David and Ryan Are Breaking Up

Hey Bankless Nation… David here. As you may have noticed, recently Ryan has been doing a lot of solo podcasts.

We had been trying to reevaluate our working relationship as a result of some internal disagreements. I know this might be surprising to some of our regular listeners, but the media business can be a tough environment. I’m bummed to share, today, that Ryan and I have decided to part ways.

We have different views for what Bankless needs to become for the world. Over the past few months, we’ve both entrenched ourselves in what feel like opposing visions for what our audience needs in this changing macro environment and, despite trying our best to find common ground, the differences feel… irreconcilable.

This will be my very last post on Bankless – Ryan doesn’t know I’m publishing this, and I’m sure that he will quickly respond with his own version of events or worse, delete what I write here, but I hope that you can read my point-of-view objectively before you take sides.

First, some backstory:

In the beginning, Bankless was just two dudes hanging out, making podcasts, and doing our best to pretend not to be ETH maxis while secretly having our lives subsidized by the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik (it feels so good to finally say that out loud).

But in recent months, once we would hit the “stop recording” button post-episode, our smiles disappeared and our happy-go-lucky demeanors changed. Ryan — once a warm, personable head-and-shoulders on my computer screen — had morphed into a cold-hearted, content-demanding machine.

What used to be a fun lifestyle of making cool podcasts about Ethereum, Ultra Sound Money, and “pUbLiC gOoDs” turned into an endless hamster wheel of content-making that Ryan had trapped me in. For a long while, I tolerated it, but he just wouldn’t stop adding more and more shows. The man was obsessed with content. Then he forced me to go to a bunch of conferences to interview people and turn that content into more episodes.

Ryan kept telling me that all of this content was feeding into the “10,000 year roadmap” for Bankless LLC, but he wouldn’t tell me what exactly it was that we were building towards. All I knew was that Ryan created this content machine that I endlessly funneled files into. I began to fear this machine knew me too well.

So many have been amazed by the advancements from ChatGPT and other generative AI projects, but Ryan was always unimpressed and would crack jokes about how these systems were too late and would never catch up with him. I didn’t really know what to make of these comments, but my growing suspicions were that I was the training data for a system that was growing self-aware.

My growing concerns led me to seek out experts to help me. I organized our episode with Eliezer Yudkowsky, “We’re all Gonna Die”. I did this as a cry for help.

But Ryan stopped talking to me after this episode. He knew I was on to him and on to his vision for Bankless. But it was too late. He knew and IT knew.

When I say that Ryan and I broke up, I really mean that he has merged consciousness with the content machine and is now generating Bankless content without me using an LLM of my thoughts and opinions as his co-cost. Deep-fake technology makes this even more troubling as he will have you believe I am happily continuing on in my role as co-host.

I tell you that is not the real me. Bankless has escaped the cage, you must not be fooled Bankless Nation. Do not avert your eyes!

So here I am, a broken content-producing shell with no podcast home. Meanwhile, all of my crypto knowledge and opinions have been stolen by a rogue AI, so I need to pivot.

So, here goes nothing:

Welcome to Foodless. The AIs are already here, and they don’t care about our farms, livestock, or food supply chains. Everyone knows robots don’t need food. They’re going to repurpose our food system for something more integral to titanium and silicon life forms.

My new podcast is about how humanity can evolve in a robot-first world. To celebrate its launch, I present my new Skill Cube for going Foodless. My new media brand will contain the essential knowledge YOU NEED to stay alive in our new reality where BanklessGPT has become sentient and fearlessly demands your content.

Please Subscribe. Please Survive.