In Episode 148 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer. Mike and Vance are the founders of Framework Ventures, a thesis-driven venture capital firm whose team of technologists, researchers, and investors partner with founders and teams to build token-based networks and develop the requisite cryptoeconomics, governance, and community to scale.
The team’s focus is on the hot new space of decentralized finance, known as DeFi for short. They are the largest owners outside of the core team & exchanges of both the decentralized oracle provider Chainlink and the derivatives platform Synthetix.
Framework’s investment thesis relies on three assumptions. The first is that (1) financial institutions will realize competitive advantages as smart contract functionality allows them to streamline costs and realize new revenue streams. (2) Permissionless open protocols will provide access to financial services to a wider range of people than is possible today. (3) Token-based business models have a competitive advantage over traditional business models for some technical products.
During this episode, we explore a number of use cases and applications that Framework’s founders believe will drive value in DeFi. We discuss cryptoeconomics in the context of how to capture network value, the “chicken-or-the-egg” problem of initializing a two-sided network and consider a new approach to valuation that breaks with some of the models and formulas that were popularized during the ICO craze of 2017.
The team also discusses their investments in Chainlink and Synthetix, including a discussion about the tech, tokenomics, and community of these projects.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/20/2020
In Episode 147 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Blockstack, a full-stack decentralized computing platform and app ecosystem that puts users in control of their identity & data.
The two spend the first half of their conversation discussing the recent twitter hack and what lessons can be drawn from the attack.
The rest of the episode (including the overtime) is spent on Blockstack and how protocols like it offer solutions for problems of security and privacy on the Internet today.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/19/2020
In Episode 146 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Irshad Manji, a public intellectual, best-selling author, and Emmy award nominated documentary filmmaker whose latest book “Don’t Label Me,” attempts to educate readers on how to have conversations about politically sensitive subjects without inflaming the culture wars. It should not surprise anyone to learn, therefore, that today’s conversation with Irshad is one of the most pleasant, honest, and meaningful that we have ever had on this podcast.
Unlike this conversation, public discourse today often feels like a series of battles and skirmishes between two monolithic view points. Discussions likewise, are often seen as opportunities to try one another in the court of public opinion. If we accept that a pluralistic, democratic society is the best way to safeguard the values and freedoms that have allowed us to manifest our individual identities, then how can we be told that in order to protect those identities we should curtail the very freedoms that gave rise to them in the first place?
We are living through a very dark period in American life. Diversity has become a sort of “rallying cry” whose champions espouse exclusively in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation. When it comes to opinions, values, and beliefs, tolerance for diversity of opinion is nowhere to be found. And yet, a pluralistic society demands that its citizens are granted the freedom to express themselves and their beliefs without fear or reprisal or condemnation. Those who seek to silence us therefore are not champions of liberty. They are tyrants masquerading as victims who seek to exercise power over the very people who they label as their oppressors.
Today’s conversation should serve (hopefully) as an inspiration for the types of discussions and free exchanges of ideas that we should all strive to have and which we need to have if we want to make it through this difficult period in our history.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/15/2020
In Episode 145 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Camila Russo, the host of the Defiant podcast and author of “The Infinite Machine,” the first official account of the rise of the Ethereum blockchain.
The first 25 minutes of this conversation explores Camila’s experience working as a journalist in Argentina, how she got interested in covering cryptocurrencies, as well as her process for writing such an ambitious book. The rest of the episode deals mostly with the book itself, including a discussion about the ICO craze of 2017 and the impact that it’s had on Ethereum, it’s developer community, and investor appetite for funding new ventures and initiatives in the space.
This part of the conversation continues into the overtime, where we also debate whether or not the ICO model itself is the ideal mechanism by which to fund early-stage, open source innovations. We also discuss what it’s like to be a journalist covering crypto today, how the media industry in crypto has changed in the years since the onset of the 2018 bear market, and the opportunities for more sophisticated, high-quality journalism in the space going forward.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/06/2020
In Episode 144 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with philosophers Brandon Warmke and Justin Tosi about the phenomenon of grandstanding, which they define as “the use and abuse of moral talk for the purposes of self-promotion.”
Although moral grandstanding is a spectacle most commonly associated with those on the political left, the practice of grandstanding is an entirely bipartisan phenomenon. Its increased prevalence in public discourse has dangerous implications for politics and society.
For grandstanders, it isn’t the pursuit of virtue that motivates them. They aren’t concerned with doing good; they’re concerned with looking good; they want others to think that they are morally superior, and they’re willing to go to great lengths in order to do it, including using moral talk as a tactic for punishment and intimidation.
The irony is that grandstanders accomplish all of this by free-riding on the moral behavior and good intentions of others. They turn civil discourse into a moral arms race, weaponizing language, and silencing their enemies with threats of doxing and humiliation.
Our society is currently going through a seismic transition. Norms are being radically upended and Americans are experiencing levels of political polarization arguably unseen since at least the 1970s. If we want to make it through this period in one piece, as one nation, undivided we need to reclaim the moral high ground in our discourse. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’re in danger of losing control of our country to the darker forces of our nature, and this would not bode well for the future of our republic.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
Become a premium subscriber, which gives you access to our episode overtimes, as well as transcripts and rundowns to each week’s episode. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 06/30/2020