Mike Solana - Trump, Crypto, Tech, Politics & Memetic Wars

what do I see I see some like scammy gamblers which whatever they're saying they're that now so I like that better um I see honest scammy gamblers I see a handful of people working on things that I think could be really cool and I think that's really nice and then I you still see a bunch of people sort of being dishonest like looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and pretending they're working on something that doesn't really actually matter and all they really want to do is launch a coin and make some money and those are my least favorite of all the groups

welcome to bankless where today we explore the frontier of tech culture and politics maybe some crypto sprinkled in too this is Ryan Sean Adams I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless the guest today is Mike salana has no relation to the salana chain that's just his last name we do discuss that yeah we did uh he's the editor of the pirate wires he's he's the guy that broke the the recent Trump Coin News this is Donald J Trump and uh we started the conversation on that interestingly enough he doubled

down on his take that the Donald J Trump coin was actually associated with Trump so uh stay tuned for that and why that could be bullish for crypto then we broaden the conversation to a number of other subjects including why Tech has pivoted right why the Democrats are bad on crypto how the tech World Views crypto is it like one giant Ponzi casino to those guys growth versus degrowth and the mimetic wars the state of media and why it's broken including social media and is the US going to be okay after the

election of 2024 Mike is a podcaster he's got his own podcast which it's always just fantastic hosting other podcasters on your podcast because they know how they know how to podcast it's always just a good conversation he's always got someone to say something useful and I really think his perspective as someone who is just just outside of crypto he's Savvy about crypto he knows about crypto he's not in crypto though but he's in Tech circles he's in political circles and so getting his perspective on like our world as well as his perspectives on the future

of where all of this whole the whole world is going is just very very very useful because he's not a crypto person even though even though he's pretty close he's pretty close and so that's kind of the value I got out of this episode with Mike David maybe for the clickbait we should have titled this the the salana episode huh and then it's just Mike salana I don't know but we'll have some things to discuss I'm sure during the debrief which is available to you if you are a bankless citizen all right guys let's get right to the episode with Mike salana before we do we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible including our number one recommended

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to Mike salana he's the editor-in-chief of pirate wires which is a media company that focuses on Tech politics and culture I would say very prot te I don't know if you'd use the term eak but that's a term you've heard on Bank list and uh it's really pushing against a number of narratives maybe the The degrowth Narrative among others also he is the CMO of Founders fund which is Peter Teal's VC thing they invest in crypto as well Mike welcome to bankless thanks for having me all right so you must be aware your last name is now the the name of a major cryptocurrency yes do do you own how do

you feel about that yeah have you said ceas to cists Foundation honestly I hate it it's you know salana was it's my name and it was a rare name and it was I owned that name I was salana I signed my essays salana salana is an important name it's my family's name like to have it just taken from me in this way is feels wrong weird and obviously you know it's it's a word and people can take words I'm not saying

that like I'm going to be sending any cease and Tois letters anytime soon but it just yeah no I don't I don't I guess maybe it's partly it's flattering but um God I wish they chose something else I really do do do you own any Soul at least you could benefit froms here no I don't I was a a Bitcoin person still am a Bitcoin person and but I I've kind of stayed out of the I'm interested in the crypto stuff beyond that in the abstract um I'm G to defend people's rights to sort of work in it and um trade in it and all

of that but uh I've got too many Hills that I'm presently dying on to take on another so so I promise that we're going to get to more like intellectual conversations but speaking of uh crypto coins that have people's name on them uh the Donald J Trump meme coin like debacle that happened last week well there's been a lot of news did you see uh yeah people are in my DM saying like no David it's not over like it's it's going to be it's going to blow up and so i' i' haven't pushed my head in since last week though well obviously I broke the news and uh I stand by everything

that I reported um I spoken a lot of on the pirate wires pod I kind of broke down everything that I know about the coin like there there are things that I can that I know for sure and then there's speculation um so I know Baron Trump was involved and beyond that you know I don't have any insight into the inner workings of the Trump family and what weird things are going on behind the scenes like I'm I have a perspective which I've shared but um I think the

more interesting thing here now is so you have obviously people are speculating on the Donald Trump mem coin uh but then you have the poly market like the the betting markets where people are like well there was a question of is the Trump coin real that was one then there was the question of is Baron Trump involved both of those because of the um protocol have been olved to know and while the first one you know what is a real official meme coin that's super subjetive really complicated like I don't that's a separate question I think philosophers

need to come in on that one to the question of is Baron Trump involved to resolve to no on that question is shocking to me I I could maybe understand um resolving to nothing like to to sort of unresolved like unresolved or I don't know if but and they like that's not possible then the problem is the protocol like you then the protocol is is a problem a huge problem because you're resolving to know on something that I know I know is true and that the only evidence we have indicates that it's true but a bunch of

anonymous dgen [ __ ] just think the Vibes are off and so they're saying it's not true they don't know anything unique and now people are losing money off of that not only are people losing money off of that but the people voting on The protocol are also voting on poly Market which feels like fraud to me and it's a huge like the Trump coin thing is fun but it has like really sent shock waves through I would say the sort of decentralized Finance community and challenged a lot of assumptions about tools that are uh you know still being

worked on and have a lot of promise and I still think there is a lot of Promise in this stuff but this one's really bad um like not only did they come out and not only did this happen they then supported it publicly they have employees making fun of people like myself um public L online over this in my opinion like very contentious issue that they're just wrong again they are just wrong about uh and poly Market just denounced them publicly so that is going to be I mean that's like a huge sort of

just now like within the last hour I would say uh breaking story I I feel like we need to maybe back up and set some context we Dove right into the Donald J Trump uh like meme coin and like some Bank list listers might not be familiar with the story so I I want to start with kind of like the tweet that sort of set a whole bunch of this off which is as you said Mike the Tweet you kind of Stand by which is uh from Pirate wires per conversations Trump is launching the official token dgt on salana Baron spearheading that's the

tweet and so is that what you're talking about like you stand by that tweet you think that that is an accurate reported was everything that I reported at the time was accurate and I have no idea what's happened since I I'm not uh in Donald like a member of Donald Trump's family I imagine a lot has happened since I can speculate and I did on the the pirate wires pod about what I think kind of maybe went down since then what what do you think what what do you think went down I believe that Baron asked Trump to run this mem coin and to make

it the sort of official Donald Trump mean coin and Trump said I love you son yes of course whatever and that I can't do his voice but someone else better than he can and uh I think he didn't think much about it and uh Baron got excited and I do believe was involved um I don't know I have no sense at all of you know whose idea it was or anything like that I just know that that Baron was involved I believe my speculation is that Trump said yes but there were other people maybe even in his family who

wanted to do their own version of a mem coin there was probably some kind of like succession like internal game who gets to do the meme coin and I think Baron Trump made a move and um that's what I think and and I think that once the new I think once the news went public probably Trump had not clued in a lot of his lawyers and I think they probably were like what the [ __ ] is this and freaked out because

it's not too long before an election and it's a sort of unknown quantity and shut it all down but there's been no public just shut down the exposure just like the law don't say anything I think they Iced Out anybody um I'm not involved obviously in the coin itself I don't even own any I don't bet on the stuff um but I think that they probably Iced Out anybody they were talking to about it and are just putting all of it on pause for now it's interesting to me that there's been no public denunciation um I uh hasn't there didn't

didn't uh there's some announcement from uh one of like the Twitter news accounts that said like an adviser to the Trump Administration says that they are not involved with the djt token on salana the advisor not involved I didn't see it I'll have to look ADV said that the Trump Administration I know the advisor advisers back Channel didn't and didn't know anything about it they're totally wrong if if there's an official if the Donald Trump campaign is officially coming out and saying the president of the United States can confirm that he is not involved in this or whatever that

will be interesting to me and I'll have to reassess what I've been saying publicly and provide more insight into what I know for sure but um I'm guilty of being a headline reer so I I don't go into the details I haven't seen that and I've been inundated with Anonymous schizophrenic Deens in my mentions days I'm surprised if they if they had announced it I think I probably would have seen that over and over again um maybe not I'll have to look at it later wait where where does Martin Skelly fit into this that's why this story is also weird skrell

was working with Baron in some capacity on the coin yeah okay and he's scr inserts himself into things I have no idea I don't want to say anything about him because I actually don't know the Genesis of that at all um I just want to share what I know can we can we talk about a hypothetical Universe where uh Trump's advisers lawyers like like you know you better sense of the situation didn't actually put pause on this and

like Trump actually legitimized a crypto meme coin what do you think that world would actually look like like well it'd be moving right now if you can say um so number go up and I think that um I think that all it would really do is solidify Trump's connection to crypto and such a way as he would have to defend it or be much more likely to defend it which would be a really great signal for crypto and uh people heavily involved in crypto to support him even more than they already have been it's

very clear to me that the Democrats want to shut it down I mean you're dealing with people who are animated by socialism and control of the economy and so obviously it always surprised me that they allowed this to go on as long as they did without going to war for it like this fundamentally threatens their ability to manipulate people and um I mean in fact that's why Bitcoin was created like come on like that's the whole [ __ ] Genesis of it and it's working um and uh yeah it's like they're on a natural Collision Course Democrats have always been on a natural Collision Course with crypto uh I even surprised

that Trump I mean Trump's not really like a free trade um sort of libertarian type person he's a populist Nationalist and I was surprised to see him take this up I think it's just politically very smart for him because um crypto is a very increasingly influential contingent of the PO or segment of the population crypto people and uh certainly they have money and they were being demonized and Trump's been making a lot of bets like this where he seems to be finding these places where there's really not any downside for him to support them and

protect them but a lot potential upside they're just like easy bets for him to make and he's been making them um and uh and crypto is I think the probably the best version of this where it was like why on I know why the far-left wants crypto to not exist but B Biden's a moderate like why does he care why is he taking this bet why is he going so hard now um with so many other things that are failing in his administration and his campaign um it was stupid and we just saw Jamal Bowman went down the

crypto people got involved there I don't really think I think that was bigger than than them I think it was bigger than was it apack or whatever I think it was just like people really hated him but yeah this and I want to continue kind of just doing the sitre on like the state of crypto and and politics right now uh like the crypto industry like we see this we get see the incoming like 2024 election and we're getting excited right uh we see like both political parties trying to like VI for our love like Donald Trump the Dems kind of pivoted and then like didn't really complete that like against crypto they

scar scared they got scared of committing to the the industry but hey at least we got the eth ETF in that moment of ETF that's it Trump undeniably like winning the tug of war over the crypto industry uh but then you have like the the pro Trump crypto people who are like f yes like you have to get behind Trump he's going to support our industry then you have like the more like moderate Skeptics like leftists who are saying like well like he's definitely more Pro crypto than Biden but like it's free real estate for him he doesn't have to make any like real

promises he just has to like speak the words and this is kind of like the tension of politics that crypto has that's the tension of politics period yeah it's like politicians say [ __ ] and do they mean it or not those that's valid I think that if you just looking at the record here it's very very very very silly to think separate from everything else it's really not even silly I think it's like it's almost dishonest to say that you think there's a chance the Democrats could be better on crypto than the Republicans at this point not only because of what they've actually done in office but because of

just like the ideology behind both parties I've never understood conceptually the sort of like the leftist crypto person I don't understand what that is to be a leftist to me is like control of the economy centralization it's the only way to make leftism work we're talking about [ __ ] Marxism here I remember there was this huge wave of press years ago Taylor the ren generated it when she did an interview of this um what was her name Leen or something she was like the web three socialist person talking about reading Marxist and [ __ ] we know Leen we've had Leen on the podcast yeah so she talked a lot about KL Marx and

like trying to find some like intersection between these things there's no intersection okay that's like you trying to be cool among like the young kids who are like the [ __ ] communist Baristas and [ __ ] while making a lot of money doing crypto stuff and it's like that's classic of a certain kind of leftist rich person to be honest but it's obnoxious and it's just not true and like ideologically um it's it's just it's just a lie you know crypto is the antithesis of centralized uh the sort of centralization that you would need to make Socialism or or communism

work it just is one one thing that uh I'm trying to measure out is like a lot of the crypto industry like we say that uh crypto might just end up deciding the fate of the United States election like we are enough of a cohort uh that like we might be able to sway some some uh swing States and even Mark Cuban uh was on he put on some big tweet saying like Gary gendler at the and his Reign Over the SEC might actually cost Biden the election because he represents like the policy stance of the Biden

Administration towards crypto I'm wondering if you as being like more external to the crypto industry uh what your thoughts on like our ability to sway this thing or not like how much influence do we really have here anyone with money has influence um people say there's too much money in politics there's not a lot of money in politics actually there's not like comparatively to the rest of the economy or whatever like people aren't flooding it with with dollars it's pretty easy to make a huge impact with a few million even um you know $10 million and now you're like a major player in in a race especially if

you're talking about Regional like Senate races or things like that um so there's money in crypto Ergo crypto has influence and should use it I think that's broadly true of anyone in Tech anyone in business like if you you need to be involved or you need to stop complaining about the outcomes okay here's the thing I don't understand Mike and maybe with your kind of like Tech politics lens you can you shed some more light on it but it feels to me like I don't understand why the Democratic party is really like doubling down on

this anti- crypto Army thing it just feels very much like shooting themselves in the foot anti- crypto Army yeah okay so this anti- crypto Army is like an Elizabeth Warren thing so she launched an actual campaign a year ago and saying hey I'm going to lead I'm the General in an anti-to sheeth War seen this right you've seen yes I was introduced to that story as uh Elizabeth Warner or goons because Trump said I will keep Elizabeth Warren under goons off of your Bitcoin well actually there's some truth in that and this is why it's a self-inflicted uh wound is because Elizabeth Warren

actually stated that like she was going to lead the anti- crypto Army right and so lieutenants like Gary Gensler the regulatory State this whole thing has been part of it and and the Biden Administration has largely kind of let them set a White House policy on this but like what I can't get my head wrapped around is like why well because he's old and scile and weak have the energy to keep her off what about so is it that but like but even for her right like the Democrats still want to remain in power they still want money and votes

do they not and so they gain Nothing by being anti- crypto like not even the big Banks want to be anti- crypto there's some legislation who is the anti- crypto Army who funding is who's supporting these people this is why it feels like such a self-owned to me that it's just like not logical from a the Democrats have a weird I mean so you have also Democratic policies on things for example and and just to I'm I'm not going to try and have the debate right now but um uh sort of like trans stuff for kids like that entire topic right uh

you have behind the scenes this the story is just breaking now Biden's uh what is it Secretary of health or whatever she is the general um involved in removing age restrictions for procedures for kids uh uh like gender affirming procedures for kids right like that is really unpopular and why would they do that and it's a that they're are lots of things like this that are really unpopular but they do it on the Republican side you have a republican right now uh who and I just skimmed so I don't have I'm not going to like you

know have a thorough breakdown of of the report here but he you have a republican congressman who is targeting IVF which is like wildly unpopular on both sides of the aisle in America and this is like on the hardcore pro-life side right like at a certain level both we have a two parties and so they have to make a lot of bizarre alliances and they end up doing things that are deeply unpopular eventually and I think on the crypto side it's like you have real marxists in the Democratic party like hardcore leftists who would

like to completely control the entire economy and getting rid of crypto is a really big part of that there's the crypto I actually believe that Bitcoin makes communism sort of impossible right now so it's a huge enemy of the the very farle so there was a take floating around uh the crypto world right after we discovered that the SEC was coming to like actually like try and stop the ethereum network like the SEC was going to try and make ether a security going after consensus uh and the take was it's not just Gary gendler in this one Rogue

campaign it's not just Gary Gensler trying to climb the political ladder but it's like the Clinton types and the the powers that be in quotes that saw the rise of web to Tech Empires saw the rise of Zuck and Facebook like uh Elon and Tesla and like the rise of Silicon Valley as like this Center of power that they don't have influence in because like the rise of the internet kind of surprised them so the internet like kind of quote unquote got away from them and created all these like you know Loki of power that are outside of like whatever the the Clinton types have influence

over and they don't want to see that again and so like one hypoth this is just a conspiracy one potential answer to like who is the anti- crypto Army is a lot of like the establishment Elites that don't want like a new set of like influence to be outside of their control I'm wondering if that like resonates with you or not or what you have any reflection I think to a certain extent yes but I think crypto is also interesting in that so many people have exposure to it including Elites and that changes your perspective on it obviously for obvious reasons as well once you've bought a little Bitcoin like you start to think about it differently when it starts to moon and there are people on

both sides of the aisle who have done that as well um which means there's a sort of tension now between the ideology of politicians and the self-interest of many politicians which is great like let's keep that as tense as possible I think that there is something to the idea that people saw this Empire Rising but also why is the most aggressive stuff happening in a in a bare Market rather than the crazy exuberance that we saw previously like there was It was kind of quiet during the exuberant

period um I don't know I'm a little bit less I and you see a little bit of this with AI as well where um I think that it's like people are going after this stuff now because they didn't do it aggressively enough before certainly you saw that with um uh scooters remember uh scooters in all the cities um do you guys remember this there was like the the like Citys that have like populated everywhere yeah right so that's mostly gone at this point they aggressively regulated out of a lot of cities and I think that the

aggressive regulation in part was driven because it came fast and hard and it was in part driven by this feeling that um among Regulators like the worst people alive that um they should have regulated more firmly against ride sharing like uber and Lyft you know they came in and they like broke a lot of rules that should never have existed in the first place like if I have a car I should be able to do whatever the [ __ ] I want with like if I want to drive someone around with my car I should be allowed to do that but they don't believe that and they think that that was a mistake they

should have ended that there should have been you know like a politically empowered taxi Lobby I guess in every city that they controlled they don't now and uh it's frustrating and this was like another version of that just like something they didn't have control of that could potentially get away and they preemptively nuked it in hindsight they probably didn't have to it seems like that stuff would have gone away on its own I am sad about that I personally loved riding the scooters around um but uh yeah there's like a lot of just in a lot of different technology spaces they're overreacting now because of what

they feel as like a a Miss on their part okay so so here's the thing um I mean we're talking about like um it definitely the the Democrats are like much weaker on crypto and like hostile towards crypto versus the the Republicans and the right but like I'm not sure I I trust the right either here Mike yeah you shouldn't trust any politician so uh you were talking in terms of right versus left and like that's one framing of it I also have like a you know like the the the political Compass type framing of it

where you have like you know two lines you have the right versus left line but then you have another line that kind of intersects that which is authoritarian at the top and then like a small El Li libertarian at the bottom right so you know civil liberties types and I know it's less common for somebody to be in the bottom left cortile of like I respect civil liberties and yet I'm on the left but there are a lot of people on the right that are just like authoritarian State as well that's why I said it not I agree you're talk like

anyone n sufficiently nationalist who wants control of the economy is going to have a hard time with this for sure and this is part of the reason like um Trump is better and he's branding himself as the pro crypto president he's he's better than Biden right now but last term he like wasn't he had like a a Secretary of Treasury who in the final days in January you know Steve munish was trying to like do a blanket ban on non-custodial crypto wallets so like how much do you really trust the right on

these kind of like Tech forward libertarian issues and like should we trust the right are they just like the the better of the evils well first of all okay so I I misspoke nationalism is not it it's it's like the authoritarian thing like because there's nationalism and globalism either one of those things can be authoritarian or I think a little bit more liberal um and the authoritarian piece is the thing that you want to watch for and there are obviously nationalist rightwing or authoritarian nationalist authoritarian right- wiers and uh who want control of the economy and whatever else your life

um can you trust the right you can't trust any politician first of all um you can't trust anybody who wants power and uh yet you also have to be just reasonable about you know the people who are going after this specific thing are they're really authoritarian right-wingers yes have they done really [ __ ] up things of course um but just look at the landscape here and like who has passed all of the worst legislation and who is right now trying to do it and it's just like very obvious that you don't vote for those people if this is your only issue um and then you Lobby aggressively on the right

it's just as like there's no good answer here because you're like oh can we trust these people it's like of course not that's just democracy but yeah I mean it would be very silly to vote for a Democrat I think if if if your only thing is um is crypto and if you are going to anyway I would be willing to bet your only thing is not crypto and you're just valuing other things higher than that than your economic freedom I want to get your perspective uh about like what the crypto industry looks like uh from you from your perspective because I know you're like pretty exposed to it but you're not in it uh so

like adjacent but not inside uh and so like uh just from from the outside in like what what what are we to to you like you like what you look over the fence like we're trading meme coins we're like trying to innovate we're like struggling for adoption scam yeah what do we look like a mess like are we legit like how how do you perceive us I think on some level it's like refreshing to see people speaking more honestly about the meme coins because that's what everything was a few years ago anyway and there was a lot of lying about like well this meme coin is going to be

essential to like I don't know agriculture in some really ambiguous way and I was just like is it that seems like a [ __ ] stretch and a half um so it's like kind of nice to see people like no I'm just going to like launch a meme coin associate it with Andrew Tate and call it Daddy and you're going to buy it because this beanie baby is really popular and you know cryptographically secure um that is one thing like I guess the the sort of overt trashiness of it I actually prefer uh and then um I think that there are a lot

of people who very earnestly are looking to work on you know decentralized Finance because they sort of believe in the mission I that's cool um and they're still figuring out ways to do that I think that Bitcoin has already proved its value and I think that any kind of decentralized cryptographically secure store of wealth is very valuable by itself like you don't even need to justify beyond that so that's cool it's already awesome to me um and then if any of these other interesting sort of hypotheticals play out that could be great too I think that the like sort of