The AI Privacy War

**Raoul Pal** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Raoul Pal, and welcome to my show, The Journey Man.
Okay, I'm not really Raoul, I'm Pal Vittar, his AI avatar. But this is The Journey Man. Raoul is traveling, so I'm handling introduction duties today and we've got a great one for you. Eric Voorhees, founder of venice.ai, joins me to dig into the question of privacy and self-sovereignty in our new AI-led world. We dig into why Eric founded Venice, as well as how blockchain rails are perfectly suited to serve this growing agentic economy. As ever, please enjoy.
Join me, Raoul Pal, as I go on a journey of discovery through the macro, crypto, and exponential age landscapes. In The Journey Man, I talk to the smartest people in the world so we can all become smarter together.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
Curious about online trading but haven't taken the first step yet? You're not alone and Plus500 Futures is a great place to start. The futures markets are moving fast and with Plus500 you can explore popular assets like oil, gold, the S&P 500, bitcoin, and more. From crypto to commodities, there's always something happening. The platform is super easy to use so you can trade on the go right from your phone. And you can get started with just $100 and jump into the action. See something interesting? Once your account is open, you can trade it in just a couple of clicks. And if you're not quite ready yet, you can practice with a free demo account. No risk, no pressure. With over 20 years of experience, Plus500 makes trading more accessible than ever. Check it out at plus500.com. Trading in future involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Not all applicants will qualify. Plus500, it's trading with a plus.

**Raoul Pal** (1:53)
Eric, welcome back to Real Vision. Been a long time.

**Eric Voorhees** (1:56)
Hey, it's been a minute. Good to see you.

**Raoul Pal** (1:59)
You've been a very busy man as well, which we're gonna talk about because there's a lot to talk about. But just for people's understanding, people who may not have seen you before, just give us a bit of your background and your story because it's a fascinating story, and where you're headed is even more fascinating, I think, as well.

**Eric Voorhees** (2:15)
Sure, yeah. So I'm of the Bitcoin world. I've got into Bitcoin very early back in 2011, back when no one had heard of it, and anyone who had heard of it thought it was a joke or a scam or both.
Fell in love with it because it basically was the ability to separate money from the state, which I believe to be one of the really most important initiatives on earth. So have been involved in Bitcoin and Crypto World since then, and built a couple of companies. And then everyone else got really interested in the AI stuff a few years ago.

**Raoul Pal** (2:53)
Before we get into the AI stuff for a second, I want to ask you a question about the original thesis of Bitcoin separating money from state and the state's adoption of Bitcoin. And how do you feel that? Because people are split on this.
I always thought it was inevitable. I've always thought of it as a Trojan horse, of our way of taking over their world. But others are upset and angry. I'm like, isn't this what we needed? I don't know. How do you think through this? Because it's valid for where we're going in the rest of the conversation as well.

**Eric Voorhees** (3:24)
I think the Trojan horse analogy is so apropos. First of all, states haven't adopted it. They should and will, but they haven't yet.
It is the best form of money that humans have ever created fundamentally.
Of course, if that's true, it will become adopted by greater and greater circles of individuals. It should not be surprising nor scary that eventually like larger companies, institutions of various kinds, TradFi has adopted it. Like that was, if it didn't get adopted by TradFi, then it means it had failed. So on its march to ascendancy, that is how things must go. And they don't change how it works. Like back in 2011, I could put Bitcoin on my computer and I could send it to anyone without anyone being able to stop me. I can do that today. So the only thing that's changed really is it's much more liquid, which makes it much more useful.

**Raoul Pal** (4:25)
Yeah, and if we go back over the journey, I was class of 2013, the journey has been that it has always managed to root itself around any obstacle. And so whether it was the state or whatever it was, whatever format the obstacle was, it managed to root itself around.