Trust Revolution cover art

Trust Revolution

Trust Revolution

By: Shawn Yeager
Listen for free

About this listen

Unfiltered conversations with builders, thinkers, and operators in Bitcoin and beyond. Exploring the systems we trust, why they work (or don't), and what comes next.

 Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • S02E15 Christian Keroles – What Dissidents Know About Bitcoin

    S02E15 Christian Keroles – What Dissidents Know About Bitcoin
    Dec 12 2025

    “It's not enough for me to be taken care of if everyone else on the planet is living in a digital gulag.” CK explains why HRF treats Bitcoin as essential infrastructure for human rights—and why dictators keep failing to build alternatives that work.

    Episode Summary

    One billion people live in democracies with stable currency and property rights. Seven billion don't. Christian Keroles, Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation, argues that Bitcoin flips this equation—giving everyone access to the best property rights and most stable money regardless of where they're born. In this conversation, CK breaks down why authoritarian regimes are the most enthusiastic about CBDCs yet consistently fail to achieve adoption. Why activists from Russia to Myanmar to Venezuela are choosing Bitcoin as their financial infrastructure, and what HRF has learned funding nearly 300 open-source Bitcoin projects. The pattern is clear: governments build intranets while Bitcoin builds the internet of money. And just like email in the 90s, the protocol works—we're just waiting for everyone to get an address.

    About the Guest

    Christian Keroles (CK) is Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation, where he leads the CBDC Tracker, Bitcoin Development Fund, and activist education programs. Before HRF, he spent years as Managing Director and COO at Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference, building the infrastructure that shaped Bitcoin's public narrative. His team has distributed millions in grants to open-source developers and trained over 300 activists from 50+ countries on Bitcoin self-custody. CK discovered Bitcoin in 2017 through Laura Shin's Unchained podcast and hasn't stopped building since.

    Social Links:

    • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ck_SNARKs
    • LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ckeroles
    • Nostr: https://primal.net/ck

    Key Quotes

    • “If you are opposing the guys in charge, you're not going to have access for very long.” — Christian Keroles
    • “Bitcoin is freedom enabling technology. Bitcoin is bad for dictators, and Bitcoin aligns with Western liberal values.” — Christian Keroles
    • “Rather than exporting troops, rather than exporting inflation, the way that we do that is we export freedom technology.” — Christian Keroles

    Key Takeaways

    • CBDCs are the intranet of money: Dictatorships are most excited about CBDCs because they enable capital controls, population surveillance, and data collection on unbanked citizens—but they consistently fail at consumer adoption because governments are terrible at shipping tech products.
    • Debanked means playing whack-a-mole: Activists under authoritarian regimes describe constant account closures, using aliases, and moving between platforms. Bitcoin gives them permissionless access to digital payments for the first time—reconnecting them to the global economy.
    • Bitcoin adoption follows the email playbook: The protocol works perfectly for sending value anywhere. The bottleneck is that nobody has a Bitcoin address yet. As more people come online, network effects compound—and HRF is funding the tools to accelerate that adoption.
    • eCash, Nostr, and open-source AI are the frontier: HRF sees these technologies as complementary layers that make Bitcoin more adoptable. eCash enables jurisdictional arbitrage for product builders; Nostr creates censorship-resistant social infrastructure; open-source AI focuses on practical threats from surveillance systems rather than theoretical superintelligence.

    Mentioned in Episode:

    • HRF CBDC Tracker - Monitoring government digital currency programs worldwide
    • Zeus Wallet - Lightning and eCash wallet CK uses personally
    • Bitcoin Design Foundation - User research for Bitcoin builders
    • Check Your Financial Privilege - Alex Gladstein's book on Bitcoin and human rights

    Podcast:

    • Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
    • Music: More Ghost Than Man
    Show More Show Less
    55 mins
  • S02E14 Why Ads Keep Winning

    S02E14 Why Ads Keep Winning
    Dec 5 2025

    Big Tech captures $670 a year from the average American through attention and data. Voluntary payment has never broken past 5% adoption in 50 years of trying. So why does it still matter? Because it's not about replacing ads. It's about having somewhere to go when the platforms decide you shouldn't exist.

    Episode Summary

    Voluntary payment sounds like the answer to surveillance capitalism. Pay creators directly, cut out the middlemen, become the customer instead of the product. The philosophy is compelling. The data is brutal. NPR, Wikipedia, Patreon, Nostr — participation rates cluster between 1-5% and haven't budged in decades. Technology isn't the problem. Human behavior is. When given a choice, most people choose free with ads over paying directly. But this episode reframes the entire question. Voluntary payment doesn't need to replace extraction economics. It needs to exist as an exit. When Patreon banned Sargon of Akkad in 2018, thousands of creators watched their income evaporate. When they fled to SubscribeStar, Stripe and PayPal cut that platform off too. OnlyFans nearly killed its own business model because banks demanded it. Operation Choke Point proved the government can strangle legal businesses through financial pressure alone. The 5% who voluntarily pay aren't your main revenue stream. They're your lifeboat — an uncancellable base that doesn't depend on any platform's good graces.

    Key Quotes

    "Your ad revenue pays the bills. Your voluntary supporters are your insurance policy."

    "Stop thinking about voluntary payment as charity. Think about it as investing in creators you can't afford to lose."

    "Voluntary payment can't dominate. Defaults always beat choice. Human nature doesn't really change. But it can exist at a scale that makes it viable."

    Key Takeaways

    • The 1-5% ceiling is structural, not technological: Patreon's conversion rate hasn't grown in a decade despite easier payments and lower friction. Better UX won't solve a values gap between early adopters and typical users.
    • Defaults beat decisions: Apple's tracking transparency saw a 55-point swing from a single design change. People don't choose surveillance — they just don't reject it. Same with payment. The path forward may be changing defaults, not convincing more people to pay.
    • Voluntary payment is deplatforming insurance: When Patreon, PayPal, or your bank decides you're too risky, most creators have no backup. Those who built direct relationships with even 5% of their audience have an escape route.
    • The hybrid model works: Chapo Trap House ($140K/month Patreon plus sponsors), Tim Dillon ($200K/month Patreon plus ads) — successful creators aren't choosing between models, they're using both.

    Timestamps

    • [00:43] The promise of value for value — paying creators instead of being monetized
    • [02:15] The $670 Big Tech extracts annually from the average American
    • [04:30] Evidence voluntary payment can work: Patreon success stories and Apple's tracking data
    • [07:45] The counterevidence: YouTube Premium at 9%, Netflix ads at 55% of signups
    • [10:20] Nostr's payment participation — 0.5% despite frictionless Bitcoin integration
    • [14:30] Historical data: NPR, Wikipedia, pay-what-you-want restaurants all hit the same ceiling
    • [17:00] Why defaults determine behavior more than decisions
    • [18:45] The exit option reframe — why voluntary payment still matters
    • [20:30] The Patreon/Sargon cascade and SubscribeStar deplatforming
    • [23:00] Operation Choke Point and financial censorship
    • [25:30] How successful creators actually operate: the hybrid model
    • [28:00] What this means for creators, listeners, and builders

    Mentioned in Episode

    • Fountain - Podcasting 2.0 app with Bitcoin Lightning payments
    • Nostr - Censorship-resistant social protocol with built-in payments
    • Patreon - Creator subscription platform
    • OpenSats - Open source Bitcoin and freedom tech funding

    Podcast

    • Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
    • Music: More Ghost Than Man
    Show More Show Less
    24 mins
  • S02E13 Cory Doctorow – Why Every Platform Betrays You

    S02E13 Cory Doctorow – Why Every Platform Betrays You
    Nov 26 2025
    “The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate.” Cory Doctorow didn't just coin “enshittification”—he mapped the precise mechanics of how every platform you depend on will eventually turn against you, and why voting with your wallet won't save you. Episode Summary Cory Doctorow breaks down the three-stage process by which platforms lure users in, lock them down, and extract maximum value until the whole thing collapses. Using Facebook as the prototype, he traces how lock-in happens automatically through what economists call the collective action problem—your friends hold you hostage, you hold them hostage, and no one can agree when to leave. The solution isn't to shatter these platforms but to evacuate them through interoperability mandates and adversarial jailbreaking that lets users maintain connections while migrating to alternatives. Doctorow argues that the coming “post-American internet” will emerge as other nations realize they no longer need to tolerate US tech dominance now that tariff threats have materialized anyway—creating an unlikely coalition of digital rights advocates, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, and national security hawks who all want the right to modify and replace American firmware. For individuals, he's blunt: join the EFF or a similar collective and stop agonizing over consumption choices. Boycotts only work when they're organized, and the energy you spend debating whether to stay on X is energy you should spend building systemic change. About the Guest Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist who works as a special advisor for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and edits the daily blog Pluralistic. He coined “enshittification,” named the American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year, and has authored over 30 books, including the recent Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. A former European Affairs Coordinator for EFF who helped establish the UK Open Rights Group, he holds honorary doctorates from York University and the Open University and serves as a Cornell AD White Professor-at-Large and MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate. He lives in Burbank, uses Linux on a Framework laptop, and remains doggedly enthusiastic about RSS. Mastodon: https://mamot.fr/@pluralisticX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorowBlog: https://pluralistic.netWebsite: https://craphound.com Key Quotes “The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate. And if you want a smaller government, have that government first and foremost enforce antitrust law.” — Cory Doctorow “People who tell you to vote with your wallet typically have thicker wallets than you and anticipate winning that vote.” — Cory Doctorow “We don't want to shatter the platforms. We want to evacuate them.” — Cory Doctorow Key Takeaways Lock-in happens through your relationships, not technology: The collective action problem means your friends hold you hostage on platforms—you can't leave until they do, and they won't until you do. This automatic lock-in is why platforms can degrade service without losing users.Interoperability is the escape hatch: The same tactics Facebook used to poach MySpace users (bots that scraped your feed and pushed replies back) could evacuate today's platforms. Mandating protocols like ActivityPub, combined with legal protection for adversarial jailbreaking, creates “supple but strong” pressure that companies can't easily evade.The post-American internet is coming: Other nations accepted US tech dominance to avoid tariffs. Now that tariffs exist anyway, a coalition of entrepreneurs (who want to cream off monopoly profits), digital rights advocates, and national security hawks (who fear Trump bricking their tractors) are converging on the same solution: jailbreak American technology.Individual action matters less than collective organizing: Stop agonizing over whether to stay on Twitter. If the platform still serves you, use it—then spend that freed-up energy joining EFF, organizing a union, or supporting mutual aid. Boycotts work only when they're coordinated; consumption choices are not politics. Timestamps [00:00] Cold open: Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse pivot as peak enshittification[03:53] The three stages of enshittification using Facebook as case study[09:48] Why this isn't collusion—it's unshackled business seeking its ideal form[14:16] How tech consolidation enables regulatory capture[26:12] Protocols vs platforms: Why Bitcoin isn't the answer[33:06] Interoperability: How Facebook killed MySpace with the same tactics we need now[37:05] AT&T's 69-year breakup and why anti-monopoly law matters[44:53] The post-American internet: Why other nations will jailbreak US tech[52:37] Technology as alchemy vs science—why secrecy makes everything worse[58:42] Hollowing out platforms vs shattering ...
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 14 mins
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.