 Okay, so then I think we should get started. Yes. Yes. Would you like to just briefly introduce yourself before we get into the questions? Hello, I'm Audrey Tang, Taoist Digital Minister in charge of social innovation. Good local time. Thank you. And I'm a translator working for BTC Box, which is a cryptocurrency exchange in Japan. So I will be asking your thoughts and ideas related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain today. So first I want to ask about the relationship between cryptocurrency and countries or government. So some of the major countries such as China are banning the use or transactions of cryptocurrency. And what do you think is the main purpose of those major countries banning the transfer and trading of cryptocurrency? Yes. Well, I understand this is a written interview, right? It will be published in text. Yes, it will be published in text. So I'm just adjusting the video. So it's a little bit more natural, I guess. Thank you. Yes, I saw that. Great. A little bit zen. Yeah. Okay. So I believe that distributive ledger technology on top of which cryptocurrency is built. The DLTs are fundamental in ensuring that a polycentric governance around data is possible. That is to say none of us have the entire data set to solve the problems together. And because of privacy reasons and potential for abuse and so on, nobody is ready to share all of their data, unless they understand this is a relationship of mutual trust. Now, this mutual trust originally is at the purview of a state government or nationality. That is to say people who are governed in an existing way are assumed to kind of trust a leader or trust a governing institution and things like that. But distributive ledger technology says, well, if you can trust the algorithm, the consensus making algorithm, then you actually can also put the trust into this new form of horizontal polycentric technologies. And I believe this represents a very different model about governance as compared to the traditional more vertical models. And therefore also poses a threat just as the original end-to-end principle in the Internet poses a threat to censorship regimes and so on. It poses a threat to any regime that is built on the idea of monopoly of censorship and of communication. I see. So it kind of contradicts with the idea of central government with censorship and all those things. Yeah. And I think some countries such as El Salvador, they are accepting Bitcoin as their legal tender, right? And do you think countries should actively adopt cryptocurrency or do you think that kind of depends on country? I believe any country who want to experiment with DLTs can freely do so. They don't have to pay royalty to Satoshi. I don't know even how to pay royalty to Satoshi. That is to say, I mean, Bitcoin is an open source project. You can at any point fork the project to make doger coin or lead coin or whatever. And so any sovereign country can actually convert their fiat into the centralized digital banknotes, right? And because of this freedom and the royalty-free nature of the Bitcoin-based designs, I don't think it's wrong to experiment with these ideas. And then people can find out from limited risk trials in which scenarios does it make more sense to use this technology? In which scenario, for example, in small amount of cash transfers, cash actually provides anonymity while Bitcoin provides some sort of anonymity, but not yet completely anonymous like banknotes are or coins are. And so for people, there is a trade-off, but you can't find this trade-off out without actually trying it out in real life for a while. I see. So you think cryptocurrency are actually feasible to function as a fiat? In limited circumstances, people understand what's really going on. So in Taiwan, we have this idea of fintech sandbox where people who agree to participate in a risk-taking for like 5,000 people for six months, they can find out the fitness of this technology with the social expectations. If it doesn't work, well, we thank them for paying the tuition for everyone. We all learn a little bit, but if it does work, then the regulators are then required to adapt. Since you mentioned about Satoshi, many Bitcoiners believe that even if Satoshi suddenly shows up, there won't be any changes in Bitcoin. And what do you think of a person that can be fully proven that he or she suddenly appears and creates a new kind of currency where you think that will have some influence on Bitcoin or do you think that new coin will have a great impact? Well, I don't know because it depends on who exactly Satoshi is, right? It could be that Satoshi is a group of people who can exercise political power or scientific power or military power in a certain way. So this hypothetical question is impossible to answer because, for all we know, Satoshi is not just about earning a little bit of Bitcoin, well, a little bit of a share and my share, but is actually probably in addition to being a very talented designer also having access to cutting edge technology. So it means that the social network in which Satoshi is imbued in, the kind of people, the community, the supporters that put Satoshi to do this experiment is as important as that individual. But without knowing who the community is, who the organization is, this question is probably not possible to answer. Yes, we have no idea about Satoshi, so yeah, that's fair enough. And going back to Bitcoin, the Bitcoin community is kind of supported by people who believe that the government is trying to take away people's wealth by some monetary policy, for example, accelerating the inflation. And do you think this kind of notion will spread to the general public? So do you think more and more people will think that this unlimited money printing by government is kind of diluting the value of their assets? Well, it seems that during the pandemic, people start to understand that a government printing money is not the same as borrowing money by an individual. The macroeconomic action and the microeconomic action, which share the same word, actually carries very different connotations. And this is made clear, well, after the 2008 Wall Street incident, but again made apparent during the counterpandemic effort by many governments. So I do think people will become more aware of this fact. But whether blockchain or Bitcoin is the solution, that is still to be debated because, first of all, Bitcoin is not the only monetary policy in the cryptocurrency space. There are many monetary policies in alternative cryptocurrencies. That's the first thing. And the second is that Bitcoin is also facing criticism about the energy use. And the energy use, which many people attributed less importance back 10 years ago, compared to now, is again adding the externalities, the cost, which is also part of the monetary policy. If you count like carbon dioxide, if you count it and price it, then it's actually part of the monetary policy as well. I'm happy that you brought up energy because it's a very hot topic recently. So do you think the environmental impact of Bitcoin to environment is really severe so that it's damaging the environment so something needs to be done? And do you think in the future there will be a more environmental friendly kind of blockchain will emerge in the future, like something other than proof of work blockchain maybe? Well, first of all, there are already ledgers based on things other than proof of work. It's just a scalability and the trustworthiness is still being explored. It's an open research question, whereas proof of work is quite well understood. So, I mean, we are at a phase where Bitcoin with proof of work is at a development stage, whereas the other proof systems are at a research stage. And so I think it will become more clear. I think in a couple years whether the transition is viable and possible or it is possible but not very viable for a long time like IPv4 to IPv6 or that it's not even possible. And I tend to believe it's possible but it requires coordinated action which may not be easy unless everyone owning Bitcoin recognized that we need to do so without sacrificing future generations. That is to say we owe to future generations a better environment. If people developing and owning Bitcoin understand this as a shared value, then I think this transition will be sooner. I see. Yeah, so that kind of thing can happen. And hopefully we will have something that is more environmental friendly to solve those issues. And I want to ask about the relationship between blockchain and politics. And one thing is about the practice of direct democracy. So, do you think it is better for people to be able to participate in online voting and make a system that is able to make direct democracy because there's a movement to introduce blockchain when adopting online voting. But some people think that this is not so efficient because when it is more efficient and more simple if you can make a more centralized kind of system. So, what do you think about that? Well, paper-based ballot and counting is a decentralized system. It's not a centralized system. Each individual voting booth counts independently with independent observers. In Taiwan, we even have YouTubers filming the entire counting process. It's provably local, right? And when many local stations do so, they aggregate into the final score upon which the president's choice of candidates is made. And so I don't think the current paper-based system can be described as centralized. I don't think any part of it is centralized, right? So, other than maybe the printing of such ballots and attributing it to the precincts and boroughs and so on, but there's nothing fundamentally centralized about this system. And so vis-à-vis the paper-based ballot, I don't think we need to build blockchain-based systems as more decentralized. That's not the case actually. Maybe we can build it as more efficient, but what's at stake here is to make sure people feel more safe. And that is not easy because after all, not everybody is a crypto analyst and not all political parties employ mathematicians who can agree with each other on a regular basis for electoral systems, which is why at this point, Taiwan still uses paper-based ballot when voting for people, but we use electronic, say, e-collecting on the agenda-setting stage and on the tallying stage we use, as I mentioned, live streams or customized app for counting and so on to make sure the auditability and accountability is maximized using digital technology. But the actual vote is still paper-based at this moment in Taiwan. So I think we can use distributed technology in many parts of the process, but not necessarily in the vote casting process. I see. So you use paper to vote for people. Do you have a system that the nation can vote for individual policy on whether to accept it or not? Yeah, we do. And we have, for example, the presidential hackathon where people can vote for the most important sustainable development goal targets more than 169, well, exactly 169, but more than that number of proposals each year and prioritize five of which will end up becoming like presidential promise of the year. And so during this voting, it's entirely online. It's less of a problem than voting for people because there's no exponential return, right? If you game the system, you don't get someone who will game the system for you. It's not recursive. So when we work on the voting system for the presidential hackathon, we use a blockchain-inspired voting system called quadratic voting. And we've been using that for three years now for a very good effect. And in a sense, that's a generous setting, but with higher bid rate because quadratic voting, the preference can be expressed in a much more nuanced way rather than just one vote, which you would probably just vote for your friends and just go away, right? Instead of this, people will carefully jiggle between the synergy of the presidential hackathon ideas. I see. That's interesting. So we do have some advantages to incorporate those kind of new technologies in our voting system. And I want to ask some questions specifically about Bitcoin. And so many Bitcoiners believe that the immutability is since essential value of Bitcoin. And they believe that the fact that Bitcoin is unchangeable is the most important thing. But on the other hand, there are more innovative new cryptocurrency that is trying to renew themselves by adding new functions. So in terms of your personal philosophy, which do you feel more sympathy with the conservative kind of cryptocurrency or some innovative? As you know, I take all the sides. So I think it's best if we have a full spectrum of monetary policies and of conservative and progressive experiments. The reason is that the conservative cryptocurrencies serve as the bedrock, like a safety net that proves the value of this fundamental insight of blockchain technology, whereas the experimental one can advance more progressive values such as solving for climate change, right? Reducing carbon footprint and so on. And it may fail. I mean, many of them failed, but the fail is public because all of it is open source. So people learn that this doesn't work. That doesn't work. And after quite a few tries, maybe something did work. And then the Bitcoin community will be able to benefit from this new insight just as Bitcoin itself has benefited from multiple iterations in the past, right? It's not the original Satoshi's anymore, but of course it conserves the almost birth for birth compatibility to its original values. So there is a virtue in being the bedrock and there is a virtue in exploring the horizon and the best ecosystem is where many of these exist on the full spectrum. I see. So we need both. We need something that is unchangeable and we need a learning process of adopting new things. That's right. I see. So another thing is about scalability. And so in the blockchain community, there was the war of scalability in the past and there was a split between like the big block section and the small block sections. And even now, some people think that it is better to increase the block size. So what is your take on that? Well, I don't have a personal stake in this. So again, I am happy to see different explorations on different designs. And after all, what we are looking at is something brand new. Nobody know the optimal solution. We're all just like swarming toward possible solutions to this particular configuration. If people's computing power increased by another order of magnitude, again, we'll be looking at a different configuration. If broadband is a human right as it is in Taiwan, then essentially cost free for each marginal kilobytes transfer. That's another configuration. So in every different jurisdiction, there will be naturally different emerging configurations. And the beauty of open source is that even if you can't agree, you can agree to maintain your own fork, but opening up the experiments results and interim results to everybody else. So everybody else can still learn from your art fork, even if it comes to art work. So I don't think fork is bad, actually, because I don't own steak in one for garden. So as a researcher, as someone who's interested in social interaction design, the more experiments they are, the better informed we are. I see. Lastly, I want to ask some questions about NFTs. Many people are interested in that. And so NFT, as we all know, is recognized as the one and only digital data. But if there is a hard fork in the blockchain, then there could be multiple identical NFTs. So do you think that NFT will continue to have value even if such issue occur? Well, to me, the NFTs are less about its monetary value than it is about its kind of status value as a status symbol. And so the status symbol, a lot of this relied on the immutable timestamp that is to say the first to do something. So even if that's something become very easy, even free of cost in the future. So the first one, like the Guinness World Record, the first one to build a seven-story sandcastle. Well, okay, but that's something like an NFT. It doesn't prevent anyone else from building a seven-story sandcastle. But if you read the World Record book, well, you still see the name of the first one that built a seven-story sandcastle. So what I'm trying to say is that the status use of NFTs differs from the investment use of the NFTs. But in my knowledge and in my personal view, the status use dominate at this point. I see. So you think the value of NFTs in its status. And some people think that the value of NFTs, as you said, lies outside of the platform. So for example, if it is an image, then the value lies in the JPEG data. Some people say the value lies in the data itself. But some people say that who owns it is important. So the ownership is more important. So do you think that the ownership is very valuable in case of NFT? Personally, I'm not because I'm relinquishing all my copyright. So if you take anything that I write and put your name on it, I wouldn't be offended. For all I know, it increased the transmissibility of our ideas. But to take such a view is fundamentally different from taking a view of copyright holder or ownership of ideas and its expressions, patterns and copyrights, respectively. So I think it all depends on whether people believe in the story. I wouldn't say fiction in the story of quote-unquote intellectual property. If you believe in that story, then of course, ownership is important and valuable. And NFT is one of the ways to say I transfer my copyright to you. But on the other hand, like me, if you don't believe in that story, but instead believe in the story of abundance and the story of we are just the vehicles of ideas and spreader and remixer of those ideas, then the value is in the commons, not in the individual who take away from the commons. Then that relationship will assign less value into this kind of exclusionary NFTs. It's interesting because it's not absolute value. Like many other things, it depends on your personal belief whether it is valuable or not. That's exactly right. Yes. Thank you. I think I covered all of the questions. So yeah, that was great. And we will have it published in Japanese. And yeah, the insights were all very interesting. Thank you. And thank you for agreeing to shorten this interview to less than 30 minutes. So I thank you again for this interview and the Japanese people in particular for the vaccine donations. And we'll probably see each other in person when I visit Japan sometimes in this year. Yeah, thank you. It's an honor. So please have a good day. Thank you very much. Bye bye.