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Why the Left Should Care about Value Accounting feat. Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
This week I spoke with Dr. Sarah Grace Manski, she has a PhD in Global Studies from UC Santa Barbara and is now a professor at George Mason University. On one side she’s done quite a bit of work for unions and written for Jacobin and on the other side she’s the founder of the International Society…
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Art, Weed, and Blockchain feat. Chibu Ichiban of afuturemodern
This week I spoke to Chibu Ichiban, a founding member of afuturemodern, a network of coops delivering liberation tech to the masses through art, culture, and basic services. Their mission is to drive mass adoption of humanity’s most radical innovations by shaping them for society’s most marginalized and revolutionary communities. They leverage art, culture, service,…
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What is the CryptoLeftist Subreddit and Discord?
Just a short explainer and run-thru of all the main Crypto Leftist communities that will hopefully simplify and make more sense of the resources available. Be sure to subscribe for more! The Blockchain Socialist site: https://theblockchainsocialist.com/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptoleftists/ Discord: https://discord.gg/Hs78cVM Twitter: https://twitter.com/TBSocialist
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Giving the Power of Money to the People through Decentralized Mutual Credit Networks ft. Aleeza Howitt from Trustlines
This week I spoke to Aleeza Howitt (@aleezagroks), a contributor to the Trustlines protocol. Trustlines is a mPoS (minimal viable Proof of Stake) sidechain to Ethereum and stores transactions for a system of decentralized mutual credit. Mutual credit is an alternative medium of exchange to most money that we use today in which “money” is created through…
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Are Public Goods Always “Good” and Will Personal Tokens Just Lead to Slavery ft. Annaliese Milano
This week I sat down with PhD student at the London School of Economics under David Graeber and Laura Bear in Anthropology and occasional CoinDesk contributor, Annaliese Milano (@AnnalieseMilano). In this episode we spoke about her current research interests in public goods, or what she prefers to call public things. Her research suggests that studying…
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Screw capitalism, start a cult, and burn your money ft. Jonathan Harris aka Money Burning Guy
For this episode I spoke with Jonathan Harris (@jonone100) aka Money Burning Guy who was recently featured as a panelist at the Consensus: Distributed conference on their panel Soft Money hosted by Joon Ian Wong and Annaliese Milano and was joined by Brett Scott, who was last episode’s guest. Jonathan is the author of The…
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The War on Cash and The Coercive Nature of Money ft. Brett Scott
This week I spoke to financial activist and author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance Hacking the Future of Finance Brett Scott (@Suitpossum). His last book was written in response to the Occupy Wall Street protests and is a guide to the world of high finance and the emergent forms of alternative finance, alternative currencies and…
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What Erik Voorhees and Other Crypto-Libertarians Get Wrong
This week I decided to do something a little bit different and go solo. For this episode I wanted to analyze the mindset and beliefs in a lot of the mainstream cryptocurrency discourse. In order to do that I wanted to use someone who is a popular figure and thought leader in the space, Erik…
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Musicians of the World Unite and Decolonize the Music Industry feat. Rich Jensen from Resonate
This week I spoke with Rich Jensen (@richjensen), Co-op Executive of Resonate (@ResonateCoop). Resonate is a cooperatively owned music streaming platform aiming to give more power to artists rather than corporate record labels and VC-funded tech companies.On average their model gives a larger payout to artists as compared to other music streaming platforms like Spotify. Rich has…
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Crypto World needs to tell Larry Summers to f*ck off
If it were possible to reduce modern neoliberalism into a single person, I think Lawrence H Summers would be make the ranking of top 10 people it could be. Larry has had a long career of working with some of the most controversial figures in American politics and is of course one himself. After an…
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From Feudalism to Capitalism to (Hopefully) Beyond feat. Dr. Joel Garrod (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of my interview with Dr. Joel Z Garrod, a sociologist based in Canada and author of a recently published article, “On the property of blockchains: comments on an emerging literature.” The paper focuses on blockchain and property relations in connection to global property relations and the evolution of capitalism. For this…
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Property Relations on the Blockchain feat. Dr. Joel Garrod (Part 1)
This week I sat with Dr. Joel Z Garrod, a sociologist based in Canada and author of a recently published article, “On the property of blockchains: comments on an emerging literature.” The paper focuses on blockchain and property relations in connection to global property relations and the evolution of capitalism. I really enjoyed the article…
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Own the Value of your Labor with DAOs feat. Daniel Kronovet from Colony
This week I interviewed Daniel Kronovet (@kronosapiens) at Colony, “An Operating System for Organizations”. The Colony Network is a suite of smart contracts, running on Ethereum. It provides a general purpose framework for the essential functions organizations require, such as ownership, structure, authority, and financial management. Along the way, we talk about organizations and society…
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Why the Left Should Care About Blockchain Identity and Quadratic Voting feat. Paula Berman from Democracy Earth
This week I spoke with Paula Berman (@_paulaberman), researcher at the Democracy Earth Foundation (@DemocracyEarth) which is a tech non-profit that aims to create platforms for decentralized and incorruptible online governance. Their projects have largely been based on Ethereum. In the interview we discuss the identity problem for decentralized platforms like blockchain, the advantages of…
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Fighting Uber with blockchain cooperatives feat. Dardan Isufi from Eva Coop
This week I spoke with Dardan Isufi (@DardanIsufi), COO of the Eva Coop (@Eva_coop) which is a cooperative ride-sharing application based on blockchain started in Montreal and expanding to other cities. We discuss taking on Uber while trying to build a democratic and non-exploitative alternative like Eva. You can also find the podcast and future episodes on…
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Crypto Commie Circlejerk: Interview with Ben Arc (@BTCSocialist)
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with Ben Arc (@BTCSocialist), one of the first openly leftist guy in bitcoin and significant contributor to the bitcoin FOSS space. In this episode we discuss what it was like for him to be one of the only people loudly represent the Left, and,…
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I’m a Leftist and Like Crypto, Should I Buy Bitcoin?
HUGE DISCLAIMER: Everything in this article, and anything I publish, is purely meant for educational purposes and should never be considered investment advice. Like seriously, I’m a socialist. I’m not going to tell you where to invest your money besides Bernie Sanders’ campaign if you’re an American citizen, but that’s not a financial instrument you…
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The Blockchain Socialist Podcast Introduction
That’s right. It’s the first episode and introduction of the TBS podcast. To be honest I’ve never done a podcast before so if you have tips or tricks to help make it better, let me know! The plan is to use this podcast for interviews or discussions with others in the blockchain space instead of…
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Interview with Jeff Emmett from The Commons Stack
This week I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeff Emmet, a Token Engineering Researcher for Giveth and The Commons Stack. In the interview we discuss how The Commons Stack is trying to create blockchain tools for handling the commons, political biases in crypto, and crypto-economic systems. Note this interview took part over email…
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Commodity Fetishism, Feet Pics, and Ideology
For this article, I was inspired by the book Marx’s Theory on the Genesis of Money: How, Why, and Through What is a Commodity Money by Samezō Kuruma from Haymarket Books. When you think of fetishism the first thing that comes to mind is probably whatever weirdly specific sexual kink you psychologically need to get…
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Yang’s Got a Blockchain Identity Crisis
It is the year 2023. You are climbing into your Tesla Cybertruck to drive to your local small town “entrepreneur and bitcoin enthusiast” meetup event where you will get to listen to a business seminar lead by Pewdiepie. You turn on the Cybertruck self-driving capabilities and pull up some Dave Chappelle standup videos from YouTube…
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Interview with Steve Huckle, Author of “Socialism and the Blockchain”
This week I had the opportunity to interview the main author of Socialism and the Blockchain, Steve Huckle, a researcher at the University of Sussex in Brighton. The article was published in 2016 by Future Internet and one of the only pieces of academic research which takes a closer look at blockchain and how it…
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The Terrible Things that Would Happen in a Capitalist Blockchain World: Libra
Whether you like it or not, it’s very likely that the blockchain is coming to a future near you. As much as it is a buzzword for corporate neoliberal lizards, there’s a reason for it. That’s because their lizard brain pleasure centers have recognized how it could be used in specific ways to improve their…
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Won’t the State just Destroy the Blockchain?
Talk to your average Twitter bitcoin stan and they will tell you, in line with right wing libertarian ideology, the government is at fault for most if not all of the world’s ills and only bitcoin can help us create a more fair world. The problem here is that if you read a bit more…
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Very Big Announcement
Crypto Leftists, comrades, and other weirdos reading my articles, I want to thank you all for the feedback and discussions you’ve all engaged in with me and each other. It’s been an amazing past couple of months when I first started this initiative and the r/cryptoleftists subreddit. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of…
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The Material Evolution of Digital Currency and Crypto (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of The Material Evolution of Digital Currency to Crypto series. You can find Part 1 here. The Great Recession Gave Birth to Bitcoin In case you missed it, back in late 2007, the US subprime mortgage market collapsed and brought down with it banks around the world causing the Great Recession,…
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The Material Evolution of Digital Currency and Crypto (Part 1)
This is Part 1 of The Material Evolution of Digital Currency to Crypto series. Whenever I speak to crypto-curious people, I like to give a little bit of the history and context that bitcoin was birthed from because I think it helps in understanding the big picture (and because I’m a dirty Marxist and I…
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Cocaine, the ICO Bubble, and Neoliberalism
As economic policy, neoliberalism appears in the form of market based reforms like deregulation, privatization, and austerity. When Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which allowed commercial and investment banks to join together who were originally separated due to the speculation of people’s money leading to the Great Depression, ~neoliberalism~. When the European Union, European…
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Isn’t Blockchain Just a Huge Waste of Energy?
This has got to be by far the most frequently asked question by other Leftists and it’s a good question to ask. It’s also not surprising considering we know from the IPCC report that we have until 2030 to decrease our carbon emissions by half and reach net-zero by 2050. Like many of you probably,…
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What Do Other Leftists Think About Blockchain?
I’m not the first Leftist™ to analyze what crypto and blockchain could or could not mean for the future but I have to admit that there aren’t very many that have gone into much detail. Let’s take a look at two Leftists™ takes from their interviews with PRIMO NUTMEG. Also, check out his YouTube channel…
