The Blockchain Socialist

I spoke to Yanis Varoufakis, economist and former Greek finance minister, at Web3 Summit in Berlin on June 18th, 2026, about why he thinks blockchain is one of the few tools left that can actually pull power away from Big Tech and the banks. Truly a privilege that I had the chance to speak with him on such a stage.
We dig into his concept of techno-feudalism and cloud capital, his monetary commons proposal for a transparent monetary system that could undercut private banks, and the digital wallet system he tried to build for Greece during the crisis. Yanis also lays out why he thinks the digital euro is dead in the water.
 You can read my reflections on the interview here. 
If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit. 
Support the show
ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke to Leo Fan, founder of Cysic, about what zero-knowledge proofs actually are, and why they might be one of the more promising answers to the internet's identity problem.

We dig into how a ZK proof lets you prove something is true without handing over any identifying personal information, why that matters as digital identity systems become pushed by governments, and Cysic's model for verifiable compute. Leo also breaks down why the hardware and cost problems around ZK have kept it from mainstream identity use so far, and how Cysic's network lets you use your own hardware to help generate these proofs, rather than leaving that compute in the hands of a few large players.
If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit. 
Support the show
ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke to Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism, co-author of Inventing the Future, and most recently Silicon Empires, about why AI is consolidating Big Tech's power rather than disrupting it.
 We dig into why the AI upstarts remain dependent on the infrastructure of the incumbents, why the gap between open and closed models may widen as frontier training costs spiral upward, and the real biosecurity risks buried under Silicon Valley's safety discourse. Nick also breaks down what AI sovereignty could mean for Europe, and why racing to hoard AI productivity gains for yourself misses the actual task: preventing a permanent underclass from forming at all. 
If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit. 
Support the show
ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke to Sean Geobey, associate professor at the University of Waterloo and Director of Groupthink Labs, about collective intelligence, cooperative economics, and what decentralized technology could actually offer the solidarity economy.
We dig into how collective intelligence works at scale, from participatory budgeting experiments in Kitchener to the structural barriers that make setting up a cooperative three times harder than incorporating a business. We also get into the limits of GDP as a measure of anything meaningful, why the left's taboo around finance is a form of unilateral disarmament, and how speculative finance has become the shortest-term thinking industry on the planet while performing the same planning function as the old Soviet Politburo. Sean also looks at Bread Cooperative (a worker cooperative I founded) and where the real bottlenecks are for Web3 to serve collective action rather than undermine it.
If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit. 
Support the show
ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

I spoke to Evan Miyazono, founder of Atlas Computing, about the neglected risks of advanced AI and what it would actually take to govern it.
We dig into the threats he thinks aren't getting enough attention, from asymmetrically offensive cyber capabilities and economic disruption to what he calls the "intelligence curse," a dynamic where governments lose any incentive to invest in their populations once labor becomes synthetic. We also get into formal verification as a framework for AI governance, why consensus and agreement become scarcer as intelligence gets cheaper, and where blockchains might actually fit into that picture in ways that have nothing to do with libertarian fantasy.
This episode is sponsored by NYM, the world's most private VPN. Unlike traditional VPNs, Nym uses a decentralized mixnet to scramble your internet data — hiding who you're talking to, when, and how often. You can switch between full mixnet mode for maximum anonymity, or a faster VPN mode for everyday use.
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If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@theblockchainsocialist@social.coop) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit. 
Support the show
ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.