Balaji Srinivasan

Ten thoughts on AI. https://t.co/qcjPZiOenj https://t.co/Rv0xn8rPAS

Strongly disagree. (1) The actual reform would be to make IPOs easier, by essentially eliminating Sarbox. And we'll actually get that reform... but only via crypto, because all companies will become cryptoequities. However, that means they'll list on Internet capital markets and crypto exchanges, rather than NYSE/NASDAQ. (2) See how the number of US public companies has crashed since the early 2000s? Then, ten years later, the number of Internet coins started soaring. The big picture is that we're just sunsetting US capital markets in favor of Internet capital markets. (3) Now, let's talk about why random government interference with volun…

This is like the assassin who missed congratulating themselves for electing Trump. Remember, the DOJ did bankrupt Spirit Airlines by blocking its merger with JetBlue. It didn’t kill Figma, but that’s only because the founder is amazing — not because state harassment helped! https://t.co/cw3g2Bg5gs Success truly has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan. Because the Figma IPO is so big that apparently even the most dedicated anti-tech haters want to get their name into the winner’s circle. But the chutzpah here is off the charts. This one reminds me of Gensler taking credit for the Bitcoin ETF, after he got forcibly dragged across th…

Prompt your AI like the old Twitter. Limit responses to 140 characters, or 140 words, or perhaps 140 lines. Otherwise you’ll get back 140 pages. AI companies should do this too. Save millions on tokens by defaulting to concision.

The way Bitcoin scales is offchain and other chains. Practically speaking, you either load BTC into an exchange and then do offchain transactions, or use something like wrapped BTC on another chain. That’s more hub-and-spoke than fully p2p, but anyone with BTC can set up a hub. For example, with even 10 BTC you can set up a hub for a small community, much like a centralized exchange. So long as no individual settlement is over $1M USD you can handle most of the community’s business by just doing offchain settlement between parties. Yes, that hub is trusted, but the goal after all is to eventually rebuild high trust societies. And softwar…

This actually makes sense to me, because AI is great for images, video, user interfaces, and anything where we can verify by eye. And Replit generates useful prototypes whose functionality can be instantly visually verified. It makes easy anything that should be easy. That’s how I think about Replit nowadays. It’s almost like the minimum description length (MDL) concept from computer science. If it’s conceptually easy, if what you want can actually be described in a few sentences or an interactive session (because prompting is also a skill), then Replit makes it easy. For any kind of data analysis or CRUD app or sample code on how an API …

AI social is the replacement of humans with bots. That's Character, Grok, and all the chat apps. Crypto social is the addition of wallets to accounts. That's Base, Farcaster, and all the coin apps.

As blockspace increases, the idea of the ledger of record is becoming more feasible. As AI progresses, the ledger of record is becoming more necessary. It means the only truly verifiable citations are links to onchain data via block explorers. Crypto is what AI can’t fake. A thread from 2020 on the ledger of record. A video from 2021 on the ledger of record, going into more detail. Note that it does anticipate the use of AI-based summarization of onchain data to create news. https://t.co/1SnhElumIv

If your manufacturing is not price-competitive abroad, your military is not price-competitive abroad. Because the wartime economy is just a subset of the peacetime economy. You can only turn plowshares into swords if you’re cranking out plowshares at low cost and high quality. Military equipment will be bought at whatever price. It’s a non-negotiable spend for any regime. That’s why North Korea spends 25%+ of its GDP on the military. So it’s not totally crazy to reboot manufacturing with a military-first approach. It may work over the very long run. The issue is that those armaments need to be price-competitive abroad to win any war of att…

All property becomes cryptography. Let me explain why. (1) First, right now, trillions of dollars worth of digital gold is secured onchain. Bitcoin is now valued everywhere there is an internet connection. And no matter what political faction you're in, everyone agrees on the raw fact of who owns what amount of BTC. (2) Next, right now, the full legalization of stablecoins means that every other asset goes onchain. Because if there is a legal status for onchain currency, of course there's a legal path for onchain stocks, onchain bonds, and every other type of financial asset. (3) So, that's a lot right there. But there's actually a next st…

This flipped within our lifetimes. Before 2016, it was considered paranoid right-wing extremism (albeit true; see Venona) to claim that Russian spies had infiltrated the US government. After 2016, it became mainstream conventional wisdom (albeit false; see Russiagate) to claim that Russian spies had infiltrated the US government. The reason is that for much of the 20th century Russia was on the communist left. But by 2016, Russia was now on the nationalist right. So, the idea of a Russian conspiracy was not useful to the left before 2016. Then it became useful to the left after 2016. Venona proved there really was a communist conspiracy …

The public sector is the platform. The private sector is the apps on that platform.

New podcast on the Bitcoin Network State.

Privacy is not a crime. Free Roman Storm! https://t.co/0IfNesOpSm https://t.co/S1RXX0gWNV

AI copy on the page is the new lorem ipsum. It's lorem aipsum.

JP Morgan is updating their p(doom), but for the dollar. https://t.co/NtCivnXCJo Just the fact that JPMC is now admitting this is a big step. "De-dollarization has increasingly become a substantive topic of discussion among investors, corporates and market participants more broadly." As the US deglobalizes, the globe dedollarizes. https://t.co/DgOddBzUzp https://t.co/O3YLh2hwwZ Yes, but no manufacturing economy can be realistically stood up in time to replace the sheer consumption that money-printing enables. Example: to make $1T, you can (a) print or (b) sell $1000 phones to 1B people. Obviously, the former is far easier. https://t.co/g…

Customers get mad at grocery store prices because they can't see the Fed. Investors get happy about rising stock prices because they can't see the Fed. And everyone is confused about housing prices because they can't see the Fed. But you can. https://t.co/ALqnbdXbAH Spot the Fed. https://t.co/TqqI0Wx7CT I do agree that Keynesianism was the most successful variant of Communism. It also seized ~100% of wealth from the population over time, but did it gradually and invisibly as opposed to suddenly and violently. But that business model is ending. https://t.co/BFlayTRJH0 https://t.co/f33rcThanh

Crypto has decentralized to Asia. https://t.co/G7OiOROsgn AI is decentralizing to Asia too. Manus, Deepseek, Qwen, Kimi. Interestingly, they are also decentralizing out of China. By going open source, and by physically moving out of China.

Despite their enormous scale, China and the Internet are nevertheless somehow invisible. China because it’s overseas. The Internet because it’s in the cloud. Of course, that’s an outside perspective. China is highly visible to China! But in the West, it’s only perceived through graphs. Even if everything physical is made in China, and everything digital is made on the Internet. The ubiquity was enabled by the invisibility.

Midwit writing used to be woke. Now midwit writing is all AI. “It’s not this, it’s that.” A superintelligence, yet midwit.

0% AI is slow. But 100% AI is slop. So the optimal amount of AI is actually between 0-100%. The exact figure varies by situation, but just the idea that 0% and 100% are both suboptimal is useful. It's the Laffer Curve, but for AI. I think we’ll need new ideas. Deterministic logical reasoning on top of the probabilistic AI models we have today. Otherwise error rates are just too high when you do tasks of any complexity or duration.

An important kind of social network will be one where no bots whatsoever are allowed. The closest thing to this right now (besides IRL, of course) is probably a corporate Slack. But that has limited scale. There’s room for a new kind of app with no AI at all within its walls. No slop, no spam. Like Twitter’s original 140 character limit. But limited to humans. Yes, but then the second layer of defense comes into play: the anti-AIrcraft guns, namely the AI detectors. If it’s easy for a human to flag ChatGPT-generated text, it’s trivial for an algorithm. Yes. But then comes the third level of defense, which is trusted human moderators doi…

Most people live here. https://t.co/NlrkVp6tkX

The Industrial Revolution improved everyone’s life, in the long run. But in the medium run, it caused the rise of communism, the murder of capitalists, and the advent of world war. Technological advance caused political chaos. Then again, would you prefer no electricity? We’re starting to make a comparable list for our era. https://t.co/W0TqbKQN6J https://t.co/QBlmpL4pHH

There were many hackish workarounds for this that required linking AI APIs to Google Scripts. But this is the native version you've always wanted. https://t.co/VBMDpzU7eB https://t.co/bmHHdlzWge One thought btw is that I disagree with Google’s chosen example. AI “personalization” of an outbound email can feel impersonal and spammy. It’s at best a first draft that you completely rewrite. But as a tool for data analysis, this is amazing.

Here’s the Luma page. https://t.co/gOXhP8fjvx

Bitcoin has had 80-90% drawdowns. But the 200 week moving average is up only. https://t.co/87MrH26u0R This graph smooths out the four year cycle. It shows the gradual rise to global reserve. Thanks to @adam3us for posting it. And Bitcoin Magazine for generating it: https://t.co/IXkGi5maGW https://t.co/6l2gyiuZeq

AI is prolix. Smart is now concise. Part of the cost of using AI is verifying AI output. That cost is higher when the AI isn't concise.

Indian founders should not think of themselves as Indian founders, but as Internet founders. When you sit on a Chinese chair, you don't think of it as a culturally Chinese object. It's not like dim sum or red envelopes. It is just a globally competitive chair that happens to be made in China. Similarly, Indian technologists should make globally competitive software that happens to be made by Indians. When you use Google Docs, GitHub, Cursor, Perplexity, Angellist, or Photoshop, you aren't thinking of those as "Indian" products even if the CEO or founder happens to be of Indian origin. Similarly, all the content, code, and smart contracts …

Bitcoin is hitting all-time highs. And the Network State Podcast is back. All new season featuring: - Michael Saylor - Jason Calacanis - Vitalik - Jeremy Howard - Benedict Evans - Claire Lehmann - Coinbase Base - Lightspeed - and Solana Trailer and links to all episodes below. https://t.co/vQJ2FMJsOc Jason and I discuss Network School, startup societies, voting with your feet, and strengthening democratic rights in a digital age. For the full episode with @Jason: 📺YouTube: https://t.co/jtOVoACwrr 🔊 Spotify: https://t.co/d9M6EltoWc 🍎Apple: https://t.co/wSxvd7Oiz2 https://t.co/xnK1RSIrCK @Jason Saylor and I review his digital assets fra…