You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 26: CBDCs, Stablecoins & Zoom In on Israel [Guest Podcast]

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jeffrey Peel for The New Era Podcast, about my latest article “The Digitalization of Money” and beyond. We discussed globalists, governments & central banks’ plan to  digitize money, using CBDCs and stablecoins, and the role of Bitcoin in the changing financial landscape. I emphasized the importance of understanding the monetary system and how it is tied to various global events and agendas. The conversation zoomed in on Ripple’s role as a CBDC leader, on Israel’s progress with CBDCs, and more broadly Israel’s role as “The World’s Lab”. I ended with the need for individuals to take control of their own financial sovereignty. ► Link to my referenced article: https://efrat.substack.com/p/on-the-brink-of-a-dramatic-change ► If you got value, please like, comment, share & follow/subscribe. Thank you! -- AFFILIATIONS – Thanks to my affiliates & partners:  ►► Get your TREZOR wallet: https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn  ►► Join me at BTC Prague with 10% off tickets (use code EFRAT): https://bit.ly/3VZDhrn  ►► Join me at Bitcoin Nashville with 10% off tickets (use code BTCIL): https://glnk.io/lr8q9/btcil  ►► Join me at Mallorca Blockchain Days with 50 euro off tickets (use code efrat): https://bit.ly/43ygh4I  -- CHAPTERS -- 00:00 Introduction & Inspiration for Efrat's Article 05:25 Stablecoins and the Globalization of the Dollar 08:47 The Astonishing Link Between Tether and US Debt 09:56 Ripple (XRP): The Ideal CBDC Partner for Gov. & Central Banks? 14:28 Argentina's Millei's Monetary Strategy 15:55 CBDC Progress is Israel 21:22 Israel, "The World's Lab": Covid, CBDC, Oct. 7th 25:43 The Sellout of Citizens and the Death of Democracy 28:32 Another Detail About Ripple 30:46 Separation of Money & State Will Lead to Individuals' Reclaim of Power -- LINKS – Jeff’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffreyPeel The New Era: www.thenewera.uk 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

Welcome to the TNE podcast. In this interview, I chat with Efrat Fenigsen after the publication of her article in Bitcoin magazine on the digitization of money. I start by asking her about how she came to write the piece. It's self-inspired by a conversation between Mark Goodwin and Whitney Webb. Since I started going down the money and then Bitcoin rabbit holes, I've been just exposed to more and more information that I think is vital to anyone in today's world in order to understand where we're going on a bigger zoomed out picture because people have a sense of detachment not only from themselves but detachment of the different events and scenarios that they're

seeing unfolding in front of them in reality to the bigger systems that are actually designed to make all this happen. And when I go through my money journey and economics and finance and Bitcoin, I learn how everything ultimately is tied back into the financial system, the monetary system. And the fact that we are now on the brink of a dramatic change, as my article is titled, on the brink of a dramatic change, I think that tying those pieces together for people and showing them how, for example, the climate agenda is tied into the financial agenda and how COVID was just probably a precursor to this an economical crisis that is uh upon us and and just kind of tie everything in for people so that they don't understand they don't feel lost and that they

can be empowered once they understand how everything works and where this is designed to take us to then hopefully choose to step out of these systems right and as both you and i know there is a way out there that can offer us uh some some comfort and and a very different way of life which is bitcoin and so hopefully you know for me discovering bitcoin was a ray of light it was very um it was very refreshing it was very i i couldn't even believe it when i first started learning about it that this actually could be a valid solution to some of the problems that i know And the more I learned, the more I validated for myself that it is a good proper solution. And I am so excited by it. And so for me, writing this article and offering it to the Bitcoin magazine was almost like closing a loop, because if they would have accepted it, which they did, it means that I, you know, I, yeah, it's like symbolic. you've arrived you're you're on to something yeah i'm on the right path and so yeah i wrote about

just before i i finished the article i had almost everything written down collecting and aggregating all the different information about cbdc's and where we are in the world and then i watched the interview with whitney webb and mark goodwin and i was blown away once again and they added so much perspective and context to a lot of the things that i was seeing so i decided to put that first in the article and then i said you know mark is the editor of bitcoin magazine i may as well just approach it so yeah and and so yeah he said wow this is a really great article and thanks for the shout out there and yeah and then zero hedge took it as well oh is that right oh excellent i wasn't aware of that with 10 i think i don't know if it's tens or hundreds of thousands of views already

because it's massive so it's huge on well congratulations on that that's that's excellent just in terms of the scene setting you know for people who are watching this uh the interview that you mentioned between mark goodwin and whitney webb and whitney webb and her team uh unlimited hangout um have been wonderful and and they were really the first team i think to expose this link between, if you like, a backdoor route into CBDCs using dollar stable coins. And it's a fascinating story. And the team there go into such depth and they follow all of the strands. And, you know, and Whitney has said in an interview in the past that, you know, she only reports on stuff that's in the public domain. If you look hard enough for it, you'll find it.

But but maybe you could just sort of recap on the the angle of this this dollar stable coin link behind the scenes as a sort of stealth method of introducing CBDCs. Yeah, right. So and you're right that Unlimited Hangout has some superb articles that go into a lot of details about stable coins. And some of those, you know, I gave an example here, XRP from Ripple, they talk about them in length as well. So I really recommend going there and checking it out. But basically, what Mark Goodwin was saying in the interview with Whitney is that we could see stable coins as the way in which the US is further globalizing the dollar, Basically using stable coins as a method to spreading the adoptions directly to the world's general public, like a B2C. Instead of B2B, you know how dollars are always used to give loans to other countries? Now they're saying maybe stable coins are the B2C tactic of it. They're going direct to consumers in different countries, making them adapt stable coins because they are more stable, because they want an exposure to the dollar, like in Argentina, for example.

And and by doing that, they continue to increase the U.S. debt and encourage uptake and usage of the dollar, which is basically what the U.S. economy must continue doing. Otherwise, it will collapse, as we know. And so that's a very interesting take. he's mentioning that perhaps cbdcs are just a red herring they may just be like a decoy to make us all fear from what's coming it's not it's not that cbdcs are not you know risky and frightening they are obviously the design of the system and the capabilities are definitely uh worth noting and and um and paying attention to but he's saying maybe cbdc's are there to just like scare everyone and have their attention on them while stable coins are used to create the globalization of continuous global globalization of the dollar with companies such as tether which for example

in the um in the last few years have acquired a hundred billion dollars in treasuries that that you know this is in the top if you put it up alongside um nation states this is in the top 20 nation states that are buying debt from the u.s yeah it's astonishing isn't it yeah here you have a crypto company right tether that has the usd uh usdt right usdt i'm not wrong not usdc usdt stablecoin and uh they have a hundred billion dollars acquisitions of treasury bills from the u.s so it's as if tether has become another china or another japan that have trillions of dollars in debt to the us so that is a very convincing argument for me to see stable coin companies you know in parallel to nation states that will help uh in the fiat world will help um

the us to increase its global debt and continue to be the global hegemony the global absolutely Absolutely. Yeah. In a nutshell, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And that that that whole link between Tether and the acquisition, as you say, of of of Treasury bonds was a link that I wasn't even aware of. And it's really quite astonishing, as you say, you know, that somebody asked me on Twitter the other day, what's what's the big deal about about U.S. debt? You know, because obviously they published a report the other day to say that it was of levels that we have never seen before. And we know this for 34 trillion or something. 34 trillions and growing by one trillion every 100 days. Yeah. And they say that the Fed is printing money just to cover the interest. Exactly. Yeah. It's the ultimate Ponzi scheme, really, isn't it?

And meanwhile, you know, as you say, you know, we were aware of the fact that they were printing money, they were auctioning bonds and, you know, auctioning those typically to banks, the bank network. We weren't fully aware there was a cryptocurrency company in here, you know, that most people have never heard of, buying hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. It's quite astonishing. Now, to move on to another crypto company, namely Ripple. So how are they involved? So Ripple has been doing fantastic work in the past few years in positioning itself as the ideal partner for governments and central banks for their CBDC projects. so you're a state you're a nation state you need to launch your cbdc pilot because you know big brother bis said so or the imf or whoever the world bank anyone that you listen to has said so

you need a cbdc project then you can go on your own and try to develop a platform or you can partner with us we already have a dedicated solution for you us meaning ripple the xrp platform and its blockchain is already ready for you as the ideal cbdc platform and here we are like you know people that what kills me like people still confuse obviously crypto with bitcoins so those that don't know what bitcoin is and that don't go deep and then they they think that you know it's all bad and and wrong and and scary and then you have companies like ripple that add to that confusion because if they are partnering with governments and central banks then obviously you know there's a reason to think that they may be nefarious and why are you promoting interests

of the establishment rather than helping the sovereignty of the individuals and so I would understand why people get confused and at the same time and I don't know if you know that but there is a pretty big group of the awakened community around the world those freedom um lovers around the world that actually i i'm sorry that i'm saying that because this is not to disrespect anyone but there is a conspiracy theory out there talking about the fact that ripple or xrp the the coin is going to save us all from a financial collapse and when the new monetary system will come in it will it's going to be called the qfs the quantum financial system what's going to be behind it are companies like ripple and so all those freedom lovers are buying xrp points like

crazy believing that that's going to release them from serfdom that's gonna that's going to be the answer to all their problems and they don't even know what money is and how money behaves and when i asked them so what's the big news here i mean what does xrp promise you that you don't have today with fiat and they say well you can you will have abundance of xrp i said you have abundance of fiat that's how it works it's just you can print as much as you want yeah with people you can print as much xrp as you want and yes it's very cheap right now because it sucks you know because no one cares about it and the fact that it's going to be worth more you have other assets out there in the market that are much more valuable than this so they essentially they

don't know anything about money and they they fall into that trap of ripple or xrp is going to be the savior and the banks are going to be working for us in this new qfs future this pink future and it's like no one's coming to save you mate yeah it's just go and learn about money seriously and ripple has done like six uh pilot projects already in six different countries georgia colombia montenegro hong kong blah blah and it's written all in the article the the different advancements they make they even got to the final stage of a hackathon it's a g20 hackathon right the g20 the establishment again i mean this is one of the more like these are the the company that i would never trust and when you buy xrp doesn't matter what kind of dream you were

sold you are basically strengthening the beast you are making the beast more powerful because xrp and ripple is going to be the chosen solution for a lot of cbdc's projects around the world then you're just helping that future come come earlier and and absolutely yeah it was very strange too wasn't it when president mile was was elected in argentina you know there was lots and lots of people saying oh this is marvelous you know he's uh he loves bitcoin and he's a big bitcoin aficionado and um and then he gets elected uh and pretty much the first thing he announces is that he's going to move in the direction of the dollar. He's essentially going to adopt, embrace the dollar.

That was very fishy, wasn't it? And of course, that's happening alongside a whole slew of ripple-oriented CBDC pilots in various nations. What's happening in Israel out of interest, by the way? And then you saw him just in the last few days, Millet, was announcing that they're going to start taxing crypto and Bitcoin in Argentina. And, you know, I heard Max and Stacey talking about it yesterday, both saying, you know, this guy just simply doesn't get Bitcoin. The fact that he puts Bitcoin in the same basket with

crypto, other cryptocurrencies, which is the same thing that we're seeing RFK doing right now, it's not a it's not good news it just shows that he's not sophisticated doesn't get bitcoin probably someone told him that this is a good thing so he was trying to be on the good side of it for a while until you know the real face was revealed but so you're asking what's happening in israel in terms of cbdc adoption so in israel the central bank of israel is quite advanced with its um planning and design stage of the of the different um projects and pilot projects that are happening there is a very close collaboration between the bank of international settlements and israel central bank in fact there was a um an event that i was um that i was present in

here in tel aviv uh about six months ago that was held in the um in the stock exchange the tel aviv stock exchange um with the bis and the israeli central bank where they uh introduced one of their successful projects called the seller project it's a cbdc project and they even showed a demo it's a retail cbdc so you could actually see what the the demo what the app's gonna look like and what the user is going to experience and to be honest it was a very boring demo 25 minutes i have it all on my youtube but you know it's all there and the evidence is there and basically every um white paper or document that the central bank is issuing here in israel about cbdc i'm taking that digesting it and reporting about it what you can learn from

the advancement of CBDC in Israel by the central bank is that Israel is admitting that CBDC is going to introduce different limits. For example, limits on the balance that users are allowed to hold in the digital shekel. They are basically saying that you will be able to continue using all of your existing payment methods like your payment apps or you know watch credit card or whatever they'll simply try and replace the infrastructure in the background so that for the end user it's as transparent as possible and they don't have to worry about that they also admitted in the past that the first sector that will that will start using cbdc will be the public sector with hundreds of thousands of people that belong to the public sector in israel

they will receive their salaries and cbdc that would be like the first stage of adoption right there is a whole document about adoption of like they're already introducing the go-to-market strategy basically and and showing you how they are planning the adoption to happen so it's by making the public sector adopted through salaries through taxation through fines and you know payments to the public sector like your municipality and things like that you'll have to pay with cbdc wow they also talk about coercion of small businesses similarly to what they've done in uh covid with masking you know that if you were a business owner and people in your shop we're not wearing a mask you would get a fine so you become the police officer so it's

the same in here with cbdc you will have to accept cbdc if you don't you get a fine you know so um they're doing like the same tactics as in covid basically the first time now that they launched a new document so in that document for the first time they are saying that the system will support the possibility of applying interest on the digital shekel which again it's not a surprise it just goes to show how this is fiat on steroids it's basically everything that fiat is plus a lot more bad features uh for us citizens um and in israel there's also a news about a new stable coin that is being designed it's called bills b-i-l-s um and um basically the some of the companies that are working on this stable coins are also some of the companies that have been

working on one of the projects the pilot projects for cbdc uh with the central bank so you know The funny thing is, is seeing how much crypto, most of the big crypto projects are getting closer and closer to the establishment and the banks and the governments and how much Bitcoin is staying detached from it and can never go close. you know what i mean yeah you may have institutional investors coming into the party because they can't ignore it anymore but there's no way that they can try and you know take control over it and so so yeah so in israel we're quite advanced the latest timeline was talking about december 2024 for a technical design document for the digital check to be published so we have another six seven eight months or so until we see the actual design of the system and i think the implementation will start soon after with uh like a group of partnerships um with the private

sector that they've they're already working on mind you none of the i mean hardly any of the public is aware here in israel of what is cbdc yeah they don't know what cbdc is but of course it'll be it'll be marketed well won't it as uh you know something that will benefit the citizens of israel in the same way as as netanyahu negotiated you know a wonderful deal with pfizer to make uh israel essentially a like a a laboratory for the rollout of the uh the covid19 vaccine yeah that's right so yeah i tweeted today this video reminder of benjamin Netanyahu talking um on the WEF Davos platform about the rollout of the vaccines in Israel in 2021 and being so proud of the deal that he struck with Albert Bourla the CEO of Pfizer and how

basically his selling point for the deal was that Israel will be the world's laboratory and so basically you're selling off the data of your citizens because you don't see them as people anymore they're just data points right as you know he says and so world data points we've been sold off to Pfizer once and I was claiming that if you didn't spot the sellout in 2021 or 22 you may have felt the sellout again on october 7th um because we're definitely a nation that is continued to be sold off to the highest bidder like a scapegoat you know and i i wouldn't go as far as you know back in history but i think the jewish people and the israeli people have a very special role to play in being victims and very often i don't like that right and i don't feel

like a victim but very often the jewish people and the israeli people take on that role and roll with it without uh resisting it without objecting without um basically saying enough like i'm not anyone's victim and i won't be sold again you know so yeah it's quite um it's quite Dyer, and Benjamin Netanyahu is definitely a character that would do almost anything to benefit glory. Yeah, because he was up for a number of corruption charges as well, wasn't he? Yeah, there were a few

open cases for Benjamin Netanyahu for the past few years now, but obviously you know nothing nothing changes the reality that he's still in power and that he's going to probably prolong this war as much as he can to stay in power and i mean this is just my opinion right but uh to to basically hold on to his seat because he knows that once he's off this seat there's a good probability he'll be in jail or i don't know what's going to happen to him but the uh the the levels of rage and anger towards this guy are very high now i think i i just want to add one more sentence before we move on but it's just really important to remember

that while he is running the the state he is still not the only one that is in charge and he's also probably being uh puppeted by other powers that be and there are many many other um people that are that are responsible for what is happening right now and what has happened on october 7th and they need to be prosecuted as well they need to be investigated and prosecuted in my in my view um and no one of them has resigned or has you know moved out they're all in place still this is like five six months after i know it's remarkable because they're remarkable it It was clear and you were right at the forefront of that, of making people aware. I think your tweets were literally, I don't know how many millions of views you had,

but drawing attention to the culpability, the fact that that border, one of the most defended borders on earth, was essentially left open. It was really quite remarkable, regardless of your opinion. You know, even if those diehard supporters of anything the Israeli government does surely had the question how that happened what the what the background was to it why for so many hours um people that you know the border was left undefended and how it happened that uh people with access to very little could penetrate such a such a fortress um is is astonishing but um but i just wanted to say well done you for for raising it and i know it it had a ripple effect you know um

Across the, if you like, the freedom community, asking why it was that these things were happening and the community, you said it bifurcated over over Israel as well. You know, a lot of people overlooked what happened during the COVID period by the Israeli government and were willing to accept without any question Netanyahu's line. I found that absolutely astonishing. I'm sure you did, too. I did too. And I was actually, as much as my information went viral during this period, I also was attacked by people that told me that I am risking their safety here in Israel because of me saying what I'm saying about the government. And I told them, what's new? I'm just being consistent. I was criticizing the government before. I'm continuing to criticize the government now.

There is no difference. The only difference is you were maybe brave enough to say what you say and do what you did during COVID and criticize the government. I have criticized them then. I continue to criticize them now. It can't be that during COVID that sold you out and you clearly saw that and you understood that but now October 7th came no they were fine it was just a failure you know it's like the stars aligned to create this magnificent event that could have happened without the government having

any influence on that any any maybe connection to it yeah you're very naive and and they so I was heavily attacked by those people that couldn't their their cognitive dissonance couldn't hold a reality in which their government and their country has actually betrayed them right and you know i i don't believe the government uh for a long time now so for me it's like a given can i add one more detail about ripple yeah that we we mentioned before because i think that's also an angle to consider, the fact that Ripple has an open legal battle with the SEC, or maybe it ended already, but they had a very strong legal battle with the SEC in the U.S. concerning the XRP cryptocurrency.

Basically, how I see it is engaging in such legal disputes inevitably positions Ripple in a scenario where maintaining a positive relationship with institutions like the SEC or the government of the US becomes crucial. They have to be on their good books, on their good side, because if they don't, they're going to fuck them over in court. And so consequently, for me, it's no surprise that Ripple prioritizes governments and central banks and financial institutions as primary target audiences. in their market strategy it's like yeah we we've got to be on your good books because you guys are

chasing us and and this is a massive difference between crypto and bitcoin crypto companies can be chased and abused by the governments and the institutions while bitcoin cannot who are they going to prosecute satoshi who like who yeah so they can be manipulated and i think ripple is one of those that is being manipulated yeah i think if you believe i'm actually uh reading uh the sovereign individual um for the first time at the minute and um well you know clearly the it was very prescient you know it was written in what 1997 uh interestingly by jacob reese mogg's father or jointly authored um but you know one of the the points it makes is that as the digital era takes hold, one of the consequences which governments don't have any control over

is increasingly the primacy of the individual. Individuals don't need to be tied to nation states and they don't really need to avail of the services of government. But it looks like there are certain corporations who are joined at the hip with government. And the fact that that cryptocurrency companies have conjoined with government would indicate that they're part of the problem. You know, I've talked and interviewed lots of interviews recently about this corporatist angle to all of this. But it does feel like the death throes of what we used to call democracy. There's no such thing as democracy any longer. All we have is big state.

And that seems to be particularly the case in Israel as well. For sure. I think it boils down to the lack of education, financial education for people. The fact that people don't understand what money is and how it works, to me, indicates that they would not even imagine a reality in which the money is not tied to the government or the state. they feel like it's natural just like the oxygen they breathe money is related to the government i mean if the central bank is not going to print money then who's going to bring money like what's going to happen they don't even know what fiat is and how it works they don't understand that we are living an experiment that did not exist hundreds of years ago that you know this is something new the whole the whole 1971 till today fiat bubble experiment that is just continuing to blow bubble after bubble and now we're at the bubble of everything explosion period they don't

get that so from an historical perspective there's a lack of knowledge and if people only understood that money and state do not have to go hand in hand it's not a given no it's it's not it doesn't have to be that way it can be different they would actually maybe start to be more hopeful and more more um courageous like they they would not be so fearful maybe they'll start understanding the power of the collective and the power of the mass the numbers that we have that the state the heads of states don't have you and i both know and both understand that the institution's biggest fear are the citizens absolutely they are afraid of us because they understand the mechanism they know how the system is designed they know that fiat lives on trust they know that

without our trust there is nothing and so they have to keep perpetuating this lie and this matrix system that we live in in order for us to buy it and continue to give them that trust once people understand how the monetary system works they don't need to trust anymore and the system will collapse and yeah it will hurt in the in the short time frame but it will be so great and liberating in the longer um view of things so you know i think financial literacy and education is so crucial at the moment and i think that a lot of bitcoiners in your audience for example that that are well informed most bitcoiners understand money they understand the systems behind it because you can't really get bitcoin without getting money and so my my um request or

or invitation to your audience would be to invest a little bit in educating people like just giving them information how does money work what is the fiat system what is inflation what is debt you know what is your uh what's your life what's the engine behind your life's economy questions that people normally don't have time or think of stopping to to ask so absolutely you're absolutely spot on and effort you've been doing a wonderful job um you know you're a marketeer and a very good one and uh as you say you're investing that in your own sovereignty these days um and you're doing a wonderful job really proselytizing um uh for you know as an individual on behalf of a wider movement, if I could call it that.

But it's not really a movement. It's just a collection of individuals who know that there's something very, very wrong with the system as it is at the minute. And the Bitcoin community is wonderful. You know, I attended a meeting the other evening in Belfast, you know, meetings that are growing, obviously, as we've gone into a bull market.

But, you know, they are wonderful. They tend to be critical thinkers. they know that something is fundamentally wrong and they're investing for their their futures and their family's futures and that's that's all that can be expected of people really in these circumstances but how do people find out more about you i know on your twitter um uh handle you have a a list of links to your podcast content there's a link to my link tree which has everything because as a marketeer i'm on every platform including noster um substack is where i write regularly so you can subscribe to my sub stack if you're into emails twitter telegram i

have a telegram channel in english and one in hebrew as well but i think also it's worth noting for your audience that i'm going to be speaking at btc prague in june about cbdc's and a lot of the different updates and you know a world of control versus freedom um and and then i'm going to be in in palma de mallorca for another bitcoin conference the crypto days and then i'm going to be in nashville speaking there as well and hopefully in el salvador towards the end of the year for adopting bitcoin so i'm going to be speaking at a lot of bitcoin conferences so please follow me if you want to join me and say hi and have a chat during those uh conferences it would be amazing to meet people face to face um and uh where else can they follow me yeah you know

all the usual channels it's just i must say one last thing when i you know i started this podcast i never thought it would take off so well and before i knew it there's like a million and a half views to the 24 episodes that I put out there, which is really fantastic. And then I walk around the corridors of the different Bitcoin conferences, like in Madeira, for example, or in Amsterdam, and people stop me and they go, wow, your podcast is really good. And I go, what, you watch it? You listen?

And they go, yeah, it's really good. But seriously, you're not just saying that because, you know, I see the numbers. I don't know the people that are actually watching. And so for me, it's a number. And when I see a face and someone telling me that they get value out of it, I am so delighted because I'm only doing that for people. So, yeah, if you ever see me, please tell me. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please do subscribe.

It's absolutely free to www.thenewera.uk. Or if you're interested more generally in Bitcoin-related matters, please subscribe to BitcoinBelfast.com. We publish regular interviews relating to Bitcoin and Bitcoin News, and we plan a major event in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in October 2024. Thanks for watching.