Patrick Byrne | Overstock, CEO -  big ideas in Aspen
Channel: Input Output
Date: 2017-10-01

Blockchain meets big ideas in Aspen

Patrick Byrne @OverstockCEO

Founder and CEO of http://Overstock.com , advocate of personal freedom, access to quality education and fairness in capital markets.

https://iohk.io/about/

A focus on the future united most conference attendees, but equally important was the historical context that brought them to where they were. Ron Paul, who Hoskinson worked for during Paul’s 2008 bid for the Republican candidacy, came on stage to a standing ovation and chants of “End the Fed”. Despite admitting he had much to learn about how blockchain worked, the libertarian politician who is now in his eighties praised the industry’s creativity. Technology should not be an arm of the government, he warned, and the internet was being coopted by commercial interests. 

“Technology is helping us, in a free society it helps improve our living condition,” he said. In a tour de force through libertarian thought, he recounted his early career in medicine eventually brought to an end by his interest in how the monetary system worked. Saying that there had been decades of monetary policy failure, from the collapse of Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, Paul attacked the march of Keynesian ideology and a system swollen with debt, leading to the 2008 global financial crisis. 

“We do want to get rid of the Fed and we should start with auditing the Fed and understanding why we need to know about it,” Paul said. “The American people deserve to know what’s going on.” Central banking was a relatively new concept, he said, predicting the end of a system that would self destruct as it sank under the weight of debt.

Backing what Paul said afterwards, Jesse Ventura, ex-wrestler and former governor of Minnesota, told IOHK that personal debt kept people from being free, in a system designed to lock people into debt. “If you are in debt you can be controlled,” Ventura said. “If people ran their finances like the government run theirs you’d be a homeless person living on the street out of a bag. You can’t live in a world of negative money.”

Paul cut a humble figure as fans queued to have their picture taken with him, and later held a television studio discussion with Ventura, a tall and imposing presence sporting a Rolling Stones bomber jacket and a US Navy Seals cap – both former employers of his.

Other speakers at the conference included early Bitcoin adopter and investor Eric Voorhees, and Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock, who spoke about his new blockchain exchange that would list ICOs, and which he said had approval to operate from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Longtime gold bug and Bitcoin sceptic Peter Schiff debated with crypto advocate Max Keiser, who in trademark showman style tore up US dollar bills on stage. 

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