This space is hosted by DIAdata_org
Space Summary
The Twitter Space was a dynamic and engaging discussion primarily centering on free speech, the influence of AI, and the possibility of global conflicts resembling World War III. Participants debated whether true free speech can exist on platforms like Twitter, particularly under the ownership of Elon Musk, and shared personal stories of censorship. The role of AI in moderating content was critically examined, with many arguing that context is often lost, leading to unfair restrictions. The conversation also touched on the ethical concerns of AI, the impact of digital identities on real-life scenarios, and drew historical parallels to understand current geopolitical tensions. Throughout, there was a shared concern about the rights and freedoms in the future digital landscape, highlighting the significant changes and challenges society might face.
Questions
Q: What defines World War III in the modern context?
A: Participants debated criteria, noting that modern conflicts may differ from past world wars but can have significant impacts.
Q: Can true free speech exist on platforms like Twitter?
A: Opinions varied, with many arguing that complete free speech is hindered by algorithmic and policy restrictions.
Q: How does context influence speech moderation?
A: Context is vital but often overlooked by AI moderators, leading to unjust censorship.
Q: Have participants faced censorship on social media?
A: Yes, several shared experiences of posts being flagged or removed.
Q: What role does digital identity play in online interactions?
A: Digital identity significantly impacts real-life opportunities and relationships.
Q: Are AI and algorithms effective in content moderation?
A: The consensus leaned towards AI often failing to grasp nuanced human communication.
Q: Which historical lessons are relevant to current geopolitical issues?
A: World Wars I and II lessons were cited to understand contemporary global tensions.
Q: What are the ethical concerns related to AI?
A: Issues include potential biases in AI and the erosion of personal freedoms.
Q: How do personal stories connect to broader societal problems?
A: Personal narratives offer tangible examples highlighting systemic issues' impact on individuals.
Q: What is predicted for the future of speech freedom on social media?
A: Uncertainty prevails, with participants anticipating both improvements and deteriorations in online speech liberties.
Highlights
Time: 00:45:50
46:00
Key Takeaways
- Participants delved into the concept of World War III
- redefining global conflicts in the modern era.
- Discussions highlighted the challenges of free speech on platforms like Twitter
- especially under Elon Musk's control.
- The crucial role of context in speech interpretation and AI moderation was examined.
- Personal anecdotes were shared to shed light on broader societal issues and challenges.
- Digital identity's significance and the repercussions of online actions in real life were emphasized.
- Algorithms' potential to misinterpret intent and impact freedom of expression was a key point of focus.
- Skepticism regarding free speech on social media and instances of censorship were noted.
- Historical comparisons were made to understand contemporary geopolitical tensions.
- The ethical implications of AI in transforming social interactions were thoroughly debated.
- Concerns about the future
- including the balance between emerging technologies and personal freedoms
- were expressed.
Behind the Mic
If anybody wants to offer any push back on any of the points that you just made, I think that they're very clear and I think that you made your argument in case it is very clear, but just want to pick Derek and Sodom's brain on this as well. How do you see this space evolving over the next five years? Let's base this off of what Iago said. Is there an argument once all of this is possible on bitcoin, and now that it's becoming all possible on bitcoin, is there an argument for why bitcoin should be the only chain on top of which, like these types of protocols are being deployed? Do you see that bitcoin will only continue to capture TVL over the next five years? Or do you think that, as Iago said, these roll ups, these ETH roll ups that are launching daily now will continue to capture market share? So I kind of just took you guys through a word scramble of questions there. But to summarize, do you think that bitcoin will continue to capture market share, TVL more specifically over the next, let's say, five years, or that other ecosystems outside of the bitcoin landscape will pick up their pace as opposed to what we've seen over the last twelve months. Just going to open this question up here, if any of you wants to take a stab at it first. If not, might have to do a pick out of the hat type of approach. Sadam, would you like to start? Actually, I w Let me know if you want to go. I can go. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, perfect. So I think from my perspective, I think this is truly just the beginning of us seeing like bitcoin defies, like what bitcoin is capable of. But it is remarkable to see where we started as it specifically relates to the Lightning Network, where it was like two nodes on the network, where we're now about 5000. And I think it S capital to like 2000 points to just shows how strong and how far the network has actually come. And that's just even on its own custody piece of it. But I think in a broader lens, you have to sort of think about all the other people who are building on top of it, and generalized consensus, as we now speak about. But things like RGB, where you're seeing stable coins being launched on top of bitcoin by demand, where when you hear these conversations happening, even in like Latam with bitcoin being viewed as like collateral. But people wanting access to USD stable coins, bitcoin backed stable coins, this truly shows that we are very, at the earlier stage of bitcoin's life cycle and how it continues to grow. So I do think that there will be a time where you'll get significant amount of TVL and specifically growing from the amount of like the new hash power and so on and so forth. But I don't think that necessarily means that other ecosystems won't grow. I think they'll be significantly more competitive between ETH and all the L twos on roll up onto ETH. But what's really exciting, I think it's like almost this escape from the competitive crowd base of like, let's just build because it's truly aligned towards what bitcoin is. But that's just my two cents on it. Go ahead Derek. Okay, that's a very big question. Five years is such a long time. So I'm going to give the classic cop out answer that it's going to be both. But with the caveat that there might be a tipping point. And what I mean by that is, let's look at the fungible tokens and defy on bitcoin today. So I think it's roughly something like 190 million of fungible tokens are issued on bitcoin today. Compare that with 200 billion in ETH. And that 190 on bitcoin just was created this year in a few months. I think the arguments that even people like ETH maxes are making around fungible tokens on bitcoin is even more secure. It's even more decentralized with L twos. It's cheaper. So if I can get that same effect while still leveraging all the great bitcoin properties, then why not do that? And so I would say long term, asymptotically, there's a very strong argument for fungible tokens and defy happening in bitcoin. The one caveat I would say is that we still have more UX challenges to still fix. So even on lightning, we would look at more of the lower level challenges, talk about liquidity, talk about whether it's like swap providers, et cetera, et cetera. The fact that the bitcoin secondary solutions, that's the whole goal here, to be able to build all these things. I do think as as a pragmatic approach, it's still going to be multichain. But in the long term, way long term, we might see this tipping point effect where you really do get to see a majority of the activity. That's where the TVL really going through bitcoin. That's absolutely right. Derek. The way that I look at bitcoin and the rest of the ecosystem is that bitcoin is a conservative system from the development perspective, right? The high bar for any change is a net benefit to consensus, right? In bitcoin. The high bar for any change is largely driven by bitcoin's core function in the ecosystem, which is to be an independent, neutral, self-sovereign system. And as such, change happens much more slowly within bitcoin and much more deliberately than in other ecosystems. But what that means is that there's much, much greater resilience, much higher levels of security and reduces attack surfaces that you can essentially see in the system. While the rest of the ecosystem is innovating very, very fast in parallel, which is great in the sense that bitcoin ends up getting the best of both worlds, right? If all this innovation is happening and people are chasing the price of any individual stable coin protocol while working through chain and whatever other infrastructural tool is in vogue at the moment, eventually what we see is that some projects will stand and these projects, if there's demand for it in bitcoin, there's enough energy behind them. And there are bitcoiners who decide to stand up for it and take the risk of working it out and integrating it and implementing it on bitcoin. Then we do see that. And that's kind of the reason why bitcoin gets the best of both worlds. We have this development, almost utopia on the one side, on the other, we've got this extremely secure space. Now, I think that the core thesis of bitcoin means that it is a net good thing that bitcoin is accelerating in its capacity to take on these new ideas and that new ideas are going to become increasingly more prevalent than bitcoin. However, while the rest of the ecosystem is innovating incredibly quickly and will continue to be innovating incredibly quickly, I would much prefer that bitcoin stays in its deliberative conservative space. And more and more energy heads in this direction purely because it is such a secure foundation to build upon. And then over time, you do see this shift, right? As the population graph of bitcoiners continues to grow because that's where the greatest value is. You see solutions that eventually could have been built on bitcoin and to some degree got bootstrapped somewhere else, but then returned to bitcoin. And that's what we see in this case. Sadam Derek, I think you guys just killed it there. That was fantastic insights. Yago, same to you. Just taking a step back here for the last question of this episode, and I'm really curious to hear all your thoughts on this. What do you guys think are some of the biggest risks or weaknesses in the bitcoin defi story today? Sadam, you were speaking about Lightning Network, and I think we have been touching upon these points throughout the last few minutes. As Yago and Derek said, Yago, I love that introduction or summary there on this conversation about how bitcoin being that conservative system attracts value, especially given the resilience that comes with it and the low tax surface. And we touched upon UX aspects from Derek as well. So this is going to be more of an open question. But what are some of the biggest risks or weaknesses in your mind within the bitcoin defi story today? I mean, any one of you can take a stab at it or we can get into specifics as well. If you don't want to talk at a high level, but just overview or to kick us off some of the fundamental risks or weaknesses in today's landscape. None of the risks and weaknesses that are kind of specific to bitcoin defi are unique to bitcoin defi, right? Most of them fall within the realm of risks that exist across defi and decentralized systems in general. The decentral systems are still very new and there's a lot of trial and error and a lot of shaking out that is required. I think often about metallic notion in long term event against this in really having a case that proof of work is sound, is secure in a system that no longer serves the profitability of the people who run them. Because one day we will be too far away from the last subsidy for there still to be ample incentive from the price mechanism to maintain the core security of the system. There are a lot of people smarter than me who tend to disagree with that, but I think it is going to be an interesting challenge to watch how that plays out. Now, in the interim, is the theory still going to be there? Is the theory going to have a great deal of value? I think so. And I don't think we'll be running out of them anytime soon. What happens in the event that we actually do run out of them and we remain too far away from the last subsidy is a question that we have yet to see how it plays out. I think the biggest weakness is just in general what bitcoin has. A 15 year track record is the most secure. And when you copy paste those types of security proofs, there is probably still just more proving X case law that we need in order to be able to replicate those protections beyond being replicated on the base layer blockchain of bitcoin. So that's like one of the weaknesses. And then I think the other weakness that sort of alluded to a little bit earlier is like the user experience and setting up swap providers. In other words, it's like UX, UX, UX. Even though it is markedly better than just being like holding a single bitcoin and having that protection where you're shielded from some of the negative outcomes of centralized finance and proliferation of various scams. We have to solve for that gap for bitcoin itself to be able to scale. And also bitcoin not just scale to nearly 8 billion people on the planet. It's also scaling the use cases that leverage bitcoin. Derek brought up economic theory, which related to like proof of work. Another question or another thing that maybe bitcoin and bitcoin DFI has in terms of weaknesses is finally getting us to a place where people are accepting that bitcoin is for payments and for savings. Because currently it is more viewed to be a volatile currency out there. But reality is that it is actually meant to be digital money. It's meant to be something we can actually transact with. As we build more defi on bitcoin, we're surfacing and teasing out some of those core use cases. We're starting to get towards the core use cases. And I think until we truly solve more and more of that, the runways for what bitcoin looks like from payment standpoint keeps getting longer and longer. I think the UX logic point was also relevant to any industry in their seed to series B. We're going to start seeing bitcoin DFI companies that are maybe like seed to pre seed companies now are going to start solving for these UX challenges that we just talked about. I can't hear you. Your mic is off. My bad. So what I was just saying was thank you so much for sharing insights. I'm afraid we would have to like wrap this up now. And yeah, I want to take a moment to say grateful for Derek, Sadaam and Yago for joining us and to everybody else over here. Thank you very much for being here today. And yeah, I guess you guys have that high signal, orange signal energy and with heart stuff emoji. All right, I'll exit now. Thank you guys. Have a nice day. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. And yeah, I guess a quick reference to resources on my end here. Hey, guys, if you like this session and you want to tune into future bitcoin dialogues episodes, give us a follow over at the Dia page that I'm speaking through right now. And I just want to once again say thank you to our speakers for joining us and giving us an hour of their time to share with us everything exciting that's going on in their world and on their side of the bitcoin landscape. So, Sodom, Derek and Yago, and, you know, all the teams behind these, these awesome people, thank you for joining us. Thanks to everybody in the audience for tuning into another great episode here, whether you're listening live or on record. And I guess that's all for today. Have a great rest of your, you know, day, afternoon or evening if you opened up with us. I hope everybody's feeling an orange heart today, per Derek's introduction there. And yeah, we'll see on the next episode of Bitcoin dialogues. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for having us. Excellent. All right, cheers.
