Pavel Usanov is an economist from St. Petersburg, a proponent of the Austrian School, who teaches at the European University and runs his own Hayek Institute. He posts many of his lecture courses on his YouTube channel. He came to the fest in the following way. Initially, they wanted to invite Grigory Bazhenov—also an economist, but a mainstream one, and also a teacher, I don’t remember exactly where, I think at HSE, plus he works for the Union of Independent Fuel Producers. Grigory also has a video blog that is roughly four times more popular than Pavel’s, which makes the fest organizers’ priorities quite clear. However, at some point, Bazhenov backed out, citing a department meeting, and so he was replaced by Usanov.
The proposed topic for Bazhenov’s lecture was: “Monetary Policy under Libertarianism: Between the Gold Standard and Crypto.” When the speaker was changed, the question of a new topic arose. Knowing that Pavel is primarily an economic historian, I suggested a modified version: “Non-Governmental Monetary Systems: Theory and History.” That is what they agreed upon. I wanted to get a good introduction to our Montelibero tokenomics, from which it would become clear why our current financial system has the specific shape it does.
On the Montelibero channel, the lecture is currently available only as a fragment of a stream, but Pavel has already posted it on his own channel.
In the lecture, one can indeed see an introduction to our tokenomics: Pavel states that whether we like it or not, today money as a universal medium of exchange is still the dollar and, to a lesser extent, the euro; Bitcoin is great for its potential, but that potential still needs to be realized. Thus, in Montelibero’s tokenomics, everything is measured using stables in euros, dollars, and bitcoins; we decided not to invent any proprietary exotic currencies like the Liberland merits to serve as money.
The day after the festival, Pavel and I recorded a separate video, this time about my book, and he also posted it on his channel. I hope that after some time, he will also record a short review of it. At least he has a book review section there.
Overall, he turned out to be a very simple and sociable person, and this is clearly not the last episode of his cooperation with Montelibero. I am not certain that Grigory Bazhenov would have done better; however, time will tell.