Blockchain for Beginners
You heard about Bitcoin. It's the first crypto currency and still the biggest. The price increases will continue to melt faces in disbelief. In 2025 governments and corporations will start accumulating strategic Bitcoin reserves - mark my words.
But Bitcoin is a bit boring. You can't do anything with it except holding it as a store of value. I am not into blockchains and web3 for Bitcoin. I am excited about everyday use cases.
The cover image above represents what's going to happen in the next few years. Blockchain technology will permeate into every corner of the world, disrupt many industries and bureaucracies, and will make your life easier, just like the original internet did. Blockchains give us web3, the internet of value. Whatever Apple or Amazon host for you, it's not yours, but theirs. Same with your money on your bank account. Ask anyone who experienced a bank run in their lifetime.
I have spend a gigantic chunk of time, headspace and energy understanding this disruptive technology. Like many early adopters, I sometimes was ridiculed for playing with toys that can make you magic internet money. Now in my 5th year of studying this with a beginner's mindset, I start to realise that:
Crypto is not about money, it is about time.
A blockchain is, fundamentally, a clock. It records when transactions take place in a transparent and untamperable way. This is the key to its potential: in a world of declining trust, this blockchain clock can serve as a universal source of reality, for everything from financial transactions to election voting.
Every transaction in blockchains carries within it the answer: who did what, when and why. Time is the ultimate trustless key to our lives, and so, seen as clocks, are blockchains.
Vitalik Buterin and other co-founders created Ethereum to become a World Computer — a universal network consisting of thousands of computers on which anyone can build decentralized applications from anywhere. This is the trailer of the best crypto documentary I know.
Let's go back once more to the cover art above. What you see there is a simplified representation of the world economy with cubes of neurons in the middle; the neurons representing both smart onchain contracts and AI (I'll come back to AI later).
Most of the economy is dependent on middlemen and women. Let's be honest, we don't like too many of them, especially when they get too big to fail:
big banks
big tech
big media
big pharma
big agro-food
big government
Blockchains don't need middlemen
When I provide liquidity in a DeFi (Decentralised Finance) pool, I am the bank - and earn a bit.
When I build a channel (think a sub on Reddit) on Farcaster, I am the social network - and earn a bit.
If I provide my idle computing power to a decentralised hosting service, I am the SaaS - and earn a bit.
Notice the pattern?!
Do you know people who work in any of the above sectors? They'll get disrupted beyond their current imagination. Why? Let's bring in AI.
It's been 2 years since ChatGPT 3/4 created a new capital allocation and computing arms race. Here is the thing: these chat bots give me instant knowledge, but I still have to do any digital task, online action, work on-screen myself afterwards. Why can Claude not book me a flight directly?
A few weeks ago, I witnessed the birth of AI agents who can make autonomous transactions with their own crypto wallets. This wild! I consider the intersection of blockchain x AI as highly consequential because of their emerging symbiotic relationship:
AI creates abundance. Crypto creates scarcity.
I have seen an agent called aether commission digital art permissionlessly and then distribute the $100K!!! earnings between the artists, their owner/maker (lovely chap called Martin) and other stakeholders. Anyone with any ideas can create anything with AI = abundance.
Blockchain will make these digital assets scarce and thus valuable.
More importantly, AI agents are the true crypto natives because this is software speaking to software at the speed of light, literally, thanks to fibre optics.
Most importantly, AI agents can't go to your local bank and open a bank account. But they can create a crypto wallet and ask to get paid in Bitcoin. They already do, I have witnessed this in real time and the proof is on the blockchain. Don't trust me, verify. I'll show you how.
Blockchain for Beginners weekend seminar
Here is my invitation: forget most of what you think you know about blockchains and crypto. If you consider yourself a curious person with a zest for learning, you might like to join my seminar this coming weekend. The first cohort was a success and I am giving you a 25% discount: FAST25
If you like my work on the Psychedelic Map For Change, you might love this course structured via these eight systemic lenses.
I'll leave you with Christian's testimonial. The cohorts are small right now (you are still early:-) and there is plenty of time for bespoke deep dives and intensive Q&A.
PMFC: Psychedelic Map For Change #3
Welcome to the edition #3 of this newsletter. The mycelium network in my life has produced some astounding fruiting bodies both in IRL and online onchain. More on the latter further down incl. context for my new online course: Blockchain for Beginners.
Shroom Season
Ok, the most exquisitely delicious Chanterelles are not psychedelic, but picking, washing and cooking them is like a psychedelic experience for me. Ping me for some pro tips (they grow in our forest, so I had plenty of small batches to experiment with). The dream is to live where liberty caps also grow within walking distance...
Medicine report: the god bomb
After an 8 months hiatus from psychedelic medicine I decided to go much deeper on the so-called God Bomb: cannabis-oil x ketamine. (I had 4-5 journeys with increasing dosages over the course of a year before). WOWOW. Imagine the dissociative out-of-body experience of ketamine combined with the highly somatic in-the-body experience of THC oil. The result feels like some kind of emergence; even though I understand the properties of both compounds, I couldn't imagine what both together created. I had a few k-hole experiences before, but this was something else entirely.
Did I feel like God? Yes. Can I put it into words? No.
This visualisation is reasonably close to how it all felt. I had no such visuals though.
Setting: early evening, fasting after lunch, THC 2 hours before the ketamine, darkness, silence, no music, no movement at all. The material that surfaced was astounding...I won't go deeper here, so if you are interested in my report, dosage, safety precautions and integration ideas, let's Zoom. It goes without saying: this is for experienced psychonauts only and don't do this ever ALONE!
What I have been up to re Psychedelics & PMFC
As you know, most of your success comes from taking a long-shot. Two years ago I gave candid and compassionate feedback to Joost Breeksema one of the Executive Directors of the Open Foundation. Their flagship conference, ICPR (Interdisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Research) draws a diverse and awesome crowd every two years in Haarlem, NL. It is a great conference, as far as this centralised event formats go. Yet I left the premises in 2022 feeling that we (the psychedelic professional space) can do better - and that a decentralised unconference part would mirror mycelium network a lot more. Biomimicry. I followed-up several times, and they finally said yes - yes to my audacious idea to facilitate an Open Space afternoon on day one, focussed on business people and policy makers. Ping me for free tips if you want to run such format in your organisation or at an event.
It was a full-blown success and I am always amazed by the outcomes people create when they are given liberating structures. The photo above is me on main stage warming up the space with some energisers.
The Psychedelic Map For Change in 2024
- Third Wave Course
After a few small IRL workshops at Regens Unite last year, Paul Austin invited me to deliver a 3-part live online seminar for Third Wave. I was real chuffed that some people found my 90 mins teaching in module 1 inspiring (Passcode: 8ssdtv5?). In module 2 Ruth Veda guided participants to anchor their conscious connected breathing onto the Realms of Reality, one of core components of the map. Module 3 was about integration using the stellar 17 journalling questions from the Presencing Institute, founded by Theory-U researcher at M.I.T. and fellow German emigrant Otto Scharmer.
- Six-Part Article
After getting several nudges this year to write a book about the map, I decided to start with a series of articles. Before you click on the links below, bit of context: one of the intentions to write these was to test a potential re-branding:
from: Psychedelic Map For Change to: Map for a Higher Civilisation
Did you notice the word crypto above in Part 1 ? I am deep into this space, especially into higher. ↑ is a headless brand which is only possible via blockchain-based coordination; owned by no corporation, but everyone who wants to contribute. This emergence of organisational life form is highly aligned with my work on the PMFC.
Wait, where is Part 6?
I am not ready to write this yet...if you actually read the first five parts you'll get a few hints about the reason (reading time in total 23 Min).
Spoken NFT
If you only have 85 seconds, here is a vocal outburst of mine in a local forest with birds in the mix. You can also mint this as an NFT for 2 dollars, just to show some appreciation.
Migrating onchain
As Ally Beiner writes in his brilliant book The Bigger Picture, Psychedelics like magic mushrooms or DMT are great tools to prepare you us what's coming: parts of our lives will move into the metaverse with AI clones of yourself and blockchain-based cameras and robots to notarise reality (so that you know whether a photo is real aka issued by the owner/author or a deep fake). The latter is perhaps the most audacious project in the crypto space I have come across to-date.
I bake much smaller bread and have started with small experiments onchain, and I have also largely left web 2 social media and spend most of my time on farcaster instead. The only Boomer Platform I still use is Linkedin and I have just shared my reasons for my migrating much of my on-screen life onchain there.
PMFC and Crypto?
100% - but that's for another newsletter
My new course: Blockchain for Beginners
On a related note, I was pulled to create this weekend course next. One of my VP-level clients asked me to deliver a workshop in-house. It was such a surprise success that I felt compelled to open it to the public - including you, dear reader. If you click this link you get a 10% discount based on the price of $150.
