Dash | How to Get Rid of Your Bank and Tech Overlords - Joel Valenzuela | Common S3nse - 2026

If you joined any other ETH dam, I would like to give a standing ovation to Joel Valenzuela. Congratulations. Greetings. Let me hold you off for a moment while I get this whole system hooked up. This, uh this whole system hooked up.

This, uh ... Is n't that a good title for a performance? How to get rid of your banking and technology oligarchs. I thought, you know, we need to finish and light it on stage until the end, so that everyone can be sure: if someone comes in now, they will immediately understand what this conference is about. I'm so glad we had Dash Con the day before yesterday, the first Dash conference in Europe since 2019.

And we had...Yes, wow! And we had a lot of updates, and now you're here. So, thank you very much, Joel. Yes, thank you.

Let's see. Ready to launch. No, he says "no." OK. Okay, who was at Dash Con?

A. Great. Who owns Dash? Who uses it? That's a better question.

Question? Who made a transaction in Dash today? Perfectly. Who did this last hour? Because you saw that Dash can be used to pay at our merchandise stand in the lobby.

And you can also use Dash at Fentuo, in the food hall area. And also at the Canary Club. Whatever you want to order from the menu, you can buy it with Dash. To make sure that Dash is not just hoarded like other cryptocurrencies, but is actually used as digital cash. I think that has always been one of Dash's main missions, and they've kept it relevant over the years.

Er... years. Er... So, yes. So glad we were able to support Dash this year with their own conference day and see them grow.

That's all. Okay, turns out it worked the first time. It just didn't work. But do you know what a tech conference is without techies who can't use a computer? Yes.

Light it up. I always like to start with a simple poll: who here has ever purchased a product or service with cryptocurrency? I knew you were a liar. So, most people did it. What about last year, who did it?

Not in the last...What about the last month? How about the week? Day? This...

I have to give a special mention to Kieran there because he always raises his hand at all my performances. So he's one of those people who not only creates cool technologies, but also uses them. So, who here, if they lost their bank account tomorrow, would be able to figure out how to pay for things with cryptocurrency? Listen, this is a pretty good audience. Okay, you all know, I can go.

No, I'm kidding. I hope we are all gathered here because we desire greater freedom and sovereignty through decentralized technologies. And this applies to many different levels. The whole point of the peer-to-peer electronic cash system was to wrest control of our money and payments from centralized entities. But now it's spreading to many other things across the tech space.

So, my name is Joel Valenzuela. I have been in the crypto space for about 13 years. I have been living on cryptocurrency without banks for about 10 years. And I'm gradually trying to test in my rather modest and everyday life how to remove all these elements of centralized control, replacing them with something open source, decentralized, and one that fully respects my privacy. And unfortunately, there aren't many good instructions on how to do it.

So I had to do everything myself from day one, from the very beginning. So I'll try to briefly summarize how to do it, how to get rid of the banking and technology watchdogs, and provide something actionable at the end of the talk in the form of a short summary to help you get started. We'll go through the " go through the " why" and the "how." Very simple format. So, first of all, banks.

It's all you guys. I'm just kidding. Not really, but I mentioned it earlier today. I was interviewed about how for every purchase how for every purchase , which almost everyone in this room makes— everyone in this room makes— although it's less common here than in other places—you have to prove your identity with a government document. Of course, this doesn't have to be done directly at the time of purchase, but who uses a bank card here?

Probably everyone, right? You had to prove your identity with a government document to obtain the means by which you purchase your coffee. In my opinion, this is completely understandable, because that's how the whole world is, but it's also unacceptable. We must be capable of better. So what can be done with this , the theory, of course, is cryptocurrency, peer-to-peer electronic cash.

Use decentralized cryptocurrency and you can do it. Perfectly. As? It's not always that simple. So, I've added some starter kit logos here.

starter kit logos here. First, I use the Dash Pay wallet—a Dash Pay wallet—a basic wallet built for the Dash cryptocurrency that provides private transactions and has built-in tools for spending at real-world merchants. So far, there are many of them in the US, but they are spreading to other countries. This one , next to it, is , next to it, is Bitrefill, the very first cryptocurrency spending company. This works for the whole world.

So no matter what country you are in, you will most likely find something available to purchase through Bitrefill. And next to it is Bitrefill. And next to it is Eon Pay, a relatively new company that seems to support over 50 million merchants worldwide. A lot in Southeast Asia, a little in Africa, a little in South America. You can, for example, go to a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Philippines, scan the QR code, and simply pay with cryptocurrency, including Dash, of course.

There's a company called Zebec over there. Zebec issues reloadable cards that do not require KYC. You can anonymously create a digital card that can be topped up. I have one of these on my watch. You simply top it up with cryptocurrency a few seconds before few seconds before you need to use it.

Then you just tap and pay—and it works almost everywhere. This is a bridge to more proper ways to pay with cryptocurrency, I believe. But it's a bridge that will allow you to make payments anywhere to make payments anywhere in the world if you have a little more knowledge. Here's Zippy, z-y-f-t-o, z-i-z-y-p-t-o. This company allows you to pay bills with cryptocurrency, among other things.

For example, utility bills, rent, or anything else. You enter your details, send cryptocurrency, and they pay the bill on your behalf. Same with the next two. Spritz in the middle. This works mostly in the US for paying bills.

Swappin paying bills. Swappin — for the EU. So, with this collection of apps and services, you can transfer about 80% of transfer about 80% of your life to cryptocurrency spending. Not bad for one slide, right? Let's move on.

Web. This is what the web looks like today, right? A huge data huge data center, the eye of Mordor watching you. When you use the internet, everything you do is tracked, recorded, and censored. But we can do better.

So, first of all, the first step is to start with the OS, the operating system level. And, of course , everyone knows that friendly penguin. It's, um, like a desert or something. No, it's Linux. So, if you About 9 years ago I switched to Linux and it was unexpected.

I thought it would be complicated, but it's surprisingly easy if you 're using Ubuntu, Mint, or something similar. It just works. So at least at the operating system level you are free from surveillance and censorship. I also purged my phone of Google by purchasing a device with GrapheneOS. And you'd be surprised how many hacker attacks and other things...

It's easy to become paranoid in crypto: " paranoid in crypto: " Oh, someone will hack me, scam me and take all my money." Most of these problems simply disappear if you use such a secure operating system first. Just don't use Windows. Please don't use Windows. Um, anyway, moving on, the first point here is my exception to the rule about what can be done today.

This is more about the future This is more about the future , in a month or so . A social network on the Dash blockchain called Yaper is emerging, which is truly decentralized. There are no intermediary services, indexers, or anything like that. You can publish posts, manage an online store, monetize content monetize content , create encrypted feeds for your followers—and you won't be "dumped" by our friend Daddy Elon when he decides to arbitrarily change the monetization rules, which of course has me a little angry lately. Encrypted communication via Signal.

Everyone already has…Raise your hand if you've never seen that little message cloud icon. Okay, just one. This is very good. Good job, Ellie. Select audience.

Yes, it's good that everyone knows Signal. Easy to download, easy to use for communication, plus encryption—it just works. Brave is a privacy-focused browser built on Chromium, so it works almost like Chrome. So, it just works. It works like a regular web browser, but it takes care of your privacy.

Also, Nym is my favorite VPN service because it's actually a relatively decentralized mixed network. You can get Tor-like privacy if you want, but you can also enable Fast Web Surfing Mode Fast Web Surfing Mode . But the point is that you can prevent, you can protect your internet traffic from being tracked. So, it's like that web plus the previous two OSes, it's like a web like a web privacy and sovereignty package. And a more recent thing that I've started to delve into a little bit and that I'll probably spend some time on is SHI- some time on is SHI- tracking.

Look how friendly she is. It seems to be a detected human threat. Oh no. Never mind. Maybe she does n't like you.

Uh, this is where in the age of AI, who here has never used AI? Yes, that's all. Who said something potentially that you wouldn't want to broadcast to the whole world? Who has ever entered something like this into a query, such as ChatGPT, etc.? That's all.

That's our problem right here. So, AI is developing very quickly, but people are putting a huge amount of personal information into these AI information into these AI systems. And all of this goes straight into a few data centers of megacorporations, they have it, and the courts can demand it in court proceedings. So, if you ask, “How do I know if my wife or husband is cheating on me?” What should I do with this ?

All of this can be used, for example, in a child custody dispute. What if you simply say, "How can I minimize my tax burden?" You don't even know how to break the law and evade taxes. No, how can I legally minimize my tax burden? This could be used against you in some legal case or something like that.

And the thing is, without knowing that, you can't just say, "I won't ask anyway." Well, then you don't benefit from the additional repository of human knowledge. So you can't just live in the dark ages to avoid having your every thought go into a public repository forever, controlled by a few companies, and governments are definitely in on it. So, I hope I scared you, I'm scared myself. I hope I've made you realize that you have to do something about it .

And luckily, there are a few things you can do, one much easier than the other. Um, this time I'll start from right to left. This llama—it's a symbol for, uh, for Llama, like llama.cpp, the local thing for AI local thing for AI inference. The gold standard is to run AI locally, which is more affordable than you might think.

I do this often, my own AI often, my own AI assistant again Hermes running on my own local hardware. You can do it, but I'm not going to lie to you, especially on this issue. I won't lie to you by saying that every average person can easily compete at the local level. It takes effort, doesn't it? You need to run a server and have powerful hardware.

Maybe if you need something really smart, it's worth spending a few thousand on additional hardware. Not everyone wants to do this. Again , this is the gold standard, but not really accessible to everyone. So this is Nano GPT everyone. So this is Nano GPT , which happens to be a sponsor of Common Sense and dash com, but that has nothing to do with the topic.

Nano GPT allows you to privately access many popular models. You can pay anonymously with cryptocurrency, they encrypt your requests, but the requests themselves still go to Anthropic, OpenAI, or others. So if you say, "Hey, look at this house at this address. What color siding do you think would look best?" They can find out who's asking, right?

It's still not entirely private still not entirely private , but they support trusted execution technologies at the hardware level. And I think Near AI does that too. It seems to be one of the service providers they use, like Venice, for example. While it's not local, it's as close to local as you can get, where you can request private information and it's very likely to stay private stay private . You can use this for your private AI tasks, taking advantage of the world's best models and maintaining your privacy.

It was a quick little overview, but I'd be happy to answer questions, as it was a lot of information on a few slides. Wait, first. Thanks for the hack on paying with cryptocurrency for more privacy. Who has a question for Joel? I wonder how these methods will work in the future when Travel Rules become widespread.

Do you mean about cryptocurrencies? Yes. I guess we'll see. The fact is that the more regulations there are in the world, the easier it becomes to use certain things things . I don't know if this is necessarily the case, but I've noticed that using cryptocurrency is becoming easier and easier.

More and more services are appearing. Interestingly, with the development of the agent economy, it will be impossible to conduct KYC for every bot that buys goods for you. So I'm not predicting the death of KYC, but I think it will become harder for the global economy to control everything in the future, especially when it becomes mainstream. Because when you have one service that allows you to spend crypto, that service is your bottleneck. If you remove it, it becomes difficult.

But the wider the adoption, the more entry and exit points entry and exit points , which makes P2P , which makes P2P trading significantly more valuable. Let's say there are a hundred people, and only one has access to a KYC exchange where you can buy and sell crypto. It is difficult to build a P2P economy for hundreds of people through one such channel of access to the real world. And if there are, say, twenty-five such people, then it is much easier to maintain a P2P economy, because everything circulates between them. So, I think the huge volume of transactions that we expect to see in real-world use will shift activity in a way that governments will be limited in their control.

Because if they push too hard, people will move to a neighboring country where business conditions are better. And then similar types of pressure appear. I already said today that we are lucky because the government has not put that much pressure on crypto so far. When I started 13 years ago, I thought many would end up in prison. Some did end up there , and it's terrible, but far fewer than I expected.

So I don't know where it's going , but for now I'm pretty optimistic. But, I could be wrong, and if so, the next time you see me here, I'll be on stage wearing a ski mask. That was a cool question. Thank you for your question. Does anyone else want to ask?

Hello, Joel. Yes, I would like to know if you have encountered any difficulties when trying to fully transition to crypto payments. And that's the first part of the question. The second part: does it work everywhere in the world, or is it perhaps easier to pay, for example, in the US and Europe, and more difficult in other countries, like, I don't know, China, maybe you've been there, or in other jurisdictions. So, answering the second question first: it depends on the practice, as it is a global technology global technology .

You can use it anywhere, but there is practically a certain difference in where it is easier to pay and where it is not . Although I think it's pretty universal. My problem is that I know very well what works in my regions, while people living in other countries know different things. So when I travel, I like to learn from people about the local instruments they use. I say, "Oh, that's really cool say, "Oh, that's really cool ."

For example, Eon Pay only offers a few options in the US. They're not very useful to me , but a lot of people I know in people I know in Southeast Asia say, " Southeast Asia say, " Dude, I use them all the time. I can pay for everything." You can use this app to send cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency to any bank account in Mexico, for example. You can pay any merchant that accepts Pix in Brazil, for example.

Many of these solutions are emerging faster outside the West because the climate, especially in Southeast Asia, is more suited to mobile payments than cards and the like. So, yes, it depends on the place, but I feel like if I lived in a country like that for half a year, I would easily find a way to use it. Regarding the first question about what was difficult: buying things is buying things is not difficult at all. Difficulties arise when you try to completely transfer your usual lifestyle to this format. I found that the hardest part was anything related to credit, like cars or housing.

If you do n't have much money and you rent a place, it's not that difficult to rent and pay with cryptocurrency. If you have a lot of money and want to buy a house, it's not that difficult to do it with cryptocurrency. The difficulties begin in the middle, when you need to buy a house, but take out a loan—this is where things get pretty confusing. While I believe that at least in the US you can use cryptocurrency as collateral to get a regular mortgage, it seems like you have to transfer it to a custodial service custodial service like Coinbase first, which I do n't really like, but at least it's something. But, um, such things are usually more difficult.

Paying bills, buying goods, transferring money— transferring money— no problems. But this is a very specific moment. Or, for example, in the US, in many places the payment infrastructure is still very outdated. And it is much worse than in Europe. So sometimes that can be a problem.

But it gets better every year, and that's very encouraging. And the best part is that the more of us use it, the higher the demand, and market demand creates more solutions, so things will improve faster. So I think we should all start using it as soon as possible and as often as possible, because if it's just five people like me doing it, then the situation will start to get worse and become more controllable. Any more questions? Then we finish.

Thank you very much .