One of my favourite thinkers in the blockchain space is Vinay Gupta, whose talks, videos and podcasts are always immensely interesting and thought-provoking. So when he appears on one of my favourite podcasts – The Ether Review – the results are always going to be well worth a listen.

In this latest appearance on The Ether Review, set against the backdrop of the DAO attack, Vinay discusses:

The potential regulation of Ethereum – “We’d quite like the network to be autonomous, self-governing and all the rest of these wonderful properties – but at the end of the day, when we have a loss of this size inside of the network, it’s very hard for us to tell the authorities that this is fundamentally not a problem. Looks like a problem, acts like a problem, it’s probably a problem. If we are having a problem, why shouldn’t they get involved to help the users.”

A possible future for the project (apocalyptic…or not?) – “We execute a merger with Wall St and the great dream of decentralisation and autonomy is deferred for another X years…”

Alternative blockchain use cases – “I think we should partner with the UN to fight climate change” & “…global governance, where you could do things that look more or less like global opinion polling from representative random samples…”

And ultimately, what can really be achieved with this new technology – “The idea that the highest manifestation of the blockchain as an idea is to generate a currency and a bunch of smart contracts which produce a hyper-efficient form of late-stage capitalism…clearly we are thinking about this in a very rigid, static, two dimensional way.”

Listen to the full episode here.