RTE Roundtable Talk #3: Cryptocurrency: Centralization vs. Decentralization (transcript)
Featuring Joel Smalley and Kristov Atlas
This is the transcript for RTE Roundtable Talk #3, video viewable here:
[00:00:00] Liam Sturgess: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Rounding the Earth Podcast. Rounding the Earth is a popular newsletter series published on Substack written by applied statistician and educator, Mathew Crawford, topics of discussion range from critical analysis of conventional wisdom to Bitcoin and everything in between.
[00:00:43] And of course, more recently, the COVID 19 pandemic. Our goal is a careful examination of important topics and perspectives shaping the world that too few people talk about subscribe to Rounding the Earth on Substack Rumble, and YouTube to join a [00:01:00] burgeoning research community and to help. unflatten the earth.
[00:01:04] My name is Liam Sturgess. I'm a musician music producer and writer slash editor coming at you live from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and I will be your host for today, but without further ado, please allow me to introduce the author of Rounding the Earth and my co-host for the podcast. Mathew Crawford.
[00:01:25] How's it going, Mathew.
[00:01:26] Mathew Crawford: Great. How are you doing Liam?
[00:01:28] Liam Sturgess: I'm doing, I'm doing good. I think we're both awake alert and ready for an excellent conversation about cryptocurrency.
[00:01:35] Mathew Crawford: Yeah, I'm glad to get started with some conversations about Bitcoin in the cryptocurrency space, because it's it's, to me, one of the most important topics as I think that it will shape a lot of the, the way we move forward into the future.
[00:01:48] Liam Sturgess: Mmm. Both, both as both as an investment standpoint and as an infrastructural cultural standpoint, would you say?
[00:01:54] Mathew Crawford: More the latter, but you know, short term in particular there are [00:02:00] great investment opportunities. I still think that that Bitcoin is the best technology worth investing in, in the world right now.
[00:02:06] But we're gonna hear about some other technologies today.
[00:02:10] Liam Sturgess: Wonderful. Well, let's use that as our opportunity to welcome Joel Smolley and Kristov Atlas. Welcome gentlemen.
[00:02:17] Joel Smalley: Thank you.
[00:02:19] Kristov Atlas: Thanks for having me.
[00:02:21] Liam Sturgess: So you guys seem to be fairly or extremely educated in the sphere of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
[00:02:29] I'd love to have you guys introduce yourselves to the audience who may or may not be familiar with what you guys do. Joel, do you wanna go first?
[00:02:36] Joel Smalley: Sure. Okay. So first of all, I would just caveat, I'm not big in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. So of course we, we have to make the distinction between cryptocurrency and blockchain.
[00:02:50] So Bitcoin cryptocurrency runs on the Bitcoin blockchain, and those were the two novelties that came in in 2008. [00:03:00] I have spent most of my time focused on blockchain technology. And for a long time, I was actually not in favor of cryptocurrencies. This was because my history has been rooted in capital markets and retail banking.
[00:03:18] So on the regulated side of finance and prior to COVID, I didn't think there was an issue with central authority. I trusted government, I trusted regulators. I trusted the central. So as a result, I kind of didn't see the real point of decentralized cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin things have changed and I'm softening up a bit.
[00:03:43] I'm not anywhere near as enthusiastic about it as Mathew. And perhaps not as much as Kristov, I don't know, but I'll allow Kristov to to introduce himself and see where he sits.
[00:03:59] Kristov Atlas: Yeah. [00:04:00] So I'm, I'm a cybersecurity professional working in the cryptocurrency space. I've been in that space for maybe nine years, 10 years.
[00:04:09] It's been a while. That's been a, a focus of mine for, for a good long time. And I'm certainly an advocate of, of cryptocurrency. I'm very excited about the technology and you know, in spite of all the the drama happening in crypto related capital markets and all that, I'm still very optimistic for what, what we'll accomplish with crypto.
[00:04:32] Mathew Crawford: Thanks guys. Joel, I just wanna say this I, I, I'm always impressed that somebody you know, who, who who's gone through. Decades of adulthood or just more than one can stop and have a major moment where they reevaluate something you know, core and central to their philosophy and be open to ideas and not know for sure where they're, they're going to land with all that it's important to, to, you know, it's important for all of us to question our beliefs every [00:05:00] once in a while.
[00:05:00] And, and, but of course it takes strength to do it. So I, I didn't know that about you, that that it was you know, only recently that you were thinking through some of these levels of how governance should take place. But thanks guys, if I could if I could start with a question and, and I didn't realize how, how different the perspectives might be on this, but I was, I was just gonna start with, what are the hurdles you know, what are the biggest hurdles for Bitcoin over the next 10 to 20 years?