62 - Governance and Capital | Joel Monegro
Bankless
Bankless
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2021
⏱️ 113 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joel Monegro is a partner at Placeholder VC, where he invests in decentralized networks and companies that democratize data, wealth, and power.
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Bankless Podcast #62 | Governance and Capital
Guest: Joel Monegro
Joel Monegro is a partner at Placeholder, a venture capital firm where he invests in decentralized networks and companies that democratize access to data, wealth, and power. He started the firm in 2017 with his friend Chris Burniske and mentor Brad Burnham after three years at Union Square Ventures, developing the firm’s early blockchain thesis and portfolio.
In this episode, Joel explores the relationship between Governance and Capital, broadly used terms in desperate need of proper definition. Governance focuses on the decision making process in regards to capital. Capital is a broad term for economic resources – that which has utility. Governance can refer to autocratic individual decision making, but we dive into governance as a mechanism for collective decisions and achieving consensus. It is typically tied to a social and/or economic system and is made of structures that drive decision making among groups of people.
Capital represents influence, power, or control over economic resources. Capital and its utility are natural social phenomena and are relative in nature. Governance and Capital are deeply linked and arguably synonymous. The optimization of governance over capital and capital instruments are priorities of blockchains, which involve both financial and governance technology. The utility of capital can increase when pooled, especially when governance is scaled and effective.
A core argument of the crypto industry is that blockchains offer a more advanced instrumentation of capital, creating maximally efficient pathways for the exchange of value. They allow the transaction/contract settlement layer to migrate away from a state-backed system, which involves the use of courts and violence to achieve security. Replacing violence with cryptographic consensus is a powerful but challenging concept – one explored deeply in this episode with Joel Monegro.
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Resources:
Placeholder VC Blog
https://www.placeholder.vc/
Joel on Twitter
https://twitter.com/jmonegro?s=20
Generations - Strauss and Howe
https://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier, internet, money, and internet finance. |
| 0:19.6 | This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front, run the opportunity. |
| 0:24.6 | This is Ryan Sean Adams, I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become |
| 0:29.7 | more bankless. |
| 0:31.2 | David, fantastic episode. |
| 0:33.9 | Who did we have on and what did we discuss? |
| 0:36.6 | We had on Joel Manegro of Placeholder V.C. |
| 0:40.2 | Joel is very close with Chris Berniske, who we've also had on the podcast. |
| 0:44.8 | And I personally really enjoy this duo of really big thinkers. |
| 0:50.4 | And these guys really take the very nuanced details of, you know, token governance, you |
| 0:56.0 | know, crypto network management and really extrapolate it from the micro all the way to |
| 1:01.9 | the macro. |
| 1:02.9 | And this is a bankless podcast that I think is really pushing the frontier of crypto |
| 1:08.1 | knowledge. |
| 1:09.1 | Because again, we are not designing these systems. |
| 1:11.4 | We are exploring these systems. |
| 1:13.4 | And Joel I think is doing a really good job exploring the frontier of crypto network governance |
| 1:19.6 | and what that means. |
| 1:21.0 | And he has, I think, done a very fantastic job really defining and articulating what |
| 1:26.0 | is actually going on when we talk about governance and linking it to capital and his association |
| 1:31.4 | of governance and capital is actually two sides of the same coin. |
| 1:35.2 | I thought was extremely profound and perhaps actually the entire through line of this entire |
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