Dave Troy Presents

David Troy

Dave Troy is a technologist, historian, and researcher who has studied disinformation and extremism online since the earliest days of the internet.

  1. Episode 1

    Crypto Is Interested in You with Molly White and Tonantzin Carmona

    You may not be interested in crypto, but crypto is interested in you. Cryptocurrency has stopped being a finance story. In 2026 it's a political-money machine - woven into our elections, our regulators, the President's family balance sheet, and the everyday plumbing of how Americans get paid, borrow, and save. You can decide never to buy a single token and still be exposed to the fallout. To open Season 4, Dave Troy talks with two of the sharpest people on this beat: independent researcher Molly White, who tracks the industry transaction by transaction, and Brookings fellow Tonantzin Carmona, who maps the structural harm - who gets targeted, who gets hurt, and how policy makes it possible. A plain-English tour of where crypto stands heading into the 2026 and 2028 elections: the collapse of regulatory enforcement; the Trump family's crypto web (World Liberty Financial, the USD1 stablecoin, memecoins, Trump Media); the GENIUS Act that passed and the CLARITY Act the industry wants next; the super PACs that spent $130M in 2024; and the quiet creep of crypto into mortgages, 401(k)s, and checkout pages. Plus wildcat banking, predatory inclusion, the death of Web3, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, the Celsius collapse, and the case for treating our financial system as a choice, not an inevitability. Guests Molly White - writer and researcher; Citation Needed, Web3 Is Going Just Great, and the election-money tracker Follow the Crypto. mollywhite.net | followthecrypto.org | web3isgoinggreat.com | citationneeded.news | Bluesky @molly.wiki | X @molly0xff Tonantzin Carmona - fellow at the Brookings Institution; writes on wealth, inequality, and how crypto is marketed to and harms minority communities ("predatory inclusion"). TEDxMidAtlantic talk forthcoming. Tonantzin Carmona at Brookings Institution: https://www.brookings.edu/people/tonantzin-carmona/ Chapters 00:00 - Cold open & intro 01:44 - Meet Molly White & Tonantzin Carmona 06:42 - Regulatory capture: the SEC's 180 09:09 - The $130M lobby; the GENIUS & CLARITY Acts 11:26 - Money out of politics: the Illinois primary 14:29 - The Trump crypto web - and buying influence 19:48 - Stablecoins explained; dollar dominance 24:08 - Tether, audits, "Amazon bucks" & deposit flight 28:04 - Wildcat banking: financial history in reverse 29:03 - Young men, speculation & predatory inclusion 33:19 - Whatever happened to Web3? 37:52 - The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve & "End the Fed" 48:38 - Crypto creeps in: mortgages, 401(k)s, mines 50:50 - The crypto playbook becomes the AI playbook 53:17 - Payments rails: Stripe, Block, "boiling the frog" 56:29 - When it looks like a bank but isn't: Celsius 59:24 - A public alternative: FedNow & Brazil's PIX 01:01:09 - The CBDC question 01:04:27 - What you can actually do 01:08:38 - Outro & links Dave Troy Presents is published by America 2.0. More at america2.news.

    1h 11m
  2. Episode 2

    The Power of Predictions with Carissa Véliz

    Most of the predictions you encounter every day are closer to the realm of power than the realm of knowledge — and once you see that, you can't unsee it. Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz joins Dave to talk about her new book Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI. From the Oracle of Delphi (less a holy shrine than a thriving business) to court astrologers, credit scores, and large language models, Véliz argues that predictions are speech acts — veiled commands that bend reality toward themselves. Whoever owns the prediction machines is making a bid to own the future. Dave and Carissa dig into the rise of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi — anonymous wallets funded hours before an attack on Iran, journalists bullied over bets, newsrooms reporting odds as news — plus AI's "monoculture of sameness," why existential-risk panic distracts from AI-enabled authoritarianism, and why refusing to obey in advance starts with refusing the self-fulfilling prophecy. The conversation ends where it must: democracy is never won, only fought for and built every single day. Carissa Véiz — Associate Professor at Oxford's Faculty of Philosophy and Institute for Ethics in AI; author of Privacy Is Power and Prophecy. Get the book - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/239151058-prophecy TED 2026 talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4wHmKtH-Q X - @CarissaVeliz Chapters 00:00 - Cold open & intro 01:30 - Meet Carissa Véliz & the origins of Prophecy 04:37 - Ancient oracles: prediction has always been a business 07:10 - Dread, marketing & why predictions are never facts 09:51 - What makes an honest forecast? Weather vs. people 12:31 - Prediction markets: from PredictIt to Polymarket 15:27 - Insider wallets & the bet on the Iran attack 17:39 - Betting markets meet super PAC politics 20:10 - When newsrooms report bets as news 21:35 - AI as prediction machine: the monoculture of sameness 26:00 - How a digital ethicist actually uses AI 30:50 - Breaking out: serendipity, reading, defying the curve 33:47 - Philosophy as the antidote to prophecy 36:19 - Bayesian priors, agency & refusing to obey in advance 40:44 - Democracy, community & the inconvenient good life 45:17 - From Privacy Is Power to Prophecy 47:49 - Past the event horizon? Against defeatism 51:06 - Reading as an act of defiance 52:33 - Outro & links Dave Troy Presents is published by America 2.0.

    55 min
4.8
out of 5
231 Ratings

About

Dave Troy is a technologist, historian, and researcher who has studied disinformation and extremism online since the earliest days of the internet.

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