You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 18: Prince Filip Karađorđević of Serbia

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

My guest today is Prince Filip Karađorđević of Serbia, Chief Strategy Officer at JAN3, a global financial technology company. Having previously worked 15 years in traditional finance, Prince Filip joined JAN3 because he believes in Bitcoin's potential to bring freedom and sovereignty to billions around the world. As the CSO, Prince Filip champions the cause of financial freedom through digital assets like Bitcoin and stablecoins, while promoting legal frameworks that support economic empowerment for the unbanked. Prince Filip is a frequent speaker at international conferences and interacts with heads of state, congresspeople, and C-suite executives. He believes in freedom and the new Renaissance that Bitcoin enables. In this episode we discuss the history of the monarchy in Serbia, including its benefits, such as protection of individual property rights and religious freedom. Filip shares his personal journey to working in the Bitcoin industry with JAN3. He explains the importance of top-down approach to Bitcoin adoption, and we end with how Bitcoin can solve issues like wars and violence by changing the incentive structure of money. This episode is the third of 5 special episodes filmed at the Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam, recorded 9 weeks ago, and aired in delay due to the War in Israel; Thanks for your support & understanding. ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, subscribe and support my work. Thank you! -- SPONSORS -- ►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the latest episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  -- LINKS -- Philip’s⁠ Twitter⁠ |⁠ Instagram⁠ |⁠ JAN3 Twitter⁠ |⁠ Website⁠ Efrat's Twitter:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/efenigson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Efrat's Telegram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://t.me/efenigson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch/listen on all platforms:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://linktr.ee/yourethevoice⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support Efrat's work:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support Efrat with Bitcoin:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson⁠⁠ Filming & Editing:⁠⁠ Ohad DeGrate⁠⁠  -- CHAPTERS -- 00:00 Introduction & Background 00:40 The Monarchy in Serbia and Yugoslavia & its Benefits 03:30 The Importance of Individual Property Rights in a Monarchy 04:35 Philip's Background and Move to Serbia 06:40 Philip’s Work in Top-Down Market Education & Adoption with JAN3 09:40 JAN3's Efforts & Grassroots Projects  10:30 Bitcoin Adoption in Switzerland & Lugano 12:40 The Royal Foundation & Job Creation in Serbia, including Bitcoin Education 16:00 Philip's Journey as a Bitcoiner and Public Acceptance 18:00 Reducing Scepticism & Objections to Bitcoin Amongst Red-Pilled 20:00 Will Djokovic Adopt Bitcoin?  22:00 Standing Up for Values and Dealing with Criticism 25:00 Money & Wars, Bitcoin’s Potential to Create Change in the World 29:00 Final Thoughts & Call to Action

Hey everyone, this is Efrat Fenikzon, I'm here at Bitcoin Amsterdam conference and I have the honor and pleasure to host today His Royal Highness Prince Karadjordjevic, Philip Karadjordjevic Prince of Serbia and Yugoslavia Yeah, Prince of Serbia now When the monarchy was abolished It was Yugoslavia If the monarchy becomes reinstated

It will be Serbia So we're in the in-between zone right now Do you think the monarchy is going to be re-established? Why not? It may happen You're working on it? I'm not directly working on it But yeah, just hard money will help

Help it get there Do the people of Serbia want it? Yes really i'd say a good portion would want it uh yes because monarchy was a time of uh of wealth as a time of people were it was pre-communism yes communism had its had its days during um and in the 50s 60s and 70s and people associate those days of the as the good days but that was it's uh it's a fake story because they people don't know this but yugoslavia during the socialist times was um was doing more trade with the west than it was with the east 60 percent of its gdp

came through trade with the west wow so it was propped up by a lot of u.s uh u.s money and uk money and to keep that project alive our family uh was uh was um was ousted i should say uh we left the we left the country and the monarchy was abolished 1943 is when my great-grandfather The King Peter II, the last king of Yugoslavia, left the country. The reason why my family was not protected by the West is because the West saw that it was easier to have control over Yugoslavia in a socialist state as a way of being closer to Russia. So they supported the partisans over the monarchy.

Plus, they didn't want a monarchy, which was at the time Yugoslavia, which was like a small empire, and it was an asset-rich, independent sovereign country under a socialist system it was always going to fail and it always needed the the help of money from abroad to uh to keep this project alive and look what happened after when tito died 1980 the whole country just disintegrated and the blame is now led is given to my great-grand uh my great my great-grandfather king alexander the first who created yugoslavia they're saying that it's his fault because yugoslavia fell apart that's the mainstream narrative now yeah people understand it's a bit more complex than that really but the reason why

yugoslavia was first created it was because it was uh we were having growing threats from um the aust the austrian hungarians and we needed to unify our people and it was uh first it was the kingdom of of of serb sloven slovenes and croats and slovenes and that then incorporated the other six nations so the bosnia montenegro and macedonia joined as well and we under the monarchy people were free to live how they wanted to all religions ethnicities were free to do whatever they wanted to to practice religions the way they wanted to because they were economically more well off and acting more as sovereign individuals under a monarchy the the head of the state doesn't really it's not that he doesn't care he wants people to be to be happy to be happy if his population are

not happy that means that the monarchy there's a chance that the monarchy is not going to survive into the future and a good monarchy makes sure that individual property rights are protected and that is important if people's property rights are protected they know that they that they have a future they can hand it down to their children and they can they can make decisions that last generations this is what freedom is about is and this is what what we had under the uh under the serbian uh monarchy and under the yugoslav monarchy is that we had this um uh this free system basically religions could get along together not like they did today under a democratic or republican system or democratic system where democracies vote for one um for one

population in over the next population yes and then you end up having divisions over time and it's constant divide and divide divide and conquer constant divide and conquer and philip you were you are um based in london or in serbia i was living in london most of my life then in 2016 i uh met my my wife to be we married in 2017 uh she moved to london i was living in london we had our first son in 2018 and then that's when i was really getting back in touch to my serbian roots she's serbian okay so luckily she she was speaking serbian uh to my son i have trouble speaking Serbian because my father my mother my mother's Brazilian princess uh she spoke to me even though she's Brazilian she was brought up in Spain most of her life and she

spoke to me in Spanish so Spanish is my mother tongue but I speak to my son in English and my wife speaks to him in Serbian so then we moved to Serbia in 2020 when COVID when the whole pandemic happened we my job went online and then within two weeks of that happening I'm like hey we're moving to Serbia why did you do that because it was at that time at that time it started because i i had my job and it was a good job in london and i could take it to serbia okay and i could work remotely from there and i told my work i'll be i will uh when things are good again when that went after lockdowns when things open up again i'll come back every now and then and we'll have this hybrid work um setup and they agreed to it okay then when things were better and things

opened up again i didn't go back and then i got a phone call say hey philip when you're coming back ah you know i'm kind of comfortable here all right well you know good for you in serbia yeah but then it was great i i didn't want to look back i was planning to stay there for good and then finally uh when i went public about bitcoin in 2022 on this talk show with uh with my wife when i was asked about crypto and then i interrupted and say no it's more about bitcoin and blah blah blah blah that's when i ended up in miami and that's when i got offered the job at jan 3 with samson mao yes so that's my that was my exit out of my fiat job into bitcoin world Great. So you did your fiat job and now you have your Bitcoin job. So tell me, you know, Bitcoin is a bottom up grassroots movement. And Gen 3 takes the top down approach through governments, right? And through politicians. Why? Why is that the way? I mean, my opinion about governments and politicians is that they're hard to trust them.

But that's the opinion of any Bitcoin like myself. Yeah, so I want to hear your approach. I think Bitcoin is, of course. Maybe you first say what Gen3 is doing. Oh, yeah, of course. Gen3 is a digital infrastructure company, Bitcoin infrastructure company, focused on expanding the Bitcoin network and accelerating hyper-Bitcoinization. We have technologies like we're releasing a new Aqua Wallet,

which is a bitcoin centric wallet with usdt on bitcoin liquid network and this is going to be big latin america we are opening up our jan 3 financials which is an otc plus other bitcoin financial products like bitcoin bonds which will be helpful for mining um for raising capital for mining and things like that so different portfolio of products yes but the marketing i say the focus the mission is to to to expand uh bitcoin awareness and yes we all agree that bitcoin is a bottom-up approach it's a grassroots project you can't change that yeah but we're gonna have to also come up with some new strategies and one of that is a bit of top-down work as well and speaking to politicians that means speaking to politicians which sometimes you have to easy

for you i guess you have access to those uh more than others yeah uh speaking to politicians leaders ministers but also company leaders high net worth individuals influential people and all around the world all around the world and and making them understand what bitcoin is and letting them know that there's this technology that's happening that's growing and it's um they have the choice to be a part of it and to um and to work with it or they might become irrelevant one day Well, it's good if they understand that, but if they want to come on board, what do you offer them to do together? It depends.

We're still very beginning stage conversations, but it'll be either mining, so finding out ways of how they can mine using their local energy to mine Bitcoin and put it onto their reserves. Yes. Or we will be white labeling our Acro wallet and so they can use that so people will go down the route of hopefully el salvador where that hopeful country would say okay let's give the choice to the people i wish more and more countries did that right yeah exactly so it's it's the choice the free market which is what it's all about either you have government issued issue

currency or here's your private money which is bitcoin the people choose and over time hope people should will see that bitcoin is superior of course yeah well to me it's clear it's very clear it's the really depends on each country so what have you managed to achieve so far with some of the countries that you've been speaking to if at all you said it's just the beginning so it's just beginnings we are quite middle middle way talked with one latin american country and we have and then i mean some talks with some regional countries in uh in in uh the balkan region about not about adopting bitcoin but about energy uh mining projects and then we have loads of other grassroots style projects happening where people are coming to us because we know we are known as

the bitcoin um nation state adoption company so we have a lot of people coming up to us saying how they can help so we create a lot of telegram groups out there and they communities communities and these guys will uh will will uh will work on trying to get introductions as well and then if want to bring us in to do conversations and to to give some sort of legitimacy to the whole to the whole thing then we do that there's there's conversations happening all over i mean um in switzerland there's uh there's some keen people that are working with the governments there there's a lot of swiss politicians that are being orange pulled at this as we speak swiss and switzerland is where the money the big money lies right this is but this is switzerland because switzerland

very much on the private on the private money issue like you've seen what happened in lugano out of all places you know Switzerland they've got one of the least inflations in the world problems of inflation

in the world they've got the highest income per capita in the world they're fine they don't need Bitcoin

I mean we all need Bitcoin but they're the last country that needs Bitcoin but Lugano has de facto adopted Bitcoin

are they a state a country they're a canton it's a Swiss system it's cantons different things they have the

ability to set their own Yes, they set their own policies. That's why you have the canton of Zug, which is very open to agnostic on crypto and technology, and they're a very tax-advantaged canton for hedge funds. You'll find a lot of the world's hedge funds located in Zug because of the tax advantage.

A little bit now what Bukele is doing in El Salvador with his technology law, saying we're going to give any technology company 15 years of no taxation. so just so they can come here create jobs and grow technology with the main focus on bitcoin of course but other things like ai and x y and z so if i get you right if any politicians or people who handle the public sector are listening to us and they're interested in bringing that conversation to their state or to their country yes they should approach you to jan 3 and we can advise them about

regulations we can advise them just education regulation um mining payment systems anything anything we uh we we have uh resources to uh to to to cover all areas of bitcoin love it can you tell me a bit about your new foundation for bitcoin education in serbia well it's not really a fun it's foundation dedicated to bitcoin bitcoin's gonna be a part of it okay tell me what the foundation it's called the royal foundation karayeski fundacja uh we're coined we've got it now in the karayeski fundacja.rs which is the serbian um um domain and we are the main focus of the of the foundation my wife and i my wife is uh her name is danisa princess danisa my son is stephanie danica danica danica and she she and i would we we've started this foundation with the

help of a couple of other friends and it's it's its aim is is for job to create jobs and to stop the brain drain in our region brain drain has been a huge issue out of serbia out of croatia slovenia and these are the rich rich part part of former yugoslavia but then of course uh macedonia bosnia and serbia we want people to stay in serbia because serbia is beautiful we want them to stay the region the region is beautiful and it can and will there will be a lot of opportunities in the future so we want people to stay there and we want other people to the diaspora to move back yes so we want to work on projects that create jobs okay and one aspect is that we wanted that we we're going to introduce is bitcoin and still trying to figure out how it can be worked in because

bitcoin is um it's not widely accepted in serbia yet people understand it people are very cash orientated in serbia so they don't fully understand what bitcoin is because of lack of trust lack of trust they don't they don't they think it's too good to be true but they like their cash and they think that's great wait until that cash is taken you know is wait till they change the cash or wait till that inflation really erodes their capital wait till the banks start to blow up which could happen anytime hopefully not but it's with a bit of education people understand that there's something better than cash and better than gold and it takes the best of gold the best of cash the best digital money, and that is Bitcoin.

And that's what we're going to do is working on financial literacy. And that's something that this world, our fiat world has done. It's made us dumb about finance. You don't get taught this in school. The common person in the street has no idea how it's built and designed. Me neither. Until I started researching actively, I knew nothing. It took me working in the financial world to know a little bit how finance works,

about how to balance your accounting books and how all that stuff works and all the jargon and all that stuff it's done on purpose to be complicated when it can be really simple and Bitcoin simplifies that and that's your mission

the mission is education of simplifying Bitcoin there's a lot of good startups projects already happening like Mi Primer Bitcoin in El Salvador I met with a couple of people here doing some other Bitcoin

educational programs there's the Looking Glass as well there's all these projects happening so we'll need to figure out how we're going to do ours who we're going to work with and things and our foundation is still very early days but uh it's it'll get going it's coming together it's

coming together our family is growing as well we're expecting our our second our second child in the next month so november that is i don't know when this episode will come out very so i'll be a little bit pure preoccupied for the rest of the year for understanding yes um you were talking about the when you came out with being a bitcoiner when i came out came out why did you not do this before and when you did it what was the reaction it it depends which crowd the serbian and then well yes i mean maybe maybe that's the reason why you didn't is it the sir well i i i became a maximalist in 20 as i think i told you i became maximal around 2020 that's when i was really Understood that something really wrong

Was going on in the world And I started studying more Read books like the Bitcoin Standard And 21 Lessons by Gigi And those sort of books And joined Bitcoin Twitter I learnt a lot there And that's what made me become

A big Maximist 2021 I was A Maximist But Closet Not really talking about it publicly Not talking about publicly at all, just still doing my public appearances in Serbia, doing what I do with my wife, traveling around, doing events here and there, the usual stuff.

But it wasn't until the program, that TV show, the evening show, that I became public. And why then? It's because it just happened to be. And I think it turned out to be a really good moment because I came out out of nowhere. It just was like a surprise. And he surprised me as well because we met a few nights before to talk about, to get to know each other. Yes. And the host, that is.

Yes. He found out that I'm into Bitcoin. But that was it, you know. We talked about loads of other things. But it wasn't until when he was recording us, then he interrupted me and said, it's now a good time to talk about crypto. And then that's when.

And look at us now here in a Bitcoin conference. And that led to me speaking to people like yourself. Uh-huh. Amazing. Yeah, it's great. I love it. Yeah, I love that you did that. What's, if there is one,

what's the path of reducing skepticism and objections to Bitcoin in the Red Pill audience? People that have woken up already to some other agendas that are happening around the world, but they still don't get the financial... This is a good question for Serbs, actually. Because they may be quite awake because of their history. Right, Red Pill, because of their history,

Because they've gone through world wars, local wars, genocide, third worst hyperinflation in the 90s in the world. I have a Croatian friend. That's what he says. Lots of people lost their savings. I have friends of mine whose parents lost their savings in the 90s. It's horrible. Also sanctions as well. All this.

They've gone through everything. They've gone through the propaganda of communism, socialism. Can they smell it from afar? They smell the propaganda these days from far. That's why, you know, vaccine uptake wasn't very high in Serbia. Was it low? Very low. Nice and low.

Nice and low. Okay. The boosters were an absolute disaster. I'm very happy to hear that. Me too. But they are a red pill nation. Yes. So that's why.

They're still skeptical. They're still a highly skeptical nation. And that's a good thing. What would it make you think? I think, I'm hoping it won't take a crisis. for them to understand i'm hoping it won't take something like what the some of the canadian truckers had people who supported them in canada last year and freezing of bank accounts i hope it won't take uh a bank run because we do have we do have a fractional reserve banking system there you

know capital allocations are at two or seven percent depending on the duration of cash but it's yeah it could that trust could disappear in a second yeah i'm hoping it won't take a shock for for them to realize i'm hoping what it will take is more confident on people like myself and other prominent figures in the serbian in the serbian um world celeb world or whatever like yes influential influentials i'm talking about one person in general djokovic to to be my uh to be my uh that was my next question supporting me do you think he will go into i need to have a conversation with i don't know him don't know i've met his family but i never met him but i know that our paths will cross i know the stars will align our paths well we know his values right

we know this guy stands for freedom and i'm not too sure if he owns bitcoin or not if he understands it or not but i think he'll get it if he does i'm sure and i think his next calling in life i'm not there to tell him what to do but i think his next point in life is like okay you've got this huge following freedom movement you are one of the biggest freedom um uh voices in the world there's bitcoin this is what bitcoin does this is what bitcoin's about this is what what bitcoin can do this is like and i think out of everyone will not care about the image effect like i took a hit when i went out and went about bitcoin yes the bitcoin crowd opened arms of course yeah some people like yeah but he's just another authoritarian character he's just a yeah i get that yeah that's what most

people would think without knowing it's fine i get that but i think with jokovic i think you'll get it i really hope you'll get it massive public yeah massive if he does that i'm sure it will be huge i you know i pray for this with you and i don't think he cares about because his image he's he already that i said damage he already said no to the vaccine he already showed us that willing to sacrifice willing to sacrifice anything everything everything and i love that and it paid off it paid off time yeah even people who were like against him when he did what he did during the last three years have now turned around and turned around and said well done respect yeah because that's what i learned with time that people actually find even if it takes them time

they find respect towards people that stand in their morals and in their values and don't give up exactly very similar parallels to muhammad ali yes yeah well he was very anti-vietnam war and stuff and he was hated during the time yeah he was there demonized by all the world you know the people of sports but then six years later he becomes the most celebrated athlete afterwards so this is what's happening with djokovic wow i really hope djokovic steps in i hope so i don't think he i don't think he cares about the decisions i think he'll get you to try he I will try. He makes the decision of being on the right side of history.

So hopefully he'll make the decision to be on Bitcoin. Yes. That will have the biggest impact on the world's population because the money they use directly impacts their way of life and their quality of life. So if he goes into that, it will have immense impact. His fan base grew by millions when he stood his ground at the Australia Open. The way they treated him.

Yes. His fan base grew by millions. Wow. I mean, and he has that following. I know a lot of people look up to him and respect his opinion. I don't have that following. I don't know. People look up to me.

Serbs look up to me. It's like, oh, look at the crazy Bitcoin prince. Hey, you're in the right path. Not all, but I have that at the moment. I think you're in the right path. Magical internet money coin prince guy, yeah. Well, you know, putting that aside and just paraphrasing on what we're talking about, personally, I'm experiencing a very hard time right now because of people naming and shaming me

and ridiculing me for voicing my views and my values about what's happening in Israel with Palestine. Of course. And mostly the criticism is from within Israel about this. That's tough. It's very, very tough to stand in front of whatever's been thrown at you in order to silence you, try and make you behave differently, do something that you don't want to do. But it takes immense courage to just stand and go inside and embody your values and your morals and stay true to your word. I was very humbled because I just got to learn about you the other day, that you wanted to interview me, and then I followed you.

Then this shit happened, pardon my French, in the region, and I saw what you had to say, very brave but correct. And I, wow, really was impressed. And I can imagine the criticism you'll have for saying those things, those words of truth. That truth hurts people. Yeah, it does. People are so divided and so misguided that they are so blind by what the truth is.

Right. And what I'm advocating for is that it's okay to hold complex positions and not take sides. Yes, exactly. It's okay to think that this is wrong, but there is a distinction to it because something there can be good, like human lives in the other side. and we want to save and protect either another group. And that's like, you have to hold this complexity.

And just don't be dragged into hate. Don't get dragged into hate. Or to polarity so quickly. That's my... And now scrolling through Twitter right now, the hate, the picking sides that we're seeing, it's horrible. Heartbreaking to see.

It just perpetuates. Perpetuates. More hate, more war. And if we're talking about that, what's the biggest problem that you think Bitcoin can solve? Because for me, it's war and violence. But what is it for you? I think war and violence is very topical right now. Yes.

The incentive structure changes. Can you explain why for the people that don't know Bitcoin really well? Well, first, you understand why fiat encourages war. because fear essentially to put it very rudimentally is why do war in total countries or countries that go through war end up having hyperinflation

it's because they print the shit out of monies to fund wars because they can and that leads to death and destruction and it's just pure evil. Bitcoin stops that because Bitcoin

you can't print Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a 21 million cap Meaning that its issuance is programmable for the rest of eternity. Well, not eternity, until there's no more bitcoins mine. But anyway, you cannot create more bitcoins. That means those who are in position of power, the states, and hopefully these states will then have to be careful of what they spend their money on. So they're not going to go and spend it on rash decisions like going into war.

Yes. That's one of the main arguments of why Bitcoin will create a more peaceful society. That's how I see it as well, yes. So I invite the people that don't know Bitcoin well enough to start looking into it. And also, why is fiat? What is backing fiat? Fiat is backed by trust. But also, what is backed by trust is countries like America flexing their muscles,

saying, look what we can do. That's how strong we are. So this is why we are the reserve currency. We have stations, I say army bases all around the world, flexing muscles, showing off what we are able to do. And that's why the dollar has got that dominance. That is so symbolic. Yeah.

You know, that show of violence, that show of power everywhere. And I would wish that our world looked differently. And the world will work differently when people will start to adopt Bitcoin more and more. Anil Patel, who writes his book, basically that when you have something like Bitcoin and now available, and it's the best money in the world,

the hardest, the fastest because of lightning, 21 million cap, all this sort of stuff, and it's available, people will go towards that. So they will look at the competition and the competition will be meaningless. And so all money will then tend to one and tend to what is the best.

And now that's Bitcoin. wow I really hope that that's the direction the world will start to take because we need a change

we do need a change with what's happening right now around the world it feels like we're in a very crazy time around the world

and I hope you and your family and your loved ones are safe in Israel really thank you very much my thoughts and prayers to all the innocent lives

all the civilians and stuff on both sides because we are about peace on all sides yes um good luck today with this conference thank you very much and if people want to follow you or jan 3 where do they go you can follow me on twitter and then there's jan3.com on twitter

so you'll give me the link and i'll put it in the notes and jan 3 on is there anything else you want people to know just keep on spreading the the education of bitcoin you know go and Speak to everyone. Go and speak to your mother. Go speak to your brother, sister. Go speak to your friends. Buy them a wallet as a Christmas present. Yes, exactly.

Just learn a little bit about Bitcoin. Learn a little bit about the history of money. Go buy the Bitcoin standard. Go buy the little Bitcoin handbook. Yes. Go buy the so much many good resources. Go to hope.com. It's that easy.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Efrat. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.