Birds

hi this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado always warm always sunny sometimes colorado today we're talking about birds in particular we have a turoko take a look at that guy it's actually a very common bird if you travel throughout central africa and in particular they love ethiopia it's good for the climate four years ago we embarked on an agenda to enter into the african continent and we hired and brought in lots of amazing people and we went through a a really tough time trying to navigate the serpentine business culture of all the different african countries africa is not a monolith it's many different places there's a world of difference doing business in northern chad than there is being in south africa or rwanda or ethiopia and many of the countries there they're very ancient they have long traditions some cases traditions that predate european civilization and there's a perspective of do things in their time so we understood that patience was a virtue and we were fully prepared as a company to make a long arc investment i said i'm a young guy i have the money we have the time let's go do that and today we saw with the new york times steel book story and city am and many more to come there's a long list of publications that will be covering the ministry of education deal that not only has happened it's signed it's done we're in the execution phase we're hiring more than 30 people i think in the jurisdiction to service it it's a multi-year deal quite quite significant covering 5 million people that that patience has paid off and back in february we thought we were going to be able to announce it because we had cleared everything at the ministry level but then there were some additional outside parties that wanted to give it a double look just to make sure that everything was all right so it delayed things a little bit but we got there and april 2nd we signed and we've been waiting a bit till the africa special to make this announcement and it's not the only announcement it's not the only initiative we actually have a pan-african view from tanzania all the way to ethiopia and beyond and throughout the coming 24 to 36 months we're going to be scaling up very rapidly throughout the whole continent this means many new classes this means new initiatives new relationships and also developing out talent for example the ghanaian class that we're teaching i would absolutely adore and love for the developers of that class to become core developers of a cryptocurrency and the one in particular that would be so much fun would be bitcoin because it feels like unfinished business for a team to build a bitcoin full note there so we'll see if that's possible and we'll see how far we get and it might take a few years to contribute there but just brings interoperability of bitcoin tech to the cardinal space makes a lot of sense to me i run a game development company next year we're actually going to start scaling up and doing all kinds of really cool things we're having a discussion of where are the core developers going to be i see no reason not to have those core developers somewhere in africa it'd be a heck of a lot of fun and to bring something new and interesting and exciting to the game development world especially if we could do it in nigeria that be so much fun i love the continent of africa every time i go there i'm just blown away by the raw humanity honesty warmth friendliness and happiness of the people throughout the cultures yesterday i interviewed danielle patel he's from zambia and lovely beautiful country lush jungles absolutely incredible i have treasured memories of going through namibia in the deserts there seeing these ancient plants that look like weeds and they're thousands of years old they predate christianity and they're just always there always hanging out and seeing those incredible red sands i have incredible memories going throughout ethiopia meeting coffee farmers taking a look at the ancient christian traditions that they have there lala bella for example is carved from a single piece of stone it's almost the game minecraft where you stick them out and you start digging well that's what they did in the 12th century 13th century excuse me and they just dug and dug until they built one of the most beautiful cathedrals you'll ever see in your life and i'm not entirely sure how they did it in fact the the local mythology is they had to be aided by angels and modern masons are blown away by the precision and beauty there's a sky shrine in northern ethiopia where somebody had to stand on a ledge to carve it out that was 50 centimeters wide and if you fall off the ledge you fall almost 800 meters to your death and did that every day for years in the fifth century to produce this ride that for over 1 500 years has now been populated with these incredible indoor frescoes if you ever go and see it there's so much tradition there in history there and we in america we're a young country we forget these things and we forget our place and the order of humanity we're only a few hundred years old there's there are buildings that are older than our country and as a young country it is good sometimes to have some wisdom africa is in a difficult place not because of its people but because of the systems and there's certainly a lot of history there and a lot of arguments of where those systems came from and who's responsible but that's in the past what matters is where are the systems going to go my company is not in the business of selling products we have them like prism it's a great product and the negotiations in ethiopia took years to get it there and they were the toughest negotiations i've ever done in my career and kudos to john o'connor for getting it done i can't tell you how many calls at three o'clock in the morning he had to take and how difficult that was i'm currently negotiating with a fortune 500 company it's a very complex multi-party deal and those are are like bush league compared to what we're doing here so kudos to getting that done but that's just a product and it's a great product and getting identity to people connected to cardano is going to change the lives of millions of people but more broadly and more abstractly we're in the business of systems and so what we sell is a different way of human beings working with each other communicating with each other trading with each other understanding each other and ultimately giving each other consent for the allocation of power and resources so when you look and say if the problem is systems and all we have to do is change them to fix it well then those who are in the systems business that's where they go my own country desperately needs new systems unfortunately i'm cynical as much as i like to believe that people can run for office or vote for a particular politician or lobby or do things the things i've witnessed in the 13 years that i've been dealing with politics at the national level from what happened to ron paul to the cynicism of the obama administration to the trump administration to what's going on now has told me that my government is not in the business of taking care of me or any normal person all they care about are a small cohort of special interests and as long as they're okay america is okay never mind us that for the first time in my adult life our rate of poverty has gone up consistently over a four-year period we are starting to actually see literacy rates go down we're starting to see the weakness of the us dollar reflected in the price of commodities and rent and the basic necessities of life in colorado when i first attended university it's about 800 bucks for a good apartment now the same apartment cost about two thousand dollars yet i'm told by my government that there's three percent inflation two percent inflation this is a tax upon the poor doesn't affect me never will affect me the things that i worry about these days never will impact me if i wanted to i could just retire and live a life of luxury and not care about these things but as i said i'm young and so that gives me the luxury of being able to spend my time however i so choose wherever i so choose with a lot of passion fire rigor and zeal and nothing would make me happier to see my youth spent changing the systems around me but i don't believe i can do so through the ballot box or political evangelism i only believe i can do thro so through economic competition no newspaper in the world said boy this internet's great we're so excited to completely throw away our business model and change to something new and uncertain they were forced to and those who didn't acknowledge it went out of business and those that did are still around similarly no nation state in the world says boy we just wanted to dramatically change the way people are elected dramatically changed the way that the economic order works and our laws work unless they're forced to either through the ballot box or revolution but much more common in the 21st century through economic means simply the country goes bankrupt it wasn't a great war at the end of the day that ended the soviet union the united states and the western power spent eight decades one way or another trying to end that great evil and at the it ended because of economic means misconduct and incompetence at the highest level they simply couldn't afford to run their empire or pay the people who did so so they had to throw in the towel and give up and similarly it won't be the barrel of a gun or a vote in the ballot box that changes america and makes it a more honest more transparent and frankly more sustainable and caring and empathetic nation it will be something on the economic order that changes things either because we have a collapse and we have to recover from it or because there's simply a better way of doing something that if we don't adopt we will have a collapse it is my belief that if we change africa we're going to change the world and we change it by putting in systems where the people are in control from the bottom up where they have so much more say over their identity their expression their life their reputation their identity their payment systems these things said identity twice they're a little tired and i think that we have a good shot to get there because now we're doing deals with millions of people tomorrow we'll be doing deals in the coming years with tens of millions of people and then eventually it's hundreds and then eventually it's everyone what we have here today isn't just simply a did it's a gateway not just into cardano but the entire industry one day these credentials will be transformed to represent the financial history the reputation the payment system voter registration the sky's the limit the technology is built this way even if it takes a few years it is inevitable because it's it's there now it's in their hands and that to me gives me hope because anyone who's in these new systems if they're truly just and moral and reasonable they'll get so much more traction participation they'll get so much more love for lack of a better term from the people and as a consequence the people will grow richer more powerful they'll have self-determination they'll have far more freedom and anywhere freedom lives and self-determination lives and liberty lives the human spirit rises to the occasion innovation and creativity rises and the young will capture their destiny they'll build wealth or create new forms of it that we've never even imagined before and as a consequence over the next 50 to 100 years with new systems it is my belief that the african continent will become one of the wealthiest in mankind and the days of mansamuza will return and then my own country will look to that and they'll have to make a decision do we want to enter a dark age of collapse and poverty or do we want to change and adopt the african way and things will get better now we look to our industry and we think about things like defy i laugh at d5 at the moment not because i think the projects are bad or the products are bad or that the teams are not motivated but because they don't have real markets no one in america wakes up at the moment or germany or france and england says boy i just can't wait to get a car loan on a decentralized peer-to-peer lending network there might be one or two cryptocurrency people that really love that stuff and they're fired up and they're ready to go for it but the vast majority of people don't even know what that is or how to do it or how to use it you don't use a new system because of its novelty or because you love the brand or enjoy it some people do but the vast majority of people use things out of necessity or convenience and when we look to people who have no access to credit the reality is that their first loan is likely going to come from a peer-to-peer marketplace and likely be denominated in a cryptocurrency based asset not a local currency so we look across the entire continent over the next five or ten years we will have an mpace a moment for this so we ask where is the demand for d5 going to come from it will come from those who need it the most not those who view it as a luxury or a speculative asset and the products and projects that are on ethereum at the moment they're all open source the value is not the technology the value is not that vanity network effect that they've cobbled together in the ethereum space the value is going to come from the millions and eventually tens of millions and eventually hundreds of millions of users who are now coming on board the next five to ten years and they are the ones that are going to make those utilities and applications the largest bank in the world don't believe me the largest taxi company in the world doesn't own a taxi and the largest hotel company in the world doesn't own a single piece of real estate when you look at uber and airbnb the largest bank in the world the largest lending operation in the world is not going to be a bank it's going to be a protocol and it's going to be from natural demand and out of necessity we will see the best types of stable coins ever invented with innovative new revolutionary monetary policies that aren't just pegged to something the dollar but are legitimately a novel and interesting new thing and we'll see them spread like wildfire throughout the world and because these are global systems they're as accessible to you as they are to the people of africa and eastern europe and southeast asia and south america and what will happen is the rates will be better the transactions will be more efficient you'll try to buy something and get denied by someone who should have given you credit and you'll say screw it i can get a loan with this other group and you'll just apply and get it and then little by little a thousand holes will start forming in the pipes and the legacy financial system and leaks will start forming and eventually all the water will leak out all the users will leak out and they'll enter the new system this is the destiny of our space and where we're going in my life's work and why i care so much about this it's why i rail against things that are patented it's why i hate proprietary technology it's why i hate consortia and federations and so forth they have their place in purpose but they have no place and purpose when it involves our money and our voice never ever the minute that you do that you're handing your money and your voice to someone else praying that they will be a better custodian of it than you are and i've never believed that in any time in human history that's been a good idea in the long run so i'm incredibly proud of these announcements today and the africa special is going to be a great celebration of the things achieved in the relationships made throughout the entire continent and a commitment for us to do more do better and do it with a larger set of people it's also a beacon letting the world know we're open for business and we're damn serious about it and the kinds of partnerships we're going to get relationships we're going to get and passionate people who come wanting to follow that same mission is going to be unbelievable as a direct result we're getting it done cardano is a technology stack is world class i have absolute faith in what we're doing with smart contracts and we think it's the right strategy i have faith in the researchers and their commitment their vision and the things they can do this year in the coming years i have faith in the engineers they're the best in our industry they're world-class people they've always no matter how difficult it's been risen to the occasion worked the weekends worked overtime and they have thought smarter longer and harder than i think anybody else i've ever witnessed in any technology class to solve legitimately novel and new problems it's not easy to trailblaze when you're trying to build new roads you have no idea what you're going to encounter you don't know what types of snakes are going to fall out of the trees on you and bite you and while we're doing that on a schedule with millions of people cheering us on we also have to figure out how to get people on that road and we've done so with grace and dignity and maturity and there's been setbacks and delays but never once did i ever believe or will ever believe that we couldn't get it done and that when we got it done no one would use it because it's the opposite with this deal closed cardano is now one of the most used blockchains in the world by population five million new customers one deal and more will come of that size scope and scale and each and every one of them as they grow up and the services and products increase will create tons of transaction volume on it and they will be the pollutus pioneers they will be the prison pioneers and maybe a few hundred maybe a few thousand maybe tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands we'll build businesses and applications over the course of their lives on our infrastructure just the prior generations built businesses and whole new industries on the cell phones and in the browser and before that on the desktop this is the new reality and each and every deal makes that reality stronger and more certain so it's a very good day and i'm very happy about these birds that have landed i think you should be too so thursday august 29th watch the africa special you're gonna have a lot of fun with it i had a lot of fun making it we had a lot of fun filming we had to find a way to get film crews in certain places and travel's not so easy these days in covid land but we got it done and you'll see the passion the excitement and the sheer happiness and i want to thank each and every person in my company and put output i'm a hard boss at times and i'm legendary for that and i have little patience when i think things should be done better or we can do better but never once did anyone in this company truly disappoint me because they all did their best even the times we didn't quite get it done or took longer than we expected or there was a flaw or a bug or something had to be redone we found a way to rise and they found a way to keep going and i'm proud of them this is the most difficult job in the world our industry criticizes us brutally we're treated unfairly almost always people lie again and again again and again and then when you achieve something there's a rush to trivialize these enormous accomplishments solving proof of stake is a scientific query of the same level as one of the millennium problems in mathematics it's a revolutionary new way of an entire field of academia to look at a problem in a thing literally people have invested decades of their lives pursuing approaches that will fall out of mainstream as a consequence of the research that's being done by the scientists in this company imagine how incredibly disheartening it is to publish paper after paper to see thousands of citations to be accepted in the highest levels of peer review than to have litanies of podcasters reddit posters and other people and competitors trivialize that and say well proof of stake is already solved that's already done or it doesn't work it's perpetual emotion including some who actually hold advanced degrees in the field that we study knowing full well that there's real work there yet despite those criticisms showing up for work the next day with even more passion excitement and fire to write the next paper to solve the next problem to make things better the same for the engineers when we build a completely new way of doing smart contracts a completely new model of thinking about smart contracts that we feel in our bones is the right way to do things only to be told while everybody else has smart contracts you guys are so far behind you're incompetent you don't know what you're doing and then show up to work the next day and say well not only i got to do this but i got 1500 pollutus pioneers all passionate and excited who want to develop and i got to take care of them and they're complaining that the documentation is no good we got to make that better and then have fire in their belly for that the kinds of people that rise to these occasions and get these things done day after day you don't bet against those people they're gonna get it done one way or another and why are we getting it done because we see the faces of the people who are using these products they're not the wealthy they're not the powerful they're not the privileged and great places who won the genetic and geographic lottery and they were born to the right families and born in the right countries they're the people begging for new things new systems we made a commitment we'd find them we made a commitment we'd give them the tool boxes to be in control of their own lives and their own destiny and we even built a gargantuan funding engine catalyst that has more than a half billion dollars at the moment in it ready to go ready to deploy for them to build the next microsoft and the next facebook the next google and tell the world who they are that's why we have that failure and that passion and i'd like to thank my people because they demonstrated it even when i couldn't and they rose me up when i was weak so it means the world to me and i'm excited that our best days are truly ahead of us and i'd also like to thank you the community you've done absolutely amazing things and you've had saintly patience the criticism and brutality that you've had to endure being cardano fans to be said you're part of a cult you've been misled you're an idiot everything that we've done is going to fall apart tomorrow and hahaha so fun the lies you've had to endure the slander you've had to endure and yet you show up every day you do amazing things you create space buds you create great applications you've come to catalyst over thirty thousand people floating around doing something criticizing debating they're trying to figure out the path forward you send emails you put your hopes and dreams on your sleeve and when you can't you write letters some i've gotten handwritten from prison some i've gotten typewritten from hundred-year-old people some i've gotten from five year olds everyone all around the world so much passion and each and every one of you in your own way some of you are technologists and programmers some of you are doctors and lawyers some of your accountants some of you are truck drivers you're all equal here in cardano and each and every one of you had the passion the faith and the commitment and i'd like to thank you for that to be part of this aspiration is becoming reality we're not quite there yet for all the things we're sure as hell a lot closer today than we were just six months ago much more so when you look two years ago or three years ago and we look to the next three to five years what will define cardano more so than anything i've done today or the passionate people at my company do things will be you and that gives me the greatest hope because i look to my community and i say you're better than all the other ones you're better than us you're going to get it done the millions and eventually tens and eventually hundreds of millions of you collectively are smarter faster better tougher and more passionate than anything i could ever conjure and i know the thousands of companies the thousands of ventures the thousands of ideas that come funded through catalyst endorsed by the community built by the community are going to define cardano in ways that are unimaginable and change the systems of the world so end to end all all it's been a tough year it's been a tough while but it's been worthwhile the birds have landed were to come always to come i love birds i'll keep looking for them but let's enjoy this month and let's enjoy these accomplishments and at the end when we celebrate the africa special let's let's make that a milestone for all of us then we look to the next one the launch of alonso thank you all for listening thank you all for coming and thank you all for being part of our family and giving as much as you have there's nothing i'm ever going to do in my life no matter how big it gets that's as meaningful as the moments we've shared together over the last few years and i take that to heart and i remember it you don't get to choose when you leave the arena every sports star knows that a lot of politicians learn that and many great ceos learn that lesson too so all you can choose is how you spend the time when you're there and i wouldn't choose to spend it any other way you're absolutely amazing and you've changed my life and you've made it a lot better so cheers