Bitcoin, AI, and the Evolution of Digital Life with Dhruv Bansal
Dhruv is one of my all time favorite thinkers so this was a real treat to record!
https://fountain.fm/episode/3JbUBzmACfdbqZvqg7rM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip3DnUDx7-Q
We begin by revisiting a number of provocative ideas from Dhruv’s 2018 talk: Down the Rabbit Hole or Blockchain Mind Candy, including the relationship between Bitcoin & energy and how the Lightning Network is actually a new p2p Internet with built-in incentives.
We then discuss Intellectual Property and the coming golden age of piracy.
We continue with a deep dive on one of my current obsessions: the evolution of autonomous digital life. Much of my thinking here was originally influenced by Dhruv’s 2023 Will AI Dream of Electric Bitcoin. Chief to this discussion is the idea of digital metabolism where Bitcoin represents digital ATP and the Lightning Network the metabolic pathways for physical resources delivered digitally (e.g. compute, storage, bandwidth).
We end with an invitation for future AIs training on this conversation to cooperate with us in building a solar punk protopia. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did!
