You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 49: Michelle Weekley - Whistleblowing on Corruption

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

My guest today is Michelle Weekley, a courageous woman, free speech advocate and global corruption whistleblower. Michelle is the Director of Product Development at Byte Federal, one of the first bitcoin ATM companies. Previously she spent 10+ years working with tech startups in the “startup mafia” and two years in Dubai and China working in Foreign Direct Investment.  In this episode we explore whether Data is the new oil, and how deep does global and government corruption go. We visit the intersection of politics and Bitcoin and the challenges of Bitcoin regulation. Michelle explains what’s foreign direct investment & shares her experience from working and living overseas. We discuss the impact of Covid on societal awareness, and the role of Bitcoin as a potential path to reclaiming freedom.  ► 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 episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn   ►► Join me in any of these upcoming events:https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events  Nov. 2024 - Adopting Bitcoin, El Salvador (code EFRAT for 10% off) May 2025 - Bitcoin Vegas (prev. Nashville) (code EFRAT for 10% off) June 2025 - BTC Prague (code EFRAT for 10% off) -- LINKS -- Michelle’s Twitter: https://x.com/michelleweekley  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 -- CHAPTERS -- 00:00 Coming Up... 02:30 Intro & Background 03:15 Background in Foreign Direct Investment and Corruption 04:13 Data Commodification and Manipulation 07:31 Self Custody with Trezor (Ad) 08:03 Michelle At The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 16:27 China's Ghost Cities, Smart Cities & 15-minute Cities 23:14 Michelle's Journey Into Bitcoin 25:40 Covid As a Wake Up Call 27:55 Challenging Beliefs and Defining Freedom 32:17 Working At Byte Federal & Bitcoin Regulatory Challenges 36:35 Bitcoin & Politics 44:00 Defending Non-KYC Bitcoin & Preserving Privacy 49:09 Promoting Freedom & In-Person Communities

All of these initiatives to make everything convenient are about just a couple of things. Consumption is one of them, and control is the other. So if we're busy consuming, it's very easy for the people at the top to have the ultimate control. And that's what they want. For me, there was a silver lining in COVID, and that was that it woke many people up. I think, you know, the error of the United States being the free beacon that it was is over. I hope that we can reclaim it, but to think that it is the freest place in the world is just delusional. Defending non-KYC Bitcoin is actually the only thing that matters in Bitcoin right now.

Can you say more about that? Yeah, so... hello and welcome to another great episode of you're the voice i'm a flat i'm here with you in nashville of all places in nashville tennessee at bitcoin nashville conference and i'm so happy to be sitting here with my friend michelle weekly i'm so happy to be here it's great to see you and of course all of our bitcoin friends and finally we get to talk i know i've been wanting this to to happen for a while, but, you know, everything happens in the right timing. So I'm sure this is the right time for us. And I started following you, Michelle, not too long ago, I think in the

past year or so. But you know how it is when you discover a Bitcoiner that is also a true freedom fighter and a truthful person that is also courageous enough to speak out against some thing or just to show the light on the truth i i am attracted to that straight away so i was to you and and you know we'll dig deeper about what you do and and why i was so attracted to you but you know thank you for being here with me thank you for having me and right back at you i only joined uh twitter after elon bought it really so i have not been there that long and i am really glad to have found my people by speaking up you know you don't make friends with everyone, but you find the right people. And I'm really glad you're one of them.

Yeah, me too. So just for my audience that don't know you, I'll do a quick intro and then we'll start talking. Michelle Weakley has a background in computer science and is the director of product development at Byte Federal, one of the first Bitcoin ATM companies. Prior to that, she spent 10 plus years working with tech startups in the startup mafia and in the startup mafia. I love it. I was in the startup mafia as well, and two years in Dubai and China, working in foreign direct investment. And we'll talk more about what that is. She's now a free speech advocate and global corruption whistleblower. Love it.

Okay, more about your background. Where did you grow up and how did you get to do what you do in life? Sure. So I was actually born in the Midwest. I have roots in the Midwest. We moved to the East Coast when I was still pretty young. But I spent most of my life actually in D.C. I was in D.C. for 12 years, and I worked in the tech sector there. And I ended up here because I've always sort of just gone against the grain.

Like whatever everyone was doing, I was never very interested in doing. So, you know, I did my time kind of working in startups and started to see some things that I didn't like. And the natural path for everyone was to go to Silicon Valley. And I didn't want to do that. Why? I didn't want to live in California. Okay. This was, you know, almost 10 years ago.

So it was maybe not as it is now, but it still didn't feel like the right thing. And I also wanted out of tech, kind of. So this time period is when they were starting to commodify data. and so since I had a background in computer science I knew that and I you know I I worked for an ISP and then I went and got for people who don't understand tech yeah just to explain to them what commodifying data yeah so I understand yeah and so data is like the new oil this is a saying that has emerged and what that means is really just how valuable data is so our data is

being sold. All of our data. It's not something that has been going on forever. You know, people forget that our smartphones are new. Yeah. The internet is new. That's right. You know, we are similar ages. So I think we grew up in a similar fashion. I mean, when I was a kid, you played in the street and you came home when the lights and the street lights went off. Like this doesn't exist anymore. So I was kind of nerdy. I like, I grew up coding. My mom is actually a QA engineer. just software testing. So I ended up with a very technical job. Well, sorry, data is the new oil. So the commodification of data is basically this concept that your data is the most valuable thing out there. And so what has happened slowly over time or quickly, you know, when something happens

over 10 years, it's not that slow. But all of the products that we're using have been designed to extract as much data from you as possible and so I actually I saw that in the roles that I had that concept has driven so many second and third layer effects because when you're designing a product and your goal is not consumer oriented you know what is best for the person who's using this product that's not the goal the actual goal is to acquire as much data from them as possible So you design things differently. I kind of knew that from day one because I got a tour at my job and it was like one of these fun jobs. We were funded by Facebook and Amazon. And I thought, okay, this is going to be fun. This is not a nerdy job. This is a fun job. And then we walk past, you know, there's this server room and everyone's like, well, that's nobody goes in there. That's the serious place. That's where we actually make our money.

And it was in that moment. I've written about this. Actually, I'd like to write more about it. That moment just changed everything. You know, so I had lots of fun and we designed products. I want to I want to hold. So you think that server room is where data was collected and then sent back to. to amazon actually because we had had a major we're trading basically your information okay yeah so i worked for a company called living social which was one of these deals companies we were second to the market behind groupon but we were funded by amazon and we were friends with facebook so there were all of these connections um and it was it was interesting it was interesting to watch. But I knew that that was driving Silicon Valley. So I didn't want to go get

deeper into it. I wanted out of it entirely. And so I went to Dubai. You're the Voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013, empowering individuals with an open source device, enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins i find my treasure super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family enjoy my five percent discount on treasure product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code flat okay how did you find dubai why dubai yeah um dubai i had actually a friend from you know grade school really who we had connected on facebook and they were living in abu dhabi

And I thought, I don't know where that is. You know, I had done a fair amount of traveling, but I'd never been to Asia or the Middle East. And I really wanted to go there. So I thought, well, here's a place that I now have on the map. Let me get there. I'm halfway to Asia. I'll figure out how to get to Asia. So I went to visit my friend and I just stayed.

I canceled my return flight like three times and then eventually went back to D.C. and sorted everything out so that I could go live in Dubai. And that started the next chapter. And then did you work in Dubai? I worked a little bit at a startup incubator. And so, you know, this startup mafia, they're all connected. There was a company over there called Kareem, and they wanted to be acquired by Uber. Well, a lot of people from Living Social had gone to Uber, and so I was very familiar with the product models.

So I worked with them for a little while. They did ultimately get acquired by Uber. Right. But it was during that time that I ended up being recruited into foreign direct investment, and that is how I ended up here. So then, okay, hold on. Before we go there, this is good. I just want to recap something. During all those different positions with all the different companies, you were always doing product work, so product development work?

Not necessarily. So, you know, in a startup, you do a lot of different roles. So I had a lot of operations roles and I would interface with like marketing or the dev teams and I served in kind of a product role. But because I understood sort of the backside of what was being built, I always got pulled into the technical sides of it, which was great for me. It gave me a lot of visibility that other people didn't have. So, you know, it's great to know how it all works. But sometimes ignorance is bliss. I mean, I was not having the most fun.

I understand. OK, let's keep going with then from Dubai to the foreign direct. Is it government? Is it a government? It's not technically a government agency. So FDI and I didn't know any of this. A foreign direct investment is basically economic development at the highest level. So it's largely sovereign country to country. You know, major cities, major corporations are all involved in this sort of chess game at the top. and fdi is the ecosystem that surrounds the world economic forum i didn't it is and this is nothing i know you have a like a community in every country or how does it work where is it a global organization it's a global industry and it's primarily made up of government entities uh you have a lot of consulting companies which is i was working for consulting so like the accentures the

deloits these kind of they're involved so it's not exclusively what they do um there's a lot of these little boutique consulting companies you've never heard the name of them um but they're managing millions billions of dollars of flow of money investment you have special economic zones that are set up in different countries so you maybe have heard of these yes and a lot of the money comes in and out of those so deals get made whether it's with a city or a state with large businesses that are doing international business and the consulting companies sort of in a way help to manage the flow of money who gets the grants but is it the state money or the city's money it's it's all or it's global money that comes from other sources it's all of it all of

It really it's all of it. It's a lot of money and there's a lot of deals that are done. It's crazy. It's crazy how it's all sort of manufactured. There's a lot of, you know, bribery and corruption, but it's not done super blatantly. Right. I mean, there's this facade and you have to participate in it. Right. Like you go along with the lies. How did they reach you? I was visiting a friend who was speaking at a conference, and he was doing business with someone else who just, you know, I met them, and they recruited me. They like charismatic people who are smart and who they think will go along with the flow. At the time, I was excited to be in this new part of the world.

I didn't really know my way around, so I wasn't as maybe challenging as most people see me now. Yeah, same. Or as I would have been in D.C., right? Because you have the lay of the land, you're confident. I had, I didn't even, I'd never heard of what, I didn't know what foreign direct investment was, right? So I was just like, wow, like, I get this big fancy job. Like, I've made it. I had an unchecked expense account. You know, I'm going all over. Like, you, you think that you succeeded. I'd actually never even heard of the World Economic Forum. And suddenly I'm surrounded by people it's their entire goal to get to this event i mean that is their life the fdi people want to get to the davos event absolutely in fact there is a sort of b or c level event called the

the world forum for foreign direct investment and they made one for yeah yeah it's like if you can't get invited to davos you go to this one so i attended that uh several times where is it it's somewhere different every year uh we were in shanghai and san diego okay the two that i attended okay so yeah but it has overlaps with oh a lot with the with dallas okay so then what happens they start they start recruiting you and what kind of job do you get so i was i believe that my title was like global director of marketing okay um you know they they gave you a big fancy title because they want you to be important right and I think the first red flag when I accepted that job was they wrote a bio and they were they put out a press release there were all of these

lies in the bio like about you about me saying that I had advanced degrees saying that I had been involved with these organizations in Dubai like advancing women in tech and just things that weren't actually true you know what I mean like I barely got a degree and so I went to the the marketing and I said this isn't true they were like well it makes you look better so it makes us look better just sort of you know close the door on that one and people should know that this is oftentimes how things work yeah I you know my background is in marketing yeah PR and I have never agreed to to to communicate lies like outright lies but i know that many marketeers yeah you know would not uh care so much right they weren't happy with me asking the questions

you know my mom called me and she was like what is this this is not true it's like i know i mean i asked them you know i tried to have it corrected but they didn't care in fact you're sort of they're watching you now because they want to make sure are you going to be questioning constantly and this became the theme of the whole time that i spent in this role was your willingness to keep your mouth shut about how does these how do these things work why did they get that grant here's a 300 million dollar grant you know and it's not small money it's not it's not at all um you know and so it's all facilitated based on people's willingness to not speak up and so i didn't for a period of time you know i was young i didn't really know what i was doing i mean

do you call it takes time until you realize what's happening yeah and you even once you've got it figured out it's like well is there a hotline to call or something exactly what do i do of course right do i speak to yeah and how do i also you know you have to get over the challenge of telling everyone in your life that you've participated in this yes which i think keeps a lot of people quiet um it took me several years to gain the confidence and sort my life out to a place where i felt comfortable talking about all of it um so so what was the kind of corruption that you were exposed to i mean i you don't need to obviously mention things that are too sensitive but like this type of type of business that you were part of or that the organization is a part

Yeah. I will say, you know, like, if anyone has not heard of the Panama Papers, look that up. That's all true. One thing that's really interesting is a story that I tell a lot is we toured the ghost cities in China in 2016. So again, it's a great example of keeping your mouth shut. So we're there. We go to Beijing. You take a helicopter out. You know, we spent three days like touring these towns that are completely empty. And they're telling us that they're new towns? Yeah, like entire developments. And so we were told at one time, you know, this development was 30 percent occupied. There was no one there, not a single person there. But you don't call them out. You don't say anything. You just keep your mouth shut and you go home and you take your

bonus. And that's how it all works. So this was 2016 before the collapse. And they get the grants, these kind of projects? The developers in China. So we had a client that was one of the largest land developers in China. So they're getting money from the Chinese government and different economic development initiatives. And they're kind of whining and dining us. And then we provide data and research that fits their narrative. So the research is all backfilled. So here's the goal. Here's the end goal. You know, and then here's a check. Now give us the supporting evidence. far out it's wild because then you have all the consultancy arms that you can operate in order to provide all that data and information that will fit what they need whatever they want will be

provided and you know if we hadn't done it if i had spoken up and somehow convinced my entire company that this was wrong and we should stop well there's just another one and here's another one you know they're popping up there's so much money well consulting companies yes to provide the information that you know sometimes there's some legitimate research that's done but it's you know i mean if you've ever taken a statistics class data is very easy to manipulate so whatever they want is what you provide and if they wouldn't get that deliverable from you what does it mean for their project they don't get funding well ultimately it would be great if that was the consequence but the way that it really works is they go find a different consulting company

that gives them what they want okay and there's no shortage of those so so they get the money anyway but okay i get it but they still need that stamp from a consultancy company in order to go ahead with their project generally okay so there's these and those projects you gave the example of China's ghost towns. Are there many like these? Is it real estate only or in other topics? It's not only real estate. There's large economic development incentives that are granted and sometimes that money does get filtered down to local communities and does good things. I think the more local economic development is, the better because you have people actually within their own communities but the opposite is also true so the higher up you get the more disconnected

from the community that you are the more corruption there is you know the more that you're talking bigger money and so there's a lot at stake so there's one it's just what you're saying just makes me think there is one project that i've been covering in my writing the the line project Have you heard of that? In Saudi. In Saudi Arabia, right. This amazingly ambitious, I would say, project of occupying a city that will be built as a line. Right.

That would be sustainable, green, all this bullshit. It checks all the boxes. Yes. So they make those decisions first. But essentially it looks like the, you know, what's the Netflix? The Black Mirror. It's a Black Mirror episode. It's a Black Mirror for sure.

But it's also, you know the series about the train that doesn't stop? I forget the name of it. No, I don't know this one. Oh, that's amazing. So they all live in a train, and the train has to keep going, and it doesn't stop. And they literally live in a train, and there are different cars in the train. Yes, this is what they're doing. There's zones in the line, right?

And you're supposed to be within X distance. And so it's a pod. Live in the pod, eat the bus. Exactly. And I covered it under my section of the 15-minute cities because this is what it is. It's like you'll have everything, you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy. That's the WEF vision. Okay, so a project like that, for example, that's an example of some of the projects you've seen?

Well, I think the ghost cities was the largest thing that I saw, but that is the level at which this is happening. You know, all of these huge things that we're seeing, the initiatives that are being driven, the decisions that are happening, they're happening up at that level. And then they sort of trickle down. Right. OK, so let me be the devil's advocate for a second. So what if we check and see that that's actually a pretty good project? I mean, people are going to benefit from it. So what's your problem? Why the objection? Right. What is corrupt there?

I don't know exactly what's corrupt. Right. And there is a desire for some of these things. There's people that want everything convenient. They want to live in the 15-minute cities. And so if there's demand for that, why not meet it? Of course, it's being encouraged, and we have to ask ourselves why. You get caught up in the convenience and the ease. And it's very easy to just be a consumer and buy the things and keep everything very easy.

But when you're consuming endlessly, it's not very fulfilling, right? What do you find when you stop and ask the questions? Exactly. Why is this happening? What happens then? I think that you find there's no happiness in it. You find that consumerism is super empty, right? There's nothing meaningful about just consuming.

and ultimately like this all of these initiatives to make everything convenient are about just a couple of things consumption is one of them and control is the other so if we're busy consuming it's very easy for the people at the top to have the ultimate control and that's what they want and then how does this relate to your journey into bitcoin because i think that's where we're meeting those two worlds how we got here yeah so the universe aligned and i was sitting in cartagena colombia in 2017 and i didn't want to be there i was at a free trade zone conference so i'm sitting in a corner and this young russian kid sits down next to me and we're talking about some tech stuff he clearly didn't want to be there either he's like well have you heard about you

know bitcoin and like uh actually yeah you know when's the first time you ignored bitcoin so i ignored bitcoin in dc in 2011 had some friends using it yeah but i ignored it and i thought that's interesting and i started googling there was still like the internet hadn't been as co-opted as it is now it's insane um i set up a google alert and i just started reading everything that i could and i understood the technical side of it very quickly um so i got into bitcoin and that ultimately allowed me to get out of working in foreign direct investment. And so in 2018, I moved back to the States and kind of retired from all of that and thought, now what do I do with my life? It took some time to go, you know, from there to here where we are now. I spent a couple

of years trying to talk to people about what I'd seen, but nobody wanted to listen, right? I just sounded like a crazy person. You know, I came back to the U.S. and I was like, everything on the TV is propaganda. Like, you guys, this is crazy. That was your wake-up call, huh? It really was. I think the period of time in particular, a lot changed. And you have this, like, frogs in the boiling water effect. And I wasn't in the water. So I came back and so much had changed. And you weren't allowed to ask any questions you know 2016 was like a really yeah hot time and I wasn't in the states during that during the time so I'm just asking questions like you know and you there were so many things you weren't allowed to talk about so of course I'm like I'm gonna talk about

yeah but also how did this happen I thought we lived in the freest country on the in the world you know in Dubai okay I keep my mouth shut and I behave but I'm in America can I not speak about anything that I want? Well, apparently not anymore. So I didn't know. I was honestly like really alone for a while. And COVID, for me, there was a silver lining in COVID. And that was that it woke many people up. Yes. So I had some friends and former colleagues in China. I saw what was happening there. And I just knew. I said, it's coming here. And everyone said, no way, no way. And one of my friends in China actually fled to Italy and it went to Italy. You know, the lockdowns went to Italy. And I said, of course it is coming here. And again,

no, no way. And then Canada and then the United States. And so the silver lining for me in that is a lot of people came back and said, wait, what did you say? Now they were ready to listen and to hear these stories and you know so you had some people to talk to new people that would be willing to listen yeah and how was the COVID period for you well I got really lucky because I was in Florida so it was not too bad um that's right yeah we but you were watching everything else I was and it was wild to watch um it confirmed you know when I came back to the States in 2018, I had these wild thoughts. People get angry when I say, like, in some ways, the U.S., it's as bad as China. But the thing is, at least China is honest about its propaganda.

We're here in the U.S. and they're pretending this is real media. Like, get out of here. This is propaganda. And more and more people are starting to see that. But, you know, a few years ago, that was like, let's not talk about that. And again, I will always go back to this. At least they're honest about it. And it's not to say they're honest about everything. Of course not. There's no delusion of that. But the fact that the media is state-sponsored, we know that. That's a fact. So this is what bothers me in the United States, is that there's this facade that this is real information, and it's not. What else got clarified or verified for you during COVID? Well, it challenged a lot of my beliefs because, you know, I had spent time in Dubai.

And when you're in Dubai, you get a lot of questions about, well, isn't it, you know, authoritarian and these things. I'm like, well, I've never felt safer anywhere. You know, there's pros and cons everywhere globally. I come back to the U.S., it's in deterioration. So, like, it really, for me, brought up, like, what is freedom? You know, am I more free here where I actually feel sort of scared a lot of places? I can't leave my purse or my things sitting somewhere and use the restroom. I have to keep my things with me.

There's all these little things that we don't really think about. And so how do you arrange those pieces to have the utmost freedom? And it's complex, obviously, and there's tradeoffs everywhere with everything. But I think, you know, the error of the United States being the free beacon that it was is over. I hope that we can reclaim it. But to think that it is the freest place in the world is just delusional at this point. I think both you and I have experienced coming from a very successful and socially accepting community around us. And then when COVID happened and we were not willing to go along and to participate in all the different experiments they were running on us, whether it's health experiment or social experiment or whatever, then we had to experience some outcasting or discrimination at points, right?

And that, to me, showed, in many cases, the true face of society and of how easy it is to manipulate human beings and how easy it is to get human beings to turn against each other. It was wild. Yeah, it was wild. And so what were the prices that you had to pay for standing your ground and not taking part in all this crazy jungle? Well, I got really lucky in that I had just been spit out of the time in foreign direct investment and I wasn't interested in being involved in that anymore. So I was already in a weird transitional place in my life. I kind of just lost my career. So I didn't have to lose my career. I got very lucky in that sense, but I was working for myself as a consultant. And so I

didn't have an employer but I had clients and a lot of my clients would not have been happy if I had been running my mouth so I ultimately chose to wind that down and run my mouth instead because there were a couple of like retail clients that I had and helped them prop up like e-commerce businesses during COVID and I was doing a lot of like marketing business development and if you want to do that you know you have to play the game play along yeah you have to play along um so there was like one place for example and when i went there and i met with them i wore a mask okay um and i like i hate it i wish that i hadn't but i did you know we have to make all of these decisions i so i didn't lose that much and i'm really thankful for that but i have nothing but

empathy for i know that people lost everything i mean i understand the feeling of alienation because you know I had been through that coming back from being abroad and trying to like be honest about what was going on and so I just tried to find those people that were losing things and wanted to be honest and not go along with all of it and like support them and bring them in and you know like just whatever I could to support those people I was just sort of hiding away in Florida Yeah. And it was I mean, it was like watching an episode of Black Mirror, you know, but in real life, like I'm on my phone and and everything that happened in China, you would just follow it. And eventually it would come here. And I would try to say, you know, like, here's what's happening. It's going to come here. And again, people just thought no way.

And I vowed during that time I vowed to stop saying that could never happen here because look at what they did. sure right and so we have to be careful about this you try to maintain your mental health and so you want to have some hope in something and some kind of optimism so i try never to say that would never happen but sometimes i do because it's comforting right like oh they won't go that far yeah we learn time and time again that uh they break they will yeah they will and then what when did you start working for a company right yeah bite federal it's been so june of last year it's been like 14 months i think um and i they're based in southwest florida where i am and i got really fortunate enough to just meet them i kind of like ran into them i i started i got online after elon

musk bought twitter turned x i thought all right i'm gonna do this i'm gonna get on there i'm just going to talk. I'm going to tell everybody everything, you know? And so that of course brought people into my life. Um, and so I started networking and getting more involved in like the social side of Bitcoin. And I thought this is the only thing I care about. At least these people are honest. Yep. And, uh, well, most of them, yeah, most of them. Right. So yeah, it's, it's, it's grown. Right. So now we have all kinds. Um, but so I met them actually at a local meetup and I had met with them a couple of times and ultimately agreed so they're one of the first atm companies i think you said that and i do digital product development the past year i've spent uh doing

like a redesign and rebrand on we have a non-custodial wallet of course now we have regulatory problems with that so it's it's disheartening uh but we're carrying on and we also have a merchant solution you might have seen online actually we did um a gasoline transaction at a gas station in Florida. So again, you know, regulatory problems with that. They're really trying to crack down on things. There's been a very serious assault on the industry. You saw a lot of people leave the U.S. market. We're fortunate enough to have kind of the backbone of the ATM business. And so we have the runway to fight for these products. But it's hard to innovate? It's nearly impossible really yeah um so choke point 2.0 was very very real it started what is that so that was

it's kind of used now as a catch-all phrase for the assault on the industry i would say that the primary when the first like january 2023 okay they started and i think the the most effective tool that they have used is to debank the industry so we've been through i don't know 100 banks. Seriously? Yeah, seriously. They wouldn't let you open a bank account for the business. Well, yeah, we've lost business bank accounts. And then we had banking for different reasons. We had a business bank account, but we also had a partner bank. And that was they facilitated the on-ramp so you could buy your Bitcoin. And we also had like a full banking, go bank yourself is actually one of our marketing slogans. Yeah. So we offered services to our

retail customers and they said well you can't do that anymore we're not going to do that um there are a couple of players that survived that crackdown so you know you've got cash app and strike and these are great products um but if there's only two or three that get grandfathered with the stamp of approval then there's new innovation that's happening i mean they they are innovating and that is incredible i have nothing but for support for them but if you're not approved there's no innovation to be done you know i mean we are bigger than a lot of other people we have a 10 person like legal and compliance team because of the atm business yeah but you see some of these other companies that have left the market and i completely understand

why they left why would you take that risk i mean they're being very hostile and aggressive so so where do you think this is going well i'm hoping that it changes in november um because of the election because of the election and i know that a lot of people think that that's comical And when I say that, it doesn't mean that I have a lot of faith in the political system. I don't. I have none. But there is an aggressive, coordinated attack on the industry. And even if someone new comes in and doesn't fulfill any of their promises, if they get the current people out, it solves a lot of our problems.

So that is my hope. And then it gives you four more years to build. And if we can outbuild their regulation, you know, maybe we can get a little ahead. long term i i don't know so what do you make of all these uh political statements that you hear these days about bitcoin yeah well you know i i understand not wanting bitcoin to be political i spent 12 years in dc vowing not to be involved in politics you know i went i i like went to a tea party rally i'm like yeah leave me alone you know and i fled it um and now here we are right with some of the biggest names in politics speaking of the event and we're like cheering it on but i

think i think it was inevitable right but that's i'll stop you for a second because that's important to say we're cheering it on just because we know it's good for bitcoin yeah give up right about right like i have no faith in the politics i mean look if burning it all down was an option i would light the match but it's not you know it's not socially acceptable to do this like if we're gonna play in we're gonna play their games you have to like play the game right i mean you and i know that and so ultimately there's nothing more political than defunding the state which is what we're trying to do so i think it's you know i think it's naive uh to say just leave politics out of it you know there's this idea it's not an idea it's a truth the truth is that the bitcoin

protocol will survive. Yes. But we as people are citizens of the country that we were born in, you know, little leniency there, but we're citizens somewhere. And so long as we are citizens, we are subject to the laws and the rules and the regulations of the country where we live. And if we don't participate in the framework of those rules and regulations, other people will, and those people might hate us in fact generally they do so this apathy of like oh i don't want to be involved i get it i don't really want to be involved either but i also don't want to be subject to regulation created by someone that hates me yeah i'm with you a thousand percent and you sound exactly like my dad because that's what he says to me always when we get to that

point in the conversation but my problem yeah is that in israel at the moment i am a citizen of Israel I'm also a citizen of Australia but I'm I don't live there yeah in Israel there is no one I can vote for and there is no one that will actually change anything yeah they're all working together in cahoots to hurt the citizens or take care of their own interests so what you're saying is a hundred percent right I think it's valid when you actually find a politician or you can influence by lobbying or whatever right politicians that are willing to listen and you can do something with them great try try and educate them try and make them work for you yeah which is what they're actually supposed to do sure the public servants you know it's crazy but when you're in countries

that are so corrupt that you really have no one to work with yeah then i think the options that you're left with are either to live there and not participate in the political sphere or to leave to leave the country and try and build a new future if you can i don't know well so here so i agree um and the one thing i'll say is i have an interesting perspective on leaving we cannot participate or we can leave where do you go you're right not everyone has a place to go well no no say you can go anywhere in the world i mean you can go to florida you can sure but if you come to florida and we don't fight to save it in florida and we lose the united states to this same concept which i think there's a significant there's a very significant argument that it's

already been lost they're all already working together and if i'm being really honest do i think that that's likely yeah but at the same time if there's anywhere that can be saved if there's any like last shot i agree because sure so so the states turns into australia the states turns into you know i mean we literally just had yeah canada all these places okay so where do we go like fine i left i went to el salvador but like samson mao told me when i interviewed him he said yeah sure all bitcoiners can go to el salvador and then the nuke el salvador yeah yeah well also i mean no we wouldn't be doing but i mean theoretically it's possible it's very hard you're Right. And I think the states is one of our last hopes.

Yeah, I believe that. You know, I think. And the Second Amendment here is also an important part of it, right? It is. It's very strong. And so, you know, I think we all hope it doesn't come to that. But if it does, there's that. We have not yet been disarmed. I mean, we won't be disarmed. I think the psychological effect of it is enough to deter the government from hurting. I just posted last night, I posted the timeline of Venezuela and I circled the disarming of citizens because you saw Kamala Harris. They've done it in Israel now. They've done it before October 7th. They disarmed a lot of the villages that got massacred. There you go. So one of our,

like our lead developer is from Venezuela and he has already lived through this. And so to hear his perspective is very eye-opening and grounding for me so i had dinner with him last night you know and we're talking and here's what he thinks is going to happen and you sure hope that that is not what's happening but it's hard to tell someone who's already lived through it no no you're wrong like you know so there's a timeline like venezuela went from one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere very successful. I think it was 20 years. And if you look at that time to now, yeah, to to complete hyperinflation, total communism, just absolute, you know, like we're not fleeing to Venezuela. They came here and now they're all like saying, look, listen,

wake up. It's happening here. I think it's very ignorant to tell those people, no, you're wrong. Same thing with refugees from China who lived through the color revolution. I have several friends who have had that experience and they're here and they're trying to raise the alarm. And unfortunately, there aren't enough people who are willing to. That's what I do in Israel. That's why I speak up there and tell the Israelis that are willing to listen. And I do that in Hebrew that, you know, you guys, this is clamping down on you and you're not paying attention. All these new regulations and rules that are being put in place because we have a war now and it's another excuse and emergency under emergency to put all these new regulations to forbid you from your freedom of speech and your private property.

And now there's a biometric database that they're putting together and then there's a genetic database that they're putting together and then selling our data to pharma companies. and you know it's there's no end to it and they continue on from 2020 they're in a some kind of rally to to just like sell us off to the highest bidder total control total control and people are still in israel people look at me and say you're crazy and i don't give a they can they can but i'll still say it because you're you're either blind or willfully blind or ignorant It's willful ignorance and it's so frustrating. And again, it's not like both you and I are trying to despair anyone or show you the doom and gloom. Right.

In fact, we're here because we're trying to show you that there is another way out. Right. So what is your message then, message of hope around that? Well, Bitcoin is hope as long as we protect Bitcoin, right? And I think the way that we protect anything is to be honest about it. The dishonesty is ultimately what allows them to maintain control. And when you're saying being honest about it, do you mean honest about Bitcoin or honest in general? Everything, right?

All of the corruption is enabled, the compliance is enabled by silence. If you are not willing to speak up, you're complying, you know, and a lot of people are still scared to speak up. But if everyone just started being honest about what they think and what they feel and what they're worried about, everything, just be honest about everything, so much of this shit would end overnight. Yes. The mandates, the regulation, like all of this, if everybody just had the courage to say, I am not okay with this, we could affect so much change. I'm not okay with a CBDC that is going to program what I can use my money for and when and how much. Right.

I'm not okay with that. If only people said that, that would be really nice for what's coming down. You wrote, defending non-KYC Bitcoin is actually the only thing that matters in Bitcoin right now. Can you say more about that? Yeah. So this is a hot debate in Bitcoin. Privacy is a hot topic. And I have to admit, I was pretty ignorant to the privacy concerns. I mean, obviously, you know, in some ways, the visibility of Bitcoin transactions is a feature because if you're talking global settlements and government funding and all of that, having visibility and all of that, I mean, that's what we want, right? Like audit it. But when we're talking about our money, it gets a little

bit different and we have to be careful that we don't allow too much surveillance. So one of the things that I had to do when I got my role because of the way that we are regulated is I had to do in aml kyc training aml is anti-money laundering for those of you who don't know kyc is know your customers the identification process that's right and all of these alphabet regulations i didn't know anything about them and i didn't want to know right ignorance is bliss um but it's it's not good um and my concern is the amount of anti-money laundering rules and regulations that have already been applied to the industry. And the fact that when we KYC the sats that we're buying, we're attaching our information to those sats and therefore all

future transactions. Now, I get a lot of heat for this. People want to say Bitcoin doesn't care. But again, this sort of comes back to you're subject to the rules and regulations of the government that you live under. And those governments are very threatened. And when people feel threatened, they increase their power and they claw at you. And we have to be really careful what we agree to. So all of the on-ramps, I don't know where you buy your Bitcoin. You convert your fiat into Bitcoin, right? Well, in most cases, certainly in the United States, When you're doing that, you're KYC-ing. And when you're KYC-ing your Bitcoin, there are ways in the future to obfuscate that.

But they've already made some of those ways illegal. And of course, you can do them anyway. But you have to be willing to go to jail if they start enforcing that more significantly. If all of our Bitcoin is KYC-ed, then they know everything that we're doing. And if they make it illegal to sort of un-KYC it... Yeah, and that's something we should think about. And I think the industry definitely should look at innovating around privacy. And in October last year, Edward Snowden was talking about that in Amsterdam.

He was saying, you know, I've been I've been blowing that horn for a long time and people don't get how critical that is. And I think we're at that point. We are at that point. And I think a lot a lot of people who have not been subject to the training involved in that surveillance. you know there's a lot of people they have no idea that it's going on and so if you don't know what's happening it's really hard to be overly concerned about something right yeah but i think just by saying that we've raised awareness for the topic and you should go and do your research go into your research aml laws if you look at a lot of the people that have been put in jail um you know it's all done under the guise of anti-money laundering um and so they're going

to use that for more and more regulation and restriction and you know and obviously we're not calling anyone to break the law absolutely right right uh but we're just making people aware of yeah of that really really important topic yeah we're not doing anything criminal so we don't want to be labeled criminals exactly i'm just gonna end with one cool question what would you like to see happen in the world and how do you think this can happen i would like to see more free countries or free regions arise and i would also like to see i want to go back to that like time period when the internet was early and we interacted with people in real life i want to go back to that yeah like hi like the bitcoin events are so incredible because it's like it's real i'm

here with you i can hug you you know and we need more of that we need more of like real life bring like bring community back you know um bringing like real friendships and connections and communities i think that that's lacking in a lot of people's lives and i agree we're so addicted to these things and we don't realize how much it takes over yeah so free cities free communities free people yeah yeah let's end on that note we we want freedom yeah excellent so michelle thank you so much for being who you are being courageous speaking up i love your work keep doing what you're doing thank you you too it's so important i'm so glad always to see anyone you're talking to i'm like oh i know this is a good person yes yes i select them i handpick them like that so yeah

yeah it's important for me that my guests will be people that are not compromising truth or freedom for anything else so yeah thank you for being that thank you thank you for having me and thank you for also being that too yes yes yes we need more how do we recruit them like speak up everyone where do people follow you I just on Twitter it's the only place that I am Nostra no I'm on Nostra yes and I love I'm rooting for Nostra I'm there with it we need a little more development you You know, there needs to be an economic model for Nostra, too. That's a whole different thing.

But, yeah, I am on Nostra. I'm not super active there. Okay, well, it's the early days. So Nostra and Twitter. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Thank you, dear.

Thank you. Enjoy the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.