WW: Hey and welcome to unlimited Hangout. I'm your host Whitney
Webb. If you are closely following the rollout of the
global biometric surveillance slavery state under the guise of
the Fourth Industrial Revolution, you may have noticed
that many of the powers building and promoting the system have a
soft spot for digital currency. Many digital currencies but
currently existing and in the works are being used to build
the infrastructure for complete centralized control in the
eradication of privacy, specifically financial privacy.
Hence the war on cash and the lesser discussed war on
encryption and bid to label privacy focused
cryptocurrencies, is national security threats, and drivers of
so called cybercrime.
Many of the most predatory pilots of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution technologies which are routinely tested on
refugees, stateless people, and other incredibly vulnerable
populations involve linking digital ID in some sort of
digital currency or token as to be detailed and unlimited
hangouts next installment of our sustainable development goals
series. The UN specifically links mandatory digital ID
globally to financial inclusion and argues that digital
currencies are necessary in order for so called Sustainable
Development to advance. While the pitfalls and dangers of
digital currencies are more apparent than ever, there is a
cultural rift among those who at least once upon a time saw
certain technologies and developments under this umbrella
like blockchain and Bitcoin as a potential exit ramp from the
road towards centralized tyranny and control by building a
permanently decentralized monetary system. Bitcoin
specifically allegedly anyway was created in response to the
2008 economic crisis and the corrupting influence of central
banks and the criminal activity of commercial banks. While some
Bitcoiners have fought to uphold these values, many powerful
actors in the Bitcoin space and the broader cryptocurrency
sphere are undermining this ethnos are building systems that
completely oppose the original impulse that led to bitcoins
creation. Among those of us who oppose the rollout of the for AR
System and the mass implementation of the biometric
surveillance state. Is it still possible to work with digital
currencies and oppose the increasing push to digitalize
everything is a decentralized digital existence still feasible
or increasingly becoming a pipe dream? Joining me today to
discuss these issues and more is Mark Goodwin. Mark is the
director of editorial for print at Bitcoin magazine. He is also
the author of several pieces about misguided and even
nefarious efforts to centralize Bitcoin, and the author of the
upcoming book entitled The Bitcoin dollar. Welcome to
unlimited hangout. Mark, thanks for being here today.
MG: Thank you, Andy. It's an honor to be here. I'm very
excited to talk about all these things.
WW: Well, there is definitely no shortage of things to talk
about. Here, that's for sure. And, you know, we have a lot to
get into. With that being said, these days, there are several
mainstream and academic articles that deal with what they term
crypto colonialism, or rather cryptocurrency being used to
entrench and deepen Neo colonialism and neoliberalism,
etc. So a lot of these articles. One example we'll have in the
show notes is the article blockchain humanitarianism, and
crypto colonialism which was published last year in the
patterns journal. Another example is an article from 2021,
which is from Vice a publication I'm usually not a fan of but
this article did bring up some important issues but also
conflated things they probably shouldn't have completed. So
this article is entitled crypto colonialist use the most
vulnerable people in the world as guinea pigs. And I'll just
read a quick excerpt here. So quote, UK nonprofit Oxfam in
partnership with an Australian Financial app has developed an
eyebrow raising solution for Vanuatu, which is a Pacific
Island at this specific ocean, I guess. It's there's a disaster
relief payment system that runs on blockchain and
cryptocurrencies, so that when other systems go down, people
can still pay for essentials. Quote, the idea was that as soon
as the disaster event happened, they can switch on this economy
explained Pete howelsen, a senior lecturer at Northumbria
University, who studies cryptocurrency and blockchain in
an interview, when the situation becomes less dire, the system
can be shut down, but it's not the money wanting people who
control the system. It's just someone at Oxfam that decides
when the disaster is over, and people lose their economic
sovereignty. Continuing on, it goes on to say Oxfam Oxfam's
blockchain intervention in Vanuatu is part of a broad trend
and charity and aid work toward innovation and solution ism the
belief that every social problem has a technological solution via
programs based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. non government
organizations and aid agencies have said that the shift from
dollars to Bitcoin will enable a more efficient transparent
charity system. But along with as these technologies bring
surveillance and political pressures, undermine local
sovereignty and create resource allocation controls on
recipients. So I'll stop there. But in this article, they
conflate, you know, this Oxfam program and similar programs
like the absolutely horrible and are Willian building blocks
program of the World Food Program and the UN. And so they
conflate those with a variety of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin
related projects. And there's also a conflation of all
cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin. So first, do you think that
conflation is wrong? And why? And second, how might some
people who see crypto Bitcoin etc, as a means of escaping
central bank control, enabling the same kind of control grid
currently being pursued by central banks?
MG: Yeah, phenomenal question. Um, I definitely, I see Bitcoin
and the extended cryptocurrency spaces, very separate things, in
terms of like, you know, what, what we can actually use them
as, as tools, like I think Bitcoin is, is a very powerful
tool in the right hands and used in the right way, and not
perverted away from its actual core, you know, decentralized
property. And a lot of these other coins are just simply not
decentralized in any way. So, you know, Bitcoin really works.
You know, because it's, it's, it's consensus is held up, you
know, by node runners that the cost of running a node is very
cheap, it's internet and electricity costs, and, you
know, maybe a few 100 gigabytes of hard drive space, very
minimal computation, whereas you get into some of these, like,
Aetherium. And, and, you know, I think we'll talk about Cardano
and some of these other ones later, and they have a much
bigger you know, entrance fee basically to participate in the
system. Whereas Bitcoin, you can literally just download core and
sync a node on on like an old, an old laptop, totally fine. So,
there's a huge separation, I think of just from that, you
know, what the Bitcoin Blockchain is, and how it's
actually, you know, decentralized consensus across
the world. Really, a lot of these secondary alternative
currencies are really kind of like a perversion or like a
bastardization of what Satoshi Nakamoto brought to us in a way
to not, you know, neuter the state's ability to debt pardon,
like Bitcoin does, but rather, like encourages the state,
right, you know, Blockchain is, is just a technology and like
any other technology can be used for freedom. And, you know, it's
wonderful freedom tech, you know, when applied within
Bitcoin, but then you look at some of these alternative
chains, and it's like, they're running, you know, Petro
dollars, basically, in the form of stable coins. And they're
creating, you know, a completely transparent ledger. For the, the
transfer of Yeah, of like, state issued debt, basically.
WW: Surveillance probably too, right. Oh, because, you know,
it's a publicly available ledger. So, I mean, yeah, I
mean, surely we're a lot of this goes to including CBDCs. Right.
MG: 100% Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin, I like to, I like to say that
it's a transparency technology. I think a lot of people sort of
mistake it for a privacy technology, kind of, because of
some of its original use cases, you know, being you know, kind
of a black market money. You know, and it's early days, and
its first happening cycle when it was, you know, inflating it,
you know, 50% of all Bitcoin ever issued were in those first
four years. And so we're seeing a lot of it come out, it's a
fast money, you want to spend it quickly, until the havening, you
know, reduces this issuance. So we saw a lot of people using it
for drugs, a lot of people using it for I'm sure horrible,
horrible things as well. I'm sure it was used. You know, for
a lot of the things that I'm sure we'll get into with with
Yeah, but so it's actually and, of course, absolutely 100% 100%
I mean, no, no, no currency uses more or supports more crime than
the dollar. It's not even close. And I actually believe we just
had Elizabeth Warren come out and make some ridiculous
comparison or or something about how cryptocurrency is funding
the fentanyl market. Which is just ridiculous. It's like I
don't go after the
WW: after the Sacklers. Or
MG: cause the crisis. Yeah, exactly. Or the giant influx of,
of fentanyl from, you know, like from the CPC. It's like it's
coming into into our borders. We know that. I think to blame this
on. Blockchain is ridiculous. So I guess long and short. Yes,
there's a false you know, connection between these
alternative currencies that are designed to enrich the
privileged few that are around the proverbial money printer, or
like if it's a staking system or whatever, you know, this
issuance of currency. You know, we're just recreating central
banking, basically with much more, you know, ability to
surveil, and to control and to blacklist to like destroy, you
know, unsanctioned transactions, or wallets that have used mixers
or any of these privacy technologies. A lot of these
other changes allow that to happen. So yeah, I think there's
a huge false connection there. And then the second part of the
question was remind me again,
WW: how might some people who see crypto and Bitcoin and so on
as a means of escaping central bank control might, how might
they be enabling the same kind of control grid currently being
pursued by central banks? And, you know, other actors?
MG: Totally. So yeah, Bitcoin is a is an is an open ledger. And
it's a permissionless database. Really, at the end of the day,
the way that you like make a transaction is you imbue data
that can be, you know, publicly published, but can't be
modified. There's actually no decryption or encryption used.
And publicly, within Bitcoin, it's all publicly key
cryptography. So everything is open, every transaction is out
there, it's in the world. And the base layer, the database
itself, you know, every 10 minutes, there's a, you know, a
few megabyte blocks that gets produced by the network that can
contain any information that anyone wants to imbue into it.
Obviously, generally, these are financial transactions, and
innately anything on Bitcoin is a financial transaction, because
it requires a fee to get in the block, but it's an open
database. And now we have people building. You know, there's this
group. Again, not to try to burn too many Bitcoin bridges here,
but there's a very popular group within the Bitcoin space
lightning labs, they were one of the very, very beginning, you
know, propagators, I guess, of the idea of the Lightning
Network, which is this scaling mechanism that goes on top of
Bitcoin that basically allows you to share, you know, a UT
EXO, which is an unspent transaction output, which are
kind of like the denominations of Bitcoin, like the bills. And
so they've been working on this project now for a few years.
That was called Tarot. And now it's called taproot asset
protocol, because they got sued actually, for using someone
else's name. But what basically the point of the system is to be
able to imbue other assets in natively into the Bitcoin base
layer. And the main one that they're looking to do, of
course, is Petro dollars or stable coins. And there's this
kind of whole general sort of consensus within Bitcoin that I,
you know, violently disagree with, and a lot of people just
cheer it on of how, you know, hey, let's not, you know,
Michael sailor was quoted at Pacific Bitcoin last year as
saying, you know, let's not be martyrs, let's not fight the
system. You know, let's adopt the dollars and dollars being on
lightning, you know, via this, this Tarot asset protocol is
going to be like $10 trillion industry, and you know, we're
all gonna make a bunch of money and numbers are gonna go up,
and, you know, this is gonna be so great, we'll be able to give,
you know, the Global South, basically access to dollars, and
it's this virtue signaling thing will give 3 billion people the
ability to use Bitcoin, and then they kind of mumble the dollar
part of it. And it's like, are we really like, is really the
point of Bitcoin here to globalize the dollar and put it
on faster rails increase the monetary velocity of the dollar?
And in my opinion, obviously, it's not I mean, the whole point
of Bitcoin is to neuter the state's ability to debt part
and, and to print money. And to issue these these treasuries and
now Bitcoiners, you know, at the highest level, these are the
best paid people that the smartest devs are kind of going
to this, this, you know, this group of people, and they're
literally putting dollars on the base layer. And
WW: so really quick, though, isn't another motive behind
bitcoin, supposed to be bypassing central banks, but
also banks in general?
MG: Um, well, that's kind of a big thing. That's a bit of a
confusion within this space as well. I mean, I think the the
actual blockchain like Bitcoin is like blockchain in general,
is a pretty lossy technology. Like it's pretty clunky. It's
very expensive, you know, to to basically to use this very small
growing database that has a limited amount of transactions
that can be, you know, in a in a set block every 10 minutes or
so. So there's actually absolutely limitations to how
many People Bitcoin can serve on the base layer. And there are
mathematical limitations to how many people can actually own,
you know, self custody Bitcoin, on the main on the main chain,
we got 8 billion people or whatever, and we wouldn't be
able to have 8 billion UTX O's. So we do have to create systems
and scaling solutions that work within Bitcoin. And I think some
of those things will end up kind of looking like Bitcoin banks.
And how Finney who is, you know, kind of considered, you know, he
was the first person to receive Bitcoin from Satoshi, and kind
of considered, you know, very likely to be a part of the
Satoshi team that created Bitcoin. And he has a bunch of
quotes at the very beginning of Bitcoin in like 2010. Even
earlier saying that, you know, I think the future of Bitcoin is
Bitcoin back banks. And, and I think a big part of Bitcoins,
misunderstanding is that it's not really prepared to replace
the dollar unnecessarily as a medium of exchange, but it can
replace US Treasuries, as this government issued, you know,
reserve asset, like the dollar isn't really the reserve
currency of the world, or it's not the reserve asset of the
world. It's really US Treasuries. And Bitcoin can
replace that. And we can still have, I mean, trust is, trust is
still an important part of being a human being, you know, I mean,
you can't create a lot of these financial situations, mortgages
and some credit and debt creation, like without, you
know, trust. And I think people think that technology will sort
of replace all human trust. And that's just not really
necessarily possible. So like, Yeah, we're gonna have to have
solutions where there are custodial moments, you know,
hopefully, for a very short period of time to kind of limit
the ability for someone to be debased. But yeah, it takes
away, you know, fully fractionally reserved, you know,
kind of the system that we have set up right now, and US
banking, it's ridiculous, Caitlin long out of Wyoming just
tried to do a bank, that would be, you know, kind of considered
a narrow Bank, which, you know, would have a one to one reserve.
And the Federal Reserve didn't give it federal reserve status,
because if one bank went narrow, it would mess up every other
fractional reserve bank in the whole system. So I think there
will be trust, there will be Bitcoin banks in the future, but
they can be created by Bitcoiners, they can be created
by you know, Freedom forward, people that are going to, you
know, okay not use this as a way to just surveil your, your
economics, your economic activity, we can actually build
these mints that are used blind signatures that are very, very,
very private. And, and we can hopefully, take away, you know,
the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury's ability, you know, to
fund all of these crazy projects blow up the debt limit, and then
anytime it comes up, oh, shit, you know, time to pay the piper,
they can just issue more debt and sell it to, you know, all
across the world, to Japan, to the Bahamas, to China. Those are
kind of the three biggest ones. Right? And I don't think Bitcoin
destroys the bank as a general concept, but it definitely
limits.
WW: I didn't, I didn't mean kill off the banks, I mean, as to
what you can, like, in theory, right? Bypass the banks, by
paying people in something, you know, the dollar,
MG: right, totally. And then this peer to peer way, you know,
it doesn't rely on any intermediaries. You know,
whereas if you're, if you're using his owl or a fucking
Venmo, or whatever, or Google Pay or whatever, it's, you know,
you're entirely up to the whim of the the payment channels,
whereas in Bitcoin Yeah, I mean, that is its value proposition is
that you can send trustless transactions in an adversarial
environment. And they will be processed immutably. I mean,
that is the value prop of Bitcoin. So it definitely, it
definitely messes with the state's ability to debt pardon.
Unless, you know, Bitcoiners all come together and get this weird
social consensus that, no, we need to put Petro dollars on the
base layer, we need to support these companies like a tether or
a USD see these huge stable coin providers, tethers up to like
$80 billion. They're now coming out, you know, because interest
rates are so high now. They're like making oodles of money. I
mean, it's ridiculous. You know, they're making five and a
quarter percent on on billions of dollars of these papers that
they're holding. And now they're buying Bitcoin with it. Now
they're doing other things because they're making so much
money. And so this group, yeah, I mean, they're incredibly
influential in the Bitcoin space. And they're very
connected to a lot of kind of strange things that have
happened, you know, there was a big BitFenix hack. Maybe like
eight years ago or so that it was like a, like just under
200,000 Bitcoin were stolen. And this is the same people that do
the tether issuance. It's all the same ownership. And, you
know, of course they then did, they issued some shit coin token
to kind of make up the last that they that, you know this Leo
security and sold a bunch of it and then it ended up being that
the person that hacked the Bitcoin was keeping it in like a
Google Drive the keys in a Google Drive and it was these
like Two Gen Z kids. This this woman kind of infamously Razzle
Khan who was like this, like, Instagram rapper, mumble rapper,
totally ridiculous, all this crazy iconography. And she had
all the Bitcoin in her, you know, just like saved in a
Google Doc. And so of course, the DOJ seizes it. Now the DOJ
has all that Bitcoin. And these are the same people that are,
you know, issuing dollars, they're, they're propagating the
ideas of putting dollars on the base layer. And they're
incredibly influential, just like in the in the, you know,
the spoken space of Bitcoin, you know, there's spaces running all
day, there's big influencers, that a lot of them are paid for,
by, you know, the stable coin, and I have a lot of issues with
it. I mean, there's a lot of really nice people, of course,
you know, in the space that, you know, I'm not trying to say
everybody's a bad person or anything like that. I love a lot
of those people. But also, you know, there's there's an issue
here, of dollar rising Bitcoin and continuing to propagate, you
know, the biggest us, you know, the biggest terrorist
organization in the world is the US government. And if we
continue to buy debt and do this weird orange washing thing that
we're doing, yeah, it's, it's absurd. I think it's very
against the, you know, like, what are we doing here? Like,
why are we doing this?
WW: Well, if your dollar rising Bitcoin, then instead of Bitcoin
being something that, you know, challenges, the central banks,
you're giving the Federal Reserve, you're allowing it to
continue to have the power it has, which was absolutely, the
problems of that was supposed to be the motive behind bitcoins
creation. Right. To Yeah, it became.
MG: So absolutely, I mean, I think there's, there's a,
there's a good thread that, you know, Bitcoin was created, very,
very likely, you know, directly out of the 2008 crisis, you
know, in in the first block, there's a note to a UK Times
article that's like the chancellor on the brink of
second bailout for the banks. And Bitcoin was was launched,
you know, it was announced Halloween of 2008, and was
launched at the start of Oh, nine. And you could argue, and I
think a lot of people do relatively successfully, that
perhaps Bitcoin, you know, was coming out of, you know, the US
government or the US intelligence as a way to create
a neutral base asset for the debasement, the economic
debasement that was coming via the printing that had to happen
when, you know, all these CDOs and the whole real estate market
imploded in the great financial crisis. And so, I kind of
proposed this theory that the this idea of like the Bitcoin
dollar, which is an analogue to the petro dollar, so, the idea
that, you know, when Nixon did the gold shock, or took us off,
the Nixon shock, took us off the gold standard in 71, you know,
we immediately, you know, invaded, invaded the Middle East
and started setting up basically a financial monopoly on the ins
and outs of petrol and oil as a means to sort of control both
industrializing nations, but also, hey, we need to print
money. We want credit expansion, but we want to have a guaranteed
buyer to be able to buy up our debt. So they created a monopoly
on the ins and outs of, you know, you had to use US dollars
to buy this energy commodity, that's oil. So if you wanted to
industrialize, you got to buy dollars, so we can print dollars
all day, and we know we have a guaranteed buyer, right?
WW: And now you have the powers that be moving to this post oil
world are right pushing us that way. So obviously they need a
new financial system. Right, but doesn't involve the petro dollar
and so where do you see those actors? Seeing what benefit
would they reap from this Bitcoin dollar you talk about?
MG: Yeah, totally. I mean, to me, it's, I think it's the exact
same mechanism. You know, you want your money, your your money
standard to be tied to energy, because you want it to be hard
to source you don't want it to be something you know, like
literally you can go print the dollar on trees or whatever you
want it to be something that if you want to create more credit,
you know, if there's a cost it's you know, expenditure to be able
to extract that energy commodity, that's what by metal
standards are the gold standard really isn't energy standard,
you still have to get the gold out of the ground, and that
requires energy. Right? Exactly. And oils exactly the same way.
And so bitcoin is an energy standard, requires, you know,
its issuance requires a significant amount of energy to
be able to submit enough cryptographic hashes to you
know, have a chance of winning by Basically a, you know, a
lottery every 10 minutes to see if you can, you can produce the
block and get the rewards. And so we've sort of recreated that
exact same mechanism over the Bitcoin energy commodity system,
where we've, and I say we obviously like America, I have
nothing to do with it, I want this all to burn down. But you
know, America has basically set up a monopoly on the ins and
outs of Bitcoin purchasing and selling. And, you know, well
over 95 I think it's even it's closer to like, 97 98% of all
Bitcoin pairs, and trades and volume are in US dollar
denominated, you know, tokens, whether it's actually literally
US dollars, or these, like, stable coins that we're talking
about? And, I mean, literally, it's called tether, right? I
mean, it's like tethering itself the dollar to Bitcoin. So you
create, the main difference with Bitcoin is that there's a cap
supply, and its issuance is asymptotically, approaching
zero, and then eventually actually does round down to
zero. You know, in the after the 33rd, having or in the 33rd
epoch, after the 32nd happening, there's no more Bitcoin being
produced that will be around like 2140 or so. And so there's
a cap supply on the actual growth and supply of Bitcoin. So
it's demand it's very demand inelastic. So if demand is
super, super high, and you're on a gold standard, you know, gold,
four axes, you know, you can send, you know, three more
people to the mind, to mind gold, you can extract it out
more, because, you know, you can actually get more of the gold
out because it's worth more me and you will be panning for gold
in our backyard and selling, you know, our chains and whatever,
because it's worth a bajillion dollars. And, and then you'll
see, you know, the supply will increase, because demand is so
high, there's so much more supply that hits the market
Bitcoin, it doesn't do that, it doesn't matter how many people
are trying to find the next block, it's always going to
produce the same amount of bitcoin. And so it is this very
unique, you know, we've never had a monetary system that has a
capped, you know, supply, I mean, it has a finite amount
that can ever be produced that's never existed before. That's a
state change of money in a very significant way. And, you know,
that's, that's a phenomenal thing for monetary growth, in
general. And that's why I am so interested in Bitcoin, because I
understand that, you know, hey, this is a state change. And if
we use this moment, and we seize this opportunity to get some,
basically, this kind of like real estate, in the future
economy of the world, you know, that we should see pretty
significant increase of wealth? And how do we use that? What are
the things that we're going to, you know, a lot of us that have
been in Bitcoin for a while, have made some money? And it's
like, what are we doing here? Are we just going to go relax,
and let it be completely dollarized and just, you know,
let the global south just get, you know, kind of blacklisted
and all these stupid, you know, stablecoin, like, there's this
whole thing of like banking the unbanked, and it's like, you're
just charging them a fee to use your bank account? Do you still
have counterparty risk? You know, we saw some of these banks
that hold paper for these stable coin companies go under, in the
last six months? And you know, is that really giving this this
virtue service to the global south that, you know, we just,
you know, we've created a mechanism for them to get robbed
by US banks. I mean, it's a joke.
WW: Yeah, that's my stop, for sure. And I do want to talk
about what you just said, this whole idea of banking the
unbanked and I know that at the recent Bitcoin Conference, which
you and I both spoke s, there were was talk of that as like a
good thing, banking the unbanked and that that phrase really
concerns me, because it's what the UN and a lot of the, the BIS
and the European Central Bank and these guys, even the Federal
Reserve, say that exact same thing, right? And what you're
talking about is, you know, how Bitcoin is being dollarized, and
enabling those same actors to really continue to engage in bad
monetary policy and, you know, which translates into a lot of
predatory behavior specifically directed at the Global South. I
mean, it seems like a total mess here, especially for those of us
that are looking to build parallel systems to resist,
right, this push to centralize control. So I guess my question
would be this whole situation we're talking about, who do you
think is likely to win out then I guess we're talking about
essentially a cultural rift in Bitcoin and some people have, I
guess, been making compromises with the existing system, not
seeing it is all bad and needing to be thrown out. And I guess
the big theme of my work is that yes, it does all need to
MG: be thrown out. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and I'm with you,
100%, which is why I'm so glad that you're engaged. thing with
the space because I think we need more people speaking
honestly. And truthfully. And it's like, of course, there are
good people that work in all these companies and whatever and
blah, blah, blah. Sure, of course, but it's
WW: like it's a value judgment. Right? I agree. I agree, people
don't realize maybe what they're doing. And they can kind of far
from the whole ethos of the, you know, that was originally behind
all of this.
MG: We've gotten. So we've gotten so far from the ethos, I
think, the the cypherpunks. And this is why, you know, I know I
said earlier that it's possible that Bitcoin kind of came out of
like US intelligence. And I think it's definitely a
possibility that absolutely acknowledge Yeah, of course, of
course. And I have a whole theory we can talk about with
John Nash, which, which associates, you know, to ran out
of Santa Monica and he was writing papers to the NSA, about
encryption and all this, and there's, there's a big
connection there. But I think the the extra opions and the and
the Cypherpunk, you know, mailing list, these people that
included how Finney and Zabo you know, a lot of these, these, you
know, they're basically, you know, anarcho capitalists, you
know, coders, I think, a lot of the writing, you know, when I go
back and read a lot of that stuff, I mean, I think it really
is in the right place. And I think the ethos of sort of early
Bitcoin, in my first interactions with it were in
like, 2014. And, you know, I didn't really understand that it
was something that like, could go up in value, I really just
saw it as a medium of exchange and understand that until a
couple years later, but I think the ethos has changed
significantly in the last few years. It's like we saw
institutions arrive. You know, we saw the stable coin providers
go from being, you know, basically a pet project on top
of Bitcoin into being this like dominant share of like,
literally dominating the Ethereum network, basically, the
dollarization of Ethereum has allowed it to be state captured.
And obviously, JP Morgan, you know, has huge hand in that.
From the very beginning, they own a lot of crucial
infrastructure and Ethereum. And they dollarized it up so much
that the actual native asset, weight on the theory is now more
in stable coins than actually in Ethereum. itself. And just
WW: really quick, I just want to add, JPMorgan right run by Jamie
Dimon who helped build Citigroup and JP Morgan and Citigroup
basically own, they do own the New York Fed, which is the
dominant force on the Federal Reserve. So they essentially
also dominate the central bank paradigm we're talking about,
Sorry, continue.
MG: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think these are big
American banks are, you know, a huge part of, you know, kind of
what I'm getting at where it's like, the institutions have
arrived, you know, they really came in 2017, when, you know, we
first broke, you know, 10k, and then later 20k, and that's when
we saw these institutions show up. And a lot of them were kind
of talking shit, you know, at the time of, you know, kind of
pushing it down, and now they're all like offering services, JP
Morgan has like, jpm coin or whatever. And then, of course,
you know, this huge investment in the infrastructure of
Aetherium. So, I think the US banking system right now, you
know, it has a lot of choices to make, about how they, you know,
basically try to parasitically attach themselves to Bitcoin.
And I think that the Bitcoiners in general are losing kind of
the social information more, if you will, about, you know,
what's actually happening here, lightning labs themselves,
again, good people there, but, you know, they're one of their
phrases is Bitcoin eyes, the dollar when they're talking
about adding, you know, the dollar to the base layer, and
it's kind of really the opposite. You're kind of dollar
rising Bitcoin, quite literally. And yeah, you're empowering
these bankers, and you brought up the BIS earlier and it's
like, you know, Elizabeth Stark of lightning labs did some
consultation for the World Economic Forum in 2016. In
August, in collaboration with Deloitte, this pete this thing
called the future the future of financial infrastructure. Yeah.
And it's she's actually listed as just Lightning Network and
like lightning labs, I don't even know if was was set up at
the time the lightning white paper had come out, but the
Lightning Network hadn't even existed yet. It relied on some
blockchain, or rather some big Bitcoin. There was a fork called
seg wit that allowed the ability for lightning to exist. So then
that didn't actually go live until 2017. So this is a couple
years before lightning was even, you know, at at sort of a
workable stage. And now we're seeing you know, Project
icebreaker came out of the BIS which is a collaboration with
the naugus Bank and the Bank of Israel. And Norway and Sweden,
and obviously, the BIS and they created this, this came out in
March of this year. And it's basically this idea of how to
use domestic you know, retail CBDCs and literally, it uses the
exact same channel mechanism and techniques. Knology that is an
essential part of how the Lightning Network works these
things called HDL C's, I don't want to get too much into the
technical weeds, but literally, you know, we have paper trails
of consultation, you know, from the people building these
systems. And now years later, we're actually seeing CBDC
systems being being generated that literally use the exact
same probabilistic time locked code and settlement structure
these payment channels to enable CBDCs you know, and this is this
is right out of the BIS. And so, we're seeing, you know,
collaboration of banker of bankers, and some of the worst
people in the world with like, you know, these Cypher punk
Bitcoin thought leaders, and it's like, what are you again,
what are we doing here? Not to keep saying that it's a cop out,
but like, what are we doing here? Are we trying to build the
Panopticon here? Are we trying to build that alternative?
WW: Well, it's sort of reminds me of, so Yasser Levine's book
surveillance Valley, he has a section on the people behind
Tor, I guess, Roger? Line, right? And how he was basically
collaborating, the people that Tor was supposed to be evading,
you know, so I guess he was,
MG: you know, was funded by DARPA wasn't it? Right? I can't
remember,
WW: it might have been like, naval intelligence or something
like that. I can't, I can't exactly. Remember the specifics,
because I read it, you know, several years ago, and I only
have so much space in my brain. But he, you know, I mean, he was
basically like, letting the Feds know, first when there was a
vulnerability in Tor so they could explain it, and all sorts
of stuff. And this is a guy that was held up as being a cyber
funk, whatever, you know. Yeah. And it's, he's not right. He's
acting like a fed.
MG: Exactly. And now, we have to wake up, I think, in general of
like, like, counter dissonance is a very real thing. Oh, sure.
It's huge. And it's, it's prolific. And, you know, we're
seeing so much of it, whether it's Noam Chomsky, I mean, it's
hilarious to me that the Noam Chomsky stuff in the sick way,
because it's like, you know, I read Manufacturing Consent, you
know, I actually literally serve and doing exactly, it's like,
oh, it's a cookbook, apparently not a warning. You know, it's
like, how do
WW: people like Elon Musk and Peter Yeah, right. Elon Musk,
for example, you know, being like, Oh, I'm gonna buy Twitter
because I'm a free speech absolutist, and then it becomes
freedom of speech is not freedom of free speech. And then, you
know, it's already taken the step to where they're taking
down more posts for the government than before Musk
bought it and whatever. But he has this, you know, very, I
guess, like two faced persona, where he has this one, public
relations produced face where he's like, Oh, I'm anti
establishment, yada, yada, yada. And then, you know, on the other
side, he couldn't be more of an establishment goon you know,
100% I feel Yeah, thing built by government subsidies, and
exactly military intelligence contractor and building the
everything app, which is going to help house all of your data
and be a huge dominant force in the FinTech space going forward.
And, and no, and, you know, the brain chip guy, and, and people
are like, Oh, this is, you know, some sort of like, Savior
promoting free speech and individualism. Like, no, he's
saying that, why are you believing him? And his actions
show the opposite? And it seems like there's people doing this,
like within the Bitcoin space, that's supposed to be at least,
you know, was viewed as being different culturally, yeah, a
few years ago. And, you know, it seems like there's a big
cultural war within Bitcoin going on, at least if it's gonna
fall victim to the same stuff or be an actual challenge to
Central Bank tyranny.
MG: Yeah, I mean, even like Jack Dorsey, right, it's like, he's a
very big Bitcoin hero. And, you know, he's put in a bunch of
money recently into scaling Bitcoin stuff and into this
noster this kind of Twitter sort of alternative, but it's like he
this guy ran this fucking spy shop for, you know, a decade.
It's like, what are we, what are we kind of doing here? And, and
yeah, the musk stuff is kind of ridiculous. And I think
especially like, post, you know, lock downs. I think we're seeing
this kind of, like, strange class kind of come up of these,
like, people that were, you know, I mean, Elon, you know,
during, you know, during all that was very, like, you know,
the science is unequivocal, you know,
WW: be invested on cure vac and mRNA technology that Zach COVID
vaccine he showed for exactly
MG: like Tesla was literally building that and, and now he's
kind of coming out as this like free. Yeah, this free speech,
free press. You know, basically anti Vaxxer like influencer guy.
And it's something that I've kind of, I'm noticing it now,
you know, as someone who kind of lived through the last couple
years and you know, dealing with you know, the social choices
that You know, by not choosing to do this medical procedure,
you know what I had to kind of deal with? And then seeing, you
know, like the majority of the voices now in the space are
people that like were vaccinated, were speaking out
very, you know, for it, when it was going on. And now it's like,
we're kind of seeing this sort of like the new heroes have, you
know, this kind of controlled opposition coming up and I look
at even like the political candidates that are coming out.
I mean, people are literally floating Jamie Dimon now.
Insane, absolutely embarrassing. Oh, my
WW: God. But I mean, he basically does run the country.
So he's exactly. publicly run it.
MG: You would be the only politician. I think that if
elected president would have less power, you
WW: know, like, yeah, no, debatable. Yeah. Yeah.
MG: Okay. Actually, as I said that out loud. I was like,
actually, that's completely not true. Unfortunately. I wish that
was more true. But um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's absurd. And
yeah, he's building this x.com Which is, you know, basically
like WeChat, USA. He controls
WW: on WeChat are major investors in Tesla. Yes. saying
they're very financially interconnected. Absolute seems
important.
MG: Seems very important. And now we're building you know,
we're kind of cheering you know, okay, these Evie cars that have
kill switches. Start laying. guy this guy back. Yeah, I mean, I
have, you know,
WW: Michael Hastings, anyone remember him.
MG: I mean, I have a little flipper zero, which is this
little, like, fun kind of hacking tool that you can
literally walk down the street and open up, you know, Tesla
charging ports and stuff, you know, from the street just
walking around. And again, I don't I'm not like, against
Eevee in this way. Like, I think there's a lot of stuff in there.
That's, that's really cool and powerful. But like the systems
that are being built the infrastructure, the literal
colonialism, of, you know, going to these places to strip them of
resources. And then, you know, come back and sell them fucking
stable coins that are powered on Twitter through Starlink. It's
just like that, like, I'm sorry, like, you want to own the libs.
So you want to, you know, support Elon Musk. And it's
like, Look at what he's building. Like, What? What? This
is one of the scariest combinations of technology
itself and your children. Yeah, yeah. It's such a good win. I'm
really glad we did that. And, yeah, and it's absolutely
absurd. And, and this control, dissonance is fucking
everywhere. I mean, like, I somewhat recently found out that
like, the Dalai Lama was paid like, $15,000 a month by the CIA
from like, the late 50s into like, 1974. And it's like, oh,
well, that's how you get like a pro Vietnam Dalai Lama. You
know, it's like, you know, same with Chomsky, kind of with,
like, 911 Truth and invading. You know, the Middle East, it
was like, Oh, well, we can't You know, I can't condemn it, I
can't this and it's just like, okay, these are supposed to be
kinda like spiritual. You know, dissonant leaders, you know, of
our time. And it's like, we've just seen this CO option happen
so many times, whether it's like the hippies in San Francisco
being co opted by the CIA with like, all this ridiculous LSDM
culture, Shin, bah, bah, bah, like we've seen, literal,
legitimate human. My point here is legitimate human movements,
be co opted in a very short period of time to become like an
enslavement or degenerate, or colonial movement, after a very
real beautiful, tangible thing happened, you know, post summer
love or whatever, you know, spiritual awakening, you know,
into kind of what, you know, should be the the Dalai Lama
stuff, and then kind of being this controlled opposition. And
I look at those and the reason why I think it's important to
talk about them is because it's like, that's happening in
Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a state change, it is a powerful thing,
I can validate my own transactions, I can send them
without any single person in the world. You know, being an
intermediary, which is, which is ridiculous. I mean, it's
incredible. But now we have these actors, and, you know,
it's like, it's ridiculous to think of something as, as we
consider as powerful and as dangerous as Bitcoin to be like,
just left alone. It's like, no, they're gonna do everything they
can to neuter this technology, and, and, you know, neuter it at
worst, and at best co opted in a way that it actually kicks the
dollars life and preserves the, you know, the, the imperialism,
the Empire of America, you know, and that's just where we're at.
WW: Well, let's talk about some of the stuff that's going on
with the US government as it relates to Bitcoin right now. So
everyone knows there's this big regulatory push and we can talk
about you know, that with stable coins maybe later, but for the
purpose of Bitcoin, you know, like what I talked about at the
Bitcoin Conference, was the effort to label Bitcoin a
national security threat, but not necessarily Bitcoin itself,
because as we've been talking about there's very establishment
quote unquote, actors that are very big into Bitcoin. So why
would those, you know, controversial actors, I guess,
are very close to the establishment actors. be putting
money in Bitcoin if it's probably going to be hit with a
regulatory Hammer of some capacity. Well, I think they're
very interested probably those guys in regulation happening
like there was this article in the institutional investor
called why the crypto world should embrace the Feds
crackdown. And it talks about how like basically this will
make Bitcoin the regulatory crack cracked and will make
Bitcoin you know, worth it. And, you know, in my speech, I talked
about this effort by the World Economic Forum partnership
against cybercrime. Westpac, which includes the FBI and the
DOJ and as you mentioned earlier, they have an insane
amount of bitcoin that they have seized. Yeah, right, making them
essentially a Bitcoin whale that can influence the market. Sure,
right. And they in Westpac, which is you know, they're a
part of, they say that Bitcoin and mixers, anything that allows
Bitcoin transactions to take place with financial anonymity,
or increased financial privacy is what makes it a threat. So
that has to be eliminated. But also the value of Bitcoin on I
guess I'm telling would be regulated, and not being hunted
down by these guys. The value of it is a threat. So it needs to
be devalued to stop, quote, unquote, acting as a driver for
cybercrime. So there's a bunch of really crazy stuff going on
there, right. And I personally feel amazed that more people
aren't wise to that. And the whole idea to sort of paint any
sort of privacy enhancing technology, including ones that
aren't exclusive to Bitcoin, just like encryption, for
example. I mean, Bill Barr, on the Trump administration was on
the total Warpath, against encryption, trying to get a
backdoor for the the DOJ and the FBI and everything that's
encrypted. You know, not necessarily financial, like
messaging and stuff like that, you know, there's this huge
effort to secure complete dominance over Cyberspace, while
at the same time the same actors are pushing everything and
everyone online for everything. Right. And, you know, that's
really disturbing. And so, I think, as it relates to Bitcoin,
you know, this war going on there is there are these people
that I guess have maybe at some level already, like, sold out,
and are going to let Bitcoin be used in this way. And then there
are people like yourself, who see it as this off ramp from
increased centralized control, but the ways of using Bitcoin,
for those purposes are about or, you know, there's an effort to
criminalize that. Is there anything you'd like to comment?
As it relates to that?
MG: Yeah, I mean, I think just like as a general comment, like,
I think there are so many ways that Bitcoin can monetize in a
very significant way and enrich you know, the majority of
Bitcoin holders, and it actually create a system that's more
shitty for everybody that's ever that's ever existed, like, the
issue with the dollar system is not. You know, it's that it's,
it is obfuscated, like we don't know, when a lot of these
changes are made, we aren't privy to the closed door
meetings that they vote on, you know, rate changes, or debt
issuance, or any of these things. So I think like, a lot
of people I think, are just getting kind of numb to the
economic realities of Bitcoin kind of number go up, and
they're just at all costs, they want to see that happen. And the
criminality of it is really interesting, because it's like,
they're sort of self admitting that it's a powerful technology,
while also trying to downplay that. It's only for scammers,
and it's it's not important, and it doesn't threaten the dollar,
but they're also like, putting out you know, this propaganda
that it's like very powerful and used by drug dealers, and
traffickers and cybercrime, and all these things. So it's like,
they're kind of like, I don't really understand what their
dialectics are here. It seems very confusing. If you're paying
attention to both sides of of the purple party. And, yeah, I
haven't really thought too much about like the criminalization
of Bitcoin, because I don't really necessarily see that I
think it's too helpful for the powers that be in a lot of ways
to, you know, to sort of champion it in these little
ways, and really control the ins and outs. They don't really have
a lot of control over the actual system itself, unless they
subsidize mining. And they're able to kind of push towards
getting some OFAC compliance like within block construction
and transaction construction, which of course, they can
subsidize with dollars, which of course they're doing. We've seen
this happen a bunch of times where these big dollar financed
operations, these mining operations, publicly traded
companies that have mined 1000s of Bitcoin, you know, oh shit,
they filed chapter 11 You go to look at the books, the stocks
imploded, you know, 199% And they have seven Bitcoin left.
And it's like, Well, where did all that Bitcoin go? You know,
how did that How did that even happen? Even like an SPF thing
or Aluna like some of these, these big implosions that were,
you know, very likely government funded or government
participated in businesses. And then you know, when the Piper
comes, it's like, there's no Bitcoin left. And so it's like,
well, where's this Bitcoin all going. And you can look at some
of it, you can see a lot of it was market sold on by Nance,
like 30,000, Bitcoin or market sold on by Nance after like Luna
imploded, which was an algorithmic setup, you know, it
was something that, you know, could have absolutely been
triggered by a knowing party. So I see, like, so much potential
for CO option on the ins and outs and of surveillance and of,
you know, sort of, you know, the raising rates, which are
crushing tax demand, it's like, well, we're gonna start seeing
capital gains tax rates go up, we're gonna see them start going
after using this KYC, this know, your customer, stuff, that
they've control the onramps, they can really, you know,
again, it's an open ledger, they can see everything, I can see
everything, I can go look at, you know, the Ukraine, Bitcoin
wallets, and see where money's coming in, I can go look at
exchanges, look at the lunar stuff, like I can see all this
stuff, you can kind of piece it all together. And I think that
there's so much, you know, ripe opportunity, unfortunately, for
like chain analysis, and these these governments sighs, you
know, adversaries on the network that they can really put
together, you know, so much, they can triangulate so much of
your economic activity, if you if you do any sort of public
acknowledgement of a Bitcoin transaction. And, you know, how
do you do that, you know, you you create, you know, you add
Bitcoin payments to Twitter for a few months or whatever, and
you get people, you know, doing that you get, you know, there's
so many ways you can kind of socially engineer someone to
expose their UTX O's or their Bitcoin holdings, you know, in a
public way. People tweet about it all the time. People go to
conferences, take pictures, they do this, they talk about how
much they have a talk about a buy. And there's so many ways to
kind of, yeah, like, I think we're at the silent like, the
very clearly the powers that be are here, they're in Bitcoin.
There's a lot of public speakers within Bitcoin that I'm sure are
not good faith actors. But I think the majority is sort of
silent. And they're kind of just letting Bitcoiners kind of shoot
themselves in the foot all over the place, in this confidence
that we've already won, and this confidence that everything is
private. And this is a big issue that I've had with like a lot of
people in the Bitcoin space talking about privacy and
surveillance, like, you know, there's this general assumption
that everything on Bitcoin or sorry, everything on lightning
is private. And it's just simply not true. If there's any sort of
adversary in this open topology network, they can ping your
nodes and can really get a very good sense of how much Bitcoin
you have, and what you're spending, you know, that you've
locked in a lightning channel. It's very easy, you know,
metadata rules, everything around us, you know, I mean,
it's just, we know, Vault seven, we know that the NSA is spying
on us, we know that they have these hardware and surveillance
networks,
WW: and they can frame any anyone they want for cyber
attack. And absolutely, well, seven. Yeah,
MG: absolutely. And also, you know, hey, let's Okay, getting
back to some of the lockdown stuff, it's like, a lot of
people literally were getting tested, and giving their social
security numbers to, you know, these ridiculous, you know,
health organizations, or people doing 20, threes in mes. And
it's like, okay, now all these people have a DNA data, they
have DNA data associated with your social security number, and
now we have you on Twitter, sending a Bitcoin transaction,
or posting a receipt of you buying Bitcoin. It's like, you
can triangulate that stuff so easily frame people so easily.
There's so much like, it's such a kind of a dumb space, even
though we've matured a lot in the last, you know, 10 something
years. But there's so much young activity, I think, you know, the
implications, the future implications of like, you know,
you shouldn't, you know, you send a tweet out about, oh, I
stack this amount I did this, it's like, in five years, that
could be a life changing amount of money. And now you have
timestamps of yourself saying all this stuff everywhere. And I
think that there's just so much, you know, fruit available to be
picked that that I think a lot of that stuff won't really come
to fruition for a few years. But when it does, I think people are
going to be really surprised at how much information they really
leaked. Probably myself included, like to be honest, you
know, I mean,
WW: yeah, well, I wasn't saying that, like, you know, they're, I
guess what I was trying to say earlier is that I feel like what
they're trying to criminalize isn't Bitcoin itself per se?
What they're trying to criminalize? Is what would
afford Bitcoin transactions increased financial privacy and
financial anonymity? Yeah, meaning that Bitcoin would be
allowed to exist, but really only in the sort of Bitcoin
dollar paradigm that you're talking about? Yeah, we're
really a Bitcoin digital dollar paradigm since that's where
dollars going,
MG: right? Yeah. 100% No, and I agree with you, I think that's
kind of what I was trying to say of, like, you know, they're
going to allow Bitcoin to exist, allow you to buy it. But you
know, you're gonna have to literally scan your face, like,
I mean, they're already places that are doing it, there were
exchanges that require a live selfie, like a video of you
turning your, your, you know, front facing camera on your
phone, and taking a 3d, you know, kind of video of your face
to be able to withdraw your Bitcoin that already exists.
It's just, you know, kind of small, it's not, it's not on any
of the huge, huge, huge exchanges yet. But that's going
to continue to happen. I mean, they're gonna get way, way
crazier as they are getting more and more desperate. I mean,
that's kind of the reality of the economic situation is like,
the government can't pay for itself, we pay more money to
uphold the debt of the dollar than we do to pay our military.
That's sort of a point of no return. And now we need to get
as much capital gains taxes as possible. So you're gonna see
some crazy shit, I think.
WW: Yeah, well, it's really ramping up already. Like in May,
you had the FBI, I think they seize the domains of maybe like
eight crypto exchanges, they said weren't doing the Know Your
Customer stuff enough. They were affording anonymous, you know,
like giving, giving their users and unlimited and privacy and
exchanging crypto for for other currencies, right. So you know,
they're already going after the ones that aren't complying with
this. And you know, living in Chile, there's not a lot of
crypto here, but the only crypto exchange here does require you
right to like, upload your face, and all this stuff. So I mean,
there is a big push for all of that. And it's definitely
definitely unsettling to say the least. So I guess, what do you
think you someone you know, someone with the values that you
have, if bitcoin is sort of turned into that? What do you
continue to hold and use it?
MG: Yeah, I would. Because I still think at its at its core,
you know, what it offers is a financial economic system, that
even if it's completely perverted on the ins and outs,
and the on ramps and off ramps, by, you know, you know,
basically all the actors were trying to neuter now, the fact
that the it is a disinflationary monetary policy, and eventually,
a deflationary monetary policy is still a state change, even if
it is entirely used, which is a very possible end game for
Bitcoin is that it is used as a reserve asset in between central
banks, and that the actual price of a main chain Bitcoin
transaction priced in Bitcoin is we'll be more than like, you
know, a day's wage of minimum wage, like That's entirely
possible that we may just price out, you know, your general
citizens of being able to participate on the base layer
because of the monetization of Bitcoin but what it still does
is it still limits the the economic growth and the debt
pardoning special privilege from the state even if they control
the ins and outs, even if they're big, you know, Bitcoin
rising the dollar or dollar rising the Bitcoin you know,
it's still limits their ability and limits the the nefarious
ability between central banks to basically to have false
reserves, right, it's, it's still an auditable system. So
even if it is very co opted, and the ins and outs are very
dollarized it still is an economic state change that I
still support. I would probably be significantly less interested
in the Bitcoin space, I probably would be looking at, you know,
other kinds of privacy tools and other things, not not
alternative currencies. I don't really think there's any real
value and any other cryptocurrency outside of
Bitcoin, I really, truly believe that. So yeah, I think I would
be like less excited about it. But I think economically like I
think that thesis is still intact, that it is the state
change and it is a net good for the economy. But you know, it's
again, it's a tool and tools can be used to enslave people and
they can be used to free people. So I really hope that it doesn't
go to that. And I'm obviously you know, burning bridges,
you're trying to get the Bitcoin or community to wake the fuck up
and realize that it's actually probably about as likely as not
likely, it's about 5050 right now that that's kind of the
outcome. I really think that and yeah,
WW: well, I think it's worth burning the bridges per
Personally, I agree is, you know, important.
MG: It's Wait,
WW: why? Why would you want to have something that you've
invested a lot of time and money and be used to build a slavery
system? And then, you know, then you're sort of locked into
supporting that slavery system unless you want to lose all the
time and money you put into it, right? Yeah.
MG: Yeah, no, true. Yeah, it's like, to me, Bitcoin is a means
to an end. And without that, and kind of being, you know, and
it's not just to make a bunch of money, like, I don't really
care. That's kind of happened to a degree. And it's completely
unfulfilling, and I don't really care. It's like, this is about
our kids, kids. And, you know, like, it's about future stuff. I
don't even really intend to touch any of my bitcoin really,
at all, other than to build communities and systems and, you
know, magazines and printing presses and, you know, broadcast
studio equipment and all the things I've kind of built, or
want to build. You know, yeah, it's this is about freedom of
the human race. And I think we've been enslaved for an
exceptionally long time. They've perverted our history, they
perverted our you know, they propagandized our ability to
connect with with each other in different parts of the world.
And Bitcoin can, like exacerbate all that, or can really can
really limit all that. So yeah, I really hope I agree, I agree,
burn the bridges, why would I want to be bridge to these
people anyway? And, yeah, it's like this is this is really
important that we get this right, especially, you know,
within, you know, the, there's only a few percent of Bitcoin
even left to be issued, you know, the majority of the
Bitcoin is owned and held by people. And it has to be
distributed, it's not an economic system that can just
rely on yield. Or rely on interest rates, it's like you
have to spend it if you want to, you know, use it, which is,
which is great. So we're in this rare moment in this first, you
know, 20 years of Bitcoin, where you know, 99% of it, of all
Bitcoin will be issued. And these are the important moments
where we actually can make decisions and limit people, and
push back on the counter dissonance and push back on this
dollarization and not just recreate JP Morgan, Bitcoin, and
have these absolute freaks continue to run our lives, you
know, we actually have an ability to kind of, you know, we
get a shot at the beasts neck here. And if we fuck it up, it's
entirely on us. And I really hope that that doesn't happen, I
think there are enough really smart people in Bitcoin, that
have the time and the talent to build alternative scaling
situations. And to deal with some of these privacy things. We
have some incredible stuff coming out using E cash, which
was this invention by David chomh. In the 80s, like 8283, he
had this paper about using blind signatures to create near
perfect privacy are entirely perfect privacy within a mint.
And now we can use Bitcoin to sort of as the reserve acid for
these mints. And we can whip them up in 30 seconds. And we
you know, that we can create our own banks and these private
mints, you know, at a whim, and we can kind of create this
decentralized Whack a Mole where it's like, okay, you, you've
identified that this person is a dissonant and is an enemy of the
state. Well, you can whack them, but there's three more that will
pop up when you do that. And that's just a reality of kind of
what we have to do. We have to think really selflessly and
realize that, you know, we have a chance and we can't let it go.
And we need to spend our money and put our words where our
mouth is, or whatever that phrase is. And do something
about it while we still have a fucking chance. And if we
continue to let Bitcoin be dollarized, you know, we've
given up our one chance and not only have we given up our one
chance, we've extended the life of the dollar, probably. And
that's why I've been Yeah, screeching about this Bitcoin
dollar thing, because and I wrote this book, because we know
we've seen, you know, stablecoin coders get killed. We've seen
them tweet out about how Israeli and US intelligence are setting
me up. And you know, this guy Nikolai. Micheline was then
found, you know, drowned in the Puerto Rican waters with all of
his clothes on, you know, a few days after maker Dow, which was
his creation voted as a community to put a, you know, a
billion dollars into Coinbase of USDC. It's like, there's this
wonderful Julian Assange piece that he wrote in 2006 called
conspiracies governance, which is in the gatekeepers issue
that, you know, you're in this Bitcoin magazine issue. And he
talks about sort of identifying the conspiracy. And the way that
you do it is you just put pins up all across the map of what
you're kind of looking at, and then you take twine and you
attach all the points and you kind of just, you don't
necessarily know how they're connected. But you just look at
this kind of map that you've created and when you look at the
Bitcoin space right now out and you look at the kind of like hit
Galeon dialectics of what we're doing here, it's like there's
this huge push towards KYC stablecoin embraced payment
networks and in exchanges, and even from like the privacy
people, like these, they're they're recommending KYC
exchanges and stable coins. And, you know, it's, it's just
ridiculous. So, yeah, that was a bit of a rant there, but
WW: no, I think it was, I think it was important. So really
quick, I just want to say, you know, for the audience, really,
you already know, this mark, I don't publicly endorse or shit
on Bitcoin, because I don't think it's my responsibility to
use my platform to tell people where to put their money, I
think that's a really personal and individual decision. But at
the same time, you know, I do see Bitcoiners as at least
Bitcoiners, like yourself, attempting to use it to build
some sort of parallel system. So what's being, you know, what
we're being herded into? And obviously, a parallel system
like that is necessary. So there's a lot of people well,
not a lot, but I mean, you know, there are people right that shit
on you know, anyone involved in any sort of digital, anything is
inherently implicit, and building the for IR. And, you
know, I know people, you know, who are trying to create some
sort of decentralized tech, whether it's like getting people
on some sort of D Googled Android thing if they decide to
continue using a smartphone or trying to get people off of
apple and Windows operating systems onto the onto Linux and
all of that. But it's, you know, I think in the near future,
we're going to be faced with increasingly difficult choices
about how much we enable the systems. So like, for me,
personally, you know, if bitcoin becomes completely a tool of
Central Bank's I don't really want anything to do with it, I
mean, I understand why you're saying that, because of the
technology and how you feel about it, and all of that, that
that's within it, but you know, I don't really plan to you know,
use those on an off ramps controlled or that enable this
same kind of behavior that bitcoins supposed to stop. So,
you know, I would just probably do nothing with Bitcoin, it
would just sit there, you know, because I enable those on and
off ramps. Right.
MG: So yeah, I agree with you, I think it's, it's important that
when, you know, we, you know, there's a great great Bitcoin,
who I think is very, very smart and talks about a lot of these
morning's beauty on who is he runs as TECHO. And his kind of
idea is, you know, he has this concept of ethical Bitcoin. And
again, ethical is obviously a word that gets perverted to get
people to do bullshit all the time. But that said, it's like,
there are alternatives, there are decentralized alternatives.
There are exchanges that don't require those things. There are
peer to peer exchanges, go to your local meetup, go find a
miner, give them cash, buy bitcoin directly, you know,
there's a lot of alternative ways that just circumnavigate
the, the, the, you know, kind of corruption of the ins and outs
of Bitcoin. And those are the things that we need to use, we
need to reject any of the systems that are using if you're
using a system that supports stable coins, you're supporting
a system that is buying government debt. So what are you
doing? And so I don't use any of those, you know, I've sort of
converted a lot of my thinking and actions, you know, away from
that, you know, as like, as I got more hip to what was really
going on, and it's like, ya know, we have to stand up and
not, like, promote these services that are perpetuating,
you know, getting the greatest terrorist organization in the
world. And so yeah, I agree with you. i It's tough. I, I so badly
don't want to imagine a world where that happens that
sometimes it's hard for me to think about what I would do if
it did happen, because I'm so so desperately fighting to make
sure that that doesn't happen. Yeah, but of course, yeah,
there's an opposite. There's definitely a possibility in the
future where I think that, you know, Bitcoin has sort of
failed. Its its its mission of of kind of neutering state
power. It is possible, at least for a short to medium term, that
that could happen in our lifetime. I still really much
definitely think so that no matter what, you know, Bitcoin
is a multi 100 year experiment, probably about 1000 years.
Something like that. It doesn't really scale planetary ly, so I
don't see any of that shit going on, but or interplanetary, I
should say. But I think regardless, it's state change of
money is so important that it is a net positive for humanity,
even if it's completely corrupted and used in a lot of
ways until the state power can actually be perverted away. I
hope that's not naive of me but I really do think economically
it is exceptionally important regardless. But yeah, I mean,
shit. It's an open ledger and it's run by the some you No, not
Ron, but, you know, some of the biggest influencers in the
entire space are some of the spookiest people. And yeah,
there's there's a whole bunch of ways, like we're seeing
politicians jumping out now and hitching themselves to it. And
you know, it's becoming one of the biggest brands in the world.
And you know, a bunch of bad people are going to use it a
Bitcoin has to be for enemies. Otherwise, it absolutely can't
be for friends, you know, and we have to fight for the death for
that ability for anyone to be able to use it. Because if
anyone is becomes a gatekeeper of who or who can't make a
transaction on Bitcoin, the entire thing has failed. So
unfortunately, we sort of have to kind of like, like, yeah,
central banks are going to be able to use this and JP Morgan
is gonna be able to use this and Jamie Dimon will probably store
a bunch of his money in Bitcoin. And, you know, there's a lot of
likelihood that, you know, the Maxwell Epstein, you know, sort
of blackmail group was like using Bitcoin. There's a there's
a great conspiracy that, you know, Maxwell was a very big
power mod on on Reddit, and was running our news and a bunch of
other things under this user user Maxwell Hill, the last
thing she posted about, or this user posted about which she
stopped posting the day that she was arrested and hasn't posted
since. And it was the number one voted person on Reddit until
that day, posted about Bitcoin, it was like the last thing that
they posted about so you know, there's a lot of connections
with Bitcoin to a lot of shitty things. And that's sort of,
unfortunately, an endorsement in a really weird way of like, how
powerful this technology is. We just need to make sure right, we
wake up and don't let it just, you know, get completely
corrupted.
WW: Well, on that last point, right. So the the justification
for regulating Bitcoin in the sense of taking away financial
privacy is to stop money laundering and all of this
stuff. But of course, these guys like you just talked about, are
very big into money laundering. So, you know, they're probably
the ones using it for that more than regular people that are
just,
MG: I mean, Jamie Dimon or JP Morgan saying anything about the
criminality of Bitcoin is ridiculous when like they got
caught like with like, you know, millions of dollars of cocaine
on their, on their, you know, their own boat of theirs. a
shipping container, you know, it's like, you know, they're
they're literally banking, sex trafficked, like known sex
traffickers. And then obviously buying up consent and all the
other ridiculous things they're doing so it's, it's completely
ridiculous for literally literal criminals, and criminals,
supporters and enablers to come out and shit on Bitcoin as a
technology that enables criminality. It's just like,
Sure, of course it does. But cash does that way more so and
there's probably no one more important to the infrastructure
and safety of the US dollar, probably then Jamie Dimon, you
know, I mean, like, he really kind of runs the show and a lot
of ways. And so yeah, I think it's a total falsehood, while
also having, you know, an extreme element of of truth in
this weird kind of endorsement of the technology. But
obviously, when compared to the dollar, it's just a joke. All
right,
WW: so we've talked a lot about Bitcoin, and you brought up
stable coins a lot. So I want to talk about that a little bit.
Because in the course of our conversation thus far, you've
explained a lot about Bitcoin and blockchain and what those
terms are maybe for people that don't necessarily know a lot
about it. But maybe people know a little bit less about stable
coins. So why don't you if you're cool to touch on, you
know, sort of what stable coins are? Why and why you see them as
problematic. And then I want to bring up some of the some weird
stuff tied up with stable coins. Yeah, brain about it.
MG: Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, that stablecoin Rabbit
Hole is really intense, because it really connects like the
worst of, of, of all the things we hate about our current
system, with like, ridiculous technology that just exacerbates
a bunch of issues that we have. So yeah, basically long and
short, a stable coin. You know, first off, the name is just
ridiculous. There's nothing stable about it at all. But the
reason why they're called stable coins is because as opposed to
and again, this is sort of, you know, this is dialectics here,
as opposed to Bitcoin, which is very volatile, and can lose 80%
of its value in a year and yada yada, which, of course, is all
true. But over long timeframes, I mean, it's the fastest growing
asset ever. So it was they were kind of created, as this, you
know, directly, you know, parallel to the Bitcoin system
as a way to give dollar access. All kinds of, you know, you
might have heard of the Euro dollar system, which basically
was a system of dollars that were, you know, created and
exchanged entirely outside of the Federal Reserve System that
were kind of set up with this interest rate, this LIBOR London
Interbank overnight rate. There was a whole bunch of banks in
Europe, I think like 12 or 11 banks. plus the one US Bank,
which was JP Morgan, of course. And they were the ones kind of
being able to control this Eurodollar market and it was
really out of the purview of the Federal Reserve System. So, one
of the reasons why you raise interest rates, which we have
raised interest rates so much as you know, you want to your you
can think of it as the higher the interest rate, the more
interest there is in being in that system, because we're
basically bribing you with yield to keep your money and keep your
value in our system and buy our debt. So the US government, you
know, started jacking up interest rates as a way to kind
of combat this offshore dollar market that was outside of the
purview of the Fed. And so stable coins are basically the,
you know, the technological evolution of the Eurodollar
market which allowed but this time you know, controlled by
entities potentially that are within the kind of dollar
coalition are kind of like the US Cabal.
WW: Oh, definitely. Yeah,
MG: I mean, of course, and there's you know, there's a
reason why all these you know, banks and, and stable coin
providers are all you know, kind of you know stationed in in this
Bermuda Triangle Bahamas Island area which we just continually
see so much of you know, this shady shit constantly happening
yeah, yeah, yeah. Like like the state is really like this ocean
state thing and they live on all these islands and they avert you
know, kind of, you know, the law of the land with this like
maritime Admiralty bullshit. And they all have, you know, their
own laws island by island. I'm sure there's trafficking and
just ridiculousness going on there. And you know, of course,
yeah, that's why we see SPF, you know, creating FTX. In the
Bahamas, the first cbdc in the world was launched in the
Bahamas, the sand dollar, which was tied to the Bahamas, and
reserve currency, which is actually just pegged to the US
dollar anyway, so the first US dollar cbdc was actually in the
Bahamas. So yeah, we're seeing all this shit. But basically,
again, long and short. It's it's a, it's a tokenized
representation of $1 that is able to be exchanged one to one
theoretically, for paper money, or, you know, US dollar credits
in a bank account, via the issuer. So the two biggest ones
are tether, which again, is that bit for next connected? You
know, they were connected with Brock Pierce. And the last one,
WW: maybe, in my opinion, we'll just say that, yes, very shady.
Fellas
MG: say that, yeah. also connected with Eos, which was
another huge affinity scam that was the largest Bitcoin scam of
all time. That was about 190 Something Bitcoins, 290,000
bitcoins stolen, you know, with all these false promises of
this, like alternative, you know, smart contract enabled,
you know, same bullshit as Cardano a theory, you know, of
all these things. And, you know, of course, you know, they were
all, you know, they were banked and based out of, you know, the
Bahamas, they got a tiny slap on the wrist, I think it was like
520 $5 million, or something was like the fine, but they got, you
know, billions and billions. So, yeah, absolutely absurd. It's
the system and this technology that, you know, is being orange
washed and sort of virtue signaling as being very
systemically important to the adoption of Bitcoin. By
allowing, you know, third world countries, basically like
Indonesia, and Africa, and, you know, budgets and the South
Asian sees, and it's kind of viewed as this way to onboard
people to Bitcoin, because it's like, oh, this big, bad Fiat,
you know, like, Venezuelan inflation is so high,
Argentinian inflation is so high, it would be, you know,
such a beautiful thing for them to be able to use the dollar, I
really wish these people had dollar access, it would be such
a better technological tool than what they're using. So it's
become this totally ridiculous way to dollarized the world. And
it's seen as both an alternative to people that dislike Bitcoin,
because it's not government issued. You know, there's a lot
of people that are like, only governments are supposed to be
able to issue money and Bitcoin isn't a state money, but stable
coins are, it's like, well, that's just the status quo. But
yeah, so we're still depends
WW: on how people view money, I guess at the end of the day,
that distinction.
MG: Yeah, totally, totally. And so we've seen basically a
Cambrian explosion of quote, unquote, innovation, and stuff
in the stable coin space. Probably most, infamously, in my
opinion with the Facebook's Libra, which was this idea of
making a basket of currencies that then you could pay, you
know, through Facebook, Facebook pay, and so it was just kind of
like not a one to one stable coin, where it was just $1. And
you could exchange it for $1. But it was it was going to be a
basket of currencies, I'm sure would have included the euro,
probably the pound, and then maybe the yen. And basically,
when that came out, you know, the Congress and most US
government officials kind of came out and were like, Oh, this
is gonna threaten the dollar, this is really bad. And kind of
feign this, like, you know, this, this, this disagreement
with, with Facebook pushing this the system and saying that it
was going to undermine the dollar, but when in reality, it
was going to dollarized the world so quickly, and where to
put billions of people onto the dollar system overnight. And
China actually realize this, and China, you know, had a complete
knee jerk reaction to the Libra presentation, basically, and
they launched their cbdc Like imminently after the Libra, you
know, announcement, the Libra obviously ended up kind of, you
know, changed names became DM and ended up kind of getting
shuttered. That guy that was running DM Marcus something.
These now runs light Spark, which is a Lightning Network,
you know, program, we're seeing a lot of former stable coin errs
and dollar people kind of getting into the, you know, the
lightning space, all of a sudden as lightning is about to embrace
stable coins, believe it or not. So yeah, basically urine. Yeah,
I know. And keep burning bridges, baby. So yeah, it's a
technology that is supposed to sort of paint this idea of
stability. And this idea of, you know, this is a safe place to be
in direct opposition to Bitcoin, which is very speculative. But
it's a bunch of bullshit. I mean, it's it's a centralized
issuance, you're you're relying on the audit of a bank, and of a
service provider to not take advantage of the literal money
printer that you've given them. You know, tether has the ability
to print tokens. And they're very loosely audited and
monitored in any sort of regulatory way, being, you know,
sort of pushed off shore entirely from us regulations to
now being in kind of this nebulous, stateless, I don't
actually even know literally, what, where they are, at the
moment. But they're out of the purview of the US dollar system
legally, anyway. But yeah, it's it was it's basically this
affinity scam to create consent for dollarization of the world
and to create this kind of virtue signaling for
technologists and freedom fighters and all this to start
supporting the dollarization of the globe, while just really all
they're doing is making the government richer, making a
select few bankers and stable coin issuers richer and really
hurting the world and really globalizing the dollar with a
super high monetary velocity, you know, these things can be
exchanged incredibly quickly. And they are bearer instruments
technically, in that if you just have them in your wallet, you
know, you you can go spend them at different exchanges and all
this, but they rely on you shitty rails, they rely on
Aetherium rails, they rely on Cardano rails or Tron rails all
of these rails have these just really poorly constructed or
banker constructed alternative blockchains Yeah. And so money
is going up to just the worst people. And it's being done
under this. This guise, as, you know, being this, you know,
humanitarian effort, and it's like, spreading the dollar
across the world is not humanitarian, my friends.
WW: Well, it's even it's even more than the humanity
problematic humanitarian aspect goes far beyond just the
stablecoin level, right? Like, I'd like to get to talking about
Cardano and some of these digital ID efforts, for example,
under the guise of, you know, decent liberating Ethiopian
schoolchildren, it's not exactly what's going on over there. But
really quick before I get there, I do want to mention a few
things so for people that don't know right, to other disturbing
I think oh, there's a lot of stuff that unsettles me about
it. And then there's you know, Brock Pierce. I think revolver
news had an interesting compilation of information about
him including Epstein connections and weird ties to
creepy pedo stuff definitely worth taking a look at that if
you're not aware, but he
MG: also former Disney actor was in was a childhood asthma in
just two Yes, yeah,
WW: yeah. So Epstein stuff more fool. Yeah, so anyway,
definitely some weird stuff there. But as far as I'm aware,
I think he stepped away officially from an association
with tether several years ago. But nevertheless, tether
reserves are held at Deltec a Bahamian bank that's probably
also well known for holding a lot of FTX accounts, including
their shady hast accounts. And then the head of Deltec John
shallow pain, very involved in Farmington State Bank, which was
part of the FTX stuff that Ed Berger and I did a piece about
on a limited hangout that I'd recommend you check out if you
want more information on that, because they turned this tiny
rural nothing bank basically in rural Washington state into
Moonstone bank, and it teamed up with the guy who created the
Bahamian original cbdc, that you mentioned a bit ago, and some
weird stuff definitely going on there. And including with the
Federal Reserve, which somehow immediately approved Moonstone.
And when it shouldn't, it does and all sorts of weird things
going on there for sure. So and of course Deltec hopefully we'll
have a report out on that soon and unlimited Hangout, or at
least in the next couple of months, because it's a real high
of going over its history before John shallow been very much
Rockefeller centric, tied up with, you know, of course, David
Rockefeller ran Chase Manhattan Bank, very big part of the deep
state, quote, unquote, that's now been folded in, of course,
to JP Morgan Chase. And basically, Dell Tech was a big
part of that and even has connections to stuff like the
1973 coup in Chile brought Pinochet to power and all sorts
of weird stuff. There which, you know, the right David
Rockefeller also had a hand in that type of stuff. But
basically, this horrible Neo colonialist paradigm has for a
long time been enabled by this particular Bahamian bank tied to
both FTX and tether that unsettles me, and then talking
about USDC. So circle, is, uh, I guess the issue where they're
right, and there's been a lot going on with them as it relates
to some of this weird stuff that's happened since the
collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. And they had to move where some
of their reserves were kept around. And after all of the
dust more or less settled on that phase of the current
banking crisis, circle decided to park their reserves that they
needed to move around with being why Mellon, and boy, it comes up
in one nation under blackmail several times. Probably guess
why. So essentially, it seems to me like stable coins are
basically being utilized for very unsettling purposes by the
same actors that I chronicle in my book is basically enabling
everything from sex trafficking, to money laundering, arms
trafficking, the worst stuff, you can imagine the wholesale
looting of wealth in the developing world, but also in
the developed world, including in the United States, you know,
enabling the same type of behavior. I find it very
unsettling. So just wanted to make that point about stable coins.
MG: It's unreal. I mean, literally four days after the
SPF, they filed chapter 11 on 1111 fancily enough on November
11. And four days after being why Mellon and a dozen other
banking institutions came out to start the it was the
announcement of the digital dollar pilot program with the
Federal Reserve Bank in New York, which was a 12 week. Yeah.
So that was immediately after, which was also the very next day
Apple Pay announced that they were allowing circle integration
and letting you use USDC payments there. Yeah, I mean,
it's the spookiest shit. I mean, being one being why Mellon was
literally founded by Alexander Hamilton, one of the oldest,
most important banks in the world are certainly in the after
the American experiment. And I think it has something like a
fifth it has, like, its hands on, like a fifth of all assets,
like in the world. It's just totally ridiculous. And yeah,
they hold the paper for, for us DC, which, you know, Brian
Armstrong, the CEO of of Coinbase, came out and said that
it's the de facto, you know, CBDC, and I think that's a huge,
that's kind of a big part of, of my thesis is that the retail
cbdc is kind of a red herring. And it's really about, you know,
I think the government doesn't, doesn't necessarily want, you
know, to directly issue money to, you know, to citizens,
because they actually reserve more restriction rights by, you
know, sort of keeping it in the private, you know, sector and,
you know, we've seen that with Facebook, we've seen that with
some of these other with, you know, these too big to fail kind
of American institutions. You know, they they're not directly,
you know, affiliated with the US government, but they, you know,
their staff is filled with with government intelligence, their
budget is filled with, you know, you know, contracts from the US
government. And I think we're going to continue To see that
kind of play out that the cbdc I think the Fed now which again
launches in a month, it's like it launches in July, as sort of
this inter banking network. And that's actually I think, in many
ways, a lot more dangerous than a cbdc. Retail facing one
anyway. And that just
WW: enables financial surveillance. Let's just CBDCs
right. Well,
MG: the thing is, is kind of, I mean, but also like, can we
really be even more of a surveillance hell than we are in
now. And I don't mean that as a challenge. Anyone listening?
Like, please don't, please don't make this worse. But like, we
are in kind of a surveillance hell, I mean, anything you do on
your phone, on a smartphone on Apple Pay and all this shit,
it's completely surveilled. Totally, totally. Yeah. And,
and, but fed now kind of, it's this entire banking operation
thing. And it basically like nationalizes, the US banking
system even more, and brings it on shores, all of this euro
dollar, all of this, you know, sort of shenanigans going on it.
It's basically paying everybody this this much higher rate, you
know, of overnight, overnight banking, and it's crashing
dollar demand outside of the United States and bringing it
back in, which is, you know, that's what you know, the
bankers want?
WW: Well, yeah, I think that's part of the impulse behind this
whole talk about banking the unbanked at the end of the day,
too, you know, we want all of the money in our system,
particularly our new system we're building so we have to
essentially in the quote, unquote, informal economy, and
bring it in, you know, into our system so that we can control
and surveil it more closely. And I think that's why you're also
seeing like, in the US, with the IRS being like every transaction
over $600, I mean, it'll keep going down, because they want
everything in the system at the end of the day,
MG: so the US will basically create these synthetic kind of
treasury reserve asset back back things that they can use fed now
to kind of, you know, do these overnight, you know, security,
reverse repo swaps, and then the actual retail, you know, forward
facing, like the things that we'll all use, hopefully not you
and I, but, you know, the majority of Americans and folks
will use this, you know, they'll use stable coins, you know,
they'll use USDC, they'll use tether they'll use JP Morgan
dollar coin, they'll use Bank of America coin, like these things
are all coming in massive ways. We need to issue a lot of money
to be able to service our debt. But the US government doesn't
issue dollars directly they issue these these Treasury
reserves. So they can sell these treasuries to stable coin
providers like tether, and tether has become one of the
largest net buyers of, of treasuries, these short term
bonds from the US government, and they're making so much money
like hands over fist. And I don't think that's going to stop
I think that's going to increase like crazy, I think we're going
to see way more stable coins, way more banker coins, because
we've already digitalized the dollar. I mean, like your Bank
of America, you know, balances a digital dollar, you know, I
mean, so little of it is actually physical, or backed in
any way. And I think we'll just see that continuing to happen.
And these sort of retail facing stable coins will in fact, be,
you know, the, the CBDC, you know, and now we're gonna see,
you know, kind of maybe control this and instead of coming out
and saying, Let's ban the US government from directly issuing
CBDCs, hurray, hurray, we won. But meanwhile, they're
promoting, you know, stable coin usage in the private sector as
if it's this win. And it's like, no, no, no, the private banking
sector of the US government is the shareholders of the Fed. And
they are the people that are, you know, basically enabling the
imperialism and colonialism of the United States government.
These are the people we don't want to support these people.
WW: Yeah, I definitely agree with them, we do not want to
support them. So I want to run something by you. That's a
little bit interest well on seemingly but I think might
illuminate some of the funny business going on with stable
coins. So the UN for example. So I talked earlier, briefly about
the World Food Programs, building blocks program, which
was basically like Syrian refugees, okay, you want food
from the UN and the World Food Programme, handover, your
biometrics scan your irises, you'll have to pay with iris
scans to get access to food? And obviously they can't say no,
because even though it's voluntary, okay, I'll
voluntarily starve or voluntarily hold over my
biometrics to be able to feed myself in a war zone, right? Not
exactly voluntary. So the humans doing stuff like that they're
backing something I wrote about a few years ago, which is under
the ID 2020. Alliance, the push for digital ID that's basically
created by gates and the Rockefeller philanthropies to
force digital ID on the entire world under the guise of
fulfilling Sustainable Development Goal target 16.
Target nine is about legal aid. Identity for all yada yada. So
basically, for example, stateless people in the border
with Thailand and my Mr. The Karen people. An agency that was
involved in the UN sex for food scandal was allowed access to
children. And it was the same theme of handover your
biometrics, and we'll issue you you know, wallets with all this
information about you tracking you from birth to death,
including not just like, you know, your identity credentials,
quote, unquote, but all your medical history and your
education history and all of that, and tied up with your
biometrics. And if you want aid, right, or access to the only
hospital these people have access to, which is run by, you
know, partners of this initiative, you have to
surrender that, you know, it's it's very messed up. So the UN
is pushing a lot of this stuff. But in August of last year, one
part of the UN at least was calling for halting the use of
stable coins and cryptocurrency in general, including Bitcoin in
developing countries. But then a few months later, in December,
the UN started dispersing aid to Ukrainian refugees in the form
of USDC. So and then, of course, I'm sure you and maybe some
people in the audience are aware of the weird stuff going on with
FTX and crypto donations to Ukraine. So what do you make of
these policy contradictions from the UN?
MG: I mean, it's just, I mean, it's just another sort of notch
on the belt of just the, you know, ridiculousness of of sort
of these huge infrastructural infrastructure, you know,
entities in our world governance. Yeah, it's
absolutely ridiculous. I think to be on one hand, you know,
shitting, on the capabilities of Bitcoin, you know, on one side
of the mouth, and then the other side of the mouth being like,
oh, no, it's essential for, you know, buying drones for the
Ukraine. And by I mean, like, I poked around on a lot of those
websites, and was kind of looking and I looked at a lot of
wallets and was doing some research with my friend, little
elites about, you know, a lot of this stuff. And I mean, it's
absurd. The amount of money that was going through the lack of
communication, the different the discrepancies between the
numbers announced and what was actually, you know, apparent on
the blockchain. And, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's such a
great example of like, you know, like, the, just the hip hip
hypocrisy of the purple party, I think, for Biden, you know, to
be and Warren and kind of the unit
WW: party, like red and blue together, right. Yeah, exactly.
That's, I
MG: mean, yeah. I mean, when you look into the, and I'll get back
to some of the Ukraine stuff, but you look at the purple party
of the financial system. You know, it's the Federal Reserve
Chair is sort of the, you know, the person is the one and I'm
sure they're, you know, blackmailed and whatever
compromised like anyone else, but every single Fed chair, from
1979, through now, with the exception of one Yellen, who's
obviously now the Treasury Secretary, was nominated by one
political party and re nominated by the other. So Paul Volcker,
wealth Chairman from Ben Bernanke, 87. So he was Carter
nominated, and then re nominated by Reagan, Greenspan, from 87 to
2006. He did it four times he was Reagan, then bush, and
Clinton, then Bush, Jr. and then Bernanke, which was bush and
then Obama, and then power was Trump, and then Biden. And it's
like, Okay, we have this huge ideological difference,
apparently, between Trump and Biden and voting for Biden and
saving democracy, and Trump is destroying the world. And yet
they can re nominate the exact same person who's, you know,
kind of arguably most important in controlling the interest
rates of the dollar system. It's,
WW: the bankers run both parties. So it's really not that
surprising once once you do that, you know, yeah. And then
MG: and you look into the, you know, the connections of FTX
with all these huge bankers as as you just expressed their own
you know, right before they collapsed, they talked about SPF
was on a podcast like a couple of days before they collapsed
about talking about wanting to start a stable coin. And so
you're seeing you know, a lot of these Yeah, this there's this
use case of okay, well, we can distribute money to the Ukraine.
And Bitcoin magazine actually has a Ukraine like department.
We have a print magazine in the Ukraine, which is very
interesting. I don't know a ton about it. But they have been
using Yeah, cryptocurrency Bitcoin and the stable coins as
a way to, you know, I guess on paper support and protect
citizens and sort of in this this war effort, and then maybe
potentially, below below paper, you know, maybe money laundering
They are using this technology in a way to. Yeah, I mean, it's
just absurd how much money has gone into the Ukraine with this
technology? And yeah, it's completely absurd. I can't even
articulate a thought of of how hypocritical it is to be passing
legislation attempting to, you know, regulate this as like a
dangerous technology. And then on the other side being, you
know, virtue signaling, you know, with blue and, and yellow
flags about how good you know, the stable coins are for the
Ukraine. It's, it's totally absurd. And,
WW: yeah, consider the fact that, like, we already know, at
least now, right, that provably I think it was Seymour Hersh,
saying that a lot of money that was destined for Ukraine was
used by the Ukrainian government was Alinsky types. For you know,
ill gotten gains and that a lot of the money sent over there,
there's no paper trail, so no one really knows. So like,
Ukraine is the conflict that comes after the US is pulled out
of Afghanistan and right, you mentioned Julian Assange
earlier, he talked a lot about how the usefulness of
Afghanistan to these particular powers, right, yeah, as it
relates to things like money laundering, you know, it wasn't
just that the money was squandered in Afghanistan, it
was intentionally lost, because there's a black budget thing
that goes on. And, you know, this is all wrapped up in terms
of US monetary policy. And as well, because you basically have
this standard FASEB 56, where the government has one set of
books, and they publish another set of books publicly, that's a
lie. And they don't have to tell you it's a lie. So no one
actually knows where money money is going. Right. So this is
doing that. With Ukraine. It's this giant money sink, and
they're using, including the UN, not just the US government, or
not just FTX, which was tied up with like the Democratic Party,
for example. But the UN itself is also using USDC. Right? Yeah,
it gets lost. Oh, yeah. But they claim it's not gonna get lost or
being misused. But for some, you know, it's just,
MG: and this is where Bitcoin I think, is a state change.
Because, you know, you can't, you can't really have two books,
you know, you can have a shitty exchange running a running a
bucket shop, that's, you know, doing ridiculous reserve
violations and commingling user funds all i FTX, of course. But,
you know, you, you can't you don't have as much opportunity
to obfuscate, you know, shitty accounting, which is like, Yeah,
I mean, how much of our current state of the world is downstream
from, you know, the US going off the gold standard Vietnam War is
kind of that seems sort of technique of like, you know,
this Afghanistan, Assange theory of, you know, like, this war was
meant to just kind of be basically a money pit. And a
laundering opportunity. And then, you know, are, obviously,
military colonialism within the Middle East was kind of directly
connected to oil. And then we see these, like, color
revolutions happening, like we saw, like the CIA and the coup
involved in Ukraine is I mean, it's very, that's clear. That's
something that happens seven, eight years ago, something like
that. Yeah. And then we also saw, you know, like, what
happened with the Iranian British Petroleum Company, and
that sort of, you know, we were basically lying to, you know, BP
used to be IBP. And there was a, there was a coup there against
the Shah, I believe, and sort of this idea of, you know, they
were charging them basically telling them that the the oil
entity was losing money, and Iran was paying taxes, because
they were losing money, the
WW: overthrow of masa deck. Yeah. installed the Shah.
MG: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Exactly. And then he came back after he
nationalized, the oil fields. So we're seeing like color
revolutions and sort of CO option of, of, you know, lesser
democracies in the US, I and we even saw that in Central
America. And now we're seeing, you know, like El Salvador and
some of this Central and South American countries that are part
of these, like 66 dollarized countries in the world. You
know, what, where was the US involvement in in that? And I
think so when we look at Ukraine, you kind of have to
look at the total picture, learn from history and be like, Okay,
well, this is sort of the playbook that the US does,
unfortunately. And obviously, you know, I'm not like,
supportive of a national country, you know, crossing a
border with military action, of course, but it's like, you look
at, you know, the sort of big picture and it's like, it's just
stinks to high hell for sure.
WW: Yeah, but I think the involvement of so much like
weird crypto stuff and Ukraine sort of signals to me that you'd
like in the past, you know, a lot of invasions and military
action were based around Petrodollar politics. Yeah,
yeah, exactly. And now it seems like it's about we're entering a
different phase where it's a little different, you know,
MG: Bitcoin dollar politics may be, you know, I mean, it could
be a direct sort of parallel to kind of Afghanistan or Iraq
involvement. Is it now? Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no. And I
think it's strange that we just pulled out you know, this
Bitcoin dollar thesis kind of came in 2020. And March 2020,
when we saw everything implode, we saw oil go negative. In
markets, it's like I, you know, I lived my entire life, it's
like the US goes and invades countries to go steal oil. And
now we're, you know, it's trading negatives in the future
market. And right before that happened, you know, obviously,
this was the COVID lock downs, which so much of it was, you
know, government and, you know, big institutional, you know,
control over government kind of pushing for this big lockdown.
So we see a global lockdown, like two months before bitcoins
issuance in May of 2020, we had another happening. And it was
the first time that the relative issuance of Bitcoin was actually
below 2% relative issuance. So for the first time ever, Bitcoin
was actually issuing less than the rate of inflation of the
dollar, and wrath less than the rate of gold coming out of the
ground, which an extraction rate is about 2% a year. So we have
this like mathematical moment happening in Bitcoin, two months
before this thing is about to occur. We see a collapse, total
collapse of all markets, dollar goes down, Dixie goes down,
stocks go down, gold goes down, oil goes down. You don't
nothing's supposed to all move down at once at the same time,
you know, like that's, that's a sign of manipulation, like,
where's the money actually going to be going into nothing? And
then, you know, we see Bitcoin crash to $3,000. And then over
the next 12 months at 20x, and it was over $60,000. A year
later. And so, what also happened during that moment, you
know, we just disappeared and left Afghanistan and left a
bunch of shit there. And then, you know, the Ukraine stuff
starts right after, you know, the COVID and forced lockdowns,
which now we're learning, you know, we're kind of this
catastrophic failure of public health. And I
WW: think it the same people that we're talking about got a
lot of wins out of the lock downs, it was catastrophic for
regular people. Yeah, but you look at someone like Jeff Bezos,
and how much market share Amazon gained, for example, how many
billionaires came out of the COVID lock downs? Yeah. And how
it pushed forward a lot of these pre COVID agendas to make
everything, push everything to the digital sphere, make
telehealth ubiquitous, make more people shop online, shut down in
person shopping, and all the stuff that I've you know, was
coming from people like Eric Schmidt, of Google, and this
National Security Commission, he was leading, you know, they were
talking about before COVID and stuff to beat China, they said,
right, but obviously, you know, more about their ambitions
really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of crazy moving
parts to all of that. I mean, I definitely think it's, it's
important to think about how things have changed, because I
feel like a lot of independent media, and it's something that
really bothers me, is still very much trapped and looking at the
world through the lens of the petrodollar. And that game has
obviously moved on, because we even have the US and the Biden
administration, for example, openly pushing for this post oil
economy, the net zero stuff, which is being developed really
by the bankers that have captured control of the UN, you
could argue they really ran it the whole time, because of
Rockefeller influence with the founding un and all of that. And
I tend to lean toward that theory, really. But even if you
don't think the UN operated responsibly, or whatever,
before, it's very clear now that they've been captured by
bankers, and that these are the ones creating quote unquote,
sustainable development. Right, right. Yeah. And you look at
Bernie and Mike Bloomberg, leading that just insane. So,
you know, I just don't Yeah, I think especially Oh, go ahead.
MG: Just what the the energy thing that you're talking about
there, I think it's so it's so crucial to the Bitcoin dollar
kind of ideas that, you know, now we're coming out, you know,
we saw the Biden administration attempt to do this 30% tax on
Bitcoin mining. I mean, the state control over energy
production has a huge huge effect on bitcoins success,
because its energy usage is directly related to its
decentralization and its ability to sort of, you know, process
sensorless transactions. And so, you know, we're seeing, you
know, the state control locked down on energy sources on
battery production. We're seeing like a Tesla nationalization,
basically of, of minerals and battery Technology. You know,
it's a software company as well, of course, with its driving
shit, no one's going to catch up to them there. But the energy
stuff is so important. And now we're seeing, you know, yeah,
this kind of, we're greenwashing. You know, state
control over over money now via this, like green virtue thing.
Sorry. So there's
WW: no, I think that's a great addition. So I think part of
what we're seeing, too, in terms of this move away from the
petrodollar, and again, I would really wish people independent
media stop acting like it's still 2019. Because we're
definitely world by now, yeah, well, I think people will get
really comfortable with that sort of analysis. And you don't
really like to, I don't know. I mean, it requires a lot of
revisioning of your worldview. And I had to sort of go through
that, too. Because I wrote a lot about Petrodollar politics back
when I worked at MIT Press, and obviously things, you know, like
we're talking about, have changed quite a bit. So um, I
think, though, you know, this idea of technocracy is important
to look at because their energy is the currency and people are
allotted a certain amount of energy that they can use. And so
there's this idea of introducing, I guess, scarcity,
at least for the masses in terms of how much your energy quota
and you're only allowed to engage in certain amounts of
economic activity based on how much energy that consumes,
right? Yeah. And this is basically what the net zero
paradigm is moving towards. But the question is, how do we get
from where we are now to there, I don't necessarily think it's
going to be like from one to the other straight off, there's
going to be some sort of gradualism. And you see so much
to with the whole like Bitcoin discussion and energy usage
stuff and energy usage as it relates to digital currencies, I
think somewhere in there, you're gonna have this gradualism style
approach that takes us from where we are now to that
technocracy paradigm. And it's Yeah, I think you are kind of
onto something here about what the plan is, but I don't
necessarily have all the, you know, steps of that mapped out
and know for sure, but it seems to me like that's probably, you
know, somewhere in the in the right ballpark, for sure.
MG: I mean, I'm just a dude with an internet connection. You
know, it's like that, too. Yeah. You know, yeah, you know, like,
I have no idea. It's just, you know, I've learned a lot and
just watching, you know, these people kind of operate and like,
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I kind of came at, I've kind of
come in a lot of this stuff from a really strange way where,
like, I, you know, was kind of a 4chan poster in like, 2016, and
kind of, like, got into sort of the red pill kind of conspiracy
stuff through that field. And I thought if it was ridiculous,
and I saw a lot of the CO option, like happen, like, I
saw, like, the queue, people happen, I saw this stuff sure
occur, that was, you know, in my opinion, kind of this direct,
you know, kind of controlled opposition to like, actual, like
leaks and truth stuff that was coming out of WikiLeaks, you
know, Podesta leaks, and all these things, Vault seven, and,
you know, all this shit. And then I got really into bitcoin
from just being in the Bay Area, just like people, you know, I
worked all these company parties, I was a bartender, you
know, up until 2020. And just like, was getting to interact
with all these people in these companies, seeing how they act
at parties, seeing these things, and just kind of being in the
Bay Area for like, this decade, the last decade, and witnessing
everything there. And it's like, I don't know how you can really
just like, stand aside and just watch that happen without, you
know, picking up something or learning and it's like, again, I
don't know, who's really controlling this Cabal, or this
dollar coalition or whatever. I mean, it's I think it's
impossible to know exactly, but we can see the actors, we can
see the like, at least this was meant for it, right? Yeah. Yeah,
for sure. And we can kind of see like, hey, there's a absolute
way where they could use Bitcoin to prolong the dollar and
globalize the dollar and extend the kind of, you know, we should
have probably given up economic hegemony, you know, to China, to
India, to, you know, kind of what the BRICS movement is kind
of now, you know, probably 10 years ago, or 2008, or whatever,
you know, we probably shouldn't have recovered from that. But we
didn't bail out, you know, the citizens we bailed out the banks
and, you know, you just look at all this shit. It's like Kamala
Harris was the DA in California who should have charged Steve
Minuchin. With all of this profiteering off of the
collapse, and she decides not to, then he becomes Secretary
Treasury prints more money than anyone and now she's the VP. And
it's just like, I don't know how you can kind of just look at all
those things and just not see everything. And counter
dissonance. That's like, like the Trumps shit. It's just an
infuriates me because it's like this no one was more important
to like Operation warp speed and lock downs and all the shit that
we've had than Trump and yet he's viewed as This like, anti
state demigod and
WW: isn't his administration in prison, Julian Assange? Yeah,
it's just clown world a lot of Yeah. What are we talking about
there? Well, again, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in
this whole, like political Savior rhetoric around Trump, at
least with his base. And I've talked a lot about in my work,
how there's this cultural priming for people to look for
that political savior. So Trump's base thinks I think they
found it right. And other people that don't like Trump are
looking for their own version of the Savior. But they're all
controlled by the bankers.
MG: in their, in their controlled by their own, well,
sorry, our own emotions, they're controlled by their emotions.
It's like, I think the Q people are just as dumb as, like the
Trump derangement syndrome people like I think they're both
dumb. It's like, they're, they're, they're being
manipulated by and their consent is being manufactured by, you
know, these ridiculous, you know, like Operation Mockingbird
WW: belief stuff. It's no one wants evidence. No one cares
about evidence or facts anymore. It's all about belief and your
belief in something. You know, your trust in something. I mean,
there's all these efforts to rebuild trust, right, since
COVID. That's been the big theme of the WEF it's been a big theme
of the UN. And trust secures compliance. That's why they're
doing it right. Yeah. So they're trying to create all these
figures that we trust, so that we will comply with what they
say. So me, you know, maybe it's hard for the West these days to
build, you know, trust with Trump's base, right. But you
know, you roll out people that are in that sphere, whether it's
Trump or Elon Musk, or Peter Thiel or Ron DeSantis or
whatever, no one you heard them that way. Yeah.
MG: He feels interesting to where like he kind of caused the
bank run on Silicon Valley Bank like that was kind of his baby.
He's a huge coiner has come out and
WW: he claims to be a Bitcoin maximalist. But then he goes on
stage with Mike Pompeo and says Bitcoin is a Chinese financial
weapon to destroy the dollar. So again, it's like Elon Musk, you
know, and he doesn't he's like projects this I'm a super
libertarian. And then his actions he created the most
Liberty destroying CIA front company, probably to ever exist.
Palantir created Facebook, which is, you know, a DARPA cut out
basically, and all this other stuff and eighth house Starlink
met with Jeffrey Epstein, we know now co invested with him
and carbine, which is taking over the emergency services of
911 to build a pre crime control grid. That's not about liberty,
Peter. No, I wouldn't. I would urge you to reconsider, at
least, you know, well,
MG: but he did write the intro. Exactly. He did write the
foreword to the sovereign individual 10th anniversary
edition. So he's super based and great, right. All right. Well,
maybe he
WW: thinks he's a sovereign individual, because he's on
accountable and untouchable, but like people that Palantir is,
you know, whose lives they've ruined or will ruin the future?
I don't think he sees them as sovereign individuals. You know,
I
MG: mean, the guy that the guy that runs the company that sells
data to the US government, it's like,
WW: all, all, every US intelligence agency, every US
and there's like, 18 of them now. So
MG: it's absurd. Yeah. And I'm sure there's deep state. Yeah.
And I'm sure I'm sure there's there's like injure,
intelligence fighting. Like, like that's kind of there is
factionalism
WW: Most definitely. That's why Epstein was taken down in my
opinion. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Interesting. It
wasn't because the establishment was mad about sex trafficking.
No, no, no. Someone off? Well, I definitely think there was a
factional thing going on. And actually, I think a lot of it
has to do with his affiliation with Mohammed bin Salman, who
sort of had came to power in this apparent coup in Saudi
Arabia deposed John Brennan, former CIA director, John
Brennan's golden boy in Saudi Arabia, who was the previous
Crown Prince, and then you have, you know, before his arrest and
2019, he was really tied up also allegedly with Tesla and Elon
Musk. And Elon Musk is, you know, hangs out with Kushner and
all this stuff. Kushner was hanging out with NBS, there's
this weird nexus there. That's sort of in Trump land, right.
And then you have John Brennan leading the Russia gate stuff to
take down that faction, I think it's pretty clear, in my
opinion, at least, that there's definitely something there
that's more likely a better explainer of why Epstein was
arrested and quote, unquote, suicided. Very useful for a very
long time. And a key part of his usefulness was his connection to
what he was doing with JP Morgan, in my opinion, and the
collapse of Bear Stearns in 2008. And a bunch of really
shady stuff that he was involved in that a lot of people don't
really like to talk about when it comes to Epstein talked about
before, right. But yeah, Epstein, in that same stuff he
was building around the time he was arrested. He was very
involved with this guy named Ben Gertz. Oh, who is a scientist?
Trent open transhumanist. And he runs something called
Singularity net. And he is one of the top guys at Hanson
robotics that produces Sophia the robot right. And Sophia the
robot was rolled out and given citizenship by NBS while he was
being NBS was being advised by Epstein. So you can sort of see
how that might have some weird connection there. And has a big
connection to this card Donald stuff involving Charles
Hoskinson that I want to get into, and, yeah, as we wrap up
the podcast, sorry, go ahead.
MG: Well, just I think, I mean, I think this is a great into the
Cardano stuff, but just the idea of citizenship, I think that is
a an angle to all this that is not talked about enough. Where,
you know, the elite sort of circumnavigation of KYC. And of
a lot of this, you know, these rules are in place, you know,
for us, but there's obviously ways to, you know, for elites,
basically to circumnavigate this stuff. And this was something
that Geoffrey Lubin when he was, you know, he's a co founder of
Ethereum. And when he was explaining the, you know, the
you basically how you could buy Ethereum, before it was issued.
I mean, he's literally on camera talking about, you know, here's
how you avoid, you know, anti money laundering and know your
customer regulations, so you can buy as much as possible. We know
JP Morgan has a huge share, and Ethereum. But this idea of
citizenship, I think, the connections of it, and how it
relates to cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, like, I think you look
at like the TerraMar Project, you look at some of the it's like,
WW: I don't know. Yeah, right. Exactly. Or the UN and the
Clinton Foundation. Yeah.
MG: And, you know, it was sort of a little bit under this guise
of kind of being this like, ocean cleanup thing, but like a
huge part of it was about ocean citizenship, and sort of
creating this like offshore citizenship
WW: for offshore bankers. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
MG: And, you know, she's a submarine pilot. What the What
is the science shit that they're doing in the, you know, what are
they looking for in the Bahamas? Like, who knows? I don't know. I
don't want to get into too much of that stuff. But I think this
WW: shorter a cement mixer do his island before he was
arrested? And I don't know.
MG: Yeah, yeah. I don't know, either. I don't know what
they're looking for building. Do they have a submarine dock
underneath there? Who knows. But the citizens ship stuff is super
important. Because we're now seeing like, you know, there's
this like Indonesian island called Palau, that has all these
blue that has all these connections with Clinton. Biden
signed off on their, you know, their, their, basically their
support budget from the US and it has this very loose
citizenship, you know, passport connection with the US, where
basically people could like swim up to this island, get a new
passport and then be able to go right into the United States. No
problem. And now we're seeing like, basically places offering
this as like a service in the crypto extended crypto space
where like, you can go get a citizenship from this little
Winky dinky I heard about this in the
WW: conference, and it blew my mind. I was like, someone was
telling me about it. Like, oh, yeah, these people I just were
talking to you were doing that. And I was like, that's what
intelligence agencies do, dude. Yeah.
MG: 100%. I mean, it's fair me out. Yeah, I'm with you. And I
mean, this is where a lot of my, I don't know, just just poking
around and looking at all this stuff. And it's like, you know,
there's clearly something going on with like, inter Island sort
of citizenship. And I think it's a way that these people are kind
of circumnavigating reporting of their finances. And then also,
you know, how it relates to trafficking and, and all that,
whether it's drugs, or what else are they circumventing? Right?
Exactly. And you start to piece together all that stuff. And
it's like Disney cruises, stopping off at little St. James
Island for snorkeling, and it's just gets so fucking dark so
fast. But but now we're seeing like, NFT citizenship. Yeah,
being presented as a way to you know, that then by Nance comes
out and says you can use this citizenship as KYC as your KYC
component. Oh, no, that when they're basically offering it as
like a service to like, you know, how to, you know,
basically, certainly means exactly, yeah, because if it's a
financial fee, then none of these laws matter. You know,
it's like to the rich, they're nothing. It's like, it's just,
it's just part of their budget, you know, like JP Morgan
spoofing the metals market, they paid the largest fine in the
history of banking. And it was like a fifth of the operating
budget profit of just that one operation. It's
WW: like, or HSBC money laundering for drug cartels and
all that stuff. And they get caught. You know, the fines,
nothing of what they made. Yeah, totally.
MG: So while I think the citizenship shit is really
crazy, and I think the way that IDs are going to work in a
blockchain, hyper surveilled model is really interesting, and
I think that there are already
WW: seeing it with what you just brought up. It's going to be a
little people aren't going to have these loopholes like you
just discussed, but the rich Well, yeah, so it's this
panopticon. And it looks like we're all included because it's
quote unquote inclusive. Right? But rich people can are gonna
have all these workarounds and loopholes, and they're setting
them up right now.
MG: Yeah. And we're seeing, I think with the Cardano stuff to
kind of loop back to that, like, there's this whole affinity scam
within that that's using, like institutions of academia as a
way to sort of build you know, yeah, affinity, right. And I
think we've kind of seen like, academia and like, certainly
like technology, academia as like being a very corrupted,
like, I think there's a reason why Epstein was so connected to
a lot of scientists in the academic world, and I don't
think it's all just eugenics. Or trans. You know, I don't
remember
WW: but I think a lot of it was but Oh, of course, of course. I
really,
MG: absolutely. But I think a lot of it is sort of like, you
know, kind of Manufacturing Consent. For you know, whatever
we just went through. I mean, I think academia was a huge part
of I got kicked out of college. I went back to school for
electrical engineering, and I got kicked out of college. We're
not getting back. And I think Akademia was a huge part of it
still is, I mean, they're still requiring Well, it's always
WW: been that look at MIT, where Noam Chomsky, for example, was
actually in heavily funded. Yeah, it's been it created
mitre, one of the shittiest military and intelligence
contractors to other exists the MIT and mitre stands for MIT.
And it's been a huge part of the military industrial complex,
since the military industrial complex, was created. Chomsky,
for example, at MIT, when he first started off got a ton of
military funding, right. So I mean, most people at MIT
probably get some sort of military funding at some point,
even if you're a linguist, right?
MG: I mean, we just saw, I mean, he's way more than a linguist. I
mean, he bass. I mean, I know,
WW: I know. I know, basically, in the 50s and 60s, yeah.
MG: But huge part of inventing, you know, the infrastructure for
computers. I mean, he's, you could say he's kind of the
father of computers and computer systems in this very strange
way.
WW: People talk about that a lot. But Epstein knew they ever
thought he wanted to meet with rice.
MG: Totally. And then we see this guy that was just, I think
he was just opposed last night, James Staley, who was the CEO of
Barclays, and JP Morgan. Yeah. And his grandfather was James
Ryan Killian, who was the president of MIT from 48 to 59.
So and his dad ran a chemicals company and his grandfather was
Staley of WT grant, when they went under. So there's just
like, it just everywhere you look. It's just like
WW: intergenerational crime families. Yeah. I mean, the
people that put Jamie diamond and power essentially, aside
from the Wexner crowd were the crown family, which is like the
quintessential intergenerational crime family, except for maybe
the Pritzker is, which are also a big part of the Epstein story.
For sure. I mean, Thomas Pritzker is in the black book is
numero uno. Why did Jeffrey Epstein call him that?
MG: years that even mean? Even mean,
WW: right? Why is he number one? I mean, even Wexner didn't get
that in the black book. You know, I mean, yeah, weird stuff
going on. So not enough people look at these families, but one
of the keys. key reasons the Pritzker IRS, for example, had
been so successful in what they've done. They were very
early on involved in Castle Bank, which was like, one of the
most notorious at least at the time, offshore financial banks
built by former CIA guy Paul Halliwell, who was a Republican
insider in the Pritzker years. Were all tied up with the
Democrats and it was their lawyer, Burton Cantor that
helped set up Castle bank with Halliwell. Right. And, you know,
all this Republican Democrat dirty money mixing off there in
the Caribbean. I mean, based on what we've talked about today,
it doesn't really sound that different than then does it?
MG: You know, definitely not. And I think that's, that's such
an important part of, I think, you know, maybe it's a good you
know, kind of general you know, kind of note to leave on, but
sort of this like, the cycles of kind of the Psyops and insanity
are compressing like so, like they have to, and now we can see
these like, you know, basically like harmonies or fractals, or
you know, whatever, like just complete reinventions of, of
these mechanisms, like occurring in real time. It's like we're
seeing them happen. And it's like, oh, that's just like, this
thing they did, and like, oh, wow, Ukraine is just like
Afghanistan. Like just the fact that we can even notice that
because it's only been 20 years. I think is like that's very
important. It's like, you know, the node researchers are
starting to see you know, this cycle is compressed and we're
able to kind of like see how the conspiracy or the coalition or
whatever Cabal, whatever the dollar system like how they
operate and we will We're learning from it because I have
to do it so much quicker. It was like, you know, the, the
financial crisis is are now happening every few years, and
we're probably going to have another one very shortly. Oh,
yeah. We've lived through it. I mean, I'm not I mean, you know,
I'm not old by any means. And I've seen like, three, you know?
Yeah, exactly. And it's like, we're, we're noticing, I can
only imagine that people that are, you know, 5060, whatever,
twice our age that are, you know, what they're noticing if
they were really kind of paying attention. So I think as the
cycles compress, you know it they get more desperate.
WW: II and they're more desperate. What are we going to
do about it? Right, right. Before I get to that, which is
the last thing I want to talk about. I do want to go back to
Cardano. And Charles. Yeah, please. Because I think it's
important under the topic of the crypto colonialism stuff, right?
So Hoskinson, co founder of Ethereum. And there's several co
founders of Ethereum, one of which is Vidovic, Butera and
Butyrin. harissa is name who I want to talk about in the
context of this thing. But basically Hoskinson has teamed
up with who I mentioned earlier, this transhumanist scientists
that was funded by Epstein, they've been Birdsell. So
Cardano and singularity net have worked to increasingly fuse
their operations and singularity the singularity net is run by
Ben girdle. And, okay, around. I think this happened after
slightly after the Cardano announced they were going to get
involved with the Ethiopian government. So the conversation
which is normally very unpleasant, at least if you're
me, thing, you know, outlet to read has an article that it
published about this called Ethiopia's blockchain deal as a
watershed moment for the technology and for Africa. And
it starts off talking about the launch of Bitcoin and then
there's this conflation of bitcoin and how everyone
doesn't, you know, these are all the negative things that have
come up about Bitcoin. It's been embroiled in these massive
controversies, but now blockchain is being used for
good and being used a tribute to the social and economic welfare
of people in the developing south. That's what it says. And
there is this lady's reasoning for this who's African by the
way, which is, I mean, what a sell out. She's basically saying
that this program by Charles Hoskinson for Ethiopia is going
to make everything better for Ethiopian children. Here's how
she describes it. She says, a few companies have begun
showcasing blockchain capabilities to various African
countries. Unlike most other cryptocurrency blockchains,
which focus on private sector use in developed regions like
Europe in North America. Their approach has been to target the
governments and public institutions in the developing
world, obviously, for altruistic reasons. I'm being sarcastic
there. Yeah, that's why I'm laughing, listening. But you
know what to take me literally on that. So anyway, she goes on
in April, the Ethiopian government confirmed that it had
signed a deal to create a national database of student
teacher ids using a decentralized digital identity
solution. The deal involves providing IDs for 5 million
children across 3500 schools, which will be used to store
educational records. This is the largest blockchain deal ever to
be signed by a government and has been making waves in the
crypto asset industry. And she goes on to talk about how
digital ID is going to be promote real financial inclusion
for me, but Okay, so you're talking about real financial
inclusion, but this is supposed to be blockchain for educational
credential. So obviously, you can see in there that this is
part of the broader un backed totally Orwellian digital ID,
you know, paradigm where it's your everything, your access to
information, your access to medical care, your access to
education, your access to money is all going to be based on this
digital ID. And then she goes on to say, This is what makes this
promising is that this is the first main blockchain projects
are focused on serving the African market with goals that
align with the developmental agenda set out under the United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the African
Union agenda 2063 goals which are basically the African Union
equivalent of the SDGs big surprise and so then she goes on
to talk about Cardano and how Cardano commission the software
company input output Hong Kong are IO eight i o h k, and a
Mergo, which is based in Japan to develop and maintain the
Cardano blockchain and that Cardano is technically owned by
this Cardano Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit, and the projects are
based this you know project is trying to show how the Cardano
blockchain and its core technology can be used to
benefit African countries. And then it goes on to say this
about what Cardano the project actually is. So in the case Some
of the earth Ethiopian deal involving Cardano and IO HK
which Charles Hoskinson runs I'm pretty sure yeah. Yeah, he says
or it says a Tala prism is being used that project will build
digital identity solutions on the Cardano. Blockchain. The
idea is to start by granting primary, secondary and
university students a digital identity that can track their
educational career, and future progress. So every test you fail
in school will be there forever. You know, but this is also part
of what I mentioned earlier with the Karen stateless, stateless
people in Thailand and Myanmar being built by ID 2020, tying
all of that to their vaccination records, their Health Registry
from the time they're born on tied to their biometrics tied to
their finances. And that's essentially what's what's going
on here. But it's being framed as ending crypto colonialism by
some of the same outlets that we're talking about crypto
colonialism as being bad. This is supposed to be how to stop
it, you know, and it's backed by the UN and all this stuff. But
you know, as I just mentioned a second ago, singularity net is
fused with this and this particular project, as far as I
believe, I think it's singularity net as well is
involved with this AI lab that Epstein's philanthropies helped
fund into existence. So you have a lot of Epstein stuff there.
And Epstein, and this deposition he gave in 2012 to the US Virgin
Islands called Africa, a great place to experiment fertile
ground for experimentation. So what do you think he's doing?
You think Epstein wasn't a crypto colonialist? He's a
serial financial criminal and sex trafficker. And in his
company that was, you know, he was creating at the time of that
deposition, he was trying to get funding all these programs for
vulnerable use in the US vi to sort of herd them into what he
was building, the tech FinTech company he was building which is
basically like a coding sweatshop by the sound of it.
Right. But allegedly, according to the US Virgin Islands, that
company founded after his first arrest was a key part of a sex
trafficking operation. So what else was he trying to get
vulnerable kids for from the USPPI? Question mark, question.
More questions. So with Ethiopia, and all this stuff
going on there, and these people being tied to it and framing
themselves as anti crypto colonialist, very disturbing.
And also the question arises, because of the people involved,
what is all this data being used for from these kids? Right?
Because you have, you know, singularity net, and Ben Gertz
will have this tied to Sophia, the robot, which is supposed to
be building its AI that controls the robot right off of the data
it's trained on. And now they have this sort of ability to
access all of this stuff. Well, they say it's decentralized. But
how decentralized is it? Really, you know, I mean, a lot of these
guys, including stable coins and all this that we've talked about
today claim, oh, we're decentralized and so on and so
forth. But that's not exactly always true, right?
MG: Yeah. Not even close to true. Especially Cardano. I
mean, no, absolutely not centralized. There. It is very
centralized, not decentralized in any way.
WW: Yeah, exactly. And then you have vitiligo you Terran, sorry,
if I'm butchering his name, I think Vitalik
MG: booter. In but due to right, well, alright. His name deserves
to be
WW: strong and fastest on the wrong syllable. Know how it is.
Exactly. Yeah, whatever. I speak two languages. I'm not that bad,
whatever. But anyway, he came up with this thing called Soul
bound tokens. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, yeah. Where
he's basically charting out the same idea of tracking someone
you know, their whole life on in these NF T's that you know, are
basically the same thing as what Hoskinson is building here in
Ethiopia, and called them
MG: soul bound tokens.
WW: I mean, this disturbing ass name. Yeah, yeah. So I think to
say the very least, you know, I really wish that more Bitcoiners
particularly the ones that actually have the values of
original Bitcoin, like you do, would start calling this stuff
out more because there's a lot of conflation, like I've talked
about in some of these mainstream articles, nice
academic articles, but also an alternative media, you know, all
Bitcoiners everyone that has is involved in crypto in any way,
they're all the same. Right? Right. Right. But there's a lot
of, like we've talked about today, you know, there are some
differences. And the question is for Bitcoiners, specifically,
but also other people that may be looking to the some of these
technologies as a potential exit ramp. The ability to use that
stuff as an X exit ramp has to be fought for and it has to be
fought for now, because like you've talked about, a lot of
ground is being lost and the battle may eventually be lost to
be able to use it that way anyway, and then it's just part
of the same system you're supposed to be fighting against.
So it's like everything else, you know, going on right now at
some point you have to have red lines. you'd have to say, I'm
not gonna cosign that, you know,
MG: it's so messed up too specifically with it being
Ethiopia is like, Ethiopia is kind of so beautiful because it
was never colonized. Like it actually kind of played all the
colonizers against each other. And they would like, take
weapons from one side and use it to shoot the other side and then
turn like they were never actually colonized, they were
kind of the only place in Africa that really wasn't colonized.
And now we're seeing Epstein, Charles Charles, yeah. And this
this did shit is so especially on these centralized systems,
it's like, you're creating a walled garden and a data depot
for that information to get leaked or to get taken. It's
like, I mean, it's like, anytime you have a collection of I mean,
even KYC exchanges have to deal with this, too. It's like, I
think there was a lawsuit in Illinois, maybe there was a
state where that was suing Coinbase for holding all of
their data of their, like 3d scans of their faces and
whatever on a on a server that got that got compromised. And so
all of that data got leaked. That was, quote, unquote, an
accident. What these people are building and colonizing, you
know, Ethiopia with, it's like that by design. Yeah. And it's
really messed up. And
WW: this is what sustainable development means to the UN who
again, I've been captured by by bankers reiterate that. So this
is a banker design vision, right? Yeah. So you're in
Bitcoin to own the bankers? Right. Right. Right, calm or
whatever. You What are you doing? Or yeah, and I
MG: would say that, I'd say the majority of Bitcoiners
understand that, I think, yeah, and these other, you know, are
basically bastardization of what Satoshi did and the creation of
centralized banking, I think people realize that with proof
of stake that there's like a dilution of holders, you know,
like, people can get that, but there's like a next level to,
like, people just love to scam and learn about why it's a scam,
why the economic, you know, you know, is set against the
citizens and is set to enrich people, they don't really,
really get into that at rocket learning, and certainly don't
have necessarily an open mind to like the true depths of how
disgusting this really is. And I think did decentralized like, a
really interesting thing, because I think that there are
some really cool use cases with that, if done in a way where
they're self hosted and encrypted and posted in a way
you can create results.
WW: Most people aren't going to not hold on this type of stuff.
That's
MG: totally. Right. Right, exactly. And even some of the
decentralized, the biggest one right now that I think people
are, there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't necessarily
feel comfortable sharing some of the sources, but there's going
to be a lot of movement happening and decentralized
standards. And that is sort of what was the project that that
was called by. And that was a project that was worked on by
this guy, Daniel burgers, super smart. Very nice guy. And now
he's working for block. Jack Dorsey Lee, kind of deep, TBD
company. And they're working on a Bitcoin digital ID, that, as
far as I know, is about to have some pretty big, you know, the
whole thing about digital IDs in the walled garden, it depends on
if someone with a huge, huge stake in the identification, you
know, sort of coalition, it you need someone to adopt the
standard, right? And so things that I've heard from people is
that a very, very, very big, large state operation. Maybe in
California is going to be adopting one of these web
service standards. Yeah.
WW: Any of that, though, like for me digital ID, if you
consider the fact that like the NSA and the CIA and Israel's
unit, a 200, GCHQ, in the UK, etc, etc, can probably get into
any device you have. Oh, yeah, I don't really, you know, you're
just, it's like any sort of digital ID even if you take
certain measures, it's probably going to be like a sitting duck
for those agencies. So if your goal is to not be surveilled and
to be, quote, unquote, ungovernable, I personally, I
don't know if I'm going to get involved with that. But again,
you know, people trying to build parallel systems and take back
our technology, yada, yada, yada. I mean, if you want to do
that, fine. I don't know if that's going to be the solution
that's going to get us out of that. You know, I think it's
more about community building at the leg level. But, you know, I
mean, at least people are, in a sense trying to do something,
but I personally, you know, I'm just wary of all digital IDs
period. So Brian put a different coat of paint on it, but I'd you
know, I see it as a sitting duck for the bad guys.
MG: I agree 99% Like I definitely agree it anytime
you're curve creating, I mean you're creating a an exploitable
attack surface anytime you put any of your identification into
a computer. I do think like still
WW: do, and even people that are critical of it, you know, just
know things.
MG: And I do that too. I mean, I'm not like this perfect, like
I'm pretty public, with like, how I operate on social media
and whatever. And that's not all good stuff, either. But I do
think like there is absolute power within, you know, PGP, and
some of these public key cryptography and some of these
encryption decryption schemes, like they are very powerful. And
they have been attacked by the state, like a lot of this
cryptography like, you know, they were sort of viewed as, you
know, munitions basically. And that it was like, militaries,
you know, issue that this technology was being released.
And so a lot of these OG cypherpunks, like, put it on T
shirts, they released it as books, they did all these things
to, to, you know, Phil Zimmerman to create PGP as something that
could actually be used by people around the world, knowing full
well it will also be used by spies, and intelligence
agencies, and all these people to operate horrible, horrible
thing,
WW: I see what you're saying, democratize the tools, don't
just get them in their hands make an example to everyone, if
they're going to use it, I can, I can get that right. But at the
same time,
MG: I think you're totally right. And I think we should be
very wary of all of these systems, including Bitcoin and
I, you know, I've basically devoted my life in many ways to
Bitcoin, education or journalism, or whatever. And I
still think that there's a less than, or more than 0% chance
that it was intelligence operation, right, like its
creation, but I can still see how the technology and the
tools, regardless in a in a freedom way, regardless of its
generation, which I think is very unique to Bitcoin. But
obviously, that's why I'm so like, jacked up about how we
need to push back on this stuff, because any technology can be co
opted so easily. And it is just such a scary, scary world to go
into.
WW: Totally. Well, we probably have to end it there. Because
this has definitely gone on longer than a lot of my podcasts
tend to but I think it was a really important conversation,
because a lot of stuff isn't being said, you know, a lot of
what you've talked about, and we've talked about today isn't
really being said, especially in the Bitcoin space. So I really
hope more people with the same you know, sort of value set that
you have in the Bitcoin space do come forward, at the very least
to differentiate themselves from people like Charles Hoskinson,
because there are people that throw everyone in the same mix.
And I don't really think you know, that's fair, knowing
people like you and others like you. So I definitely think the
more voices that are added, you know, about these issues, the
better off we will be. But you have mentioned a couple times
that you have an up coming book about some of what we've
discussed today, the Bitcoin dollars, so kit work, when and
where, what, what details regarding those things about the
book, you know, why don't you let us know that and where
people can follow you on social media, etc?
MG: Yeah, totally. So, yeah, the books been finished up for a
bit. I literally got a message from the publisher, as I was
talking to you right now, so about to have a call to talk
about some other things. So hopefully, very soon, I was
hoping to have it out in time for the conference, which was a
couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, that wasn't able
to happen, but I'm thinking hopefully in the next couple
months, certainly by the end of the year, especially because I
think just so many of the things within the the thesis are sort
of already playing out. You know, so but a lot of the stuff
I've written about is available on Bitcoin magazine.com You can
kind of search by author, you can search Mark Goodman and find
find me there I've written a lot of stuff on there about digital
dollar stable coins, the you know, the the birth of the
Bitcoin dollar was kind of my first article for the magazine.
And that kind of sets the tone for the thesis. So we'll be
publishing with Bitcoin magazine as well, which I'm very excited
about. We are continuing the physical print world, obviously,
you know, I run the editorial for the print magazine, which
we're very stoked that you've been in now a bunch of times,
which is awesome. We hope. Well, we'll be three and Oh, right.
Yep. And that's a bunch of times you know, three's a crowd. And
you can definitely find us there. stored up Bitcoin
magazine.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Mark Goodwin with
an underscore between the W and the AI n. And yeah, I hope to
see y'all out on the battlefield, yelling about this
stuff because it's super important. And yeah, yeah,
thanks so much for having me. This was a blast.
WW: I definitely think it's a battlefield. And I think a lot
of people don't see that. I mean, there it is an information
war. And I think right now to an extent Bitcoiners are losing
that. So I think this is a big, you know, what a lot of what
you've shared today, I think is a step in the right direction
for the coiners I hope more will come out and show what side
they're on because it really is a time for everyone to start
picking sides. Are you going to back this banker? This taupe
banker built dystopia? Or are we going to build something
different? And you know, it's time to pick the side? Most
definitely. And I think the more people that are vocal, the less
you're going to see these configurations of the people
that are building that with stable coins and cryptocurrency
and even with dollarized Bitcoin and then, you know, the people
on the side against all of that, I hope. I really hope to see
more of that in the not so distant future because who might
who knows how much time we have left? Uh, but not totally
censored internet. You know? That's,
MG: I agree. Yeah. Reality.
WW: Alright. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. Mark.
Really enjoyed this conversation, probably why it
ran really long, but I really enjoyed it. So you know. Thanks
again. Thanks for your time. Thanks to everyone listening.
And please feel free to share this around and thanks to
everyone, as always that supports this podcast and makes
it possible. couldn't do this without you and we'll catch you
on the next episode. Thanks so much.