BTC Sessions - How Wall Street’s Bitcoin Adoption is Killing the IMF (Without Knowing It!) | Alex Gladstein

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Mentor Sessions Ep. 021: Bitcoin’s Fight for Freedom: Alex Gladstein on Human Rights, IMF Debt Traps, and the Trojan Horse EffectWhat if Bitcoin isn’t just for Wall Street, but a shield for freedom and human rights? In this explosive BTC Sessions interview, Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation, unveils how Bitcoin empowers activism, defies censorship, and challenges the IMF’s debt traps. From broken economies to authoritarian regimes, it’s not about getting rich—it’s about surviving inflation, tyranny, and financial oppression. Gladstein reveals how giants like Vanguard and BlackRock adopting Bitcoin unknowingly spread decentralization and freedom technology, acting as a Trojan horse against the International Monetary Fund’s predatory system. Discover how Bitcoin could free nations and individuals from debt traps, reshaping global finance and human rights. Ready to escape the fiat matrix? Watch now for a mind-blowing take on Bitcoin’s revolutionary power!Key Topics:• Bitcoin as an activist tool• Censorship resistance and decentralization• The IMF’s debt trap history• Trojan horse effect of institutional adoption Chapters:• 00:00:00 - Intro: Bitcoin’s Role in FreedomGladstein on Bitcoin as a tool for activism and dissidents.• 00:01:27 - Beyond Tech Bros: Bitcoin for AllWhy Bitcoin isn’t just for the privileged.• 00:03:39 - Financial Privilege ExposedHow financial privilege blinds critics to Bitcoin’s value.• 00:06:43 - Censorship Resistance in ActionBitcoin’s power for activists under oppressive regimes.• 00:14:20 - Oslo Freedom Forum InsightsStories of censorship resistance from activists.• 00:32:14 - IMF Debt Traps UnveiledThe IMF’s predatory lending and debt trap legacy.• 00:52:46 - Bitcoin vs. IMF: El Salvador’s FightCan Bitcoin free countries like El Salvador from the IMF?• 00:59:01 - Trojan Horse of FreedomHow adoption drives decentralization and freedom.• 01:00:50 - Bitcoin’s Unstoppable FutureWhy governments can’t stop Bitcoin’s rise.• 01:02:31 - Open-Source Money’s PowerThe gift of Bitcoin’s programmability.• 01:03:05 - Closing: Get Involved TodayGladstein’s call to join the Bitcoin revolution. About Alex Gladstein:• Chief Strategy Officer, Human Rights Foundation• Twitter: @gladstein• Website: https://hrf.org/ Donate: https://hrf.org/btc/⚡ POWERED by @Sazmining — the easiest way to mine Bitcoin and take control of your financial future. ⛏️You own the rig 🌍 It runs on clean energy 🔐 You get cheap Bitcoin BELOW Exchange Cost Start stacking wild sats today: 👉 https://qrco.de/bg8Jwq 📚 FREE Bitcoin Book Giveaway: New to Bitcoin? Get Magic Internet Money by Jesse Berger FREE! 👉 Click: bitcoinmentororange.com/magic-internet-money 💡BOOK Private Sessions with Bitcoin Mentor: Master self-custody, hardware, multisig, Lightning, privacy, and more. 👉 Visit bitcoinmentor.io Follow Us on X:• BTC Sessions: @BTCsessions• Nathan: @theBTCmentor• Gary: @GaryLeeNYC Previous Episode: Check out Dr. Ahmad Ammous on Bitcoin and Decentralized Health: Watch here: https://youtu.be/gqN8z3uwtx4Support the Channel: Smash the like button, share with your Bitcoin crew, and subscribe for more! #Bitcoin #Freedom #HumanRights #CensorshipResistance #IMF #DebtTrap #Activism #FinancialPrivilege #Decentralization #TrojanHorse #MentorSessions #BitcoinPodcast #BitcoinEducation #Podcast #Crypto #MentorSessions

What you end up having is a doubly useful tool for people who are activists and dissidents. And it's also being adopted by like Vanguard and BlackRock and apparently the U.S. government. They either don't know or they don't care that as they promote the Bitcoin brand and they drive the price up, they're pushing freedom, technology around the world. They were a leader in Central West Africa. They tried to basically rally other African countries to say, yeah, we're not paying back the debt. And then he was murdered and replaced with a very loyal eye on the client. So my hope is that in 100 years, we don't have this kind of debt trap. I am that nonsense.

Bitcoin's the only way out. Imagine if the world's most powerful, best-performing financial asset wasn't just for Wall Street elites, but for everyday people fighting for freedom in places where money itself is a weapon of control. In today's video, we're diving deep into the real Bitcoin revolution with Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation, Alex Gladstein. Stories from activists and broken economies where Bitcoin isn't about getting rich and quick, It's about surviving inflation, censorship, tyranny, and simply surviving. We chat about new empowering tech, the twisted history of the IMF,

and what the future looks like for countries still caught in their web, and Bitcoin's adoption trajectory. Going beyond Bitcoin to bring you the skills and insights you need to escape the Fiat matrix, this is Mentor Sessions. Well, Alex, thank you so much for joining us. Right off the bat, we all know that Bitcoin is only for tech pros. and finance bros. But maybe you guys at the Oslo Freedom Forum and Human Rights Foundation

have different stories to tell, bro. Yeah, well, it's for a lot of different kinds of people. It is for anyone. It might not be for everybody. A lot of deniers out there, a lot of people who don't want to deal with Bitcoin, and that's fine. One of the nice things about Bitcoin is a voluntary system. There's no central violent,

authority forcing you to use it. You know, what will eventually force you to use it nonviolently will be the fact that it continues to increase in value over time and it continues to grow as a global monetary network so that it'll be pretty hard to avoid it. And it will be a bad financial decision for you and your organization or family or community or country or whatever to sort of wall yourself off from it. It's sort of like the internet. The internet wasn't violent.

It didn't force you to use it. People chose to use it because they realized they had a lot of value, make their lives easier, allowed them to connect to the world around them. And I think you're going to see something similar here with Bitcoin. But for now, it's very early in inks, early adoption. and some of the, I guess, tech, the people who think Bitcoin's only for wealthy investors or tech pros or whatever, you know, they might be surprised by some of the facts, which are that Bitcoin is very widely adopted around the world, especially in countries where the currency system is broken or doesn't work well, which one would think would be intuitive that you would understand that. But I don't quite people, I don't quite think people have thought that one through very well. And that's because they usually suffer from something called financial privilege, which I believe is a term that Allen Farrington invented.

I have to check on that one. But it's become part of the lexicon I use in my work because usually what happens is the people who are haters or deniers or whatever, you know, tend to come from wealthy countries that have stable currencies and property rights and pre-s breach and rule of law. generally speaking, right? Like, you know, obviously we know that the Canadian and American and British governments violate those rights sometimes. But generally speaking, like, you know, you can't really compare us to like China or Saudi Arabia on these things. We have a pretty robust property rights and free speech system.

And our currencies are, I'm not sure about the moose shekel, but we're, our currencies are generally speaking better than, you know, like a lot of other ones. I mean, even say what you want about the Canadian Peso, but, you know, it performs, it's not like you guys, it's not like you lose 50% overnight. That's what happens to a lot of countries. A lot of people, hundreds of millions, billions of people have dealt with this sort of situation where they wake up one day and like literally their wages, which are often not in a bank account because a lot of people don't have bank accounts around the world.

meaning they're held either in stacks of paper notes or they're held in some kind of arrangement with their employer, where it's like their employer owes them a certain amount or whatever it ends up being. This is more traditional around the world. You know, they're not saving an Amazon stock. That's not an option for most people around the world. You know, imagine just waking up and 40, 50% of it is just gone, meaning it's the same. nominal number of units, but it's only going to get you half as much real estate, food, water, gold, dollars, whatever. And that's what happens all the time. These are currency

devaluations that happen alongside just general inflation and hyperinflation. And this is what people deal with around the world. So that's generally speaking why people are in many countries like Nigeria and Pakistan and Egypt and Cuba flock towards Bitcoin. But there's an even additional more powerful use case. You know, that makes it appealing for anybody no matter their profession, right? Everybody wants to preserve their purchasing power or expand their purchasing power for their family and their community, their business. Everybody wants to have access to a global currency that can work everywhere. But even more so, there's the cypherpunk value.

used to it that are interconnected with the other ones, you can't separate these out. So if you're going to have 21 million and scarcity and global connectivity and permissionlessness, like these things all are inextricably tied with the cypherpunk parts of Bitcoin, the fact that it's unstoppable and censorship resistant, right, and decentralized. So what you end up having is a doubly useful tool for people who are activists and dissidents and troublemakers in these countries, right? So they're the ones who get their, not only does their currency suck, and they can't really interact with the global financial system very well,

and not only don't, you know, is it hard for them to save, but they also get their bank account frozen, like whenever they disagree with the government. And again, we've seen some of this. You see glimmers of this in Western societies, right? You see, you see glimmers of this happen occasionally in America, Canada, Europe. In Canada? they did that there? Yeah.

Well, I mean, yeah. And it happened, right? But it's more of an alarming exception in Canada as opposed to just daily occurrence, right? In China, it's just they have this real-time AI-powered financial system where anybody who so much expresses the smallest tint of dissent against the government immediately gets their financial services cut off. That's not what happens in Canada. Like, obviously. Like there's people who's living it is to go on television and make fun, whether it be Trudeau or the new guy or whatever. Like that's impossible in a lot of societies.

So, you know, everything's a spectrum. But the point is that this thing is such an important tool for generally speaking people who live under broken economies, which is most of the world, sadly. And it's also very powerful for activists and political dissidents. So it's got kind of these two aspects to it where it's like digital gold and it's digital cash. It's kind of got a little bit of both, which makes it very potent. What you're saying makes so much sense. I mean, I'm sorry, Nathan, I just have a quick follow up there.

Because what you're describing, yes, intuitively as kind of like a libertarian type myself, that's how I thought Bitcoin would grow. I thought like many others that it would be very bottom up. It would be the people who have the least access to banking, the least access to a stable currency that's going to hold its value. And while there have been pockets of that around the developing world, it's, it just baffles me. And I'm sure you can offer better insight why one country randomly will embrace Bitcoin, the people there will embrace it. And then very next door to the next country, which is, could be just as poor as the other one. It's just nowhere to be found. And it's,

it doesn't have that growth that I thought and assumed it would. What am I missing here? What did I get wrong. Well, I just think that adoption is in, it's going to be in like a step, step, step curve. It's going to be fits and starts. It's not going to be a smooth linear experience, much like the rise in Bitcoin's value against the US dollar is not a smooth experience. It's up and down and two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, four steps back sometimes. Adoption is the same way. It's an organic phenomenon happening all over the world. And Bitcoin is so alien to how most people think about money. You know, it's not, you know, in their mind, it's like, it's not tied to anything

real. They can't quite grasp why it's so valuable because they really haven't done the homework yet. And we shouldn't expect them to at first. This is a journey everybody goes through, you know, that we're all familiar with, right, from zero knowledge about Bitcoin to having a modest amount of knowledge is a journey. You know, it takes weeks, months, takes a lot of time. Got to get your 40 hours of Bitcoin podcast. in every week.

Otherwise, you're just not going to make it, basically. But, no, but I mean, it's hard to fathom. It's hard to grok. It's a difficult thing to understand. So you might have one leader in one country, like the King of Bhutan, sort of figure it out. He's like, holy shit, we can take all of this wasted energy that we're normally either selling for nothing to. China or India or we're just letting it run off and we could turn into the hardest money in the

world and they'll pay us to do this and like he sort of figured this out right and and and the park rangers in verunga and the DRC figured this out they're like wait a second all this extra hydro energy that we're not using when we sleep someone will buy that from us and all we need to do is set up like a starlink yes okay and and they'll pay us so that we don't we don't actually have to pay anything they'll come in and they'll set up all the infrastructure. Yes. So, you know, people around the world start to figure this out. But it's, again, it's like it requires an open mind.

And it's a total paradigm shift. So it fits and starts. It happens like this. And I think what, what your point, like, the reason why it's not like only grassroots activism driven adoption is because of NGU. Right? Like, Manaro is a better, like, you know, example of, like, if Bitcoin didn't exist, if we only had, like, you know, currencies on the internet that offered, like, some interesting privacy tech,

but they didn't hold their value very well. You know, let's say Bitcoin didn't exist. We only had something like Monaro. Yeah, like, Manero would never be adopted by more than a tiny fraction of people. Because, like, why would large institutions, you know, that just it's not, not, not going to happen. The reason why what really made Bitcoin special, which was Satoshi's genius,

was marrying the two ideas of digital scarcity of having, basically taking the state or the corporation out of the issuance equation and making it fair for everyone. And marrying that with a pseudonymous currency that's not tied to your ID, that's programmable, that you can use privately. that's that's that's cool so he he he she whoever it was they god knows who it was they figured this out right

which is just remarkable so that's that's why it gets this strange adoption where it's like on the one hand it's being adopted in these villages in central america and uh in you know small small towns in India. And it's also being adopted by like, BlackRock, Vanguard and Black Rock and, you know, apparently the U.S. government. So that's,

that's what I've been observing all these years is the Trojan horse theory where it's like, yeah, all these large institutions adopt it because of self-interest. They correctly recognize that it is a good long-term savings instrument and an investment. Yes, they're correct. It's the best one that's ever existed. just facts since it was created. It's the best investment ever over that time period. It's the best performing asset period.

So they see that and they're like not dumb and they want some. And they either don't know or they don't care. That as they promote the Bitcoin brand and they drive the price up, they're pushing freedom technology around the world. There's nothing they can do about it. They can't have it both ways. And that's the most magical part about the whole thing. I kind of want to go jump back for a second if we can, Alex.

On specifically thinking about the anti-censorship part of things, I know that we recently had the Oslo Freedom Forum just a couple weeks ago. And sometimes I think those things can be better communicated just through a narrative. I'm curious if there's anything maybe from this year or if there's any stories, particularly on the anti-censorship side for the freedom activists that were successes for Bitcoin, where it really was key and helpful and instrumental in the work that they were doing. Yeah, well, it's interesting. We have different conversations, right, in different groups. There's like this Wall Street conversation, which is more interested in like market structure and can your bank sell you Bitcoin in America and are we getting an ETF or not, which was for years the thing, right? People cared about. Now, obviously you see why they cared about it.

But, you know, is the U.S. government going to have this kind of regulation on it or not? you know, issues with large alphabet super organizations like the SEC. So that's one echo chamber. That's one conversation. We have a totally different conversation at these other events where we, like, you never hear people talk about the price and dollars pretty much ever. It's not that interesting. We're talking about it as a medium of exchange.

We're talking about a Bitcoin as currency, not as not as a financial savings instrument. Everybody obviously knows that it's a really good one of, that it's really good one of, that It's really good at that. But that's not what gets people excited at these events. I mean, what gets people excited is the ability to use it as money to move value from A to B without permission from any government. So some of the interesting stuff we were looking at are innovations in that area, right? So when we started working with activists on Bitcoin stuff in 2017, Bitcoin was really hard to use. And, you know, despite what all of the uninformed haters say,

Bitcoin is so much easier to use today than it was then. I mean, there weren't very many wallets. They weren't very good. They weren't designed really with the newbie user in mind. Most of them also included all these shit coins. Especially in the 2018-19 era. Now we have Bitcoin-focused, Bitcoin-only suites of different kinds of awesome open-source software and hardware options for people that really range. and there's so many different interesting kinds.

And what we've been really looking at is UX. So, you know, I was just looking like today, two announcements I saw today, which were really cool. I just have them here, actually. One was three. I'll just mention three. So, so like swaps have been like a big thing that really helps people. people. For example, you know, bolts is a really useful tool. I mean, BDC sessions

talks about this all the time. Like if you're dealing with on-chain and then you've got some lightning stuff like Bolt's is so cool. You can just like plug in some on-chain and you get some lightning. Like it's just really quite interesting the way they do it. But I'll be, which is obviously some of the listeners know, is a great app ecosystem. kind of that allows you to have a kind of a browser extension as well as a mobile app and it can be connected to a node that you run or that you control but someone else runs it but you control the private keys so it's still self-custodial um i really like that setup but albi's great and they just announced today that they've got both 12 offers so this is something that's

really cool and uh we've been looking at that for a long time and integrated swaps so basically both style swaps. So these are two things that like five years ago were on the dream list, right? Because like what activists need, what people out there need is a static identity that they can post and share without losing privacy. So and there's other ones, right? Like in a way you had like, you had like, you had like pay nims and you had silent addresses. But there were, there's big downsize to these things.

Like, they're not nearly as user-friendly as what we're starting to cook with now with lightning. Like, the idea that you can essentially have an alpha numeric email and, like, someone can, you're posting it and people are sending you stuff and they don't know anything about you. Like, they don't know where that money goes after that is amazing, right? So, Bolt 12 offers super, super cool, starting to get integrated into more apps. This is what we were hoping for. This is what you want is an experience where you can move Bitcoin around without having to deal with like a lot of different invoicing. It can just be confusing to people because that's not really how money works for them today. It is, I mean, even like, look, it's, I just think if you're open-minded about it, it's, it's, again, so much easier to use in it.

And it used to be like, I was buying something on a website the other day with Bitcoin, small business accepts Bitcoin. It's like a piece of merch. I was having it sent to me. So obviously I had to put in my address where I wanted it sent. And then instead of dealing with like credit card billing info and stuff, entering this long ass number and dealing with all that, which is what like, and I get it. Like people have a lot of auto fill.

But not, I mean, still, when you're on the airplane and you haven't used it before and there's wife, like you're always entering in all this nonsense with payment information. It takes forever. It's really annoying. You want to get a visa to some new country. It's not like they have your shit, like memorized. No, you have to put it in. So the very fact that instead of dealing with that, you can just say pay with Bitcoin.

And it just generates like an invoice and I scan it with my phone. And two seconds later, I'm done and I can move on. And it's in my email address. It's being tracked, like meaning the shipment's on its way. And I didn't, I didn't like give it all this other nonsense. So that's even with the invoice, like it's strong. but I mean imagine when it can be even better than that so we're we're we're we're really moving on some of these features that that you know the human rights community really wanted bolt 12 swaps

I mean swaps obviously give a lot of privacy there's some other stuff they have lightning addresses for sub wall that's channel rebalancing that's super super dope and on on bolt 12 it says yeah you can just generate bolt 12 offers straight from your hub go to receive bolt 12 out of description and now you're ready. Like this is unbelievably fire. This is sick. So I mean, that's where we want to be.

Same time, Electrum, which is an awesome, you know, old school Bitcoin wallet that is new in terms of features, but has been maintained for 15 years, I think,

close to 15 years. They've just announced submarine swaps over Noster. Nice. Yeah, I mean, that's cool. And then you've got all this stuff that Dorsey and Kale and Gardner and Rabler working on, like a lot of this interesting kind of pioneering cypherpunk stuff.

So today, Kale showed a demo of sending Bitcoin over Bluetooth between two phones that don't have internet using BitChat, one Android, one iPhone. And they both have, like, the BitChat now has a native cashier wallet. So they're sending value from one phone to the other without internet in a private way. And it's Bitcoin denominated. I mean, Zcash.

And, like, I get it. It's paid for Bitcoin. Like, it's not actually on chain. Yes. But it pays out any lightning address. Like that's the brilliance of cash you is that it speaks lightning. So it's like, yeah, okay, great. So you like just grab some, it's like a bare instrument.

You just grab some cash from someone with no internet. Now it's on your phone. You can turn around and just buy something on the internet with it. And the merchant doesn't have to know what he cash is. The merchant just speaks lightning. This is crazy. So, for example, like as this year goes on and we see the roll out of all these square readers, four million of them are going to start accepting light.

Okay. You can just use e-cash. You don't have to use lightning or Bitcoin. So you can be, you can live in e-cash and buy stuff at your local coffee shop in America later this year. I just think that's incredible. I mean, it totally deals a huge blow to surveillance capitalism. So I think there's a lot to be excited about. Obviously, I'm paying a lot of attention to what's happening on Wall Street and with governments and nation-state adoption and with savings and Bitcoin's performance. Yes, all those things are interesting to me too. They're not not interesting to me. All that's happening with mining is very interesting, highly interesting to me. Energies we're using to mine, where we're mining, the general hopeful decentralization

of mining as we've gone from 80% in China to not. And recognizing the pool issues today and then seeing people start to tack that through heat punk philosophy and home mining and different software setups to get miners more in control of templates. That's also highly interesting to me. But what we live and breathe is that using Bitcoin is digital cash. Like how can we make it better, more private, faster, more accessible, more adopted? And all three of these things work together, right? Like the energy infrastructure piece, the savings and investment piece and the cash piece, they feed off each other.

Like it's unlikely that Square is going to convince its team and its big public company to accept Lightning payments, which is very cypropine just because of what we all know, what Lightning does. If there isn't more widespread acceptance of Bitcoin as like this energy savings technology, if there isn't more widespread acceptance of Bitcoin as, you know, what, a really good investment. So these things all work together. You can't separate them. So we're sitting over here doing all the human rights work with the activists with Bitcoin. Yeah, of course we're benefiting from Wall Street adoption and more and more mining around the world. It's awesome. It's truly awesome. Imagine mining Bitcoin, cheaper than buying on an exchange with direct payouts hitting your wallet like clockwork. Saz mining makes it real.

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so two things I kind of want to pull on two threads there. One is I'm wondering if you think that the basically, I agree, the tools that are being built right now are phenomenal and incredible compared to what we had just even a few years ago. Like I use Lightning and E-Cash and Liquid all the time, right? There's the trust trade-offs, but I absolutely love that they're and they're very helpful. I'm wondering if you think that Bitcoin, as it continues to grow in adoption with the number go-up kind of marketing technology and the new tools, if it brings the cypherpunk ethos with it, or if that will start to get kind of diluted with more mainstream adoption over time. It was simply that it just attracted those people initially and it really speaks to them or it will communicate that kind of value to a broader audience in the future. And then additionally, kind of a darker twist, I'm curious your thoughts on, we know that Bitcoin is incredibly powerful for the individual, but could. Couldn't it also be empowering to bad actors thinking like authoritarian regimes where they could also then use it?

Does it cut both ways where they could use it to obfuscate international sanctions or international pressure? Yeah, I mean, look, there's two ways to think about this. One is today and one is in 100 years. Today, what's already obvious is that Bitcoin is much more powerful for the individual than the state. Like states and even large criminal organizations have ways to move money around. Yeah. They use the banking system. Yep.

Who doesn't have, you know, a way to get money around. Usually are individuals, families split up by geographic, you know, disparities, etc. So what's more relevant is that like, what? So like Putin can like get around something using Bitcoin, which we're not even really sure. doing. But let's say he did some trade with India, got around some sort of U.S. sanction with Bitcoin. I mean, is that really that? I mean, what's really important is that 100 million Russians can opt out of the Russian ruble with Bitcoin. Like, that's far more profound than some sort of trade mechanism thing. Far, far more profound and important. I mean, it's similar to, like,

the encryption thing. Like, what's more important that, like, Putin can share a secret message with his daughter? No, what's way more important is that 100 million Russians can, can speak secretly without the KGB spying on them. Like, let's be, let's have context here. This is an asymmetric technology. The implications for the individual are so huge. The individual's, you know, and it's funny because, like, the implications for the individual are just, like, radical liberation in many ways.

The implications for the state are not great for, like, corrupt thieves in the long term. Like, like, this is going to make it harder for them to do a lot of funny, business in a Bitcoin standard versus a fiat standard. It's going to make it a little harder for them to manipulate the system. It's going to completely make it impossible for them to have the big red button that just devalues people's savings like I described earlier. You can't do a 44% overnight currency devaluation if the whole world uses one global monetary standard. That that option is just completely whipped off the table. So it doesn't like it's not a panacea. It doesn't. It doesn't, like remove all the bad things, but it removes a lot of bad things. That's like, you know,

the Bitcoin fixes this thing is, is of course exaggerated for, for a joke by a lot of us. But, you know, I'll often remind people that the list of things that it does just straight up fix is very, very long. Like, yes, it doesn't do 100 things, but it does like 59 things. And it's, it's pretty crazy. It literally fixes currency devaluation. That's just off the table. So, I mean, it fixes many, many things. And. You know, today, I think you're seeing obviously the impact on the individual far greater than the nation state. I mean, even the nation states that are trying to do Bitcoin stuff, the IMF is still powerful. The IMF has basically like totally prevented El Salvador from doing, you know, what it was, I guess, interested in doing if you're, if you're trust their documents.

And then in Bhutan, it might even give them a hard time. And generally speaking, in Argentina, they gave them a hard time. So, I mean, I just think any developing country that's going to have a Bitcoin strategy is. going to meet a lot of resistance right now. So I would say today, it's so clearly better for individuals than for like the large criminal organizations and, you know, in governments. But that'll change. Like meaning like in a hundred years, if it's a Bitcoin standard, well, guess what? All crime is done with Bitcoin because nobody uses fiat anymore. So it's like at some point, it's like we see a shift, but like we're not, we're not there yet.

actually want to today most criminals use US dollars to commit crimes not not not Bitcoin correct I actually want to double click on that a little bit as well to mentioning El Salvador in the IMF

speaking of large corrupt criminal organizations I know you've written about the IMF extensively in hidden repression in particular I'm curious your thoughts so even recently I saw that like we had the events in Pakistan they were saying that Pakistan wasn't going to be allowed to mine as kind of a condition of their loan I believe

yeah and then I think it was just like a day or two ago, we had Buckelly meeting with Pakistan's head of crypto as well. And up until I think like this morning or yesterday, it looked to me initially like Buckelly was kind of defying the IMF. Like, I'm going to continue stacking Bitcoin regardless of what you say. But now I know there's some reports from them specifically, kind of calling that into question. And so one, I just want to get your general thoughts on it. And for anyone who's not familiar, maybe give us a little bit of background on the IMF and why they're so bloody evil. And number two, I'm wondering, I'm wondering, I, At some point in time, I would think that the IMF's influence and power would start to wane,

especially if a lot of other countries have other options to go to. I'm not sure if we're at that point yet, but I almost wonder for starting to see inklings of early rebellions against them. Well, TLDR, and you can read my book, Hidden Repression, if you want to learn more. But the IMF was set up for a reasonable purpose, which was to be the lender of last resort in the international financial system at the end of World War II, when we had just experienced like an entire decade of total shutdown of global trade. So the idea was like everybody put a little money in today. And by the way, most, you had, it was like mostly gold, like your country to buy access to the IMF to become part of it, which almost every country became and to get the benefits of

the World Bank, you had to, you had to pay your, your, your, your, basically your membership fee. And it was like you had to do most of it in gold. You couldn't do it all in your own currency. So the IMF is still the third largest holder of gold in the world. I didn't know that. Yeah. And of course, they poo-poo any idea of using gold for anything else, but they like to hold it. Of course. It's a total classic.

But basically, again, the original idea was sound reasonable at least. And it could also be done in a Bitcoin standard. Like, hey, let's put some money away for a rainy day in case there's a big famine or a hurricane that destroys stuff or there's a war. and we want to help refugees. Like it's okay to have money set aside for that. And that's really kind of what it aimed to do for the first few decades. And it helped rebuild Europe and in Japan after World War II when those countries might face a balance of payments issue.

And they could no longer export to the world because they couldn't afford to produce things. They would get a loan and then they would try to pay it back. And it worked reasonable. Okay. But then, like, after the Fiat system came in the early 70s, and the gold standard was officially, you know, moved beyond. It just took on a new life. It became this, like, neo-colonial apparatus

that allowed these big Western empires to feasts on smaller, poorer countries, not not smaller countries, but big, big countries, but poorer ones through debt colonialism instead of old school colonialism. So basically, they would get dollar bailouts. And they're not allowed. allowed to pay them back with their own currency. You have to get dollars. So it forces them into this system of just perpetual debt where the average country would have like $100 million in external debt in the 70s and now it has like $100 billion. And that's not matching population

growth or economic growth or anything like that. It's totally untethered. It's completely wild. Exponential growth in debt. And it's a big part of this is because these were historically dictators taking the dollar bailout from the IMF and then turning around and devalienable. valuing the currency that the people used. So the good example is Egypt and Cece, the dictator there. I mean, he takes $3 billion from the IMF, or I guess $8 billion is what he's currently taken. But the average, you know, 70 million Egyptian workers are earning pounds. They're not, they're earning Egyptian pounds.

They're not earning dollars. And he devalued the pound by 50%. So it's like $8 billion bailout. goes to the dictator to build out the military and police state and subsidize certain things for it for you know on his terms meanwhile it's more expensive it requires more man hours to earn a piece of bread in egypt than it did five years ago so this is what this is structural adjustment this is like they take these loans and they they they basically have to the dictator then views their country like a private equity firm you use like a company it just acquires like let's

cut cut cut cut cut wherever we can so let's raise taxes Let's kill the currency. Let's remove any, like, you know, regardless of your theory of where the state should be in terms of providing things for the people, you can't go from 100 to zero because people die. So like they might have a little bit of subsidy for healthcare education. Instead of phasing it out gently, it just goes to zero overnight. And then you're just like, okay, there's not time for the private sector to react. People die. So this is this is what's been going on for decades is this kind of structural adjustment.

Sometimes it's called austerity. But, you know, generally speaking, these are never things that the Western countries had to do. Like Britain has this whole extravagant free healthcare thing, which again, we can debate how well it works, but they have free health care, the NHS for their people. Free healthcare, but you get my point. Yeah, yeah, you guys have, okay, fine, but get this, but get this. Poor countries were never allowed to do that if they took a country. and I am up loan. Not allowed. Not allowed to do that. Not allowed to do what the rich countries do. Not allowed to have any handouts for poor people or any of that stuff. So they take this loan. They have to

cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And that's why, again, you see impoverishment and you see huge crises. So, I mean, that's why I don't like the IMF very much. It's very exploitative. It works with dictators. And it's not a good expression of American values at all. It's predatory instead of being collaborative and cooperative. And I don't think we need it. I think we can be stronger without it in a Bitcoin standard. So that's my take on that. No, I agree.

I'm curious to on that, just to tease it apart for myself a little bit too. Is the IMF in the World Bank that essentially controlled like it? It was post-Bretton Woods, if I'm not mistaken, but is it essentially controlled them by the U.S. and that's why it's the U.S. dollar-denominated loans? And then in terms of the subsidies and programs that they have to cut, is essentially the equivalent of the bank being like,

yeah, fine, we'll give you another loan, but we're cutting up all your credit cards? So for the first part, so the second part of the question relates to like the bailouts. The first part is, yeah, so in 44, when it was all drawn up, the U.S. did have this like super dominant global economy. So we had the most gold of any country by far. We had incredibly large economy,

all these different things like versus the total per capita versus, or rather total GDP versus the world, it was like 40% or something of all the world's economic profits were like American. So now it's like 20%. So like America's faded by half versus the rest of the world. It's not like we've gotten weak. It's just other people have gotten medium strong or strong, right? And there's just a lot more of other people than America. It's 300 something million Americans. There's eight billion people on the planet, right? So the rest of the world's growing and changing, but the rules never changed. So like, Like, it was fair for us at the time to have some sort of veto power because we were the biggest underwriting the whole thing.

But we're no longer the biggest. So all these rules at the IMF about how to like change things are all based on population sizes from 1944. So like England has like England has more veto power than China. It's just not or than India. And, you know, Italy has more than China. All these ridiculous stuff. So you go through and you look at it. But the point is, you know, the IMF does have its own currency, the SDR,

but the SDR is a bastion and it's still mostly dollars. And essentially, the U.S. has sort of big veto power there. Let's remember that the head of the, I mean, the World Bank and INF headquarters are in Washington, D.C. As if it's if you need a reminder of who's in control. The head of the World Bank's usually always an American and the head of the IMF is always a European. That was like the deal. It's not going to be like somebody from Malawi or, you know, Laos. It's not going to happen.

So, you know, that's an expression of power and where it's from. As far as the bailouts go, no, it'll be, it's called the Paris Club. So basically like, okay, let's say you had a dictator. They were like, screw this. I'm not paying this back. You have to understand that like at the other end of that contract is some kind of Western Bank. Not the IMF World Bank, but like a private bank, okay? They have a balance sheet.

And like the loan to the Congo is an asset on that bank's balance sheet. They don't want to see that go to zero. No. No thanks. They would rather extend another loan. And they want to see their balance sheet grow as opposed to shrink. So, you know, like Mobutu in the 70s and 80s, he would go back to the IMF and say, man, I can't.

Sorry, I can't pay this back. or we're not even sorry. He would just be like, I'm not paying this back. But then, you know, they had all these handlers in go-betweens who were like, they're like, fine. We'll, you can't pay $5 billion back. We'll give you $10 billion. You pay back the five. And you get another five.

And this is just how it continued. And this is the spiral. Yeah, so the Paris Club is like where you would, it's where you would go to as a dictator if you couldn't afford to pay it back and you wanted to renegotiate terms. And of course, the terms would always. get more predatory over time so that, you know, countries could never escape this trap. And as long as they owed Dymaph, you know, Dyneth gets its pound of flesh with all kinds of, again, just like laundry list of conditions that you have to condition at conditionality, which again is predicated on ultimately getting cheaper goods and labor from that country

from the West. So it's like, again, we want your labor cheap. We want your goods. cheap. So yeah, we're going to need you to devalue your currency so we can get the labor of the people cheaper. We want to be able to buy more from you without us changing our system. Can I ask a question? That'll work. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt there. I mean, I get you're saying the IMF and the banks, you know, on the other end of it, they want repeat business. They don't want the, you know, developing country to completely pay everything off because they want the asset on the balance sheet. But at some point, I assume, like even a loan shark is like, like, yeah, this guy's too much of a deadbeat to loan money to anymore. It's just not worth it.

What am I missing? Why wouldn't they eventually just say, well, this isn't worth it? We're never going to get our money back. There must be something different that I'm just not grocking, as the kids say these days. Well, so, again, this is a political economic system. It's not a pure private market system. It does make billions of dollars for the nation, for the creditor nations, for America and Europe and Japan. Like it is profitable enterprise, but that's not why they do it. They can make the same amount of money doing other things. They do it for power and for control, right? So, again, if you're a dictator and you've proven yourself like Mobutu did,

and you can go and look at this, you can look at like the, it's kind of interesting, you can look at the IMF lending history for, you know, Zaire. So there's the, and now it's called the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo. But if you type in like lending commitments, IMF, Zaire, you'll get this little spreadsheet. And it shows you the amount agreed and the amount drawn. And you can see they started with zero, like they didn't owe anything. And then it's like, okay, so then they took 27, used to look at thousands of SDRs.

So whatever it was, 27 million. back in the 60s was actually a lot of money. And that's called a standby arrangement or agreement where, again, it's one of these things, but it's like a line of credit. And then it's like, oh, they couldn't pay that one back. Let's give them 40. And let's give them 45. Let's give them 100.

Let's give them a thousand. So, like, you know, and it just continues to add up, right? So my point is, like, they knew very well that Zay, year and the dictator there wasn't going to pay back the loans. They wanted to continue to provide the dollars and continue to sink the country deeper into debt. And the dictator doesn't have to pay the money back. The dictator knows that. Whoever's after them has to pay. So, for example, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines borrowed $20 billion while he was dictator. And then when he got ousted by the people power movement in the 80s in the Philippines, it's not like the IMF was

Like, oh, okay, you guys don't have to pay back what he borrowed. No, like something like half of the GDP of the Philippines the next year in their new free country that they've gotten rid of the dictator. Half of their national profit, basically, as a country, went to paying back interest on the debt that the dictator had accrued. So they don't trust on the debt. Yeah, just they don't, yeah, they don't do, they don't do, what's it called? They don't wipe the slate clean. They don't do like a debt jubilee. When, in fact, American courts have a precedent on this.

Like, when we fought the Spanish over Cuba a hundred years ago, when the, when we won, American courts actually said that the Cuban people didn't have to pay back the debt that the Spanish Empire had incurred because they were oppressors, which makes sense, total sense. But that precedent is not followed by the IMF. So like whenever people have a Democratic Revolution and overthrow a dictator, they don't get to like, they still have to pay back the dictator's debt. I guess would their argument be that it was a dictator from within the country and not a foreign power? I mean, if they want to split. I mean, they make all this nonsense.

They say we're not political. But like they're constantly backing dictators. It's like crazy. I mean, there was one exception was after we invaded and overthrew Saddam in Iraq. I think we had to slate clean on that one. Like there's certain exceptions we'll make. But generally speaking, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's called odious debt. And, you know, generally speaking, there should be an international agreement where, like,

odious debt is like, should be canceled. But again, they don't, like, they don't want debt cancellation. So what they want is to pay back more, they want to pay back the debt with more debt. So to your point, like, instead of, like, again, okay, there was five million given out to the folks in the Congo. Oh, that's just going to go to zero. We're going to have to eat that. No, we're just going to give another $10 million, and five of that will pay back the original. And then there's a new loan.

And we'll deal with that later. And it's even at a higher interest rate. So this is just what they kept doing. This is why it's an exponential curve of debt. Would you just get rid of the IMF? Just like if you had a magic wand, just goodbye and replace it with nothing? I just don't think it's more of like an outcome of the system. I don't think it's a conspiracy theory or like people's sad.

I don't think the head of the IMF sits down with like his colleagues or her colleagues today. Mustache, twist. Yeah, and says, or if you're, you know, Dominique's Dresscon. Maybe she waxes. I don't know. Whatever. I don't know. But whatever.

The point is, I don't think they sit down and they're like, ooh, let's see how much money we can steal from Africans today. No, I think it's more of a structural path-dependent thing where it's like, it's just sort of machine. It's what it's doing. It's like, so I think Bitcoin is the only way. out. I mean, it's clearly the way out for individuals because you don't, you can't get structurally adjusted. Like if you're saving in Bitcoin, you're self-cust being like, or, or if you're saving in Bitcoin and sending the Bitcoin to your family abroad or whatever, whatever you're doing, they can't, they can't, they can't squeeze you anymore. So that's amazing. So it helps individuals escape.

You know, as far as does it help countries escape, we don't know. The jury's out. Like, I'd like to think that like eventually it seems like kind of obviously yes, especially with the mining. Like being able, like this is huge, like being able to mine and convert your abundant energy around you into a natural, into a neutral reserve currency that could be used to buy things like oil and aircraft and fertilizer and stuff. I mean, that's huge because right now, the only way that countries can buy any of that stuff is with dollars. So to get the dollars, they either have to borrow from like the IMAP or some other bilateral lending institution at a high interest rate, or they have to do business with America and sell

stuff that we want. So what they all end up doing all these countries is shaping their economies to grow or make stuff that we want instead of stuff that they need for the people. This is why you have like shrimp farming. Because like rich people in the West like shrimp and we want it in our freezers. Shrimp farming does not help the people who actually do the shrimp farming. Like this isn't like a rational free market thing that makes any sense. It's all just sort of it's like oh, well, we can get an I enough loan for that. Because that's what that's what that's what that's what that's what we want out of you is shrimp. So there's a lot here where it's like in a new system where the government doesn't have

that pressure to like get dollars no matter what. They can just mine Bitcoin for that marginal amount that they need to buy certain things. It totally changes the system. May I ask a question just to challenge that for just a moment? And I know you know tons more about this than I ever will. If without the loan, the biggest moneymaker for producers in that country was actually farming shrimp to sell abroad, I would think that would still make sense to do from an economic sense because then you get the money and you can buy the things you need from that. Like just basic trade 101, produce the goods that you're best at with the highest demand. Yes, but that was never a free market outcome of Bangladesh.

Like in order to do shrimp farming, there has to be massive human rights violations, massive child labor violations. massive environmental destruction and massive reduction of security of the people. I mean, they basically, they had these dikes or dams that would protect people from floods. And instead, what they do is they poke holes in them so that the land fills the water. And then they go and they have the kids and the young people who are essentially slaves, like go in the ocean to get little, to get little tiny shrimp. and they bring them into these new watery fields and the shrimp

grow into big shrimp and that's how they get the shrimp. So when a storm comes now instead of having these dikes and these forests to protect which were the natural and manmade and natural protections that they had now it's just like and it comes

over and it kills a bunch of people. So these are not like decisions that a rational actor would make. Gotcha. If they were like had any kind of accountability with the people. But again, oftentimes, again, in Bangladesh, it's just a bunch of corrupt dictators. So they don't, you know, so again, maybe maybe a, yeah,

maybe like, I mean, who knows? I mean, this all gets confusing, but it's like, it's complicated. I just think that it's hard to say, who's good at making what. Like, like, America makes a lot of corn, but it's, it's largely because of, like, like, subsidy and politic, like, democratic, like, democratic election, reasons. Like, we should just be importing cheap sugar from somewhere else, but instead we're subsidizing national. So even in democracies, it's like all screwed up. So it's, it's hard to say. I mean, one thing is like Canada and America should definitely be exporting energy. That's obvious. Like, that's clear. But like, when it comes to other stuff, it's just hard to say. I mean, should Bangladesh be exporting shrimp? I'm not sure. It's hard to say that we don't have a

world where we can like sit down and just brass tax that. Like, like, they definitely shouldn't be doing it the way they're doing it now. Or at least, like, I feel really bad for all the people involved in the production side of it, who don't see any of the gains, you know, that has seen elsewhere. Yeah, it's a major distortion in the price signals. It's going to skew everything. Of course, going to like that kind of monocrop of shrimp is never going to be sustainable because you don't even have necessarily a local market for it.

Curious then kind of jumping back a bit and tying to that as well, too, then. Alex, I'm wondering if you, maybe like how you see it playing out, or if you think, for example, that Bitcoin could get El Salvador out from the boot of the IMF? Well, I mean, I just posted about this yesterday. Let's see. I have the data right here. So Bulgaria seized 213,000 Bitcoin in 2017. And then, you know, they apparently sold it all, right?

Yeah. So today that would be worth $25 billion. Yeah. Okay. Bulgaria's national debt, their current total debt, it's $32 billion. So let's play this out another cycle. Yeah, I was going to say, wait for years. All right. So what you have here is literally just staying humble and stacking the stats that come to you in the case for Bulgaria, would have completely removed them from any kind of debt trap, whether to be to their own citizens, to foreign markets, to lending, to lenders.

they would be just not in that situation. So that's just like, that's a fact. So, you know, when it comes to these other countries, I absolutely think it could be a way out. If they are smart like Norway and they create a wealth fund and they manage it carefully, yeah, the problem is most countries aren't smart like Norway and they're corrupt and they end up stealing everything like Nigeria, etc. I mean, if you're smart and you avoid petty corruption and you,

you were able to save carefully over 10, 20, 30 years like the Norwegians did. Like their sovereign wealth fund was like a couple hundred million bucks in the 90s. Now it's like $3 trillion. And that was with no, well, they had some micro strategy in there at some point. But basically with no Bitcoin. Like most of those gains were not Bitcoin related. They were just smart investment at low but reasonable return rates. I mean, over a period of time.

So, I mean, I absolutely think it's a way out of countries, but they have to do it. What I don't know is will they make those correct decisions? I mean, obviously, Bhutan has, Bhutan's got more than a billion dollars of Bitcoin because they turned that flowing water into it. I mean, most of these poorer countries have abundant either hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, something that's happening every day that they're not. capturing and and bitcoin mining allows that to to be captured and you know most of these poor countries you go to have absolutely crazy abundance of resources but but there's never been a way for them to harvest themselves for different reasons whether it be dictatorship or corruption or colonialism or whatever i think this is a way out of that for a lot of them but again you have

to have smart leaders or else it's not going to happen i want to kind of tag onto that then because we spoke about earlier that if someone defaults on the debt that's taking it off the balance sheet but they pay it back that's taking the asset off the balance sheet for them as well too. And so I would think that, right? That's why, I mean, but that's why it's like they kind of want to keep them in the debt trap. They don't, they don't want the country to be like fully paid back. We're not dealing with the IMF anymore. That's like usually not something they're into.

I would think that they're not necessarily going to go quietly into the night. Although you did make the point earlier that this really is just a machine. It's not really necessarily malice or being directed by any sort of group of people or individuals. I'm just curious if that sort of situation, starts to play out if you think they'll have a, you know, kind of villainous response. But it's always been tied to the system. Like that, like most countries are like Bulgaria. Most countries have a large debt. Like, it's not like they're debt-free. Like, most countries are not sitting in that situation. And, and nor does it make sense for a lot of countries that have

no debt. Like, you know, borrowing and like structure, to use this, you know, this is somewhat of a normal thing. I guess my point being that some countries have some countries exited the IMF system or the or the or the IMF World Bank Western lending system, India, China, like they they got out now. Now some of them have their own system now that they're using to do the same thing like China for example. But I mean India took took some funding in this way for a while and then they decided not to take anymore and they were they're certainly the better for it so you know if you have a strong leader you can and you're big enough country you can try to do this thing it's tricky though um you know Thomas Sankara was you could look this person up they were a leader in central west Africa um in the 80s and they tried to basically rally other African countries to say yeah we're not

paying back the debt that that that that that colonial French force is racked up on our behalf. Sorry. And then he was murdered and replaced with a very loyal IMF client. So, you know, just each country and area has its own story. But there are generalities you can tell of the general experience, which are that generally speaking, the developing world, if you want to call it that. It's really the de-developing world because they're getting, like,

they're basically more economically dependent than they were 50 years ago. like a lot of these countries used to manufacture cars, airplanes, all sorts of shit. They don't do that anymore. They just sell raw goods to the West. This is called de-development, right? But a lot of these countries, generally speaking, have in absolutely crazy amounts of external debt that does not match any sort of improvements in life expectancy or GDP per capita and gold terms in their society. It just doesn't. Like, these are just the outcomes of the system.

There are exceptions. There are different areas where this influence is stronger or weaker. But this is like the outcome of the fiat system, basically. And this is what we can say no to. And people can at least opt out individually. I got a question to follow up on what Nathan was saying. You've called Bitcoin a Trojan horse. And we've talked about Hayek, the sly roundabout way to kind of get governments to stop doing this whole government fiat thing.

when the day comes and the politicians no longer have the incentive to try to bring this freedom money in because maybe it's not benefiting them in the near term and they realize, oh, damn, this is going to destroy my sovereign currency, my fiat currency. What happens? Is there anything? I guess what do you envision the worst possible scenario that a government or governmental organization could do to try to quote unquote stop Bitcoin and what kind of a chance if Fannie does not have of doing anything.

I just think it's like the stric end effect. If they're like, hey, you're not allowed to use Bitcoin or whatever, it just makes people like, what? Oh, that's interesting. Why did you say that? That was weird. We were talking about the weather. Yeah, I think that it's like Trump with Epstein stuff right now.

Oh, my God. He's like, stop talking. Like, what are you? Why are you so angry about it? Dude, I'm sorry, please tell me you've seen the Chappelle show sketch with Blackbush, because that's exactly what it reminded me of. Have you seen that one? Similar idea.

But we still talk about the war. We're going to space. Yeah. So I just, I think they can put short-term obstacles in the way. But like, this is only going in one direction. I mean, as long as governments keep devaluing currency and deplatforming people, like, Bitcoin's going up, I mean, if they meaningfully were to stop doing that, and restore some kind, I don't know how they would,

but if they restored some sort of like super sound money to everybody, then they stopped censoring people, then Bitcoin would have no reason to exist, and it would slowly die, and people would stop eating electricity, and it would go away. But there's no way to kill it otherwise. I mean, the only way to kill it is to change human behavior, and your behavior is not going to change in that way.

It's going to have to go through a transformation led by Bitcoin. into hopefully a better kind of human behavior. So my hope is that in 100 years, our ancestors are living in a world where, you know, we don't have this kind of debt trap, I am that nonsense, whether it be perpetrated by China or the United States or whatever world power is in the future. Probably be Africa.

I mean, dude, in a hundred years, Africa is probably going to run the world based on population. So who knows? I mean, Wakanda. Like, the point is, now it's going to be like two billion people in Africa and this Chinese are going to

the Chinese population is going to decline America should be fine but like the demographics aren't looking good for for like Europe and East Asia basically but but who knows what the world looks like the point is one hopes that this kind of predatory lending

is kind of much harder to do so we'll see I mean that's ironically like anybody involved in Bitcoin. I mean, you can take that step today. You can get involved in the revolution. This isn't just some idea thing.

You can ask to be paid in Bitcoin. You can get your school involved, your kid's school. You can get your church or whatever. You can get your local market involved. You can start stacking. You can learn more about how to stack carefully. Like, the thing that makes it so powerful is that you can get involved today. And even to your earlier point, like you can now send

it without the internet Bluetooth between two phones. Like, yeah, I mean, good luck is, is edge case stuff, but it's like, it shows you the power of programmable money.

It's amazing. Like what you can build and open, open source money. I mean, it is really insane that this open source money is, um, whatever it is. It's freaking 120,000 US dollars right now as we speak.

It's, it's completely nuts. Uh, it's just like it's, nobody, nobody issues it. Nobody knows who created it. Um,

what a, gift. So that's where we are. Beautiful. And with that, Alex, I think that's the perfect place to put a bow on it. I know we've got events in Africa and Indonesia coming up and you've got the next Freedom Forum. I think it's June 1st to 3rd next year. Where can people go to check out your stuff? What do you have going on? All that, all the links and all the goodies. Yeah. If you go to at atrrf.org slash financial freedom, you can learn about what we're doing at HRF, doing education grants, got the open source projects. You should apply.

I'll be in Indonesia at the Indonesia Bitcoin Conference in September. I'll be at the Africa Bitcoin Conference in December. It's probably about it for me. It's two big trips for the rest of the year as far as Bitcoin events. And then, yeah, Oslo Freedom Forum is, well, I'll be at Vegas next year. And then I'll be at the Oslo Freedom Forum June, one, two, three, which is an awesome place where activism and Bitcoin come together. You should check it out. beautiful i hope to make it one year maybe next as well too and lastly just because i want to make sure

if i want if someone like myself wanted to donate via lightning to hrf is that possible yeah for for years we've been running our own infrastructure over btc pay uh probably for more than five years so if you go to hrf.org slash btc you can check out our btc page and uh you can even donate via pay join um which is which is pretty tight if you enjoyed this episode with alice gladstein please do do like and subscribe and check out the previous episode with Dr. Amuse on the evils of Fiat Medicine.