"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 especial..."

"this is the lex friedman 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 wit..."

"commit fraud and claim they're giving 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 freed..."

"they only claim to have the entitlements and they definitely don't have the liberties do you think there's one right that's more important than others you kind of suggested the freedom of the press ma..."

"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 new like novel mechanisms for people to communicate with each other like..."

"you know i'm not saying that those are lies look into it but uh they're very unlikely phenomena so like does that matter i i think it ends poorly when the state tries to restrict speech um i think tha..."

"very different from 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 yeah and t..."

"persecuted there's no real free speech there's no press freedom there's no independent judiciary there really aren't checks and balances and even trying to create like a human rights organization or l..."

"unfortunately so do you think capitalism that's maybe one of the flaws of capitalism as it turns a blind eye to injustices against human nature against the human rights like it turns a blind eye to au..."

"tests one is actually can you have a gay pride parade that's a good serious it actually lines up perfectly it doesn't matter what religion the dictatorship is yeah they don't like minor they don't lik..."

"distinguish between open societies and closed ones or like like free societies and authoritarian regimes it doesn't mean that your government's going to be good all the time what it means is that the ..."

"afterwards um some people have told me that when you live in a totalitarian or an authoritarian regime it's kind of like a political desert what grows in the desert scorpions and cacti right so basica..."

"and it's it's you know you could do half class full half class empty the half class full is that almost half the world lives under democracy like that that's an incredible achievement but just under h..."

"is there's ways to give for technology to be utilized as a tool for the abuse of the citizenry i've seen both in my work at href i started by helping to put together backpacks with foreign information..."

"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 surveillance which is very interesting it's who gets to have control of the data..."

"risks in our world today and it's not talked about enough that's interesting so technologies basically enables the automation of oppression absolutely so like but to define technology big data analysi..."

"versus a fear society yeah people are it's all about the trade-offs you make in your daily life like living more privately with more freedom is less convenient you trade freedom and privacy for conven..."

"be persecuted for those things and i feel like especially in america we we forget that we're we're distanced from that really strong reality you know on the topic of snowden and then nsa what should w..."

"about the constructs were inventions i wonder if there's other inventions that will allow us to sort of not engage not give governments or any centralized institutions so much power like why why do ci..."

"politics information money yes let's talk about money what is money and why is it important to think about in the context of human rights i have witnessed money be peripheralized take it has taken a b..."

"about money they're just not usually asked to talk about it so you know for me um money you know when i study money or look at money it's really about control you know who who's creating it and how mu..."

"you know from one perspective money and inflation hyperinflation is a kind of symptom of corruption as opposed to the core of the corruption and at this at the flip side in terms of resisting the corr..."

"can bitcoin be used to um to fight authoritarianism not just in the united states but all of those 53 percent that you're referring to what how can bitcoin help so we talked about authoritarianism we ..."

"put it whether it's on an open source software wallet like the blue wallet is a good one for people to check out um or a hardware wallet like cold card for example there's different ways to do this um..."

"and uh gain bitcoin these mechanisms could be something that's figured out in the third world as opposed to in the oh i mean i mean the capital of bitcoin could easily be lagos and not san francisco y..."

"you also mentioned that sort of bitcoin is uh this is the mechanism of a peaceful revolution so it's a way to to resist authoritarianism in a peaceful way it's ultimately a mec you know you mentioned ..."

"overtake you mean number of users do you mean a price per coin then yeah the number of users because we're talking about one percent two percent yeah and if we are serious about this being um in the s..."

"this idea of like a euro dollar maybe like a dollar that is minted outside of the control of the us federal reserve right it would be a euro dollar so stable coins are kind of like euro dollars just m..."

"the serious legal pushback from countries from nations especially authoritarian nations yeah so it's been interesting it's been 12 years okay more than 12 years since satoshi nakamoto created bitcoin ..."

"to define that a little further meaning it's it does seem like the more people get excited and start using bitcoin the more of its value grows so it's just a good feedback loop yeah it's a feedback lo..."

"need to fight like what i'm scared is happening in china like this growing authoritarian state which is powered by big data analysis this is our way to fight back and and it runs on this like really i..."

"bitcoin itself like exchanges today are adopting something called lightning network which is a way to scale bitcoin on a second layer much like we had gold bars which we scaled with paper money and th..."

"you could do that today absolutely it's called the coin join for example but right now it's more expensive to coinjoin a bitcoin you have to pay a premium for your privacy this would flip that on its ..."

"no i 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 ..."

"that's very very powerful um 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 your needs of the privacy and..."

"it's not just the volatility it's just the the na you know uh yeah having if you think it's a pyramid scheme you're not going to want to get involved and in some sense if i were to speak to the bitcoi..."

"i took this personality test and i'm a 99 skepticism so i was first sadly because i was first introduced to bitcoin in 2013. and i was like yeah whatever and it took me four years to actually get into..."

"to have one thing we haven't talked about all the violations of the human rights that authoritarian regimes do there's a not a positive but there is a you mentioned that nationalism is a drug yeah the..."

"you hold your government to account for all the ways they mess up i mean look you have patriotism and then you have jingoism right it's very important we stay on the patriotic side like as an american..."

"and again with the business stuff like people are like airbnb is like a sponsor of the olympics like what at the individual level at a business level how does somebody like me who's just one little au..."

"unfortunately today's celebrities are doing the opposite we just you know have this press release go out yesterday about akon and he's he's off whitewashing the crimes of the dictator of uganda and tr..."

"um an interest of in the celebrity classes among athletes singers presidents you know we need to find a way to punish these people yeah it's surprising because the we've become more and more connected..."

"go up fgu man do you think we're it's kind of a dark question but you think we're headed towards a war with china the united states versus china i hope not i hope not in the cyber space and potentiall..."

"i just we don't know when um yes you know but and there's quite a few folks who talk about the fall of the american empire and it also concerns me that we don't know when that might fall you assume me..."

"no question so we've been talking about states and nations yeah but can we just briefly talk about facebook and twitter and companies that have a huge impact on the world as well and actually one of t..."

"um and that's very exciting like right now you could be de-platformed from your uh you know from like whether it's uh patreon or youtube or whatever um and your your bank account can be closed down ri..."

"going to fix the fact that like twitter can decide to kick off the president and like a lot of people are going to be upset by that you know like there's ways you can improve the ux over time and they..."

"the same intuition as you said before if the state is doing it in this case twitter is kind of the state it's not going to work out well but if it individu if you give power to the individuals to do t..."

"kind of like the idea behind the internet right there's like different parts of the internet that are censored but like at the very bottom of the very bottom of the backbone of it it's like this this ..."

"good i i think uh it requires genius to require skill it requires great design to come up with a way to that you know it's there's a pareto front here the trade there's a right way to hit that trade-o..."

"willing to give over a lot more data as long as they know what they're giving over as long as they know what they can delete yeah i guess maybe you're more optimistic about people caring about i feel ..."

"features to it it's worth checking out it's very like early days like it feels like i mean i was pretty young but it feels like the 90s in the internet like it has that feeling yeah you know it's roug..."

"wallets as well i mean they're they're almost there they're like if you use like a moon wallet is like i mean it's so cool looking and it's so seamless and they've spent so many hours thinking about y..."

"so gary kasparov i'm russian he means a lot to me on a personal level he's the chairman of uh human rights foundation what does gary have to do with anything what's your relationship like with him do ..."

"yeah he's uh so he has a lot of fascinating ideas about uh artificial intelligence as well he's opened my eyes a little bit to the to the state of russia today because i've read most books on putin uh..."

"like his point of view which which i think is interesting um and fair yeah let me just say on one unrelated comment some people criticize me and others like joe rogan for giving people a platform i th..."

"are paying attention to and the kind of interviews they do you know is like f five minutes at most but usually it's like one minute it's these quick clip things and it's very gotcha and they're lookin..."

"again this new yorker piece on what's happening to the uyghurs is incredibly well reported however by the you know on the other hand you have um in this sort of clickbaity journalism that's all about ..."

"i have to also call people out i have to do enough the hard lifting and the hard work of knowing exactly what are the bad things that that person has done and i also have the responsibility to call th..."

"washing like to know what manipulative pr looks like i think you just you should know if you've researched the topic you should know it inside you because it would be is there anything you're afraid t..."

"what it's like to go through not just authoritarianism but also hyperinflation and i mean really you know at the end of the day what the fear describes is how mugabe took this country in the 1980s and..."

"uh basically deteriorate and how you can lose everything um the second book is i just mentioned it but the man without a face by masha gessen incredible book about modern russia and putin just a maste..."

"characters in the book map where we are today the book itself is about the late i think it's the late 2020s and we have a populist president who decides to announce that the united states is like basi..."

"curiosity is it is it discussing the the technical sides are also the philosophical because a lot of people mention sort of the bitcoin standard is the philosophical entry into the whole bitcoin world..."

"funny it's funny to watch the bitcoin maximalist immune system also attacking uh attacking him and and this whole feedback mechanism is working together it's fascinating well i probably consider mysel..."

"um i also made a video that did very well for reason magazine called why is bitcoin protecting human rights around the world it's five minutes and it just i feel like i tried to boil everything that i..."

"ins when you know by by making something public and saying you shouldn't do x it actually increases attention about x a lot more right um so i i think there's a lot of interesting game theory there th..."

"do you think it might yeah well first of all bitcoin has been attacked again many times and we talk about the you spoke about this with nick carter on your show um the sort of protocol wars or conflic..."

"destroy itself so if we think about all the threats facing human civilization uh nuclear war natural or engineer pandemics you know we talk about human rights violations we talk about uh authoritarian..."

"uh other planets other exoplanets but also forget planets just creating colonies that flow about in space there's exciting technologies that are yet to be discovered yet to be engineered and built tha..."

"trying to like push out into space would be my like counter i guess yeah i agree with you in my mind the sort of destruction and suffering are next-door neighbors so yeah we don't need to destroy all ..."

"upbringing i went to a public school here and um we never learned about money it was never part of our curriculum um even personal finances was not part of our curriculum you could take like an option..."

"or for like financial you need to be 18 have a bank account or whatever right one one of the people that we supported at ahref through our we do software development funding for people in bitcoin uh o..."

"certainly would be empowering in the third world too not just weirdos like you yeah i was going to mention one of the people i got who taught me about bitcoin her name is roya mapub she's an afghan te..."

"come from where was that born i was going to be an engineer actually and then in 2003 we invaded iraq and i got very interested in why we did that as a nation and i switched to my focus of study to li..."

"in the book one of whom is very pro-war and one of them is very against war basically he the father himself is pro-war and his son is against it and they have all these debates and it's nice to go bac..."

"the histories that i have studied myself from just even the two world wars the history of the 20th century from a perspective of the monetary system of of money and it's it's interesting it's interest..."

"as i was afraid about but yes you're absolutely right we're still there's a there's a big presence by the united states and other nations and across the world that's military this the military-industr..."

"yeah i i believe there's a technology technological innovations you're suggesting that perhaps one of the technological innovations like is bitcoin is a big part of it yeah on the money side i think t..."

"so you're busy fighting the demons the darkness that's out there but looking in the mirror you're finite being unfortunately this ride ends for you soon pretty soon um do you ever ask yourself about t..."

"often marred by cold realities that we've discussed but i do feel like in a way um that the meaning of life is that that pursuit uh um of course biologically is you know the spread our species right b..."

"inner sense of what is injustice i don't know like some of the human rights that you've mentioned earlier they're they're they're just philosophical constructs but there also seem to be somehow deeply..."

"and then and then and then from there we'll see um you know i you know i think it's important that we have design choices where we can like um have a little more say and that not everything be pre-pro..."

"continue pushing it's kind of scary to me sometimes humbling beautiful but also scary to think of you mention north korea people are kind of living in ignorance it's scary to me to think about how muc..."

"different concepts absolutely but i also mean just like not even laziness but cognitive limitations and just historical scientific limitations like you know we're very young species like all of the ex..."

"yeah i mean look don't be a sheep okay it's easy to beat no offense to sheep and there's some practical things man get on signals start encrypting your messages take control over your your privacy the..."