isolated pools to be used as a mini confidence game. There are other systems that can have a full audit trail and also have near impossible counterfeiting that are more in-tune to what money is actually made of.
The metaphor that I have settled on is this:
Money is a camouflaged bucket. The size of the bucket correlates to the value of the money. The camouflage is a mirror that can reflect the current greatest desire, that the bucket can buy, held by the mind that is contemplating the bucket.
I have two different analyses that show that the container aspect of the bucket conveys either a dream, a product or the energy to create a product or dream. A long time ago the energy to create a product was the food grown from sunlight fed to a person or animal to move and/or rearrange atoms. As time progressed other forms of exploitable energy sources have come to be fed to machinery to move and/or rearrange atoms.
It therefore follows that upon canceling out the effects of human psychology this model can be reduced to the statement: All budgets are fundamentally an energy budget.
Now if you consult an astrophysicist, biologist, ecologist or NASA program manager and say this they will respond with something like “Yes, that concept is as basic as gravity”. Now we can apply this concept to economics.
The value of money is the amount of energy that a given unit of currency can purchase. This is the real connection behind the term petrodollar. In short money is merely the force carrier not the force its self. The real unit of value is the unit of energy available for use.
Side note:
Because money has Mirror of Erised effects on humans it alters our ability to play the money portion of the “game of life” with optimum game theory strategies. See statistics on money management outcomes in the population. Prediction if you analyze a good statistical slice of spam in all medium types it will be found that there are entire classes of spam that exploit these non-optimal strategies. Related Prediction many other classes of spam will correspond with one or more reproductive strategies that can be exploited. Some of these exploits have emerged due to changes in the Darwinian environment that have unbalanced established reproductive strategies.
too wordy.
I wish I had a bitcoin for every time she said "So"
JustKeith That’s a great question.
14:57 Obviously capitalism cannot be saved, whether you call it human-capitalism or any other name. Something more like democratic socialism is the reasonable alternative.
Decentralized, voluntary/consensual, networked micro-governments are how natural systems function well. You get to choose your own rules, and be free to have the life you want to have. You might need to relocate, but you will be supported in doing that, since it's in everyone's best interest to have you where you belong and not be in some place where you don't fit in well.
"Democratic socialism" is a paradox. It's like "democratic nazism". What you mean is "social democracy", which needs capitalism. Every system that values human dignity & freedom needs capitalism. Socialism, in all of its forms, is the opposite of that.