Creating Peaceful Money | Ameen Soleiman, Joseph Schiarizzi, Jessica Salomon, and Reza Jafery

there we go hey hey hey everyone I'd like to introduce you to the creating peaceful money panel I will be the moderator my name is Jessica Solomon we'll start with just a brief round of intros as all these guys and myself a gal I have a number of interesting things that we've done in the space uh that relate to creating peaceful money so I actually began my career in crypto as the First Community manager at Makow I started at the launch of singling single collateral die in December 2017 since then um I've been working in the space on a number of different dii protocols uh and including some fun stuff and nfts and all that jazz um and now we have Reza Reza do you want to tell us a little bit about your impressive background absolutely um hi I'm Reza I am the Dow lead for reflexer and currently am working on let's get high U which is another Fork of reflexer and um yeah that's me excited to be here hey I'm Joseph shizzy I'm the founder of open dollar uh we're a new over collateralized stable coin on arbitrum backed by liquid staking tokens like Lio eth and Rocket pool eth uh we built open Dollar on the Jeb framework that reflexer and Ry has also built on uh and we're bringing new tradable cdps to the market um before this I was working at uh openc on the marketplace place behind uh Cort and I've contributed to uh meta cartel um few other Dows like uh raid Guild and uh consensus getcoin uh and really excited to be on the panel here today we're excited to have you uh hello my name is Amin solomani uh I worked at consensus for a bit and then uh have built some payment products I uh the C CE of spankchain I built the we was one of the co-founders of reflexer Summoner of mikd and now working on let's get high with Reza and excited for the uh peaceful money collaboration that we have going on as we all are so I'm going to start with a little bit of historical context in recent history there have been four Monumental events and currency and monetary policy in 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was created 1971 Nixon eliminated the gold standard and made it a legal to back the dollar 2011 2011 the Bitcoin distributed Network started Mining and transacting in 2015 we had the launch of programmable currency being ethereum and in the future when we actually think people will look back at all these events what do our panelists think will be the most significant advancements and currency and monetary policy to come I I'll take this one to start um I think that the Golden Age of Central Banking and currency management is actually ahead of us not behind us uh because uh for far too long we just assume that the central Bankers know what they're talking about when they come out and ask us to have faith in them and tell us what the interest rates should be but what we've uh discovered and proven and demonstrated empirically with Ry is that you can actually completely automate the monetary policy for a currency and it more or less works fine so I think in the future any idiot is going to be able to run a currency and that'll result in like a printing press Cambrian explosion of knowledge around currency management and that'll be what results in the Golden Age of of currency all right can can I add yeah I would love for you to add to that um I think all of human history is going to be separated into two time periods the time uh before ethereum where the only possible way to enforce an agreement between two people is with violence and all of human history expanding into the you know humans expanding into the universe forever uh and being able to enforce agreements with math using smart contracts or other technology that we haven't even thought of yet um and so we're actually like right at the very very beginning of this new golden age of peaceful money where math enforces agreements uh instead of violence well I'm excited for this new age but I'd like to know what is peaceful money and maybe we can start by defining a negative what is peaceful money versus non- peaceful money and I've heard the term flat coin touted around by a number of different important people what do you guys think of that um we don't really like flat coin uh we're going to start calling it float coins we are all float coins uh not really vibing with the BAGI Direction at the moment um as far as like peaceful money versus violent money or non- peaceful money really if a currency requires a military to enforce it then it's essentially being the the value of the currency is being backed up by violence and so the idea with peaceful money is we we don't have to do that anymore we don't have to you know use the Navy or the entire US military to enforce or even sanctions to enforce the value of the money we can now just use Smart contracts to enforce them autonomously and as long as we are smart about the collateral uh I think we can continue to create money that doesn't need thugs to back it up cool um so getting more into floating coins versus FL coins which we might not like does it actually make sense to Peg to an inflation rate and what would be the tradeoffs if we were to Pegg to a say Global inflation rate so how do you define what an inflation rate is right is it the rate of the US dollar like more of it being printed because you know most US dollars were printed since 2020 so you know inflation wasn't wasn't you know 100% at any time in the last you know few years it's been like 15% and who are the economists that are telling us at the Federal Reserve what the inflation rate is and how much you know how much less money you have in your bank account uh I think just defining those kind of rates is just giving more power to Bankers that we don't necessarily have to do um and uh in terms of like crypto like the demand for centrally back stable coins is mostly from payments and from those type of transactions you know usdc is mostly used for payments and for settling payments but the demand for decentralized stable coins like Ry and open dollar and potentially High uh most of that demand comes from meeting the demand for the UN for leverage on the underlying collateral right and so these are are Financial tools um that uh are probably more attractive to the people who are creating them right every time you deposit collateral into open or Ry um or or other cdps right you're depositing this collateral you're minting new stable coins so the people actually creating the stable coins um don't want to Mint against something that is more expensive right that that makes their debt positions worse off uh and and um less stable basically right so so I want to build something that is for depositors and um you know gives gives access to Capital that normal people don't necessarily um always have access to right when Jeff Bezos wants to buy a new $500 million super yacht which he did he doesn't sell $500 million of Amazon stock he borrows against it and doesn't pay taxes uh so you know wouldn't it be nice if everybody had access to those same type of financial um Services uh and the same type of the same type of actually stable stable coins yeah that would be nice I'd like to add a little bit uh color so like BAGI came up with this term flat coin in his uh definition I think it means you know CPI denominated essentially Peg to the inflation rate uh the index of your basket of you know toilet paper cheeseburgers whatever uh and so like you know that index is manipulated like Joseph said and also uh it's hard to borrow against because it's an increasing number so people might not want it um and so this brings us back to like float coins and the idea of a float coin is that it's it's short for controlled Peg floating stable coin but that's a lot of words uh so we just say float coin uh and the cool thing about a float coin in how Ry is designed and how high is designed uh is that it can basically find the equilibrium interest rate that both the holders want and the borrowers want and uh expressing it in you know a dollar is sort of fine for that because it even though it is denominated in a dollar it's not always pegged to exactly $1 the currency can appreciate in value or depreciate in value based on uh the market forces that are at play uh how much people want to borrow against it versus how much people want to hold the coins uh and so I think it's a novel mechanism to achieve stability with that you can basically fully automate um and yeah it's a better way to achieve sound money uh for for any monetary policy right so in summary it sounds like our panelists aren't a fan of the Consumer Price Index for defining inflation because they feel it's a manipulable by Bankers or politicians that are trying to get voted in and also it sounds like the Consumer Price Index actually changes with the market of the goods being priced so digital monetary transactions offer convenience speed low cost but with them does come a loss of privacy big Banks large corporations and the government know how much money we make and what we spend it on the blockchain does not solve the Privacy problem uh since all of it is on a public record and people can basically see everything that we do the transactions are preserved what steps can we as the blockchain community truly take to deploy the advantages of digital money that being convenience speed low cost but at the same time to preserve privacy without running a foul of government entities that truly respond to any perceived threat on their ability to monitor Financial transactions by locking people up we might be able to think of a couple examples of that uh yeah so um I I think that in America we've gotten pretty used to the surveillance State um but it's not necessarily a global thing uh there was one Swiss Central Banker who I met and his plans for the Central Bank digital currency for Switzerland included privacy from the Central Bank itself as a feature that he was pitching to the users of the currency because what you lose when you have a full surveillance system is that you risk every single person's financial transaction history as in a giant Honeypot that can be hacked and exposed and is a threat to people in the armed forces or people looking for abortions in states that it might not be allowed and that is not uh I don't know a great equilibrium for us to to settle with and so I think promoting the legitimate use of privacy for uh our financial systems in the jurisdictions that appreciate it will lead us to uh being able to legitimize it in other jurisdictions like ours can I can I pleas I would love all of you guys to keep adding on okay yeah um so I I live in Washington DC and uh everyone who I know who has organized a mass protest uh like the women's March or or other ones of you know various IDE ideologies they all use signal to organize those right which is a private encrypted messaging app and everyone I know who is a is a staffer in Congress uh in the house or Senate they all you signal and everyone I know who is an organizer for like women Healthcare uh or uh you know ve very not always you know left ideologies or just across across the Spectrum like the people who are the most at risk of uh government crackdowns or or being um sought after because of their ideologies no matter what it is uh and most at risk of violence happening to them because of the things that they're standing up for and the things that they believe in those are the people that uh need privacy the most and and see it and so there there is a segment in our society in American society that values privacy even if I think most people are willing to give it up for convenience um and showing people across every political divide and ideological divide that privacy is like a fundamental human right and and makes your your life better um also creates a more peaceful Society because um they're you're less able to to Target people based on ideology so um yeah I think I think you know having uh privacy if you ever meet someone that is like oh tornado cash is for North Korea it's not it's for normal people who want to uh pay for health care or organize a protest of you know the status quo um it it it's for it's for you know regular use cases and and it can be for normal people too right and so crypto might not be for normal people right now um but the existing monetary system is not not for peace uh because because of its its transparency to uh to bankers and and to the government so if we want to create a peaceful monetary system I think it privacy has to go hand inand for sure did you just call me weird did I call you weird no crypto's not for normal people crypto is not not right now I mean I mean raise your hand if you're in the audience if you consider yourself a normal person yeah like like like 5% right pretty much what I nor is Eye of the Beholder so most of us think we're Unique Individuals well Fiat currencies are backed by the regulatory authority of the Fiat government for the most part regulatory Authority is enforced by the nation's police and military typically Warren Buffett Peter Schiff elizabe for and some of our favorite people have said that cryptocurrency is hot garbage or alluded in some sense to cryptocurrency being hot garbage because they feel it's just ones and zeros with nothing backing it since BTC and eth and other blockchain currencies are not protected by the Marines or Interpol do the detractors of cryptocurrency actually have a good point can I can I correct the question uh uh the US dollar is not backed by the US regulatory environment uh right we don't have a law that says you're not allowed to sell the US dollar for other other currencies and there's no law you know you know I think China is made made a a rule recently you're not allowed to sell Chinese stocks because you know that will make them go down right so the the regulatory enforcement does not back any of the value of the dollar uh uh I I think it's mostly backed by the assets that the United States controls which are you know primarily uh uh enfor Vehicles police and military right so um you know and our enforcement that um that oil trading is done in in dollars right what would happen if Saudi Arabia decided to go with a bricks currency and and stop trading trading oil and dollars I don't think it would go very well for them um for because of because of influence because of you know the American influence which is great for me as America as an American I love that you know it means uh you know my dollars are are strong everywhere and my open dollars are strong everywhere too um but there is surely a better a better way to do it and to back money by math uh instead of instead of BU these these type of violent assets uh and that's that's kind of the idea of peaceful money is uh you know we can enforce agreements enforce these transactions whether you're buying and selling oil or something that's even more peaceful than oil uh you know you can have those transactions and have those agreements enforced enforced by math uh and to me the back of any peaceful money has to has to come down to um the only thing that we know the only way we know how to enforce agreements is uh peacefully I think right now is with smart contracts and and with math so the the backing is is uh you know is with math and and with assets that are are tied to Smart contracts uh yeah would anyone else like to correct my question um so I think that we want uh we don't uh like for for for getting to the whole uh peaceful money thing it's you want the it to be collateralized and basically things that don't have an army that you're implicitly paying seniorage to that funds the Army right when you're holding dollars most people don't think about it like this but you are subsidizing the budget of the government that is using that money to go enforce the strength of the Dollar by securing Assets in the Middle East typically the oil uh transactions and so uh if you want to not have that uh you need to try to not have your money backed by those things and back it with Bitcoin and eth and then try to ideally not have it be rug pullable uh and this is one of the cool things that uh Joseph was saying where it's like once you have blockchains you actually reduce the incentive to make the money rug pullable in general because you can have Smart contracts that can conceivably outlive you uh in every other currency issued in history what happens is the issuer of the currency rationally decides hey I'm going to you know rug a bit of this during my lifetime to pay for my crisis because that's convenient for me uh and so they you know make it worth a little less you know metal or they uh in 1971 they end the gold standard if if makerd Dow for example said hey uh we're no longer redeeming our die for the assets that are backing it we would call that theft but that's what the US government did to the entire planet in 1971 and then was then forced to set up what I call Pool two for the US dollar uh which is enforcing with the military that the oil is sold for dollars and uh sometimes it feels like it doesn't actually even matter who the president is whether it's a Republican or a Democrat if the upholding of the dollar requires us to enter into military engagements uh in or like and that is the what we're trying to Meme here in the sense of peaceful money is this combination of factors that have allowed us for maybe the first time in history to build systems that don't have to do that and that can outlive us and not result in future Generations being ridden with debt or war or what have you yeah I think this question kind of perfectly encapsulates why we or why I at least am here in the first place and that that really a lot of people think like that you know a lot of people hear Warren Buffett say crypto's dog and they're just you know like Warren Buffett's the smartest Financial guy in the world and they just follow along with it and you'd be surprised how many people I talk to outside of crypto that still think the dollar is backed by gold um there's people just don't really know how this works and they they take people like Warren Buffett and the other people you mentioned they kind of idolize them put them up on a pedestal and when they hear these things they just take it for truth and the reason why I'm here right now is I kind of I want to show people that that's not the case that we can create something that isn't you know enforced by militaries that can have value that can be fair and transparent and you know ethical in a sense and I'll add something this is now my favorite panelist he didn't correct me yeah uh you know to some extent right if we're being honest uh there are bitcoins being m in America and those Bitcoins are paying taxes to the US government right and so same with stakers being in America and paying taxes and so but you can do the math on like what fraction of the currency issuance is going into the war budget uh and ideally it'll be less you know it'll almost conceivably never be zero but if we can minimize it that would be cool and so starting to talk about it is one way to make you know we have green this farm rais that and it's like is your money peaceful like have you guys even thought about that we've thought a little bit about it but we're thinking more about it now um so now time for a question that uh the panelist we're quite excited about uh can the philosophy of peaceful money be a large tin do do the principles resonate with many different political philosophies or is this just Anarchy capitalism only for socialists or for somebody else it's definitely not for only for socialists you know we're all launching crypto protocols uh you know VC funded open dollar or you know aan funded high or you know what what I would I would definitely not not call it uh cryp you know any part of crypto socialism um maybe may there's there's some you know Universal basic income things there but uh those are you know radical experiments too um so is it a is it a big tent uh you know I think anyone who believes violence is bad which is most people not everyone I definitely know some Psychopaths okay but uh I would I would I would wager that most people think violence is bad and if we can do things that uh lead to their there being less violence globally between people uh or between nation states or between you know alien races that we run into in the far future when we're still using smart contracts that are still deployed on ethereum you know thousands of years later uh you know having less violence is good uh worth pursuing and the more people that uh join join the big tent and and join uh uh the ideology of of peacefulness and working towards a more peaceful monetary more peaceful and fair uh monetary system I I would I would say that's you know something worth pursuing right so peaceful money maybe isn't the thing for warhawks probably not not for warhawks or uh even if you're holding any you know EV every 401K in in America is holding a little bit of rathon right uh which is not bad right you know uh tomahawk missiles super lit um you know maybe need a couple of those around for for something I think most people don't know I actually have a degree in Naval science and studied ship weapon systems once a while ago but uh irrelevant uh you know no it's not Irrelevant this good news we can we can defund uh not defund the police you know in that sense but you know defund Ron and then there will be less missiles right may be good depending on what your ideology is and we can defund uh uh you know coal power plants by bringing more capit capit to renewable energy and whatever type of assets that you want to promote and you want to propagate in the world you should back stable coins by them and let people make leverage positions on those and I want there to be more eth because eth is awesome and more people buying eth and using it in more ways so we'll make a stable coin backed by you know eth which is a peaceful asset if you want there to be more renewable energy make a stable coin backed by renewable energy if you want there to be more peace make stable coins backed by peaceful assets uh and and Etc and I I I think that should be open to you know many many different types types of assets and people with many different types of goals yeah I'll add to this one uh we like to think of crypto as a global movement like it's not just for America it's not just for you know the third world countries it's for everybody in between because inflation is essentially a scam that like every single country on the planet runs against its citizens and it's more or less for lack of a better plan on the part of the citizens to be like well what else are we going to use to do our transactions how else are we going to back money and use this and because the government can inflate they can steal from everybody and then use that money in nefarious ways for Wars or violence and so forth and so if people had you know the understanding and ability to create their own assets uh their own currencies backed by real world assets like I got pitched on an almond backed uh money that was pretty funny uh Energy Water reservoirs you know uh electrical you know stuff uh that would all be pretty cool and it would reduce the dependence of those people on the centrally issued currencies that then Rob them in order and then back up that uh with violence and so you're no longer if you're using one of these stable coins that's backed by some peaceful you know assets you're no longer directly contributing to the cycle of violence and so I think this is something that affects everybody on the planet and we're basically all on the same team against the people who would try to use this our our currencies against us Reza do you have an opinion on whether or not this is for Anarchist socialists or somebody else or all three I think these guys covered it perfectly all right sounds good now for a question that um gets Beyond just peaceful money and more into the broader topic of humanity some people believe that the only way for the crypto Community to detach itself from prying warlike National governments is to establish a city state with private security and Military and pay an adjacent size Sovereign government for defense if such a state was created I have two questions would everyone agree on a single medium of exchange if so which one would that be and also I'd like to know how we would ensure population growth of a city state in which 90% of the habitants were men yeah I think she's seen the pictures of the network State meetups uh I've um walked by a couple and left yeah uh so I I mean uh city states yeah you're you're going to need some way of securing it right like that there's no version of the world where you have a military budget that's a zero uh it's mostly if I was participating in this what I would prefer is for the costs to be explicit right like charge me taxes let me do the math on whether or not I prefer the taxes don't rob me at the level of currency because you think I don't have a better plan you know uh and and then uh if you I specifically about the medium exchange thing it's not necessary to have everybody have the same medium exchange because you can charge taxes in kind for you know what people are producing or the outputs and you know or allow several different currencies that you uh adopt and if there's like liquid Global markets for them then it doesn't really you know matter as a level of you know necessity uh where most people go wrong is they think they can get away with oh well let's just print the money and then the next generation will pay for it uh and I think that that's would lead to a shorter term citystate than the one I would be interested in building yeah the the business model of printing money very good business model for the person doing the printing so if your city state is owned by some very rich VCS and their business model is to print new money and all of the plebs use it and it's really good for them that is a great idea uh for the people that control that uh right so you know great may maybe it will work out for them uh I happen to already belong to a digital city state it's called RuneScape uh and I have a 20-year veteran Cape okay so uh you know we have our own RuneScape gold currency uh it's owned by a company they can print an infinite amount of it um the market cap of it is actually higher than um it would it would probably be in the top you know five five currencies globally um because it's so inflated and valueless uh uh uh in in its units right um so you know maybe it works out like that uh um uh you know anyone should be able to launch their own currency I don't think the government should have a monopoly on creating currencies right like right if if you want to make a gold backed currency like have fun you should be able to do that uh maybe it will maybe it will work uh and certainly printing dollars or or printing open dollars or printing you know whatever currency bellagi or anyone else wants to come up with this is a great business model uh but maybe uh things that a small group of people control and are able to always control the money supply will always end up with the same problems that we have with the US dollar now uh and things like open dollar or Ry or high that are backed by a limited supply of eth and can only be minted not by individuals but by a protocol that is permissionless that is peaceful that is backed by math and where monetary policies are controlled by a controller that has a smart contract which everyone agrees to participate in uh maybe maybe you know that's worth pursuing maybe that would be a lot a lot better than what we have now well it sounds like you guys are pursuing it so hopefully some people use it I I'll add one more thing and that's just that like uh the uh you you can so like when we talk about the ability to to Mint the currency like you can make the stable coin not have a and then Joseph can mint the money right uh in the smart cont it just doesn't have that function so like people in theory in you know in the future should be able to trust these things more and for longer because they don't have the same risk of getting rug pulled in the way that our every fiat currency which has a central bank which in infinite print uh at any time does because that's essentially a giant Honeypot waiting to happen uh every time so they'll tell you hey it's stable inflation's going back to 2% Trust trust us but then when they feel like it they'll rug everybody's sense of stability for their own uh gain to solve their crisis or whatever and so blockchains give us this ability for like the first time in history to design these things and just be very transparent about the protocols and the rules and say look we don't even have the ability to print money like only the people who bring the assets can print the money and the protocol governs this yeah I think what really jumped out from Joseph's answer was the you said people can choose to participate you unless you have left wherever whatever country you're from and came to America and like fought to get citizenship you have not chosen to participate you're kind of just like you just did um and I I think that people should have the ability to opt in or opt out of their medium exchange um and when it comes to like whether we need some sort of you know military to protect this uh mythical State I don't really have a problem paying for protection I want to be safe I just think it should be explicitly St stated you know like hey I'm using this and by using this I am paying I'm making sure no one comes into my house and robs me you know just transparency and the ability to opt in and opt out all right uh these are all great responses uh no one actually got at how we would ensure population growth of these Network states that are 90% men but I'd like to posit my own response I think harm should be allowed for the women that join them but it'll be a somewhat sparing application we hear some clapping in the audience it's a light clap this is a I think you have a novel solution to the supply and demand problem here can I uh can I announce do a small announcement yes you are allowed to do that thank you um so we're we're announcing today the um peaceful money Alliance at peaceful money .org and you can sign up now to uh be part of uh a new peaceful monetary system where we're planning to do uh peaceful ratings and rate different currencies based on their peacefulness um and and more things from there so peaceful money.org and yeah please sign up thank you uh we'll we'll give a last minute shill about our projects too so yes please uh if you want to see the best coolest website ever made go to Let's high.com spelled ha AI uh the dmtl will greet you and uh yeah it's pretty fun got a open dollar sh open dollar.com it's awesome there we go awesome well thank you so much you guys this was super fun for me um we'll see you all later