#231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights

[0] The following is a conversation with Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

[1] In recent times, Alex has focused on how cryptocurrency, and especially Bitcoin, can be a tool for empowering democracy and several liberties in the world, most crucially, parts of the world that are living under authoritarian regimes.

[2] As a side note, let me say that I have been learning a lot about the ways in which money can be used to amass power.

[3] and in the same way, the decentralization of money can be used to resist the corrupting nature of this power.

[4] Alex and I do not agree on everything, but we strive for the same betterment of humanity.

[5] He's sensitive to the suffering in the world and is dedicating his life to finding solutions that lessen that suffering.

[6] Whether Bitcoin is one such solution, I don't know.

[7] But I think it has a chance, and that means it is worth exploring deeply.

[8] I'm staying in this path of learning, patiently, and with as little ego as possible.

[9] I hope you come along with me on this journey as well.

[10] And now, a quick few seconds summary of the sponsors.

[11] Check them out in the description.

[12] It's the best way to support this podcast.

[13] First is Stripe, a payment platform.

[14] Second is PaperSpace, a platform I use to train and deploy machine learning models.

[15] Third is Code Academy, a website where you can learn to code.

[16] fourth is n i a company that helps engineer solve the world's toughest problems and fifth is eight sleep a self -cooling mattress cover i sleep on so the choice is money ai programming engineering or sleep choose wisely my friends and the choices today are kind of amazing and now onto the full ad reads as always no ads in the middle i try to make these interesting but if you skip them please still check out our sponsors.

[17] I enjoy their stuff.

[18] Maybe you will too.

[19] This show is brought to you by Stripe, an amazing payment platform that has helped thousands of companies of all sizes make processing payments simple and borderless.

[20] Stripe has engineered the world's most powerful and easy to use APIs so you can get up and running in minutes, not days.

[21] They also have a new no -code solution called payment links that allows you to sell online by generating a link you can share with your customers to get paid fast, all with no coding required.

[22] But if you're anything like me and you love coding, you can still work with Stripe to create some incredible systems.

[23] They make payments powerful and simple.

[24] If you like simple, you can go simple.

[25] If you like powerful, you can go with both.

[26] So whether you're an online or in -person retailer, software platform, marketplace, or subscriptions and business, if I can only speak English, visit stripe .com.

[27] That's stripe .com.

[28] Maybe I should start doing these ad reads in Russian.

[29] This show is also brought to you by PaperSpace Gradient, which is a platform that lets you build, train, and deploy machine learning models of any size and complexity.

[30] I love how powerful and intuitive it is.

[31] I'm likely going to use PaperSpace for a couple of machine learning experiences.

[32] I'm doing as part of an upcoming video.

[33] Fast