The Chopping Block: Live at TOKEN2049 feat. Balaji Srinivasan & Arthur Hayes on Kazakhstan, Crypto Bunker Mode, and the L2 Shutdowns

Arthur Hayes (0:00)

I mean, you motherfuckers come to my city, and the traffic is insane for like, you know, a whole week.

Balaji Srinivasan (0:04)

Then if you want 10,000 acres for Arthur Hayes City, we can do that. Even Squid Game is showing all the South Koreans killing each other or whatever, right?

Arthur Hayes (0:13)

How much by, Joe, did you drink?

Haseeb Qureshi (0:16)

Not a dividend.

Tom Schmidt (0:17)

It's a tale of two clans.

Haseeb Qureshi (0:18)

Now, your losses are on someone else's balance sheet.

Tom Schmidt (0:21)

Generally speaking, air drops are kind of pointless anyways.

Haseeb Qureshi (0:23)

I mean, trading firms who are very involved.

Tom Schmidt (0:26)

I like that either of the ultimate.

Haseeb Qureshi (0:28)

DeFi protocol is part of the antidote to this problem.

Welcome to The Chopping Block. Every couple of weeks, the now five of us get together and give the industry insider's perspective on the crypto topics of the day. So quick intro, we've got Tom, the DeFi Maven and Master of Memes.

Tom Schmidt (0:43)

Hello, everyone.

Haseeb Qureshi (0:44)

Next, we've got Tarun, the Giga Brain and Granpuba Adgauntlet.

Joining us again, a Token2049 tradition. We've got Arthur Hayes, the Arbiter of Alpha at Maelstrom. Howdy. Then, of course, we've got Balaji, the Bitcoin Brainiac, and obviously, the head hype man at Dragonfly. We're early-stage investors in crypto, but I want to copy out that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see ChoppingBlock.xyz for more disclosures. So we are here at Token2049 in Singapore. It is, I think at this point, the biggest crypto conference in the world. It's one of the only places where I think you still feel this kind of energy.

It's like the US conferences have gotten very institutional, a lot of suits. This is like the one retail mega conference that still gets the juices flowing. How have you guys felt about Token2049?

Arthur Hayes (1:33)

I mean, your mother fuckers come to my city and traffic is insane for a whole week.

Haseeb Qureshi (1:37)

But it's not just us. It's like, it's everything happening at the same time. There's like five conferences happening. There's like Milk-in, there's obviously F1 happening this weekend. So it's not just us. Also, the air here is insanely bad for some reason. It's like Delhi. It's bad. Yeah.

Tom Schmidt (1:50)

It's worse than Delhi.

Balaji Srinivasan (1:52)

Indonesia fires it.

Haseeb Qureshi (1:53)

Yeah, that's what I've heard. It fires in Indonesia.

Tom Schmidt (1:55)

I feel like the institutional shift, you also feel it here. This is like the first year where there's been no wrapped Lambo out front, and it's just everyone is growing up a little bit, which makes me a little bit sad. I was looking forward to more jubilation.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:09)

There's still one more day.

Tom Schmidt (2:10)

There's one more day. You can make your dream happen still.

Haseeb Qureshi (2:13)

Yeah, that's true. That's true. The Lambo's are tomorrow.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:17)

I have an observation by the way, which is I think crypto is MNA-ing Western institutions, but Eastern institutions are more functional, so they will survive. Western institutions, financial institutions won't. Anything that's holding a lot of 10-year, 20-year, 30-year treasuries, I'm sure Arthur has some opinions on that. They're wrecked.

Haseeb Qureshi (2:34)

Fair enough. Well, I want to start with this story. Speaking of fires in Southeast Asia, the network state has recently pulled the plug on its headquarters in Southeast Asia, and is now moving to Kazakhstan.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:47)

Well, so yes, we actually already moved.

Haseeb Qureshi (2:49)

Already moved to Kazakhstan. Tell us the story of how this all played out.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:53)

So actually, we actually still have an office in Singapore, and we're actually going to open up something else in Southeast Asia, so stationed on that. But basically, Kazakhstan, just to talk about Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan is going to be the next El Salvador, the next UAE, the next Singapore. The reason is, so first, why was it off the radar? Well, there's a Barat movie which really misled everybody about what Kazakhstan is. You see a movie and you think, okay, it's like a caricature of reality, but it's like in the ballpark, like Jurassic ballpark, you ballpark approximate it like the DNA in Jurassic Park, but it's actually totally not.

Really, what Kazakhstan is, is it's land Asia.

You're all familiar with like coastal Asia because the way Americans or Westerners learn geography is America fights wars there. So like Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Americans know those countries exist and they're on the coast. China also is a part of the Korean War. Singapore recently, Crazy Rich Asians, there's a movie, they know Singapore exists, but they're all on the coast. Kazakhstan is so far inland and it's adjacent to Russia and China. It speaks Russian so it doesn't post in English. For all these reasons, Americans don't really have a reason to go there plus Barat made it seem like it's not a great place. Because of that, it's like this encased in amber, absolutely amazing country which is, I would call it Singapore but with space to build. It has all of the quality of governance of a UAE or Singapore, really high IQ people and government like they're number one in the Physics Olympiad, tying with China and India which is pretty legit as a country.