Proposition: "This Polis Believes That Active Trading Is Necessary for Efficient and Sustainable Finance."

On this day, philosophers, builders, and visionaries gather beneath the painted portico of the Stoa, not to idolize coin or code, but to weigh a question fundamental to the soul of a new economy.

The assembly defines “trading” not as mere exchange of necessities — not the buying of wheat or the lending of tools — but as the intentional, repeated exchange of financial assets in the pursuit of short-term gain. This includes day trading, swing trading, high-frequency trading, and speculative derivatives.

Not all exchange is in question. But this gathering dares to ask:

Is this form of activity truly necessary?
Or might the Polis, with wisdom and imagination, design something more just, more stable, more meaningful?

Opening Speaker:

Citizens of the Polis,
To function, a market must flow. And trading — yes, even speculative trading — is the river that nourishes it. It provides:

• Liquidity, allowing citizens to move their assets without ruinous slippage

• Price Discovery, so that value is not dictated by fiat, but discovered through consensus

• Risk Management, enabling those who build to share their burden with those willing to bear it

In both the Athenian agora and the digital Agora of DeFi, trading is the mechanism through which choice becomes action, and action becomes signal.

To condemn trading is to forget its role in funding innovation, enabling exit, and correcting imbalance. The Uniswap LP, the arbitrageur, the market maker — these are not villains. They are stewards of motion.

Closing Speaker:

Critics may say trading encourages speculation, but let’s be clear:

Speculation can serve function, not just frenzy.

Arbitrage aligns markets. Short-term trading helps correct mispricings. Traders take on risks that others won’t. Even in DeFi, liquidity providers and arbitrage bots ensure systems like Uniswap and Curve remain efficient.

Furthermore, let us not forget: speculative capital often funds innovation. Ethereum's ICO? Built on traders’ belief. Trading volume? Fuels adoption, TVL, and composability across protocols.

To remove trading is to flatten the system — to replace dynamic capital movement with stagnation. Progress needs friction. And trading, even in its speculative forms, creates the sparks.

Opening Speaker:

Citizens of the Polis,

We do not deny that some asset exchange is necessary. But the motion defends active trading — the back-and-forth buying and selling of assets to extract value.

And here, we draw the line.

This model, while functional in 20th-century TradFi, creates a façade of productivity while obscuring systemic inefficiencies. Trading today often rewards no creation, only positioning. In John Bogle’s words:

“Speculation creates more heat than light.”

It diverts intellectual talent into strategies for beating a system they built, rather than solving real-world problems. It encourages velocity over value, and reaction over reflection.

And in DeFi, it has produced:

• Fragile systems dependent on hype and liquidity

• Token designs that collapse without speculative churn

• Ecosystems overrun by MEV bots, wash trading, and sybil games

We mint tokens that have no use but to be traded, no story but their own volatility.

If we are designing financial systems from scratch, why build in the churn?

Closing Speaker:

This is not a debate about abolishing markets — but about what kind of market we choose to build.

Trading, as defined in this motion — the repeated exchange of assets to extract short-term profit — is not the only path to efficiency, nor to sustainability. In fact, it often builds systems that are fragile, zero-sum, and extractive by nature.

We ask you to consider:

What are these profits from day trading, swing trading, and derivatives truly built on?
What value do they create?
What risk do they magnify — and for whom?

The 2008 financial crisis, driven by hyper-leveraged derivatives, showed us:

The system rewards traders who shift risk to someone else, without ever solving a real problem.

And in DeFi, the same story repeats — now faster, permissionless, and more opaque. Flash loan attacks. MEV front-running. Protocol collapses when yield dries up.

But beyond risk, there is something even more tragic: the waste of human potential.

We suggest that human intelligence, passion, and audacity to venture should not be spent simply trying to out-leverage or out-maneuver a volatile system.

Why not channel that same boldness — that same hunger for edge — into running a venture that solves community problems?
Why not use our ingenuity to build systems of cooperation, governance, and regenerative finance, instead of zero-sum churn?

We dream not of a slower market, but of a braver economy — one where price isn’t everything, and value comes from impact, not volatility.

The debate presented two visions for the role of trading in finance — both rooted in experience, but diverging in aspiration.

The House of Affirmation reminded us that markets require liquidity. That buying and selling allow people to move assets freely, set prices based on real-world information, and manage risk. Without these functions, both traditional finance and DeFi protocols — from lending pools to AMMs — would grind to a halt.

But the House of Rebuttal challenged us to ask:

How much of today’s trading is actually productive?

Most modern trading — especially in DeFi — isn’t about funding businesses, protecting farmers from drought, or even hedging against market risk. It’s about capturing short-term price differences with bots, leverage, or speculation. This creates fragile systems that often collapse when token prices stop going up.

More importantly, the Opposition asked:

Is this really the best use of human intelligence, creativity, and ambition?

Should our smartest minds spend their lives optimizing arbitrage strategies and chasing yield? Or can they build tools, platforms, and communities that more directly solve real problems — from affordable housing to decentralized energy to transparent governance?

We now live in a world where AI can assist price discovery, smart contracts can enforce trust, and protocols can be designed from scratch. So the question is no longer, “Does trading work?”
It’s: “Is it worth centering our entire system around it?”

The symposium concluded with a shared vision, not of rejection, but of redesign.

We don’t need to eliminate trading. But we don’t need to glorify it either.

Let it serve where it serves — but let’s design systems that reward people for creating value, not just extracting it.

This vision includes:

• Proof-of-Use Tokens
  Users earn tokens by contributing, participating, or governing — not just by holding or flipping coins.

• Reputation-Based Access
  Instead of buying influence, users build it by showing up, helping others, and making good decisions.

• AI-Guided Pricing
  Fare-like dynamic pricing (think Uber or Airbnb) could replace speculative markets in some areas.

• Optional, Not Central, Trading
  Liquidity remains — but speculation becomes a side effect, not the core activity.

In this system, a farmer using blockchain to manage co-op payments contributes as much as a coder writing arbitrage bots.
A user helping others navigate a decentralized platform earns status — not through clicks, but through care.

It’s still a market — just one that values what matters.

Let this be our next chapter in financial design:

One where we use code to free people from the need to trade, and free people to build what really counts.