so before we take a deep dive I want to show of hands of people who have sent money or if you know somebody who has sent money to Godman or churches temples moss or even put money in those boxes outside the religious statues come on guys show me yeah pretty much hundred percent right good it's not beard there are seven billion people on this in this world and six billion are religious so if you had not raised your hand they would have been something wrong that would have been weird okay now let's try to understand
who we send this money to are we sending the money to God or I'll be sending money to the guard men are the religious institutions you can argue that I actually did send the money to the religious institutions if that is the case you should not be upset when they buy a hundred million dollar yacht or when they buy a jet or when they built a luxurious church but that's not the case every time we see that kind of a news we get upset because we've sent our money even though we haven't explicitly said it
that it was meant for God even though we can't see God we can't touch God we can't feel God we expect them to do something in the spirit to either send it to a charity or somebody who is deserving now let's think about why people do it let's look into some of the reasons in the semitic religions or the Abrahamic religions like the Christians and the Muslims it is written in their text like if you don't send this money this percentage whatever that is 1/10 or 2.5% you will go to hell so you're scared most
people don't even question they send it now if you look at the Hindus they have different reasons because they have multiple gods it's not a monotheistic religion now they're some of them it'll come up with the answer that you know I want to get X so I'm paying why it's a bribe right you want to get it so multiple reasons none of them are wrong none of them are right it's up to you but there's one thing though the money that you send goes to a middleman it does not go to God it goes to
a middleman which is fine because they're doing a service they have acquired your trust with this I want to bring in some data points for your consideration so since I'm speaking in Kerala let's start from Kerala a small state in India with 35 million people we have 8,000 churches we have 14,000 mosques we have 30,000 temples the Travancore davison board and the good wire davison board each collects close to 100 million dollars a year in donations the Padmanabhaswamy temple has assets or gold it's they say worth 20 billion dollars with a B now let's take
the case of South India there's five hundred thousand temples Tirupati gets close to 1 billion dollars in donations a year let's take the whole of India three million temples that's more than all the schools all their industries all the hospitals put together practically let's go outside even further outside Mecca Medina gets 16 billion dollars a year this is a lot of money now let's go to us 400 thousand churches they get two hundred billion dollars a year now this is a large industry the sending money to guards industry every other industry has been disrupted by
technologies manufacturing be it pharma feed finance they have become optimized they have used technologies but this industry still works the same way as it has been functioning for three thousand years or four thousand years whenever that started so I have been fascinated by these numbers the main reason for my fascination which most of you could share with me that the first one would be the fact that I was born in a conservative family in Kerala or in India and my parents were sending money and I always saw that wherever they were sending money to was
not optimized like if you how many cents on the dollar or how many pies around the rupee is going for a cause how much of it is being squandered this is something that most of you would have checked with your parents too right I have asked them questions like to my parents to my uncles to my friends like when you tell them about an investment to put in a company they would say oh let me see the financials report I want to see this I want to see that I want to know more about the
founders but the same amount they would send to a place which they don't even check what is being done with the money agreed okay now the thing is who are gods or what are gods there are different explanations from different people I'll say a few I've had a theology who told me God is love try to explain that to a five-year-old kid you can't you have to explain to him God is this all-powerful thing sitting in the clouds over there that's much easier doesn't matter whatever is the definition of whatever the definition of God is
the question is is there relevance to God I think yes because gods have held us gods religions scriptures have helped humans evolve have helped humans cooperate just like money has helped us evolve money has helped us cooperate because money is fiction and it is fiction that brings us humans together we can cooperate so among societies when I say fiction what I mean by fiction is take a million dollars to a monkey in a cage and see if he will exchange that banana for the million dollars would he no way right same way as the monkey
if he would give the banana for 10,000 bananas in the afterlife we would all of us do there are bombas who bomb for 72 virgins in afterlife there are guys that I've read that who'd kept metal plates in the groin area to make sure that nothing happens over they after the bombing now how about the relevance of gurus priests and people like that or the pastor's do they have relevance now they are physical they are not virtual like the gods I certainly think they do they have relevance why because they are like a coach even
Federer and Michael Jordan has a coach because you need help you're trying to get to our destination think of them as a GPS maybe they'll help you find the destination so middlemen these God men are the religious institutions are somehow bringing trust they're doing a service because many times people who have told me that they sent the money to the middlemen because they don't have the time to find which is the verticals perfect reason now if they're doing all these good things why do I think or why do many of us sometime think there's a
problem they're doing all these good things the problem there is they get money there's a huge amount of money flowing through this pipe and because they are providing this middleman service in this transaction they are able to put in a straw over there and suck money out still good they're doing a service the problem is they are becoming more powerful when they get this money and getting power corrupts them and then once power corrupts they start censoring you they start issuing fatwas they say what you should be doing they get into bed with the politicians
they try to tilt opinions on where or who you should work for take the US elections that happen recently social media data was stolen by hackers allegedly and it seems that they could tilt opinion and because of that the social media companies had been taken to congressional hearings how many of our gurus pastors priests preach to their lady and say you should work for this guy or make statements like in the 2014 elections I had one I had seen one of the major gurus with the largest following tweet that if you work for this party
we would see the dollar becoming having parity to the rupee who checks who puts a checks on these pay on these people the power that they gain this power is enormous they the trust that take we give them they break the trust by living a luxurious life by covering up sex scandals and by making us fight for things that we really shouldn't be fighting for so this has been there always in human history this piece has always happened where the centralized pub the centralized party that's providing a service makes us do wrong things newspaper they
were the centralized power that was giving us information they went into bed with the politicians and they started treating us wrong news sometimes for their gains we have gone to Wars we have put people in jail branding them traitors and lo and behold we as humans we made the Internet we don't have to rely on centralized powers for our content or for that information anymore how about money money is the basic thing on how we have evolved because we trade we transact and we exchange value and garments hold us by our throats by taking control
over money and then what do they do for the trust that we have given them they inflate the money they devalue the currency and they keep us in a debt trap lo and behold the human ingenuity we found Bitcoin a peer-to-peer decentralized currency so that we can break away from the government control so the same way any centralized power be it the government we the religious read Facebook because they control they pretty much control all our data or our privacy when they have so much power they take your they take control of your lives and
you have to break out of that and how do you break out of that for that I'm an investor I'm a believer in decentralized freedoms so I'm making a call out over there so if you want to build a platform because now it's possible with Bitcoin it's been proven that we can take out the middleman the Byzantine journalist problem the computer science problem has been solved we can be there are ways to take out the middleman we can build platforms we can take them out let's build it let's think about the free word let's not
be brain worked because freedoms there are two kind of ways your freedoms are curtailed one is when people show you the gun it's very evident the other one is when you are brainwashed that is not very evident you want to build systems that are not like a pyramid the structural hierarchy that we have today is like a pyramid and because of that people are trying to get to the top pushing others down because your power prestige everything comes more and more as you get to the top let's try to build decentralized systems there it is
flat and we can cooperate and we don't have to think of ruling somebody else and for this as an investor I'm always looking for projects I'm always looking for founders I'd be investing in them too I'm looking for somebody to disintermediate these middlemen in the guards industry thank you for being a wonderful audience and thank you for listening [Applause]
