Santiago Siri: “Crypto Politics: Beyond the Nation-state” | Blockstack Berlin 2018

  

Replace the State with Bitcoin
Despite this dark picture, there is hope, as Santi Siri points out in his hugely popular appearance at the at BlockstackBerlin 🇩🇪 conference earlier this month.  Bitcoin blockchain technology already offers people a way to fight back against the rampant corruption at the core of democracy’s demise. It enables people in developing nations with corrupt governments and fraudulent banking practices to not be held captive to a tyrannical reality – to fight back by opting out. In this sense, Bitcoin is already saving lives. 

But there are also grave challenges. None other than Edward Snowden sounded a clear warning to the world’s leading blockchain developers gathered in Berlin: any technology or innovation that humans are able to create will end up being abused by corrupt actors.  At this writing, powerful, energy-rich nations including Turkey 🇹🇷 and Iran 🇮🇷 are announcing plans for Initial Country Offerings. Venezuela was the first to launch a cryptocurrency – the Petro – and has demonstrated how a state can enact a systematic plan to attack Bitcoin miners and violently appropriate their technology to retain its iron grip on a catastrophically failing economy and the helpless citizens trapped within it.

     

Cryptopolitics
Democracy Earth coined the phrase cryptopolitics because as an organization and movement we are sitting at the intersection of technology and politics.  We believe that blockchain as a censorship-resistant technology that is borderless and can reach any place in the world, can act as a liberating force for communities that need it the most.  The kind of default transparency and permissionless accountability blockchains bring to any organization – even nonprofits like Democracy Earth Foundation – is how governments should be run. It is the promise of democracy made real. 

Token Sale Update
Democracy Earth will hold a token sale in 2Q 2018.  If you are an accredited investor interested in the pre-sale, there is still time to participate – just click the button below to visit our ICO website and download the SAFT (Simple Agreement For Tokens) for review. Investor accreditation is verified by CoinList.  Though SEC regulations prohibit investors from New York or China from participating in the pre-sale, the public sale will be open to all investors, globally.  Join the DEF Telegram channel to stay updated on token sale details and Q&A with the founders.

Democracy Earth Ambassadors
We have recently announced our new Ambassador in Brazil 🇧🇷, Diogo Busse, who will stand for election for Brazil’s House of Representatives as a liquid democracy “Trojan Horse” candidate. In May we will have four more candidates for the City Council of Birmingham, organized by our UK Ambassador Sunny Sangha through his People Power Brum initiative. 

After launching this past December, we have brought the Democracy Earth Ambassadors program up to full speed, announcing Ambassadors in Brazil 🇧🇷, Thailand 🇹🇭, Sri Lanka 🇱🇰, andEngland 🇬🇧.  The response to our call for Ambassadors has been truly overwhelming! We are continuing to process applications from the US 🇺🇸, Belgium 🇧🇪, Mexico 🇲🇽, Australia 🇦🇺, Costa Rica 🇨🇷, Panama 🇵🇦, Israel 🇮🇱, Uruguay 🇺🇾, Netherlands 🇳🇱, and Wales and will formally re-open the application process at Ambassadors.Democracy.Earth in the second quarter.

More Ambassador activity:

• Watch Ambassador Sunny Sangha interviewed on television here 
• Due to strong demand among university students, we will launch later this year a branch of the program that will build our movement on college campuses. Stay tuned!

Social, Community, Media

• We launched our Meet The Team interview series on Medium, where the most recent post turns the spotlight on the Democracy Earth Embassies director, Paula Berman. 
• Venezuelan-born developer Eduardo Medina talks about the challenges facing his countrymen and the promise blockchain-based democracy holds for their future in this Tales From The Crypt podcast 🎧
• Our Ambassador in SriLanka writes compellingly about the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal triggering a national emergency social media shutdown in this article How Facebook is Killing Sri Lankan Democracy in Hacktivism
• Democracy Earth community contributor Avital Balwit published this fascinating article for the Virginia Review of Politics, Democracy Decentralized; How Blockchain Voting Will Revolutionize Government  
• Pressed for time? Santi Siri gives a tightly-packed 20 minute overview of presentations made earlier this month at the BlockstackBerlin and Fast Forward Accelerate Good events on thisDemocracy Salon podcast 🎧

Thank you for reading, and thank you as always for being part of the Democracy Earth community!
🌎

Santiago Siri
Founder & President

Democracy Earth Foundation
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit in San Francisco, California.
democracy.earth

Connect on Twitter 
Connect on Instagram
Connect on Facebook