Get on the Peace Train...Last chance to Vote on the Block!
Before we give our ‘Day of Election’ message below, we wanted to give it one last chance to encourage our loyal Cryptonite an opportunity to ‘Vote’ and take a survey on our non-profit build blockchain-based Voting Block platform.
Along with my lifelong friend and fellow Silicon Valley OG, Tim Draper, I have created Voting Block USA to close the Web3 innovation knowledge gap between the entrepreneurial community, the American people, and—as much as we are allergic to them—our politicians in Washington, DC.
We graciously ask you to take a few minutes of your valuable time to 'vote' for your dream Presidential candidate and take our brief survey on the Voting Block USA platform to help prove a significant point.
We built the platform with our partners at Circle, Coinbase, Arbitrum, Perplexity.ai, and Persona to demonstrate the power of AI and blockchain and how it offers a much more efficient, tamper-proof, and private way to vote for our elected officials than any existing system.
And we built it for waaay under $100,000!
So, along with safety, security, and privacy, the Voting Block represents a significant innovation metaphor for how our community can radically help our governments reduce spending significantly and bring down our trillions in deficits.
We also hope to prove that while we all prefer a variety of different presidential candidates, we can largely agree that Web3 innovation can help confront many of our nation's most pressing issues.
The Web3 revolution is still alive and well
It feels like our efforts to persuade our members to ‘vote’ on our non-profit Voting Block platform have been a bit of a push-and-shove with sluggish results for a couple of reasons. Many people are frozen with anxiety that the other team’s candidate will win. There has never been a more stark choice in our country’s history. Second, we have been bombarded with a relentless stream of desperate fundraising and get-out-the-vote pleas across all devices, and people are exhausted and pissed.
No matter how the vote swings, half the country will feel pretty unsettled. For everyone’s sake, the Web3 community needs to keep focused on doing what we have been doing to return power to the people. We can and will show the world how our innovation can help restore freedom of speech, online security, and privacy, create less dependence on the online Walled Gardens and middlemen and their usurous fees, and even be a powerful force for peace on earth.
Our view is that we are not as divided and in as much disagreement as the centralized powers (Big Tech, Big Media, Big Hollywood, Big Gov., Big Pharma, etc.) are trying to manipulate us into believing. Following is a summary of six major policy areas where Web3 innovation has the potential to significantly impact, on which—we think—there is general agreement
Decentralizing the Mighty Dragon
While Web3 innovation is fostering decentralization, the Chinese government seeks centralization of data as a means of control. The CCP has control over TikTok, national smartphone data, its traceable digital yuan (e-CNY), and digital wallet to track its people, store their biometric data, and rank them according to their ‘loyalty’ to the Communist Party. Just think what the CCP would like to do for us.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell forecasted a managerial industrialism in which man builds machines that act like men and develops men who act like machines. We can help ensure that science fiction does not become a reality by disrupting and dismantling the trend toward managerial industrialism and continuing to create the tools to make it impossible.
Creating government efficiency and slashing budgets
If Elon Musk can reduce the cost of operating the old Twitter by 90 percent, Web3 can help the US government overhead by at least 50 percent. The US government should train its own LLM around its massive body of data to offer citizens transparency and assistance. US citizens could log in and speak with an AI bot that could answer almost all questions about their government services, such as taxes, licenses, health insurance, and social security, as well as identify and discern government regulations and requirements.
Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel warned in his New York Times editorial, ‘In 2017 Xi Jinping added the principle of ‘civil-military fusion’ to the CCP’s constitution,’ which mandates that all research and intellectual property in China be shared with the People’s Liberation Army. This is a totalitarian approach, of course, but it provides the advantage of keeping the CCP on the cutting edge. Silicon Valley, Inc. should build a significant presence in Washington to both keep our government up on innovation (also, to help keep it free of unnecessary regulation) and set up education and training programs for government employees to build Web3 skills to better transition into the private economy.
Bringing nonviolent resistance back into fashion
The successful Civil Rights movement in the US, the end of the Vietnam War, the divestment of South Africa’s Apartheid, and the Fall of the Soviet Union were all achieved via nonviolent protests. Non-violence resistance, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and his mentor Mahatma Gandhi, has proven more successful than conventional warfare or other forms of violence. In fact, conventional warfare is so destructive now it can no longer be argued as just—the ROI for the number of lives lost and associated collateral damage simply no longer adds up.
The US should also lead a global effort to put a moratorium on all autonomous weapons and killer AI robots whose algorithms determine who to kill without the direct involvement of human reasoning, moral judgment, and ethical decision-making.
Decentralization of education
According to a report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the following ‘top schools’ (in order) are the least friendly to freedom of speech and exercising the First Amendment: Harvard, University of Penn., Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, Fordham, U of T at Austin, and Yale University. We also think that the top four listed have had the highest rate of anti-semitic incidents over the last year.
This is a complicated subject, but our school systems are outdated, inefficient, and way too expensive, and are ripe for Web3 disruption.
Eliminating the PACs and Super Donors
In a completely unprecedented manner, the Democratic candidate for president in 2024 was hand-picked in secret by an unnamed committee of power brokers, including so-called Super Donors. In other words, the Pigs are running the show on the Blue Farm, and its absurdity and audacity are now on full display. As we have been predicting, as a result, the Democrats are set to get their asses handed back to them.
US citizens no longer trust our archaic and anti-democratic voting and campaign fundraising system that encourages Politburo-style behavior and tactics. The Party, for example, spent millions of PAC and Super Donor money on very unsuccessfully trying to keep RFK, Jr. off primary ballots all over the country and ditto for the Party’s leading opponent. You can’t ‘Save Democracy’ by acting totalitarian.
Campaign finance laws should be reformed so that voting-age citizens are issued a set limit of tokens that they may directly contribute to local, state, and federal candidates for campaign expenses and receive a 100% deduction from their taxes. Otherwise, candidates may not accept money or resources from corporations, PACs, political parties, or non-US citizens. Today, you need to raise $1B to be elected President—and only God knows what candidates are promising to whom to get that money. It’s all corrupt, and Web3 has the tools to fix it.
Realizing the original intent of the Internet dream
In Web1, we set the foundation to make all knowledge free and accessible. In Web 2, we put that knowledge, our phone, our bank, and pretty much whatever else we need to access in our pockets. Web3 is about the final fulfillment of the original Internet dream—creating a private, safe, and distributed world free of the walled gardens that sell our data, censor our content, and control our lives. It is our duty and our penance to fulfill this noble cause.
After all, we are the global Silicon Valley and have had a much higher impact on the world than Washington, DC, over the last 60 years—so let’s get this Internet thing right.
Crossing the threshold of hope
No matter who is the victor in today’s election, we are still all connected by our faith in the inherent worth and dignity of every individual (including immigrants in the US illegally) and our shared commitment to justice and compassion for all. We also believe in keeping the American Dream alive so any person, regardless of background, can rise and thrive by following their passions, working hard, and operating honestly and with a fair mind. This dream includes the ability to fail, learn, and start over—having faith that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and better prepared to get it right the next time. For all these unifying ideals, we pray. We shall survive the election if we all get on the Peace Train 🚞 today.
** If your candidate lost and we still haven’t made you feel any better, remember—There is always 2028! 🇺🇸
 | A guest post by
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A great perspective on Web3 innovation! The potential for decentralization and new business models is exciting—looking forward to seeing how this space evolves.
Great vision but referring to your last chapter: Crossing the threshold of hope I would respect it more if you reacted on my unanswered mails with very simple requests and questions for over 1 year now. It seems that you are still working on your Cryptonite project intensively.