Matt Huang
speaker
205 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Matt Huang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yes, I think the speculation has been productive. Okay, you could debate the ratio of speculation to the utility that's been created and compare that across trends. And crypto, I think, is definitely more speculative than typical. But that's in part because assets that one can speculate on are part of the core thing that's being enabled and the core form factor.
But yeah, within crypto, I think of speculation in two ways. One is that it's actually very core to the adoption of any new monetary asset, because to believe that other people will eventually accept some asset as money is inherently a speculative act. And OK, you can have fundamental reasons for believing that because the supply is fixed or it has certain technical features.
But ultimately, your belief hinges on belief in others. I think that makes people uncomfortable sometimes. And I think I see a lot of people very confident that Bitcoin, for example, cannot possibly be money or gold. And I think it comes from this place of just the inherent distaste for speculation versus trying to inspect it more carefully.
Then, yes, there's the Carlota Perez idea of speculation as a bootstrap. And I think we have seen that play out productively in crypto.
So, for example, a lot of the stablecoin activity that's possible now, 200 billion in stablecoin assets, lots of stablecoins being used outside of crypto, whether it's cross-border payments or access to USD in countries that struggle with their local currency, corporate payments, etc. That's all enabled by the infrastructure work that was done over the last decade. two, three years.
If you look at Ethereum L2s like Base or Solana, we have stablecoin transactions that are extremely cheap and fast now. Whereas in 2017 or 2021, those same transactions would have been $10 or $100 to send a mainnet transaction.
So I think we're in a completely different place on the infrastructure side now, mostly invisible to the broader public, but manifesting in real applications like stablecoin payments being possible.
I don't want to come off as I don't care about the investment returns and being a good steward on behalf of LPs and stuff. But I do think the mission that animates us is making sure that crypto technology can succeed in the world. And I think if we look at the internet, the idea that we have end-to-end encrypted messaging today, WhatsApp, Signal, I think is a contingent fact.
As in, there are many possible universes where we don't have that. It's not something that was inevitable. And it's something we possibly could lose or have been close to losing many times. And I think right now, putting the political dimension aside, there's a lot of discussion about the idea of free speech and censorship. So I think these are some of the questions of our time.
And that's just on the side of information and transmitting information. But I think if we look at, there is no free speech without economic freedom, because you can use economic violence country to country, country to citizen, to punish speech. And I think we saw this, say, in the case of the Canadian truckers, if you remember that incident.
And so I think economic freedom is one of these underrated frontiers where we are slowly walking our way into possible totalitarianism in how much financial control our governments have over the people. And I think everyone in the U.S. looks at China and says, that looks like a very dystopian system. Social credit score, full visibility into finances, one system.
And I don't think they fully realize the same thing is happening in the West. So I think it's one of the more urgent problems facing freedom in the West alongside the speech issues. A common characterization, only criminals need encrypted messaging or only criminals need privacy of their financial transactions.
I think it's increasingly clear that this is something that affects everyone and it's not singularly political. in the sense that it's not a right or a left issue. For example, I think in the aftermath of the first Trump presidency, a lot of people in the MAGA world lost bank accounts.
Now, with the Republicans in power, a lot of people on the left are worried about people being able to access abortions and get proper health care without financial surveillance of their payments. These are issues that touch on all sides and this ultimate question of individual freedom and sovereignty.
I think the most obvious recent example is the set of debankings that have happened. Operation Chokepoint 2.0, which Nick Carter and the crypto community has done a really good job cataloging. There was also Operation Chokepoint 1.0, which happened prior, primarily with marijuana, gambling, and other... Can you describe what those things were?
They're ultimately the government saying these activities are technically legal, but we don't like them. And so they apply various kinds of bureaucratic pressure onto the banking system to refuse those people as customers. And I think the law should be the law. So if some activity is illegal, then let's make it illegal.
But when activity is legal, I think it's sort of incumbent on the system to enable that legal activity to happen should it want to happen. And I think of crypto as much like we would look at the Chinese control of media as something distasteful to us in the West. And the free Internet is something that seems more moral.
And the Internet is a very useful check on that type of totalitarian control because through VPNs or other technical techniques, people in China have access to the real Internet and can find out information should they want to. That alternate system doesn't exist yet for finances. And I think crypto is building that.
And so at a minimum, I think it's a check on the degree of overreach of the traditional system. But I think it's also a very important alternative. I think in the long run, we also get more efficient systems, more innovation, lots of positive effects. It's not just a political defensive point, but that political dimension is a very important part of what's being built.
Well, I'm not fully sure. I suppose I've always had somewhat of a skepticism towards authority. And so when I see authority exerting itself, it does make me wonder, is this the way we want the world to work?
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