You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 76: Ben Samocha - Money (and Bitcoin) Make The World Go Round

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

My guest today is Ben Samocha, founder and CEO of CryptoJungle, a leading platform for Bitcoin education & Media in Israel. Ben shares his journey from using Bitcoin as a payment tool during his poker days to becoming an educator working with the public, regulators, and policymakers. In this conversation, we explore the role of Bitcoin in the broader financial and political landscape, and why education is essential these days. Ben analyzes the influence of global power shifts on monetary systems, and the emerging financial order involving stablecoins, CBDCs, and the potential for a new Bretton Woods moment. Ben outlines the dangers of institutional co-option, the Bank of Israel’s digital shekel, and why the coming years are critical for resisting centralized control and fostering a truly decentralized future.► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow 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 on June 19-21 at BTC Prague! Code EFRAT = 10% discount: https://pages.btcprague.com/ambassador-efrat-fenigson -- SPECIAL OFFERS –►► Join us at BITCOIN VEGAS! May 27-29 - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://bit.ly/4jVtATE ►► Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat ►► 10% off on all books & accessories at the “Bitcoin Infinity Store” - use code EFRAT: https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/ ►► Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Ben’s Twitter: https://x.com/bensamocha Ben’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-samocha/  Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Telegram: https://t.me/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –00:00 Coming Up...01:15 Intro to Ben and His Role in Israel's Bitcoin Scene05:23 How Ben Orange-Pilled Efrat08:36 Trezor and BTC Prague10:03 Freedom, Censorship, and the Deeper Meaning of Bitcoin13:43 The Israeli Bitcoin Community: Criticism and Cultural Challenges17:34 Ben's Awakening to Fiat and Money Deceptions25:18 Discovering Bitcoin Through Poker32:34 Learning About Bitcoin Through Myths Debunking41:22 Why Is Ben Choosing 'Crypto'?50:35 Ben's Macro Outlook: World War III, Monetary Upheaval, Global Power Shifts57:35 Trump's Strategy and Tariffs1:01:11 The New Monetary Order: USD, Gold, Bitcoin, and the Next Bretton Woods1:11:26 Stablecoins - Another Pillar in the US' New Financial Infrastructure1:13:50 CBDCs - How They Tie Into the New Monetary Order1:23:56 Banking Role in a Bitcoin Reality1:25:38 Resistance to Institutional Adoption and Bitcoin's Growth1:27:41 Past Five Years Started the Great Awakening1:30:09 The Central Bank of Israel and the Digital Shekel (CBDC)1:39:00 Why Do the Next Five Years Matter? The Urgency of Education and Resistance1:42:30 Closing Thoughts, Hope and a Call to Action

I will not live in a country where money is purely digital and fiat controlled by the government. I will not do that, even if it means changing my entire life. I drive my optimism from Bitcoin because Bitcoin is a Trojan horse. The U.S. is going to dump gold for Bitcoin. So simultaneously, they attack gold that they have, that these other countries have, China, Russia, etc. They use the funds to buy Bitcoin, so they increase their Bitcoin after they, as a government, have more Bitcoin. So essentially, they try to really make Bitcoin the new gold. And that is an attack of a monetary system.

If we are optimistic that we will have internet remaining after this war and it doesn't go nuclear and it doesn't go fully insane, Bitcoin is going to be the best beneficiary of this. Entire industries are going to be reshaped by that, especially, obviously, robotics and AI, which are also going to be very dominant in this next war, I believe. Hello and welcome to another great episode of You're the Voice. I'm Efrat Fenikzon, your host, and I'm super happy to be here today with a good friend of mine, Ben Samocha. Hey, Ben. Hey, Efrat. Thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. This is, I'm going to say it right from the beginning. Maybe it will be less awkward that way. We are very good friends and we're used to speaking in Hebrew to each other. This is the first time we're doing an interview or any conversation between us in English, purely in English. So it's a little bit strange, right? But I think we're going to get through this.

Thanks for agreeing to come with me today. I think my audience is going to love this episode because you're going to understand in a few minutes why. So let me tell you about Ben. Okay, so Ben is one of the most influential Bitcoiners in Israel. He is the founder and CEO of CryptoJungle. It's the largest and leading media platform in Israel, which includes a website, community, YouTube, podcast and conferences. And he's also the founder and lead lecturer at Blockchain and Digital Currency College in Israel.

He has over 100,000 followers and frequent media appearances. And he's, in my opinion, is the leading figure for Bitcoin and Bitcoin adoption in Israel. and he's a friend of mine and he's the person who orange-pilled me. Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! I think this is your

most important line in your biography and you forgot to add that one, so I added it. For sure. I want in your official biography everything plus

I orange-pilled. We have Eric Weiss and Michael Saylor and now we have that duo, right? It's a story your followers will now hear for the first time from me and not from you, because you told them before.

Right, and maybe also your perspective, which is different than mine, which I'd love to hear. But just before we get there, because that's what we're going to start with, we're both going to be at Bitcoin 2025 in Vegas, which is the largest Bitcoin conference in the world. And I've been there last year in Nashville. It was insane.

It was the first time that Trump was there. So it was like a little bit annoying in terms of the security measures and everything, but it was, you know, not because I'm a Trump fan, but because seeing what the Bitcoin industry is going through with the institutional and government adoption and actually seeing politicians coming to the Bitcoin community and speaking to them. It's politicians, it's the top Wall Street financiers. the financiers and the top tech guys like everyone is going to be there and it's it's really going to be crazy like it's a three-day event right it's a three-day event but with full of satellite events around it and parties and networking events and it's really the place to be if you really want to get a foot in the door in this industry and if you want to meet people find partnerships there's an exhibition as well so if you want to meet startups or invest or

you know or get a job i think that's a really good place to be you know yeah so yeah so come with us we are going um we have like a group of people joining us uh we're flying from here from israel and we're gonna be there for about a week so if you want more details about that we will put a link in the show notes to give those who want to join us with a discount code as well with a discount code and yes it will be great to hang out with you guys if you choose to join us okay so we're going to be in vegas together we don't know yet what we are going to be speaking about yet because the agenda is not yet clear but we can guess um but let's take a step back and talk about how we met and why we met. Can you share? Yes. So I'll share that from my perspective,

I was a huge follower and admirer of yours, of your work. So basically when COVID hit and the world became lunatic in a matter of months, you were one of the same people that were doing the justice work, the true work of bringing out the truth and being the voice for the truth when lockdowns began and especially when the vaccines and all the green passports and all that. And for me, it was hard to be out there, right? So I was a business owner, it was my income. So to be very aggressive and go to demonstrations and be noisy about it was not an easy feat

to do. And then you were, so you were leading there and I was following and sharing and I came to the protest as well and all this time i was like if you are so pro-freedom you're so anti-censorship yeah how are you not a bitcoin heir and then one day i just texted you on twitter um it was still twitter then and uh i told you that exactly and you said i'm waiting for somebody to teach me right about that and i think that you also heard about me from one of your employer employees yeah you were still back in marketing and uh that's how we arranged the first meeting and i came to your offices and we sat there for like two hours and it was amazing and uh the

orange pill began you took you swallowed the pill but you still didn't grasp it for sure for fully right uh yeah i i mean i was ready for it but you can't really understand it all in one conversation not even in 100 hours if you go to the full depth right to the full depth but was i asking the right questions i don't remember yes you were asking the right questions and you were always looking for the connections to freedom and to censorship and to understanding why it's important because the the understanding that if you control money you basically control everything else and it gives you the advantage to do that then it impacts freedom in every other aspect and to learn about the banking system to learn about central banks it takes you through that

rabbit hole and obviously we didn't get to speak about all of it in the beginning like in the first two hours but then we met again and we talked online and we texted and then I came with you to buy your first bitcoins and I opened your wallet with you that's right and you held my hand I held your hand. And for me, it was like, for me, it was like my, my own evangelism, right? I'm the lead orange pillar in Israel. So I gave the pill to a few tens, if not a hundred thousand people in Israel. And that's why I do what I do. Cause I want to educate people. I want to influence them. I want them to understand money through Bitcoin and to do it with you. When you become a voice for so many people, and I told you that before, that makes me a super proud dad that you expand the message. 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 Trezor super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family.

Enjoy my 5% discount on Trezor product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code FLAT. Are you coming to BTC Prague? The biggest, most influential Bitcoin-only event in Europe returns on June 19-21, with 200 plus speakers on four stages, 100 Bitcoin companies presenting at the expo, and 10,000 like-minded Bitcoiners and freedom lovers from all around the world. There's a great emphasis this year on the freedom movement. So if you're a freedom maxi like me, you don't want to miss this event. I'm excited to attend once again as a speaker and to interview the best and brightest for my podcast. In fact, BTC Prague is where I conducted my epic interview

with Michael Saylor. The event runs for three days with a developer's day, pitching contest, panels, presentations, and parties. Ticket prices increase on the first of each month. So make sure to get your ticket now. Use my code AFRAT for a 10% discount and see you in Prague. You know, it's very funny what you say about that I was asking questions about freedom and and censorship because I think that when I first heard about Bitcoin, I had no idea that that could help with, you know, preserving my liberty. And, and it's funny because I was looking at it because people told me, you know, it cuts the middleman and obviously it's a way to hedge your money from state, but I really didn't understand it. I didn't understand what it meant. Like, how

can this work? And I don't think I even believed that anything could really protect me or my, my hard earned savings from what's called the big bad state. And, um, so it's funny. So when, when I think that when you reveal this to me, that was a real revelation, like understanding that not only I'm learning a new topic here and I'm being exposed to like the whole world of economics and finance and money, which are things that are relatively new to me. I am actually learning, I'm being exposed to a new tool in my personal journey towards liberty and freedom. And that was a big, big, big revelation. I think that's why I fell in love so much with this tool. And that's why I'm so grateful. And that's why I keep doing what I'm doing. Because not only now I can share, you know, shed the light on hidden truths and expose scams or atrocities or things like that, but I can also provide some kind of way out. Solution.

Yeah. Solution and hope to people that actually want to. Because of money control and how it impacts other industries and there's the amazing book of Why Nations Fail, for example, where they really show that when you as a humanity, you experience a critical juncture, right? like a revolution or a big war, et cetera. You have the political infrastructure, the political entities, and you have the financial and economical entities. And if one of them stays in power, then if it's the economical,

they can rebuy the new political elite. And if it's the political elite, then they can reshape the new economical elite. And then essentially it stays the same. And now we are in this critical juncture and we have a tool that's actually for us and by us, by the people. And it's truly decentralized.

And I think that in a way, Bitcoin is much more than just a tool for sovereignty. It's also a tool for reshaping humanity in a better way that doesn't worship over consumption of things we really don't need. Like I just gave you a branded mug of my college. It's not something that we need. It's something that we want. It's something that we want to show, but it's not something that we need. And then therefore, by rethinking money, you rethink life. Absolutely.

And that makes me think about the Bitcoin community that we are both, whether we like it or not, part of here in Israel, which I have some criticism from time to time. You know that because we talk about it. And what you're saying is so fundamental in my eyes, because you are talking about how when you really understand money you understand the power structure and you understand how the world operates and in my opinion there is so much of the number go up and money talk like becoming richer thanks to bitcoin talk here in Israel amongst the community which you know I came so enthusiastic into this community thinking that I'm going to find so many freedom lovers

I do all around the world, but in contrast in Israel, a lot less. And I mean, thankfully you are one of them, but there are so many people here that are in Bitcoin, but don't really get it. In my opinion, they don't get it. Like they look at it as another vehicle for investment or becoming richer. And that's just like the beautiful adverse reaction of it. It's not the essence of it. the essence of it is really the answer to central banking. It's the answer to that

corruption of power and control and tightening control. So in your opinion, why do you think people here, I mean, and I know I'm generalizing because obviously it's not everyone, but why do you think there's a difficulty for people to see through the monetary aspect of Bitcoin and look into the values and the ideology like you're referring to. Yeah, so I will first say that there are true Bitcoiners that care about money here and there are maxis here in Israel and they've done amazing work, especially in the first few years

of creating the Israeli Bitcoin Association and leading things like education in not even a non-profit way. They lost a lot of money just to do that. And I really appreciate it And I learned a lot from them. And they also participated in the global community a lot. In the end, I don't think it's specifically related to them.

I think it's a matter of society today, right? So we might learn to be critic of one thing, but then when it's another thing, we don't approach the problem with the same questions, right? So if we asked the same questions we ask about the monetary system and money and how it works, et cetera, Like we do when we learn about Bitcoin, if we ask the same questions about the pharmaceutical companies, about the war industry, etc., then it will lead us to the same way. But these people, what they do is they don't ask. They understand money is fraudulent the way it works right now. They understand money needs to be changed, but they don't do the extra step to understand that if money is corrupt, it corrupts everything else. and i think that it's a matter of um somewhat propaganda right we are in this system for so

long we are that's what we learn in the education system that's what we learn in the academia that's what we do all day that's what we hear in the news and and we have built trust in the governmental institutions and what they bring with them and i think in a way it's a like a psychological way to protect yourself because you don't some people are not strong enough mentally to really understand that most of what we learned is fake is is a lie and i i can share that for me it wasn't easy at all my journey included a lot of rabbit holes some of them were like months of being really down really feeling bad feeling why why why yeah and who could do these kind of things right and uh when was it by the way when did you start paying

attention to and seeing like the things are maybe not as you're being told split it two to two the main thing was uh learning about money and one of the books that was very helpful about that was the creature from jackal island by edward g griffin uh one of the best books i've ever read i read it twice already and you read this twice it's so thick it's an amazing book and it's it's so bad for me to see how much time has it been since he wrote it and how correct he was in in like truly understanding where the world is headed if we don't wake up and uh um so that book really took me down to the rabbit hole of money and war and more financing and how fiat essentially creates all of that. But I stayed in the monetary realm. So I took it to Milton Friedman. I took it

to Hayek and Mises. I took it to learning about economy. And I studied economics in the academia as well in the university. So I truly learned about money after learning about Bitcoin. And that's the first rabbit hole I took. And that accompanied me for like the first three years of my Bitcoin experience from 2017 to 2020. So when you were a graduate of academia in economics and you were being taught everything you're being taught about economics. All the propaganda. Right. And did you buy it while you were studying it? no absolutely not it made no sense you had no other frame of reference um i discovered bitcoin

about halfway academia but it took me a while to to do the extra steps to understand how bad economic studies are in terms of like what but the the basic thing of saying there is an assumption that you go all the the three years of bachelors the assumption is the central bank is almighty yeah you have to assume that yes there's constant liquidity the central bank will take care of it's god like why why it can always why the hell would you assume that how can you assume that when there are so many empirical studies and cases that it shows otherwise yeah how can this be assumed and how come the austrian economics uh school of thought and uh the uh chicago school of thought both of them very important in the last century how come it's just 10 slides of all my my school

oh they do mention it it's it's mentioned okay five slides is this why do they mention it just to show that it exists and like because it's an evolution because you had to to evolve into keynesian economics okay which is nonsense like it's it's absolute nonsense but you don't they don't give you the tools to actually understand it yourself so i had to read books and i had to take subscriptions in other online courses etc and i did a course that really teaches you how the monetary system works today what is euro dollar how money is moved and what what its impact on balance sheets how it's connected to regulation all these kind of things that makes you look at the world so differently. And I remember being hosted in one of the leading

financial podcasts in Israel. And I was having behind the scenes talk with a host about the treasury auctions and how money truly works. And he knew nothing about it. And I'm like, dude, you're like top three in Israel, giving criticism and analysis on markets and on the Fed. And you don't even know how a treasury auction works and who can participate and all that. What's going on? Because he believes the underlying assumption that the central bank is almighty and he doesn't need to question that. But also because we have been funneled through media channels of absolute idiots or paid shills. it's either or yeah the people that we are supposed to be listening to them in academia

in the news in the mainstream media etc they know nothing right and it's crazy to understand how much so right they just constantly repeat the same mantras that you are taught in the academia and it's just so dumb because if you truly ask the questions and you look at the empirical cases that you have on a daily basis today in turkey in chile in argentina it's like it's like everywhere You just need to choose to look and explore. Yeah. So that was the rabbit hole I took until 2020. When COVID hit, I was the doomsday bringer to Israel.

I was telling everyone it's going to kill everyone. I was afraid to meet my grandmother. I was hardcore, two masks at the beginning, wearing stupid latex gloves, all of that, all of that nonsense. And then it took me about a month and a half from the first lockdown. So about end of April, beginning of May 2020, to ask about the money. And I remember sitting in front of ZeroEdge, which I really appreciate. And I'm a paid subscriber to this platform. And I remember reading this article about funding related to the Wuhan lab.

And then it hit me. It's like, wait, right. This is weird. Everything is weird. Why is this happening? And then I just start diving insanely. Like I spent just in these two months, tens of hours, everything that's being public in 2024 about the NIAID and the funding of gain of function research and all of it was public

from 2020. All of it was known to me in 2020 because I was looking, right? Because I was searching for it. And you had the connections from the Pamina papers and the Switzerland papers and this paper and all of that is out there. And then the fraud became so obvious to me and it took me down to this rabbit hole of big pharma, of all the conspiracy theories you can probably, or not theories, of spoilers of how the world really works. And that made me much more aware. Therefore, I did not participate in the experiment and chose not to put this foreign material into my body that now we know includes foreign DNA, includes potentially baby, what's it called in English?

Cells or... Cells, yeah, uterus cells, right? And all that and stem cells. So I didn't participate in that and that's how we came to meet. That's right. Thank God for your, I guess, intuitive ability for critical thinking. Because that's what you did in academia, which led you into the money rabbit hole. And that's what you've done again during COVID, which led you again to, I guess, everything else. Yeah.

And well, okay, let's go back to Bitcoin then. And when you started going down that rabbit hole and learned more about Bitcoin, how did it change your perspective over money? It changed my perspective entirely. I will add, it's also a good background story because it played a crucial role as well. But I discovered Bitcoin through poker. So I call it a semi-pro, right? So are you happy we're going to Vegas? Oh, absolutely. I will say that, honestly, the World Series of Poker event starts on May 27th, the same day that the Bitcoin conference is happening.

What are you more excited about, Ben? I still don't know. I think I'm leaning into being more excited from the poker. I am honestly saying I can't believe I'm going to be speaking in the largest Bitcoin event in the world for the first time being only 44. But playing poker in WSOP has been a dream of mine since I was 13, 14, something like that, when I just started playing poker. And it's funny. You're a poker fan? Yeah, I'm a poker fan. So it's like two dreams coming true at the same time for you.

Absolutely. Are you going to play at the tournament in Vegas? Yes, I'm going to stay two weeks after. Do you need to sign up for it? Not in advance. You can sign up there. Okay. Yeah.

I'm not going to see you at night, right? But you have to understand also why. So I discovered Bitcoin through poker and poker was another rabbit hole for me, right? Because I knew that I had good intuition. I knew that I was good at it. I won a small tournament in Vegas. I won a small tournament in Bulgaria. Nothing really worth noting, right?

But then I started learning about poker professionally. I started learning the game theory behind it and how amazing this game is and how many lessons it has that it is now being taught in the largest universities in the world, in business schools on how to make better decisions because it really teaches you an enormous set of skills on how to evaluate information, how to assess it in real time, how to make better decisions in the short term that affect the longer term in a better way in the EV. And when I started playing poker more professionally, that was 2015, and poker is illegal in israel so all the international platforms like poker stars etc were banned

so i had to play in more uh friendly yeah in more friendly environments online platforms that weren't blocked in israel and in order to use them i used to uh at the beginning use this kind of middleman who took 10 commission for every dollar which was insane or my friend introduced me the bitcoin and said listen you can use this he opened the wallet for me it's freaking blockchain.com wallet and he said this is how you send this is how you receive if you need to buy and sell you go to this place that we knew um and that's what i did so the poker platform took bitcoin as payment okay back in 2015 so i was using poker i was using bitcoin as money for poker for a year and a half and then in early 2017 i had a really good month a really good run

and suddenly i had all this money in bitcoin and i was like holy shit what what is this you didn't want to accumulate it no no i never i didn't even care what was the exchange rate i never looked at it wasn't any of it was just a medium yeah it was just money like just a medium that i was using yeah um and then i panicked so i was playing an all-night tournament right i finished i won second place in this tournament 12 p.m the next day after playing all night went to sleep two hours woke up panicking sweating why am i holding so much money for me which is not that well it wasn't that much right but for a student uh that poker was the income for my life that was a lot of money right so i woke up tired as much as i was and i drove to this place and i

sold almost all of it. I stayed with $400 worth of Bitcoin. And on the way back, I started thinking, wait, Ben, you're a poker professional, allegedly, or semi-pro. You're a rational thinker. Why would you respond like that? Why not read what Bitcoin is? So I went to sleep and I woke up the next day. And that's when I started truly learning about Bitcoin. This very day was the day that my mind blew i immediately understood that on the first day on the first day i already opened two screens one screen is the white paper the other screen is google and i literally translated to myself to understand every single word in the in the in the white paper and that's why you have it behind you everywhere you go you take that one the bitcoin bible and uh that day obviously

changed my life because immediately i put the bitcoin the poker on the side and all i wanted to do is learn about bitcoin and then i had the and this is also important for the story the rabbit hole of understanding crypto right learning about ethereum your mind goes for the beginning and then learning about all these altcoins and all the decentralized applications you can build and about trading and about investing i taught myself everything i didn't care about the university i I just studied all day long at, I think, four notebooks that I still have, by the way, that I filled them with everything that I needed to know. And it was an amazing experience. And because I had that experience, first of all, I understood that this is what I want to do with my life.

Like I know that I found my thing. I was still bartending on the side. uh um i didn't know what i want to do in terms of education etc but i knew that i want to be there this is something big this is going to change the world and uh to it also played a role in my journey of i'm glad that i had this epiphany going through ethereum and altcoins and every coin is going to change the world and every industry is going to be revolutionized all this dreams selling of blockchain instead of bitcoin that i'm glad that i had that because now then it puts me in a way uh well positioned to take people faster from the crypto to the bitcoin

right wait hold on with that because i want to dive deeper to that but i i want to amazing story I want to just assert something. Unlike most people in Western countries, you started your journey into Bitcoin using it as a medium of exchange for years before you actually started using it as a store of value. Yes. Which is like flipping the thing on its head. It's quite amazing. And although it wasn't easy using it as a medium of exchange back then, but you found one way that worked and you continued running with it. wow that is one hell of a story okay okay so i think that you told me once that when you started

searching and researching bitcoin you went through a journey of proving yourself why this thing is going to fail yeah why is that so i started crypto jungle in 2017 The reason that I started Crypto Jungle was one, because I wanted to do something about myself and this industry. And more importantly, I am a native English speaker. So it was very easy for me to learn about Bitcoin and about crypto. But there was nothing in Hebrew, like literally nothing. No guides to explain to you how to buy safely, how to prevent frauds and mistakes. What is a wallet? Nothing.

So the purpose was to navigate the jungle, which is why Crypto Jungle. And I started the business two weeks before Bitcoin hit $20,000 for the first time, which is the end of the 2017 cycle. So from there, it was one year of downhill. And obviously, I'm still a student, first time entrepreneur, knew nothing about it and was just learning on the go. and all this time everyone around me were like why are you promoting this scam what bitcoin is a fraud uh all my friends my family believed in me but they didn't believe in bitcoin yet so so they were like why are you doing this again but we support you but why yeah but why are you doing this and and i realized that there are a lot of stories being told about bitcoin and a lot of

criticism being told about Bitcoin. And at this point, I already learned a lot, right? But I felt like it wasn't enough. So I realized that in order for me to be truly behind my vision as to where we are going, then I have to address the critics myself. I didn't care about sharing it with others yet, at least not enough. But the talk about anonymity and being used by criminals went down that rabbit hole, learned about Silk Road, learned about before that, learned about WikiLeaks, learned about everything related to that, learned about chain analysis and tracking tools and how not really anonymous Bitcoin is and why, on the contrary, we have to be more private when we use it and we have to encourage people to build more private solutions

on Bitcoin. And when it comes to Bitcoin's economic features, right? So there's a lot of criticism about bitcoin being deflationary i will say it's disinflationary if we want to be precise uh so this completely reshapes your thinking about economy like the whole purpose of gdp how we measure economic growth and success today it's to understand that this is a fraud as well because what you are doing with how the way you are calculating gdp is you take the services And if I obviously simplify it, the services and the products that are being sold in this country, you multiply it by the prices. But if you control the prices by expanding the money supply, i.e. money printing, so you increase the GDP. It's a lie.

And it doesn't really measure economic growth and definitely not economic welfare. Who enjoys this? So GDP can grow 50-fold, but it can still mean that the bottom 90% are becoming more poor, even though the GDP is growing. So I had to go through that cycle. And energy, which was a big thing back then because climate change was still believed by many. it still is but but uh but all the that was prime nonsense uh um climate change uh uh awareness and um back then this was one of the largest critics about bitcoin and ripple joined with uh uh what's they call a green piece to do a campaign against it and ethereum started talking about transitioning

to proof of stake pieces to be more energy efficient and i was like wait but what's going So in order to understand that, I had to understand the energy market. So I learned how the oil industry works. I learned how natural gas is being created and all of that. And then I realized, holy shit, this actually makes the industry much better, much more efficient, much more cheaper, much more abundant. it literally transforms energy in places that you couldn't even reach to money to to something that you can use and that's enormous for gdp right and um i had to go through all that and through the monetary aspects right so so that was really a big role and one of the books out there is by alan greenspan don't know i don't remember how it's called in english uh the age of turbulence But I read books by Milton Friedman. I read books by Hayek and Mises. I went through all the economic theory, deep dive. And I, like I said before, I learned about how money works today. What is the euro dollar system? What is how the banking system really moves money around the world? Why Basel III regulations are so important? Why collateral and treasuries, et cetera, are so important? And that's why I was able to make predictions like that the dollar is going to strengthen back in 2020 when everybody was saying the dollar is going to die because the U.S. just printed $5 trillion into the economy.

I was saying, no, the dollar is going to strengthen much more before it's going to die. It's going to die eventually. But I had to go through that process and to wear a costume, right? I really remember myself sitting with my notebook and in this course by Dr. Perry Merling, and he is a central bank fan, right? So he's teaching about central banking and why central banks were created and how they work and how important they are. And he's giving all this good reasons. As part of your degree? No, as part of my external studies.

and I was sitting on my bed watching the TV and I was mad this is not true and I told myself no Ben you have to listen to him as if you are pro central banks right like I really tried to

get into their mindset and eventually obviously it made me more more bullish on Bitcoin exactly So that's the process. And it also played a part in understanding altcoins and blockchain companies. We didn't talk about my background. I was also working for a PR and marketing agency in the blockchain space. I even co-founded a company with them that does media, a press release distribution service called Chainwire. And this company, Market Across, I got to work with the largest companies in the world. So I worked with Binance.

I did Solana's launch. I worked with Polkadot. I worked with Crypto.com and with tens of others of coins slash shitcoins, right? And I was able to see the industry from behind the scenes. And on the one hand, I met amazing entrepreneurs, truly amazing people that what was driving them was the same ideology that was driving me. They understood that we need to decentralize not just money, we have to decentralize other industries as well. And I was having amazing conversations with them.

But eventually it was all down to token economics. And eventually even the best entrepreneurs were, because everything was focused about the price of the coin, whether if it's their income and their wealth, their ability to pay to suppliers and to marketing, etc. All of that was eventually influenced by what is the price of their coin. And that was when I truly realized how problematic it would be to have a multi-currency world as in like a fraud coin and bencoin and crypto jungle coin and you're the voice coin and all these coins for everything, coins for everyone. It doesn't make sense when you take a deep dive into what token economics is, how it works and how it needs to be connected to your vision, to what you're trying to accomplish and to not impact your day to day, which eventually made me even more a Bitcoiner. But I'm trying to understand. I mean, this is a good segue to this next topic of crypto education, which is what you chose to do. I mean, you're one of the people that I know that is most bullish on Bitcoin, that is a true Bitcoiner.

And yet your business is called Crypto Jungle and you cater for crypto audiences and shitcoin seekers. And why that choice? And how do you make the transition then from your Bitcoin... Orientation. No, not orientation. I'm looking for the word conviction, your conviction and your, your rational thought and belief in this, in this, um, new way of living. I'm not even calling it a coin.

It's so much more than that. We know that to being in that jungle and putting yourself like choosing to put yourself in there. What's your rationale? What's your philosophy behind this? So I'll begin by saying that I'm not a one-coiner, right? So I obviously believe in Bitcoin the most, but I also believe in the 80-20 rule. So I believe 80% of the value when we reprice the world next, like in comparison into Bitcoin instead of the US dollar as it is done today or gold, I believe 80% of the value will be built in a way on Bitcoin, whether if it's on-chain, whether if it's layer twos, whether if it's centralized solutions relying on Bitcoin behind the scenes. So I believe Bitcoin will be

80% of the world's wealth built around it. But I also believe that Bitcoin is not efficient enough for many other things and that blockchains as much as we need to understand the trade-offs that we make on decentralization and security they do offer value which is smaller for more niches right for example stable coins true we can we will be able to use stable coins with reliance on bitcoin as a protocol but now for example most of the stable coins of the 200 billion of them are built on other blockchains and I do believe that this is innovation and I do believe that this provides freedom

to USDT and USDC holders around the world. They can use dollars not through their banking system which allows them to escape the chains. True, it has downsides as well but it enables financial and economical innovation that wasn't possible in the past and even yesterday

you had the Italian finance minister say that He said we should be much more worried about US dollar stablecoins rather than European, I think he said, rather than European CBDC or no, tariffs, he said, as opposed to tariffs. Right. So he deems stablecoins as a threat to the European Union and the European economy more than tariffs. That's the messaging point they gave him from the EU and the ECB. It's part of the CBDC campaign. Could be so, but eventually it's innovation and also DeFi, decentralized finance, the fact that you can now lend to other people and take loans from other people around the world, that you can trade representations of value, be it tokens, be it NFTs, be it even if they are eventually connecting to the real world like tokenized fiat, like tokenized real estate, all these solutions, eventually what they do. And I had a regulator on my podcast say that in a very good way, that if the banking system and the financial system today works like this, you have a very small cartel that everything goes through it. All the market making activities of the securities and all the payment channels, everything goes to the same, same, same middlemen that control everything. What DeFi enables you is to expand this to many others.

And in a way, it's very good. It does expand competition. It does make them, these cartels, more worried. And therefore, even if it is not built on Bitcoin, I do think it is a good evolution. Same for gaming solutions, etc. So that's how I see it. um when it comes to why i chose crypto jungle um i'm i will admit that at the beginning i wasn't just a bitcoiner right i wasn't hardcore bitcoin i really thought crypto will be the true revolution

and eventually it is also true right because bitcoin is considered part of crypto it's true it's true that we try to separate because we want to emphasize the differences of decentralization and the ideology. Because they're different beasts. True, true. But you have to put it in the normies perspective. So what do normies care about?

Right. They care about crypto, not Bitcoin in terms of they think it's the same thing. Yes. And they care about making money. That's the first reason that 99% of them

is going to come to crypto slash Bitcoin. And that's why I said that my journey was important for me in understanding that. Because if I understand that that's what they're looking for, Then I can create a funnel where they go much faster through a path that one, really puts them away from all the meme coins and shit coins and all these non-sickle things that exist and away from frauds and away from mistakes. And I get, I think on a weekly basis, I get at least a five call from my graduates that tell me, Ben, thanks to you, we were able to avoid this scam.

We almost fell for phishing, but thanks to you and all of that. But also I create a faster route to understanding Bitcoin and understanding money. And then even if like me, they understand it and they believe the 80-20 rule, they still are much more Bitcoin heirs than they are crypto heirs. And I believe that in the pay it forward way and what I'm trying to do in my evangelism, and that's the reason why I chose to do education and content as opposed to other offers that were on the table like with market across is that this is this is the way this is the strategic way to take the hook them with making money and i'm not lamborghini uh seller

you know the dubai kind of thing not not that way but to give them the platform to learn about crypto what is crypto how to make money off crypto by investing or by trading but to simultaneously create a quicker easier understandable funnel to money through bitcoin and then even if they want to do other stuff they still have a most of their chunk and most of their attention to bitcoin and the rest is considered more less significant uh so that's why legit um how many people do you think went through your uh your education programs until today more or less So when it comes to like paying students in terms of actual students doing all of my courses, more than 4,000. When it comes to people doing my free material, the free course, free trading lessons, all this kind of stuff, close to 20,000.

And when it comes to the wide audience, today we have almost 200,000 visitors a month on my website. I have, each YouTube video is around 7,000, 8,000 views. The podcast is the most listened in Israel. My community has 65,000 members. I've been in almost... The 65,000 are people, like anyone can join the community? Anyone can join. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah. So my influence is big and everybody knows that, you know, in Israel, if you need something that's related to crypto, you talk with me or my platforms. and I'm happy that I was able to achieve that right because of my reputation because of the way I do things right I really don't bullshit I really say the plain things I go and I warn of Luna for example Luna that all the kryptonaires were crazy about and it's going to change the world and I was saying it's a Ponzi and it's going to collapse I didn't believe it's going collapsed three weeks after i said that uh because i told markets can stay uh irrational longer than they can stay solvent right so you can continue luna could have continued to two hundred dollars

before it collapsed to zero but i was there saying on youtube warning my club my crowd it's okay to to speculate but do it with one percent do it with two percent of your net worth of your investment portfolio be ready don't don't go all in and be connected to this uh illusion because it is an illusion nobody can offer you 18 on the dollar unless it's a fraud let's talk a bit about macro geopolitics uh because this is one of the things that i'm very interested in today obviously most people are because it's impacting everyone's lives no matter where you are um but also i've taken one of your courses uh which was called investments during chaos right yeah and it was a five class uh course uh which was pretty good and i think

a couple of years ago or so sorry you were kind of laying out your um your thesis for where the world's going to go in the next few years and what has you develop a certain investment thesis and what backs it up and what kind of industries you think are going to be impacted by it and what kind of players in the market are going to be pulling the strings and where. And a lot of what you said during that course came true or yeah, unfortunately came true. And I remember many people at the course were like, they were, I mean, I knew a lot of things you were talking about it was really good to like pack this all up and see how you actually use that very rationally to lead people to make economical decisions about their investments and about their

portfolio and so I definitely recommend people take that course but also I want to hear this was a couple of years ago, what is your view today on the current crossroads that we're in, like the convergence of World War III that is either here or looming, I don't know, the battle over money, the war on information, like all these things, how do they transact with each other, communicate with each other? What is their relationship there? And where do you see this going? And I know this is a big topic, but let's try. Let's give it a try. Yeah, so Investments During Chaos was a course that I launched in May 2023.

The reason I launched it was because I needed to get it out of my system. Like I needed people to try and see the world the way I see it. And I low-priced it so it can reach many people, as many as I could. And it had several themes. One of them was World War III and the fact that I believe we are in it. And I was saying it before even Russia invaded Ukraine. And there I describe the three main areas where World War III will be impacted, which was Europe. So Ukraine, Russia, I still believe is going to expand and it's going to be NATO versus Russia, Israel and Iran, which obviously that was six months before October 7th.

And we know what happened since. and I still believe it's going to get worse and now we are in this negotiation phase between Trump and Iran to try and get a deal I think that deal is doomed I hope not but I think that deal is doomed

even before it started and that I don't know if it's going to be in April, May or July but I think we're very close to the next phase in World War III still don't know which will come first Europe or Israel as in the next phase of escalation. But it's very, for people like us that know where to look and where to listen and how to ask the right questions, I think it's very

apparent that the European Union and the UK want the war with Russia, not just to stay, but to expand the keir starmer uh has already mentioned says sending troops to ukraine putin has already said this is going to be an act of war um so the the finances like the way they are now increasing their security budgets it's all 800 billion from germany which is which is a very big shock because germany was against all of that so i think it's very obvious uh that this is the next phase and obviously China. So China, Taiwan, which I believe is not going to be just China, Taiwan. It's going to be China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia. It's all going to be like that. That will be the last phase, right? So I believe the China strategy is to make the West waste resources

on ukraine and on iran before china makes the move therefore it will be easier for uh for them to uh expand their dominance in the china the south china sea and in the pacific as a whole and uh that's my opinion about world war three i think that eventually if we have free press in 20 years from now and free information then uh february 24th 2022 will be remembered as the day World War III began just like we remember September 1st 1939 is the day Germany invaded Poland

and September 1st 1939 February 24th because that was the day Russia invaded Ukraine so that's my perspective on World War III obviously it means

money printer go boom so that's That's why I have a saying that I really don't like saying it, but it's so out there, right? The more I'm short humanity, the more I'm long Bitcoin, right? Because if we are optimistic that we will have internet remaining after this war and it doesn't go nuclear and it doesn't go fully insane, like totally insane. So Bitcoin is going to be the best beneficiary of this. because one thing is a constant which is the money printer not doesn't just need to continue printer printing but the printing uh has to continue expand exponentially in order to to

to deal with the this enormous expenses when it comes to war and what it will bring and infrastructure building and all of that so entirely entire industries are going to be reshaped by that especially obviously robotics and ai which are also going to be very dominant in this next war, I believe. And there are, you know, rumors that China is already building both robot armies, etc. So they don't really care

about the demographic cliff that they are witnessing right now. So it's super interesting. What do you think about the tariffs hiccup along the way now? It's not a hiccup. It's an obvious thing. Do you think it's a beginning of something?

Obviously, yeah. The beginning already was in Trump's first term. So nothing is surprising here. That's what surprises me. So yeah, share more. Trump, when it comes to his first term or things that he said and wrote in 2015, tariffs was a main theme there, a huge theme. And in the last year, all of his campaign promises, he already is making all the moves to be a politician that stands behind his word. It doesn't matter if we think it's true, not true. It doesn't matter if I personally disagree with the way he's done it. I agree that the U.S. needs tariffs.

I agree that this is, that they need to, especially from a national security standpoint, they need to put more emphasis on their local industries. Because today, just following Grant Williams' podcast, I don't know if you know it, really, really recommend, probably my favorite podcast out there. and uh i just listened to an episode there where just you understand how bad the situation is in the u.s today for every one ship army ship navy ship that the u.s creates and in the united in the united states china creates 200 200 and not only but from that one ship 50 of the value chain goes through china yeah so it's insane it's like how can you expect the united states to win a war in the pacific if all the ships are made in china and you can't so you have to create these barriers and stop letting china invade the world through subsidies because what china is doing

and has been doing in the last 20 years is print money to fund industries that are not supposed to be profitable, just so that they can sell in really, really low prices, all the equipment, all the manufacturing, all of that. Therefore, you go to them to manufacture everything in China. All your local companies are closing, right? And then when they won the industry, now they can make the companies profitable. But they already killed your base. They already killed your industry and they already took your technology and your IP,

right? And then they go build and buy the companies as well, like we have in Israel too, right? China owns a lot of Israeli companies. So Trump has been against it vocally for a very long time, and now he's doing a lot of things against it. And I believe that this will continue to escalate because he understands that he has to make an umbrella with Canada and Mexico as well. It doesn't just stay within the U.S., the U.K. probably too. So it's the next phase, right? It's just another thing. And tariffs were also last time they were discussed was the 1930s. So you can really see the history rhymes with the fourth turning, another book that's here behind you. We are in that phase. So that's what I see for the world. So talk a bit about the new monetary order in light of that. So we know Bretton Woods in 44 was very significant. And now, you know, speaking of the fourth turning, I feel like we're starting the Mar-a-Lago agreement phase without calling it that yet.

So I think we are, and this is honestly like a self-reflection, right? That at least if the world goes nuts, we are sitting in the best seat, right? To understand and see what's going on because it really is historical that we are able to see these events go in real time. So when it comes to the monetary order, there are several things happening at the same time. On the one hand, you have Agenda 2030, right? And the World Economic Forum trying to push to a world government and therefore a world currency allegedly reliant on the SDR by the International Monetary Fund. That narrative is completely blown, right? So Trump took a huge knife and cut it and it's dead almost entirely. There's close to zero chance we'll get there in a normal way, at least. Then you have BRICS. So BRICS countries have been transitioning to gold and to other commodities for a very long time. They've been buying gold in the last six, seven years in historic rates and historic numbers.

It's really insane to see how much, much more than the 70s, right? And they're also building and laying out infrastructure rails for new payment systems, new monetary systems and for example china and russia are already settling trade deficits with gold they have banks in hong kong singapore and dubai and they each old accounts in those banks and they just move the different the difference between this fault and this fault with gold so they already do a lot of settlement in gold in crypto as well in crypto much less they do but much, much less. But this is where it gets interesting, right? So China and Russia are both dictatorships and dictatorships are really characterized by not letting their citizens do

what they want to do. So you want to enforce capital controls. You don't want to let them have sovereignty on their money. So it is banned in China, right? You cannot hold Bitcoin legally in china and it is also very uh limiting in russia you can only use specific platforms and even then there are many other limitations so therefore it is hard for them to really adopt crypto in the international way what i think they're going to do is they're going to try and create locally pegged tokens that replicate like a CBTC, China BTC, that is in a local, it's in the part of the DCEP of the Chinese digital currency system. It's the ACNY.

Yes, but it will be the same with Bitcoin. You will think you are holding Bitcoin, but you are not holding Bitcoin. Just like you think you are holding gold via an ETF, but you are not holding gold in an ETF. What do you mean? You think they're going to lie to you? To their citizens that they have Bitcoin? They're going to have a system that is called Wrapped Bitcoins. Wrapped Bitcoin is an ability to essentially move Bitcoin from the original chain, from the original blockchain to another blockchain.

So for example, over the Ethereum network today, you have more than 300,000 Bitcoins locked. And they are being traded in decentralized finance applications, being used for lending. And it's called a Wrapped Bitcoin because you lock Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain and you create a token that resembles this Bitcoin on a different chain and you can do more things with it. I think they're creating a closed loop systems where you will have RBTC, which is Russia Bitcoin, CBTC, China Bitcoin. Then you as a citizen in your bank or in your digital currency wallet

by the government will be able to hold Bitcoin, but it's not really Bitcoin. And then they can do the same thing that the US did with gold in 1934. they can just revalue the bitcoin and give you less confiscate yeah that's what i think they will do right and now but they will fool their people yes in that sense because they will not educate them they're doing it in so many other senses so we shouldn't be surprised that this is going to happen and it's going to help also create a bridge to the world because it's going to like send a message that they are allowing their citizens to hold bitcoin but i think the

real interesting part is obviously the u.s because when it comes to the tariff and scott besant which i listened to many many interviews and speeches of him he's a monetary historian he taught monetary history in university he was a forex trader with george soros there when all the attacks on the bank of england happened and many other trades that are also related like attributed to him As in, he was the speculator doing these things with the Bank of Japan, etc. He's very knowledgeable when it comes to the monetary system. Scott Bassington has been speaking for years about the need to create a new Bretton Woods that favors the United States and disfavors China.

And now, as Bitcoin heirs, as an administration of Bitcoin heirs, they have the ability to create an attack on gold and on the BRICS companies with Bitcoin. And this is what I think the grand strategy is. And I know this is very presumptuous, right? Because who am I to bring in this kind of... But a lot of it is already out there. So I personally think that the US is going to dump gold for Bitcoin. So simultaneously, they attack gold that they have, that these other countries have, China, Russia, etc. And they used the funds to buy Bitcoin. So they increased their Bitcoin after they, as a government, have more Bitcoin. So essentially, they tried to really make Bitcoin the new gold. And that is an attack of a monetary system. Right.

That is not an attack of like speculation. Yeah. That is attack on money. And the U.S. now is well positioned to do it. Because the dollar, when Trump is doing what he's doing, I don't mean to be blunt, he's holding the world because the world is reliant on dollars. They need dollars because 65-70% of transactions are invoiced and receipts are paid in dollars. 45% of the world's debt is nominated in dollars which means that if you are Turkey and you have dollar debt

you need to have dollar income so that you are able not only to pay the debt but also the interest on the debt and you can't just change that out of nowhere you have to go to either the fiscal authority which is the United States Treasury and Government or the central bank authority which is the liquidity swaps

you create some kind of mechanisms that the Federal Reserve can lend you money and against your local currency. And this means that Trump really is... Do you think they're going to revalue the gold and then... Sell it to buy Bitcoin. Wow. And I think they're not just going to do mark to market.

So today also... And then bring other countries to the table to renegotiate their relationship to Bitcoin? This is also happening. I believe this is also happening right now. I believe that. That is already happening. Yes.

Yes. Listen, you have the chairman of the White House crypto policy. The czar? Not the czar, not David Sachs. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The director. Bo Hines, I think the name is. And he said that too.

He said that that's part of the things that they're evaluating. And what they're evaluating right now, at least publicly, is repricing the gold on the treasury balance sheet from $42.2, which is now the cost value from 1974 that it is priced in, to $3,300, which is the price right now. I believe they're going to do it to $6,000 or $5,000 and sell the difference to buy Bitcoin. Then they crash the price of gold or at least keep, at the very least, keep it the same while expanding the U.S. government balance sheet substantially and buying Bitcoin with them. I believe that this is, I'll try and be less optimistic. When they buy Bitcoin then, do they buy it to hold it in reserves or what do they buy for? They buy it not just to hold it in reserves, but to also include it in regulations, include it in ways that allow other countries to do the same. So, for example, VanEck has been, not just VanEck, but Jan3 and other companies have been really promoting this treasury bonds, right?

So you are able to really lower the price of your auction by creating 10% Bitcoin holdings against the treasury bond. Therefore, you can take a 0.5% interest on that for a 10-year bond and have it fully backed by Bitcoin. And also in a transparent way, you can actually create a separate wallet, an open source solution that they can see that this is trusted and this is backed by Bitcoin. So the message is adopt Bitcoin, not gold. Bitcoin is the 21st century gold because it's more liquid globally. You can transition it all over the world in large sums as well because we as the United States Treasury, which is the largest and most liquid market in the world, we hold Bitcoin. um so yeah it's optimistic and then the way there do you think it goes through stable coins that's why they're pushing the stable coin uh regulation so much in the u.s right now so i believe stable

coins are um one a tool to finance the treasury so the u.s is adopting uh treasuries is adopting stablecoins to expand the dollar and it's another finger of the huevos right so what's happening right now is that you have BRICS companies and the alliance has grown to over 40 countries and all these countries are now subject to trading agreements with the BRICS companies but these trading agreements were signed by the leaders and the leaders in Egypt in ethiopia in brazil are not trusted by the people so by expanding stablecoin adoption and increasing it and even really like pushing it as an agenda mining you're undermining the actual authorities and you can replace them uh the same economic uh uh hitman way right so you have new wave of

economic hitmans promoting u.s dollar-backed stable coins directly to the people with much less violence yes and much less uh hardship on the people exactly it is a very sophisticated strategy i think uh what you're laying out here and if that is the move then then i think i see stable coins as the as a step to get there and that's why they are being so quick to yep to put it on the fast track now yeah it's supposed to be out by july like just the new entire regulation july august i think we will already know what it's going to look like and there are two bills on the table for it um okay which then takes me very elegantly to the question about cbdc's because you You did refer to it when you said, okay, Trump put his foot down and said, no, CBDC is on my watch.

But yes, we are working on national stable coins, which is a different way of doing that. And we have recorded also a whole episode about that in Hebrew to kind of explain to people the differences between the different tools that they are using and why. I am interested in your take on CBDCs and how you see them rolling out in the world, because in my view, it's going to be different in every country. And as it, I think, nicely ties into your theory, we are going to see the use of that tool serving different agendas or different interests of different countries. And so when people are, you know, I sometimes feel like, especially in the freedom movement, that there is this very easy way of framing things for oneself. When you want to warn people about what's coming, you'll say, oh, climate is a scam, health is hijacked and CBDCs are bad. And obviously there are more, but you kind of put that umbrella over CBDCs. Just go, CBDC is bad, get cash.

While people don't even understand that cash is fiat and what is fiat and they don't know what it means. It's still better fiat, but yeah. Sorry? It's still better fiat on the spectrum. It is better fiat, but it's fiat, right? I mean, cash definitely has its advantages. I'm all pro-cash, but you've got to understand what you are preaching for when your solution ends with the cash, right? It's not a long-term solution.

It's not going to make a difference in the longer or the bigger scheme of things. And so what I'm kind of looking for, and that's why I do what I do with the work I do on CBDCs, to introduce that nuanced thought and critical thought into the whole world of CBDC. It's not like CBDC is bad, period. It's like, let's break it down and see what kind of instruments are in there and who's going to use what and for what. And I really believe that, sorry for this big rant, but I really believe that this is an overtone window

that is being opened very aggressively with retail CBDC being on the extreme scale of this dystopian reality and with cash and non-KYC Bitcoin being on the softest part of the scale. So how do you see this tying up with the new monetary order? Of course. So basically, I would say that like almost everything, there's a spectrum. So I think retail CBDC is dead. Retail CBDC is not... Everywhere? Almost everywhere is dead. It's not... The only places where it can potentially work, not even because China, they went wholesale. They tried retail. No, that's not true, dude. You're not updated. But China, what it did is it integrated their ECNY into the travel app, the shopping app, the Alipay and WeChat Pay. It's already integrated in there. So now they're boasting 800 million wallets of ECNY in the space of nothing. But that makes it wholesale. Retail means in the...

That is also retail because it's in retail applications. yes it's not just the wholesale token the concept as a consumer can choose to use your ecny quota in your purchase through these apps they went to the chinese uber and the chinese yeah amazon and everything and just put it in wholesale because they went already to companies that are being regulated by the central bank and or by the yeah but that's why it's wholesale because the purpose is to eventually use the traditional mechanisms of using money in order to push it faster. And they understood that the retail is not going to adopt the more direct retail way, right? Because you're not going to download a specific wallet for the digital

shekel, but they understand that you will need to use it through Bank Apoalim, through Bank Lumi, through Beet or Pepper, which is our equivalent of Venmo and PayPal and Square, etc. Okay, it's a question of definitions, but I get what you mean. What I believe most of the central banks will do, they will expand the list of who are the PSPs, the payment service providers connected to the wholesale CBDC in order for the adoption to be fast and strong through everywhere. So at the beginning, you will have the ability to choose, do you want to use the digital

shekel or the CNY, or do you want to use the normal shekels in your bank account, allegedly. And then the problem is that eventually after you have a network effect of say more than 50, 60%, then they will be able to remove entirely the other option, which is the thing that we should fear, obviously, the most, which means that the system of control has been, has taken place. So I think that where we see stablecoin adoption, USD stablecoin adoption rising, that's where we're going to see the fastest tracks to CBDC as possible. Yep.

If at least they are aware of it, right? So some countries, and I know that for a fact, are really dumb about it. They really don't know how big these things are going and how important it's going to be um but i think that they will understand like the italian financial finance ministry just said that the usd stable coins are a weapon and you have to understand that for the citizens of the country the us dollar is god for them it's like the we see it as the the dirtiest cleanest cleanest shirt in the closet but they see it as god because they only know terrible and disgusting clothes And then the dollar is like, I want it.

I want a dollar. And I think that CBDC are going to be pushed that way in those countries. So we're going to hear about it soon, about like strong measurements that from, I don't know, within a month, your currency is going to, some of your currency is going to be replaced. Switched. Most of the payment service providers are going to have to, through regulation, be accepted because it's a dictatorship. So it's usually easier where you don't have to go through parliament or if you go through parliament, it's like this. So I think that's definitely happening. I think that when it comes to the U.S., and this is the most important part, right?

Because the U.S. is eventually the lighthouse of freedom to the world still, right? Even though we have our criticism, eventually the U.S. has its constitution. It has a lot of Americans that will die defending the Constitution with their Second Amendment and their guns, right? And I think, and it's also what I hear from industry insiders that I cannot name, obviously, but they are the ones walking through the corridors of Congress and Senate, that the vibe is changing. The narrative behind the anti-CBDC, the narrative behind adopting stablecoins is not from the narrative of let's expand our reach and our control, but it's actually let's expand freedom. And this is what they hear in the corridors and in the offices of those politicians. The same ones that we can be very critical about, and the ones at the front, right? So it seems like the ideology is supposed to be there.

On the other hand, when you look at what Doge is doing, which is making the government more efficient, and that's the narrative, and they're doing a great job, they're exposing a lot of frauds, they're exposing a lot of things. in the process they are completely violating the rights of privacy of many many americans they are literally going into government employees bank accounts to send and non-profits receiving money from they're going in to see what they did with their money and this is the complete opposite of freedom this is full-on dictatorship mode right um so i honestly don't know where it will go i think and i want to be optimistic that the orange pill has gotten to a point that the idea is so strong that like caitlin long that we talked about off the record like other individuals that have influence and are in the right is the right person in the right place we will be able

to affect that we will be able to create for example a stable coin regulation and stable call actually law that makes it much more decentralized in the banking system itself so if every bank and every fintech company can create a stable coin and needs to hold like in like they do in custodia in wyoming needs to show the regulator and they can transmit every day they can transmit this is the account of this client this is the wallet where we hold stablecoin, they can do all

that very easily very easily and the people drafting those regulations know that so this is what we should be looking at, like what will be demanded of stablecoin issuers, how easy it is to become one or is it still the same

Fedmaster account strict cartel right, so So this remains to be seen. And do you think that the banking system plays an important role going forward for Bitcoin? Yes, because also when it comes to Bitcoin-backed loans, eventually credit is important. And if there's something that's very consensus today for Bitcoiners in the West is you never sell your Bitcoin, right? You don't want to use it today to buy stuff unless you have gone completely off fiat and like you have to sell some Bitcoin in order to live.

You want to hold Bitcoin. You want to even increase your Bitcoin holdings. So the way you do it is you take credit against your Bitcoin. And in order for that to happen in a wide scale, you have to have the banking system. Okay, you have to. It's not an option. But the nice part about it is that through the transparency of Bitcoin and through the transparency of blockchains like the ones that enable stablecoins to be out there, you really are able to assess the risks if you know what you're doing, which is a very big if in terms of regulations and all that. What is the risk ratio that these banks are taking?

So is it 90% like we have allegedly with fiat money, which is much more than that? Or is it three, like times three, which means that you hold 33% of your Bitcoin against the 67% credit. So that is the kind of phase that we are in, in terms of rebuilding, reshaping the financial and economical infrastructure of whatever remains after world war three and what do you think about the like intuitive resistance that a lot of bitcoiners that are very ideological feel towards the stage that we're in seeing governments and institutions coming into play and reshaping things using their beloved freedom tool.

I think that eventually it's a path. We cannot, if we really want to make a difference, we cannot see everything as black and white. It's not all one and zeros. It's a lot of in between. And in order to get to where we want to go, we have to create education systems. We have to do so much things for the people to understand so that when we get there, we'll

do it right. Like, for example, one of the things that I talk about in my course is that today when we use the internet, nobody knows what HTTP is. Nobody knows what TCP IP is. If we do the same thing with money and we don't ask how blockchains work, how is consensus processed and how many nodes do we need to have in the computer network all of these questions are crucial if we want these systems to still be robust 30 years from now so if we don't make this education and this is why i chose to do it if we don't do this messaging and we also need to use

the existing dumb untrustworthy politicians who most likely get paid now by crypto companies to push agendas we need to use the corrupt system that we have now to create a better system later hoping that in the process we one expand the education much more broadly and two that the ones involved won't be corrupted in the process as well right so it's a lot of ifs um and wishful thank you yeah but i think that especially given the the five years and and what i personally went through in covid as an unvaccinated person uh and and all that came through it and and being able to see like the full-on growing up we learned about the holocaust so much as israelis because my grandfather's book is over

there he survived the holocaust i heard his story from him and i always thought how could people do it how how could the germans in those years do what they did to the jews it made no sense why how how come and in covid i saw how i saw how embedded the propaganda was that my own family my own kin my own friends were seeing me as an enemy when i'm trying to be to help them to save them from this poison right and and they still they had the problem of seeing that so i think that what we've been through in the last five years now they come to me and they say ben you were right what else can you teach me what do you think about that so now if you try and get uh i it's like the 10th booster already nobody will go to get it right except for the old people where

they forced them to unfortunately in the u.s they still give it to babies but yeah yeah so i think that i've become over the years much more optimistic so when i when i did uh chaos for example i was the chaos course that was that was sort of like a turning point right because i started to see more people around me, much more awake now, much more critic, much more asking questions. They turn off the news, right? They turn off the main propaganda channel. Hopefully young people get the message. I mean, that's the first step. We always have to first disconnect from the media and then start trusting our intuition and go search for information on our own wonderful okay i have one more question uh but before my last question

i want to because it relates to what we talked about before about stable coins and cbdcs etc i want to get a word from you about the way you perceive since you are israeli and you're based in Israel and you do work with a lot of different members of the establishment in Israel, how do you see your relationship with the Bank of Israel? What is your, I think, legitimate criticism over their work here? And what do you think can be achieved if there is some kind of collaboration with the different entities of the establishment here in Israel, which is something that I know that you do. Yeah. So what I am, what I will say is this, I know he was already in my conference, right? The

head of the Israeli digital shekel project. I met some members of the Israeli digital shekel project. i don't think that these are bad people trying to see how they can control us i don't i really don't think that this is where they're coming from and i know for a fact that the discussions about privacy and maintaining privacy and all of that is solid like they're really talking about it as if they want to create a cbdc that will enable anonymity for certain sizes of transactions etc. I'm stopping you for a second because even though I'm the number one critic of CBDCs in Israel, I agree with you. I also think that they don't think that they're doing anything bad and I don't think that they are sitting there going, how can we increase control over people? So I

agree with you on that. I think that it very much resembles to the beginning of our conversation where you described your professors or people in the industry that have like the biggest finance podcasting that they simply don't know what they're doing like they don't even understand the drawbacks or the or they think the shortcomings of the system yeah yeah so sorry so i just had to like align there yeah the the damage can be done but it doesn't mean that it is done by bad people or people think that they are doing something bad exactly what i can say is that i know there isn't consensus that the cbdc is even needed okay and uh uh there were like uh um disagreements whether it should be retail cbdc or wholesale cbdc but um eventually and it's true not just

for the bank of israel but for every other place almost it depends on what the big trading uh uh groups will do. So if the EU adopts digital euro and it requires trading partners to use the digital euro for payments, so not creating a CBDC creates problems in doing this process. You'll have to be much more blunt about resisting as opposed to just accepting that it needs to be there, right? So that's why I think that the decision whether to launch or not launch digital shekel which allegedly has not been taking uh will be determined by the eu much more than it will be determined by the bank of israel um so that's one two um the reason i'm personally against the digital shekel because i really don't think that it is needed as even if i put the

system of control aside and even if i put freedom aside in terms of actual need there is no need for this infrastructure the payment rails can be used differently by the private sector will be done better by the private sector but what needs to be done is to expand competition israel has the largest like it's a one banking cartel like you have two companies running the entire banking system of israel so what needs to be done is we need to introduce more banks we need to introduce more payment companies more competition and the standard but they can do the private uh uh payment systems can do it very good by themselves so that's uh another thing but feel free to expand it above cbdc's like i'm not just talking about yeah so that it's the same thing for stable coins

and what i said about the u.s i think it's the same way i think that if bits of gold which is the Israeli regulated entity today that is the only and the first to create the Israeli shekel stablecoin that is still in the pilot phase and it's done with regulators. They are very involved in the project in order to really test it out.

I think that also the other companies should be, if we're going this way, then it needs to be with competition and not just one king, right? But the most important thing when it comes to CBDC, And that's what most people don't get, even the ones that work on the projects, right? Is that the path to the system of control that you and I fear is not tomorrow.

When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, they had very limited powers. And the Fed was created in somewhat of a decentralized way with 13 branches all over the U.S., banking partners locally, etc. Some of them were so small, they were very insignificant. So it started out with the idea that it's going to be good. But what happened is that after two years, three years, the U.S. entered World War I, the Fed started money printing. And then they changed regulations and they added more things to the Federal Reserve Act.

And then they introduced the FOMC, the Federal Open Market Committee, which suddenly not only decides what the interest rate will be but also literally goes into market and buys and sells securities they were never meant to do that never ever meant to do that these are powers that were given to them by banking and central banking lobbyists over time so if we come to a phase where the Israeli shekel is not only accepted and brought into law, right? And what they advised to increase the network effect, like for example, for the government to play employees

and suppliers with Israeli digital shekel and to include it in the fiat law, the legal tender law and all these kinds of things. If it brings us to 50, 60, 70% network effect, then you are in that position where whether if the CBDC is private at the beginning or not, it doesn't matter. You can click a button in a simple way. It will change everything, whether if you can use Bitcoin or not. So once you have 60% adoption of CBDC, you can tell everyone, listen, hi, emergency order

6104. you have one month to sell your bitcoin to israeli digital shekel or to leave the country or you'll be a criminal and you'll be prosecuted and your citizenship will be taken from you and what people don't see is that the technocracy that we are headed into enables that in a magnificent way that connects it to your vaccine passport to your carbon credits to all of that and it's just so blunt out there that it sometimes really frustrates me like how can you not see how obvious this is um but i think that what you and i are doing in israel and we are the the largest like the the leading voices against cbdc in israel and against basically the central bank as a whole

right that says a tool to create more freedom and money more competition and money um i think that we have influence we are the voice right and i hope we will remain the voice and we will continue to uh have the internal strength uh to to continue this battle because for me in a way if or when the digital shekel is introduced that's when i switch the clock and i know that i will i won't be staying here right i i will make start making all the preparations because i know that i will not live in a country where money is purely digital and fiat controlled by the government i will not do that even if it means changing my entire life um so that's personally for me beautiful okay thank you for sharing that um why the next five years matter in terms of resisting

because we are in the end of the first turning of the winter and we are about to end of the fourth the fourth turning and we are about to switch to the first turning to the to the generation we are supposed to rebuild our norms our values our institutions and i think that if we don't win this first turning which means if we don't leave uh end world war three with the right leaders with the right voices among us the people locally as in literally your municipality your state your country um then eventually the next millennium will be dictated by technocracy because it will be too late to change that once the true system of control of technology with ai with robotics, with all of that is connected, there will be no way out. It will be just like

those dystopian movies. It will be just like 1984. It will be just like Edward Griffin when he ends the book with two scenarios, the realistic scenario and pessimistic scenario. And we are currently more headed to the realistic scenario, but thanks to Trump, because else we would have definitely been in the pessimistic scenario and i really really hope and this is edward has red pill university right where he and if you try to find it in google you can good luck getting to page three or four even though it's the name of the domain right because they don't want you to know these things they don't want you to be a he teaches people on how to be an ambassador for these voices uh and how to becoming a voice like you are doing globally like i am doing locally

and uh i think that these five years where the monetary system is being reshaped where the world war three is going to determine the next century at the minimum right it's very important that we have more people awake aware to money systems and how they work to censorship and and freedom values and to understanding that the way we define human rights is being changed, literally changed in the definitions, in all the alleged institutions, global or local, that we trust and that are governed by the same people, by the same elite that want to maintain their grasp so they used this system to make themselves the richest the wealthiest the landowners the farmland owners etc and now they're trying in the last minute while they're still grasping with

their nails they're trying to reshape the system so that they will maintain the wealth instead of like happened in history where the people came with the um the tools and then started doing what what you know um so they're trying to prevent that and in a way we need that not that i'm inciting for violence that's not my point i'm inciting for the to resist and the need for change i really i'm trying to understand so you think i mean i can see the actions that this current US administration is taking that can be and are positive. And I'm also seeing warning signs and many things that are distressing in my eyes. And one of them is the fact that technocracy, as you say, is very quickly being introduced into this administration and ways of working of this

administration. And a lot of the figures that have headed, um, spearheaded, you know, the PayPal mafia as they are being called, um, are being put in positions of power to create the regulation that will lead the way to the kind of reality that they want to create. And I think that And oftentimes I try to stay vigilant and look at what these people are doing in like super critical eyes to understand what is the underlying message or intention that they have that they may not be saying as, you know, politicians and people in positions of power always tend to wrap their rhetoric in very positive ways. And we already know that many of the things that they say are not necessarily how reality is going to look in a few years time. And so while I'm with you in the tendency to see the more bright and positive route that life is taking these days by 2030, if we're talking about the next five years, I am very worried about the technocratic transhumanistic agenda that is creeping in, in very sophisticated ways. And so, you know, I'm staying vigilant. I'm trying to understand

what exactly am I asking you, right? Like, how can I draw your optimism and hope from what you are saying because i i don't know if this is true so yeah so i i draw my optimism one like i said from my uh circles my closest circles be it my friends my family the wider circles my followers that i can i receive so many messages so many people send me messages about things that i said years ago that are not now coming to pass and and and how they are looking at the world differently from the awakening and also from you know

in my college I have the blockchain expert course where it's a six month course it's a official certificate and I teach

the attorney general office I teach the police I teach the government I teach regulators I teach the bank of Israel they're all sending employees to my courses

and they come to me afterwards and they tell me Ben I see the world differently after this course like

and these are people that are gonna be or are already in positions of of power so in the title we see the title and we say oh they're bad they must be bad if they're but they're not and and that's why that's why i want to commingle with them i want to be there with them i want to influence them i want to understand i want to help them understand the

world or see the world at least the way i see it and and what has happened is in the last few years I've seen much more of it happen. I've seen much more change globally and locally from my space. And also I drive my optimism from Bitcoin because Bitcoin is a Trojan horse. Even if the meanest and baddest corporates like BlackRock adopted and governments adopted, they are bringing in the Trojan, the Trojan horse into their house. That's what they're doing, because even even if they don't go through the Bitcoin bonds, right, they don't issue treasury bonds backed by Bitcoin. but they do adopt stable coins like with a target to increase stable coins times 10 in the next three years right that's more money printing and that's more money printing to stable coins which is much more closer to bitcoin so you create more rails you create more options for people to jump off the system while it's still possible.

And the more you do that, the more you create more optimism, the more you create more hope, the more you create more questions with people that didn't ask those questions before. That's why when you toured El Salvador, despite what we know about the bad things that's happening and the step back that Bukele took with IMF and all that,

we know it's still influencing the people. And we know it from books like Alex Gladstein, who traveled the world and seen the stories of the circular economies and what's happening there. So that's where I drive my hope from. I take my hope from. And yeah, that's what I hope to continue to see. Well, your mission is definitely admirable and inspiring.

And I personally hope that you continue doing that because we need someone like you doing what you're doing. So well done and keep up the good work. And thank you so much for this conversation. I find that it was fascinating and insightful. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up? No, I guess the only one thing is just a call to action. Like, don't leave it as this was interesting.

Choose five people to teach them about Bitcoin. Take the next family dinner to tell them, listen, in the next 30 minutes, we'll be discussing Bitcoin and money. i think that if we as evangelists do more of that as people who see that there's something wrong in the world we give them we we stop looking at people as so stupid right because that was really part of the thing that really bothered me at the beginning like i was seeing all these things and i was like what how come they're all stupid it's not it doesn't make sense it doesn't It doesn't make sense that the ignorance is so wide, but it's because we were programmed. So when you let people understand that not only they're not stupid, but they were led away from being taught knowledge and you give them a little bit of not just knowledge, but tools to understand that knowledge by asking questions about money is something to begin with.

I see what it does to people. It's really amazing. Like people that came to events that I did five years ago. I saw one of them two weeks ago. You see, Ben, you sent me 10 shekels worth of Bitcoin. And that day changed my life. From that day, I went home. I started seeing more stuff about Bitcoin.

I bought more Bitcoin. I became more involved. I work in the industry now. I taught all my friends about it. So this is what I want to see more. This is why what I asked for is a call to action. Go tell your friends, go tell your family about Bitcoin. beautiful well I also send my personal thank you to you because if it wasn't for you being active

and doing exactly that with me I would probably not be sitting here right now so thank you dear and um one last thing I thought about as you were speaking is that if you like this um interaction and engagement that we have between us you want to wait for um Vegas because we're going to be conducting interviews together at least i think 10 of them we're going to be interviewing speakers for both of our podcasts at the same time so we're kind of partnering and doing that together so you want to follow myself you want to follow ben where can people follow you basically in almost every platform so youtube it's crypto jungle twitter it's ben samoa linkedin most of my content is in hebrew because i chose my path to bring it to israel uh occasionally i

do some english content as well i learned some time ago that uh there's uh foreign governments listening to my youtube channel seriously with transcripts translations blew my mind blew my mind oh wow yeah uh but in a positive way like they want to learn and um yeah i mean i guess it's best to follow you for the international audience on Twitter because there they can translate everything automatically to English. So maybe that's the right one for you. We'll put the links in the show notes and yeah, be with us in Vegas. It's going to be fun. Thank you so much, Ben. That was great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Please take a minute to give this episode a like, a comment and subscribe or follow, and please share it with your friends

so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives. Till next time.