Author: CoinDesk

The founder of Popular Front joins NLW for a discussion about protests, media and how the people being covered tend to not reflect divisive politics.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

On today’s episode of The Breakdown, we introduce the Breakdown Brief - a look at three key topics in bitcoin and crypto. Today, the Brief covers:

• Brave browsers auto adding ref links to Binance.us 
• The disconnect between Wall Street and crypto when it comes to inflation expectations
• A 2018 Pentagon war game including bitcoin 

Our featured interview is with Jake Hanrahan, founder of Popular Front - a podcast and independent media company covering underreported and irregular conflict with “no frills, no elitism.” Jake was previously an embedded reporter with Vice and has covered conflict in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine and elsewhere. 

In this conversation, Jake and NLW discuss:

• Why Jake left Vice and decided to build an independent journalism project
• Why the mainstream media isn’t bad because of some political conspiracy, but because its business model doesn’t allow it to understand how real people are experiencing issues 
• How the protests are being (mis)covered around the world
• Why American protests are going global
• What he learned covering protests in Hong Kong last year 
• What situations people should be paying attention to around the world that they’re not right now

Find our guest online:

Twitter: Jake_Hanrahan

Website: popularfront.co

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

'The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Recently the hosts of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss the systemically important "Be Your Own Bank" Bitcoin narrative and what it means around the world today.

The episode is sponsored by eToro.com and The Internet of Money Vol. 3

On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! you're invited to join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine, Jonathan Mohan and Stephanie Murpy for an in-depth discussion about the ups and downs, the good and the bad about being your own bank in the modern world of Bitcoin.

The powerful idea and meme at the core of Bitcoin self-sovereignty is incredibly empowering but has an unspoken element that requires persistent competence and at least for some makes it more trouble than it's worth.

As the world reels from the response to COVID-19 and disorder seems the trend on the rise, we discuss how although Bitcoin makes it possible for anyone to be their own bank, who actually wants the constant vigilance and anxiety that goes along with it? And what happens when things go wrong and there's no-one to blame but ourselves?

"...There is tremendous luxury in having institutions that at least appear to be stable over some period of time where you don't need to worry about the details of how they work and what happens under failure conditions. That luxury is pretty concentrated in just a few places in the world and at some point you can't afford that luxury of apathy. - Andreas M. Antonopoulos, LTB! #437

Credits

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine. Music provided by Jared Rubens, FromEther and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas.

Photo by Pathdoc on Shutterstock

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A recap of one of the most significant weeks in recent American political history.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

The Breakdown Weekly Recap looks at the key themes that shaped the week. On this week’s episode, NLW discusses:

• The modern significance of Tiananmen Square, and why this week’s U.S. protests show why the tools of surveillance need to be applied to states, not citizens.
• The importance of “narrative violations,” or fighting to see things without falling into popular but often wrong conventional wisdoms.
• The need to resist attempts from both the left and the right to fit today’s unrest into convenient culture-war frameworks that perpetuate each group’s power.

This week on The Breakdown:

Monday | The Power and Peril of the 'Bitcoin Fixes This' Meme 

• A look at what role, if any, bitcoin has to play in remaking the world that is being protested around the U.S. (and world) this week.

Tuesday | Bitcoin, Cellphones and the Citizen Tools of Anti-Authoritarianism, Feat. Alex Gladstein

• A look at the anti-authoritarian technology stack, including where non-state money like bitcoin fits in.

Wednesday | 5 Numbers That Tell the Story of Markets Right Now

• From the number of U.S. flights from Chinese carriers to S&P 500 growth in the tumultuous year of 1968, these (unexpected) numbers tell the story of today’s markets.

Thursday | The Mirage of the Money Printer: Why the Fed Is More PR Than Policy, Feat. Jeffrey P. Snider

• An argument that the Fed is actually highly ineffectual due to the presence of the eurodollar shadow-banking system.

Friday | The Biggest Realignment in the US-China Relationship Since Nixon, Feat. Graham Webster

• A 101-level primer on the history of the U.S.-China relationship, and why today’s bluster represents a fundamental shift. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How one of the world’s most important geopolitical relationships came to be what it is in 2020.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

The U.S.-China relationship has an outsized impact on global economics and politics. As that relationship comes even more into focus in the wake of COVID-19, this episode provides a historical primer. 

Graham Webster is editor-in-chief of the Stanford–New America DigiChina Project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center. He’s also a China digital economy fellow at the New America think tank.

In this episode, Webster explains:

• Why the relationship with the U.S. has been at the forefront of Chinese policy since the People’s Republic of China was formed, but has flitted in and out of America’s focus.
• Why the first most significant period in the U.S.-China relationship came between the late 1960s and 1970s, as the U.S.-China relationship normalized.
• How Tiananmen Square undermined but didn’t destroy the relationship.
• Why George W. Bush came into office with an intention to focus on China but got distracted in the wake of 9/11.
• Why China has spent the last decade becoming increasingly illiberal.
• How the rise of social media contributed to the shift.
• Why China and U.S. policy is as much a reflection of domestic self-identity in both countries as it is a bilateral political question. 
• Why China’s human rights abuses present such a challenge.
• How COVID-19 changes the relationship.

Find our guest online:

Twitter: gwbstr

DigiChina

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The meme is “money printer go brrr,” but according to this macro expert, central banks have almost no power to actually influence money itself.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

The conventional wisdom is that central banks are the most important economic actors in the world. Markets hang on their every word. 

Yet, what if that power has less to do with actual monetary policy and more to do with how the performance of that policy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as market actors respond to media coverage?

Jeff Snider is the head of global research at Alhambra Investments. In this conversation, he and NLW explore:

• How the Fed lost the ability to even determine what the money supply is.
• How the financialization in the 1980s exacerbated monetary confusion.
• Why the most important force in the global economy isn’t central banks but the eurodollar and shadow banking system.
• How the eurodollar and shadow banking sector creates a drag on real economic growth.
• Why the conventional wisdom and “central bank savior” narrative around 2008 was dead wrong.
• The problem with “survivor’s euphoria.”
• Why “money printer go brr” is actually a flood myth.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last Thursday, seeking to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 prevents social media companies from civil liability for the content posted on them. The order targets Twitter and Facebook after Twitter fact-checked two of the President’s tweets. 

Today, CoinDesk tackles the topic with Chief Content Officer Michael Casey, Privacy Reporter Benjamin Powers, New York Law School professor and past President of the American Civil Liberties Union Nadine Strossen, and author of the Open Index Protocol Amy James

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

On this podcast, the CoinDesk team brings listeners up to speed on the leadup to and aftermath of the executive order, discuss the fairness implications of editorializing on social media, the business models that enable and are empowered by all of this, and how decentralized protocols can chart an alternative path forward.

First we talk about the first amendment and Section 230 itself, what it does and doesn’t do as it pertains to social media platforms and moderation. 

Then we talk about fairness and the if you don’t-like-it-leave argument, as well as related topics

We’ll talk about the business models and assumptions implicit in the current state of dominant social media platforms before turning to alternatives or possible solutions in decentralized protocols and multi-layered approaches to moderation or censorship.

Links from the episode:

• System Override: How Bitcoin, Blockchain, Free Speech and Free Tech Change Everything
• Open Index Protocol
• Amy James on Twitter

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Every day that protests continue and the stock market goes up, more people ask what the disconnect between markets and the real economy is. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW peels back the story of today’s economy by looking at five numbers:

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

• The growth of the S&P500 since the March 23 low
• Current unemployment stats and a Bloomberg Economics estimate of the number of jobs at risk
• The performance of the S&P500 in 1968, one of the most tumultuous years in American history
• The total percentage of the world’s debt denominated in dollar terms
• The number of flights between the US and China by Chinese airlines going forward

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A conversation with the outspoken pro-bitcoin, anti-surveillance human rights advocate and global power expert.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

Alex Gladstein is the chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation. He is a powerful voice for the role of bitcoin in combating authoritarianism around the globe. 

In today's episode, he and NLW discuss: 

• What the protests tell us about the state of democracy in the U.S.
• The potential impact of protests and COVID-19 on surveillance norms 
• The potential for a "biological Patriot Act" 
• The implications of China's push to absorb Hong Kong 
• The relevance or irrelevance of China's digital currency
• The role of bitcoin in promoting freedom

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the U.S. experiences the most sustained civil disobedience in more than a generation, an exploration of what role bitcoin has to play in building a better system.

This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.

Cities around the country have been engulfed in protest in the wake of the murder of 46-year-old black man George Floyd. There is an intense battle for the narrative around the protests. Are they legitimate outcries against institutional racism and police brutality? Is the looting covertly being driven by white supremacists on the one hand or ANTIFA on the other? 

In the Bitcoin community, some have plumbed the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to argue that the core underlying issue has to do with a monetary system that structurally creates inequality. Others have clapped back against pushing that meme in this moment. 

In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at:

• What bitcoiners are trying to say when they apply the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to this moment.
• Why the current system structurally exacerbates inequality.
• Why the meme fails to capture additional economic, political and power dimensions of what’s going on.
• Why the meme in this moment might feel so out of place as to inspire the opposite of its intended effect: turning people away from bitcoin rather than making them want to learn more.
• Why Satoshi’s “If you don’t get it, I don’t have time to explain it to you” quote is the most misused and abused of his sayings.
• Why complexity and nuance, not memes, are needed now.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

'The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Recently the hosts of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss state sponsored propaganda, corporate censorship and how cryptocurrency or decentralization changes the game.

The rallying cry of the totalitarian is "He farted first", but if both systems have produced similar outcomes, is there much of a difference? Inspired by a recent article in the Atlantic, in today's wide-ranging discussion the hosts of Let's Talk Bitcoin! dig deeply into the questions of censorship, propaganda and how things are both better and worse than in years past.

The episode is sponsored by eToro.com and The Internet of Money Vol. 3

Shownotes:

• Who are they censoring from and how do we unpack this manipulation?
• The rallying cry of the totalitarian is always “He farted first”
• Who gets to decide what is censored?
• The squeaky wheel of child pornography gets the attention, the much more insidious problem of silencing certain voices, or giving preference to other voices. 
• Propaganda goes hand-in-hand with censorship
• Propaganda is harder to detect ‘reverse censorship’
• Private platform curation have the right to moderate which can be interpreted as censorship.
• You have to choose if you’re a publisher or a platform
• What if AT&T listened to your phone calls, sold ads against them and disconnected you whenever you say something that would trouble sponsors?
• Common carriers vs. publishers
• FOSTA, SESTA and turning platforms into publishers 
• Crony capitalism will always co-opt government
• The only way to win is not to play
• The only way to not be coopted as a protocol is to have it not be owned by anyone.
• It may be impossible to be a platform if you’re not a protocol
• Information overload and compartmentalization
• Are the solutions that are being proposed the solution that we need to solve this problem?
• What kind of side effects does the solution have?
• It’s one thing to say “there are idiots out there who have not developed critical thinking and are easily swayed and we need to fix this” and a whole other thing to say “And that’s why only the landed gentry should vote”
• Do tech companies think they’re helping?
• Benevolent fascism is still fascism
• The public school system was never meant for the average person to be able to form their own opinion, “it is for factory men not philosophers”
• Manufacturing consent with the power to control, censor, frame, set up the base assumptions of belief and then seek to nail them down.
• A dictatorship of the mind is far more effective than a dictatorship of violence.
• If Let’s Talk Bitcoin! Were on Youtube, we wouldn’t be able to say the word Covid-19. Avoiding totalitarian controls means missing opportunities presented by big would-be platforms.
• Government surveillance vs. private surveillance provided to the government
• What we learned from Edward Snowden
• Does China commercialize surveillance?
• If both systems have produced the same outcome, is there much of a difference between them?
• A virtual prison camp
• Suppression of information does not translate to changing reality
• Biblical verses in the blockchain and 
• “A platform puts data out but search is editorialism”
• Phone numbers, the yellow pages, cocaine and liability
• Privacy, anonymity and another form of censorship
• We need 30 different words for different kinds of censorship
• Is it censorship when private companies do it?
• Where did the word censorship come from and what words should we be using?
• “The problem with censorship is not the content, it’s the person in which the control is vested”
• Is this worse because of growing polarization and partisanship?
• Was the internet free-er when nobody used it?
• Letters to the editor and platforms that amplify
• Even more insidious than censorship are the algorithms choosing what is seen and by who.
• Geographic boundaries vs. idealogical boundaries and the demise of newspaper monopolies on local discourse
• 5G and Coronavirus: Niche ideas wouldn’t propagate if censorship worked
• The Streisand effect, reach and survivor bias
• The influence that Google’s page-rank has on congressional primaries
• A generational divide in social media management skills and critical thinking
• Masks, conspiracy theories and narrative control
• Manipulating the wisdom of the crowds as manipulating the wisdom of society
• Censorship by private forces for profit and by government for state control, and the coalition of the two. 
• Censorship as controlling access to the publishing of information vs. controlling what is amplified vs. how much reach it has.
• A big difference is visible in implementation of severe consequences for speech
• The chilling effect of harsh penalties and being “disappeared” for speech
• Ostracism, state punishment or private corporate consequences
• What are your favorite words or terms for specific kinds of censorship? Send us an email at adam@ltbshow.com 
• If you light your brainfarts on fire, is that flaring?

Credits

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine. Music provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.

Photo by Sebastiaan Stam on Unsplash

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.