WBD011 Audio Transcription

The Role of The State with Desiree Dickerson

Interview date: Friday 6th April

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Desiree Dickerson. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, we don't only discuss the harassment on Desiree’s cloned Twitter account; we also talked about the important work she is doing in the blockchain space, specifically with regards to the work she is doing at Women for Women International and various issues in the Crypto space such as the role of the state.

“It was really disappointing to see someone attacking my credibility. That hurt more than anything. Trying to take away from the hard work I have put into the space. That really got to me”

— Desiree Dickerson

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Hi, Desiree.

Desiree Dickerson: Hi, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Thank you for coming on the podcast and agreeing to do this.  We might have a bit of noise out there; we're just going to have to ignore it.  I can't remember how we exactly started speaking, but it was some straight edge thing and I thought maybe you're into straight edge music knowing I was into Earth Crisis and stuff, and then you said Fugazi.

Desiree Dickerson:  Yeah, it had something to do with Fugazi and something to do with straight edge.  Yeah, that's my thing sometimes, straight edge, obviously just sometimes; typically, Monday through Thursday.

Peter McCormack: The straight edge people won't like you saying sometimes straight edge.  You can't be part-time straight edge.

Desiree Dickerson: I know.  I'm starting my own movement.  I do love the whole DC punk scene and Fugazi, so it was crazy that we connected over that even outside of the whole crypto thing.

Peter McCormack: Didn't you say someone in Fugazi lives near you?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, Ian I can't remember his last name.  He literally lives a few blocks from here and lives a totally normal life, completely separated from the whole Fugazi thing.

Peter McCormack: That's pretty cool.  I think it would be useful for people to know a bit about your background.  I read about your course you studied and then I read about some paper you did.  Hold on, I've got to read this out.  You published the Genetic Complexity in the Drosophila Model of Diabetes; right, beyond me!  If you can give a background and explain how your career went, it seems, from operations to management and now you're blockchain; it seems like you've got four jobs.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, I feel like I do a lot and I apologise to my friends and family I haven't seen in a while.  No, so my academic background is definitely in the sciences.  I have my Masters in Biophysics and Physiology, so I was hardcore doing research.  That's where this whole fly Drosophila, a fly model, obviously a lot of studies are done in that.  So, I did lot of genetics research really in ecology and evolution. 

That was interesting and I really enjoyed that and I decided sitting in a lab with flies by myself all day wasn't very glamorous or very fun.  I still love solving problems, so that's what brought me to consulting.  I did the whole management consulting thing, really focusing on business strategy and operations largely for large-scale IT enterprises.  That's what I've been doing and then I've been interested in crypto and blockchain for quite a while.  Somewhat embarrassingly, it started with Dogecoin, because I'm kind of addicted to Reddit and that's how I got into it.

Peter McCormack: A lot of people discovered with Dogecoin.

Desiree Dickerson: I know.  I feel like it's pretty common, so I'm not that embarrassed, but it is kind of embarrassing in the same sense.  So, I got into it that way and then I really just got interested in cryptography and actually learning how the blockchain worked.  When this fellowship came about, I was like, "That's perfect", it's a way to actually give back.

Peter McCormack: Explain what a fellowship is to people who don't understand.

Desiree Dickerson: A fellowship is more like an academic residency, so this was actually sponsored by the Hilton Prize Coalition and it's for Women for Women International.  Basically, they just set aside some money to have someone come in for six months and they injected me into the organisation to figure out how they can use blockchain in their program.  It was a really amazing experience; I haven't done any nonprofit work before. 

I think a lot of my work was valuable, because a lot of people are now using it in that industry, because a lot of nonprofits are, "We don't want to get lost.  Blockchain, blockchain".  So, my full whitepaper, which hasn't been published yet, but the blog post I just came out with for the plan to be drawn up runs through what nonprofits and NGOs should do when they're actually considering some type of blockchain implementation in an organisation.  My big takeaway from that is you need to be really responsible, measured and make sure it's right and then just go from there.

Peter McCormack: Is there a FOMO with blockchain at the moment, people thinking they should be doing something with it, yet they don't understand it or know what they should be doing?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.  I don't think there's FOMO; I think that people don't even have the fear of missing out, because they're just so far into trouble of, "Okay, we're actually going to do something with blockchain.  We're going to go full force and irresponsibly so", and dumping a lot of money into it for not a lot of good reason.  I'm not going to name names, but for instance the Long Island Iced Tea company is now a blockchain company.

Peter McCormack: Are they a blockchain company or did they just change their name?

Desiree Dickerson: I honestly have no idea.  I think they changed their name and got a lot of criticism and now have acquired something or actually started something up, so I don't know maybe it will be legitimate.  I highly doubt it, but I think people are so fearful of having FOMO that they irresponsibly have jumped in too far and probably are in over their heads.

Peter McCormack: So they have fear of FOMO?

Desiree Dickerson: Yes, I think so!

Peter McCormack: As somebody who's working and studied and looked at the blockchain itself and the use of the blockchain, where do you see, in business and in charities and nonprofits, where do you see there is an opportunity for the blockchain?

Desiree Dickerson: That's a really interesting question; I think that's what everyone should ask.

Peter McCormack: Beyond just a standard database.

Desiree Dickerson: For instance, there are so many humanitarian use cases, supply chain, whether that be migrant workers, food distribution, tracking of payments.  Then there's the financial use cases in terms of banking for the unbanked, remittance payments and then identity as well as property rights.  Just looking at the nonprofit industry, there's so many different opportunities, and this is the consultant side of me coming in where there are so many ways to use this technology, but you need to figure out what aligns with your organisational mission and vision. 

For instance, Women for Women, they do a lot of programs around social and economic empowerment for the women, so starting to talk about property rights when these women can't even read.  I think it's really important to do a very in-depth organisational assessment on, "What is our mission and how can blockchain actually help us further that mission?" rather than what I'd say a lot of times is, "How can we make blockchain work for us rather than us work to have blockchain and say that we're doing blockchain?" 

It's a sexy marketing term but if it's not working for you, you're going to start wasting resources, you're going to start wasting time and ultimately, it's just going to detract from your work.

Peter McCormack: Do these tend to be private blockchains or are they using protocols that are out there?

Desiree Dickerson: It just depends.  For instance, with Women for Women, we really focus on the financial use cases, so a lot with banking for the unbanked and stipend delivery, so the remittance piece.  For instance, my big recommendation was Hagan are a technology company, nonprofit.  So, why don't we look at partnering with organisations that are actually doing this, for instance BitPesa. 

BitPesa is definitely public, they convert fiat to crypto and then back to fiat of whatever the destination currency is.  So, I think it really just depends.  I'm a huge proponent of public blockchains, but a lot of these, for instance, Spen, is a really cool solution.  They're a little bit newer in this space, but they do it on a permission blockchain, which has its pros and cons.

Peter McCormack: Women for Women International, of the things you're doing, is that taking most of your time or is it the thing you're most interested in?

Desiree Dickerson: Definitely the thing that I am most interested in.  It's wrapping up and I have my hands in several different things, writing for 21Cryptos, which is fine and editing for Whale Reports, which is great working with those guys.  I'm still kind of doing the consulting thing as well, helping out with that, but it's been hard to tear myself away from the salary as well as some of the people.  So, I'm actually helping them build up a blockchain practice around stuff that's coming out from the federal government.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so the Women for Women International, in countries like England and the US, are we a little bit clouded from different issues facing women here that they are supporting?  You talk about banked for the unbanked.  Is there an issue maybe in certain countries where women can't get bank accounts, is there a gender thing going on here?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, most definitely, and Women for Women really serves the poorest of the poor, specifically in post-conflict marginalised areas.  These women oftentimes are in communities where the households are predominantly run and overseen by the male figurehead.  So oftentimes, these women will see their husbands killed in conflict and they'll just immediately lose all their property rights, because if it wasn't in their name, it was in their husband's name, they lose all of those property rights back to whatever government or controlling power. 

Then oftentimes, they've never been in charge of finances before; so, really helping them understand how to save, where to spend money and oftentimes, how to start a business, because in these areas it's not like, "Oh, I can just go and work at the Microsoft call centre".  This is more like how to produce some type of food product and how to sell that in the community.  They're dealing with issues that are just so basic that implementing blockchain at that level can be challenging, but these are issues that the program around it, the program itself can definitely use blockchain.

Peter McCormack: I guess banking for the unbanked is a blockchain solution in certain markets?

Desiree Dickerson: Right, right.  That starts around actually having a mobile device, whether that be connected to the internet or using a mesh network.  Spen, for example, actually has a quasi-bank account.  Obviously, it's not backed by any central bank or anything, but it's almost like Venmo, where the women can transfer money between women out there, and then there's vendors who can use it as well.  It's like a blockchain-based Venmo app.

Peter McCormack: Is it local currency or is it crypto?

Desiree Dickerson: That depends.  Spen, for instance, does deal with the local currency, but I think in the back end I can't remember which currency specifically off the top of my head they're using.  But a lot of times, the woman using the app is not seeing the crypto behind the scenes, they're seeing their actual fiat currency.

Peter McCormack: It's funny, we live in a world and a market now where everything is driven by price speculation.  You'll regularly see on Twitter or in the crypto press people will be saying, "We don't have any real-world projects.  Nothing's being built", but actually there's a bunch of important work being done here people aren't really aware of.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, in my blog post, I outline several.  The State Department and Coca-Cola have a project going on right now to use blockchain for focusing on the supply chain for migrant workers for the next World Cup.  People are actually working on it and there are actually use cases; I think the Mars company and IBM and Walmart are doing the food supply chain aspect of things. 

When people say there's not anything actually happening, I think that's juvenile to say that.  Things are just starting to happen.  Just because it hasn't solved every problem in the world doesn't mean it's not a legitimate solution; we have to give it time to grow and expecting it to be further along and expecting it to be something that it's not yet is irresponsible.

Peter McCormack: I don't see it any different from the start of the internet and the dotcom era; there were a lot of failures of a lot of a speculation.  I actually don't see price speculation as a bad thing, because it brings capital into the markets.  It gives us money to spit-test these projects.  That said, are you investing?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, most definitely.  I stepped back a little bit in December, because I needed to buckle down and not be sitting on TradingView all day.  I'm just not really that great at TA to be honest.  Fundamental analysis, that's my thing and I enjoy reading whitepapers and getting down to the weeds with different projects.  Yeah, I used to have quite a large portfolio and I've started selling it off as long as I'm making money off it.  I can't keep track of everything that's going on.

Peter McCormack: Interestingly, some people live purely on TA, they don't believe in the fundamental analysis.  Based on what you've read, what are the projects that you like?

Desiree Dickerson: Man, lately I've just been so out of the loop on everything.  Okay, this is embarrassing and everyone knows that I love Litecoin because I love Charlie Lee.

Peter McCormack: Oh my God, do you?

Desiree Dickerson: I can't really say that the fundamentals are really there, but I just love that project.

Peter McCormack: Did you hear my interview with him? 

Desiree Dickerson: I haven't.

Peter McCormack: He was episode 6 and such a nice guy.

Desiree Dickerson: He's my crypto crush, I love Charlie Lee.  I think the big ones, I love Bitcoin and I think there's a lot of potential around Ethereum, there's a lot going on there.  But lately, there's also been so much crap out there.  It's clouding my view of everything, making me suck gas.  I don't even know what a utility token is anymore.  I understood what it meant and what its purpose was before, and now it's been so misconstrued, I'm just like…

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well it looks like the SEC considers almost every utility token to be a security token.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Or a debt token, as I've heard them, with no intrinsic value.  You've been involved in some government work?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, just federal consulting.

Peter McCormack: Is that blockchain-based?

Desiree Dickerson: No.  I know a lot of the folks who are working on it in the government and they're really pushing hard and doing some awesome things, but I haven't been involved directly in that.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  I do want to ask you about one thing specifically that came up recently; I think most people felt for you.  You had what was called a parody account, which really wasn't; it was pretty much harassment.  Can you explain how you first realised the account existed?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, so I had no idea and then I actually got back from all of my travel and someone messaged me and said, "Hey, I know this isn't you but this person's harassing me", and leads me to the awful account.  It had been up for a month just harassing people on their pages and obviously pretending to be me.  You're on Twitter and you don't generally always look at the name; people change their names on there all the time, but the picture is my face; I've never changed my Twitter picture.

Peter McCormack: But, it was a clone of the profile essentially?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, exactly, exactly.  It was shocking.  I've had "cyber bullies", people telling me I'm ugly or I smell bad, which I wouldn't know how they know, but that never really got to me, people telling me I'm stupid, just really petty stuff like that.  But this was someone impersonating me and they generally went after other women saying really awful, hateful things.  Then they also were soliciting a fake me and offering fake nude pictures of me in return for Bitcoin, which was really disturbing.  And then to have people message me and say, "That's not your account, I want my money back", the fact this person was profiting and getting Bitcoin in return for fake photos that I actually have never seen was really, really troubling. 

What was insane was that so many people, if you look at my first post, there's 200 people who said, "I've reported this, this is awful, this is harassment" and people did it over as well as myself, I reported it and I was, "This is me" and I'm providing proof with my ID to Twitter and after two days, I got the response, "This is a parody account.  It doesn't violate Twitter rules".  I'm, "This is just a joke", but it really wasn't a joke at all.

Peter McCormack: This seems to be spanning between harassment, I guess bullying, harassment but also a scam; it's a scam as well.  We have a lot of scams, but this is also a scam?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, exactly.  It's the full gamut of horrible things that can happen on Twitter.  Yeah, definitely the harassment piece and, like I mentioned earlier, I have a friend who does a lot of harassment law; she reached out, which I think is important.  If this ever happens to anyone else, definitely document everything.  Going into it she's like, "Okay, you need to have the screenshots" because eventually the account was shut down so I couldn't see anything. 

So, if this ever happens to you, PSA: document, document, document and document Twitter's responses, because at some point it becomes too much and apparently, talking to this lawyer, a case can be made if Twitter doesn't take the account down.  There's a lot that you can do, because at some point harassment becomes more than just a silly troll on the internet, it becomes a lot more.

Peter McCormack: While they were harassing others, were they harassing friends of yours?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, just general people, people that I knew on Twitter.  They were saying awful things and stuff that I don't feel comfortable repeating!

Peter McCormack: Yes, of course.  No, you don't have to, but do you feel also this was harassment of you?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, definitely.  Some of the responses were when I would comment and they would comment on my post as well, so they would respond directly to me, telling me how stupid I was or calling me really crude names.  They did harass me directly a couple of times, but I felt this is so strange to deal with, it was more how are people going to view me. 

I'd try and actually produce thought leadership pieces, maybe blog posts and the work that I've been doing, so it was really disappointing to see someone almost as if they were attacking my credibility, trying to ruin my credibility in the space.  That hurt more than anything.  The words and the names that I was called didn't bother me, but just trying to take away from the hard work I've put into this space, that really got to me.

Peter McCormack: How long did it go on for?

Desiree Dickerson: So I think about, that I was aware of, for three days.  So, for three days I was attacking it, which doesn't seem that long; but with everything else and trying to finish my fellowship, it was a lot and then yeah, for three days, but it had been going on for an entire month before.  It actually started around Valentine's Day.

Peter McCormack: Valentine's.  I guess whoever did it might not even understand how much this affects somebody and how upsetting it is.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: It also feels like something that doesn't really happen to men.  Men get attacked and men get bullied, men get trolled and accused and called names, but it doesn't feel like a profile like that would be set up for a man.  Do you feel like this was just some kind of gender attack as well?

Desiree Dickerson: You know, I really can't say specifically.  I do know that the person did target a lot of other female accounts, just calling them awful names.  I'm sorry for these people that this person attacked and I have seen a couple of instances of women having impersonator accounts and seeing them post, "Hey, this person's impersonating me.  Please help me report", which I've done as well.  But those are really the only instances, so I'm not sure if it's gender focused.

Peter McCormack: I guess it would be strange, I just couldn't see a female doing that for a male account, and I guess it would be strange for a male to do that for another male, unless they really wanted to attack them.

Desiree Dickerson: It was weird, because the person spent so much time doing it.  It wasn't just once a day; it was consistently on and on and on and on and that's what just blew my mind.  It went undetected for a month for me, so I don't know if the person's still out there and still doing it, but even though it's not that big of a deal, it just clouds your mind. 

Peter McCormack: It is a big deal.  You mentioned this has an impact on you.  Other people are going to see this and think this might be you.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, definitely.  I was constantly checking my Twitter all day long and having people message me and be, "Oh my gosh, now this person's posting this", and there's just this huge drama that I never would have anticipated.

Peter McCormack: I think everyone felt for you through it and I think the response of Twitter was hugely disappointing, but seems to reflect very strange decisions that Twitter are making at the moment. 

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, I am so anti-censorship and freedom of speech, especially on the internet.  Not that I struggle with it, I obviously wanted the account taken down.  However, had it been Reddit or something where there's not really any type of constraint over what people say and do, I wouldn't have had such a problem with the response I got from Twitter. 

But the fact that they are so adamant on regulating and censoring the whole crypto sphere on Twitter, that's what blew my mind.  I wrote an article for 21Crypto that will come out next month about the whole crypto Twitter censorship that we saw a few weeks ago, with all the shadow bans and people's accounts just being completely suspended. 

I did a call for stories from folks on Twitter and I got some really interesting stories of people whose accounts they created 11 years ago and had really cultivated followings and relationships with the people, and took a lot of pride and enjoyed the content that they pushed out to their audiences.  So, it was really hurtful; it really impacted their lives when Twitter suspended their account. 

Thinking about that with my experience, I was just really bothered that Twitter could just haphazardly block people because they said "Twitter" or because they said "Crypto" or made fun of one theme that I saw with some of the stories I heard was people making fun of, "Oh, send me 1 Ether and I'll send you 5 Ethereum back", and so people were banned off.  If Twitter's banning people for that, but are not going to shut down this account that's clearly harassing me and everyone else, so I was really, really disappointed.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I still don't understand the Twitter approach at the moment, because it's so inconsistent.  I talk about crypto; I don't think I've been shadow banned.  Other people do, they have been shadow banned and I don't understand it.  Also, now they've banned crypto ads.  Can you make any heads or tail of what's going on here?

Desiree Dickerson: There really does not seem to be any strategy whatsoever.  Maybe I want to see if you -- I've typed a few tweets that I've deleted because I'm, "Oh my gosh, I think I might get censored or get banned for saying something" not anything aggressive, but just something where I was, "Oh, this might tick their box" or whatever.  Have you felt that way, that you might be?

Peter McCormack: No, I type anything.  I post anything I want and I get into all kinds of arguments and situations that I shouldn't be!  At one point I did have a fear, because I have a range of content out there and Twitter is the main place I get the audience for my podcasts, and it would be devastating to lose that account, but I couldn't find any consistency in it. 

There's one guy who's on my Facebook group, he's got 200 followers and a couple of them are really cool followers but he's had the account, like you said, for 10 years and he got banned.  He got banned!

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I can't understand it, especially also as Jack Dorsey is investing in crypto, he invested in Lightning Network.  His Square are doing things in crypto.  I can't see any pattern.  Did any of the people you speak to have any indication of what they thought they might, or were there any patterns?

Desiree Dickerson: You know, somehow mocking that whole Ethereum scam, it did get several.  Those were the only ones.  Then some people suggesting that their tweets making fun of Roger Ver was why they got banned.  Those were the two common themes.  I don't know how much credence there is behind either one.

Peter McCormack: I've done everything you've listed.  Every single thing you've listed I've done it.  It seems to have quietened down now though.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: That seems to be over and we seem to have moved past that.  I don't know, we'll have to wait and see.  I don't know about you, but it seems like there are always different sectors attacking crypto.  The banks will attack it or there will be governments attacking it or it will be social media are now attacking it.  Why do you think this is?

Desiree Dickerson: I want to think it's just people are just so familiar with this ecosphere that they've been working in and building for the last 50 years, and creating something and introducing something that has the power to completely shift the paradigm that is extremely threatening.  I really think about government as a bunch of -- I'm not going to say actually anything about that.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay.

Desiree Dickerson: But financial institutions, you think about that it's a bunch of old white dudes who are, "Oh shoot, IPOs is failing, they're happening less and less, there's no innovation happening there and now there's these ICOs, oh my gosh, we've got to not let this happen".  So, I think that there's a lot of resistance, because they are profiting from how the environment works right now, so why would you ever want it to change?  I get where they're coming from but, you know…

Peter McCormack: I think it's fear of the unknown.  It's magic into their money, there's this new thing.  I think because people can't own it, they don't own it.  Any other technology, you can own your bit of the internet.  I think people can't own it and they can't control it and governments and banks are used to owning and controlling things.

Desiree Dickerson: Right, but then again, I don't know, I feel like people for whatever reason, it's so new and people want to understand it to the nth degree.  When I try and describe to blockchain to someone, I can do it.

Peter McCormack: Go on then!  How do you describe blockchain to somebody?

Desiree Dickerson: This is how I described it to the nonprofit this week and this is high level and I can walk you through step by step.  That doesn't work for most people.  Even for me when I was researching and trying to learn myself, I had to read 30 different things to just really get it, because there are so many components.  There's the behavioural economics part of it, there's the cryptography part, there's this trustless trust part.  There's just so many things to it, it's hard to describe in one go. 

But my thing for people is, I don't know how a car engine works but it doesn't mean I'm not going to drive a car; I only need to know if it gets me from point A to point B.  I don't know the inner workings and honest to God, I don't know how a cell phone works, it just blows my mind, but it's not going to mean I'm not going to use it. 

So I think for people, if you're not going to be in the weeds working on blockchain, if you're not going to be really working with cryptocurrency, there's no reason to bash it just because you don't understand it.  You don't bash your microwave because you don't get how that works.  That's my bid to people and that's how I approach it when I'm explaining it to people. 

Yeah, I'll explain it at a high level but you don't need to understand what it is and how it works, you need to understand what it does and what it has the potential to do, because that's what's really going to matter to most people.

Peter McCormack: For me, crypto splits into the cryptocurrencies and then protocols and projects, but essentially there are the two: one's money and one's technology.  I know they're both technology and maths, whatever, but one is about the financial side and one is about the products.  I feel closer to the financial side, because money's proven, the use case is proven.  I end up saying the same things over and over again, but for me I find that when I had to buy a bunch of mining gear for China, bought it with crypto, transaction was $100,000, it was confirmed in about seven minutes and the fee was less than $1. 

That to me was a proven use case, because I don't know how the bank would do that.  But also, I believe we need a global currency and the only way to do that is decentralise.  So that's for me, with where I am, but in terms of you, what are the things that you find are important in this space?  Are you certain crypto is here forever, for good, until something better comes along; or do you think that we've got something that might or might not succeed?

Desiree Dickerson: No, I think it's here forever.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Desiree Dickerson: I don't think it's going to solve all of society's problems tomorrow, I think it's going to take a while, but I think it's reached that threshold of no return.  So, we just need to give it time and nurture it, but I'm totally on the whole crypto thing as well.  I think the biggest thing I'm obsessed with is the whole decentralised, really avoiding any central authority, even in the humanitarian use cases, just thinking about some type of oppressive -- or a gene controlling how people spend their money is one of the most frightening things to me. 

Half the people can't even buy cryptocurrency on Coinbase because their banks won't let them.  These governments and these central banks have the power to control how we spend our money.  I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibilities, and I think that's a big thing for me too.  One of my favourite books is Future Crimes and it talks so much about data ownership and owning the information about yourself.  That's really how I -- but I'm really excited to see what the technology does with a decentralised internet, because it's just like, "Oh my gosh, there's all this data and it's all about me and I own none of it.  Everything I type in Google spreadsheets or Google docs, Google can have", and that's…

Peter McCormack: Well, with what has happened with Facebook recently.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, yeah.

Peter McCormack: I think everyone's got a little bit -- you know what, look it didn't bother me a huge amount.  I knew Facebook was getting this data and they're no different from Apple and Google and Twitter and everyone's doing, but you see a future where we own our data then?  How does this work; where do you see it?

Desiree Dickerson: There's a lot of people who have projects going about taking back ownership of data and being able to actually monetise it and make money yourself by selling and sharing your data with insurance agencies, advertising agencies.  I've heard the argument that, for instance, Facebook, the data they collected I think somewhere -- I don't know if this is an official statistic, but I was told in person only 50% of that data is actually accurate. 

Peter McCormack: What, it's like predictive data based on your behaviour?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.  Whatever data they're collecting on Facebook, all of that data, usually only 50% of it is accurate.  If I type in something ridiculous, it doesn't mean I'm really actually interested in it.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I see, I see.

Desiree Dickerson: I can be typing in something about babies, but I'm not actually pregnant, but they would probably sell that data, "Oh, this girl's at that age and she typed in something to do with babies.  Let's sell her data.  This is valuable to Pampers", so I'll get those ads.  But they say only 50% of the data is correct, so if users or individuals own their own data, it's probably accurate.  I can tell you how tall I am or what my interests are.  So, consumers of that data, advertisers, whoever will be more willing to pay me for my data than pay Facebook. 

I've heard that model proposed, which could work, I'm not sure, but I think we're really far away from that.  That's the use case that I want to see take off, because I'm so paranoid about all of that.

Peter McCormack: You're paranoid about the data?

Desiree Dickerson: I have so much paranoia.

Peter McCormack: In what way?

Desiree Dickerson: Just people watching and people having…

Peter McCormack: Like Big Brother, 1984 stuff?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Wow, okay!  I get it, I think the Facebook thing was a real wake-up to everybody.  I know because I've worked in tech, and you know because you've worked in tech.  I think a lot of people don't actually realise what these companies do and the data they're keeping.  Google tracks everywhere you go with Google Maps and Apple does.

Desiree Dickerson: Right.

Peter McCormack: I think you can look on Apple and you can see everywhere you've been on their maps and their phone.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.  Hey, now you have GDPR, so at least your laws are giving you some…

Peter McCormack: Are you telling me something that I should know about?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, General Data Protection Regulation.

Peter McCormack: I know I should know that.

Desiree Dickerson: I think it's 25 May.

Peter McCormack: Is that an EU thing?

Desiree Dickerson: Is it EU?

Peter McCormack: If it's an EU thing, we've got Brexit coming in a year, I think it's a year.

Desiree Dickerson: We only get a little bit of it, but yeah, it's this huge EU regulation that basically if you say, "I want my data back and you must delete me", it's your right to be forgotten.  There's a new law and it actually affects a lot of US companies, because if you have data on anyone in the EU on your database and they want that deleted, they have to.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I have heard of this, yes.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.  It is huge fines if you don't handle data, people's data and information responsibly.  I think that could be also a really interesting shift.

Peter McCormack: It seems like there's a lot of convergence now around privacy, data.  It's funny because of doing these interviews they are generally about Bitcoin and crypto, but the stories increasingly coming out are actually quite scary.  I was with Lyn Ulbricht this week talking about the case with Ross and there's a lot of troubling things around that, around constitutional, how did she put it?  Questions around breaching the Constitution; is that how you say it?  You breach the Constitution?  Sorry.

Desiree Dickerson: I'm really not a legal person.

Peter McCormack: But also, the previous week I met with Morgan Rockwell, who was arrested for selling Bitcoin.  We have everything with Snowdon and the NSA this week saying about tracking Bitcoin users.  It seems to me that we have governments who are increasingly collecting data and monitoring people, and cryptocurrency seems to be this thing that's almost part of the fight back in that we get now control of our money, and then the other technologies built off the back of it are giving us control of our data.  I don't know where I'm going with this, by the way!

Desiree Dickerson: No, it's like the ultimate freedom.  It's like actually we've been given a tool to circumvent all these institutionalised, power-hungry people and organisations, and finally we're given this opportunity to break away from that.  So I think as a community, we just need to do it responsibly and avoid things like the whole tarnished image with Silk Road and whatnot.  But those things come and go and I'm not dogging on Silk Road at all, but it's public perception.

Peter McCormack: Yes, because that's another interesting debate, because there's a lot of misinformation about the Silk Road.  After I published the interview, I had a couple of debates and people saying it was used for people trafficking and it was used for terrorism and all these things that weren't actually strictly true.  It was created by Ross Ulbricht because he wanted to give people the freedom of choice outside of government control and coercion. 

It comes back to the point, what do we want the state to do for us?  Do we want the state to be there to protect us or control us?  Should consumption of drugs be a free choice?  Do you have a view on that?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.  I personally don't think that the government should be telling me.  I don't think the government should be telling me what to do with my body in terms of my reproduction, or anything else.  I'm not a drug user personally, but for instance I love Silk Road for the fact that they have an online marketplace with reviews and a way for the community that's going to self-regulate the quality of the products on the market.  I'm assuming I can go over here and get drugs, I've seen people selling drugs.

Peter McCormack: But it can be cut with anything, right?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, I know.  Now there's like fentanyl in cocaine I heard today, but online, on a place like Silk Road that gives a way to actually regulate what's happening in the market and what's being done, self-regulated by the community that was using it, which I thought was amazing.  And then it comes in only through taxes and it could be better, who knows.

Peter McCormack: Let me find this quote.  This was from Meghan Ralston, a former harm reduction manager for the Drug Policy Alliance.  She was quoted as saying, "The Silk Road was a peaceful alternative to the often deadly violence so commonly associated with the drug war and street drug transactions in particular". 

Now, somebody came back to me the other day and I was discussing it with them and said, "Yeah, at that end of the supply chain", but the part of the supply chain in Mexico and Colombia, 80,000 people have been killed in Colombia.  I don't know if that was a year or whatever.  But there is certainly a debate to be had around, if you're a drug user, you are often having to buy in dangerous and violent situations potentially and you also do not know what you're buying.  The reviews part of Silk Road was the thing that had to make the suppliers be a little bit more honest and we've lost that.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: We've gone down a funny route here, haven't we?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, yeah.  I know and I guess I don't know much about the war on drugs and I don't really actually know that much about drugs to be honest, but who knows; what they talk about and we were just talking about migrant workers and supply chain.  Who knows, maybe the blockchain kicks in with that too.

Peter McCormack: It's funny because the more technology has advanced and the more it's empowered governments to watch and control us, but also then that is leading the fight back of people saying, "We've had enough of this, we don't want this".  It's funny, I don't know if you ever read about Bitcoin maximalists and the, I struggle to say it, hyperbitcoinisation.  Did I even get that right?  Where actually, there are people who foresee a time where the value of fiat will be so low compared to Bitcoin that people will prefer to own Bitcoin and Bitcoin will take over and fiat will be a secondary currency.

Desiree Dickerson: Right.

Peter McCormack: And the governments won't be able to do anything about it, and at that point governments will start to lose control.  I come back to the point of thinking, "What would it be like to have a country without state control?  Would it be good?"  I don't know, it's something I can't foresee, but it feels like Bitcoin is raising all these other questions now.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, I think there's a potential for that to happen.  The government is out of control.  The waste of money and resources that's spent by the government is astounding and I have seen it first hand.  But maybe if governments lose control, I don't think there's going to be this crazy society where everybody's just sharing heroin, killing people and everyone's a sex worker.  I think that everyone wants to be protected to a certain extent, but everybody wants their freedom. 

Maybe it will spark a fire for something where it's more like a self-regulated government, where people actually believe in it and it's not some crazy voting system that we invented back in the day when there weren't computers and I don't know, people died when they were 40 just because.  I think there's a ton of potential and especially in America, and I think we need to shake things up a bit for sure.

Peter McCormack: In what way?  Just as an outsider's perspective, it feels like you have two choices of vote.  You vote Republican or you vote Democrat.  You've got a bunch of people who are Democrats and they're never going to change; you've got a bunch of people who are Republican and they're never going to change; and then you've got the few people in the middle.

Desiree Dickerson: That don't get their voices heard whatsoever, right?

Peter McCormack: Each way.

Desiree Dickerson: I don't know.  From living in DC, I am so far out of the political arena it's not funny.  But just from accounts that I've heard, and I have read things, it never was so separated like this and back in the day, Republicans and Democrats in Congress would hang out at the bar and drink together, and now it's not like that anymore and we're just a society divided. 

I don't know how we've gotten like this and I don't know how it's ever going to change.  My thing about America and the government today is it's just a bureaucratic nightmare.  Have you tried to do taxes?  No, obviously you haven't here.

Peter McCormack: Not here, no.

Desiree Dickerson: But it's a disaster.

Peter McCormack: I'm in crypto, I don't pay tax!

Desiree Dickerson: And we're here.

Peter McCormack: It's a joke, by the way!

Desiree Dickerson: I know, right.  I've yet to do my taxes.  That's to do this weekend.

Peter McCormack: Does everyone here have to do their taxes on their own?

Desiree Dickerson: You can hire someone to do it.

Peter McCormack: In the UK if you're employed, your taxes are usually done by the company you work for, unless you earn over a certain threshold.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, they'll take out and do automatic withdrawals and then you can just fill out your tax form, it's really easy and then you just get a refund.  But if you have multiple sources of income, it's a disaster.  Then to add crypto into it, I haven't even started thinking about it which is irresponsible.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but the whole tax side of crypto is complicated and confusing and different markets look at it in different ways.

Desiree Dickerson: No government agency here looks at crypto the same way which is insane.  I mean, there's four or five different regulating bodies and they can't agree on anything.  They haven't agreed on one thing internally, yet alone agree with every other regulating body, so it's just a mess.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so you've got the CFTC, SEC.

Desiree Dickerson: SEC, FTC. 

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Desiree Dickerson: I think there's one or two more, I've no idea.

Peter McCormack: So, Morgan was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security.

Desiree Dickerson: Oh, no.  There's so many, I've no idea.  I think there's 17 intelligence agencies alone.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, 17 government agencies?

Desiree Dickerson: No, no.  There's way more.  That's intelligence agencies.

Peter McCormack: Intelligence agencies?

Desiree Dickerson: Yes.

Peter McCormack: Gosh.

Desiree Dickerson: You just don't know about them.

Peter McCormack: It's pretty scary stuff.  I found the stuff that Edward Snowdon came out with, I think was it this week or last week, about the NSA tracking Bitcoin users.  That's what they were going for first.  I found that quite scary.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah.  I have views on it.  The whole Edward Snowdon thing happened and I was, "Man, this guy's going to be an American hero.  I'm so for this.  Let us know what they're tracking, what they're watching".

Peter McCormack: But he went to Russia.

Desiree Dickerson: Well, then it's like, okay, so they were owning all of our data and national secrets.  So now that you have them, you're just going to let everybody have them.  I mean, people died because of it and people's lives were ruined and it cost taxpayers billions of dollars to rebuild programs that were now public, and so there were a lot of after-effects that I thought was probably not the best way that it could be handled.  But yeah, I don't agree that the government should be tracking Bitcoin users.  I'm totally against all of this tracking stuff.

Peter McCormack: I wonder where it's going to go.  The CFTC thing was really bullish and Christopher Giancarlo was really bullish and really supportive.  It feels to me like the American government have realised you can't stop Bitcoin, it's a distributed ledger and that actually if there's an opportunity for wealth creation, let's be the first.

Desiree Dickerson: Right, but that's the CFTC right.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Desiree Dickerson: They regulate corn, like commodities.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but we call it corn!

Desiree Dickerson: Touché.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Desiree Dickerson: But then you have the SEC who have been such curmudgeons about it.  They frigging hate it and honestly I don't know at the end of the day, but my thought is they're the ones who are going to win out on this.

Peter McCormack: Interesting.  How does this get resolved then?

Desiree Dickerson: I have no idea.  You see all the time we can't even resolve our national budget, and government's always about to be closed down every month.

Peter McCormack: But isn't that just party politics and one party saying, "Right, we're going to hold you to ransom here unless you agree to this" just to get things through?  I only watched two series, but if it is like House of Cards, is it like House of Cards?  Because if it is, it's insane, because everything's about back-door deals and lobbyists.

Desiree Dickerson: I'm not in on the mix, but my view is it's probably worse than that.

Peter McCormack: Oh, God!

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, we'll see how it shakes out. I think the only thing we can do is really have strong people who are the face of all this, so Coin Center being up there actually educating lawmakers and people who make laws and whatnot.  I think that's the most important thing we can do.

Peter McCormack: So, as terrible as this sounds, I wasn't aware of Coin Center until you mentioned them to me the other day.  I think a lot of people won't know who they are or what they're here to do.  Can you just explain?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, I don't work for Coin Center!

Peter McCormack: I know, of course, yeah.  But it seems to be an important role they're doing.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, for lack of a better word, because I don't do their marketing or anything, but they're almost like a lobbying body who really goes in and advocates for cryptocurrency and just really this little revolution that's happening.  They'll go and they'll educate all the lawmakers and they put out a lot of really amazing thought leadership, so the whole pornography on the blockchain or the child porn on the block thing that came out; they put out this amazing article that was short and perfect and it just really silenced a lot of the chatter going on around that area. 

I think really supporting organisations like that is how we're going to get our voices heard.  Sitting and tweeting and complaining and making fun of these guys who make the laws is not going to get us anywhere, but actually writing to Congressmen and getting out there, actually taking action, also supporting organisations like Coin Center or the Chamber of Digital Commerce, I think that's really how we can affect how we're going to be regulated.

Peter McCormack: Okay, great.  We've pretty much done our hour.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, I know.

Peter McCormack: Police sirens.  Just to finish off, just let us know your plans, what are you up to; what's coming up for you; and how people can stay in touch, whether you want to hear from people, how they should hear from you?

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, so I'm not really sure what's next.  I'm trying to figure that out and hopefully something really fun.  But if you're looking to follow me, definitely follow me on Twitter.  It's @dickerson_des.  That's definitely the best way to get hold of me.  Then yeah, I have my Medium which I occasionally post on, but definitely tweet at me.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I'll put it out there.  Thank you for this, I really appreciate it.

Desiree Dickerson: Yeah, this was wonderful.

Peter McCormack: All right, thank you.