all right Mike is on I can hear it very good all right Fair ladies fellow gentlemen my name is Eric Voorhees lover of Liberty founder of shapeshift some call me a crypto OG my girlfriend likes to call me the oldest man in crypto and from time to time I'm known for hunting down pudgy curly-haired scammers that over index on acronyms amphetamines and abundant donations to Washington [Applause] um I was asked to give a little talk about why we're here why we are in this industry why we're in why we are in this place it's an
honor to have this opportunity but first I want to gather a little bit of information about you the audience and I'll pretend that I can see many of you with these lights on me raise your hand if you are here for the free coffee oh someone someone's lying raise your hand if you're here for the Lambos unfortunately you probably won't be getting those this year but hold on uh raise your hand if you're here because you love Banks no no hands raise your hand if you're here to get your eyeballs scanned by World coin raise
your hand if you're here to celebrate kyc or other forms of wholesale spying on innocent people all right um raise your hand if you're here for a rebellion all right there's some hands that's why I'm here I'm here for a rebellion peaceful for sure but no less revolutionary and as I was working on the speech I realized that the theme was going to match the name of the event permissionless I love this name it's one of the best words that captures the essence of our industry it is radical it is rebellious it's non-compliant it's American
and as the oldest man in crypto let me remind you that this all began about 15 years ago with the invention of Bitcoin and why was that moment in time important why did it matter back then why was Bitcoin interesting it was interesting because it was permissionless Bitcoin invented permissionless money and with the invention of smart contracts on ethereum a few years later we had all the tools we needed to build an entirely permissionless Financial system this attribute is revolutionary and this attribute more than any other is the essence of crypto the attribute is imbued
in all good projects in this space and if something is not permissionless we should consider it at best as a stepping stone to that which is but isn't it interesting that being permissionless has been so novel and so difficult to achieve isn't it interesting that in the realm of money before crypto all movement of funds required someone's permission you may say that cash is permissionless but not if you're sending it across any distance try moving ten thousand dollars across the border and you will be swiftly reminded of the permissions that are imposed on you no
cash is not even permissionless and for all its virtues it is receding from society so thank God that a permissionless form of digital money was invented because it happened just in time but why does this all matter in the first place consider that essentially all action in the economic sphere requires money and in a world where most people struggle to put food on the table the economic sphere is literally the Arbiter of life or death for billions most people don't have the luxury of working toward their passion they work they toil they transact because they
need to live thus money is fundamental to our human existence and because of this we should care about its quality we should care about its character and we should can we should care who controls it the permission is often subtle but it is ubiquitous every time you pay with your card you're being granted permission it appears as though the permission is simply whether you had enough money but in reality there is another much more Insidious layer of approval taking place the bank the financial institution the government numerous parties all along the line strangers to you
people you will never meet bless each of your transactions and you don't notice because permission is usually granted as long as you behave citizen the permission will be there but if you require permission to spend and to trade then you require permission to exist so why do we accept this world in which you are free to transact only on the conditional approval of strangers this of course is not freedom it is subservience it is serfdom and that the chains bear lightly down in most cases should not lull us into forgetting that the chains exist if
they are tolerated they will become heavier let's acknowledge that the laws restricting our Affairs grow often and recede only rarely consider that the average man of a hundred years ago compared to the average man of today who was more economically free 120 years ago there wasn't even an income tax things were so radical back then that you were actually permitted to keep what you earned you could even cross borders without one of those adorable books of stamps we call a passport it's amazing that Society could even exist under that kind of Anarchy and yet without
any income tax or immigration restrictions America experienced the greatest period of growth that the world had ever seen that society in which labor and capital are unpermissioned is the society that tends to grow the fastest but some men love to plunder the permission to keep what you earned and to move freely across borders was gradually retracted wrapped always in appeals to collectivist propaganda like the national interest today across all the taxes that you bear half of your money is stolen by the state but the state is just a set of strangers so half of your
money is stolen by a set of strangers what excuse do you tell yourself to cope with such embarrassment the permission to build your own life is being withdrawn by those who plunder you and tell you it's for your own good so what prevents this trend from continuing what prevents the man of tomorrow from even greater servitude what force resists an increasingly permissioned existence we do we do you may not realize it but what we are building is the economic defense of modern society against plunder and restriction by the state we are saying no to the
Perpetual encroachment of permissioned existence it is not the political process the political circus that saves us from this phenomenon for that is the very process which caused it now as free men and free women our Salvation is our own responsibility It Is Us it is ourselves our minds our hands and our decision to act and we are doing so without permission permission is what the kindergarten child attains to go to the bathroom it is not what the respectable man attains in his financial affairs for if I may transact with you only by the good graces
of those watching me from above then I am something below I am a subject I'm not a man but a child but is a child even an appropriate metaphor children are generally loved by their parents do you feel similarly loved by the Central Intelligence Agency farm animals perhaps is the better metaphor we've allowed ourselves to be treated like farm animals we graze in the pen we produce we are harvested but we can vote however yes we can choose who operates the shears we can vote whether we want red or blue to Rob us and we
argue endlessly over the preferable color for us to surrender these many permissions we must really respect our leaders we must aspire to the greatness of these Lords they must certainly be of brilliant mind of High character they must Inspire and guide us toward that which we could not achieve without them are these accurate descriptions of the leaders of the world are they men of impeccable wisdom are Donald Trump or Joe Biden such Paragons of virtue such incredible specimens of humanity that submission to them is in any way warranted I look out at the political class
that Legion of bureaucrats suckling at the teat of plundered wealth with all their ornaments of authority with all their hubris masked as confidence with the inauthenticity of their smiles matched only by the absurdity of their ideas and I find no reason to submit to the permissions under which they seek to restrain me to such people we owe nothing but to humanity we owe much that's why we're here and crypto is our Rebellion [Applause] crypto is our Rebellion it is a rebellion against a system that is Unworthy of its Authority it's our Rebellion against coercion and
servitude it is our Rebellion against the economically ignorant the endlessly imperious and the ethically impotent crypto is our Rebellion against permission and it is no less than a noble Reclamation of dignity and Grace is free and Sovereign individuals in the service of peaceful civilization that is why we are here for the truth is that we don't require permission to build great things from those Petty tyrants who build nothing and this was the very principle on which America was founded the permission of the state is a facade a ruse tolerated only by those Afflicted with Stockholm
Syndrome it is a curtain placed upon our eyes effective only because we have been too weak too afraid too helpless too distracted and often too comfortable to see beyond the Shroud many of us in this industry have seen beyond that shroud we've seen that Washington is no more necessary for good society today than King George and the English Parliament was 250 years ago crypto is a technology of individual freedom and a declaration of financial Independence crypto is the freedom to act out our own economic interests as free men and free women in a just Society
to trade to exchange to deal to build to barter we should be optimistic for what a time to be alive at the dawn of such peaceful Revolution where any two people on Earth can trade value without permission does that scare you or does that really and yet hubris affects all people are we sure that we are not suffering from it as good Skeptics we should be skeptical first and foremost of ourselves and our own assumptions the question we should always ask ourselves are we agents of good or of chaos and how would we know are
we merely rebellious adolescents enabling a chaotic world without permission are we no more than subversive degenerates petulant teenagers who too immature and naive to see the value of order lash out in its very existence how can we so irreverently condemn the necessity of compliance the virtue of permission the many resplendent wonders of central Administration do we not care about Society if we have our way won't Bad actors thrive in society degenerate these are the strongest allegations against us and yet they are easily defeated they are defeated upon the recognition that what we seek is not
actually freedom from permission and rules per se but simply a preference for rules which are objective and transparent rather than the status quo of rules which are subjective and opaque we like to say that code is law but that's the misnomer code is better than law and we are highlighting for the world to see the fundamental difference between law based on men and law based on math compare a redundantly audited and formally verified smart contract to any embarrassing mess of congressional legislation which is more scientifically sound which is actually a better demonstration of order one
is a matter of engineering the other is a matter of electioneering compare a smart contract in which every variable is mathematically defined to the Securities Act of 1933. which has thousand dollar an hour lawyers arguing over the degree to which cartoon pictures of board apes are comparable to Florida orange groves the absurdity of most Financial regulation is plain and we shouldn't tolerate it but all of us should desire orderly objective transparent markets and to all the Regulators in the audience before you send me yet another subpoena consider that this is the common ground we share
we all want rules we all want rules rules are good and this is the most important point that I'll make today the traditional Financial system is built on the rules of men rather than the rules of math and Society can do better the rules of men are formed through a political process which all people acknowledge as fallible and often corrupt the rules of man rely on highly subjective human language and leave wide areas open for interpretation when it comes to enforcement of these already squishy rules nobody can predict a priori which infractions will actually be
enforced Gary Gensler alleges that all tokens are securities okay Gary why hasn't the SEC enforced against all tokens the most charitable explanation is that they are under-resourced okay but that still proves the point that Financial regulation as it exists today is subjectively and partially enforced and if we care about orderly markets how can we respect that how can we respect that compare this to any smart contract which enforces 100 of the time and we can all know a priori how that enforcement will be executed uniswap's enforcement division is never under-resourced and the rules by which
it operates are objective and transparent we don't have to suffer subjective rules in the realm of Finance any longer but instead of uniswap winning the Nobel Prize for the development of orderly markets they are persecuted for the very fun by the very agency tasks with ensuring orderly markets so you want to call us agents of chaos you want to dismiss us as the destructive anarchists we are the only ones building Financial rules that are enforced to 100 of the time code police is better than police we desire strong rules in our markets and any rule
which can easily be broken is a weak rule there is a law that I may not cross a border without declaring ten thousand dollars in my pocket interesting I can so easily violate that law that it's a embarrassment the very definition of that word the laws of physics the laws of mathematics the laws of code these laws have meaning they are powerful they are consistent they are worthy of respect the laws of men the laws of a DC regulator they are comparatively pathetic from the perspective of consistent order and they are an unfit Foundation upon
which to build civilization into the 21st century no man's law is at best highly fallible and porous perhaps it was needed once just as we once needed the post office to send mail yet both the post office and the SEC still exist vestigial and embarrassing though I'm sure their budgets will yet again increase next year now compare the subjective laws of regulators or rebellious adolescence with the law of code compare the Dodd-Frank Act that detestable Tome 2300 pages long which spawned thousands more pages across 400 new Financial regulations with ave's lending contracts toward the achievement
of orderly markets which of these is more emblematic of an advanced civilization which is obviously the product of the 20th century technology in which the product of the 21st compare the open source collaboration of crypto with the backroom dealings of DC which process of rulemaking is more noble and more virtuous we are not agents of chaos but agents of order and while some may not approve of the systems of order that we're building then again no dinosaur ever approved of an asteroid do we care about Society yes of course deep in our bones we care
about Society many of us are here because we see widespread economic Injustice in the world and we want to help we live amid Society we benefit from it and we owe our efforts toward its Improvement but unlike any politician who mandates compliance with his ideas at the point of a gun we are here to build peacefully and we impose on no one so do not let the status tell you that you do not care about rules or Society for you are building a superior technology for rules within society and it is they the politicians The
Regulators the leaching plundering class of Washington DC who should be praising your fine work in the realm of order and rulemaking compared to what we are building they are the Agents of Chaos they are the people printing billions of dollars and then pretending not to know where inflation comes from for them to claim the moral or intellectual High Ground in any matter of economics is absurd they could at least have the decency to get out of the way to be sure our enemies are numerous there are many who find the idea of open permissionless finance
to be abhorrent for their use to controlling things that they haven't built and now finally they can't and for the rest of us for those radicals who don't impose their opinions upon millions of innocent people by force how optimistic we can be how bright the light of opportunity shines for everyone who has discovered this permissionless Promethean fire how much brilliant creative energy is captured in this single room yes we endure seemingly endless setbacks and struggle yes scammers abound yes we are condemned by the system that we aim to replace some of us endure persecution and
all of us periodically pain the friends try to see through those struggles be grateful for every noble challenge that you face in your work for you are alive and your work is important be grateful for this opportunity in front of you consider all those people in traditional Finance those cogs in the regulatory state who go to work each day with dead eyes and weak hearts their soul knows that they are involved in nothing creative or beautiful they are involved in nothing wild or romantic but many of you are so embrace it and cherish it and
build upon it wild and romantic these words still Define the heart of crypto and in a world of bureaucratic soul-crushing absurdity where Society seems to be eating itself grinding to dust all those who DARE stand as individuals against an Arcane apparatus this wild and romantic heart of crypto still beats block by block with unrelenting ambition stand tall and remember that you are neither slave nor surf in America the common man is the noble so act like it be men and women of Vitality integrity and of proud disposition be the pioneering industrialists and reflect the nobility
of that role build with intention and see through every form of lowly interference especially if it comes wearing flags and demanding tribute any regulator can submit a pull request that they don't is telling the traditional intra-legal Financial territory was lost long ago to the political circus so now we venture into a new territory that we've built extra legal and permissionless here in this new land west of the old we admit only a subservience to moral virtue to mathematics and to the awesome power of open composable immutable code in our audacity we build things and force
them on no one and we have invented not just on the clean whiteboard of imagination but in the dirty cauldron of real engineering the world's first and only transparent objective Financial system for all mankind we built it without a dollar of tax money and we built it without permission consider what it means to be in opposition to this development to be opposed to objective transparent rule sets and voluntary Association among consenting adults to demand the compliance and submission of peaceful people at the point of a gun examine those who act like that and you will
discover where those enemies of humanity so pitifully lay they are done ignoring us they're certainly still still laughing at us and they've obviously started to fight us but we will win ethical arguments aside because man is a capitalist creature and capital flows where it is respected like water it flows where it may and as the permissions of the Fiat system constrain and strangle so are open decentralized alternative stands ready to receive it true Innovation is messy sometimes veering in unhelpful directions and Back Again but Capital will flow to well-ordered decentralized finance as water flows indelibly
to the Sea and both will happen naturally and both will happen without permission thank you [Applause] [Music]
