Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights | Lex Fridman Podcast #231

1. 0:00 – 1:34

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation and the Oslo Freedom Forum. In recent times, Alex has focused on how cryptocurrency, and especially Bitcoin, can be a tool for empowering democracy and civil l- liberties in the world, most crucially, parts of the world that are living under authoritarian regimes. As a side note, let me say that I have been learning a lot about the ways in which money can be used to amass power, and in the same way, the decentralization of money can be used to resist the corrupting nature of this power. Alex and I do not agree on everything, but we strive for the same betterment of humanity. He's sensitive to the suffering in the world and is dedicating his life to finding solutions that lessen that suffering. Whether Bitcoin is one such solution, I don't know, but I think it has a chance, and that means it is worth exploring deeply. I'm staying in this path of learning patiently and with as little ego as possible. I hope you come along with me on this journey as well. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. We recorded this conversation a while ago, and I thought I lost the audio, and was really disappointed with myself for messing this thing up. But luckily, last week, I found it, and so, rescued from out of the abyss of nonexistence, here's my conversation with Alex Gladstein.

2. 1:34 – 15:34

   Universal human rights

   1. LFLex Fridman1:34

      What are some universal human rights that you believe all people should have?

   2. AGAlex Gladstein1:40

      So, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of belief, freedom to participate in your government, the freedom to have privacy, the freedom to own things, property rights. These are all basic, fundamental, negative rights, what we call them. These are the basic, fundamental human freedoms.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:59

      What does negative rights mean?

   4. AGAlex Gladstein2:02

      Negative rights are liberties, and positive rights are entitlements. So after World War II, when the UN came together, it was largely compromised between the Communist Soviet Union and the, you know, free United States, right? So, the US had, uh, on its side of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, uh, a bunch of li- liberties, essentially, things like free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly. The Soviets wanted entitlements, uh, like the right to work, the right to have housing, the right to water, the right to a vacation. So if you actually read the UN Declaration for Human Rights, it's a negotiation between the Soviets and the Americans. Later, there was another document in the '70s released called the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and this is what HRF uses as its sort of, like, lodestar, um, its founding document, and this is, like, essentially an international agreement on the negative rights. Those are the things we choose to focus on, because essentially, authoritarian regimes can commit fraud and claim they're giving the, the positive rights, the entitlements without having any of the negative liberties, and they can do that because they don't have any, like, free speech or press freedom. Um, when you, when you take people's basic fundamental freedoms away, it's quite easy to make, like, a Potemkin village and pretend that there's the entitlements and that we have good, uh, healthcare, and, you know, it's the same sort of thing that authoritarians have done for decades, uh, Cuba and Venezuela and, and the Soviet Union.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:29

      Do you think it's possible for authoritarian regimes to manipulate, to kind of lie about the negative rights as well by saying that the people have free speech, uh, the people h- have the freedom t- for assembly and all those kinds of things? Can't you still manipulate the idea that, uh, citizenry still has those rights?

   6. AGAlex Gladstein3:49

      The opposition l- leader of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, he once told me, uh, that, a funny joke that, you know, "In my country, we have freedom of speech. We don't have freedom after speech."

   7. LFLex Fridman4:00

      (laughs)

   8. AGAlex Gladstein4:00

      So yeah. They, they can absolutely manipulate whatever they want. But I've done research into socioeconomic data, and I guess what I'm telling you is that authoritarian regimes, which make up, uh, 53% of the world's population across 95 countries, um, about 4.3 billion people, those who live under those regimes are subject to, uh, massive fraud when it comes to things like literacy rates, um, life expectancy, um, any sort of socioeconomic data, economic growth. They can do this because there's no free press. Um, so for us at the Human Rights Foundation and for people like me, we believe that the negative rights, the liberties, the things that are in, for example, uh, the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, these things are the table, and then we can build on top of that. We can build the rest of our societies on top of that. The freest countries in the world have both the negative liberties and the entitlements, like Norway, for example. But there's a big difference between Norway and North Korea. In North Korea, they only claim to have the entitlements, and they definitely don't have the liberties.

   9. LFLex Fridman5:05

      Do you think there's one right that's more important than others? You kind of suggested the freedom of the press, maybe freedom of speech, that if you take that away, all the other ones kind of collapse along with, like, from a ripple effect. Is there something fundamental that you, uh, like to focus your attention on to defend, to protect, to make sure it's there?

   10. AGAlex Gladstein5:25

       Yeah. I think, I think free speech is probably the most fundamental. It's probably why the founders chose to make it into the First Amendment. Um, a lot of things are downstream from there. Property rights are also very, very important. Um, obviously, we've seen the, the toll of violent redistributionism, you know, in over the last 100 years, uh, whether it was, uh, Lenin or Stalin or Mao, uh, or other regimes in everywhere from Ethiopia to colonia- colonialists everywhere to, to North Korea. It's not a pretty legacy.

   11. LFLex Fridman5:56

       Is free speech clear to you as a concept? There's been quite a few debates, especially in the digital age.... what it means to violate freedom of speech. There's been a lot of m- new, like novel, mechanisms for people to communicate with each other.

   12. AGAlex Gladstein6:12

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LFLex Fridman6:12

       Like especially on social networks. And it seems that, uh, unclear... Because a lot of times those are managed by private companies. It's unclear how much protection do the citizens have to have when they're communicating. A lot of people are being censored on these social platforms. Some people, even presidents, get, uh, removed from those social platforms. Have you thought about the freedom of speech in the United States, but in, in the world, uh, m- as it, uh, as it's implemented in the 21st century, given the internet and all those kinds of things?

   14. AGAlex Gladstein6:50

       There is a Soviet dissident named Natan Sharansky who, um, survived, uh, the regime. And he wrote a book, uh, in which his thesis was essentially the way that you can define a free society is through something called the town square test. Can you go to a public space where you live and criticize your ruler loudly, um, without fear of ret- retribution? If you can do that, you have, you have free speech. I think that's a pretty good litmus test.

   15. LFLex Fridman7:19

       Hmm.

   16. AGAlex Gladstein7:20

       Um, most people in this world cannot do that. If you live in Havana, if you live in Moscow, if you live in Beijing, uh, you cannot do that. And, and that's not a free society. Uh, in Austin, Texas, in Boston, Massachusetts, in London, in Santiago, Chile, in Tokyo, Japan, in many democracies, you can do that. And I think that that's a really helpful basic sort of litmus test.

   17. LFLex Fridman7:42

       Does the content of the criticism matter? Can it be complete lies, meaning conspiracy theories that involve claiming that the leader is, let's say, a lizard/pedophile-/ you know... I'm not saying that those are lies. Look into it. But, uh, they're very unlikely (laughs) phenomena. So, like, does that matter?

   18. AGAlex Gladstein8:10

       I, I think it ends poorly when the state tries to restrict speech. Um, I think that's kind of how I would define censorship. I, I think censorship and deplatforming are two different things. Uh, private companies, um, you know, they get to make up their own rules about what's allowed on their platforms. And I think that's very different from a government with guns and an army restricting the speech of its citizens with threats of violence. These things are different for me.

   19. LFLex Fridman8:39

       That violence is a, is a fundamental difference. I don't know. I, I, um, I've gotten the chance to have dinner with Alex Jones.

   20. AGAlex Gladstein8:46

       Mm-hmm.

   21. LFLex Fridman8:47

       And, uh, I've, I've talked to him a few times offline. And it does... I understand why people are so off-put by him. But it does bother me that he's universally removed from every platform. It feels like there's many more evil people, bad people compared to Alex Jones, who still are given a voice on these platforms. And so I'm uncomfortable with the universality of the application of the censorship by, uh, by these platforms. But on the flip side, you're right. There's not a violence, there's not tanks, there's not guns behind that censorship.

   22. AGAlex Gladstein9:29

       Yeah, it's a bit of a generalization. But Alex Jones would be in prison or dead if he were in North Korea or-

   23. LFLex Fridman9:36

       Yeah.

   24. AGAlex Gladstein9:36

       ... in Cuba or in Russia or in China. The he- the, the authorities would not tolerate him to do what he did. And here, he can kind of do what he wants. He's encountering some resistance in the marketplace of ideas. Uh, large organizations, corporations, and a lot of public sentiment, uh, in different parts of our country don't like him. (laughs) And they're doing their best to drown his, out his voice. But that's very different from a, a violent threat of censorship from the state. And that's what we study, that's what I study, are these, you know... What is the state doing? That's kind of paramount for, for me.

   25. LFLex Fridman10:11

       Yeah, and that's true. Because in the marketplace of ideas, there could be a company that springs up that gives Alex Jones a platform. And the United States is not going to prevent those companies from functioning. Of course, there's, uh, from a technologically, tech-, from a technology perspective, there is, uh, AWS-

   26. AGAlex Gladstein10:30

       Mm-hmm.

   27. LFLex Fridman10:30

       ... removing Parler from the platform. It gets a little weird.

   28. AGAlex Gladstein10:33

       Mm-hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman10:33

       You know, as you get closer and closer to the computer infrastructure, because then you get closer and closer to the state, actually. The, the more you get to the infrastructure that's usually managed by the state, the closer it gets to the, the control of the state. I would argue AWS is pretty damn close to infrastructure that's kind of controlled by the state, if you especially look at other nations-

   30. AGAlex Gladstein10:55

       Mm-hmm.
3. 15:34 – 25:44

   Authoritarianism

   1. AGAlex Gladstein15:34

   2. LFLex Fridman15:34

      You mentioned one of the signs that, uh, the state is a, an authoritarian state.

   3. AGAlex Gladstein15:40

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman15:41

      H- how do you know if you're living in an authoritarian state?

   5. AGAlex Gladstein15:44

      (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman15:44

      Or when you study another nation or analyze the behavior of another nation, how do you know that's an authorit- authoritarian state? Is it as simple as them having a dictator? Is it as simple as them as declaring that they don't have a democracy? Or is there something more subtle?

   7. AGAlex Gladstein15:59

      There's a couple good litmus tests. One is actually can you have a gay pride parade?

   8. LFLex Fridman16:03

      (laughs) That's a good-

   9. AGAlex Gladstein16:05

      Serious. It actually lines up perfectly. Doesn't matter what religion the dictatorship is.

   10. LFLex Fridman16:09

       Yeah.

   11. AGAlex Gladstein16:10

       They don't like minor- they don't like minorities, and they love to scapegoat whether it's gays or religious minorities, et cetera. So it lines up pretty well.

   12. LFLex Fridman16:17

       That's really interesting.

   13. AGAlex Gladstein16:17

       If you cannot have a gay pride parade in your country because you're fearful that you're gonna get the crap kicked out of you, probably live in an authoritarian regime. Um...

   14. LFLex Fridman16:27

       I'm sure that's not just about some kind of homophobia. Why is that? That's really interesting, 'cause that's where I go-

   15. AGAlex Gladstein16:33

       Scapegoating.

   16. LFLex Fridman16:33

       ... I'm going through, so the scapego-

   17. AGAlex Gladstein16:35

       Fascism scapegoats minorities.

   18. LFLex Fridman16:37

       There's an other.

   19. AGAlex Gladstein16:38

       Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman16:38

       You create an other group, and then you, uh...

   21. AGAlex Gladstein16:40

       Where there, yeah, I mean, Uganda is a great example of this, but so is Saudi Arabia, so is China. Um, I mean, so is Cuba. I mean, these are all regimes which demonize, uh, the, you know, LGBT communities. Um...

   22. LFLex Fridman16:53

       It's interesting because, maybe you can correct me-

   23. AGAlex Gladstein16:56

       Mm-hmm.

   24. LFLex Fridman16:56

       ... but from my very distant outsider perspective, uh, the, uh, sort of the way that, uh, certain authoritarian governments speak about, uh, gay people is it's almost like, uh, wha- what is it, um, "We don't have gay people in our country" kind of idea, as opposed to scapegoat-

   25. AGAlex Gladstein17:18

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman17:18

       ... scapegoating, which is like...

   27. AGAlex Gladstein17:21

       Well, denial is the most powerful form of demonization. I mean, this is what the Iranian dictatorship does. A few years ago when Ahmadinejad, who was, who was then sort of the de facto leader, he came to Columbia University, and he tried to give a speech, which you can look up, and he tried to claim that there were no gays in, in Iran. And that's the most powerful form of demonization, is trying to just wipe out your utter existence. There's other good litmus tests too. Um, you know, f- for example, you, you can think about comedy. Um, can you make money making fun of your government on television? If you cannot, you live in a dictatorship most likely. I mean, it's shocking to people that I work with who live in dictatorships when I tell them that not only are comedians, uh, able to safely make fun of our government, but they get paid very well to do so. That's a hallmark of a free society. So that's another good litmus test.

   28. LFLex Fridman18:11

       Hear that Tim Dillon? You should go to North Korea. Check it out. (laughs)

   29. AGAlex Gladstein18:14

       Yeah, and, and look, there are tons of flaws with democracies. Uh, the-

   30. LFLex Fridman18:17

       This is a really good test, by the way. (laughs)
4. 25:44 – 37:07

   AIs impact on civil liberties

   1. LFLex Fridman25:45

      I have a sense that technology, like most technological innovations, will give power to the individuals, will give, uh, will fight- fight authoritarian governments as opposed to give more power to authoritarian governments. But your sense is that there's ways to give ... for technology to be utilis- utilized as a tool for the abuse of the citizenry.

   2. AGAlex Gladstein26:08

      I've seen both. In my work at HRF, I started by helping to put together backpacks with foreign information that we sent to the Cuban underground library movement. So in Cuba, you know, to own a book at the time, you had to like have the government's permission. There was very little internet penetration, okay? So we would send in movies, you know, V for Vendetta dubbed into Spanish-

   3. LFLex Fridman26:30

      (laughs)

   4. AGAlex Gladstein26:30

      ... and people would sit-

   5. LFLex Fridman26:31

      That's great.

   6. AGAlex Gladstein26:31

      ... inside their homes-

   7. LFLex Fridman26:32

      Yeah.

   8. AGAlex Gladstein26:32

      ... and they'd watch it and they would answer questions with each other, and it was very powerful. And then after that I worked with people inside North Korea. We would send in flash drives. We have this program called Flash Drives for Freedom. We've sent over 100,000 flash drives, uh, in our work into North Korea, a country of about 25 million people. That's a lot. It's a big- big difference. That's, you know, many, many millions of hours of films, books, movies, et cetera. So I've seen the power that technology can have where, you know, in the '60s and '70s, you know, to get- to break an information blockade you had to, like, send in crates of books into a Communist country. So now all of a sudden you can send the entire contents of what was once the Library of Alexandria on something the size of your- your thumbnail. Like, that's remarkable. So obviously I've seen the positives of technology, and we'll certainly get into Bitcoin, but I'm, you know, very concerned about essentially big data analysis, like what people call AI or general A- you know, specif- you know, specific kinds of AI. Like, very concerning. I think these are very authoritarian. I mean, it's very hard to make a case that AI is going to be good for human rights. Very difficult, in my opinion. The- it may be good for health, it may be good for, uh, our efforts to protect the planet, it may be good for a lot of scientific things. I find it very hard to believe it'll be good for civil liberties.

   9. LFLex Fridman27:45

      Oh, that's fun. This is fun, because I disagree. Uh-

   10. AGAlex Gladstein27:49

       Give me your examples.

   11. LFLex Fridman27:51

       I-

   12. AGAlex Gladstein27:51

       I'm serious. What- what AI applications will improve civil liberties?

   13. LFLex Fridman27:54

       Oh, I thought- I thought you meant examples of stuff that's already out there, because I can give you examples that- for example, the kind of things that I would like to work on-

   14. AGAlex Gladstein28:04

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LFLex Fridman28:04

       ... but also the kind of things that I'm hoping to see.

   16. AGAlex Gladstein28:07

       Mm-hmm.

   17. LFLex Fridman28:07

       Which is AI could be used by centralized powers, by governments, by big organizations like Facebook and Twitter and so on, to collect data about people.

   18. AGAlex Gladstein28:21

       (laughs) Right.

   19. LFLex Fridman28:22

       Right? But I believe there's a huge hunger among people to have control over their own data. So instead, you can have AI that's distributed, where people have complete ownership of their little AI systems. So, like, the kind of stuff that I would like to build or would like to see to be built is, uh ... You could think of it as personal assistants or AI that's owned by you, and you get to give it out. You have complete control over all of your data, you have complete control over everything that's, uh, learnable about your day-to-day experiences that could be useful in the s- in the market of, um, goods and ideas and all those kinds of things. So it has to do with ... So you- I know you talk about the sur- surveillance, which is very interesting.

   20. AGAlex Gladstein29:14

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman29:14

       It's who gets to have control of the data. And I think ... I- I believe there's a lot of hunger in- among regular people (laughs) to have control over their data, such that if you want to create a business, you have a lot of money to be made from a capitalist perspective by providing products that let people control their data, where you have no control.

   22. AGAlex Gladstein29:40

       It sounds like to me you're describing encryption, or- or at least the- the ability to encrypt, the ability to use, uh, digital keys to secure your property. And I- I ... That to me is a very powerful, uh, individual r- force for individual rights. Very powerful. And it's what's- what animates Bitcoin ultimately, which- which we'll get into. But for me, at least the way I look at it today in 2021, the threat from big data analysis, uh, used by governments in authoritarian regimes is terrifying. I mean, to actually see what the Chinese Communist Party's doing, where they have hundreds of millions of cameras overseeing society, cameras that can tell who's a Uighur and who's a Han. That, to me, is terrifying. And- and everything is sorted instantly. There are- there are super computers that are built in Urumqi, i- in Xinjiang, for this explicit purpose. And, you know, it allows the government to quickly sort and basically commit genocide a lot faster, and it's really scary. So I- I do agree, and I've seen personally how-... powerful technology can be as a force for freedom. Um, but I'm, I'm very, very worried about big data analysis in the hands of governments.

   23. LFLex Fridman30:48

       See, that's funny 'cause I, I, I tend to see governments as ultimately incompetent in the space of technology, to where they will always be lagging behind. So you look at what Ch- the Chinese surveillance systems are doing.

   24. AGAlex Gladstein30:59

       Mm-hmm.

   25. LFLex Fridman31:00

       I, I believe when, once it started getting bad enough that, uh, t- the, like, technologies would be created to resist that. So to mess with it from, from the hacker community, but also from the individual communities. So surveillance is actually very difficult from a centralized perspective to detect, uh, you know, to collect data about you, to detect everything you are, because you can spoof a lot of that information. So I believe you can put power in the hands of the citizens to sort of feed the government fake data to confuse it at a mass scale, to where it'll, it'll make their surveillance less effective. But that, that ... Okay, that could be very sort of hopeful -

   26. AGAlex Gladstein31:39

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman31:40

       ... optimistic idea.

   28. AGAlex Gladstein31:40

       I mean, the practical application in Xinjiang, which is a territory the size of Alaska, uh, where a large percentage of the population has been put into prison camps. Um, the current issue of The New Yorker has an absolutely harrowing, uh, essay that, that tells the story of one such woman who in, I believe, 20- 2017, got sucked into one of these camps, and it took her a year or, or more to get out. Um, and, and she's talking about how in each home in Xinjiang, each home has a QR code on it that the police can scan and get like a quick instant download of who lives there. Uh, each car has, you know, like a scannable code. Um, e- every, every single person has their DNA taken, and the DNA is being sifted through and analyzed by algorithms. So this is like the Chinese government's laboratory for, "How can we use technology to oppress, a s- sort of like digital Leninism?" And that, to me, is one of the biggest, uh, risks in our world today, and it's not talked about enough.

   29. LFLex Fridman32:37

       That's interesting. So technologies basically enables the automation of oppression.

   30. AGAlex Gladstein32:42

       Absolutely.
5. 37:07 – 40:46

   Edward Snowden and government surveillance

   1. AGAlex Gladstein37:08

   2. LFLex Fridman37:08

      On the topic of Snowden and, and the N- NSA, what should we be thinking about? 'Cause that feels like a, already an outdated set of conversations, because of the information we've gotten from the past.

   3. AGAlex Gladstein37:19

      Well-

   4. LFLex Fridman37:19

      It feels like everything's gotten quiet now in terms of how much we actually-

   5. AGAlex Gladstein37:22

      No, there's-

   6. LFLex Fridman37:22

      ... know about the-

   7. AGAlex Gladstein37:23

      ... it's hugely important. I, I, I think the two lessons from Snowden are, A, m- th- the Patriot Act and the war on terror and mass surveillance are not necessary for our democracy and for our freedoms. Um, this was a false choice. We never had to sacrifice them to be safer. Um, and, and we've seen that. Government has spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on these, like, surveillance programs that y- you can read about, have amou- amounted to very little, except for tremendous bureaucratic waste and, you know, t- you know, erosion of our freedoms. Um, but at the same time, we, we need to practice more privacy. And the dramatic increase in the usage of Signal, for example, has been really, really great to see. It's, it's fantastic that tens of millions of people are downloading Signal and using it. Um, you should try to be onboarding more and more of your conversations onto Signal, for example, where governments can't see what you're saying. Maybe they can see the metadata. Maybe they can see that you sent, your phone number sent a message to someone else's phone number at this time, but they can't see what's inside. So, using encryption in your life is very, very important. That's a good starting point. I would say that's kinda step A.

   8. LFLex Fridman38:32

      The ideas of democracy, the ideas of the balance of power, um, the, all the ideas that we were talking about, the constructs-

   9. AGAlex Gladstein38:41

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LFLex Fridman38:42

       ... were inventions.

   11. AGAlex Gladstein38:44

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman38:44

       I wonder if there's other inventions that will allow us to sort of not engage ... n- not give governments or any centralized institutions so much power. Like, why, why do citizens have to use Signal? Why? Because that's an effort. You have to be ... 'cause you have to, like, understand exactly why. So, that's a nice little solution for a particular set of problems. But, like, there's a million other ways that data, I'm sure, is, is being collected constantly. If we don't create a system that prevents the establishments of these centralized powers, then we'll always have this problem.

   13. AGAlex Gladstein39:20

       Yeah, I think we can keep it simple for the purposes of this conversation. You have politics, information, and money. Those are the three things I would encourage us to focus on.

   14. LFLex Fridman39:28

       Okay.

   15. AGAlex Gladstein39:28

       In politics, yes, someone invented democracy. I mean, whether it was the Greeks, um, or the West Africans, or many others around the world around the same time invented this idea that we should be ruled by, uh, rules and not by rulers, right?

   16. LFLex Fridman39:41

       Yeah.

   17. AGAlex Gladstein39:41

       Um, and that has evolved dramatically, right? And now you ... and then you have information. Information also used to be highly centralized, right? Uh, y- you know, think about how rich you had to be to gain access to a library before the printing press, or, you know, how much money you had to have, or how close to the king or the f- you know, feudal lord that you had to be to be able to have that ability. But now, you know, y- uh, the majority of the world, billions of people have access to all information in their pocket, and they can set up an account on social media and get their word out. So, not only politics, but information has been dramatically decentralized. Um, and then I would say that encrypted messaging is kind of a co- corollary to that second innovation, in as much as now people are, like, more effortlessly ... like, Signal is a lot easier to use than PGP, for example.

   18. LFLex Fridman40:28

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AGAlex Gladstein40:29

       They're more easily able to practice privacy when it comes to having private messages, uh, globally. Um, these are all good things and we need to keep pushing. And I think money is, like, honestly maybe the most important piece, and that's why I spend so much time thinking about Bitcoin.

   20. LFLex Fridman40:45

       Okay. So,

6. 40:46 – 44:59

   Money

   1. LFLex Fridman40:46

      politics, information-

   2. AGAlex Gladstein40:49

      Mm-hmm.

   3. LFLex Fridman40:49

      ... money.

   4. AGAlex Gladstein40:49

      Yes.

   5. LFLex Fridman40:50

      Let's talk about money. What is money and why is it important to think about in the context of human rights?

   6. AGAlex Gladstein40:58

      I have witnessed money be peripheralized. Take, tak- it has taken a back seat in the human rights conversation. The idea of currency. Who makes the money, who makes the rules, who issues it, who sets the interest rates, all these things, it is not on the menu of human rights activists. If you just do, like, a systematic study of, like, the human rights discourse over the last several decades, m- money is not there. It's also not really taught in schools. Like, children don't really learn about money, where does it come from. It's, it's kind of hidden from, from our, from a lot of our discourse. Um, only really when I got into Bitcoin did I start learning more about money. Um, I spent 10 years at the Human Rights Foundation, and we, we did all kinds of programs around the world. We convened Oslo Freedom Forums in different places, and I got to meet hundreds of dissidents. And very rarely did they ever speak about currency or bank accounts or moving money from one place to another. But when I started asking them, they always had amazing stories about money. Always. I mean, my friend Yvan Mawire, who, um, started the This Flag movement in Zimbabwe, which ended up toppling Robert Mugabe, when I asked him to come to San Francisco to give a talk about hyperinflation, which he lived through, he said, "No one's ever asked me to do that before."

   7. LFLex Fridman42:12

      Hm.

   8. AGAlex Gladstein42:12

      "But I'll come." And he came. This was about three years ago. And the first thing he did when he got on the stage is he opened up his shirt and he brought out a necklace that had the 1980 Zimbabwean dollar on it. And he said, "We in the activist community wear this as a symbol of where our country used to be," because the Zimbabwean dollar used to be worth two British pounds. And then, of course, over the next two and a half decades of economic mismanagement and corruption by Mugabe, it got inflated out of existence, right? You've seen those, like, $100 trillion Zimbabwean notes.

   9. LFLex Fridman42:40

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AGAlex Gladstein42:41

       Um, so he had to live through that, which was terrible and crushing.... but he, you know, is an expert on money. If you actually talk to human rights activists about money, they know a lot about money. They're just not usually asked to talk about it. So, you know, for me, um, money, mon- you know, when I study money or look at money, it's really about control, you know, who, who is creating it and how much does the population know about the creation of that money? And when it comes to Bitcoin, it's really the people's money. Like, there is no shadowy force in charge of it. We all know the rules. We all know how it's gonna get minted and how it's gonna get printed, and, you know, that information is out there for everybody to see. And there's no, like, special group of rules for one group of people or another group. You know, a billionaire and a refugee are the same in the eyes of the protocol. This is a rather revolutionary concept, and in the same way that democracy allowed us to decentralize politics and have checks and balances, and in the same way that the internet is this culmination of technologies that allowed us to decentralize information, access to and, and control over it, Bitcoin, you know, decentralizes money. I mean, no longer, again, is there one group of people who can just change it arbitrarily. We're all in the same playing field, and I think that that is a tremendous innovation.

   11. LFLex Fridman44:01

       You know, from one perspective, money and i- inflation, hyperinflation is a kind of symptom of corruption, as opposed to the core of the corruption.

   12. AGAlex Gladstein44:10

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LFLex Fridman44:11

       And at the s- at the flip side, in terms of resisting the corruption, resisting the abuse of, uh, human rights, it's interesting to think that fighting inflation or f-

   14. AGAlex Gladstein44:25

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LFLex Fridman44:25

       ... fighting, you know, fighting the mismanagement of, uh, the money supply, uh, is a way to fight back authoritarianism or to fight authoritarianism. And that's an interesting concept that I think was introduced to me by just plugging myself in- intellectually into the Bitcoin community, but also just cryptocurrency in general.

   16. AGAlex Gladstein44:47

       Mm-hmm.

   17. LFLex Fridman44:48

       Is, is to like ... it's not that money is the symptom. You know, money is a tool to fight back too.

   18. AGAlex Gladstein44:58

       Absolutely.

7. 44:59 – 1:00:46

   Bitcoin

   1. AGAlex Gladstein44:59

   2. LFLex Fridman45:00

      So in, in what way can Bitcoin be used to, um, to fight authoritarianism?

   3. AGAlex Gladstein45:08

      Yes.

   4. LFLex Fridman45:09

      Not just in the United States, but all of those 53% that you're referring to. What ... how can Bitcoin help?

   5. AGAlex Gladstein45:15

      So we talked about authoritarianism, and we talked about the surveillance state. To me, Bitcoin has two kind of key mechanisms through which it can help us. Number one, uh, it's a sovereign savings account. It's debasement proof, meaning the government cannot print more whenever they want. This is very, very different from fiat currency, which by its very name, its very nature, can be issued on sort of demand, right, by the rulers. And while I live in a country where the rulers do a reasonable job (laughs) of managing the money, most people aren't so lucky. So only 13% of humans in the world live in a country that's a liberal democracy with property rights and has what we call a reserve currency, meaning a currency so stable and desirable that other countries save in it at the central bank level, right? You basically have the US, the UK, Australia, Switzerland, the euro, and Canada. I mean, those are like reserve currencies, and these are liberal democracies where people have reasonable guarantees over property rights. Everybody else either lives under, like, a weaker currency or an authoritarian regime. That's 87% of the world's population, almost seven billion people. So for them, a sovereign savings account that's permissionless, meaning you don't have to have ID to use it, is a big, big deal. And a lot of people talk about Zimbabwe or Venezuela as some, like, isolated cases. "Oh, well, you know, hyperinflation only happens in, in those two countries." Um, I actually did some research into this, and there's about one point, uh, o- over a, you know, close to 1.3 billion people who live under double or triple digit inflation. This is not an isolated instance. We're talking huge countries, Nigeria, 200 million people, 15% inflation. Turkey, 15% inflation for 100 million people. Argentina, 40% inflation for a country of 45 million people. Um, so you can go down the list. There's about 35 countries where, like, people's earnings, their wages, um, are literally disappearing in front of their eyes over a matter of weeks or months, against things like the dollar or gold or real estate, right? So this is a huge issue. It absolutely is a human rights issue for me. I mean, when it comes to your time and energy, having control over that or having it stolen from you, I think this is pretty clear. And Bitcoin is, like, an immediate, uh, low-cost, easily accessible solution for people. And I've learned this not from my own assumptions, but by talking to people, by interviewing dozens of people, whether it's in Sudan, which currently has triple digit inflation, um, or, uh, people who have escaped from Syria who have used Bitcoin to get their wealth out of the country and then also to make payments back to people inside, um, or Venezuela or elsewhere. It's very, very powerful.

   6. LFLex Fridman47:58

      I think some very small percentage of people have used ... have owned Bitcoins. Was it something like one percent, right, of the world? Whatever, whatever that number is, it's small-

   7. AGAlex Gladstein48:07

      Call it two percent for the purposes of our calc-

   8. LFLex Fridman48:09

      Okay.

   9. AGAlex Gladstein48:09

      ... about-

   10. LFLex Fridman48:09

       Two percent.

   11. AGAlex Gladstein48:09

       ... a little under 200 million people.

   12. LFLex Fridman48:12

       Uh, wow, yeah.

   13. AGAlex Gladstein48:14

       At most right now.

   14. LFLex Fridman48:15

       So if we look at Zimbabwe, Sudan, if we look at uh-

   15. AGAlex Gladstein48:17

       Small percentages of people.

   16. LFLex Fridman48:19

       Do you think the technology is mature enough? 'Cause it's not just about the idea, it's also about the implementation of it. Like, you know, Bitcoin, for the most part, requires access to c- (laughs) to, to the internet.

   17. AGAlex Gladstein48:32

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman48:33

       And what do you think about accessibility of this technology now as a method of activism in the worst parts of the world? We often think, like, all the conversations we've had about Bitcoin is essentially-... middle class, like, wealthy people-

   19. AGAlex Gladstein48:49

       Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman48:49

       ... relative to the rest of the world. They're kind of talking sort of investment and high-concept ideas. Then there's also the people in the world who are suffering, who are living through hyperinflation. They may not have a computer or access to the internet.

   21. AGAlex Gladstein49:03

       Mm-hmm.

   22. LFLex Fridman49:03

       Like, what, how do you think Bitcoin can help them?

   23. AGAlex Gladstein49:06

       Yeah, so again, we have one clear use case, which is a sovereign savings account that you can control, right? The other use, use case is an unstoppable payments network. This is very important for people who live behind, for example, sanctions. Like, the US, like, basically, um, weaponizes the dollar, and it, like, sanctions different countries. And instead of sanctioning, like, a handful of rulers, for example, which I would support, this is like a Magnitsky or smart sanctions.

   24. LFLex Fridman49:30

       Mm-hmm.

   25. AGAlex Gladstein49:30

       Sometimes we'll just say, "We're just gonna shut off this whole country." So then people go-

   26. LFLex Fridman49:33

       So the people suffer.

   27. AGAlex Gladstein49:34

       Cuba or Iran are good examples.

   28. LFLex Fridman49:35

       Yeah.

   29. AGAlex Gladstein49:36

       Average people suffer, right? So people in those two countries I just mentioned, Cuba, Iran, or even Palestine, which is off, a- also sort of, like, blockaded by the Israelis. So you have Cuba, Iran, Palestine are three good examples where people inside all three of those countries now are using Bitcoin to do commerce, do their business, send money back and forth to their families.

   30. LFLex Fridman49:54

       So they're sanction-resistant.
8. 1:00:46 – 1:11:17

   Government response to Bitcoin

   1. LFLex Fridman1:00:46

      So there's going to be a moment, if Bitcoin continues to grow in its impact, when governments are going to seriously contend with, you know, "What do we do with this?" Do you think about those moments? Is, uh, Bitcoin, is the cryptocurrency world in general going to be able to withstand the serious legal pushback from countries, from nations, especially authoritarian nations?

   2. AGAlex Gladstein1:01:11

      Yeah. So it's been interesting. It's been 12 years, okay, more than 12 years since Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, and they haven't been able to stop it. They have tried. They have tried a lot. Uh, I wrote a long essay for Quillette on this, like, like, "Why haven't governments been able to stop Bitcoin?" And my thesis is essentially that there's been, like, this mix of different kind of technical, social, uh, e- and economic and political incentives and disincentives that make it very difficult.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:01:39

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AGAlex Gladstein1:01:39

      Um, and I think to me, the, the, the, the best way to think about it is that Bitcoin's like a Trojan horse. So just, just to actually tell that story just a little bit, because I think it's important to, to understand the classical mythology tale. Um, I find this very interesting.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:01:53

      Oh, of the actual Trojan horse?

   6. AGAlex Gladstein1:01:54

      Of the actual Trojan horse, yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:01:55

      Yeah.

   8. AGAlex Gladstein1:01:55

      Which was told in, in The Aeneid, actually, by, by Virgil, right? And the idea was the Greeks had been, like, trying to take the city of Troy for, like, a decade. Had these, like, impregnable walls, and they couldn't do it. And Ulysses and the rest of their Greek army were like, "We don't know what to do." Um, so Minerva, the, the, the god of strategy and war, you know, kind of, like, they get this idea from her, I guess, to, to actually try to use subterfuge and trickery to take over the city. So the idea is to ... And this was sort of hatched by Ulysses, right, to put this horse together that would kind of be like a gift. So the idea was the Greeks d- just, like, pretended to leave, right? They, they deserted. They left behind one soldier and this horse. And the Trojans looked at it, and they were like, "What's going on here?" And th- they brought in the soldier, and the soldier's like, "Look, th- they left. They're so sorry for all of the desecration and blood spill."

   9. LFLex Fridman1:02:43

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AGAlex Gladstein1:02:43

       "This is their gift to you. It's, you know, honoring Minerva, you know? It's like this, like, you know, trophy for you guys."

   11. LFLex Fridman1:02:49

       Yeah.

   12. AGAlex Gladstein1:02:50

       And there were actually people inside Troy, uh, Cassandra, a prophet, as well as Laocoön, who was, like, a priest, who said, "No, no, no. This is obviously a trick. This is obviously a trick." Um, but they were, like, dispatched and ignored, because the horse was like ... It was just, like, so badass. So the, the Trojans were like, "Bring it into the city." So they brought it in themselves. No blood spilled at all, right? In the middle of the night, of course, we've, what you realize is the horse was packed with Greek soldiers, and they come out and they let the army in, which was, like, hiding behind an island. So this idea that, like, something could be so attractive that you really can't say no, even if you know what's inside of it, is at play w- in Bitcoin.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:03:25

       Mm-hmm.

   14. AGAlex Gladstein1:03:26

       So, like, eh, Bitcoin has this number go up technology, right? Is what we call it, in, in sort of shorthand. NGU, NGU, right? But what people don't realize is that NGU is like the Trojan horse.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:03:37

       Yeah. Yeah.

   16. AGAlex Gladstein1:03:37

       Inside the Trojan horse is FGU, freedom go up technology. So dictators and rogue regimes and corporations-

   17. LFLex Fridman1:03:44

       Uh-huh.

   18. AGAlex Gladstein1:03:44

       ... are gonna buy, mine, tax, accumulate this thing, because it's the best performing financial asset in the world.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:03:51

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AGAlex Gladstein1:03:51

       What they don't realize or they're gonna have to ignore is that they're also aiding and abetting this freedom technology (object thuds) which allows individuals to be sovereign (object thuds) and eventually erodes their power. There's no question that rogue regimes and bad actors have already used and will continue to use Bitcoin. The thing is, when you think about a North Korea or a Venezuela, and that government instructs some of its bureaucrats and cronies and officials to start stealing Bitcoin or accumulating it or whatever for short-term gain, to get around sanctions and, and use it to buy dollars or something like that, right, which they can't get normally. Well, guess what? All those people who the regime has instructed to, like, figure this thing out and use it, they're all gonna realize, "Oh, my God. This is money the government doesn't control," and it's gonna spread like a virus. Okay? So this is like the idea of the Trojan horse allegory, why I think it's so important and powerful with Bitcoin. All the people talking about Bitcoin today o- on TV, they don't care about freedom or privacy. They just care about number go up. But what they don't realize is what's concealed within. And that's very, very powerful to me.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:04:50

       So w- the people talking about Bitcoin on TV are m- maybe investor types.

   22. AGAlex Gladstein1:04:54

       Yeah. Professional investors, co- corporations, and soon governments. I mean, you just had-

   23. LFLex Fridman1:04:59

       But-

   24. AGAlex Gladstein1:04:59

       ... today, this morning on CNBC, the leader of, uh, uh, the r- republican leader of the House of Representatives, a congressman saying, like, "We need to be pro-Bitcoin as a country." And the other day, Peter Thiel had a very interesting comment where he was basically like, "Let's not fall behind China in this race." So you have influential people in our government, o- o- like, sort of posturing for this, like, uh, you know, Bitcoin race that's gonna happen in the next 10 years. You're gonna see this. Countries are gonna compete-

   25. LFLex Fridman1:05:27

       (laughs) Yeah.

   26. AGAlex Gladstein1:05:27

       ... to stack Bitcoin. Absolutely.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:05:29

       So you, so you believe the, the thing that's shiny and sexy like the Trojan horse-

   28. AGAlex Gladstein1:05:34

       Mm-hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:05:34

       ... is the number go up, uh, idea?

   30. AGAlex Gladstein1:05:36

       It's too hard to ignore.
9. 1:11:17 – 1:16:40

   The blockchain

   1. LFLex Fridman1:11:17

      The, you know, the idea of blockchain in general.

   2. AGAlex Gladstein1:11:19

      Mm-hmm.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:11:20

      E- uh, from, uh, like, a 10,000-foot view, the blockchain is a centralized place to keep the record of everything that ever happened. And does that concern you from a privacy perspective, from a control perspective? Even though it's managed, especially, you know, given the low frequency of transactions for Bitcoin, you can, uh, like, you, you can have a lot of, you know, small computers across the globe-

   4. AGAlex Gladstein1:11:47

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:11:47

      ... to contain the entirety set of transactions, you know, all of those kinds of features. Does that concern you that there's one place where everything is made public in terms of everything that ever happened?

   6. AGAlex Gladstein1:12:00

      No. Uh, and I'll give you two reasons. Number one, the Bitcoin blockchain is ultimately a settlement layer. It's kind of like something like Fedwire in the United States. It's a way for, like, institutions to settle with each other. That's what I think it's gonna be like in 20, 30 years from now. The average person is never gonna touch the Bitcoin blockchain probably.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:12:20

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AGAlex Gladstein1:12:20

      They're gonna use things like Lightning, or un- unfortunately, they may use Bitcoin banks. But they'll either use custodians or the- or they'll use second-layer noncustodial solutions to interact.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:12:30

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AGAlex Gladstein1:12:30

       The main chain's gonna get very expensive. It's gonna be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars, or- or even more if the dollar starts to weaken, uh, to make a transaction on the main chain. And that will be reserved for, like, very large transactions or transactions that need final, final settlement, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and I think that that's- that's fine, a- a- and, and that's okay. And it's very important that that ledger, that settlement layer, uh...... be kept by thousands of people around the world. The Bitcoin blockchain is not centralized. It is, it is decentralized. It is run by people like me who run a node at home. I run a personal server. I run the Bitcoin blockchain. No one else. You run it. That person runs it. There's no, there's no one in charge.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:13:13

       Wait, you have a full node?

   12. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:14

       Yeah, I run a full node.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:13:16

       (laughs) Beautiful.

   14. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:16

       It's great. I mean, it's pretty easy, man. You run it, and that way, you can be sovereign over all of your usage, right?

   15. LFLex Fridman1:13:21

       Beautiful.

   16. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:22

       And you can run it on a Raspberry Pi with less than 150 bucks of equipment.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:13:25

       (laughs)

   18. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:26

       And that's so important because again, there is no Amazon Web Service vulnerability here. That is a problem, and I agree with you, w- we're trending in a bad direction, where like, the government could just turn off, you know, a big important website or a news source. Well, they can't turn off Bitcoin because it doesn't live on AWS. It lives with us. We are Bitcoin. And I think that that's, that's very, very powerful. Um...

   19. LFLex Fridman1:13:45

       And then you can have this, the, something like a Lightning Network where you can escape some of the constraints of the blockchain, depending on-

   20. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:53

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:13:53

       ... your needs of the pro-

   22. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:54

       Exactly.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:13:54

       ... privacy and all those kinds of things.

   24. AGAlex Gladstein1:13:56

       Everything's an engineering trade-off, but yeah, you can trade off some of the assurances of the base layer to go into Lightning, for example. And, and there you can get more speed and more privacy, and the things that Bitcoin lacks, speed and privacy, for example, um, you can get on these second layers. So there's, there's all kinds of cool engineering things that people are coming up with. Um, but I also want to say, anyone who says the blockchain, like, that's a red flag for that person doesn't really know what they're talking about. Like, Satoshi didn't use the blockchain in the, the, the white paper. Blockchain was a marketing term come- that people came up with later to try and do this thing that was kind of like, it peaked in 2015, and it, and it continues to be an issue today of, it's blockchain, not Bitcoin. And that was like a very corporate, um, kinda social attack on Bitcoin-

   25. LFLex Fridman1:14:42

       Gotcha.

   26. AGAlex Gladstein1:14:42

       ... to say we could take this like ledger part of this radical thing that's for criminals and all these bad people, but we could take one part of it out, and we could bring it over here and we could make it safe for everybody. The real McCoy is Bitcoin. I, I mean, Satoshi referred to it as the time chain. I mean, really what they're talking about is just these like blocks that are connected chronologically of transactions. It's really not that exciting. The exciting part of Bitcoin is, is the proof of work, you know, where the transaction processing is done by mining and by energy and by real-world expenditures instead of like, you know, some central ledger. And, you know, when you remove the blockchain from Bitcoin, it's not very... To me, it's just not, it's- it's just not that interesting.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:15:22

       I, I don't know. To me, blockchain or time chain, whatever, as it... Philosophically, it's a, it's a pretty beautiful idea. I mean, (laughs) it's pretty simple, but nevertheless, it's beautiful from a... I'm a big database person.

   28. AGAlex Gladstein1:15:33

       Mm-hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:15:33

       It's an interesting way to store information that, uh, especially that's totally publicly accessible. It's, um... I know that to Bitcoin, proof of work is the fundamental idea.

   30. AGAlex Gladstein1:15:44

       Yes.
10. 1:16:40 – 1:19:31

    Can Bitcoin fail?

    1. AGAlex Gladstein1:16:40

    2. LFLex Fridman1:16:40

       If you're wrong about Bitcoin, what would that look like? What kind of thing that, uh, in 10, 20 years that you, you're not wrong-

    3. AGAlex Gladstein1:16:53

       Right.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:16:53

       ... but-

    5. AGAlex Gladstein1:16:53

       It doesn't pan out.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:16:54

       It doesn't pan out, but other things that actually make you feel good about all the hard work you've done do pan out, something you haven't expected.

    7. AGAlex Gladstein1:17:02

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:17:02

       What, what might that be?

    9. AGAlex Gladstein1:17:04

       Well, as we've talked about, my career started in human rights and in promoting individual freedom and fighting authoritarianism. That fight will, will continue on, no matter what happens with Bitcoin. Um, I think it would be a massive failure and a tragedy if this project, like, didn't work, and-

    10. LFLex Fridman1:17:20

        The Bitcoin project.

    11. AGAlex Gladstein1:17:21

        Yes. If the Bitcoin project didn't work, we would, i- it would... Honestly, it's one of the only thing that g- things that gives me hope, because it is an effective way to push back against creeping centralized control. Um, if for whatever reason, and I can't really see... One of the reasons I'm so into it is I can't really see how it's not gonna work. Again, I think the Trojan horse allegory is too powerful. Um, these big centralized actors are gonna be too greedy, and they're gonna want some, as opposed to banning it. It's way easier for them to buy it than to ban it. I think that's just what's gonna happen. But if, but if whatev- for whatever reason it failed, I would have very little hope left, because really, I mean, the Chinese model of like centralizing all of your data and controlling it, I mean, ultimately is, is a very, very powerful, um, sort of like arch force. And, uh, I, I would be concerned that that would be all of our, of our sort of destiny.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:18:09

        I do have to sort of push back at the style of communication.

Episode duration: 2:33:36