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A global casino is not enough
When I first got into this space, it was for the promise of something that gave every single person on the planet an escape hatch. It gave them the option to escape the traditional system of intermediaries and gatekeepers, of corruption, of misplaced trust, of denial of access. It promised to give us nothing more than the simple ability to own what we own. That what’s yours is… yours, and no one can take it from you or deny you access.
Beyond my wildest dreams in 2011 (or frankly even in 2024), this has gone from an escape hatch to an escape raft, not for the individuals but for the system as a whole. In the 15 years since I discovered crypto, we’ve seen more corruption than I care to count, banks fail, currencies fail, and even the best of each batch wildly outperformed by this little mathematical experiment called Bitcoin. The image of a decentralized system used by many, owned by all that expands beyond any given jurisdiction, globally available, globally owned, has become increasingly relevant every day as it has outperformed every global asset and is now valued in the trillions.
In proving this, the wool was removed from our eyes, and we saw more than just electronic cash, a trustless system bound by math expanded far beyond ‘digital gold’. It became clear that much of the future world, from lending and savings to identity and contracts, could be housed in the same system. Like most new frontiers, though, the dreamers were the minority.
"First come the dreamers, then the bankers, then the salesmen, then the sharks, then the desperate, and then the thieves."
- Landman
And piece by piece, a better system came to mean a better casino. ‘Fast finance’ regardless of the risk, ‘open access’ even if the contracts were upgradable. Scaling via centralization or multisigs, whatever tradeoff could be made for the incremental millisecond to speed up consumer turnover. Social tokens are hailed as the future of community, and memecoins as the future of investing.
We’ve lost sight of what we set out to build, and we’ve lost sight of why it actually matters. One by one, the dreamers fell, disillusioned by the misguided focus on scaling via trade-offs or pulled by the token grant to lend their name and credibility to keep building a better casino.
Now, don’t get me wrong, at my core, I am a libertarian, and I appreciate the value of free markets. Each of these things should be able to exist; that is the cost of free systems, just as hearing an opinion I don’t value is the cost of free speech. Somewhere along the way though, the dreamers drank the poisoned wine and came to believe that the end we got was the end we set out for. Like the worst possible case of Stockholm Syndrome, they either convinced themselves that what they did was good or quit the game entirely in disgust.
Let me remind you why I am here and what this space has meant to me.
I grew up in rural New Hampshire in about as peaceful a time and environment as possible. Despite that, I have seen my former profession banned for profit from Las Vegas lobbyists, payment processors unilaterally cancelled, I’ve been debanked, and I’ve been forced out of multiple homes due to uncertain or outright hostile regulation. I’ve seen the economy blow up, and I’ve had my financial institutions blow up. I’ve watched conmen take billions from those who trusted them. And compared globally, I am one of the lucky ones.
We deserve a better system and a freer world.
There is no reason why someone should not own their own money, have a basic right to privacy, or be trapped in a failing currency or a corrupt system.
Zero is a response to what we want to see in the world and what the world has not given us. Zero is a response to those dreamers who let their vision die, or convinced themselves that 15 tps was enough to serve the rich, and left the rest to multisigs. Zero is planting a stake in the ground, picking the torch back up, and marching forward with the ideals we came here for.
Zero will propel our values into the world, not because we hope the existing financial system shares them, but because these principles are so powerful they cannot be ignored. We set out not to replace a single piece of the stack or to capture the tiny fraction captured to date. We set out to change the entire system. A new backend. Globally distributed, globally owned. Permissionless and censorship-resistant. A system open to all. A better system, where mathematical proofs reign supreme.
When I first got into this space, it was for the promise of something that gave every single person on the planet an escape hatch. It gave them the option to escape the traditional system of intermediaries and gatekeepers, of corruption, of misplaced trust, of denial of access. It promised to give us nothing more than the simple ability to own what we own. That what’s yours is… yours, and no one can take it from you or deny you access.
Beyond my wildest dreams in 2011 (or frankly even in 2024), this has gone from an escape hatch to an escape raft, not for the individuals but for the system as a whole. In the 15 years since I discovered crypto, we’ve seen more corruption than I care to count, banks fail, currencies fail, and even the best of each batch wildly outperformed by this little mathematical experiment called Bitcoin. The image of a decentralized system used by many, owned by all that expands beyond any given jurisdiction, globally available, globally owned, has become increasingly relevant every day as it has outperformed every global asset and is now valued in the trillions.
In proving this, the wool was removed from our eyes, and we saw more than just electronic cash, a trustless system bound by math expanded far beyond ‘digital gold’. It became clear that much of the future world, from lending and savings to identity and contracts, could be housed in the same system. Like most new frontiers, though, the dreamers were the minority.
"First come the dreamers, then the bankers, then the salesmen, then the sharks, then the desperate, and then the thieves."
- Landman
And piece by piece, a better system came to mean a better casino. ‘Fast finance’ regardless of the risk, ‘open access’ even if the contracts were upgradable. Scaling via centralization or multisigs, whatever tradeoff could be made for the incremental millisecond to speed up consumer turnover. Social tokens are hailed as the future of community, and memecoins as the future of investing.
We’ve lost sight of what we set out to build, and we’ve lost sight of why it actually matters. One by one, the dreamers fell, disillusioned by the misguided focus on scaling via trade-offs or pulled by the token grant to lend their name and credibility to keep building a better casino.
Now, don’t get me wrong, at my core, I am a libertarian, and I appreciate the value of free markets. Each of these things should be able to exist; that is the cost of free systems, just as hearing an opinion I don’t value is the cost of free speech. Somewhere along the way though, the dreamers drank the poisoned wine and came to believe that the end we got was the end we set out for. Like the worst possible case of Stockholm Syndrome, they either convinced themselves that what they did was good or quit the game entirely in disgust.
Let me remind you why I am here and what this space has meant to me.
I grew up in rural New Hampshire in about as peaceful a time and environment as possible. Despite that, I have seen my former profession banned for profit from Las Vegas lobbyists, payment processors unilaterally cancelled, I’ve been debanked, and I’ve been forced out of multiple homes due to uncertain or outright hostile regulation. I’ve seen the economy blow up, and I’ve had my financial institutions blow up. I’ve watched conmen take billions from those who trusted them. And compared globally, I am one of the lucky ones.
We deserve a better system and a freer world.
There is no reason why someone should not own their own money, have a basic right to privacy, or be trapped in a failing currency or a corrupt system.
Zero is a response to what we want to see in the world and what the world has not given us. Zero is a response to those dreamers who let their vision die, or convinced themselves that 15 tps was enough to serve the rich, and left the rest to multisigs. Zero is planting a stake in the ground, picking the torch back up, and marching forward with the ideals we came here for.
Zero will propel our values into the world, not because we hope the existing financial system shares them, but because these principles are so powerful they cannot be ignored. We set out not to replace a single piece of the stack or to capture the tiny fraction captured to date. We set out to change the entire system. A new backend. Globally distributed, globally owned. Permissionless and censorship-resistant. A system open to all. A better system, where mathematical proofs reign supreme.
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