WEBVTT 00:00:00.017 --> 00:00:04.377 Well, stablecoins are just as programmable as CBDCs in every single way. 00:00:04.577 --> 00:00:09.337 You're – instead of trusting the government to not restrict the spending conditions, 00:00:09.417 --> 00:00:12.937 you're trusting a private company, some of which – many of which aren't even 00:00:12.937 --> 00:00:16.877 domiciled in the United States, don't even have constitutional protections of 00:00:16.877 --> 00:00:19.277 free speech or whatever have you. 00:00:19.797 --> 00:00:24.597 And it's every bit as dangerous as the government having programmability over your money. 00:00:25.897 --> 00:00:27.537 It's just a private company. 00:00:30.017 --> 00:00:32.537 You're listening to The Corbett Report. 00:00:35.637 --> 00:00:38.557 Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to The Corbett Report. This is James Corbett 00:00:38.557 --> 00:00:43.017 of CorbettReport.com, and this conversation is coming to you in the midst of Crypto Week, 00:00:43.197 --> 00:00:47.857 which, for those who don't know, is the White House-designated super week in 00:00:47.857 --> 00:00:51.717 which a bunch of crypto-related legislation is due to be passed, 00:00:51.717 --> 00:00:53.577 including the Clarity Act, 00:00:53.817 --> 00:00:59.577 the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, and the Senate's Genius Act, 00:00:59.757 --> 00:01:01.257 regulation. Regulating stablecoins. 00:01:01.457 --> 00:01:03.417 Get it? Stable. Genius. 00:01:03.777 --> 00:01:06.077 Just like Trump. Oh, they're so witty. 00:01:06.797 --> 00:01:09.937 Well, what does any of this really mean? Oh, good. 00:01:10.037 --> 00:01:14.077 They're fighting against the CBDC threat that I've talked about for many years. 00:01:14.257 --> 00:01:15.717 So that's a good thing, right? 00:01:16.317 --> 00:01:21.017 Right? Well, maybe and maybe not. The devil, as always, is in the details. 00:01:21.237 --> 00:01:24.557 And to talk about those details, I'm going to bring on someone who has a lot 00:01:24.557 --> 00:01:25.517 to say about this subject. 00:01:25.737 --> 00:01:30.417 His name is Mark Goodwin. And I would imagine my audience perhaps best knows 00:01:30.417 --> 00:01:34.297 him as a co-author with Whitney Webb on a series of articles from Unlimited 00:01:34.297 --> 00:01:37.817 Hangout, specifically some articles from last year, which I think are relevant 00:01:37.817 --> 00:01:40.657 to today's conversation and which I will link up in the show notes, 00:01:40.857 --> 00:01:45.157 including Trump embraces the Bitcoin dollar, stable coins to entrench U.S. 00:01:45.377 --> 00:01:49.757 Financial hegemony, and the chain of consensus, the cartel behind the blockchain. 00:01:50.877 --> 00:01:54.237 He's done some incredibly important reporting on these matters, 00:01:54.357 --> 00:01:57.257 so let's bring him on the program. Mark Goodwin, thank you so much for joining us today. 00:01:58.004 --> 00:02:02.324 James, thank you so much. Long-time fan. It's a great privilege to be here and 00:02:02.324 --> 00:02:05.084 talk with you about something that's going to affect everybody, 00:02:05.084 --> 00:02:07.244 whether or not you know what's going on or not. 00:02:07.404 --> 00:02:10.424 So, important time and really happy to be here with you today. 00:02:11.024 --> 00:02:14.204 Yes, well, I think you are not wrong about that, unfortunately. 00:02:14.304 --> 00:02:17.024 This is going to affect everyone, whether they know about it or not. 00:02:17.024 --> 00:02:20.004 But before we get into the nuts and bolts of this, since this is your first 00:02:20.004 --> 00:02:24.364 time, and since you have an interesting origin story in the alt-media space here, 00:02:24.644 --> 00:02:28.864 why don't you tell us about how you got started in this space generally and 00:02:28.864 --> 00:02:33.104 how you came over to the alt-media side of things? Yeah, sure. 00:02:34.224 --> 00:02:37.804 Well, I was living in the Bay Area for a long time, you know, 00:02:37.844 --> 00:02:43.844 in San Francisco for, you know, the better part of 10 years and was there through, 00:02:43.864 --> 00:02:46.664 you know, it's been in the news a lot. 00:02:46.664 --> 00:02:50.064 There's a lot that's been going on in San Francisco and California in particular. 00:02:51.704 --> 00:02:55.784 Just the political divide just got really insane. And I was doing blue-collar 00:02:55.784 --> 00:02:58.804 things and working in service and bartending and what have you. 00:02:59.204 --> 00:03:05.004 And, you know, I was there during the pandemic, you know, we'll call it that. 00:03:05.364 --> 00:03:09.704 And, you know, most of my friends were lefties, maybe some walk-away lefties, 00:03:09.804 --> 00:03:13.964 but, you know, really from that side. And then I kind of just watched everybody 00:03:13.964 --> 00:03:17.224 turn and, you know, everything get really nasty. 00:03:18.564 --> 00:03:23.364 And it wasn't a great time for me personally, but I took that opportunity to 00:03:23.364 --> 00:03:25.284 sort of, you know, I had a lot of time on my hands. 00:03:25.444 --> 00:03:27.624 The bar industry had collapsed. I wasn't working. 00:03:28.384 --> 00:03:35.204 But I had been in Bitcoin for a few years because a guy who took over for Ross 00:03:35.204 --> 00:03:43.664 for Silk Road 2.0 was a regular at the bar that I was barbacking at in 2014, 2015. 00:03:43.964 --> 00:03:48.344 So he came in and explained Bitcoin to me pretty early on, and I thought it 00:03:48.344 --> 00:03:52.564 was kind of interesting and then got really into it as it went on. By 2020, I saw... 00:03:53.071 --> 00:03:55.871 OK, you know, the government's going to do what the government does, 00:03:55.891 --> 00:04:00.071 and it's going to print a shit ton of money because that's just that's how we solve viruses. 00:04:01.191 --> 00:04:04.571 And obviously, I understood a lot more of that later. But I took that time to 00:04:04.571 --> 00:04:08.851 kind of start writing and educating about Bitcoin just for friends that were 00:04:08.851 --> 00:04:12.231 in the service industry, because I was like, this is really going to hurt you. 00:04:12.351 --> 00:04:16.791 You know, you don't have long term savings and living paycheck to paycheck. 00:04:16.931 --> 00:04:20.611 Your paycheck was just taken away from you by the government and your right 00:04:20.611 --> 00:04:22.471 to earn and travel and all that. 00:04:23.051 --> 00:04:26.571 I'm sure your audience is very familiar with all that. And so I started educating 00:04:26.571 --> 00:04:31.871 about Bitcoin, and that led to writing about it sort of professionally, 00:04:32.171 --> 00:04:34.791 part-time at first with Bitcoin Magazine. 00:04:35.011 --> 00:04:38.711 Then it got kind of roped in, and by the end of it was actually running the 00:04:38.711 --> 00:04:40.111 editorial there as editor-in-chief. 00:04:40.951 --> 00:04:45.711 And then as the Bitcoin space really turned towards the government as sort of 00:04:45.711 --> 00:04:51.791 a partner in crime, if you will, I got very disenchanted with the whole movement. 00:04:52.631 --> 00:04:55.571 Which is not to say that there are not benefits to it, of course, 00:04:55.751 --> 00:05:02.291 as I am enjoying to some degree, but was sort of, hey, I don't want to do this Trump thing. 00:05:02.411 --> 00:05:07.351 I know where this is going. I know the group of people that he sort of runs with. 00:05:07.511 --> 00:05:10.671 And, you know, I think a lot of those people are figuring that out now. 00:05:10.791 --> 00:05:16.791 So long story short, I left the Bitcoin space about a year ago officially and 00:05:16.791 --> 00:05:19.911 have been writing at Unlimited Hangout with my friend Whitney Webb, 00:05:20.091 --> 00:05:23.331 yeah, for some time now. I'm really focusing on. 00:05:23.859 --> 00:05:28.819 You know, the dollarization of crypto and the dollarization of the world because 00:05:28.819 --> 00:05:31.659 of crypto and how Bitcoin plays into that. 00:05:31.859 --> 00:05:35.819 And I wrote a book called The Bitcoin Dollar based on an article I wrote in 00:05:35.819 --> 00:05:37.739 2021 that sort of sets this all up. 00:05:37.879 --> 00:05:41.199 So yeah, I sort of was in the Bitcoin sphere pretty intensely, 00:05:41.639 --> 00:05:47.099 saw where it was going, noped out, and then have been kind of lovingly embraced 00:05:47.099 --> 00:05:49.999 by the alt media space, which I'm very thankful for. 00:05:50.239 --> 00:05:53.319 So that's kind of the origin a little bit that's an interesting story 00:05:53.319 --> 00:05:56.339 i i'm interested in that trajectory because it sort of tracks with 00:05:56.339 --> 00:05:59.299 what i have seen taking place and i've been talking about 00:05:59.299 --> 00:06:02.139 bitcoin since what was it 2012 i can't remember 00:06:02.139 --> 00:06:04.979 a long time yeah whenever my first uh 00:06:04.979 --> 00:06:09.759 podcast on it was was a long time ago and it was of course sold to at least 00:06:09.759 --> 00:06:14.459 the alt media space at the time as this libertarian decentralized disintermediate 00:06:14.459 --> 00:06:18.819 the banking system that we're gonna stick it to the man and then i've watched 00:06:18.819 --> 00:06:23.819 over the course of a decade as people basically flooded in with dollar signs in their eyes, 00:06:23.959 --> 00:06:27.819 thinking about, we're going to comply with the man so that we get this all regulated. 00:06:28.059 --> 00:06:30.999 And that is, unfortunately, the trajectory of the crypto space, 00:06:31.139 --> 00:06:32.959 generally speaking, for a lot of people. 00:06:33.159 --> 00:06:37.899 I think a lot of people in my audience, the Venn diagram overlap of my audience 00:06:37.899 --> 00:06:42.079 and crypto bros probably are in Monero or Xano or something at this point. 00:06:42.079 --> 00:06:46.519 But still, it's a vanishingly small minority of the space that still actually 00:06:46.519 --> 00:06:48.059 cares about freedom and privacy. 00:06:48.819 --> 00:06:53.219 Having said all of that, we're here today to talk about stablecoins, 00:06:53.239 --> 00:06:57.119 because as I mentioned before, the Genius Act is in the process of being passed 00:06:57.119 --> 00:06:59.199 as we're recording this conversation, question mark. 00:06:59.419 --> 00:07:03.419 At any rate, it is certainly on the table, and I think a lot of people still 00:07:03.419 --> 00:07:09.119 don't even know what a stablecoin is, let alone why it's going to affect their lives. 00:07:09.299 --> 00:07:13.019 So why don't we just start at the brass tacks of that? What is a stablecoin? 00:07:13.019 --> 00:07:18.859 Totally, yeah. So the idea, the name, it's very clever. 00:07:19.219 --> 00:07:22.959 These very important products that come into our lives usually have very clever names. 00:07:23.099 --> 00:07:29.719 And I think the stablecoin name is a very clever trick because the idea of the 00:07:29.719 --> 00:07:31.659 stablecoin, the stability, 00:07:31.939 --> 00:07:39.279 comes from the fact that it is a tokenized representation of a real-world asset 00:07:39.279 --> 00:07:43.079 or of something that exists in reality. 00:07:43.139 --> 00:07:47.719 And here's a representation of it that's pegged one-to-one. That's the stable. 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:53.899 So there's a token on the blockchain and a bank dollar, and they are pegged 00:07:53.899 --> 00:07:55.999 together. So it's a one-to-one representation. 00:07:56.319 --> 00:08:00.719 And the idea of a stable coin is that unlike Bitcoin, there's not these rapid 00:08:00.719 --> 00:08:04.139 fluctuations in value as you're exchanging the token. 00:08:04.299 --> 00:08:08.619 It's stable, right? That's the idea of the name. 00:08:08.619 --> 00:08:12.599 But of course, it's a very clever trick because we all know that the purchasing 00:08:12.599 --> 00:08:17.659 power of a dollar is anything but stable and has been routinely inflated away 00:08:17.659 --> 00:08:20.659 for a very long time now and not –. 00:08:21.357 --> 00:08:27.057 Not only that, the general idea of the Fed debasing the dollar alongside the Treasury, 00:08:27.217 --> 00:08:33.277 of course, we have the idea of, well, if it's a tokenized representation on 00:08:33.277 --> 00:08:35.977 a blockchain and there's supposed to be this dollar in a bank, 00:08:36.117 --> 00:08:37.517 what if the bank goes under? 00:08:37.657 --> 00:08:41.397 What if the holder of the stablecoin issuer gets subpoenaed? 00:08:41.577 --> 00:08:47.277 Or some other nasty fun thing that tends to happen in these – wherever dollars 00:08:47.277 --> 00:08:49.317 are. Of course, there's a lot 00:08:49.317 --> 00:08:55.537 of risks that come when you have sort of a trusted peg in these systems. 00:08:55.697 --> 00:09:00.497 So stablecoins are basically the modern iteration of what we've seen for a really 00:09:00.497 --> 00:09:05.497 long time of private capital creation, which is to say that the majority of 00:09:05.497 --> 00:09:08.637 dollars are already digital. They've been digital for a long time. 00:09:08.917 --> 00:09:13.477 And the way that they're created is the Fed and the Treasury print these reserves, 00:09:13.477 --> 00:09:18.217 these securities, and they give them to private banks like a J.P. Morgan. 00:09:18.577 --> 00:09:23.097 And then J.P. Morgan actually creates the dollars in your checkings account. 00:09:23.577 --> 00:09:26.797 They're not actually made by the government directly. They're selling these 00:09:26.797 --> 00:09:30.577 reserves, and the private banks make them. Stablecoins are the same thing. 00:09:31.037 --> 00:09:33.977 They obviously have some quirks and some things that we'll get into here. 00:09:33.977 --> 00:09:38.837 But the general idea is that it's just a digital asset that is pegged one-to-one 00:09:38.837 --> 00:09:43.117 with a real-world asset. The vast majority of these are dollars. 00:09:43.477 --> 00:09:46.637 But of course, you can have stablecoins that are based on the price of gold. 00:09:46.837 --> 00:09:48.977 You can have stablecoins on the price of oil. 00:09:50.277 --> 00:09:55.097 And you can have clever stablecoins that aren't even a one-to-one, 00:09:55.097 --> 00:09:56.797 but there's some sort of algorithmic pairings. 00:09:57.474 --> 00:10:02.114 Where they're trusting the market forces to, you know, represent the purchasing 00:10:02.114 --> 00:10:04.794 power of a dollar through some other basket of currencies. 00:10:05.594 --> 00:10:10.274 Notably, we saw that with the Terra Luna explosion in 2022, where there was 00:10:10.274 --> 00:10:14.934 this algorithmic stablecoin that was backed by Bitcoin that was then popped and exploded, 00:10:15.674 --> 00:10:21.874 as I postulate in this piece, on purpose in order to spurn regulation, 00:10:21.874 --> 00:10:27.314 which we are now seeing literally hit the president's desk today, the Genius Act. 00:10:27.474 --> 00:10:30.974 Which, of course, sets up the stablecoin industry. 00:10:31.174 --> 00:10:36.714 And the main way that it does it is putting rules and regulations into what 00:10:36.714 --> 00:10:38.414 can actually back these stablecoins. 00:10:38.774 --> 00:10:45.934 So what is going to basically happen here is that the government is going to 00:10:45.934 --> 00:10:48.454 tell stablecoin issuers that they have to hold U.S. 00:10:48.554 --> 00:10:52.014 Government debt in order to print these dollar tokens. 00:10:53.614 --> 00:10:57.354 So instead of doing cool, fun things that one might be able to do with this 00:10:57.354 --> 00:11:00.074 technology, which has some fun use cases. 00:11:00.374 --> 00:11:05.854 Instead of being able to create dollar instruments that don't touch government debt at all, the U.S. 00:11:05.914 --> 00:11:08.994 Government is coming out and saying, if you want to call your thing a stablecoin, 00:11:09.094 --> 00:11:12.954 you want to put that dollar sign there, you better buy our debt first, buy our bags. 00:11:13.274 --> 00:11:18.534 So the Genius Act is quite genius in a way, in that it's forcing technologists 00:11:18.534 --> 00:11:22.214 to bite the bullet and buy the debt of the U.S. 00:11:22.334 --> 00:11:25.454 Government at a very crucial time in which the U.S. 00:11:25.814 --> 00:11:28.374 Government desperately needs more buyers of debt. 00:11:29.154 --> 00:11:34.754 So I'll wrap it up there. But that basically catches you up very quickly on what stablecoins are. 00:11:35.334 --> 00:11:39.434 And you'll hear them a lot. For the most part, whenever you hear the word stablecoin, 00:11:39.554 --> 00:11:43.254 you can just think a digital dollar that's represented on a blockchain. 00:11:44.745 --> 00:11:45.925 Excellent. Well, that is a 00:11:45.925 --> 00:11:50.225 good crash course for people who need to understand why this is important. 00:11:50.405 --> 00:11:53.185 They'll need to look into the history of, say, Bretton Woods, 00:11:53.385 --> 00:11:56.465 the agreement at the end of World War II that was going to peg the entire world 00:11:56.465 --> 00:12:00.405 monetary system to the U.S. dollar, which itself was pegged to gold. 00:12:00.925 --> 00:12:03.605 Famously, of course, Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. 00:12:04.285 --> 00:12:10.425 What is really backing up the entire global monetary order? I don't know. How about oil? 00:12:10.725 --> 00:12:13.465 And so, of course, we saw the engineering of the petrodollar system, 00:12:13.485 --> 00:12:17.825 which functioned very well for half a century in propping up the U.S. 00:12:18.085 --> 00:12:21.805 Dollar, because everyone who wants to industrialize or perform industrial activities 00:12:21.805 --> 00:12:25.525 is going to need oil, so they're going to buy it. Then it's denominated in U.S. 00:12:25.885 --> 00:12:30.365 Dollars, and the Saudis had a deal to basically launder all their money back through U.S. 00:12:30.665 --> 00:12:33.865 Banks, so keeping it in the U.S. system. This is how the U.S. 00:12:34.125 --> 00:12:38.425 Dollar has been propped up and propagated for the past half century. 00:12:38.625 --> 00:12:42.085 But that system is coming to an end, and there was some fake news last year. 00:12:42.205 --> 00:12:44.385 The petrodollar agreement expired. 00:12:44.685 --> 00:12:48.325 Well, there was no particular agreement. It was a system, but it is expiring. 00:12:48.585 --> 00:12:51.405 And it is certainly under pressure from a lot of different threats like the 00:12:51.405 --> 00:12:53.945 petroyuan and other such ideas. 00:12:54.265 --> 00:12:59.725 So the question then becomes, how do you not only continue, not only service 00:12:59.725 --> 00:13:04.325 this $35 trillion debt or whatever it is at the moment, but how do you continue 00:13:04.325 --> 00:13:07.925 blowing that bubble so that the big, beautiful bill and everything else can 00:13:07.925 --> 00:13:09.125 continue to be financed. 00:13:09.645 --> 00:13:13.105 There's got to be a reason why people are buying dollars. Oh, I know. 00:13:13.345 --> 00:13:21.105 Let's make stable coins a regulatory mandate for them to be tethered to U.S. 00:13:21.485 --> 00:13:25.065 Debt, U.S. treasuries, so that people will still be buying into the U.S. 00:13:25.545 --> 00:13:29.405 Debt system. And they can continue inflating the bubble. That is sort of the 00:13:29.405 --> 00:13:31.705 underlying aspect of all of this. 00:13:31.965 --> 00:13:35.645 Correct me if I'm wrong on any part of that assessment. No, I think that was perfect. 00:13:35.745 --> 00:13:39.485 A very It's a very succinct explanation of the petrodollar, and the general 00:13:39.485 --> 00:13:43.765 idea is, well, okay, if you want to print more money, you've got to have more 00:13:43.765 --> 00:13:46.685 users. You've got to have more people interested in the system. 00:13:46.805 --> 00:13:50.365 There's a few ways you can do it, but the best way to do it is to get more people 00:13:50.365 --> 00:13:54.745 playing in the sandbox, right? Get more people using dollars as their medium of exchange. 00:13:55.467 --> 00:14:01.987 If you go from the total addressable market of dollar users from maybe a billion 00:14:01.987 --> 00:14:07.907 players, the 350-whatever Americans, and then all the people using dollars as 00:14:07.907 --> 00:14:09.227 a store of value across the world, 00:14:09.627 --> 00:14:16.007 with stable coins, really all you need is a smartphone or an internet access. 00:14:17.047 --> 00:14:23.287 And you have access to U.S. dollars, which is something that hasn't necessarily 00:14:23.287 --> 00:14:27.827 been available to the 7, 8 billion people in the world, 00:14:28.347 --> 00:14:33.927 there's been limitations to who can play in the regulatory regime of the dollar kind of by design. 00:14:34.087 --> 00:14:39.307 You had to get pallets of cash sent to the Middle East or whatever to be able to play in that system. 00:14:39.427 --> 00:14:45.767 Now you simply download a wallet on a smartphone and you have access to dollars. 00:14:46.667 --> 00:14:50.527 This, of course, is sold as this very altruistic thing. 00:14:50.707 --> 00:14:54.027 You know, we are banking the unbanked, James. It's amazing. It's like, 00:14:54.187 --> 00:14:58.507 no, you're charging someone basically a fee to use your bank account, 00:14:59.307 --> 00:15:05.367 and you're letting them buy little IOUs, basically, for the dollars that you hold in your account. 00:15:06.087 --> 00:15:11.047 So we're seeing this push of, you know, how do we extend dollar hedgemen? 00:15:11.187 --> 00:15:15.627 You know, we find more users. And so now we're pushing stablecoins on the global 00:15:15.627 --> 00:15:22.387 south, on South America, on Asia, on Africa, and we're seeing serious headwinds of adoption. 00:15:23.607 --> 00:15:28.627 And we're seeing the dollarization of crypto and blockchains in general. 00:15:28.907 --> 00:15:37.127 I think there was a stat a year ago that 80% of all value settled in the extended 00:15:37.127 --> 00:15:39.727 cryptocurrency space was using stablecoins. 00:15:39.727 --> 00:15:44.107 I mean, it is the killer app of blockchain is dollars. 00:15:44.427 --> 00:15:47.407 I mean, it's very strange. It seems very backwards of, again, 00:15:47.487 --> 00:15:49.607 as you started at the beginning, you know, what was the idea, 00:15:49.727 --> 00:15:54.407 the ethos of this movement to now revert back to, oh, it's dollar tokens is 00:15:54.407 --> 00:15:57.787 the killer app is is sort of sad. But this is this is. 00:15:58.267 --> 00:16:04.347 These systems are not designed willy-nilly. This is not an accident that as 00:16:04.347 --> 00:16:09.947 we are really seeing runaway debt service happening after 08, 00:16:10.167 --> 00:16:14.687 which was a controlled implosion, to 2020, which was a controlled implosion, 00:16:15.027 --> 00:16:19.427 very specifically a controlled implosion that crushed demand and velocity of 00:16:19.427 --> 00:16:21.887 dollars by shutting everybody in their house. 00:16:22.027 --> 00:16:25.927 And then you print trillions and trillions of dollars. As that was happening, 00:16:26.087 --> 00:16:30.847 Trump is setting up the entirety of the Bitcoin dollar stablecoin play that 00:16:30.847 --> 00:16:32.667 we're now seeing the fruits of. 00:16:32.927 --> 00:16:40.447 On his last days in office, he's passing these bulletins and letting banks hold stablecoins. 00:16:40.567 --> 00:16:43.367 Those were things that happened in his final days in office. 00:16:43.707 --> 00:16:47.007 And now we're seeing the Genius Act sort of formalize that. 00:16:47.247 --> 00:16:50.847 So in 2020, there was like 10 billion stablecoins. 00:16:50.987 --> 00:16:55.267 It was a very, very small industry. Now we're $200 billion or something like that, 00:16:55.347 --> 00:17:01.907 and it's going to go to – Scott Besson is – running Treasury is estimating $3.7 00:17:01.907 --> 00:17:09.027 trillion of stablecoin demand will be enabled basically overnight from the Genius Act passing. 00:17:09.227 --> 00:17:13.907 That's tonight, depending where you are in the world. That's this afternoon. 00:17:14.827 --> 00:17:18.327 That's a serious amount of money. You look at the bailouts in 08, 00:17:18.447 --> 00:17:22.487 it was hundreds of billions, and it was enough to get us all in the streets 00:17:22.487 --> 00:17:26.707 yelling, why are we bailing out the banks with these hundreds of billions of dollars? 00:17:27.187 --> 00:17:33.227 Now it's, oh, we can print $3.7 trillion to stablecoin issuers, 00:17:33.327 --> 00:17:39.307 and this is seen as this sort of technological advancement, this altruistic bankingly unbanked. 00:17:39.307 --> 00:17:43.807 In reality, it's a very clever trick by the government to create debt demand 00:17:43.807 --> 00:17:49.667 and create more dollar users at the most critical time possible as this debt 00:17:49.667 --> 00:17:54.287 service is now outpacing our military budget, which upheld the petrodollar, 00:17:54.467 --> 00:17:58.047 and really becoming a national priority. 00:17:58.267 --> 00:18:02.447 That is why these bills are all happening. That's why this crypto week is being presented. 00:18:02.687 --> 00:18:08.807 It's because the U.S. government needs these stable coins to be able to kick the can down the road. 00:18:09.307 --> 00:18:14.807 And there's a whole other element to this of this debt sink idea that is the 00:18:14.807 --> 00:18:20.167 other pair to this, which is using Bitcoin as this deflationary scarce asset 00:18:20.167 --> 00:18:22.567 that they can inflate the dollars into. 00:18:23.007 --> 00:18:28.687 And rather than inflating into gold or into land or into other assets that are 00:18:28.687 --> 00:18:31.647 held by other countries, right? 00:18:31.747 --> 00:18:35.667 Like we could pay off the debt tomorrow if we wanted to and we said an ounce 00:18:35.667 --> 00:18:39.547 of gold is $30,000. Come, come, come, you know, give us your, 00:18:39.667 --> 00:18:41.187 you know, they could pay off the debt tomorrow. 00:18:41.527 --> 00:18:44.947 But what would that do? That would make everybody in the world that holds gold 00:18:44.947 --> 00:18:46.247 extremely, extremely rich. 00:18:46.487 --> 00:18:50.187 They don't want to do that. They want to keep this wealth transfer into the 00:18:50.187 --> 00:18:51.647 tightest circle possible. 00:18:52.326 --> 00:18:58.086 So very conveniently, this decentralized, scarce asset comes out of nowhere 00:18:58.086 --> 00:19:05.286 at the onset of the – or rather at the offset of the 2007-08-09 crisis. 00:19:05.466 --> 00:19:14.286 Bitcoin comes out, released anonymously, and it's obviously sold as this decentralized 00:19:14.286 --> 00:19:16.126 idea, and in many ways it is. 00:19:16.246 --> 00:19:24.146 But it's really more distributed than decentralized. It's an imperfect distribution of power. 00:19:24.426 --> 00:19:27.666 And when you look at where that power goes, really the only way you can really 00:19:27.666 --> 00:19:32.306 measure it is hash rate, which is the computers upholding the system, 00:19:32.426 --> 00:19:33.626 and then who holds the Bitcoin. 00:19:33.866 --> 00:19:37.746 And when you look at it across the board, it's the United States of America, 00:19:37.806 --> 00:19:42.026 whether it's the private interests of the US or even just the government itself, 00:19:42.346 --> 00:19:44.046 private companies, public companies. 00:19:44.786 --> 00:19:50.586 And so the wealth bubble that was – the debt bubble that was exploded over our 00:19:50.586 --> 00:19:57.026 lives is now about to be vacuumed into the next financial system. 00:19:57.086 --> 00:20:02.586 And we are quite literally on the onset of that on-off switch on the vacuum 00:20:02.586 --> 00:20:06.886 is being turned probably right now. In fact, by the time people are watching 00:20:06.886 --> 00:20:09.426 this conversation, it will probably already have passed. 00:20:09.646 --> 00:20:17.786 So the on-twitch is going as we're speaking. But so the people who are positioned 00:20:17.786 --> 00:20:23.246 on the the bottom level of this elevator that's about to shoot up here. Sure. 00:20:23.566 --> 00:20:26.706 Would they be would there be any names that people would recognize that are 00:20:26.706 --> 00:20:30.646 involved in this stable coin industry? Like, I don't know, like like Trump, for example. 00:20:31.466 --> 00:20:36.446 Sure. Yeah. I mean, Trump himself and his family, you know, they did one of 00:20:36.446 --> 00:20:38.926 the large it should be one of the biggest political scandals, 00:20:39.166 --> 00:20:42.526 frankly, ever is on inauguration night. 00:20:43.326 --> 00:20:46.946 You know, the Trump family releases their own private currency. 00:20:47.888 --> 00:20:52.028 You know, if you remove the crypto aspect of a Solana meme coin and you just 00:20:52.028 --> 00:20:58.528 say it, what it is without the technical jargon, he started his own private currency, you know, 00:20:58.748 --> 00:21:04.248 24 hours before he's re-sworn back in to be the president of the United States. That's insane. 00:21:04.888 --> 00:21:09.488 Very crazy. Now, I'm not saying I enjoy the monopoly of the public sector on 00:21:09.488 --> 00:21:14.468 money printing, but it is a wild thing to have a president, an incoming president, 00:21:14.528 --> 00:21:16.188 create their own currency. 00:21:16.728 --> 00:21:19.928 And then you look at, well, what are the conflicts of interest here? 00:21:20.088 --> 00:21:26.368 It's like, well, hey, anybody in the international game can directly pay into 00:21:26.368 --> 00:21:27.908 the coffers of the president, 00:21:27.908 --> 00:21:33.468 totally circumnavigating all of the rules and regulations that should be in 00:21:33.468 --> 00:21:36.268 place for restricting conflicts of interest. 00:21:36.848 --> 00:21:41.268 You want to lobby and donate to a president. There are a lot of rules of what 00:21:41.268 --> 00:21:44.548 you can do by printing your own currency and letting anybody in the world with 00:21:44.548 --> 00:21:46.048 internet access access it. 00:21:46.188 --> 00:21:51.088 Um, suddenly you have billions of dollars sloshing around going into the president's 00:21:51.088 --> 00:21:56.048 pockets right before he takes power, right before he signs bills like we are seeing today. 00:21:56.288 --> 00:22:00.288 Right. So, you know, what is the whole point of the public sector in general? 00:22:00.468 --> 00:22:05.128 It's a regulatory enabling environment for the private sector interests, 00:22:05.288 --> 00:22:09.188 the donor class of the, uh, you know, the representatives that they buy. 00:22:09.388 --> 00:22:14.028 So Trump has started his own stable coin. He has started his own currency. 00:22:15.088 --> 00:22:20.288 How successful they'll be, we'll see, but there's an extreme conflict of interest immediately. 00:22:21.648 --> 00:22:26.028 Ironically, that is something being picked up by the Elizabeth Warren sort of 00:22:26.028 --> 00:22:30.028 anti-crypto group is, look, this is ridiculous, this crypto con. 00:22:30.248 --> 00:22:33.768 And in many ways, they're actually right. I don't very often find myself agreeing 00:22:33.768 --> 00:22:36.028 with her, but I think in this case, she's sort of correct. 00:22:36.188 --> 00:22:38.568 Broken clock is right twice a day, I suppose. 00:22:39.748 --> 00:22:46.088 But in my opinion, I think more importantly, I think Trump is a figurehead personally. 00:22:47.648 --> 00:22:53.148 And I think the interests behind him have been in the crypto space for an extremely 00:22:53.148 --> 00:23:00.108 long time, very possibly even created the crypto space, depending on how deep you want to go. 00:23:00.108 --> 00:23:05.308 And in particular, I'm looking at Peter Thiel and the extended PayPal mafia, 00:23:05.948 --> 00:23:08.088 including Elon, including Reid Hoffman. 00:23:09.764 --> 00:23:12.764 And a lot of other players associated, especially with Peter Thiel. 00:23:13.024 --> 00:23:19.744 And if you actually look at the original founding motto of PayPal, 00:23:20.244 --> 00:23:24.444 the idea of it was like their original logo was a new world currency. 00:23:24.844 --> 00:23:29.364 And they had come together with this idea. David Sachs is this former McKinsey 00:23:29.364 --> 00:23:34.604 consultant who comes in to join Thiel, who is a currency trader. 00:23:35.144 --> 00:23:39.724 And Max Levgen, who's a cryptographer who spent all this time working on distributed 00:23:39.724 --> 00:23:42.464 systems. They were the two guys that formed PayPal. 00:23:43.544 --> 00:23:47.824 He comes in and he sort of takes them from, hey, stop playing with your palm 00:23:47.824 --> 00:23:50.984 pilots. Let's go to the internet. Let's use email. 00:23:51.484 --> 00:23:57.384 He's now, of course, the crypto AI czar for Trump. He's one of the main advisors on these bills. 00:23:57.804 --> 00:24:01.004 But when they all got together, those three, they were really the biggest ones 00:24:01.004 --> 00:24:04.284 at the beginning of PayPal. And their idea was, let's create a new world currency. 00:24:05.444 --> 00:24:09.704 And there's this book, The PayPal Wars, 00:24:09.924 --> 00:24:15.644 where Peter Thiel is described by this early marketing executive at PayPal as 00:24:15.644 --> 00:24:20.184 doing this early meeting at PayPal where he describes there's a really lack 00:24:20.184 --> 00:24:23.404 of dollars being accessed across the world. 00:24:23.604 --> 00:24:27.244 And central banks across the world are really taking advantage of their citizens. 00:24:27.244 --> 00:24:30.864 And if we can create dollars and put them natively on the internet, 00:24:31.184 --> 00:24:37.124 we can allow these slaves to their central banks, which is true. 00:24:37.124 --> 00:24:43.604 But we can give freedom to these citizens that are stuck in their shitty fiat 00:24:43.604 --> 00:24:50.704 currency being printed by their local governments, and they can get beautiful, beautiful dollars. 00:24:50.704 --> 00:24:54.824 And we can onboard them and really save the world, basically, 00:24:55.044 --> 00:24:58.104 from central bank control. 00:24:58.484 --> 00:25:04.084 And of course, now here we are 20 years later, that exact same pitch is being 00:25:04.084 --> 00:25:05.824 made by these stablecoin providers. 00:25:06.664 --> 00:25:11.804 Thiel really saw this very early on that there was a way to use technology to 00:25:11.804 --> 00:25:16.164 dollarize the world rather than military force or political force. 00:25:16.164 --> 00:25:21.904 And that actually technology is sort of a dissolving agent that can break down 00:25:21.904 --> 00:25:26.124 a lot of these controls that local governments have over their citizens, 00:25:26.124 --> 00:25:28.204 specifically as it relates to capital flight. 00:25:28.444 --> 00:25:32.444 So the PayPal guys were hip to this a very long time ago. Of course, 00:25:32.524 --> 00:25:34.604 they're incredibly connected to intelligence. 00:25:35.084 --> 00:25:39.284 Palantir, you know, the great Palantir that everyone's now suddenly being awakened 00:25:39.284 --> 00:25:43.064 to started as the anti-fraud algorithm at PayPal. 00:25:43.344 --> 00:25:46.964 I mean, it really came out of this group. Obviously, there's the TIA aspect, 00:25:47.124 --> 00:25:53.344 Poindexter, and all that, but the original algorithm that became Palantir was called Igor. 00:25:53.544 --> 00:25:56.784 It was named after a Russian scammer that was scamming everybody with PayPal. 00:25:57.004 --> 00:26:01.344 So the PayPal mafia understood that technology could do something that politics 00:26:01.344 --> 00:26:03.664 and military really couldn't. 00:26:04.381 --> 00:26:09.961 And this group of people really had the brains and the intelligence connections 00:26:09.961 --> 00:26:12.561 to be able to set up something like this. 00:26:12.761 --> 00:26:16.241 And of course PayPal Mafia gets all of the credit these days, 00:26:16.241 --> 00:26:21.041 but it was really PayPal that dollarized the internet, that made the native 00:26:21.041 --> 00:26:25.361 currency of the internet the dollar with their eBay counterparts, 00:26:25.701 --> 00:26:28.821 all of which have immense intelligence connections. 00:26:29.541 --> 00:26:35.501 And now we're seeing the next iteration of that, where it's not just PayPal dollars. 00:26:35.761 --> 00:26:40.101 Now we're seeing these stablecoins proliferate and actually really neutering 00:26:40.101 --> 00:26:45.981 the ability of local governments to retain value within their country, 00:26:46.161 --> 00:26:52.421 within their closed system of, why would you hold Argentine pesos if you can 00:26:52.421 --> 00:26:54.501 get access to dollars with the internet? 00:26:55.301 --> 00:26:59.341 Maybe they wanted pesos 20 years ago, but they couldn't quite do it. 00:26:59.561 --> 00:27:04.961 There was closed-circuit regulatory things at play that were stopping people 00:27:04.961 --> 00:27:09.841 from being able to just sell dollar access to Argentina. 00:27:10.001 --> 00:27:16.841 Now we have a way to circumnavigate the enabling environment of the public sector via technology. 00:27:17.521 --> 00:27:26.601 And so Teal is super connected all over the stablecoin space and the PayPal mafia in general. 00:27:27.141 --> 00:27:32.141 Elon Musk wants to turn X into half the financial system and all of these things 00:27:32.141 --> 00:27:33.821 that these AI companies are saying. 00:27:34.461 --> 00:27:38.821 And in reality, I think they might do it, which is very scary. 00:27:39.081 --> 00:27:46.241 And what's the outcome of this? Why are stablecoins worse than dollars? 00:27:46.641 --> 00:27:51.921 We really have to just sort of look at the dialectic and sort of the warnings. 00:27:52.301 --> 00:27:59.721 Folks like you have been saying about CBDCs for almost a decade now, if not for longer. 00:28:00.701 --> 00:28:04.481 And when you look at the dichotomy of CBDCs and stablecoins, 00:28:04.661 --> 00:28:07.441 you start to see some like chilling similarities. 00:28:08.041 --> 00:28:14.461 And in many ways, you might even argue they're worse due to constitutional protection. 00:28:14.741 --> 00:28:18.981 So maybe I'll stop ranting there for a second and let you pick up there. 00:28:19.121 --> 00:28:21.961 You know, you're reading my mind, actually, because that's exactly what I wanted 00:28:21.961 --> 00:28:25.721 to get into. Because obviously the great irony is that during this crypto week, 00:28:25.841 --> 00:28:30.841 we have the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act being passed at the same time as the 00:28:30.841 --> 00:28:34.041 Genius Act to wire in the stablecoins into the global economy. 00:28:34.201 --> 00:28:38.661 And I think that is no coincidence because, thankfully, a lot of people have 00:28:38.661 --> 00:28:42.421 woken up to the very real threat that central bank digital currencies pose. 00:28:42.721 --> 00:28:45.361 And the politicians love to get in front of the parade. Yeah, 00:28:45.501 --> 00:28:47.961 don't worry, guys. We're going to protect you from that horrible threat. 00:28:47.961 --> 00:28:50.661 And here's this stablecoin thing that you guys can use. 00:28:51.241 --> 00:28:55.241 What is the difference? Why is it worse? Why would it be worse? 00:28:55.801 --> 00:28:59.761 Don't we want a private version of this instead of a central bank run version? 00:29:00.546 --> 00:29:04.326 Right. I mean, that's sort of the funny dialectic that we're dealing with right now. 00:29:05.466 --> 00:29:10.446 You know, this idea of, you know, the Javier Malaise, the free market champions 00:29:10.446 --> 00:29:15.886 are going to come in and deliver the enslaved masses from the government failure 00:29:15.886 --> 00:29:19.946 that was, you know, the global lockdowns of COVID, right? 00:29:20.046 --> 00:29:23.226 I mean, we've seen a controlled demolition of the trusted institutions, 00:29:23.446 --> 00:29:27.106 whether it's media, whether it's whatever, whether it's banking. 00:29:27.886 --> 00:29:31.066 But where does that lead the people to go to? 00:29:31.286 --> 00:29:35.246 It's whenever there's a controlled demolition, there's a there's a new path 00:29:35.246 --> 00:29:38.126 paved that looks very nice that goes right into another pen. 00:29:38.566 --> 00:29:41.766 And we've seen that with journalism. I mean, it's absolutely insane. 00:29:41.906 --> 00:29:44.166 The podcast community is now 00:29:44.166 --> 00:29:48.706 the new mainstream media. They are the state media. They have Trump on. 00:29:48.806 --> 00:29:51.946 They have Vance on. They're giving them softball questions, laughing, 00:29:51.946 --> 00:29:57.326 doing that. it's the same dialectic that we're seeing with capital creation. 00:29:57.606 --> 00:30:00.806 So we obviously all lost a lot of trust. 00:30:01.226 --> 00:30:04.486 Many of us didn't have that trust there, but I think in a mass scale, 00:30:04.706 --> 00:30:09.166 a lot of trust has been lost on the government and the public sector. 00:30:09.326 --> 00:30:13.066 And so at the same time, the fears of a CBDC. 00:30:13.646 --> 00:30:18.786 Of a government controlling a digital currency, sort of started bubbling up 00:30:18.786 --> 00:30:24.566 around the time that the government started printing a bunch of money and directly 00:30:24.566 --> 00:30:27.486 depositing money into people's bank accounts. 00:30:27.626 --> 00:30:31.066 And when people started pushing back against the government, 00:30:31.326 --> 00:30:33.106 like say the trucker protest, 00:30:33.506 --> 00:30:38.826 we saw the government and local law enforcement put pressure on the financial 00:30:38.826 --> 00:30:45.046 institutions that were spreading that money around and GoFundMe sees the funds. 00:30:45.226 --> 00:30:49.586 And we saw some direct examples of this when there were dissonant voices pushing 00:30:49.586 --> 00:30:51.246 against public sector power, 00:30:51.566 --> 00:30:56.706 public sector was able to sort of use, you know, the lawfare and economic, 00:30:56.706 --> 00:31:02.566 you know, tomfoolery to prevent, you know, dissonant action. 00:31:02.826 --> 00:31:07.686 And so the CBDC, you know, fear was, was very rightly, you know, 00:31:07.826 --> 00:31:11.206 sown in these, in these years, because we of course don't want, 00:31:11.366 --> 00:31:15.966 they already can push and leverage private companies. We don't want them to have control. 00:31:18.826 --> 00:31:24.266 I don't want the government to be able to go into my wallet and take my money 00:31:24.266 --> 00:31:31.366 because I don't want to get a shot or because I think so-and-so about so-and-so in the government. 00:31:31.606 --> 00:31:36.866 So these fears were like very natural and I think in many ways obviously completely correct. 00:31:37.906 --> 00:31:42.406 But this is kind of how the government works. They create a fear. They let the fear build. 00:31:42.826 --> 00:31:46.306 And then they create this dialectic solution to the problem. 00:31:46.466 --> 00:31:47.926 You lost your trust in government. 00:31:48.346 --> 00:31:51.986 You're fearful of us printing a bunch of money. You're fearful of us doing all 00:31:51.986 --> 00:31:53.986 this, you know, crap to dissident voices. 00:31:54.466 --> 00:31:59.046 Well, hey, we're going to ban CBDCs. Don't you worry. We got you covered. 00:31:59.966 --> 00:32:04.746 But come over here and check out this stablecoin thing. It's a private bank. It's free market. 00:32:05.066 --> 00:32:08.406 You know, the free market is always right. Nothing bad can ever happen in the 00:32:08.406 --> 00:32:10.466 free market. There's no cartels there. 00:32:10.706 --> 00:32:13.466 There's no plunder capitalism. It's just all good stuff. 00:32:13.766 --> 00:32:18.466 So what you're afraid of with CBDCs, the stable coin will come in and it will 00:32:18.466 --> 00:32:20.366 totally take care of all of those concerns. 00:32:20.646 --> 00:32:24.826 And we saw that Trump, I mean, literally his first, one of the first executive 00:32:24.826 --> 00:32:30.026 orders he signed in office was, I'm going to ban the development and research of CBDCs. 00:32:30.426 --> 00:32:35.186 And in the same EO, three paragraphs later, he's like, but we're going to use 00:32:35.186 --> 00:32:38.266 beautiful stable coins and it's going to be so beautiful. 00:32:38.586 --> 00:32:41.426 I mean, they really telegraphed it if you were paying attention, 00:32:41.846 --> 00:32:43.546 you know, this dialectic shift. 00:32:43.846 --> 00:32:48.926 So what are we afraid of CBDs, right? We're afraid of them being programmable. 00:32:50.006 --> 00:32:54.706 We're afraid of them being seizeable and surveillable. Those are kind of the 00:32:54.706 --> 00:32:57.286 three main things I would say we're sort of afraid of. 00:32:57.686 --> 00:33:01.166 From a programmability standpoint, I don't want the government saying I can't 00:33:01.166 --> 00:33:07.406 buy a tank of gas because I bought a steak yesterday and the steak has this 00:33:07.406 --> 00:33:14.106 much carbon off-put and I can't buy a plane ticket because I like running big computers. 00:33:14.446 --> 00:33:19.246 Whatever the aspect is, the programmability of the spending conditions of your 00:33:19.246 --> 00:33:22.086 money, you don't want the government to have control over that. 00:33:22.086 --> 00:33:26.266 I don't want them to be able to program and say, if I don't spend this money 00:33:26.266 --> 00:33:32.126 overnight, it's going to disappear from my wallet, or I can't send it and I 00:33:32.126 --> 00:33:34.786 can't donate to a cause that's anti-government. 00:33:35.126 --> 00:33:39.526 Whatever the thing is, I don't want the government to be able to programmably 00:33:39.526 --> 00:33:41.926 restrict where I can spend my money. 00:33:42.086 --> 00:33:47.426 And that's part of the big transfer of the digitization of money is that now 00:33:47.426 --> 00:33:51.746 the restrictions on your spending conditions aren't physical. 00:33:52.086 --> 00:33:57.706 It's not, oh, I need a boat to send a billion dollars of gold across the ocean. 00:33:58.026 --> 00:34:02.206 It's now just what can the program actualize? 00:34:02.366 --> 00:34:05.946 And so when you allow a central controller over the program to say you can't 00:34:05.946 --> 00:34:10.366 spend money here or this or here are the conditions, the programmability becomes a really big issue. 00:34:11.808 --> 00:34:15.888 Well, stablecoins are just as programmable as CBDCs in every single way. 00:34:16.148 --> 00:34:20.848 You're – instead of trusting the government to not restrict the spending conditions, 00:34:20.908 --> 00:34:24.448 you're trusting a private company, some of which – many of which aren't even 00:34:24.448 --> 00:34:28.388 domiciled in the United States, don't even have constitutional protections of 00:34:28.388 --> 00:34:30.788 free speech or whatever have you. 00:34:31.348 --> 00:34:36.108 And it's every bit as dangerous as the government having programmability over your money. 00:34:37.428 --> 00:34:42.088 It's just a private company. maybe there are some good private companies out 00:34:42.088 --> 00:34:48.148 there I'm sure they do exist but it's not really an upgrade and that concern 00:34:48.148 --> 00:34:51.888 still is there and on the same level if you can access. 00:34:53.248 --> 00:34:58.048 The code as a centralized issuer to say I'm restricting where you can spend 00:34:58.048 --> 00:35:02.248 it well then you can also just seize it and so the seizeability is the same 00:35:02.248 --> 00:35:08.208 thing it's still programmability when the token is digital so they can program it, they can seize it, 00:35:09.048 --> 00:35:14.008 And I think the third pillar, the surveillability, and we can get a little bit nitty-gritty here. 00:35:14.148 --> 00:35:17.928 I'll try to keep it brief and not bore anybody and put them to sleep talking about blockchains. 00:35:18.208 --> 00:35:22.988 But the surveillability of a private stablecoin on a public blockchain, 00:35:22.988 --> 00:35:29.188 which I'll explain, versus a CBDC, is a little bit more nuanced. 00:35:29.188 --> 00:35:32.268 But I think it's really important, and I really like – if you take one thing 00:35:32.268 --> 00:35:34.308 from this viewer, I hope it's this. 00:35:34.308 --> 00:35:43.908 And a CBDC, just like when you use a wire or some sort of traditional banking 00:35:43.908 --> 00:35:45.028 instrument to send money, 00:35:45.248 --> 00:35:52.688 you are very knowingly unveiling your transactional history to a party. 00:35:53.345 --> 00:35:56.885 When you use a bank, when you use a – if you're using Bank of America and you 00:35:56.885 --> 00:36:01.025 have a bank app and you're sending money to someone, you're revealing to your 00:36:01.025 --> 00:36:04.145 bank who you're spending money to and then to your receiver's bank. 00:36:04.285 --> 00:36:07.765 And there's a group of people, a closed group of people, but there's a group 00:36:07.765 --> 00:36:12.025 of people you are 100% exposing your transactional history to. 00:36:12.425 --> 00:36:18.365 It's just a necessity for updating a ledger, right, that expresses the volatility 00:36:18.365 --> 00:36:19.625 between these two parties. 00:36:20.765 --> 00:36:25.805 Blockchain is a very confusing, you know, a lot of people don't really grok 00:36:25.805 --> 00:36:30.365 the nuances of it, which is very understandable. It's kind of confusing on purpose. 00:36:30.385 --> 00:36:34.965 But you can really think of a blockchain as just a public distributed ledger. 00:36:35.345 --> 00:36:39.665 So rather than that ledger expressing the volatility between the two transacting 00:36:39.665 --> 00:36:45.685 parties being a closed circuit in a black box in Bank of America's server room 00:36:45.685 --> 00:36:49.685 or Wells Fargo server room, It's now native to the internet, 00:36:49.965 --> 00:36:53.705 downloadable by anybody, and anybody that has access to the blockchain, 00:36:53.885 --> 00:36:58.045 which means anybody that has access to the internet, can now download the blockchain, 00:36:58.045 --> 00:37:04.785 which is just a string of ledgers strung together very cleverly, cryptographically. 00:37:05.425 --> 00:37:09.785 But it means that every transaction that you make on a blockchain is viewable 00:37:09.785 --> 00:37:12.425 by anybody that has access to the internet. 00:37:13.096 --> 00:37:17.776 But it's pseudonymous. Don't worry. Well, 00:37:18.196 --> 00:37:22.596 you know, there is some truth to that, but there's also a whole bunch of horseshit 00:37:22.596 --> 00:37:28.076 to that, which is to say that the heuristic analysis that can take place when 00:37:28.076 --> 00:37:32.596 you're using a public blockchain, you know, it's very hard to do anything private on the Internet. 00:37:32.876 --> 00:37:37.096 It's very hard to do anything private at all these days. But specifically trying 00:37:37.096 --> 00:37:41.636 to do some sort of communication where there's a handshake online is really 00:37:41.636 --> 00:37:46.836 hard because so many pieces of the infrastructure that we think of the Internet 00:37:46.836 --> 00:37:49.596 as being this distributed, beautiful, open thing, but it's really not. 00:37:49.596 --> 00:37:53.616 It's a whole bunch of closed people that have, oh, I'm your ISP here, 00:37:53.776 --> 00:37:56.796 that I can see everything, every bit going in and out of your system. 00:37:57.016 --> 00:38:01.636 Here's the ISP on the other side. They can see. We know damn well via the Snowden 00:38:01.636 --> 00:38:05.196 leaks and some other things that they are literally just taking data directly 00:38:05.196 --> 00:38:06.896 from the fiber optic cables, 00:38:06.916 --> 00:38:10.376 and they're reading everything coming in and out As now we're getting the Starlink 00:38:10.376 --> 00:38:13.436 era and satellite internet, they're reading everything. 00:38:13.756 --> 00:38:17.136 And so a blockchain is really this kind of really clever 00:38:17.136 --> 00:38:23.956 way to create an opportunity for the world and really intelligence agencies 00:38:23.956 --> 00:38:29.676 to be able to get warrantless surveillance on everybody using stable coins on 00:38:29.676 --> 00:38:35.256 public blockchains because every transaction you make is published openly. 00:38:35.256 --> 00:38:38.736 It doesn't say Mark Goodwin sends James Corbett. 00:38:39.016 --> 00:38:43.176 It's a string of numbers, a couple dollars in a string of numbers. 00:38:43.376 --> 00:38:49.856 But if you are an intelligence-level-sized entity, which nowadays are increasingly 00:38:49.856 --> 00:38:53.136 more and more private and in many ways have always been private, 00:38:53.276 --> 00:38:56.876 the intelligence community really was the information sector of the banking industry. 00:38:58.136 --> 00:39:02.936 But now we're seeing, you know, with heuristic analysis, combining these data 00:39:02.936 --> 00:39:09.516 caches of IP addresses, of social network, you know, oh, I posted that I bought 00:39:09.516 --> 00:39:10.916 Bitcoin today on Twitter. 00:39:11.736 --> 00:39:16.556 Well, Palantir now has a database that says you bought Bitcoin that day and at this price. 00:39:16.716 --> 00:39:20.936 And you can really, at this very high level of computational analysis, 00:39:21.516 --> 00:39:25.916 really break down a lot of stuff that happens on these blockchains just through 00:39:25.916 --> 00:39:27.856 pretty basic human behavior. 00:39:27.856 --> 00:39:31.516 So in reality, it's created an asymmetric 00:39:31.516 --> 00:39:38.236 advantage for intelligence-level communities and industries to be able to analyze 00:39:38.236 --> 00:39:44.976 the blockchain without any need of getting a warrant and going to that Wells 00:39:44.976 --> 00:39:46.856 Fargo server room or that Bank 00:39:46.856 --> 00:39:50.396 of America server room that they would have needed to do 10 years ago. 00:39:50.396 --> 00:39:55.356 Now they can go right to the blockchain and they can find exactly the transaction 00:39:55.356 --> 00:39:57.836 and use heuristic analysis and find your wallet. 00:39:59.476 --> 00:40:05.096 It's really worse than CBDCs in this way because rather than it just being the 00:40:05.096 --> 00:40:08.256 government, which is very bad, I'm not saying CBDCs are good. 00:40:09.441 --> 00:40:13.841 Publishing it in a closed box where you are willingly, knowingly giving your 00:40:13.841 --> 00:40:19.741 information to, you know, 10 to 13 branches of government and law enforcement 00:40:19.741 --> 00:40:22.161 and respective people that would be in charge of a CBDC. 00:40:22.661 --> 00:40:24.201 Instead, you're actually publishing 00:40:24.201 --> 00:40:28.241 all of your transactional data to everybody in the world, right? 00:40:28.421 --> 00:40:31.521 So I would argue in many ways they are worse. 00:40:31.721 --> 00:40:35.861 They don't give you constitutional protections that might exist from a government-issued 00:40:35.861 --> 00:40:45.381 currency. and they are published in a way that can be analyzed by very powerful computational groups. 00:40:45.621 --> 00:40:49.721 And there's no shortage of those these days. And let's be honest, 00:40:50.041 --> 00:40:52.521 these people that kind of built this industry, 00:40:52.901 --> 00:41:00.861 like a Peter Thiel, happens to run one of the biggest data bases in the entire 00:41:00.861 --> 00:41:06.001 world that's only growing and getting more powerful every day as it gets more and more data. 00:41:06.601 --> 00:41:12.861 Blockchains are really ripe for data because they are just literally an open ledger. 00:41:13.421 --> 00:41:18.141 So that's sort of that dialectic of, yes, CBDCs are bad, but stablecoins are 00:41:18.141 --> 00:41:21.401 kind of the worst of both worlds. They're... 00:41:22.342 --> 00:41:27.202 They're private in name only. They are backed by government debt, 00:41:27.302 --> 00:41:33.602 so it's still extending dollar hedgemen, dollar empire, buying Uncle Sam's bags. 00:41:33.822 --> 00:41:38.322 They are still beholden to the public sector because if you want to hold $150 00:41:38.322 --> 00:41:43.042 billion of treasuries, you damn well better do whatever the government wants you to do. 00:41:43.202 --> 00:41:47.902 You can't just hold that and say, I'm not giving you my customer information. 00:41:47.902 --> 00:41:52.322 No, they'll seize your treasuries, and then there goes by $150 billion. 00:41:53.362 --> 00:41:59.022 So let's look at this. A good example, Tether is the biggest stablecoin provider in the world. 00:41:59.262 --> 00:42:02.702 They have over $160 billion of treasuries. 00:42:02.922 --> 00:42:07.022 They have been forced to onboard the FBI, the Secret Service, 00:42:07.222 --> 00:42:13.282 Chain Analysis, which is an In-Q-Tel-funded private blockchain analysis company. 00:42:13.282 --> 00:42:18.822 All of these law enforcement arms, private or public, are on their system. 00:42:18.982 --> 00:42:26.142 They've seized and blacklisted billions of dollars of tethers at the behest of the public sector, 00:42:26.282 --> 00:42:35.102 and that is sort of the – it's the new iteration of the private-public relationship 00:42:35.102 --> 00:42:37.722 that has been capital creation. 00:42:37.722 --> 00:42:42.822 And in many ways, it's being sold to us as this convenient, wonderful thing, 00:42:42.982 --> 00:42:45.402 cheap fees, dollar access for everybody. 00:42:45.522 --> 00:42:51.802 But we're creating an environment and a petri dish right now for global mass 00:42:51.802 --> 00:42:58.882 surveillance for all of our financial transactions and still the seesability 00:42:58.882 --> 00:43:01.782 and programmability at the behest of the public sector. 00:43:02.002 --> 00:43:06.542 So what's really the benefit here? What is so genius about this for the people? 00:43:06.542 --> 00:43:10.362 Oh, no, it's actually a really good way to build the Panopticon and buy Uncle 00:43:10.362 --> 00:43:16.542 Sam's bags and enrich all of the donor class that we have seen support Donald 00:43:16.542 --> 00:43:18.722 Trump's current administration. 00:43:19.975 --> 00:43:23.935 And to do it through a cutout so that gives the plausible deniability to the 00:43:23.935 --> 00:43:26.935 government itself in the exact same way Operation Chokepoint worked. 00:43:27.115 --> 00:43:29.435 Don't worry. It's not the government that's debanking people. 00:43:29.595 --> 00:43:33.295 It's the government that's leaning on the DOJ to lean on the FDIC to lean on 00:43:33.295 --> 00:43:34.775 the private banks to debank you. 00:43:34.875 --> 00:43:37.815 And the private banks are doing it. So, you know, it's them. 00:43:38.035 --> 00:43:42.135 It's not us in the exact same way. It's not it's not the government that's going 00:43:42.135 --> 00:43:45.575 to be programming and controlling and surveilling your your digital currency. 00:43:45.575 --> 00:43:48.815 It's going to be the government leaning on the treasury to lean on these stablecoin 00:43:48.815 --> 00:43:50.235 issuers to do all of that. 00:43:50.415 --> 00:43:53.815 So yes, as you say, the worst of all possible worlds, in a sense. 00:43:53.955 --> 00:43:58.175 And as I say, this genius act is in the process of being passed as we're talking. 00:43:58.175 --> 00:44:03.095 So by the time people see this conversation, it may already be a fait accompli. 00:44:03.235 --> 00:44:08.275 So there is no doubt much more that we could, should, and hopefully will have 00:44:08.275 --> 00:44:12.055 to say on this topic in the future. I know you'll be keeping your eye on this 00:44:12.055 --> 00:44:16.535 topic, and I will too, and so hopefully we can update people as this continues to develop. 00:44:16.735 --> 00:44:20.215 But I'm glad we set the groundwork today and let people know what is happening 00:44:20.215 --> 00:44:23.215 as it's happening, because I don't see a lot of people talking about this, 00:44:23.275 --> 00:44:24.875 and I'm glad you're out there doing that. 00:44:25.015 --> 00:44:29.335 On that note, of course, I'll be linking up your articles with Whitney Webb 00:44:29.335 --> 00:44:33.295 on Unlimited Hangout about this topic that I think are great explainers that 00:44:33.295 --> 00:44:37.835 get people on board and explain all of this to them in pretty simple English, 00:44:38.055 --> 00:44:40.195 so I'm glad that resource exists today. 00:44:40.617 --> 00:44:43.277 Where else should people be going? How can they follow your work if they're 00:44:43.277 --> 00:44:44.137 interested in the subject? 00:44:44.917 --> 00:44:47.357 Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I do think it's very 00:44:47.357 --> 00:44:50.677 important just to add one little salt at the end of this. 00:44:50.817 --> 00:44:53.297 It's I think this thing is coming. I think it's inevitable. 00:44:53.717 --> 00:44:57.177 And whether or not you choose, you know, financial stuff is always very personal. 00:44:57.517 --> 00:45:02.257 So I'm not saying you should do anything at all, but just learn about what's happening. 00:45:02.437 --> 00:45:06.577 Learn about the technology and the players here and make a decision for yourself 00:45:06.577 --> 00:45:07.997 how you want to best situate. 00:45:08.597 --> 00:45:12.317 But just know that no matter what, you can try to cover your ears and block 00:45:12.317 --> 00:45:16.837 your eyes, but this tsunami is coming of stablecoins and money printing and 00:45:16.837 --> 00:45:17.937 all the things that we know. 00:45:18.097 --> 00:45:21.217 So just inform yourself and decide what you want to do with it. 00:45:21.837 --> 00:45:27.957 And that is hopefully the point of our work and my work is to just inform. 00:45:28.197 --> 00:45:30.477 Financial literacy is a really hard thing to find. 00:45:31.217 --> 00:45:34.117 It's very complicated, and it's very complicated on purpose. 00:45:34.637 --> 00:45:38.797 Finances, you know, the financial system on purpose is designed that way. 00:45:38.977 --> 00:45:41.237 When you add blockchain jargon, it gets even crazier. 00:45:41.437 --> 00:45:45.837 And that's kind of the whole point is to hide and mask behind these things and 00:45:45.837 --> 00:45:46.877 then create this new system. 00:45:46.997 --> 00:45:51.157 And all of a sudden, there's a new class of people that can only access these digital dollars. 00:45:51.317 --> 00:45:55.597 So prevent yourself from going there by reading, you know, a whole bunch of 00:45:55.597 --> 00:45:58.597 there are now quite awareness to what's going on. 00:45:58.757 --> 00:46:00.937 So there are some others really holding this torch. 00:46:01.097 --> 00:46:04.117 But I got to tip my hat to Whitney Webb at a limited Hangout, 00:46:04.197 --> 00:46:10.117 where you can find my work for noticing that this was something that was important. 00:46:11.317 --> 00:46:15.497 And working on me with a series called The Chain, which we will be turning into 00:46:15.497 --> 00:46:17.217 a book by the end of the year. 00:46:18.277 --> 00:46:22.277 And you can find it on thelimitedhangout.com, but I also created just a little URL. 00:46:22.297 --> 00:46:26.817 That's thechain.wiki, so you can just see all the articles there. 00:46:27.317 --> 00:46:30.357 It's almost 100,000 words. It's a book itself already online. 00:46:30.357 --> 00:46:32.377 We added a whole bunch of backstory to it. So, 00:46:33.010 --> 00:46:37.290 Just check it out there on Unlimited Hangout. And then very excited to announce, 00:46:37.350 --> 00:46:40.030 too, that we're going to be, you know, moving in that direction, 00:46:40.210 --> 00:46:43.410 doing more long form stuff and physical things. 00:46:43.710 --> 00:46:45.550 So we're going to be starting a print magazine. 00:46:45.850 --> 00:46:49.030 We're going to be publishing this book, starting a publishing house, 00:46:49.050 --> 00:46:53.050 which is what I was doing at Bitcoin Magazine when I started running the print magazine. 00:46:53.330 --> 00:46:56.890 I'm super excited about that because that's where we need to go. 00:46:56.890 --> 00:47:02.250 So, and, you know, they want us in this spin cycle of confusion by just hyper 00:47:02.250 --> 00:47:04.590 normal, just flashing us with stuff. 00:47:04.970 --> 00:47:08.490 We got to slow down. We got to breathe because the decisions we make are going 00:47:08.490 --> 00:47:12.190 to reverberate for a really long time as we're going into this new financial system. 00:47:12.570 --> 00:47:16.030 So our idea was let's make some slow content for fast times. 00:47:16.210 --> 00:47:21.650 And that's kind of the idea of the publishing house. So more to be said there 00:47:21.650 --> 00:47:25.410 for sure, but follow us on Unlimited Hangout and you'll get the skinny there. 00:47:26.630 --> 00:47:30.630 I'm incredibly excited to see this. And it does, again, it seems interesting 00:47:30.630 --> 00:47:33.970 to me that you've fallen so far through the Bitcoin rabbit hole that you're 00:47:33.970 --> 00:47:37.170 out on the other side back into the real world, an actual physical print. 00:47:37.590 --> 00:47:42.730 Yeah, it's good. I think that is the best possible progression to make is to 00:47:42.730 --> 00:47:47.510 reconnect with the actual real world as we realize that the digital world was 00:47:47.510 --> 00:47:49.930 just supposed to be an adjunct, just something that we use. 00:47:50.050 --> 00:47:52.270 But no, no, no, no, no. It's starting to use us. 00:47:52.450 --> 00:47:57.270 And we have to start reconnecting with the real world physical print magazines and books. 00:47:57.470 --> 00:48:00.230 Yes, I'm all on board. So I'm very excited to hear about that. 00:48:00.410 --> 00:48:02.470 I hope we get the chance to talk about that more in the future. 00:48:03.030 --> 00:48:07.070 Mark, good to make this connection. Let's keep talking and keep ringing the 00:48:07.070 --> 00:48:08.970 alarm bell about these issues. Thank you for your time. 00:48:09.750 --> 00:48:11.430 You got it, James. Thanks so much for having me. A real honor. 00:48:13.680 --> 00:48:24.720 Music. 00:48:24.290 --> 00:48:31.370 The federal reserve the heart of the american banking system for over 100 years 00:48:31.370 --> 00:48:36.250 it has operated in the shadows controlling america's money supply in total secrecy 00:48:36.250 --> 00:48:40.750 so all that information is available in our commercial paper. And who got the money? 00:48:41.490 --> 00:48:46.190 Hundreds and hundreds of banks. Any bank that has access to the U.S. 00:48:46.690 --> 00:48:49.550 Federal Reserve's discount. Tell us who they are. No. 00:48:51.710 --> 00:48:58.850 Until now. 100 years ago, in 1913, the Fed was created. Fractional reserve banking. 00:48:59.210 --> 00:49:02.610 The legal authority to do it. Takeover of monetary policy. 00:49:02.810 --> 00:49:08.050 Are conducted by the Federal Reserve Banks. They There is no other agency of 00:49:08.050 --> 00:49:11.830 government which can overrule actions that we take.