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Balaji Srinivasan

Former CTO of Coinbase, Independent

Search every verified Balaji Srinivasan interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Balaji Srinivasan, founder of The Network State and Network School, spoke at multiple events in Singapore in October 2026, including TOKEN2049 and the Network State Conference. He discussed the concept of network states, describing them as cloud communities that crowdfund territory and eventually seek diplomatic recognition. He highlighted Network School's partnership with the Republic of Kazakhstan, calling the country "Singapore with space to build" and stating that it has the physical and digital infrastructure to become a global tech hub. He also said that most countries are small and can be engaged like enterprises, and that mobility serves as a non-violent alternative to military defense. At TOKEN2049, Srinivasan participated in a panel on Zcash, where he argued that privacy-focused cryptocurrency is necessary as a hedge against surveillance and seizure, and he described Zcash as "insurance against Bitcoin." In other appearances, he discussed the intersection of AI and cryptography, stating that "AI is the sword, ZK is the shield," and expressed the view that public key cryptography will continue but may face security challenges. He also commented on fiat currency, describing it as "proof of future work" and suggesting that the dollar will not maintain its store of value.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“The entire premise behind KYC is, 'Oh, the government is protecting you from some criminals or something. Therefore, upload all your passport and other stuff.' But, almost certainly today the cost-benefit of uploading that stuff and creating this honeypot with millions and millions of passports and so on. In the age of AI, that's just guaranteed to eventually get hacked at some point. And those are the hacks that peo”

“Bitcoin's transparency is actually a feature in a certain sense, which is um you know, when President Bukele of El Salvador posted a Bitcoin address, uh anybody can verify how much BTC is at that address. By contrast, if somebody today was to post a video of how much gold there was in Fort Knox, because of AI, you wouldn't necessarily believe that there was that much gold in Fort Knox. And so, we've actually hit a fl”

“Many people would tell me, 'Oh, Balaji, you're so naive. You know, these network states don't have a military. The nation-states are all going to kill you, blah blah blah.' And you know, the thing is I obviously knew that like, you know, nation-states have militaries, but clearly Google got to trillions of dollars without firing a shot. Bitcoin got to trillions of dollars without firing a shot. And now I've got it in”

“So I do think if AI is the sword, ZK is the shield. Right? So like if really if AI is the eye that guides the sword, then you know, it can pick up even a very subtle little signal on something. It can it doesn't miss a trick. You know, it can synthesize out of thousands of pages of data. But the ZK can defend against that by giving zero knowledge, right? So that's one part of it is ZK gives the individual leverage to”

“I think there's actually you know people talk about the singularity but there's several singularities. In fact, you can make a deck which is just going through like 50, 70 so for example, rates are going through the moon as you know the sovereign debt crisis is happening this gigantic important thing. All like meeting and dating in the West is just all internet now. Every other form of meeting people has gone to zero”

“Your success ruins you in a way. Yes. Um, and so whatever the next store value is, the government wants just like it did with gold. Right. And so I think that's a good sign for Bitcoin in many price.”

Other executives at Independent

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