In the future, cryptocurrency will not only be an asset class but also a way of life. This article is an exclusive interview conducted by Luke Belmar, the founder of Capital Club, with Meow, the founder of Jupiter. The article is sourced from “Luke Belmar – Money Talks with Jupiter Exchange Founder Meow $JUP” and compiled, translated, and written by Block Beats.
Table of Contents:
– Currency Originates from Consensus
– Illusion of Traditional Finance
– Jupiter Breaks the Illusion
– Currency is an Action Medium
– Cryptocurrency Garden
– Turning “Tokens” into “Currency”
– Community Consensus Embodies Token Value
– Empowering Users to Become the Community
– Embracing Community Uniqueness
– Jupiter’s Vision
In the week leading up to the official release of the JUP token, Luke Belmar, the founder of Capital Club, conducted an exclusive interview with Meow, the founder of Jupiter.
Before developing Jupiter, Meow served as the chief advisor for Instadapp, Kyber, and Blockfolio. He is also a co-founder of the largest wrapped token wBTC and a founding contributor to the Handshake project. Currently, Meow is the founder of Raccoons Labs and is developing the Solana liquidity aggregator Jupiter, the Solana liquidity protocol Meteora, and conducting multi-chain research with a strong interest in social infrastructure.
Luke Belmar is well-known as a successful entrepreneur, and his success is the result of combining digital advertising, e-commerce, direct sales, and investments in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Luke Belmar once said, “Funds often stay away from those who chase them, but are easily attracted by those who realize that money is just a monopoly currency.”
Luke Belmar hosts the interview program “Money Talks,” which focuses on exclusive conversations with some of the most outstanding thinkers in the business, entrepreneurship, and finance fields. In the latest episode, Luke Belmar and Meow discussed the “Currency Consensus Theory,” in which Meow profoundly elaborated on his unique insights into the execution of the crypto world and the role and influence of Jupiter in this process.
Meow believes that the traditional financial system creates an illusion in which people live as if in a prison, invisible and trapped. Cryptocurrency is the key to breaking this illusion. It made Meow realize that consensus is a very powerful force and that consensus shapes currency. Consensus is the result of the collective efforts of everyone in the community, and the construction of the crypto world cannot be separated from consensus. Compared to the invisible prison, cryptocurrency is like a garden that is open to everyone and welcomes everyone to participate in its construction. Jupiter aims to become such a garden.
Therefore, Meow attaches great importance to the community ecology involved in the garden construction. He points out that each community should have its own characteristics and charm. In describing the Jupiter community, Meow compares it to a “global decentralized securities exchange” that allows anyone to trade on it, and all processes and details can be seen by everyone in the community.
BlockBeats has compiled the interview content as follows, with some parts deleted.
According to Meow’s perspective, the “Currency Consensus Theory” refers to the need for corresponding consensus in the process of creating currency. This process involves a form of control, and one can say that you actually have control. The purpose of this control is that if someone prints a large amount of virtual currency to a certain amount, the law will intervene and take mandatory measures to arrest and imprison them. This consensus is also strengthened through governments, central banks, and the entire network of different banks and branches.
In the “Currency Consensus Theory,” the consensus of fiat currency comes from the ability to control and actually allow people to use this fiat currency. Meow uses the strong consensus of the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities as an example, pointing out that when there is enough consensus invested in them, the currency becomes real.
When explaining this theory, Meow introduced the concept of “Infinite Tsukuyomi,” which is a ninjutsu in the Japanese anime “Naruto” that can make people trapped in an eternal illusion and mistakenly believe that it is reality.
Luke Belmar: Let’s start from the beginning. What led you to where you are today?
Meow: I have been involved in many technology-related jobs, such as social networking and viral marketing. I believe that we actually built the first recommendation system that uses social data. From a technological perspective, initially, recommendations were based on semantics, using phrases like “if you are into computers and technology.” But we found that social data is more interesting than semantic data, so we built the recommendation engine on top of that. For example, if you follow someone, through social data recommendations, you can interact with another person who follows them.
I successfully promoted it through a series of viral marketing methods. So, I think we have achieved a lot in this area and have been sticking to this concept. We tried various mechanisms and invented many new concepts, but it seems that there are still some missing parts, something that hasn’t been perfected. It’s like if you try to build a fintech company, you are actually dealing with regulations. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a fact of life in our world. I comply with all these rules, but I don’t really like doing it.
I have always been very interested in economics and finance, but because of this, whenever I approached this field, I realized that no fintech company is truly innovative; they are just building on top of the entire stack. The whole stack is huge, and the bottom layer is immutable, including banks, credit card systems, processing systems, and energy systems.
Basically, I have to follow this set of rules, but when I read all the economics books, I always feel that they don’t make sense at all. All these efficient theories, even the new concepts I have read, such as behavioral economics, are all wrong. These theories don’t match what is happening in the real world; it’s almost like saying that economics is a branch of pseudoscience.
And I can never understand why the whole world is living in the “Infinite Tsukuyomi” ninjutsu. I studied economics in Silicon Valley, was exposed to various knowledge, and economics seemed like “Infinite Tsukuyomi” to me because there is no corresponding financial market, and all predictions are wrong. How can you have confidence in breaking through the inflationary social army when everyone around you is in the “Infinite Tsukuyomi”? This is where cryptocurrency comes in. It was the first time I realized, “This is evidence that proves that this auditing is nonsense.”
Luke Belmar: Like catching a glimpse of the outside world from a prison cell and realizing there is freedom.
Meow: Exactly. For example, one of the most effective ways the British used to control colonies was through indoctrination, telling you, “You are inferior, we are superior, your culture is inferior, everything is inferior.” And people become obedient and believe in this rhetoric.
I think we have moved away from this mentality in many things, but when it comes to economics and other aspects, we are still enforcing this kind of control. Because it’s very difficult to control specific individuals, the only way to control is through education. That’s why governments around the world attach great importance to education and history, because what you tell someone early in their life can create an infinite economy. And cryptocurrency made me realize that all of this is an illusion.
Luke Belmar: When was your first encounter with cryptocurrency?
Meow: It was probably around 2013, maybe even earlier. I have a very good friend who is one of the top experts in the field of cryptocurrency, and I was fortunate to meet him at a Dogecoin party, and we started working together. At that time, I knew nothing about cryptocurrency, so I asked him, “Hey, how much do you know about cryptocurrency?” He said he didn’t know anything. Then I kept asking him, “How much do you know about cryptocurrency?” And he still said he didn’t know anything. But we clicked, he had a lot of ideas, was good at technical marketing, and I was good at coding. He also had a deep background in cryptography and financial systems, so we got along well.
If you look at all the academic textbooks, the most basic concept is price, whether it’s from the left or the right, everything is related to price. If you study economics textbooks, they emphasize the importance of price. And usually, the price is fiat currency. So, fiat currency is what economics majors are most concerned about, and it’s easy to see the problem. Besides corruption, there’s one more thing: 99% of AEI (American Enterprise Institute) people come from the same school. They live together, cook together, and even though they have conflicting relationships, they are all friends.
We are forced to accept the concept of fiat currency from the moment we are born. Until Bitcoin was introduced, it told people, “You don’t have to have something worth one trillion dollars or one trillion units, you don’t have to print something to introduce stimulus or achieve economic growth.” Then the “glitch” happened, such as Bitcoin and decentralized finance, and people began to question the status quo. What you see today, like meme coins or new networks, basically breaks our existing concepts.
This is a very good topic that delves into what real currency is. In the process of creating currency, the corresponding consensus must be invested. This process involves a form of control, and one can say that you actually have control. The purpose of this control is that if someone prints a large amount of virtual currency to a certain amount, the law will intervene and take mandatory measures to arrest and imprison them.
Luke Belmar: Technically speaking, if you have a replica of the currency, coin, or denomination imposed by a ruler or king, you are counterfeiting their power.
Meow: This power is also strengthened through governments, central banks, and the entire network of other banks, branches, etc. So, the consensus of fiat currency comes from the ability to control and actually allow people to use this fiat currency. People have to accept fiat currency, otherwise, they will be thrown into prison or some other place, and most importantly, this is achieved through consensus.
Now let’s look at cryptocurrency. How do you distinguish real currency from fake currency in crypto? I want to explain this through a series of more technical concepts, such as liquidity, digitalization, wide dissemination, number of holders, existence time of the currency, etc., but these are all superficial. When there is enough consensus invested in it, the currency becomes real.
For example, Ethereum became a real currency because people in the entire network invested their life consensus to make the network operate excellently. Although I have done a lot of construction on Solana, I want to say that Ethereum is amazing. The whole network is led by Vitalik, who has gathered a group of financiers, geeks, holders, enthusiasts, and people who create this consensus, so it becomes a real currency. A truly sincere human consensus transformed into a series of other consensuses, such as proof of work, code, infrastructure, etc.
If the government wants to create currency, there must be a central bank, coordination, and police to enforce it. All of this requires consensus. If done well, then there is currency. This is business, an almost illusory way of thinking. I like the theory of consensus. The more a currency can represent a large network composed of many people and invest in real consensus, the more real it is.
Luke Belmar: Because consensus cannot be created or destroyed, it can only transform, so fiat currency is not real. For example, when you create 6 trillion dollars out of thin air, you haven’t created consensus; you have created an illusion. Calculated at a minimum wage of $15 per hour, you have created about 400 billion hours of minimum wage labor force out of thin air, which gives the economy the illusion of an infinite workforce.
Meow: That’s right. Fiat currency is backed by violence, while crypto is backed by consensus.