Embracing Cryptocurrency Voters – Tyler Whirty (HODLpac)

Tyler Whirty:

The crypto community is a powder keg of political energy.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing partner of startup caucus, the home of campaign tech innovation on the right welcome to the business of politics show on this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen every day. We're talking with Tyler wordy, founder of ho pack a pack for crypto voters that is also a crypto native organization and community governed. Don't worry if you don't know what some of those words mean or mean together. In combination, we dive into that and more in our conversation. Let's get to it. Tyler, before we go any further, crypto is still a new concept. So I wanna make sure that we have a, a shared understanding. Give us your best overview of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and web three. And I may jump in and ask you to explain some, some terminology along the way.

Tyler Whirty:

Yeah, of course. So thank you, Eric, for having me, this is a big fan of this show. So I'm excited to talk about crypto and it's application to politics. So just to to answer your first question, like what is crypto, that's a huge question. So many, you know, people that have like dipped their toes in, in, in crypto and web three, you know, find themselves falling down the rabbit hole and it leads to so many different, you know, topics and avenues, but I'll, I'll give you a good, hopefully give you a good overview. So, you know, a couple key concepts, blockchain cryptocurrency, web three blockchains refer to, you know, this novel kind of database, basically blockchains represent our peer-to-peer networks where a decentralized ledger keeps track of data. And that enables what is now known as web three and, and, and differs from things like web two in that there's no central company or actor that's storing the data and controlling and, and kind of gate keeping that data. So blockchains enable a lot of things. They enable digital native peer-to-peer payments. So transfers of value.

Eric Wilson:

So Tyler, the right way to think about blockchains or are, are sort of a, a database. So just like this podcast is stored on a database and our, our websites are built on databases and all the applications we use are built on, on databases instead of that being stored and controlled by, you know, maybe it's hosted on my own computer or I host it to the cloud. It's actually hosted on numerous other computers around the world, these other peers on the network. So at its core, blockchain is this new type of database technology. And just like with, let's say HTML, I can build many different types of websites with this type of database. You can then go build many different types of applications. Do I have that right?

Tyler Whirty:

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Blockchains at its at their core enable, you know, a network of computers to come to a shared consensus about, you know, the state of the blockchain, which again is, is, is storing data. So if Bitcoin, for example, you know, that allows a network of people to come to a consensus around who owns Bitcoin, the token, the cryptocurrency, and allows the transfer of value a as a result. Now, other things like Ethereum allow other types of applications to be built on top and you can get into things like NFTs and, and Dows, which are other kind of concepts that I'm sure other people have or that the listeners have heard of. But, but yeah, that, that's the essential kind of understanding of, of what a blockchain is. It's a shared consensus over a, a set of data.

Eric Wilson:

And so we just to, to, to really spell this out folks, the reason that these databases, these blockchain ledgers can be open to the public. Everyone can have a copy and yet they still maintain the integrity of the data that they're recording is through cryptography. Right? So I have a set of digits that can unlock my data. Other people can see sort of the, the, the public aspects of that. And that's why we call it cryptocurrency, right. Because it's secured with cryptography, just like securing email, any other sort of online security that we're familiar with. And so Bitcoin is probably the most well known application of blockchain tech, but not the only one. Correct?

Tyler Whirty:

Correct.

Eric Wilson:

So what do we mean when we talk about web three?

Tyler Whirty:

So web three is kind of the new version of the web that's enabled by blockchains, right? So another kind of key concept here, you know, kind of shorthand thing of way to understand this is that we're moving from platforms to protocols. So you mentioned email, right. Email itself is a protocol there it's, it's a, you know, agreed upon, you know, set of rules and, you know, code essentially that allows, you know, people to send emails to each other. And doesn't matter whether you're using Gmail or Yahoo mail or whatever else it all works together. It just has a different front end. Right. So that's a great way of kind of understanding like what blockchains enable the you know, it's, it's, it's protocol based. So everyone's agreeing on an underlying set of, of, of like of concepts and technology and using the same you know, protocol and then building applications on top of that, which are inherently interoperable because of, you know, the, because everyone's using the same, the same blockchain that unlocks open source development in, in, you know, people contributing in building different projects and it unleashes, you know, creative energy, creative destruction and all that good stuff, all that things that, you know, that, that propel us to, you know, to, you know, innovation, whereas the platform era, the kind of the web two era, you, you know, you're reliant on, you know, one company to build that new feature or build, you know, the new experience or, or whatever else.

And, and, you know, they own all the data that comes from that. Whereas, you know, the, in web three it's open season, you can go ahead and you can build whatever, whatever you want using the concepts. And it pushes things forward and everyone builds on top of each other. So this is really, you know, it's the future of the, of the web and, and, you know, the future is kind of here now, web three is, you know, thousands of developers and billions of dollars are being, are being you know, devoted to building this, this new internet.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. So I hope that, you know, our listeners, if you, if, you know, you may be skeptical of, of cryptocurrency and, or, or really haven't spent time to, to look into it, or just unsure of the whole idea, I hope they walk away with an understanding here that it's not just Bitcoin and assets on the internet NFTs, but there's a whole world of applications that really haven't been tapped into yet. And so as folks that listen to the show or are working on campaigns, talking to voters, you run ho pack. And so explain for us what a crypto voter is and what are the issues that they care

Tyler Whirty:

About. Yeah. You know, so that's a, it is a great question. I think the crypto voter is an emerging concept. I mentioned the rabbit hole that so many people fall down when they kind of discover crypto and get, and get more into it. When you come out the other side, you have some level of crypto voter in you. Right. Right. Which is, you care about certain issues that affect this new paradigm to use the, the classic word. So, you know, what are those things? Some of them are digital privacy, right. So the way you kind of interact with web three, you're doing so through a wallet. It's not Eric Wilson's account with Facebook. You know, that's, that's hooked up to your email and maybe your phone number and all that kind of stuff. It's instead you are working out of a meta mask or something that, which is just a browser extension that might be able to be traced back to you in certain ways.

But, you know, there's a, there's a certain pseudonymity or anonymity to it. And that as many listeners here know, like, has some friction with, with certain parts of the current kind of regulatory framework for the internet or, or for online commerce or, or what have you. So like those things matter. Right. I think there's, there's like, there's, there's other more tactical issues, right. For like the use of cryptocurrency in every, in everyday life, you know, cryptocurrency isn't like taxed efficiently, or, or kind of like on par with, with other currencies, like if you were gonna use euros in the United States or something. So there's like, there's tactical issues, but there's also just these, these big picture of like, enable of like allowing individuals to have the choice to kind of participate in this new ecosystem, you know, without you know, running a fel of, of like laws, you know, made for, for other times and circumstances.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And it seems like a lot of what the crypto community is fighting right now is let's not stifle innovation. Let's not be skeptical of something just because it's new. And I think you're seeing different states adopt different postures of who's friendly to crypto the federal government is taking a look. So it's definitely in the mix in regulation and, and politics. And so obviously people are going to, to vote based on that. One of the things that makes Hodel pack unique is that it's governed by the community of supporters, how in the world does that

Tyler Whirty:

Work? Right. Yeah. So, you know, so there, there's this concept and I, I think I mentioned it earlier, this concept of, of a Dow a decentralized autonomous organization, it's a kind of a derivative concept of, of what a, a like of what web three enables, which is, which is true, you know, digital ownership, if you own a token that you know, is granted some type of governance rights over you know, either an entire decentralized application, something like a UN swap, right. Which is like an exchange protocol in, in, you know, in web three exchange protocol you know, then if you own unis swap tokens, you have a, a, a vote in the, in the governance of that

Eric Wilson:

Protocol. Got it. So instead of someone just paying their dues and being a member in the pack, they are also almost like a, well they're, they're a voting member of how the, the pack is run.

Tyler Whirty:

Right. Well, so that yes, and that, and I'm the first to admit that, that, you know, the, the difference between hold pack's community governance and, you know, like I, the example I use, like, you know, owning a uni token and having a, like a governance token over a, you know, a protocol you know, there, they're very different concepts if hold pack was completely on chain and, and, you know, run by smart contracts. And, you know, there was no, you know, human element to it that I would be more comfortable saying that yes, hold pack is a do. And I think people, but, but people are kind of loose with that term. Right. So they, they say, you know, that things are Dows when there's, you know, it's, they're not, you know, true. Dows in the sense of the word, but that's kind of like a, you know, your own purity test based on what, how you think about those concepts.

Eric Wilson:

Right. And, and I think one of the things that's really important here is that there're always gonna be degrees or, or shades of how radically the technology gets applied. Just, you know, folks may be familiar with the constitution now, which was this online effort to buy a copy of the constitution of the United States when it was up for auction. You know, they, I think they fairly called themselves the Dow, but when you look into how it was actually structured, they, they had to have people in the real world working with the auction house, making sure that the assets got verified and, and figuring out what they were gonna do with it. It's just not there are some upward limits to, yes, totally digital protocol can be run by a group of people, but things that interact with the real world are, are gonna have to have that, that hybrid approach.

Tyler Whirty:

That's right. Yeah. So, you know, and we're in the early innings of like, of figuring those types of things out, but I think that's a great example. So Hoak kind of fits into that camp. Right. I mean, I would love to build a fully on chain pack. I think that's really cool. And, you know, wink, wink, you know, maybe I think

Eric Wilson:

The FEC would have some issues with you

Tyler Whirty:

Potentially, potentially potentially for sure. But, you know, it's still an interesting thought experiment and an interesting kind of like goal, but, but anyway, yeah. So hold pack, it's playing with these concepts of a community governed, digitally native political organization might look like if you're able to build that that has some advantages, right? So NFTs, you know, right now a lot of people think of those as, you know, they picture the board apes, right. Of board ape yacht club, or they picture some other kind of silly profile picture. But, but really what NFTs are when you're interacting with web three it's it's wallet based, you're not necessarily signing up anywhere and like giving over your, your information, but so NFTs, you know, that you hold in your wallet for being a part of hold pack, right. Or being a part of constitution Dow or being a part of, you know, Ukraine Dow, right.

Where they raised a bunch of money from a web three kind of crowd fund to to send to Ukraine to support, you know, the, the war effort, those are kind of digital identity markers, right? Like you collect these NFT NFTs, they, they create your digital identity. They, they add to the, you know, the multi-layered, you know, sense of, of digital self, that web three kind of enables. And I think that's really interesting. Right. And, and of course politics is such an awesome, you know, application of that concept, in my opinion, right. The, so many people, I mean, for better or for worse, you know, nowadays kind of hold

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. Make politics, their identity, right.

Tyler Whirty:

Yeah. You know, you know, for better exactly. They, part of their, part of their identity is their political identity and the, you know, the groups they align with the ideas they support. And I think NFTs as, as we kind of move more into a web three version of digital life NFTs for politics are, are gonna be, you know, kind of what helps people kind of create that identity. Right. And I think that's just where we are in the early, early innings of this. But I think like it's such a fascinating concept, you know, some people have to be working on this.

Eric Wilson:

Absolutely. And, and so even at this early stage, how are we seeing candidates and elected officials reach out to crypto voters?

Tyler Whirty:

So crypto voters, I, you know, I didn't mean to minimize them, right. I, I, I think, you know, there are, the crypto community is a, is, is a you know, a powder keg of, of political energy. And we've seen it pop up several times in the last few years. Whether it be at the end of the Trump administration, when there was a, you know, treasury department move to, to restrict the use of self-hosted wallets, which is the concept that we've been talking about today or, you know, in the infrastructure bill fight last year, when, when there was some anti crypto provisions, you know, the crypto community has, has you know, rallied behind those or, or rallied in light of those things. And, and, you know, set the record for treasury department public comments and, you know, sent something like 50,000, you know, calls and emails to, to members of, of Congress and, and senators around the infrastructure bill fight.

so, so there there's this latent and well, not even really latent, there's this real, you know, organized kind of hive, mind, energy in the crypto community. And in that, you know, it has been channeled into politics you know, several times over the last few years. And, and, you know, I think as a result of that, you know, and also as a result of, you know, this is a newly kind of wealthy class, right? In American society, you know, a lot of politicians have taken notice and, and they've reaching out to, to the crypto community and, you know, leaning into learning about issues that matter to us. Right. And, and I think that's, that's been really cool to see, and it's been on both sides of the aisle. You know, I think there's a kind of a different different reasons for different types of politicians on, on, you know, why crypto is appealing and why web three is appealing. But you know, the, the idea certainly behind hold pack is, is to is to get as many politicians and policy makers to kind of engage and, and learn about these issues. Cuz I think, you know, once, once you do kind of dig in and, and start learning about it, it's hard to hard to, you know, be staunchly against it.

Eric Wilson:

Right. You're listening to the business of politics show. I'm speaking with Tyler wordy founder of Hoak, we're talking about the future of blockchain technology in politics. Now, Tyler, you alluded to NFTs a little bit earlier and I'm certainly excited about all the things that web three has to offer, especially when it comes to politics. What are some applications that you are eager to see that maybe we aren't ready for yet or, or just over the horizon, I guess in other words, what should people be looking out for when they, they see it next? Yeah.

Tyler Whirty:

You know, that's a great question I saw. I mean, you know, like we could, we could talk about NFTs for the whole podcast, but I think just to return to that, you know, NFTs, they are community building technology. Right. And like what is politics, but building community certainly on the campaign side, like you are, you know, that's, that is the goal.

Eric Wilson:

So yeah. Let me just jump in here and say NFTs, non fungible tokens. Thank you. So instead of like a Bitcoin where my Bitcoin is the same as your Bitcoin, the NFT is, is a unique digital asset. Most people are, are familiar with them as, as sort of these profile pictures, but they can represent so much more. So there's the, that's what an NFT is. And, and so I'll let you keep elaborating on, on how they might be used in politics.

Tyler Whirty:

Yeah, sure. You know, and, and I think you can just kind of say tokens as well. I mean, I mean, you know, a lot of NFT, like the, the real difference between regular kind of crypto tokens, if you will, and, and NFTs, there's just a couple lines of code, right? Like it, it, but, but they, but yes, they, you know so to, to, to talk about NFTs and politics, you know, they are community building technology. So, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of, you know, Twitter users listening right now. You've probably seen, you know profile picture NFTs, you know, on Twitter, you know, just think about the power of that in a political campaign. You know, in, in Facebook and Instagram are, are integrating NFTs to soon as well. So, you know, instead of just donating to a campaign, you donate and you get an NFT and you put it in your social media and then all, you know, that that has just advertising and, and you know, other benefits for, for the, for the candidate or for the organization, that's using that as, as kind of a fundraising tool.

you know, we've talked about Dows, you know, I think that's fascinating, right? Like if there's a future where a lot of, you know, spontaneous kind of political organization can happen just like online without somebody, you know, certainly there's always kind of leaders and stuff like this, but you know, Dows will enable, you know, spontaneous kind of political activity in organization by, you know, individuals and, you know, is, is that the future of kind of grassroots advocacy? You know, maybe, maybe there's an element of, of that in there of course now, right. Another way to think about it, like just speaking right to the political, you know, operators that listening, of course, just accepting crypto assets, you know, on your campaign is a good way of like having another, you know, source of funding, right? So it, it just leaning into web three. I think there's, there's not a whole lot of downsides if, if you're able to do it in a, you know, a compliant way and you know, do doing it smartly.

Eric Wilson:

And I think that there's a really important thread here between what's happening in web three and the trends that I'm seeing with campaign technology. I often emphasize the fact that we are seeing more technology and software following supporters rather than campaigns. So, great example of this on the right is win red. You have a as a donor, an account with win red, other campaigns plug into that on the left mobilized, this is their event platform. You have an account with mobilized and then other campaigns advertised their events on mobilized. And so this ownership layer that that web three is starting to bring into play is going to, to really accelerate that trend. And as eager as I am about all of this, you said it yourself, we're we're in, in very early innings. It is uncertain regulatory ground. Sometimes with crypto, it's difficult to really use this. I've been locked out of a wallet before <laugh> an expensive mistake to make it is not consumer grade technology yet. What needs to happen before we see the transformation of politics by web three

Tyler Whirty:

Great point and great question. So, you know, I think for web three, two to transform politics is, is gonna take tools that make that easy, right. And tools. And, and then, and so that's answer one, answer two is, you know, web three will transform politics. Wow. It's transforming everything else. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. So like, I think digital life is gonna change a lot over the next few years.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. I like to think about it as web three or, and, and blockchain is the technology. And right now we're very much at the not, not hobbyist phase, but you have to be an expert. It reminds me a lot of the early days of the web, where if you wanted to have a website, you had to know HTML and being able to host and fast forward to today, we have all these DIY website builders and they make it very easy, but they're still on HTML and people who care to learn about HTML and CSS can build things on their own independent of, of other folks have much more autonomy. And I think we need to get to essentially the, like the drag and drop builders of web three.

Tyler Whirty:

Right. Right. But the, you know, the promise is that even if there are tools that make it easier, you know, the drag and drop of web three, if you will, which I think is a interesting concept, it won't mean sacrificing your digital sovereignty if you will. Right. which would, well, hopefully, right. I mean, that's what a lot of people in the, in the space are working towards to make sure that we don't have a kind of re aggregation of, of, you know, of again, I'm using this term digital life. Cause I think it really does kind of it's it's it is so all encompassing that digital life is a good way to describe it, that we don't want, you know, that just a new Facebook, right. Or a new kind of bank, you know, banking system. We, we, you know, we wanna, we wanna restore, you know, created a, a, a new, a new version of the web where that it's, it's more decentralized and more, you know it has more self sovereignty and, and, you know, individual, but yeah, there's gonna be trade offs and there's gonna be there's luckily there's a lot of smarter people than I working on, like these concepts for, for general applications.

I'm just thinking a lot about that, their applications to politics.

Eric Wilson:

Right. So Tyler, if someone is interested in learning more about web three after listening to our conversation what are some of the best ways for them to get started?

Tyler Whirty:

Yeah. So the love this question. So I, I, I have three, I have three things for, for listeners top of mind, a 16 Z the the venture firm has a, has a, a collection of, of of writing and in, in videos and stuff on their website called the crypto Canon C a N O N. So I would, I recommend that that has a lot of good information variant fund which is another web three focused venture firm has a lot of good writing on their, on their site about, you know, this concept of the ownership economy, which is something that the web web three is enabling, right ownership and like more widely distributing ownership of, of you know, of, of web applications and, you know, all the good stuff that's being built. Right. So and, and much more, right. Like this is concept that we've been talking about. So I, I would point them in that direction. And then if they're interested in you know, more policy or politics related stuff then I would, I would point them in the direction of, of coin center and the blockchain association, which, you know, have really good really good material on some of the some of the policy policy issues related to, to crypto.

Eric Wilson:

And I'll recommend rabbit hole. I think it's rabbit hole dot Gigi as a really good HandsOn resource. It sort of guides you through, okay. You know, here, here's building a wallet, here's completing a task, here's voting in a Dow. So folks who are really interested in getting, getting hands on, on what it has to offer in a, in a fairly low stakes way, that's another great resource. Tyler, you're obviously working on some tools to help campaigns and packs tap into the power of web three. What's another startup that you'd like to see in the political web three space.

Tyler Whirty:

Yeah. You know, so I would say that if anybody's thinking about these things I want to talk, so please reach out at T wordy on Twitter. Maybe we can put that on, on, on, you know, the show notes or something. Yeah,

Eric Wilson:

For

Tyler Whirty:

Sure. Amazing. so if anybody's thinking about these concepts, I want to talk, there's very few of us that are you know, and I'm hopefully, you know, this, this podcast can, can spark some you know, some, some more people and spark some ideas. So I would say that, you know, that, and, and then, you know, I would just, I, I really, I would love to see more startup organizations. Right. I think, I think there, there's a, if, if you're a young person listening to this and, you know, you wanna run your own five, one C, four, or pack, or, you know, other type of organization one day you know, why not build it on web three rails, right. Let's push this, push it forward, build the next generation of K street of think tanks of whatever on, you know, in DC, like let's build DC in the metaverse like, just kidding. But I think there's something to that. I'd love to see more you know, kind of policy entrepreneurs, if you will you know, start to think about how they can incorporate this into their toolbox

Eric Wilson:

And web three really makes it easier. That's the idea to create these types of organizations. That's, that's our goal to eliminate some of these gatekeepers that, that have made it historically difficult to administer an institution like this. So, Tyler, you've given us a lot to think about a lot of homework to do. I wanna say, thank you so much for joining us. Folks can learn more about Tyler I'll link to his Twitter account, as well as to total pack. And remember to share this episode, if it made you a little bit smarter, if it gave you something to think about, we also appreciate your subscription wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you've been listening for a while, be sure and leave us a review. That's also really helpful for reaching new listeners and, and trying to get more people into our conversations about innovation and new technology for campaigns. And now you can join our email list at our new website, business of politics, podcast.com. You'll get email alerts anytime there are new episodes, and you'll get to see transcripts show notes and see all the episodes you may have missed. So do check out our new website, business of politics, podcast.com with that, I'll say, thank you for listening. And we'll talk to you next time.

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