I hope that we will reach a future where the digital world becomes a cypherpunk utopia. Right now, we are very far from that. Big Tech controls almost all of the digital world. The truth is, that most privacy preserving products suck. The user experience is just horrible compared to what you'd expect after having used a product by Big Tech. It all makes sense. Big Tech consists of huge companies with loads of resources. It's almost impossible to compete with them. Especially, because the monetary incentive is generally non existent in the open-source and privacy preserving space. I mean, how many privacy tools do you hear about generating a huge profit big enough to hire talented developers? Not many. Most are run by passionate developers who work on those projects in their spare time as hobbies — not fulltime jobs.

I am not saying you cannot make a profitable business by making open source software. I think Proton, Red Hat, MongoDB, etc., are great examples showing that it really is possible to create a business that generates revenue even though their products are fully or partly open source.
And I certainly think open source will win over closed source. It will take. Probably a lot of time simply due to the large corporations we are up against — but it will happen!

My belief is that every software should be open-source and decentralized, at least when it makes sense for the product or service.

So, when does it make sense?
Well, whenever trust and anti-censorship is important, I think you should only use software that is open-source and decentralized. Here are some examples of services that I think should absolutely be open-source and decentralized: a social media, crypto wallet or a chatting/messaging-protocol.
But why? Why is it so important for these specific types of services to be open-source and decentralized? Let's start with a social-media platform. Why should a social media platform be open-source and decentralized? In the case of a social media, there are mainly one very important reason: free speech.

I suppose we have all heard of the mass banning of people on the Big Tech platforms because the government and Big Tech deemed their opinions as not allowed. When people are banned for holding certain opinions, it's censorship. It's exactly what totalitarian governments do. They ban opinions they deem as being a threat to their establishment.

A platform like Facebook can easily ban users because the platform is entirely closed and Meta controls EVERYTHING. On the contrary we have a decentralized protocol. For instance, a protocol like Nostr. Banning a user from the entire network of Nostr is practically impossible, since no single entity controls the protocol. It is run and operated by the people. This is what decentralized protocols are all about. The idea is to delegate the power to everyone. Or at least, many more than just one or very few entities.

Another really cool thing about being decentralized is that users can choose their own frontend clients — coders can even build their own! You know, how on Instagram, you can only use the official Instagram app. With a decentralized protocol like Nostr, you can choose between many different or completely build your own client from scratch. That's because the protocol is completely independent of any frontend.

For a chatting/messaging protocol, being censorship-resistant is certainly important. You don’t want anyone to have the power to completely ban you from the service. But privacy might be even more important, because you definitely do not want anyone to read your private messages. I hope that we will see a messaging protocol that is completely independent of any specific app. A protocol that anyone can build upon and setup their own relay (server) — maybe Nostr or something similar is the future of private messaging just like it very much could be the future of social media.

I think money and the State should be independent. In fact, I don't think the State should have any influence over the currency we choose to use. It should be completely driven by the market — meaning what people prefer. I believe people would eventually come to the conclusion that privacy coins are to be preferred because they are, well, private. Having a public ledger like Bitcoin is a huge disadvantage when you are up against State powers and companies (i.e. Chainalysis) who are doing everything they can to track every transaction on the blockchain.

The big advantage Monero has over Bitcoin is that the Monero blockchain is private by design. You know how on Bitcoin, you are able to see every transaction on the network and how much people have in their wallets? Well, that's not possible on Monero. The senders address is hidden by ring signatures, stealth addresses hide the receivers address and transaction amounts are also hidden on the network. Not to mention, even the amounts of Monero held in a wallet is hidden from the network.

Is Monero perfect? Absolutely not. Privacy is an endless battle which means Monero will need to keep evolving. The reason why I am bullish on Monero compared to other privacy coins, is because of the strong community behind it. Monero is getting updated quite frequently in order to stay up-to-date with cutting-edge privacy features.

I believe technological growth improves the world.

Basically, I am pro-technology, advocating for the rapid advancement of innovation as a means to solve our most pressing challenges. By accelerating technological development, we can revolutionize healthcare, address environmental issues, enhance human capabilities, and so much more. Effective accelerationism is not about reckless progress; it's about harnessing technology thoughtfully and ethically to push humanity forward.

Ultimately, being pro-technology means being pro-humanity.