0:00: OK, and welcome to our podcast here, Genius Life, together with Simon Dickson.
0:07: Hello, Simon, how are you?
0:10: Hey, Roger.
0:10: Good to see you again.
0:11: Can you hear me OK?
0:12: Yeah, that sounds awesome.
0:13: That sounds great.
0:14: And, , really, really great to see you again.
0:16: It's been, we're just saying like 10 years, , since we first met 2014.
0:22: , and I'm really looking forward to this call because this is the 2nd Genius slide that we are doing since we announced our Genius treasury at Genius.
0:30: And, , I am, , I'm really keen on, , everyone who is really learning about, , what is gonna be taking place over the next 10 years.
0:39: , they just realise how much has changed in 10 years, , where things were 10 years ago, , where things could be in 10 years' time.
0:45: So why don't we start off with there?
0:46: I, I know when we, , first met, I was running the Entrepreneurs summit in London.
0:50: , you came, joined us, and, , we were already talking about Bitcoin.
0:53: I mean, you, you were one of the very, very first.
0:56: To ever really be out there like letting people know, , where the world was going and, , your vision, , and the Bank of the future, , concept already, , you were actually sharing, I think you're actually unveiling it at our summit at that point as well.
1:10: , so maybe let's start right back then, and you can share with everyone.
1:13: You even basically got into, , deciding that the future was all about Bitcoin and, , the pathway that you were taking, especially when it comes, , to your experience in banking and, , and that a lot of it was obviously a reaction to your background of what wasn't working, , as to what would be a solution that is working.
1:32: Yeah, OK, thank you very much for allowing me to share it.
1:35: , so I think it started with me, 2000, , dot com boom and bust.
1:42: , my father, who was born into poverty, self-made millionaire, decided to put all of his money and his whole retirement into the equivalent of pets.com and all sorts of stuff, , on the stock market, so.
1:57: , my father lost his entire retirement and everything he'd ever built in the boom and bust, and he asked me, , how old were you at that point, like when when that was happening?
2:07: And do you remember it happening at the time?
2:09: So where are we now?
2:10: 24, so I was, this is 24 years ago.
2:12: , so I was about 20 years old.
2:15: , and, , yeah, my, and I remember my father coming to me cause you know, he made a bunch of money on the stock market and thought this is great, I'm going all in.
2:26: , he wanted to then become a full-time trader.
2:28: , but, you know, he was really, really just based upon making money, overexposed himself, never really understood much around it.
2:38: It was just, , gambling, essentially.
2:40: , and he ended up losing it all.
2:42: And so one day he asked me, a son, , where did my money go?
2:46: What happened?
2:47: , and ever since then I've just been obsessed with the topic of money.
2:51: So first place I wanted to go to learn about money when you're 20 years old is I thought I'll go do an economics degree.
2:58: , didn't really get the answers in the economics degree, so I thought I'll go do an economics masters.
3:03: , didn't really get the answers in the Economics masters, and so I, , decided I wanna to go work in, in London City.
3:11: , I couldn't really get a job in London City, so I got myself a job as a tea boy, , for a stockbrokers in Manchester called TD Waterhouse.
3:20: , and, , when I, when I was selling stocks, I started to understand.
3:25: What actually moves these stocks, and it turns out it's relationships with market makers.
3:30: , and so, , I wanted to become a market maker, so I managed to get my break, , got my first job in the investment bank KBC, worked as a market maker, and learned the sheer manipulation that happens in terms of pricing, the so-called Chinese walls between corporate finance and market making.
3:49: , and really it's all just a game of, , pushing people into psychological decisions, , and the institutions are always on the other side making all the money.
4:00: So while we were pushing the stocks up and down for retail, , Goldman Sachs was on the other side of the trade, , and, , so then decided to work in corporate finance to try and understand, you know, who are all these people and who are the insiders, .
4:16: when you were doing that stock market trading, like was it mainly the London stock market or was it also US at that point what was happening at that point?
4:25: Yeah, it was two markets.
4:26: It was London Stock Exchange, , alternative investment markets, so low cap, low liquidity stocks.
4:33: , and they just launched a competing exchange called Plus Markets.
4:37: , and so we were the, the first to make a market in plus markets at the same time.
4:42: , and then, yeah, decided that I wanted to understand the other side of it, so, , I got a job in corporate finance, which was helping venture capitalists, , float on the alternative investment market.
4:56: , and after doing that for approximately a year, , I decided I wanted to understand like what how these companies became public and the entrepreneurs behind it, so .
5:08: I was really studying on the side a lot about how money really works and I went down a bit of a conspiratorial route in terms of understanding the history of money, which turned out to be conspiracy fact.
5:21: exactly how money is created, and so once I understood how all the pieces fit together, , then that's when I decided to throw in the corporate towel in 2006.
5:33: And I started giving presentations all around the around the world, mainly UK but then went over to Chicago and various other places.
5:43: But that would presenting on monetary reform.
5:45: That, that would have been like what exactly what one year before the whole global financial crisis started, started basically picking 2007, right?
5:53: So what was that like when you were out there basically sharing about this and that kind of panic was going on?
6:00: Yeah, exactly.
6:01: So in 2006, , when I was going around universities talking about concepts like fractional reserve banking and, you know, money multipliers and various other things, people thought it was, you know, telling somebody that did you know that when you deposit your money at a bank, they become the legal owner of your money.
6:19: they then actually spend it as they choose and they actually create digital currency every time they issue a mortgage or a loan.
6:26: , people would think you're a conspiracy theorist and you are crazy.
6:29: , then 2007 happened.
6:32: We had, , you know, Northern Rock in the UK, , then we had the subprime crisis and suddenly hundreds and hundreds of people were interested in understanding about monetary reform.
6:43: , and so, you know, that took us to 2007, 2008.
6:49: Now at that time, I fell into.
6:52: , trying to actually reform banks by working with governments and in the UK there was things called like the Vickers report, , where they were investigating, and I said, you, you, you're just focusing on the symptoms, you're not focusing on the cause.
7:08: Like this is a monetary reform issue.
7:10: You know, this subprime crisis was a symptom of how money is actually created and a solution only comes from monetary reform, so.
7:19: , at that time, my, my wife just said, look, dealing with these politicians and bankers, like, it's just a waste of time, , that nothing's gonna happen.
7:29: , and there were documentaries, I don't know if you remember, there was like things called Bank on Dave, where he was trying to create a bank at the time.
7:37: , and I decided, why don't we just create a non-fractional reserve bank, a bank where people can own their money, a bank where people can decide the flow of money.
7:48: And a bank where we don't actually create money, it's just a safe storage for people's money.
7:54: , and in trying to do that, , I realised it was impossible.
7:58: , I went to the Bank of England, we tried to get a licence, they said, firstly, you need to put a $60 million down payment and you need to deposit it into Barclays, and they need to get a cut of every single transaction and you have to actually engage in re-hypothecation.
8:16: , , because that's how the banking system works, you, you couldn't offer people a safe place to store their money because that's the biggest threat to fractional reserve banking.
8:27: , and so I discovered that pretty quickly, , and it, it actually made me broke.
8:32: We went through all of our savings.
8:35: , by this point, I was about 250K in debt.
8:39: , we went down to our last credit card trying to make this company work and the barriers were just too big.
8:45: What, what was the year when that was happening?
8:48: , this is about 2009.
8:52: , so this is like a couple of years, you know, deep into the financial crisis, , Lehman Brothers hadn't gone bust yet.
8:59: , Lehman Brothers was about to go into file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, , to, and, .
9:06: And yeah, , so realised that we just couldn't, , create a bank.
9:12: , and so it was at this moment when I decided I'm gonna write my book, so I wrote a book, it was my second book, and it was called Bank to the Future, Protect Your Future before governments go bust.
9:23: , and it was really just helping people understand that there's, , all of this social media, , there's all of this technology.
9:31: , and actually it's probably gonna be a bottom up change.
9:35: , we've actually just got to create the technology and, , we were kind of lobbying the Bank of England to open up their API keys at this time, and then we got regulatory change for, , you know, , having challenger banks where it didn't, you just didn't have to go through Barclays and clearing banks.
9:52: And then there were things like peer to peer lending with companies like ZOA, , then there was crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding, and all of this technology was changing everything.
10:01: , but in the book I realise, yeah, yeah, I, I wanna pause right there and, and yeah, tell us about the book and, and the key part to it and before we get onto cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
10:13: , I, I'd love to share with you some of my observations, , experience, and questions very specifically around money, right?
10:21: Like, you know, and because this is like a critical, critical piece that enables, , anyone who is now watching what's going on in the world to understand it at a very different level from where it is right now.
10:32: But first of all, you know, share, share your observations in the book about, about this whole commentary about money itself and what you were seeing in terms of how, how it was being controlled by these systems.
10:43: Yeah, so I, I tried to, as part of the book, I tried to figure out how we could live in a world without banks, , and how we could actually, and my conclusion was, all of the technology is being built on top of legacy technology.
10:56: And it was the same experience that I had, and so I only found one way of operating outside the system.
11:02: And it was this guy, as I was writing this book, the book, a guy called Johnny Bitcoin messaged me on Facebook and he said, hey Simon, .
11:12: Yeah, I know those, I, I attended one of your talks, and I've actually just sold my house and I've moved into a squat in Old Street.
11:20: , and in this crack den, there's a bunch of people working on this technology called Bitcoin.
11:26: and so and and he said, I've sold my house, it's the future of money.
11:31: , and he, he literally sold everything, moved into, moved into the squad, , and just started hanging out with people that were coding on Bitcoin Core.
11:42: And so I was like, what is this, , Bitcoin thing?
11:44: So I decided to include it in the book and delayed launching it.
11:47: , and I went to the squat, and a guy called Amir Taki was at the squat, and he was one of those crazy early Bitcoin developers that was telling me about a world of that I just never understood.
12:02: OK, so I'm before we go, we go too much into the, the story of where that goes.
12:06: I, I think that's a super, , , interesting, , conversation we're about to have.
12:12: And if we can just, , like from that experience and, and the fact that you came through this.
12:16: Even trying to set up your own bank, I find super interesting.
12:19: I was born in Hong Kong and, , and my father, , who's Scottish, he, he, the, the way he found his way to, , , , Hong Kong and my mother because my mother happened to be, , his, , , his superior in the.
12:32: Hong Kong police, and they met there, , and he actually came out to Hong Kong to join the Hong Kong police because it was a good way to get out of Scotland.
12:39: , and then when he came in, he just saw all the corruption that was happening.
12:42: And so he was a pivotal part of starting up the ICAC, which is the corruption, , , squad, and some of the first things they were looking at, , was corruption in, , in the banking system, right?
12:51: Like the, the, there was some of the biggest banking scandals, , that actually happened.
12:55: There was, there was a really huge one, ICCI.
12:57: , and, and like, you know, the, it was, it was exactly where, , you basically had all of the stuff we see happening today, you know, but happening at scale, , and where you had the police, you know, getting involved in trying to find out exactly where the money was getting passed to who, who in the government was actually involved in it as well.
13:15: , and, and, and what's really interesting about that whole story is we saw that same, you know, as, as we evolved in and, and grew as, as a family, and then I went off to Cambridge to, to study architecture and.
13:26: And I was very interested.
13:27: I, I started my first business when I was, , in Cambridge, and I got very interested in this whole concept of money and where does money come from and, and what's it all about.
13:35: And, and I would say one of my biggest eye-openers, , which it happened about the same time when, when, when you were basically in the, you know, early 2000s going through your experience.
13:43: , was when I, , met up with, , incredible woman called Lyn Twist, right, and Lynn Twist, she has a book called The Soul of Money, right?
13:50: I'm gonna recommend two books for everyone who, who's watching this right now.
13:53: , and, and a huge part of what she was saying was that, , you know, poverty itself is a construction of money, the way that money is structured at the moment, right?
13:59: And.
14:00: , and I wanted to know a lot more about that.
14:02: So she started pointing us, and pointing me to the right kind of books to read.
14:05: And, and by far the best book that I ever read on money, which is called The Future of Money, which is by Bernard litre.
14:11: , what I really found interesting about that was the times in which government money no longer worked, right?
14:17: So he, he went back to the recession and he basically showed the American recession.
14:21: , you know, when, when money just dried up, right, there just wasn't enough money from the, from in US dollars.
14:26: , and so you had all these community currencies that got created.
14:28: And, , and, and it was pretty much just, you know, people like you and me getting together and saying, well, if we don't have enough money, , and we want to actually, you know, like swap goods, , let's create our own.
14:37: And, and what was so incredible about these community currencies was they did the opposite of what current money does, right?
14:44: Like, yeah, and, and, and we actually did this during the pandemic as well.
14:47: , and what I mean by doing the opposite is, , you know, there's a reason that pretty much every religion in the world, , says that, you know, earning interest on your money is illegal because if something happens at the moment, money can make money.
14:58: , and, , and especially if it's controlled by governments to do this.
15:01: So for example, if, if, if I have a bottle of water, , and I'm not worried about drinking, , , like holding onto my water, cause I know there's always water around, , and, and other people have bottles of water as well, like we all get to drink, right?
15:12: The issue is.
15:13: If someone says, hey, if at the end of the day, you've got water, I'm gonna give you more water, right?
15:17: Or I'm gonna give you an interest in that water.
15:19: , the guys who know how to grab the water from everybody is gonna go and grab it, right?
15:23: Because they're thinking about how to turn that water into more water.
15:25: Suddenly everyone's thirsty, right?
15:26: And so, like, you know, what basically was happening, , again and again when there wasn't enough in the money supply was that the people who weren't thinking about their money as much had that money taken away by the people that actually wanted to grab onto it, and there was no incentive to make the money flow through the system.
15:40: And these community currencies had negative interest.
15:42: If you held onto your money and you didn't basically pass it on, , then you basically had less at the end of the day.
15:48: It actually went down in value, but if you actually did pass it on, then it retained its value.
15:52: , and every time you had the voucher, be, you know, if I did business with you, I gave it to you, it was fine.
15:57: But if I had it myself and it was like 2 days old, then my money became worthless.
16:01: And so everyone was wanting, had a, you know, reason to go and actually use it with each other.
16:05: , when we had our.
16:07: Community globally, and the pandemic hit, , we created something called the Trusted Buyers Club to say, everyone who comes in, you've got $10,000 credit on our system, and you can straight away start using it.
16:15: But if you get to the end of the week, and you, whatever you haven't used, you're gonna lose 10% of it.
16:19: So use all of it.
16:20: And everyone started actually spending with each other.
16:22: And of course, community currencies, you know, are what enabled so many different communities from the recession to actually continue until, again, the government came in at the national level and outlawed it all.
16:31: And obviously, that also was the beginning.
16:33: Of, , the Third Reich, and that's what happened in Germany when you had all of these different, , , community currencies that all disappeared in Germany.
16:40: And then, you know, we ended up with like, you know, the, the, the, the, the Second World War.
16:44: And I was so fascinated by that, and the whole idea that there is a way to engineer money in such a way that you can create prosperity for everybody.
16:51: , but we have actually gone down a very different pathway, which is one in which we have a current system we have.
16:57: And I wanted to share all of that because, , For me, that's what excited me so much when I heard you talk about your story.
17:05: , and it was at the time, by the way, , when a number of different people that already we had met up with who'd actually come out to places like Bali, trying to get out of America because the FBI were out of, you know, the, the founders of Bit gold, the guys that basically were in the currencies before, , Bitcoin actually, you know, got created.
17:21: , it, it, it was already where the, , genesis of these new systems.
17:26: That enabled us to actually create, , new economies effectively, or ways of evolving and growing, we're already being experimented with.
17:33: So I wanted to give that as a background from my side as well, because I think for many people, you know, who showed up, it's like, well, where did this Bitcoin thing come from?
17:40: There's an entire history behind it, which is really worth studying, if you want to know why we end up with poverty today, why we end up with people not being able to pay bills today.
17:49: , and, and I know this is a big part of what you were looking at, and, And, and just hearing the story of your, of your father, , you know, so many people are going through exactly that today, wondering why is it I'm working so hard and having no money.
18:01: , so yeah, I, I, I'd love for you to continue on this story, , but at the same time, , you know, basically share as, as you're going through the story, how your view of money itself has changed in terms of what is possible, , basically as you started going down this pathway.
18:17: Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much for sharing that.
18:19: It's interesting you say Hong Kong cos that was a part of my story when we couldn't do it in the UK I had to move to Hong Kong.
18:26: , and, and Hong Kong has a very interesting history in itself as well, cos, , you know, it was actually the opium wars, , where the British Empire wanted to get China addicted to opium.
18:41: In order to steal all of its silver, , from the gold that it was stealing from, , you know, India, , and essentially use that and it created the foundation of a drug drug trafficking cartel, , that drug trafficking cartel, the fact that they needed to set up, yeah, they needed to set up a bank which was HSBC and so HSBC was set up within Hong Kong.
19:07: , and then they ended up, you know, the settlement was a 99 year lease, , and when I lived in Hong Kong, the, you know, it, it, they were going through that transition of reunification with, , China that was leading to, you know, all of the, the riots of the cultural differences between, , the, you know, the Cantonese and everything.
19:26: , and that is actually the story of money.
19:29: , the story of central banking, and I could go into every phase if you wanna go all the, and I won't, but if you wanna go all the way back to its theological roots in usury, , you know, and, , all the way through, you find that the fall of the Roman Empire.
19:44: , all the way through to the Napoleonic revolutions.
19:48: These are actually wars over the control of money.
19:51: Even American independence was when the Bank of England wanted to, , you know, actually create, , a counterfeit version of the colonial scripts, flood the market, create inflation, , and, , charge tax to the American people, and they revolted against the Bank of England.
20:11: , and, , you know, the Bank of England in itself, it was just set up by, , trying to get, you know, fund both sides of the French war and the British war.
20:21: , and, , essentially it was the battle for the control of money.
20:25: , and the central banks won, , because how it used to work is, , let's say you wanted to create a $20 bill, and this is how money still works today in the cash and coin economy.
20:37: If you want to create a $20 bill, it costs approximately 3 cents to create it.
20:41: , and you go to a Royal Mint, they print it, the production cost is about 3 cents.
20:45: You then take that $20 bill and you sell it to a private bank.
20:49: , the bank pays the face value of it, so there's 1997 margin in a $20 bill.
20:55: That $19.97 is then transferred to Treasury and reduces the amount of tax that the people need to pay.
21:03: And so pre central banking, if you look at when the Bank of England was founded, you also got the introduction of income tax.
21:11: , if you look at the Federal Reserve 1913, you also got the introduction of income tax, because the profits from creating money were handed over to the Federal Reserve shareholders, which is the private banks that set up the system in the first place and used assassination and violence in order to make sure it got through, steal the money supply from Congress, , and then charge income tax on the people and create a Ponzi scheme where money was created as debt.
21:41: So if you take out a mortgage, that money's not just sat there, they actually create a digital currency every time they issue a loan, it's a digital pound or a digital euro or a digital dollar.
21:52: And when they create it, it actually comes with interest, and if you want to repay that interest, the money doesn't exist to repay that interest, so therefore you have to create more digital currency.
22:03: What's the best way of creating digital currency en masse?
22:07: Lend it to the government for war.
22:09: And so the entire history of war, when you want to understand it, and you were talking about Germany, you know, you look at the Bolshevik revolution, , this was actually, you know, a central banking war where they wanted to overthrow the Russian government that had zero inflation, , the world's largest gold reserves, zero unemployment, , and, , and, , the Bolshevik revolution was replacing.
22:35: , one of the most successful economies in Russia with the Soviet Union by the same families that were funding the Federal Reserve.
22:43: And so if you look at the Cold War, the central bank, the Federal Reserve was like an ideological way of taking over constitutional America and replacing it with debt-based money.
22:54: And it was the same families that were also funding the Bolshevik revolution and created the Soviet Union, both sides of the Cold War.
23:02: , and so it's an absolutely fascinating history when you get into it.
23:06: It's actually quite ironic that actually this, , this podcast is called The Future of Money.
23:10: We're talking about the history of money, right?
23:11: But it's like, like that, that I, I, I love that quote that the, you know, the more you want to, you know, , understand the future, the more you need to study the past, right?
23:18: Like you want to look 100 years in the future, look 100 years in the past and.
23:21: , , two things which give me a real personal interest in what's happening right now with Bitcoin and what's happening with, you know, things like, you know, Treasury reserves and, and the extent to which governments now start embracing, etc.
23:31: , is kind of interesting my pathway personally, because you've had your personal pathway, , and I've had my personal pathway as well.
23:38: The, the fact that, you know, basically, the Hamilton clan, right?
23:41: Because my, my dad's from Scotland, and I went to study the Hamilton clan.
23:44: All the way back and it goes, you know, goes all the way back.
23:46: Then also in Hamilton that was basically, you know, like, like carrying, , you know, , , , Richard the Lionheart's heart, you know, back from, , Europe because, , they were part of the Crusades, right?
23:56: Like they basically were the Crusaders that went all the way back in time to the, , , to the Temple Knights.
24:02: And, and what's so interesting is that story about how the Temple Knights really understood promises like trust and.
24:08: And how money was just basically, you know, a permissory note, it was just promise, , and, and basically, you know, Florence as the kind of like basis of the Renaissance, but also the basis of the of the Knights Templars coming through, , that whole, , pathway where the Medicis who are basically all related to, , the, the first Bank, , created what we have today, which is, which is our double accounting system, right?
24:31: And, and the idea today that, you know, All the money that is in your cash flows, your promises paid, , you know, the, the, the P&Ls your promises made, , or, or, or your balance sheets promises made, and your P&Ls promise is delivered, and understanding that you can then track it over time, which is what they were doing at that point, so that they could actually be, you know, you know, basically building currency across time and, and across, across place.
24:52: , and then by the time you then had, , , Isaac Newton, who, I, I went to Trinity College and Isaac Newton.
24:58: Who basically at Trinity, while he was a scientist, he was really, really interested in this whole pathway of how money got created, , and you know, the, the Solomon Temple, you know, best draughts of Solomon Temple and the best, , , , draughts of, , the Hermetic, , philosophy with the Emerald Tablet, that was all, , Isaac Newton, right?
25:17: And, and he, he collected all of this, , and what I was blown away by was the fact that people think he's a scientist, you know, he was, he basically went from, , Trinity College.
25:25: Down to the Bank of England, where he became the head of the Royal Mint.
25:29: And he's the first to create the gold standard.
25:31: , and it all, and it all happened off the back of the fact that everyone was on the silver standard.
25:34: And he goes, Well, like, the silver's being debased, so let's basically link silver to gold.
25:38: And he just got the numbers wrong.
25:39: And as a result, everyone goes, Well, we're better off on the gold standard than the silver standard.
25:43: And that was the beginning of the British Empire, right?
25:45: And then the fact that that all then grew, , and then, and then along comes, , you know, an economist, right, in Cambridge, which is John, , Maynard Kean.
25:52: After, , the Second World War.
25:55: And basically, he's the one who collected all of Isaac Newton's stuff and got really interested in the same thing.
26:00: And then he was the one who was brought in Bretton Woods to basically say, create an entire monetary system, right?
26:04: And he created the IMF as a way to create the money and, and regulate the money, and they created the World Bank as a way to distribute the money.
26:09: And, and now we're in this monster Frankenstein that got created at that time, where, where the whole point of why it was created is the total opposite.
26:16: , and taking my pathway all the way through the Hamilton plan.
26:19: Where we really were the ones that Hamiltons were the ones that issued Freemasonry down into England, , at, at, at the time of, , , , of Guy Fawkes and, , , and, and, , , and the shift in the monarchy there.
26:31: , and then, of course, Alex, Alexander Hamilton heads out with his clan to America and creates up the Federal Reserve in America.
26:39: And I'm like, holy cow, like my, my, my, my, my, my, my lineage has been involved in this all the way through.
26:46: , and they've got a lot to, to answer for for the fact that they basically created an entire Federal Reserve in America, which basically was debt-based, as you mentioned, right?
26:54: Because being debt-based meant that people were going to be more likely, , to want to see America around to get their, their, their debt repaid.
27:01: , so interesting, this whole pathway and how it links, but more importantly, the fact that it's only when you actually see that the problems of money and how it has created so much challenges, the way it's designed, , at its core for the common man.
27:16: , it's been great for the monkeys.
27:18: It's been great for the, , federal government, right?
27:19: But it's not been great for the because it's designed in such a way that you have to keep on chasing for it, right?
27:24: And, and it's designed in such a way, , that, you know, the, the, like the fact that it's called an economy, which means you got to economise, it's just not enough there, right?
27:32: And that's the whole basics of of the wealth of nations, right?
27:35: It's not the wealth of people, it's the wealth of nations, , which is the government and how the government gets to control the people.
27:40: , I find this super interesting and it's obviously at the basis of the philosophy, .
27:44: Which is within, , now what we're seeing, not just in Bitcoin, but blockchain itself, right?
27:49: Like, what can you do to decentralise trust in such a way you don't need a centralised body anymore, , which means you don't, you know, you don't have someone who's actually out for themselves, which is not the individuals that actually make up the democracy in the first place.
28:01: So I'd love for you to take that whole pathway.
28:03: Any, any comments you have on just what I shared, because I, I, I know we could talk about this for hours, but just from there, then lead back into the story where you started getting involved with the whole Bitcoin thing.
28:14: Yeah, so, , that's the first realisation that you realise fiat currency is just one big Ponzi scheme.
28:20: , they fund the wars and they get governments deep and deep into debt, and the governments love it because they get to borrow the money, , and they get to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
28:31: , but it leads to this side effect of a perpetual debt cycle, and a perpetual debt cycle means that you have baked into the protocol anti-Christian and anti-Islamic finance, which forbade usury, , and usury is actually built into the protocol of how fiat currency is created.
28:51: It's created as a credit, as a debt.
28:54: And so now you've got this force.
28:57: , which, , is, , you know, and then you talk about the history of economics.
29:01: There was a lot of funding to universities from the very same entities that created these central banks, and you end up with Keynesian economics, which essentially said government debt needs to grow in order to stimulate the economy.
29:14: And then you have Milton Freedom with monetarism which took like classical economics, , and said, well, you can, , you need a 2% inflation built into it.
29:24: , and all inflation comes from the central bank, , and so inflation is built into the psyche, and Austrian economics and hard money is just left to the side, , and then all of these are the next wave of central bankers and PhDs and the foundation of the financial system, , and then we end up in the situation we are in right now, which is where.
29:49: You have the largest economy in the world like America, $36 trillion in debt, extreme wealth inequality, where they're sending billions of dollars to fund wars, but they've got massive infrastructure problems in their own countries.
30:05: Real homelessness problems, , and the assets are converging into those that bought real estate, stocks and were able to beat inflation by by buying assets or they've got their business.
30:19: , and this is creating more and more wealth inequality, which drives those that are feeling despondent by the system, begging the government and becoming extreme left, and then almost begging for more of a socialist communist ideology.
30:33: And those on the extreme right using all their money and power in order to rig the system, bribe the system, , and they end up with more and more of the assets and so you go to the extreme right, , and, , you know, and then what Bitcoin wanted to do.
30:48: Is essentially say, well, maybe there is another way, maybe we could bring back hard money, and maybe we could bring back Austrian economics, which essentially said, you know, there's a wealth effect, there's delayed gratification, you you have a time preference for your money, and the longer you can delay it, the better.
31:08: and if you can save and the value of the money actually goes up, then you end up saving and then there's a wealth effect and then you end up reinvesting your we.
31:18: Rather than always leveraging the debt cycle because you're looking to borrow money in order to invest in assets.
31:25: And so you almost have this two-tiered system of fiat currency that drives debt and you have to play leverage to win the game and beat inflation.
31:34: , or you have a hard money system which encourages equity, profit share, savings, building wealth, and then re-spending that wealth, and these are two different ideologies which kind of perfectly summarises where we are once they created Bitcoin.
31:50: , and so this brings us back to where we were.
31:52: So, , I was, , invited to speak at the first Bitcoin conference since 2011.
31:59: , Amir Tarki invited me.
32:01: , I wanted to go and promote the book and promote.
32:04: You know, how people could use bank to the future and have a non-fractional reserve Bank as soon as the Bank of England let us.
32:12: we took our last bit of credit card debt, , I started writing on Bitcoin to understand how this ecosystem worked.
32:19: , and because we failed so miserably at trying to create a bank, I was very, very receptive to it.
32:25: , and my wife just said, hey, we've gotta go over to that conference, it was in Prague.
32:29: , and, , we got to go and speak, so, , and that was when I started my YouTube channel.
32:34: I started, we filmed the talk on the first Bitcoin conference.
32:38: , and this was before, like 3 years before we came to your conference to talk about it as well.
32:44: , and, , yeah, just met the early Bitcoin community, and it was about 50 to 100 people.
32:51: I think the room was filled with 50 people.
32:53: The price of Bitcoin had just listed on an exchange.
32:56: Mount Gots was the main exchange where it was priced.
33:00: And during the conference, the price of Bitcoin crashed from $30 to $3.
33:05: , and I bought my first Bitcoin at $3 and someone came up to me, gave me this physical coin, which had 5 Bitcoin on, and I bought them, , I bought it at $3 per bitcoin.
33:17: and someone helped me set up a wallet and there was after the conference there was this hackathon.
33:23: , and you had to go to like what can only be described.
33:26: You had to get these codes and you would receive, you know, SMS codes around Prague.
33:31: , and then you would end up in this crack den basically, and you had to knock on the door in the correct way.
33:36: And then there was a bunch of people with anonymous masks on hacking and, , and they hacked together a, , a vending machine where I could spend the one Bitcoin through a QR code and then it would give me a Mars bar.
33:48: So I spent one of them, , one of my Bitcoin on a Mars on a Mars bar.
33:54: Yeah.
33:55: , but, you know, , I, from that moment on, I realised because they explained to me how this thing actually works, and I took it to my framework of how I understood banking, , and came with this concept that, right, Bitcoin's actually doing the opposite of fiat currency.
34:13: And I said, what is, what is banking?
34:15: Well, there's 3 principles.
34:16: When you deposit your money at a bank, the bank becomes the legal owner of your money.
34:21: With Bitcoin, you become the legal owner of your money, so it brought back self custody and bearer asset.
34:27: So the Bitcoin exists on my phone, on my computer, , and so you can actually bring back ownership without a bank in the middle.
34:36: Then I'd try and spend it and I realised, well, you know, I just bought a Mars bar with a Bitcoin, but there was no banking permission, there was no card network, there was no er anti-money laundering, there was no KYC.
34:49: What happened there?
34:51: , and I realise you can, once you can earn your own money, you can spend it as you choose.
34:55: And it's kind of an innocent until proven guilty system.
34:59: , you create an immutable record of it.
35:01: If you commit crime, , there's, , no plausible deniability that that record's gonna be there forever.
35:08: And people that have stolen, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin, the DOJ comes back and connects them later.
35:14: , so you create that, , which, whereas fiat currency is kind of guilty until proven innocent.
35:21: , whenever I, you know, and this doesn't affect you until you build significant wealth.
35:25: I was broke at the time, , but Bitcoin made it where, you know, when you do these very large transactions out in the fiat currency world, I'm very lucky if my bank will allow me to spend my money today.
35:38: You know, , you, firstly, when you're associated with Bitcoin, you, you have very hard to get banking, and so, , you end up with basically having to document every single movement.
35:51: It takes ages.
35:52: If I want to send 100 million through the banking system, you know, it's incredibly difficult to do that.
35:58: , and you, you end up like when I wanted to buy my house, for example, it took 9 months to complete that transaction cos I wanted to buy it.
36:07: Cause I didn't want to take on a mortgage, I just wanted to buy it because I had the money.
36:11: , and they hate it when you don't borrow the money.
36:14: , and so it took 9 months just to find a bank that would complete that transaction.
36:18: , but anyway, , with Bitcoin, you can spend it as you choose.
36:22: With banking, , you know, they determine how it's spent, and because they create it every time they issue a loan, they're directing the flow of money, whether 40% of all the money goes to real estate, that pushes up the price of real estate.
36:37: , and so, you know, banks are directing the flow with Bitcoin, you spend it peer to peer.
36:42: And the final concept, which is the most important concept, , is, , the monetary policy.
36:48: And once you understand the monetary policy, it's a little bit geeky to get your head around.
36:53: But you realise that it is the world's scarcest asset and it's digital that the world has ever seen.
37:00: And so you talked about the transition from a silver backed currency, you know, there is a lot more silver in the world than it has industrial use.
37:09: The reason gold became better money for the standard is cos it's rarer.
37:13: You know, , as the price of gold goes up, you can mine for more gold, , you have more investment to do that.
37:20: You have to go deeper and deeper into the ground, and historically, it's only increased at approximately 2% per annum.
37:28: , with Bitcoin, it created a completely fixed monetary policy.
37:33: , and so it's even rarer now than gold.
37:36: , and so, you know, the way that it works is you have 21 million bitcoins, , approximately, , every 10 minutes new bitcoins are minted.
37:47: And they're rewarded to minors, and anyone can be a minor.
37:49: Originally you'd fire up your laptop and become a minor.
37:53: , and you could earn, you could compete with everybody else to earn these 50 bitcoins every 10 minutes.
37:59: , more people, as more and more people did it, as it got more and more value, people started putting graphic cards in and they started putting more and more power towards it.
38:08: , and then eventually as it got more and more value, you know, .
38:12: A company called Bitmain in China started saying we'll manufacture application specific integrated circuit, AI machines, and you can actually mine Bitcoin faster than anybody else.
38:24: , and this whole mining industry emerged and anybody can be the miner, anyone can be the central bank.
38:31: But the central bank cannot change the monetary policy.
38:34: There will be, initially there was 50 bitcoins mined every 10 minutes, and that will continue for 4 years.
38:41: And then after 4 years, which also coincides with the election cycle, we have this halving cycle it's called.
38:48: , the number of bitcoins that were mined every 10 minutes would cut in half, so it'd be 25.
38:53: Another 4 years, it would be 12.5.
38:56: Another 4 years it would be 6.18.
38:58: Another 4 years and it would be, sorry, 3 1/8 after 6 quarter.
39:03: And that brings us to where we are right now.
39:05: We, we have this 95% of all the Bitcoin has now been mined.
39:10: There's only ever gonna be 21 million of them.
39:13: , there are, , you know, probably 44 to 6 million of them got lost when people just lost the key, because when you can own your own money, you have the responsibility of securing it.
39:23: , but now we've got this digital scarcity that started off as just a bunch of geeks, us trying to, , you know, get the Bitcoin and mine the bitcoin, to our industry becoming more and more institutional for the mining.
39:40: , and then suddenly, you know, , people would come along and you'd get companies that wanted to buy it.
39:47: And then you eventually got countries, and we've been through that journey.
39:50: And as the market capitalization of Bitcoin went up and up and up, the liquidity went up and up and up, and as the liquidity went up and up and up, it got the attention of more and more people.
40:01: , and this, this competition to try and own these bitcoins has just got more and more aggressive over time.
40:08: And the most important thing is that it became a commodity in itself because the code of Bitcoin became really, really hard to change.
40:18: And the miners didn't own it, the node operators didn't own it, they verify all the transactions, the entrepreneurs didn't own it, the companies and the venture capitalists didn't own it, the individuals didn't own it.
40:30: No one part of the ecosystem could control it.
40:33: , and so it became this commodity where nobody can control it, and so eventually the largest financial institutions that were fighting us all the way, saying, ah, it's not Bitcoin, it's blockchain, get rid of Bitcoin, there's nothing to it.
40:48: , they ended up capitulating and having to be involved in Bitcoin.
40:53: And it kind of brings us to where we are now, because now you've got money you can own, money you can spend and money that has a fixed supply.
41:00: With banking, money that you can't own, money that you may not be able to spend or you need permission from a government, and money where the monetary policy is created by the central bank, mainly based upon war.
41:12: Right?
41:13: I, I, I, I wanna share, I wanna share this as you were going through.
41:16: , the story, , I, I, I want to share this post that you put up here, this is from, you know, November 24th, so it's now, right?
41:23: And basically, , was two days ago and.
41:25: I really like this because it actually shows, look, it's, it's only ever been like, you know, this is the 4th halving.
41:32: And you can see how many more halvings are coming, but as you know, but as you say, right, it's like 95% of all the Bitcoin already is out there, right?
41:39: And, and so each one of these is again, like, you know, every 4 years this is happening, but, but, but it's not, it's like the supply will not grow that much.
41:46: And obviously, , you know, people like Michael Sala.
41:49: Who obviously is the one who's kind of leading this revolution from a, from a corporate Bitcoin treasury point of view is, you know, he kind of gives the example of, like, you know, , property in, , Manhattan, right?
42:00: And, and, and, and I, I look at that and go, well, OK, that's, that's one way to look at it.
42:03: But frankly, you know, the problem with property in Manhattan is that, you know, you can still, you can still add more property, right?
42:08: You can still, you know, make a bigger building, right?
42:10: But if you actually think about it as the land, which you can Not, , increase in size.
42:15: , and at this point people are criticising, well, you, you know, you've got Bitcoin, how are you gonna make money off Bitcoin?
42:19: It's like, it's like having land in Manhattan at the very beginning when you knew that it was gonna be the global financial centre or believed it was going to be in the future.
42:26: , and people say, what were you gonna do with the land?
42:27: Like, you know, you can't sell it to anyone at the moment, right?
42:29: And if you did, you're not gonna make much money.
42:31: , without realising, no, there's gonna be a point when people are gonna be wanting to rent that land for them to actually build.
42:36: , the economy on that land, build a building on that land, and, and what will be a three-story building will eventually get replaced by, you know, a, a, a fifty-story building.
42:44: , and eventually, with that land, you don't have to just lease it out.
42:47: You can actually have a, a shareholding in that property as well.
42:50: And once you start realising that we're not talking about, , and a Manhattan for humans, right?
42:56: And, and this was, I had an interview with Forbes journalist yesterday where he says, what, what is it that got you involved in this as an education company?
43:04: I said we're educating about the future, we're educating about a world in which AGIs happen, right, the singularities happen.
43:10: , what does the world look like when AI is building an economy way, way, way, way bigger than the one we have right now?
43:16: It's not for 8 billion humans, it's for 100 billion robots, AI, , they're gonna create their own currency because AI can only operate with other AI using tokens.
43:25: And that tokens have to have some kind of incentive or some kind of value.
43:28: So they're gonna create their own currencies.
43:29: And if you were to ask an AI to create a currency that it could use in the most effective way possible, of course.
43:35: Course is gonna make something 24/7, which is digital, , which has the ability, , for you to be able to break it up into, you know, like infinite number of pieces so that you can actually start building your economy off the back of it.
43:45: And it has to be backed by something, , which is scarce and which cannot, , be debased by anybody, , it's gonna be Bitcoin.
43:52: It would choose Bitcoin.
43:53: And in the same way the SEC has been outlawing cryptos, AI will outlaw, US dollars, there will be a day when basically it will be at a point when this, this economy gets so big, , that, , you're not gonna be able to use any fiat currencies, right?
44:11: Because it makes no sense to do that.
44:14: And so when you think, wow, so you're actually able to have an actual piece of this right now, right, before everyone stops talking about Bitcoin and starts talking about Satoshi's, , and it's very interesting because, you know, he was asking the question, well, OK, I can see that could be in the future.
44:26: But for now, why, why just go all in on Bitcoin?
44:29: Like why go buy Bitcoin?
44:31: , and I told him the story about, you know, when we were in South Africa and we went to Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe was going through hyperinflation.
44:38: , and you had some people working really, really hard on their company and their business and their job and going, no matter how hard I work, it, it basically keeps on dropping, the, the currency keeps on dropping against the US dollar.
44:49: , and at that point, there were some people who said, you know what, my whole business is gonna be just buying US dollars.
44:54: I'm not, I'm not gonna get out of the Zimbabwean dollar.
44:56: I'm gonna get into US dollar.
44:57: Those guys all survived.
44:59: Everyone else got crushed, right?
45:00: And, and when you actually realise, no, it wasn't about buying the US dollar, it was about getting out of, , the hyperinflation taking place.
45:06: US dollar has been in hyperinflation against Bitcoin.
45:09: For the last 10 years, I mean, like it's lost 99.99% of its value.
45:12: You are buying it at like, you know, $3 and, and, and now look at it.
45:16: , so you, you, you take that and that's 99.9% or 9%, right, that has actually dropped.
45:20: , so when you go, wow, like, if you think about it that way around, that compared to this new world we're going into, , this is the reason that you should be betting fully in it.
45:28: It's why we're.
45:29: Betting fully on it, , and at the same time, there's a, there's another thing which is that we're, we have been battling, , together with our lawyers about manipulations on small caps, , and it's one thing to say, hey, look, here's the actual value of the business.
45:42: It's another thing when you actually have it in Bitcoin and you can just see that the Bitcoin you've got is worth as much if not more, than the business, right?
45:50: Like there is this thing here, which is the, , if I just share my screen again.
45:54: That this here, which I shared on the podcast last, , , , , last week was the Bitcoin Treasuries.
46:00: This, this is growing very, very quickly.
46:02: But what's very interesting here is this, this thing here, which is basically the ratio of Bitcoin value of treasuries versus cost basis of the market cap, right?
46:11: And so you can see here, it's like, you know, 1.64, , you know, on micro strategy, a lot of these 1.64 or 2, you know, the lowest one here of all of them at the moment.
46:21: , is basically like, you know, it's almost a kind of a, , you know, a 1 to 1, right, which is basically, , this one here, .
46:30: And it is, , it's, , genius.
46:32: It's this one here, right?
46:33: We're at 1.02.
46:34: All was in parody it's like, you know, you know, it, it, it's not gonna be long if people want to manipulate our stock.
46:40: For someone to say, hey, if I want to buy a Bitcoin, I'm gonna go to a company where they've got more Bitcoin than the value of the company, right?
46:45: So that's cheaper than actually just buying the Bitcoin.
46:47: , and of course, if, if you believe in Michael Celler's view that every Bitcoin's gonna be worth $13 when you're at a point when you've got 153 Bitcoin, that's $2 billion worth, right?
46:55: Like, so.
46:56: So, so this is about actually preparing for this world that we're moving into.
47:00: And, and of course, , when you were buying, , at the very beginning at $3 that was long before we had the institutions or even governments considering now, and, and actually deciding to buy, and our states deciding they want to actually set up their own treasuries as well.
47:15: I would love for you, like in our kind of like, you know, final quarter of this podcast to now talk about the future and what your conclusions are on where this world is going and what everyone listening should be really thinking about when it comes to basically the future, , that they should be preparing for and what future you see Bitcoin playing in this.
47:35: Yeah, absolutely.
47:36: So, , I believe and .
47:39: It, , that we're gonna move to a world of central bank digital currencies, which is the remnants of the fiat currency system.
47:48: , it's the bailout of all the banks, the ultimate bailout, , artificial intelligence and Bitcoin.
47:55: , and when you have those three things together, I also believe that artificial intelligence will fire the central bank digital currencies and use Bitcoin in constructing a currency that works better for humanity.
48:09: , so I, I agree with that.
48:10: How did we get here?
48:12: , and what the future looks like?
48:13: , I'll break it very briefly into, I talked about those four year cycles.
48:19: Cycle one, it was just about proving that this thing is decentralised.
48:23: , and so, you know, after it launched in 2009 for 4 years, , we needed to prove that this is decentralised and we needed to fund the companies that would build the infrastructure.
48:34: , that's what Banks of the Future did.
48:35: We funded companies like Coinbase, Kracken, BitStamp, Bit Finex, , you know, Robin Hood, various other companies, , and it was all funded bottom up by investors on our platform, we got shares in those companies.
48:49: , and much of that, you know, circle as well, so we built the infrastructure, , and we were all of the Bitcoiners were able to benefit that through because we pivoted from a bank to, , funding this.
49:02: And so just like you, you kind of have this aha moment about Bitcoin, we realised we're going all in in Bitcoin, we're not gonna build a bank anymore.
49:09: Bitcoin is the bank, let's fund the companies.
49:12: , the, the, the next cycle was about not getting shut down, so we had massive regulatory shutdown.
49:19: Mount Gox went bust.
49:21: , this is when I spoke at your, your conference 2014, and that was the first time I ever heard about AI and singularity and some of these concepts.
49:30: , I presented on Bitcoin and funding and investing in these companies at that time.
49:35: , and it was just about not getting shut down.
49:37: We had massive regulatory crackdown in the US, Japan, everywhere.
49:42: , we got through that, , we figured out, we got through without being shut down because the government's realised they couldn't shut it down.
49:49: , the time to do that was in cycle one.
49:52: By this time, the mining was too big.
49:54: We'd created the largest supercomputer in the world.
49:56: It was distributed in geographical locations that hate each other.
50:01: They were mining in China, they were mining in America, they were mining in Europe, they were mining in Central America, Africa, Russia, Iran, you know, people were mining in different places.
50:11: And so you couldn't take out the network anymore, it was too big.
50:15: , that was the 2nd, you know, the 2nd phase was not get shut down.
50:20: , the 3rd phase was when everyone started creating their own coins and somebody tried to take Bitcoin and create fake Bitcoin.
50:27: And so, you know, one of the very proleverent people in our community, , started saying we're gonna partner with miners, we're gonna create Bitcoin cash, and then they wanted to create Bitcoin Satoshi's vision, and then they wanted to create Bitcoin Gold, and we had all these fake bitcoins, and we just needed to prove there is only one Bitcoin.
50:45: And so we ended up today with like 22,000 currencies, , and everyone realising there's still only 21 million Bitcoin and everything else is just something else.
50:54: There's only one Bitcoin.
50:55: Bitcoin's unique, , and we really got that in the third cycle.
51:00: , the fourth cycle was about a world of quantitative tightening, , because we had lived in a world of quantitative easing.
51:08: Was this all just Fed money being pumped into Bitcoin?
51:11: , well, once we moved to quantitative tightening, we survived that cycle.
51:16: We survived, you know, is there, is there counterfeit Bitcoin?
51:19: And we ended up with, , presidents like President Bikeelli that said we're gonna make Bitcoin legal tender.
51:25: Michael Saor that said, I'm gonna transform a public company and use Bitcoin as treasury.
51:31: , and then that laid the foundation for the current cycle, which is where we, you know, essentially the Fed created this pump and dump cycle.
51:40: , wiped out all the fraud, all the fraudulent companies, and then we had Bitcoin ETFs and we had large financial institutions that all started pouring in, you know, the, the large, large pools of money, , and that's kind of where we are now, but we're still not there yet because so many of the financial institutions.
52:01: It takes like a year in their cycle to get this signed off by compliance, create the products, get the custodian, , get this OK with regulators and all that.
52:11: And then that's just in America.
52:12: Then you've got all the countries around the world, we've got all these different regulatory regime.
52:17: The industry is not going anywhere, but we all got to front run and we still are because Wall Street's not in in any major major way yet.
52:27: They all know that they're trying to get in.
52:28: , and so, and now we had, you know, the pinnacle where Trump made it part of his campaign that he's gonna protect America by doing a Bitcoin strategic reserve.
52:39: Then Pennsylvania State said we're gonna front run the Fed, and we're gonna do it.
52:44: And now you've got all these states, and then you've got countries like Texas, you got, yeah, you've got a whole bunch of them now doing this.
52:49: Yeah.
52:50: Yeah, and then you've got like BRICs that are saying, well, we have some gold backing in our currency.
52:55: Why not have some Bitcoin backing?
52:57: , and so you've got now this global race.
53:01: , you've got, you know, like the Saudi that's got their vision 2030 and UAE that are thinking, how do we diversify from oil?
53:09: Well, why don't we really allocate and build a mining industry?
53:12: Why don't we get jobs by and, and competition all around the world to attract all the innovation and all the brain drainers coming from this industry.
53:22: , and so we still have so much more to go, and you said I bought Bitcoin at $3 I did.
53:28: , but I implemented a very simple rule.
53:30: I said, I'm gonna earn fiat currency, and every month I need to have more Bitcoin than I'd had the previous month.
53:36: So I still buy Bitcoin at $97,000 today.
53:40: Because every time I earn fiat currency, I'm saying, where do I wanna save my money?
53:45: Well, the only place to save it for me is Bitcoin, and then I can take some of that and invest it to meet different needs like income or diversification or things like that.
53:56: But it comes down to that simple equation.
53:58: , yeah, you could say I got lucky at 3.
54:01: I mean, the risk was off the scale at $3.
54:03: , but by always taking my fiat currency and converting it into Bitcoin as savings, , our company banked to the future never needed any venture capital.
54:14: We funded the whole thing by Bitcoin growth.
54:17: , we, I just, I, I, I just wanna share, let me just jump in for a second.
54:21: I want to share.
54:22: , for, for those who you don't know, this is how Simon's, , company, Bank of the Future is Bank of the Future BNK tofuture.com.
54:29: You can see basically how, , you know, the way already you've been building out a full, , raft of different, , investment.
54:37: , mechanisms for, , Bitcoin, which is obviously what we're seeing micro strategy do right now as well.
54:41: You've been doing this for, you know, well over a decade, right, which is super interesting and it's, and it's really for, you know, any kind of investment, including retail investors as well, , and of course, you know, like, you know, the education side, we should definitely speak about that in terms of how we build that as well.
54:55: , there's something about fundamentally the fact when when you, by the way, when you had, , you know, with your talk at the summit, we had people like Simon Zucci who now.
55:02: Set up Crow Property, which is, you know, the, the number one crowd funding site for property in, , in the US.
55:08: There's wealth my great, which was, , Simon Picken, who did the same thing.
55:11: , he heard your, , what you were doing and said, right, I'm, I'm gonna do the same thing now as well.
55:15: , but I'm gonna do it specifically, , for, , , for, , , property assets, you know, real estate.
55:22: , he said, as a result of this, basically started building out, , the whole idea of a blockchain.
55:28: Based, , tokenized, , asset portfolio, right?
55:31: And this was way back 10 years ago, and now this has actually evolved where there's been over a billion dollars that is South Africa based, but it actually, , , is, in all jurisdictions, US, UK, , and it's called wealth migrate, because it means you can migrate all your wealth from basically, , what is starting with, , you know, fear currency, and, and then you're putting it all into digital currency.
55:48: , and so there's all these different initiatives that have started, and I wanted to just share this with you and, and get your thoughts on.
55:54: The future of how blockchain links into all of this.
55:56: , we had to dust this off with our blockchain partners right now, because when we did our IPO, , the first thing SEC said is anything blockchain-based, we, we don't want to hear about it, we don't want to see it, right?
56:06: And, and even when we tried to basically go onto a blockchain-based exchange, which is upstream exchange, you know, at the Beginning, you know, they thought they had everything all like, you know, , approved by the SEC, but same thing happened again.
56:17: It's like, nope, it just sounds too much like it's crypto.
56:20: , we don't want to hear about it.
56:21: This year was basically our white paper, , for our gems, which is, , basically, , education-based credits, right?
56:27: And our argument is that within education.
56:30: , you know, if you get credits for your high school diploma, and then when you get your high school diploma, you can't use your credits, or, or you get credits for your university degree, and then once you get your university degree, you know, the credits mean nothing.
56:41: That's like getting air miles on a plane and when you land, you know, the air miles expire.
56:44: It's like that makes no sense.
56:46: So the idea that you could actually earn credits and then actually spend.
56:48: Those credits in the ecosystem made a lot of sense to us, right?
56:51: So we said, well, this is perfect.
56:52: Like this is what should, we should be doing a blockchain.
56:55: , and this actually goes into all the details on, , how it's not just, , credits that you can be earning, , as you are learning.
57:01: It's also about getting your certifications, right?
57:04: Like over 50% of all resumes.
57:06: Have got some untruth of some sort in there, and everyone needs, you know, every recruitment company has to go and basically try and figure out how do I go about actually building out my own, , , , , you know, my, my, my, my own verification for, you know, checking with all the universities, did this person get his degree and so on.
57:23: , of course, if it's all on the blockchain, you don't have any of those issues.
57:27: And so having a value layer where we can actually be verifying not just currency, but actually, you know, people's.
57:32: Credentials and, and their learning and, , and, and, and the AI's that they're actually interacting with that all have an address and where they're going and can connect to other other AIs.
57:41: Everything's gonna have a blockchain-based address in the future.
57:43: , and this is the Manhattan we're talking about, right?
57:45: It's a totally different world that we're moving into, where, of course, the currency needs to be blockchain-based as well.
57:50: It has to be, right?
57:51: , I'd love for you to, you know, kind of like maybe kind of round this off on the basis that, especially when you said that you're working with AIM and, and small caps, , You know, the extent to which, , you know, this can really support those that are really earnestly trying to build value and the old centralised opaque way that the current markets work, , can really shift if we can find a way eventually to get to basically blockchain-based markets, even when it comes to trading shares in companies.
58:18: , and the final thing I'll say just before, , asking you to share on this is I've been fascinating watching, , the kind of commentary.
58:25: Around states in America where there's no voter ID, right?
58:29: Because the idea there is like, well, why would you have no voter ID unless you're just trying to hide something, right?
58:34: Well, at the moment, , short selling on the US markets has no voter ID, right?
58:39: You, you don't have to be saying that you're shorting, whereas you do have to be saying if you're a retail investor, what you're buying and how you're buying it.
58:45: And it's like, wait, hang on, why, why would they want to hide that, , same reason, right?
58:49: So, , you've had that experience is where you started.
58:52: I would love for you to kind of share the extent to which it's not just currency, , but it's the underlying basis of trust with the blockchain itself in all these areas that people have been screwed, , and how we can actually see a whole new future, especially now if we've got an administration that's going to actually embrace this.
59:12: Yeah, and we probably need to do a part two, Roger, cos there's so much to talk about in that, but I just want the world to know that there are unlimited possibilities of where this is going next, and everybody needs to adjust.
59:26: , so, you know, I think that central banks, that debt-based Ponzi scheme, just means that eventually every bank goes bust.
59:35: They get rolled over into JP Morgan and the shareholders of the Fed.
59:39: And then eventually they get rolled rolled over into a central bank digital currency.
59:44: That's communism on a blockchain, that's not a good place to go.
59:48: But that is the end result of fiat currency, so how do we counter that?
59:52: Well, we counter that with money we can owe money, we can spare money that has a fixed supply, which is Bitcoin.
59:57: And then artificial intelligence is gonna take away human intelligence and take us in whatever direction that goes.
1:00:04: , but at the same time, it's not just money.
1:00:08: , so, you know, , you talked about naked short selling.
1:00:12: There was a guy very early on in Bitcoin called Patrick Byrne from Overstock.
1:00:17: , and he was infamous for being screwed over by short sellers, and, , he invested in like some of the early technology, 2013, 2014, , and really wanted to go around, how can I put all these stocks on the Bitcoin blockchain.
1:00:31: , that actually set off a wave of wanting to create alternative blockchains, you know, one of the people involved in that was Vitalibuyrin.
1:00:39: , I invested in the Ethereum ICO, the Bitcoin has funded it, , and then they ended up creating, you know, Ethereum as a mechanism for tokenizing and building all these smart contracts.
1:00:51: , I really, it's too much to even go into, but the, the amount of things that.
1:00:56: That are gonna be, you know, from this.
1:00:58: So even BlackRock now, they want to launch their own exchange.
1:01:01: What they did is they, , you talked about crowd property, they funded through Bank of the Future in the early days as well when they put that now people are putting, you know, real estate investment, and being able to allow that to be tradable, , you know, parts of it.
1:01:19: There's, there's challenges in when you take real assets and put them to, , you know, blockchain assets, but .
1:01:27: All of these interesting applications are coming further and further.
1:01:31: We had stablecoins that then led to tokenized, , you know, treasuries, , and tokenized treasuries are now tradable on blockchains.
1:01:42: , BlackRock wants to launch their own exchange.
1:01:44: I bet you it's gonna be a tokenized exchange.
1:01:47: , and, , so now you go further and further and further down.
1:01:52: All the different financial products, all the bond markets, , all of this different stuff, , that's gonna be built on top of this sector.
1:02:00: Even things like government transparency, so the beauty of El Salvador is El Salvador made a promise to the Salvadoran people.
1:02:08: They said we will buy one Bitcoin every single day, and we won't sell it.
1:02:12: , now, when a government says that, how do you trust them?
1:02:16: Well, they publish the wallet address, they add one Bitcoin every day and they don't sell it.
1:02:20: Everyone can verify that.
1:02:22: The government is now building a strategic asset that one day will probably be worth the $30 billion of debt that was accumulated through civil war, through regime changes, through excess indebtedness to the IMF.
1:02:37: They're freeing themselves from the IMF, which is why the IMF said.
1:02:42: We don't want you to do this.
1:02:43: Congress even said this is a national security risk in America.
1:02:46: The Bank of England said we're concerned about your people.
1:02:49: President Mikey said, screw you, I'm doing it.
1:02:52: , and now the people know that they're getting one Bitcoin every day, and whatever happens, foreign interference, they don't necessarily have to restructure with Belt and Road in China.
1:03:01: They don't necessarily have to roll over their IMF debt.
1:03:04: They could use their pristine collateral and rebuild a stablecoin using this as the backing eventually.
1:03:12: And so, all countries can do that.
1:03:15: But Kelli invited 40 different central banks.
1:03:18: you talked about micro strategy, micro strategy led the way of how do you give exposure to Bitcoin for corporate debt investors, fixed income investors, created a convertible note that allowed him to borrow.
1:03:31: , and then actually be able to buy Bitcoin with that.
1:03:34: Now you've got companies like yourself saying, you know, hey, we can build our strategic reserves.
1:03:40: , we can actually hedge the bottom of a company that may have been naked naked shorted, manipulated, and fight back with Bitcoin as an asset.
1:03:51: , we even in 2016 used a Bitcoin token in order to take a company that was hacked, bit Finex, out of bankruptcy by issuing a token, allowing people to have that token as a debt.
1:04:05: They could convert it into shares in the company, and then Bitfinex recovered, got the doors open, paid out hundreds of millions in dividends, went from a 30 cent token to a $16 equity.
1:04:18: And they ended up buying back, and we created the most successful bankruptcy recovery by just avoiding all the lawyers, avoiding the whole bankruptcy proceeding and just issuing a debt for that whole.
1:04:30: It's gonna be, you know, the, the limitation there is no limitations.
1:04:33: This has been the ongoing conversation I've been having with Christian, he's our lawyer that basically has got the damages.
1:04:38: , , , lawsuit, , and, and, and going through an update on the damages at the moment, and I'm like, hey, Wes, it's already taken over a year to get going, how much longer he's like, hey, we're almost there, we're almost there.
1:04:48: And I'm like, these guys, their whole goal is to try and bankrupt the company before it has a chance to basically fight back.
1:04:54: It's very sad that pretty much every single CEO, there's not a single one of the CEOs that I basically was speaking to, you know, at the time when I, I went public on this.
1:05:02: , that is still in the same position that I know of, right?
1:05:04: They've all either lost their job or the company's gone bankrupt or, you know, it's, it's like, it's horrible to see that this has happened, right?
1:05:10: But we're still here fighting and what's so great is exactly what you said.
1:05:14: The fact that we've now got a Bitcoin reserve that can grow, means we can outlast their ability to actually try and push us into the ground, and we can actually make sure that we actually are demonstrating the actual value that we're building and we're growing, .
1:05:26: And, and, and that means that if this thing does take 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 years, right, we can be around for that.
1:05:31: And, and I think that the more that other small caps, , not just the big companies, but the small caps, can see that there's a way for them to be able to preserve through all of this craziness that's happening with the centralised systems, which will all disappear eventually, right?
1:05:44: It's just a matter of time while we're actually building these new decentralised ones, I think that's where it's really exciting.
1:05:49: , And I look forward, , Simon, to where we can be speaking in 10 years' time, , on basically how the next 10 years were even, , wilder in terms of growth, , than the last 10.
1:05:59: And for sure, we're a whole lot wiser now than we were 10 years ago, right?
1:06:03: So, any final words you'd like to basically share with everyone in terms of words of advice or, , just words of encouragement so that they take the right steps at this point of where Bitcoin is right now?
1:06:15: Yeah, , value your wealth in Bitcoin, so don't value your wealth in dollars or fiat currency because that will confuse you.
1:06:22: Price everything in Bitcoin and you'll realise that every single asset has been going to zero against Bitcoin in its 15 year history.
1:06:32: , own more Bitcoin this month than the previous month, whether it's $10 100 dollars.
1:06:37: Do that for at least 4 years, this is not financial advice, you know, I can't say the past will equal the future, but I will be doing the same.
1:06:46: , and I'll continue to every single month when I earn my fiat currency, I'll buy some Bitcoin.
1:06:50: I'll earn more Bitcoin this month than the previous month, whatever the price is.
1:06:54: When the price crashes, you're getting more Bitcoin for your fiat currency.
1:06:59: When the price goes up, your dollar wealth is increasing and you feel good, and the higher the price goes, the more people go in, come into this industry.
1:07:06: , and so I freed myself from debt slavery, trying to create a non-fractional reserve bank by using that very same principle.
1:07:15: It took me to wealth I never imagined was possible, and it gave me freedom to be able to speak.
1:07:20: I give all my commentary on Simon Dixon.com.
1:07:23: I got a podcast, and all I do is I share the, you know, from this journey of transitioning to a Bitcoin AI and CBDC world.
1:07:31: , I freed my company from any outside interference.
1:07:35: I didn't need to have any venture capitalists, we just did it the way we wanted to do it for our investors.
1:07:41: , and we made many, many people wealthy along the journey, which are now our funders, because they all did the same.
1:07:48: , and, , I believe that we can all free our countries from central banks, because I believe that central banks are taking us to a world of communism on a blockchain called central bank digital currencies, and we need a resistance against that, which is hard money, savings, entrepreneurs creating value based upon real economics, not leveraging debt, but leveraging real hard money.
1:08:12: And I believe that all the public companies that start embracing, embracing this treasury strategy, the states, the countries, , these are gonna be, you know, if, if America doesn't do this Bitcoin strategic reserve asset, the global South will, and the global South could potentially flip the global North, and then the global North could get on board.
1:08:33: This is what's exciting about this, this is bottom up.
1:08:36: This is free markets, this is competition.
1:08:39: And we have two paths we can go, we can continue this central bank route, which is revolutionary war, death and destruction, which is where we are right now.
1:08:50: Or we can do this evolutionary, build it bottom up, we can free ourselves, we can free our companies, we can free our countries, and we can do it evolutionary, and we can restructure the old with the new.
1:09:02: And there is nowhere else that's more interesting in you are alive at the most interesting time in financial history, no doubt about it.
1:09:10: Your children and your grandchildren will ask you what was it like to be alive during that time?
1:09:16: And if you said I didn't participate, I think they're gonna look back at you and say, how did you not get involved in that moment, and we are involved in absolutely changing moment.
1:09:27: , and if you don't adjust, unfortunately many are gonna get wrecked.
1:09:30: , people need to get on the right side of this change, , and that's what I would say to all people.
1:09:36: It is urgent, not financial advice, , but the way that Bitcoin was designed is I think we are actually risk adjusted right in the beginning and you're still early.
1:09:47: So many people don't know this stuff, and so many people will be figuring this stuff out.
1:09:52: We're still early.
1:09:53: Absolutely.
1:09:54: Simon Dixon, that was very well said.
1:09:56: It's been fabulous catching up again.
1:09:58: , yeah, absolutely, we should do a part two on this.
1:10:00: And for everyone listening, , we're gonna be doing another podcast, , next Tuesday.
1:10:04: And, and so, , stay tuned for our, , next guest.
1:10:07: , but I really want to say a huge thank you, , to Simon.
1:10:10: We'll, we'll catch up separately and, , see what we can do together between Genius and Bank of the Future as well.
1:10:15: , and really have loved this a lot.
1:10:17: , thanks very much, Simon.
1:10:18: Thanks everyone for tuning in, and we'll catch up again soon.
1:10:21: All right.
1:10:21: See you.
