We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC129: How the IMF and World Bank Sell Exploitation As Development w/ Alex Gladstein (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, I have back one of our favorite guests with Mr. Alex Gladstein. The last time Alex was on the show, we discussed his groundbreaking article on the IMF in the World Bank. Well, Alex is back with even more because he's turned all of his research into a full-blown book on the topic. We cover a whole host of new and additional ideas from our previous conversation, which is vital information for understanding the impact of the legacy financial system and the hope, the abundant hope that Bitcoin brings to so many regions around the world. So with that, here's my chat with Mr. Alex Gladstein. You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by The Investors Podcast Network.

Starting point is 00:00:55 Now for your host, Preston Picks. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I'm here with Alex. And Alex, this has been a whirlwind. You got a book that just came out like a couple days ago. How has it been? That's really exciting. A lot of feedback. It's really nice to hold it in my hands. The hardcover edition, which is what we're going for, at least for the first few months, is just such a nice little package. I think they did a great job with the design. It feels really good. I've been kind of doing this thing the last few years where I'm first drafting a lot of content. as free articles on the internet and then kind of taking feedback, improving them, expanding them and then turning them into book projects, which has been really gratifying because it allows, first of all, anyone to access the content for free, but also do something a little more polished and structured for folks who want in a book format. And at the end of the day, I think what will have a much larger reach with the book,

Starting point is 00:02:02 it's going to be, this one at least is going to be available in physical bookstore. Barnes & Noble, things like that. So I think that's going to be really cool. I also like the fact that it's more of an international economics book. Yes, it is a kind of a Bitcoin book in the end, right? But the first, whatever, 60, 70, 80% of the book doesn't really talk about Bitcoin. It presents a problem that we've discussed before of how the international monetary system is repressive for most people. And I think that that will help draw more people into thinking about Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:02:35 I really do in the same. and the way that it drew me into thinking more about Bitcoin as a global force. I think we all have our own reasoning for getting into Bitcoin at the beginning, whether it be as a speculative asset, as an investment, or in my case, as kind of a cyperpunk human rights tool, which could provide privacy and censorship resistance. I think we all have our entry point. Very, very few people get into Bitcoin because they think it's going to be like the future global reserve currency.

Starting point is 00:03:05 So I think that hopefully this book can make an impact on people who are thinking about international economics and just show them a different point of view. Yes. Well, it's funny. So my wife, she has a master's in nonprofit management. And I remember distinctly when she was going through her degree, how much this global NGO, IMF, World Bank type stuff is crammed down the throats of all of. of these nonprofit management students. And I read the article that was kind of the precursor to this book. And I shared the article with my wife. She kind of, she flipped through it. And like, I read that thing from the start to the finish and was just so blown away at how how well you properly define

Starting point is 00:03:56 the way they operate and the impacts of what they're doing. And so when I got the hardcover ordered, I said to my wife, I said, there's a book. book coming and as soon as it gets here, you are reading this thing cover to cover. And I really want her to see kind of like basically the other side of the story because everybody's living in the west. Like we hear one side of the story. We really do. Like it's just crammed down our throats. And I think you do just an incredible job like laying out the other side of the story. So let me lead off with this question for you, Alex. In your intro, you have, this is this is what you wrote. this particular paragraph, I think, is really important in your intro. You say, as someone who

Starting point is 00:04:37 has spent my career fighting for the classic Western values of freedom and human rights, this book has taught me two things. Number one, these values are more important than ever before and essential for the future success of humanity. Number two, one cost of securing these freedoms in the West has been the deprivation of these freedoms for people elsewhere. Talk to us about the second part of that. Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of a grim realization. And I think it's something that people intuitively know in a small sense. Like it kind of creeps up on you. And I think most people have this sinking feeling that they know that there's this unequal quality to the world.

Starting point is 00:05:17 What I didn't quite realize was how directly tied together the kind of haves and the have-nots were. Like I didn't quite realize how dependent success in one area was, honestly, the exploitation of people in another. area. I really thought they were distinct and I thought that, you know, the West really was successful just because more or less of its productivity, freedoms, entrepreneurialism, all these different examples. And I thought that, you know, in many ways, the global set out governments and societies were less productive because of the lack of freedoms, lack of property rights, things like that. And that's a really naive view in retrospect. I think that's what I thought as a younger person. That's just obviously very, I think, ignorant.

Starting point is 00:06:06 And now looking back, we have to ask, why are these other societies so corrupt and authoritarian? Why do they lack so many institutions? And it is very linked to the West's role there, going back to imperialism, colonialism, and then going in the modern era through how the international monetary system has been used to repress these countries on an ongoing basis, again, replacing the weapon of the warship or the cannon or the bayonet with the weapon of debt. And I think that this is not a permanent construct. I don't think this kind of competitive rival risks dynamic is necessarily going to be permanent. Of course, you're always going to have rivalry.

Starting point is 00:06:53 But what I mean by that is I don't necessarily think you're always going to have certain societies that prosper at the cost of impoverishing others. I think that this has quite a bit to do with the quality of the monetary system in the modern age. Because before the fiat, let's say before Bretton Woods, a lot of the exploitation was done through just straightforward violence, right? That's how it was how imperialism was accomplished, right? So in the modern age, when you can't really be so brazen typically, right, were quote unquote, more civilized. The exploitation, I argue in my book, is done through debt, through creditors, borrowers and this relationship. And that's how the Western nations and now, even today, China, you know, continue to kind of benefit themselves at the expense of others. I think that if we have a

Starting point is 00:07:43 new paradigm where it's, where the global reserve currency is, is neutral and is not sort of preferential to anyone nation or group of nations and is truly kind of apolitical, then I think a different dynamic can emerge. And Jeff Booth calls this forced cooperation. And, I think this is really interesting. I don't know. Obviously, it's a little bit of like a hope. We don't know everything in speculation. Nobody knows what the world's going to look like in 10, 20 years.

Starting point is 00:08:11 But I do think as we shipped more towards a global language for money that's equal for everyone, that some of these really gross excesses get corrected, let's say. I think it just makes sense that if you have everyone on one standard, there's going to be a little bit of a regression to the mean away from some of these really hideous dynamic. So that's something I've been thinking about a lot. Like basically what we need for the world is post-colonial post-fiat, post-fiat economy. Like we had a post-colonial economy, but it was fiat money, which enables the controllers of that fiat money to still repress.

Starting point is 00:08:48 What we really need is a post-colonial post-fiat money. That's really the only way I think the developing world can really, really thrive. And that can be done in cooperation with the West. It doesn't have to be this dynamic. Like it's been since Bretton Woods where the West has achieved energy and food sovereignty at the expense of energy and food sovereignty of the Global South. I think we can, it seems a little kumbaya, but I really do think we can kind of have a little bit more equal footing here.

Starting point is 00:09:16 I really do. Do you think a lot of the key leaders, and I know this is really hard to generalize, but do you think a lot of the key leaders in the global South, understand your thesis wholeheartedly? or do you think that because they're living through the pain that that's brought about because of it, or do you think that they view it more as just something that is different than this source that you're basically saying is the Fiat system that's the root cause? Do you think that they see it as something else that's providing the troubles that they face? I mean, look, I think anyone who's lived in a country that's been structurally adjusted, 10, 15, 20 times, as you might have in a place like Argentina or Ghana, Pakistan.

Starting point is 00:10:04 I think that inhabitants of these countries intuitively know that the IMA is a malicious force. They feel they felt their parents and their grandparents have felt what it's like after an adjustment that they know that austerity is painful. It doesn't matter what profession or age or, you know, field they're in. That's like something that is known, I think, and very obvious. And I think leaders and politicians know this too. The problem is there's a lot of opportunism. And even leaders like Lula, for example, in Brazil,

Starting point is 00:10:35 who've been very critical of the sort of debt-based international monetary system. I mean, you know, they may say one thing, but on the other, on the next day, they may go and they may take the loan, right? Political leaders are in a difficult position because they are tasked with helping people not in 10 years, but now, right? So the kind of temporary short-term nature of politics, whether it be dictatorship or democracy, it just sort of lends itself towards. There's no better opportunities for them.

Starting point is 00:11:04 Yeah. Yeah, well, maybe like they know that it's bad to like further in debt the country, but what other options do they have is I guess how they reason it to themselves? I think that these leaders know that the current system is broken, that they've been screwed and that they'd like a different system. I very, very few of them, you know, except for obviously maybe, maybe. the folks in El Salvador, Central African Republic, a few other places. I mean, I think very few of them are grasping the Bitcoin thing. I do think you're going to see more of that. Right now,

Starting point is 00:11:32 what we're seeing, though, quite obviously, is gold, right? You're seeing central banks buy gold at all time levels. This is happening, not just in the global south, but all over the world. I just saw a chart yesterday from the FT. It's a historic gold buying pace at the moment. And it's just interesting. When you look at charts of gold purchases by central banks, you can kind of like see the, you know, what was called like the Treasury standard, right? Like post-71. Like people piled into Treasuries as savings kind of after the Petro Dollar was set up. That really was really strong until a global financial crisis, right?

Starting point is 00:12:07 And then it's it peaked and now it's declined and now it's really starting to pick up where a lot of these big, big governments are moving away delicately from treasuries and into gold. So I think that the gold thing is well understood. And I think that gold, does obviously provide some sovereignty and sort of kind of a check for some of these governments. But ultimately, it's pretty limited in the 21st century economy. And for people, it's not that helpful. Like, it's just the fact that it can't teleport. And it's kind of clunky and difficult to divide up and to share. And you can't really use it as money, so to speak. I mean,

Starting point is 00:12:44 it's really just a savings asset, right? Like, it can't really be, it's very impractical to use money. I think it's interesting to watch gold really become really popular right now, especially in the global south. And I think that as you start seeing this fiat system start to, start to unwind a little bit, that's going to accelerate. And then hopefully we see a little more Bitcoin adoption as well. I mean, I really do think that it's something that will help the individual, just as much as it'll help local communities and sovereigns. Like, I think that's the thing. Gold, like, it's hard to imagine like 10 million people benefiting from self-custody and gold. Like certainly that's the case in some countries, but it's just sort of hard to imagine that

Starting point is 00:13:25 having like a really big impact today. But I can imagine Bitcoin doing that for obvious reasons. So it's interesting to see these trends. The other one I was looking at is I used some data in my book about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ownership. And the global average of adults that use the internet is around 10% of people who've dabbled. let's say in some sort of way with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And the U.S. is a little bit above average.

Starting point is 00:13:50 Now, obviously that's because we're all highly connected. We've been like pounded with cryptocurrency advertisements on the Super Bowl and stuff. So it's around 12%. But you look at some of these countries that have been structurally adjusted a lot, countries that I look at in my book, and you're talking 20, 22%, 20%, 20%, 18%, 16% of internet using adults from 16 to 64 years old using Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. So we're talking a really noticeable trend here of people finding a way out. I thought that was really interesting.

Starting point is 00:14:23 And I think this is happening at a, this innovation of Bitcoin is quite fortunate. And it's happened now because as we were talking about earlier before we started recording, I mentioned to you that I'm really interested in the impact of the U.S. governance monetary policy abroad. What caused a lot of the suffering that I talked about in my book. was the U.S. government raising interest rates in the early 80s, which it was doing, were a very, like, self-interested but very, very reasonable, like, let's say, domestically reasonable goal was inflation was getting out of control in the United States and they had to raise

Starting point is 00:14:57 interest rates to try and fight that. Like, I think people understand that. That's fine. And when we talk about the Fed's mandates, things like keeping, you know, healthy employment and healthy inflation, things like that, the well-being of other people around the world is not part of the Fed's mandate. So when Volcker raises the rates to, you know, 18, 19, 20%, whatever they go to, it absolutely crushes the global south. What was known then is the third world. And you know, Mexico defaults and then all these other countries default. And you have the third world crisis and standards of living just plummet that decade. I mean, again, we're talking people who have to work 50% more or even twice as many hours to earn the same amount of rice or beef

Starting point is 00:15:35 or something like that. That's really what happened during that time. You had massive, massive wage deflation in real terms. That's happening again, right? In the last 18 months, you're seeing the Fed hike historically, right? Where like up to almost 5% are in that area from zero and close to zero. And that has led to like massive price inflation in the global south in terms of like bread, wheat, petrol, any kind of like basic stuff that people need to survive. And then also obviously a lot of currency devaluation. And the debt service that the governments kind of have to prioritize is all in dollars, right?

Starting point is 00:16:12 So mostly, there's some that are, you know, increasingly in China. And I want to talk to you about that, but in Chinese currency, but in general, like, we're still, it's still a dollar world. All these poorer nations have dollar debt and it, all of a sudden it gets really expensive because they don't, they can't print dollars. They can only get dollars through exports, really, in many cases. And the world starts to slow down. You had COVID.

Starting point is 00:16:33 You had the lockdowns. Like, so they, there's like, as we know, there's been dollar shortages. And it's why you see this stuff about the swap lines, things like that. Costs capital gets high. And you're seeing the same kind of disarray and tragedy. You're seeing total economic and political collapse in dozens of countries. So if the country hasn't completely politically collapsed, like maybe it has in Iraq or Sri Lanka, for example, then you're seeing total economic collapse like you might see in a place like Lebanon or Nigeria or so many other places.

Starting point is 00:17:04 So you're seeing like a breakdown. And one of the major, major factors of this, of course, is extremely, you know, accelerated rising costs. to capital due the Fed's decision making. So the thing is to wrap up, I note that people didn't have a way out in the 80s. What were you going to do if you were in Peru in the 80s being structurally adjusted? Like you, there was no sort of electronic money to be even conceived of. There were no mobile funds. Like you had the currency that you had, which was being depleted in terms of its value,

Starting point is 00:17:33 very, very, devalued very, very quickly, right? And you had no way out. But today, people have a way out. Like their fiat is struggling, right? But we're watching in the data, them escape into Bitcoin. I just think that's really interesting. One of the things that I've been talking with various Bitcoiners about on shows and whatnot is just this idea of net producers versus net consumers. And when you look at countries, people, businesses that are net consumers are not profitable or don't have disposable income, their ability to buy gold, their ability to buy Bitcoin, something that doesn't have counterparty risk.

Starting point is 00:18:10 is near impossible, especially when you look at it from a Bitcoin standpoint with all the volatility, like they can't afford to save in this technology if they don't even have, say, disposable income. But let's just say they do have a small amount of disposable income. They don't want to put it in something that is highly volatile because if they do have to cash it in for the pay an expense, it's difficult or it's challenging or it's worth less. And then they don't have that rainy day fund. So when we look at this and we look at the global south and we look at the impact for the last 40 years is just an explosion of their nominal debt load. They don't have, they're not net producers because they have such high loads of interest expense. And so it's really, it's really difficult, I guess from a nation state standpoint for them to leverage the technology and the power that Bitcoin provides.

Starting point is 00:19:03 do you think that that's one of the main reasons that we're seeing like they like it from a country level. Like you talk to people and they're like, this is amazing that somebody can't come in here and change the number of units. But they're still handicapped into the old, the debt loads that they have that they can't possibly save in it because they're still trying to pay down their fiat loans that just keep exploding and expanding. Yeah, well, I think that what we can observe now is that Bitcoin's a way out for now. individuals, it remains to be seen if it's a way out for countries. Like, we just have to kind of watch that. But what I do think is worth mentioning in response is stable coins because it's like an interesting, it fits into the narrative an interesting way.

Starting point is 00:19:45 Like typically what the West would do would be to protect its own economies and try to open up these like global South countries. And like that was the driving force. And in defense, a lot of these global South countries would impose things like capital controls, like they would try to like protect against capital flight, things like that. So you had this like struggle going back and forth because there was not like an equal playing ground. Like the powers that be had massive subsidies, their own internal industries, right? Like massive tariffs on anything coming in. So there was this natural kind of little struggle that,

Starting point is 00:20:23 I mean, big struggle that that continues. Now stable coins are interesting because as I like to point out, the global monetary system has evolved partially because of politics and partially because of markets, right? So when we talk about things like the petrodollar or world trade policy, the agricultural, they mean agricultural policy, these are obviously political decisions, political constructs. But something like the euro dollar would be a totally market-based construct in terms of it emerged organically outside of the control of the U.S. government. I think it's interesting to watch that. And now you're seeing the stable coins kind of pop up as like a successor to the euro dollar in a way, like, right? They're not, yes, they could probably be killed off by the U.S.

Starting point is 00:21:03 government if the U.S. government wanted to, but like as they exist today, they're kind of like this little free market phenomenon that's popped up where like people really want dollars and it's kind of penetrated out into a lot of societies. So I think what's happening is you're seeing people kind of balancing the Bitcoin adoption with stable coin adoption in a lot of ways. Like everywhere where you see Bitcoin adoption, you often see a lot of stable coin adoption. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right, I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord,

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Starting point is 00:25:50 Yeah, I mean, I think that there's, like, again, dollar's still a king. There's a natural desire to have the money that everything is priced in in the world. And before stable coins, that was pretty hard for like lower to middle income people in the global south to get. Like, they could get it in paper money, which has, of course, like, there's a lot of limitations there. But it's not like in many of these countries, you could get like, you could have like a dollar checking account. No, like sometimes if sometimes if you had one, there would be haircuts. like they would, in some countries, if you're a small business, you can like earn dollars from American tourists or whatever or American clients. But in countries like Ethiopia, you have a

Starting point is 00:26:30 certain number of days to get rid of the dollars. Otherwise, the government comes in and takes them and gives you the local currency at like a horrible exchange rate. The ability to hold just hold a dollar digitally is a pretty revolutionary thing, I think. And again, it might be ephemeral, but it's like, it's interesting to see that. And that is, absolutely why you see someone interest in stable coins. Like I'm not sure people trust stable coins more. It's obviously like we're talking about like, you know, tens of millions of people. So it's hard to make generalizations. But I think that there's trust in Bitcoin, but I think that people know that it's quite volatile and they can't like reasonably run their

Starting point is 00:27:06 business off of it. If they're a fiat focused business for now, if you've got all these bills or income coming in in fiat, like it's difficult to be like Bitcoin native. Like that's a challenge. And that you see that everywhere from businesses to even, like developers, like a lot of developers, like they try to get paid entirely in Bitcoin and the price swings and they're in trouble. So I've seen that. I think that while we're in this kind of a transitionary phase, it's nice to have both tools. Like as an American, obviously, I like the fact that I can access the dollar and Bitcoin. That's pretty handy. And I, I just think it's probably morally reasonable to ask that everybody in the world to have that same privilege.

Starting point is 00:27:45 Like, that's kind of nice. Like, I hope everybody in the world could have as we go through this transition access to Bitcoin, but also access for the best fiat currency. I think that that's like, that seems fair. And I think that that the market is expressing that in the rapid adoption of stable coins around the world in these countries. Like people like having the dollar. They also like having Bitcoin. I think that's going to be the case for a little while here. You had mentioned the Chinese you want being used for debt issuance. Teach us. What are you hearing? What is the size of this? Just tell us everything you know. Yeah, well, it's pretty significant. I have some data for you, but like basically what people need to know is that the CCP has

Starting point is 00:28:25 been watching what the IMF World Bank did, right? Like they themselves were clients at one point and they want to replicate it. It's pretty appealing for a natural power, a global power, too wants to do the same sort of resource exploitation, like that that makes sense. So what they'd like to do, which they are doing, is trying to make it so that like resource states that have things like minerals or oil. what they'd like to do is buy that stuff with Yuan that they can print and then have those countries which now have these like whatever you want to call them Petro Yuan or just

Starting point is 00:29:00 yuan earnings China would like to see some of that get paid back to it in the form of paying back these debts paying back interest on these debts. That's the machine of course that the US built through the IMAP and the petrol system, etc. So you're kind of seeing the Chinese try to build that. It is not going to work the same way because the market doesn't want to use the yuan. Like there may be more and more trade being done in it, but like what, what you really should be looking at is like percentage of global like reserves that are held in the new day on and they still remain like super tiny. Like I don't, if you look at the history of reserve currencies and here's where I would disagree

Starting point is 00:29:36 with Ray Dalio, it's like whether they were the Dutch or or the British or the Americans, like, you go back, you look at all the different reserve currencies. They were empires. They exploited human rights abroad, but domestically where they issued the currency, there was a rule of law. Like there was a court system. There was somewhat of, there was transparency. Like, you know, you could, there was private property. That was the case in these systems, even going back hundreds of years. So the market likes having a rule of law at the heart of where the currency is being made. That's, that's really clear. People like that. That's not going to happen with China. They don't have a rule of law. There's total opacity. Like no one really

Starting point is 00:30:16 knows what's going on. I don't think you're going to see people be like excited to save in that currency. No. You also have the triven dilemma stuff like like China doesn't want to have a really strong currency. That'll completely wreck the country if it can't export like it has been doing over the last 20 years. Like like the way it's been able to grow is as many of your guests have talked about is through having a weak currency. And they continually try to like make that the case where they're like, you know, weaker than they quote unquote should be. And obviously the U.S. accuses them of being like, you know, I find this pretty rich,

Starting point is 00:30:49 but the, what do they call them a currency manipulator? Like, this is what countries do. They try to devalue their currency so they can have higher exports, right? And the U.S. never had to deal with this

Starting point is 00:30:59 because we have the Triffon dilemma. We are the reserve currency. So people will buy our debt, no matter how indebted we are to a point. That's not the case with China. They have, they're in this little dance. But they tried to establish this kind of IMF-type system,

Starting point is 00:31:15 and I'll just free, some stats that'll give you an idea of how big it is. And many, many listeners maybe have heard like the Belt and Road, which is kind of like the overall construct, but it's really like a bunch of like Chinese funded bilateral and multilateral banks that are active in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America. So about 37% of the debt that the 74 poorest countries owed last year was to Chinese controlled institutions. Wow. So you can kind of, it's more than a third. There's a really interesting book called Banking on Beijing by a guy named Brad Parks. And he claims that like in terms of single nation states, like you would look at,

Starting point is 00:31:56 for example, the IMF, as people might know, is controlled by its creditors, which typically are the U.S. plus Japan, Germany, France, UK, etc. But according to him, the CCP is the single largest lender to the developing world today. So as of last year, they had about 843 billion spread across 165 countries and almost 14,000 projects. Before, like that, the last year, the city is the before last year, when they started to have trouble, they were deploying about $85 billion per year to the global South. And 90% of that's credit, by the way, and it's not cheap. Like, they're more expensive than the IMF, for example.

Starting point is 00:32:29 So I view this as like, obviously, super negative. It's an IMF-like resource drain dynamic. It's run by a genocidal dictatorship. Like, this is not like a good thing. But they are encountering some trouble because they don't mint the reserve currency. So the trick to the IMF system has always been that the U.S. government can just simply print more and not suffer as a result of that within reason. We live in this kind of MMT kind of utopia type thing because of the Triff and Dialysis. So, you know, again, we can just kind of print more.

Starting point is 00:33:00 And it hasn't necessarily impacted people's appetite for our debt because what's been better than being promised to be paid back by the U.S.? Like there hasn't really been that many other better places to put your money in the last 50 years until the last few years, have started to change that paradigm, right? Well, China doesn't have that set up. So I think what's happening is that they have to eat these costs. Like if they lend a bunch of money to a country that goes under or that doesn't want to pay it back, I'm sure they can use force. They can take a huge stake in a telecom locally or something like that.

Starting point is 00:33:35 But they can't just like extend another loan necessarily. That's the IMF playbook. The IMF would go to a dictator and they would lend a totally irresponsible. of money, like let's say to Mobutu and Zaid here in the 70s and or Marcos in the Philippines in the 70s and they would say, here's a couple billion dollars. And then like obviously the dictator would not pay it back. And that's kind of where China is stuck. Like they have to figure out what to do. They have like discuss restructuring and all these things. Whereas traditionally the Western systems would just just say here's more money. And that's why these

Starting point is 00:34:06 countries have this like exponential debt increase. I don't know if you're going to get that exponential effect with China over time because they can't just print more. Like they have to, they're somewhat limited. So it'll be interesting to watch, but their presence in the global south is way bigger than I thought. I mean, it's pretty serious. Like we're talking, again, 37% of all the debt owed by poor countries is to China today. And you see those maps, right, that circulate on social where it's like, China is the

Starting point is 00:34:32 biggest trading partner of like, it's like the entire global south, right? So they have this massive presence and it's very concerning, obviously. for all the criticisms I have for the U.S. and for the IMF and World Bank Ledd system, I have even more for China. Like, you know, sometimes we'll do a window dressing about human rights, but hey, that's better than like the Chinese coming in and saying, if you talk about human rights, we're leaving. Like, there's degrees to this, right? It's very concerning. But I don't think it's as sustainable as what we've got going on because, again, they don't, they don't issue the reserve currency and they're about to have a huge economic crisis at home. So you're seeing them kind of pull back from abroad a little bit.

Starting point is 00:35:12 Their banking system is going to be under a lot of stress. I mean, it's very much powered by a lot of these real estate loans, these mortgages that are going to go to zero. So, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see what happens there. But, like, clearly, like, some of the first things that will be cut back if they have a serious, serious crisis, financially speaking, are their, you know, designs across the world, right? You see that when any empire starts to collapse. what disintegrates first is what's farthest from the core. Looking at your book and looking at all the stuff you learned through writing this book, what's one of the most striking findings or research that you uncovered in that process?

Starting point is 00:35:53 I think that, well, I mean, and I feel like this can't be mentioned enough, but I was so shocked to learn that the flow of global funds that was moving from rich countries to poor countries, which is intuitive and that's what you think was happening. reversed permanently in 1982. And essentially since then, what started as a trickle is now a multi-trillion dollar annual flow of resources from the global south

Starting point is 00:36:16 to the global north. Another way of putting that is that the global south is subsidizing our way of life. I think that was a pretty jarring realization. I think that there's also quite a bit of surprise that I stumbled across

Starting point is 00:36:32 when I was looking at like protectionist policy. Like, you know, a lot of the neoliberal stuff that the IMF pushes might sound good in a vacuum to a lot of libertarians. Like they may say, well, why should there be subsidies on food and energy, things like that? And I would agree in theory, right? In theory, I'm a classic liberal. But in practice, what happens is that, again, there's like these double standards

Starting point is 00:36:51 where the West has, like, centralized a lot of policy and used anti-free market measures to protect their economies over here while trying to, like, impose this, like, super, super harsh free market policy there. And that leads to this drain that we're just. discussing, right? So I thought this was really shocking that just I'll read a paragraph from the book. It's estimated that protectionism by industrial countries reduces developing countries national income by roughly twice as much as provided by development assistance. In other words, if Western nations simply opened their economies, they wouldn't have to provide any development

Starting point is 00:37:26 assistance at all. That's a pretty heavy thing to think about. Like if we just sucked it up men stopped subsidizing our agriculture, for example, then the natural reaction would be that agriculture would be much more competitive and profitable in Africa. And they'd make more of it and they'd start selling some of it to us. The fact that they don't do that and the fact that Africa imports 85% of its food, which is another thing I learned in doing this, is a result of our policies where we stack the deck. Again, we subsidize centrally plan. We subsidize our, system and we force their system down and it just makes it very hard for them to sell this stuff. And that's been done intentionally, like a very state admission of the U.S.

Starting point is 00:38:13 And again, this makes sense from a realist point of view, was to achieve food sovereignty. And we want all these little countries to be dependent on us for food because then that gives us this huge bargaining chip in negotiations. And we've used it. I mean, there have been some countries we've starved, like, straight up, like, because they didn't do what we wanted. I think that if we would give up some of these economic weapons, I think there wouldn't be any need for foreign aid. Like that's, I think, the big realization.

Starting point is 00:38:40 Like this whole foreign aid industry is just like a bandaid covering up a really nasty wound. And we can heal the wound simply by becoming more free market by practicing what we preach. I think that that was a really interesting realization for me. You probably have some of the best stories about how Bitcoin has impacted real people's lives in the global society. Can you just give us maybe a story that's at the forefront of your mind or something that you've, that you've read recently that you think would be a great example for people to kind of hear and hear the impact of the Lightning Network or Bitcoin as a savings technology or whatever? Well, there's two things that I would point out, like Breed and Abouremah, who I mentioned before

Starting point is 00:39:22 and that your listeners just probably know, I interviewed her for the book at Linux, and she talked about how it's pretty crazy like it. And this fuels a lot of it. the anti-capitalist sentiment. Like, I think that you and I would probably agree to capitalism is great, but that this is not capitalism, right? To paraphrase Alan Farrington, right? Like, all we're looking at is like the manipulation of the market system by governments

Starting point is 00:39:44 and states, right? We look at the bond market. We look at the stock market. We look at all this stuff. And all we're looking at, all you're reporting on as you do your job is how this is manipulated. It's hard to judge the system when it's so manipulated, I think was Alan Farrington's point. but in this current system, whatever you want to describe it as, in general, a farmer in sub-Saharan Africa, which includes people that she knows that she works with, they only earn 1% of the price

Starting point is 00:40:10 of coffee on the global market. And for her, that's like just super screwed up. Like, you don't have to be a Marxist to think that that's screwed up, right? Like, the person who does the most work to give you the cup of coffee, we talk about value for value in the Bitcoin community. Okay. We talk about paying your local butcher or your local farmer in Bitcoin. directly so they get all the money, right?

Starting point is 00:40:31 That's like what you see when you go to Austin, you go to Nashville, you start seeing this like beef initiative stuff. You start seeing this food intelligence stuff. I'm telling you, this stuff resonates hardcore with people in Africa. Like, they love hearing about this. This is super important to them.

Starting point is 00:40:46 I think you're going to find a lot of common ground between the bitcoinsers working on food sovereignty in America and abroad, the big, big time. But when you think about like the fact that you get these Bitcoin communities trying to establish these direct peer-to-peer ties, to the people giving them their food, understanding them as humans, becoming friends with them.

Starting point is 00:41:04 I think that then you think about the fact that when you drink this cup of coffee, only 1% of the value goes to the person who grows, you know, who actually does the most work. It's shocking. Like, it's really shocking, right? She says if we can get to a stage

Starting point is 00:41:15 where farmers can sell their coffee without so many middlemen institutions and get paid in Bitcoin directly or more or less directly from the consumer, you could imagine, she says, how much of a difference that would make in their lives. That's one thing I wanted to win out along these lines. Second thing is kind of just a story about lightning would be, you know, you've got a lot of Nigerians who have family in the United States or friends or clients in the United States customers.

Starting point is 00:41:40 I mean, you're sending money back to Nigeria from the United States. Again, Nigeria, the biggest country in Africa is going to be bigger than the United States and population in 2030 years. Massive country basically could be called the United States of Africa. Or people call it that. So this enormous, enormous country, there's a lot of flow from the U.S. to Nigeria. and from Europe to Nigeria, et cetera. In the American case, you use any sort of fiat rail, like whether it's Western Union or bank wire or, you know,

Starting point is 00:42:08 some of them don't work, like transfer wise left Nigeria. But, you know, you figure out a way to get fiat money from the U.S. and Nigeria. And not only are the normal fees that you'd have, whatever, I think the World Bank says that the average remittance or payment to sub-Saharan Africa from the West is like 7% fee. Okay, so not only do you have like that fee, which could fluctuate, But then you have the exchange rate risk thing. The government of Nigeria, as recently, was imposing an exchange rate of 450 Naira per dollar, right?

Starting point is 00:42:38 So the person on the other end, whether they be someone you're sending money to, whether you're paying for a service, maybe you're buying a book from a Nigerian author, maybe you're buying some coffee from someone in Nigeria. They're only getting 450 Naira per dollar. But the street rate of the Naira is 750, right, in this example, like let's say a month ago. I'm not sure exactly what it is now, but this is what it was about a month ago. So the government basically just steals like 40% of the value of that transaction by imposing it as fake rate. So the amazing thing about Bitcoin is it gives people the real rate of exchange, which is pretty freak. Incredible.

Starting point is 00:43:13 And that's where you know. And that goes for like, again, this doesn't necessarily have to be, I mean, yes, I'm coming at this from even right's angle. Like I'm thinking about it. Like, I don't want to send a grant of $25,000 to someone in, and we're doing this. We're funding a lot of people in Nigeria. I don't want to be sending a wire if they're only going to get $16,000 out of the $25. I want them to get the whole thing and ideally not pay the 7% either.

Starting point is 00:43:40 Now, Bitcoin doesn't have counterparty risk, but it's got an exchange rate risk on that's own side. So, hey, maybe they take the 25 when they get it and they sell it for stable coins and keep half. That's their complete, they have free to make their own decision. But what I hate is the fact that if you use the safe official system, you just get robbed. I mean, it's crazy. And this is the opposite of what the establishment would have you think. Like when you think about the U.S. government and the financial times and the whole established media political circle, they would have you think that the Bitcoin is the more

Starting point is 00:44:13 dangerous and risky thing. Yeah. But the current system is how they screw you. It's really crazy. It's not just that I'm concerned from human rights point of view. It's just for like anyone literally doing a remittance or business or whatever. Using the Bitcoin rail, again, gives you the real rate of exchange. And this is where you can start seeing what Jeff was talking about in terms of course

Starting point is 00:44:32 to cooperation. So I'll just read this piece that I think I was inspired by him. So basically, Bitcoin, he says, can short circuit the old system that has subsidized wealthy countries at the expense of wages and poorer countries. In the old system, the periphery had to be sacrificed to protect the core. In the new system, the periphery and core can work together. For example, right now, he says the U.S. dollar system keeps people poor through wage deflation in the periphery. But by equalizing the money and creating a neutral standard for everyone,

Starting point is 00:45:02 a different dynamic is created with one monetary standard labor rates would necessarily be pulled closer together instead of kept apart. We don't have words for dynamic, he says, because this never existed. But again, he calls this worst cooperation. And I think what I just described to in the way that companies using Bitcoin to do business are now serving the full value of the money to their customers is a really good example of this. Like, if you think about this, you think about how the U.S. has been able to impose its,

Starting point is 00:45:33 or rather how the U.S. has been able to subsidize its quality of life, honestly, has been to export inflation. We often talk about this, right? Well, it's a lot harder to export inflation if the Nigerian employees are now earning Bitcoin, right? Right? Like, you know, it's, it's, and we always talk about wages being sticky. Well, what are they, what are you going to do? Tell them you're paying less money. No, no, what ends up normally happening is like the exportation of the inflation of wages or the devaluation of wages is hidden because they're just not, they're not getting a demotion. They're just not getting a raise. And they're making whatever amount of IRA. And then IRA is just getting absolutely crushed, right? So this is subsidizing the way of life in the United States of people because it means that our input costs are not as much as they would be in a normal free. market, right? Well, all of a sudden you have Bitcoin, it's going to equalize things. And I'm very excited about that possibility. But again, you know, we don't know what's going to happen at the

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Starting point is 00:49:53 slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. Well, you bring up a really interesting point when you're just comparing. We earlier talked about the volatility of Bitcoin and why that's a reason why they They might prefer dollars or whatever. But in this scenario that you just described, when you look at the cut that they take

Starting point is 00:50:14 when you're using traditional rails, Bitcoin starts to make a whole lot more sense, even though it has this volatility in the price to whatever underlying you're comparing it back to. So that's why you see a lot of people use Bitcoin with stable coins, like in the global south. Like they kind of, it's a package deal, but like they might use the Bitcoin. they may earn in Bitcoin, but then they might hedge the Bitcoin by buying some stable coins.

Starting point is 00:50:40 This is just sort of, and like, it would be very unfair for us to like judge or blame them for that, right? Oh, yeah, no. They don't have dollars. Yeah. Like, in fact, in a lot of these countries' dollars

Starting point is 00:50:51 are illegal where there's capital controls or the government's going to come and steal all your gold in dollars or like Ethiopia, again, really large, massive country, more than 100 million people. It's illegal to have cash essentially on your body, like outside in the countryside, like in terms of U.S. dollars. Just like FDR tried to take all of the good money from Americans back in the 30s to fund

Starting point is 00:51:13 the New Deal and stuff, like that's what all these dictators do. They try to take the good money away. So that's what this revolution is all about. It is a reaction, is a reaction to governments doing that everywhere. Which countries are you seeing adopting Bitcoin the most? Like where do you see this really just kind of taking off right now? Again, I think it's tricky because people who measure this stuff often just to say cryptocurrency and then we don't have an accurate reading. Bit refil has some interesting data. I mean,

Starting point is 00:51:45 they're a really large player in the space of like people using Bitcoin to buy stuff, which of course, as we know is like a minority of Bitcoin's usage. Like most people use Bitcoin either to like just move money or to save, etc. But for the people actually using it to like buy mobile phone, whatever. If you look at Sergey, who's like the head of the refill, he has these great threads with all this data. Matt Alborg also now is helping them out and he he's got this good data too. I mean, you'll see Bitcoin is 40% or something of the whole, right? I think something like that.

Starting point is 00:52:18 Stablecoin is really dominant. Like that's what people are buying stuff with in these economies. So you're really seeing in a lot of places in terms of volume, transaction volume, and popularity as like a currency to buy stuff. like you're seeing a lot of stable coin traction in a lot of these countries. Again, I think that you often see the Bitcoin and stable coins kind of come to be adopted together. But again, like, I think that the rate of the people who are comfortable with, familiar with, understand, use Bitcoin is demonstrably higher in countries that don't have a good

Starting point is 00:52:50 currency. And I think this is just such an obvious thing that would happen. I don't know if there, I don't know if it's like a law or, you know, a theory or something. but it's clearly an observable reality that the worst your currency is the higher likelihood you are to use Bitcoin. It just seems obvious. Do you think that we just need more time for the global South to really kind of understand why Bitcoin is different than stable coins?

Starting point is 00:53:16 For instance, I don't know when it started taking so much market share, the stable coins and Bitcoin. I would guess it was in the last two to three years that it's really kind of taken on. 100%. It's like last three years. You know, if we warp four years into the future from right now, I suspect the price of Bitcoin is going to be drastically different than where it is right now. Sure. And these people that have been using stable coins and Bitcoin are going to look back and say, wow, I've been using this stable coin for the last four years.

Starting point is 00:53:45 And if I was trying to preserve my disposable income in Bitcoin instead of stable coins, I would be 5x more wealthy or 10x more wealthy than what I am right now. Is that what drives the adoption long term? Yeah, but it's so hard to say because, look, I mean, we're in like a two-year bear market right now. I mean, right? So that colors people's understanding of it. Yes. You've got a lot of people out there who got in at 40 or 50, right? So they're like, hmm, you know, I'm sure they're excited that it bounced back a little bit from like, what, 16.

Starting point is 00:54:18 But people are short term in terms of the way they think about this when they first get involved, right? So I think it's fair to expect that whatever the best non-Bitcoin money is, there's going to be a natural market demand for that globally until Bitcoin becomes big enough where like gold, it's a little more stable. I think that gold's like a pretty good proxy. Like if Bitcoin gets to 10 trillion, 15 trillion, like it's not going to be as volatile. It's just going to be too big. It will definitely still be moving around a lot, but it's going to be more like, oh, like a 2% declines like a big deal, right? Whereas today at Bitcoin, we could go down 10% a day, right? That would be like really unlikely for gold, right? On the road from a trillion, from, well,

Starting point is 00:54:57 right now we're at a half trillion. So on the road from a half trillion to 10 trillion, I think that people, the market's going to express demand for something else to hedge. And then at some point, it just that market demand starts to die down as people are more comfortable with Bitcoin. I mean, you've seen it. Like people who've been around Bitcoin for five years are more comfortable living in Bitcoin because they figured out how to do that. But it's not like an immediately understandable thing to do. It's hard a little, it's hard to be pure on Bitcoin, right? It's not not so easy. I think he gets easier for a lot of reasons over the coming decade, but I think you're just again, you're going to whatever that, whether it's the dollar

Starting point is 00:55:36 or God knows what, gold. I mean, whatever it is, like you're going to see the market express demand for that. Hey, let's say the dollar goes under and the yachts like get destroyed and Bitcoin skyrocket. It's like it might still be too volatile to use in your daily life. So, hey, maybe gold becomes like a thing for a while. And then maybe there's like basically, tether is tied to the gold price instead of the dollar price. And there's like these like gold tethers. I mean, it's going to be something like that until I think you see Bitcoin get to the point where one to two percent fluctuations throughout the week are kind of like normal maximum. Like the dollar, like the dollar, right? If you look at the Dixie, I guess, like it's not that

Starting point is 00:56:16 often when it goes up or down more than 10 percent, right? And like a really short period of time. So once Bitcoin, but I do think people are underestimating how like the difference between Bitcoin's volatility and maybe like the dollar's volatility. Like, like, it's going to get there. Like, I think in like the next decade where you look at bonds like, I mean, you've seen, I mean, you're talking about all the time. Like bonds are a type of dollar or a form of dollar, right? And those are already at Bitcoin's volatility.

Starting point is 00:56:41 So we talk about the, like they're not going to come back up, right? Like they're going in a particular direction. I think that it's going to be a while for people to be fully on board. And I think what's going to happen is you're going to have small communities of real diehard people who are like the educators and the evangelists, just like in our world, right, in the West. And then everyone else is just going to be like slowly adopting. But given what I've seen and given what I'm reporting on and given the people I've talked to and given the history, this is not going to be pretty for anybody, but especially for folks in the global South who have

Starting point is 00:57:16 these weak fee currencies. Like, they're going to lose everything. I think it's a moral imperative for us to help them learn about Bitcoin as much as possible. But I also think we shouldn't judge if they find ways to hedge in something that is easily accessible for Americans. I would expect that whatever the next best money is for daily use will remain popular until Bitcoin's volatility chills out a little bit. I think that that's completely reasonable in terms of making a prediction. And it's rational because if Bitcoin continues to succeed, it will eventually reach a size where it will be a little less volatile.

Starting point is 00:57:51 So I think it's quite natural to just expect there's going to be these side markets for a while. But in general, the adoption of Bitcoin globally is just going crazy. I mean, the number of conferences and stuff coming up in these places that like, it's crazy. Like, I'm trying to go to the, I'm trying to go to the one in Indonesia. Like, there's so much to learn from people. Like, there's going to be ones in Indonesia, Argentina, India, Ghana, South Africa, Japan. I mean, I'm just just rattling off ones I know of in the next 10 months. And we're trying to do what we can here. Like, I think that there's no, you know, we don't have to, like, I think in many ways, Like the thought leaders in the global south, like we just have, we have a lot more to learn from them than they have from us in many ways, right?

Starting point is 00:58:31 So what I'm trying to do through the Human Rights Foundation is bring them together and then learn from them. So, and then have them learn from each other, which is something I borrowed from the work we do in the human rights field. Like what we do is we gather dissidents together, have them trade notes and they get stronger, right? So we want monetary dissidents to come and do the same thing. So at the Oslo Freedom Forum this year, which will be June 13 to 15, in Norway, we're going to have a financial. Freedom Track where we've got Bitcoin community leaders from everywhere, from, again, Indonesia to India, to Iraq, to Cameroon, to Venezuela. And they're going to be coming in and teaching us stuff, like how to use Bitcoin in a dictatorship. Like, what's the best way to grow a community in a global

Starting point is 00:59:09 South country? Like, that's the kind of content we're going to offer. And we're also going to strive to do more, do what we can to help bring them together and provide them the resources they need, whether it be sponsoring to Africa, Bitcoin Conference, which I hope you can make one day. It's amazing. Or any of these other events. It's an intricier, you know, political environment. So that's kind of where I think we can help. And again, it's very tied into the writing I'm doing. But they kind of come full circle to the thing you asked me at the beginning.

Starting point is 00:59:37 I do think it's the fight for human rights and Western values is more important than ever. That's a big takeaway I had for my book. But knowing that that has always come through this unequal exchange, through this exploitation, I think that we need to take a hard look at that and figure out, well, can we fix it? The wrong answer is like a simp for some dictator. Like it frustrates me to no end to watch Bitcoin or support like Dubai or Saudi Arabia or China or Russia or whatever. Like that's the wrong way. That's the wrong lesson to take from the fact that our societies are exploitative.

Starting point is 01:00:10 Like the right lesson would be to say, what are the good things about our societies and how can we have? How can we produce the exploitation? That would be the correct lesson in my book. I think that fixing the money that helps address this. I think that transcending fiat, moving more towards a world that I think you and I both think it's going to have Bitcoin as more of a significant force in a global economy is going to give more people, individuals, lower middle class individuals, a way out, first of all, and a shield to protect them against all this nonsense.

Starting point is 01:00:39 But over time may start to have a huge impact on like the overall way that nation states interact with each other. And I think it might end up being a more fair system. So let's move forward towards that however we can. And I hope folks can read the book and be prepared to be shocked and angry. But then also be prepared to get real. I mean, you're going to be very angry when you read this book. I mean, there's just no way around it.

Starting point is 01:01:05 And I anticipate, I mean, that's kind of what I went through. Like, I just, um, is it this, is it all the, is it all the hard facts that everything's back to? Because that was the thing that I took away, at least reading the article was just, like you state, here's how I see things actually working and then you back it up with so much evidence and so many facts. Is that why you're saying you're going to be angry? I have 229 citations in a 179 page book. And I, what I tried to do in the book is actually I tried to flesh out a recommended reading list, which I'm excited about. So I kind of thought it hard about the top of maybe like 25, 30 resources, which really were helpful for me.

Starting point is 01:01:46 And I just put them in here. so folks can go and get those books and learn. And they're like very diverse. Like authors are totally all over the political map. But like these are some of the books that I learned a lot from. And I took what I could from them. So there's a lot more to be learned from just reading the whole things. But I think that's something I wanted to give.

Starting point is 01:02:05 And it just, I'm just happy to have it out there. Again, it's going to piss people off. But as I say in the intro, what I went through is that I kind of went through a journey of basically going from shock to just, belief to shame to optimism for a better future. So I hope that's like the direction we could go. I love that. I would say this. If you have anybody that you know, friend, family, whoever, that works in one of these Western NGO non-profit space in general, right? Because I think so much of the messaging that's happening in the NGO, Western NGO space is like if you go far enough

Starting point is 01:02:41 upstream, the IMF and the World Bank is heavily involved in the messaging of all these programs. People forget. They are the two of the most important pillars of the Brettonwood system. Like when the U.S. government set up the World Monetary Order in 1944, the IMF and World Bank were like two of the handful of key pillars. Like, don't forget that. They are the largest international lender of last resort and largest development bank still in the world. They remain incredibly important.

Starting point is 01:03:08 They remain criminally underinvestigated. Yes. They remain out of the conversation. And let's just shine a light. see what we can learn what was my overall take. And that's it. I think the book can at least like, it would be awesome if like a lot of the employees

Starting point is 01:03:24 of these organizations started a book club and started to read stuff like this. I think the main thing that I also wanted to contribute was like there's a lot of this like kind of rhetoric out there. Like confessions of an economic hitman stuff. Like I wanted to add something from my perspective because I just have a slightly different take. I, again, I don't think the answer is to like oppose the U.S.

Starting point is 01:03:47 and oppose the U.S. system entirely and stand some like revolutionary, whatever, it's Chavez or Putin or Chez Jinping. Like, that's a lot of this like de-dollarization stuff you see on the internet these days. It's a little concerning because it's like, well, are you posting about de-dollarization because like you want like Russia and China to succeed? Or are you posting about it because that's a fact and you're observing it, right? This can often get muddied. and I'm posting about it because I've been observing it for years and I quite obviously it's

Starting point is 01:04:19 happening. What I'm not post, I'm not like cheer posting China though. Amen, I see a lot of this. Amen. A lot of this too. And I just wanted to add something to the lexicon that was a critical look at the M&ML bank, but that was more of like a hey, the route is for us to like fix it, not like

Starting point is 01:04:37 again ditch the system. Like I feel very, very strongly about that. And as Americans, I think that that's important for us. Like, let's not give up on this project. Yes, it has accesses and things that need to end that are shameful and highly repressive. But the way forward is to fix that, not to give up entirely. So I hope folks can appreciate where I'm coming from. I'm glad you said anyway.

Starting point is 01:05:00 I'm really glad you said that because I feel the exact same way as what you just said. Oh, we're not out here cheering for the end of the dollar or for the rise of our enemies or whatever. We're here cheering for the end of the dollar because the dollar hegemony system has been pretty bad for most Americans. And it's actually led to Americans support for some of the worst dictators in the world and the repression of countless people. And it's not been the pride of the United States. Like it's not what the founders intended. Like remember, the current dollar system was created by Nixon and Kissinger, you know, not by Washington and Adams and Jefferson. Let's just remember that.

Starting point is 01:05:37 So this is something we need to fix about America. It's not our character inherently. Anyway, I like that you like that. So let's keep pushing that. Absolutely. And people know who to buy this book for. Buy this book for yourself too. I mean, oh, my gosh, this is so good.

Starting point is 01:05:54 So good, Alex. I cannot say that enough. So thank you so much for making time. Is there anything else you wanted to highlight that we can have in the show notes? I want to just say our first conversation, we got into structural adjustment, a lot of like, a lot of meat. on what's included in this book. Yeah, so we'll have a link to that in the show notes with our first conversation because we covered pretty much a completely different set of things in this conversation.

Starting point is 01:06:18 But totally. What else do you want to highlight? No, just the book's out. It's hidden repression. You can get it on Amazon and you can get it on Bitcoin magazine. I have reasons for wanting you to do both or either. The best would be to buy, probably if you want to, you can buy with Bitcoin on Bitcoin magazine, which is awesome.

Starting point is 01:06:39 But leaving reviews on Amazon is very helpful for me because obviously that's the whole system. The surveillance capitalist system wants you to do that. So the easy way to help me without helping Amazon necessarily would be to buy the book with Bitcoin on Bitcoin magazine and then leave a review on Amazon. That would be like a great thing. But I will be doing more on this. If you're in Miami, I will be speaking on Friday of the Bitcoin conference on the main stage around 4 p.m. I'll be right after Arthur Hayes and Michael Lewis, which is pretty awesome. That's going to be very entertaining.

Starting point is 01:07:11 And I'll be right before Jack Muller. So it's going to be a really fun afternoon on the big stage. I've got a 20-minute talk on Bitcoin versus the IMF based on this book for you guys. I also have two signings. I'll be doing a signing in the Whale area on Saturday the 20th. I'll also be doing a signing in the Expo area. More details on that to come. But really, really excited to see a lot of you in Miami soon.

Starting point is 01:07:32 And again, if any of the listeners are interested in getting deeper into this content, definitely come to the Oslo Freedom Forum in June. The tickets are available at Oslofremforum.com. And again, just huge thanks, Preston, for having me on the show. Oh, my goodness. Thank you for making time and coming on. It is always a pleasure to hear what you're up to and to talk about this amazing book that you just published.

Starting point is 01:07:53 So thanks for coming on, Alex. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin-specific shows come out every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it's something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. And with that, thanks for listening. And I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses or forums, go to the investorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only.

Starting point is 01:08:38 Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC129: How the IMF and World Bank Sell Exploitation As Development w/ Alex Gladstein (Bitcoin Podcast)

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