I spoke to Victor Muhagachi, co-founder of NEDA Labs, building digital asset payment infrastructure in Tanzania and East Africa, about what it actually looks like to bring crypto to communities in this context.

Victor grew up watching mobile money transform how people transact across Africa but also watching 15-20% of people's money disappear just in the act of digitizing it. We dig into NEDA Labs work on Tanzanian Shilling stablecoin rails and the experience of talking to regulators. We also get into the savings circle pilot they ran with the JUKUMU Hub, a local community space, and Solar Foundation whom we had recently in a Bread Cooperative community call.

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.

Use the code blockchainsocialist when signing up and get an extra month!

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

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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 Nader Dabit, longtime crypto developer and educator who built at Aave, Lens, and Developer DAO, about what it felt like to be at the frontier of Web3 and why he eventually left.

Nader spent years genuinely believing in decentralized social and censorship resistant platforms, and we dig into why those ideas haven't found their footing: the brutal difficulty of onboarding people, a culture that kept rewarding hype over substance, and watching the space forgive grifters over and over while builders burned out. We also get into the moment AI clicked and why late 2024 felt like a real turning point, what agentic coding does to the software engineering profession, and whether the crypto-AI intersection is real or just the latest way to raise money. And Nader shares some thoughts as a Palestinian American on why censorship resistance still matters to him even if the tools haven't delivered on it yet.

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.

Use the code blockchainsocialist when signing up and get an extra month!

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 Vincent, assistant professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University and author of the Data Leverage substack, about what it actually means that AI systems are built on the collective output of humanity's digital labor and what we can do about it.

Nick has spent years researching how data functions as a bargaining tool, and we get into the nitty gritty of what that looks like in practice: data strikes, data poisoning, and redirecting your data to competitors as forms of collective action. We also discuss the explosion of agentic coding tools like Claude Code, what they mean for software engineers and entry-level workers, and why the very thing that makes LLMs so powerful — their dependence on collective human data — is also what makes them uniquely vulnerable to organized pressure from below.

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.

Use the code blockchainsocialist when signing up and get an extra month!

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.