Category: Interviews

  • Is crypto a scam or FINDOM fetish?

    There seems to be an ever increasingly thin line between crypto, scams, and financial domination. I spoke to Steve Pikelny, CEO, CTO, CFO, COO of http://FastCashMoneyPlus.biz and Jesus pamphlet collector aka steviep about his newest art project FinSexy to explore the uncomfortable intersection between AI, findom and crypto. If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a…

  • Who Controls the Killswitch?

    I spoke to Eric Alston again! Eric is a professor at University of Colorado and recently completed a fellowship with the Summer of Protocols studying the governance of killswitches. His report is titled “Killswitch Protocols: Or On Engineering Recursive System Death” and co-authored with Seth Killian and Garrette David. During the interview we discussed the history of…

  • Tech Workers Coalition: Adapting the Labor Movement for the Digital Age

    For this episode I spoke to Simone Robutti. Simone works as an organization designer, adversarial researcher, and teacher. Formerly a software developer, he has been part of different chapters of Tech Workers Coalition since 2018. During the interview we discussed how to start a labor union at your tech company, innovative ways to go on strike, and how…

  • Islamic Economics: Solving Wealth Inequality by Mixing Libertarianism with… SOCIALISM??

    For this episode I spoke to Ahmed Gatnash, the Executive director of Kawaakibi Foundation. He is also a Strategy Advisor at the Albert Einstein Institution, and is the co-author of Middle East Crisis Factory, a primer on systemic crises and a vision for a positive future for the MENA region. During the discussion we spoke about the context…

  • The Future of Social Media with Suji Yan (Mask Network)

    For this episode I spoke to Suji Yan, CEO and founder of Mask Network. Mask’s main product is an open-sourced browser extension that wraps around several web2 and web3 social media networks. Rather than starting a new social media platform, the extension brings the benefits of both kinds of social media. During the discussion we spoke about…

  • EthicHub: La lucha por un café Ético / The struggle for Ethical Coffee (CER)

    This episode is part of a subseries where I’ve partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this interview we spoke to Neri Ortiz and Lucía Ruiz who both live in Mexico. Neri…

  • It doesn’t matter if the AI is fake, it’s all magic anyways

    For this episode I spoke to Nick Susi, Executive Director of Strategy at dotdotdash who recently wrote a really interesting article on his Substack titled magic, online!. The article goes into the history of magical thinking that accompanied many of the past’s technological achievements like phones that let you talk to the dead or fairies that appeared in some…

  • Sovereign Nature Initiative : How to ReFi without carbon credits with Andrea Leiter

    This episode is part of a subseries where I’ve partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this interview we spoke to Andrea Leiter, co-founder of Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI). SNI uses blockchain to turn…

  • Why Socialism Needs Spirituality (Red Enlightenment)

    For this episode I spoke to Graham Jones, the author of Red Enlightenment, published through Repeater Books like Blockchain Radicals. Red Enlightenment argues not only for a deepened understanding of religious matters, but calls for the secular left to develop its own spiritual perspectives. It proposes a materialist spirituality built from socialist and scientific sources, finding points of…

  • Compeerism: How the Commons can succeed where the Silicon Valley led digital revolution failed

    For this episode I spoke to Dr. Hannes Gerhardt, a Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. His research spans a range of topics within political geography and geoeconomics. We spoke about his new book FROM CAPITAL TO COMMONS: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. During the interview we spoke about his…

  • Anoma: Undefining Money and Scaling Anarchism with Christopher Goes (CER)

    This episode is the start of a subseries where I’ve partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this first interview we’ve spoken to Christopher Goes, co-founder of Anoma,  a framework for an ecosystem…

  • Governable Spaces: Designing Democracy for the Internet

    I´m once again speaking with Nathan Schneider about his newly released book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life.  In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond…

  • Platformization: The platform organizational form is eating the world and we can do better

    My friend and researcher of the politics of tech platforms, Gianmarco Cristofari recently had an extended in my apartment and so we thought it’d be a great opportunity to interview each other. He interviewed me here for the Institute for Network Cultures to talk about my book and the left’s relationship with crypto. We spoke about how platforms are…

  • Cute anime girl pfps or funding mechanism for esoteric neo-fascism? (Miladys and Remilia Corp)

    For this episode I spoke to James Brennan (@jt_bren) who has been finishing up his Masters at the University of Colorado focused on crypto. As part of his research he took a dep dive into the infamous group behind the Miladys NFT collection, Remilia Corp. During the discussion we spoke about esoteric political ideologies professed…

  • Obol Network – How DVT helps decentralize Ethereum and incentivize collectivism

    I spoke to Oisín Kyne, co-founder and CTO of Obol Network,  an ecosystem for trust minimized Ethereum staking that enables people to create, test, run and coordinate distributed validators. Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) enables the duties of an Ethereum validator to be performed across a cluster of nodes in order to improve resilience as compared to running…

  • Fund evacuations from Gaza with ETH – ethevacuations.xyz

    I spoke to Kat (katalunia.eth) who is behind a project called ETH Evacuations which is taking donations to pay for families to get out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing. Kat is a product manager and startup builder, most recently Head of Product at Zora and travelled to Gaza in June 2023 to be a mentor in…

  • From hacking the CIA as a teenager to community computers

    I spoke to Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder and CEO of Celestia, a modular blockchain network that makes for others to securely launch their own blockchain. Mustafa was also a member of the black hat hacking group LulzSec under the name T-Flow known for hacking the CIA website, newspapaers owned by Rupert Murdoch, and other corporate and state organizations in 2011.…

  • accelerationism is back and tech elites are making it cringier than it already was (e/acc)

    If you’ve been surfing the tech sphere lately, you may have come across the term e/acc or effective accelerationism as if it was something new. But like most of these tech elite driven ideologies, it’s largely a mutation of more naive and sometimes sinister trends. For this episode I spoke to Adam Jones, host of Acid…

  • Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform (gang gang mmm ice cream so good)

    Tokens have increasingly more popular beyond just in the crypto world *gang gang mmm ice cream so good*. Tokens are not new, but how they have been  used and their proliferation have exploded with the rise of digital platforms. I spoke to Rachel O’Dwyer,  writer and a lecturer in Digital Cultures in the National College of…

  • A Regenerative Village as a DAO in Portugal (Traditional Dream Factory)

    You can find the video version of the interview here where I’ve cut the interview with some film I took while at TDF. In this episode I spoke to Sam Delesque (@samueldelesque), founder of Traditional Dream Factory (TDF), a regenerative village based in Abela, Portugal that is blending crypto with permaculture and community. TDF is the first village part…

  • OTNS: Is Praxis a bunch of fascists dressed as libertarians?

    In this episode of OTNS, we spoke to Ali Breland, a journalist at Mother Jones who has written on crypto and politics, about his recent publication about the links between Praxis and far right figures. We spoke about his experience of going to a Praxis sponsored party in NYC, his interviews with ex-employees about the fascist sympathies of the…

  • China is a Process: Understanding the Chinese Crypto Diaspora Community

    In this episode I spoke to Afra Wang, a Chinese diaspora journalist who has been in crypto now for a year and a half with Mask Network and organizer of the ZuConnect Decentralized Social Day in Istanbul where I moderated a panel on technology addiction in crypto. Given that usually crypto is often seen through and talked about…

  • Web3 Workers Rights, Exit to Community, and Solidarity Primitives

    In this episode I spoke to my friend and scholar Tara Merk who is part of BlockchainGov and has been focusing her PhD thesis on Exit to Community (E2C). E2C is proposed as an alternative to IPOs or buyouts for founders of businesses to be able to be compensated for their work while giving ownership of their business to…

  • Building autonomous infrastructure for tactical media

    In this episode I spoke to Geert Lovink, a Dutch media theorist and founder of the Institute of Network Cultures who has been engaged with internet culture since at least the 80s. We were recently together in Cyprus for the latest installment of MoneyLab,  which he also co-founded. Talking with him was a great way to gain more understanding…

  • Seeing crypto for what it is and how to live with contradiction with Brett Scott

    In this episode I spoke with Brett Scott, an independent scholar, writer, and defender of physical cash from a left point of view. Brett was involved in the early Bitcioin communities and one of the first guests of the podcast back in 2020 so it was nice to be able to talk to him again after so…

  • Postcapitalist Computing & Currency with Zachary Marlow from the Moneyless Society Podcast

    During this last Crypto Commons Gathering I had the pleasure to meet Zachary Marlow from the Moneyless Society Podcast. We had the idea of recording a joint podcast with Zachary leading to talk about post-capitalism, crypto, and money. The discussion was also recorded in video format  which you can find  here on the Moneyless Society Podcast YouTube channel which I…

  • Open-Source Funding vs Venture Capital with Scott Moore

    In this episode I spoke with Scott Moore, the co-founder of Gitcoin and Public Works. Scott was one of the pioneers in public goods funding through quadratic funding and DAOs. During the discussion we talk about the “everything is coordination” meme, his advice for starting a DAO, and open source development. We also talk about our differences in views…

  • What is Left Accelerationism and Post-Work? Interview with Nick Srnicek

    I spoke to Nick Srnicek, author of ‘Platform Capitalism’, ‘Inventing the Future’ and the ‘MANIFESTO FOR AN ACCELERATIONIST POLITICS‘. Together we dissect the roots of accelerationist politics of which Nick is known for his work on left accelerationism, its controversial implications, and its ongoing interpretation. We discuss why he doesn’t like the term accelerationist anymore,…

  • OTNS: Is Code still Law? (Interview with Lawrence Lessig)

    In this episode we had the pleasure of speaking to Lawrence Lessig, the legal scholar known for coining the term “code is law” which if you’ve been in crypto, you’ll know that this phrase has been very influential on the space. During the discussion we talk about the original design of the internet, how it…

  • Venture capitalists steal from the future with David Z Morris

    In this episode I spoke to David Z Morris, Chief Insights columnist at Coindesk who wrote a really nice book review of Block Radicals and creator of the Crypto Crooks podcast. David’s been following the crypto space since near the beginning when he reported on the gold bug community’s interest in bitcoin a decade ago. He is also the author…

  • Blockchain Radicals Book Launch Event in NYC Recording

    This episode is coming out on August 8th, 2023, aka publishing day for my book, “Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It“! On July 23rdI had the privilege to present my new book  in New York City at the offices of Metalabel for the official book launch event! I was also interviewed by…

  • Crypto in Africa and the Communism of Ubuntu

    In this episode I spoke to Eric Annan, founder of Aya, a startup in Africa trying to bring more Africans into the crypto space I met while at Zuzalu. We had some very interesting conversations together while there and I thought he would be great to have on the show to discuss crypto from one African perspective.…

  • ReSource Finance: Building Bridges to New Monetary Systems

    In this episode I spoke with Ashley Buck, the founder of ReSource Finance and was also the first employee of Consensys. ReSource Finance is a decentralized mutual credit protocol and ecosystem building more regenerative economies by enabling growth without capital. ReSource is innovative in the mutual credit space because it adds a built in system for managing risk…

  • OTNS: Cosmo-Localism, Beyonders, and the Medieval Parallels to Digital Nomadism

    In this episode we continue Phase 2 of OTNS with Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation. We discuss his concept of cosmo-localism which advocates for everything heavy to be local, and everything light to be global, how many medieval institutions were cosmo-local, and the implications of the rise of knowledge workers detached from physical…

  • Collaborative Finance: Credit clearing for collectively doing more with less capital

    For this episode I spoke to Ethen Buchman (@buchmanster) and Tomaž Fleischman (@T_Fleischman) in person while at the  Commons Hubin Austria from May 22nd to 28th for the Collaborative Financeevent with the Crypto Commons Association, one of the projects part of the Breadchain Cooperative. Ethan is one of the co-founders of Cosmos and works at Informal Systems,…

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