You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 86: Susie Violet Ward - Fixing the UK's Broken Bitcoin Policy

Starting point is 00:00:00 The FCA, the Financial Conduct Authority, don't understand the difference between Bitcoin and crypto. And that's a real problem, because if you don't understand that one is a decentralized protocol and the other are VC companies, then you're not going to be able to legislate for them properly. The reason why I first bought Bitcoin is because I wanted to buy some Dogecoin. We have it on record now. Bitcoin mining doesn't use water. Even the ones that are called in hydro are in closed-loop systems. They don't really use water. It was just ridiculous.

Starting point is 00:00:36 For a long, long time, I thought that you needed to pay tax for a functioning society, that it was a moral obligation if you wanted to look after people. And I really, truly believed that for a long time. And then when I really understood what they spent our tax money on, and I started feeling like actually paying tax was immoral. hello and welcome from bitcoin vegas 2025 i'm afrat with you're the voice and i'm ben from crypto talks and we're here today at a collaboration we're going to interview a series of guests here in vegas and we'll introduce each one of them for you and then

Starting point is 00:01:25 we'll roll with the episodes. The episodes are going to be released on both Your The Voice and Cripple Talks. So make sure you're subscribed to both. Our next guest is Susie Violet Ward. Susie is the CEO and co-founder of Bitcoin Policy UK. She's a financial analyst and journalist specializing in Bitcoin. She writes for Forbes, focusing on the intersection of Bitcoin and the environment. So Susie, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. I've wanted to do this for a long time because we've been hanging out together for a while in conferences and spaces and stuff like that. Let's start with Bitcoin Policy UK and you. So what's Bitcoin Policy UK mission,

Starting point is 00:02:13 your role there, and how did you roll into Bitcoin? Can you remind me of some of those questions? So the first one, okay, what's the mission? So we want to advocate for people that buy hold and want to sell bitcoin so anyone that wants to do any of those three things we want to make sure that it it's easy for them and they can actually do it because the uk is quite a hostile environment when it comes to bitcoin the on off ramps have made it quite difficult the fca the financial conduct authority don't understand the difference between bitcoin and crypto and that's a real problem because if you don't understand that one is a decentralized protocol and the other are VC companies, then you're not going to be

Starting point is 00:02:56 able to legislate for them properly. So we want to make sure that there's good education so they can make right decisions so that the regulations can be fair and useful to people. So your main mission is education on that front, or do you also do other stuff? So we are a think tank. we um we we respond to consultations so my co-founder and chief policy officer freddie yeah he does the most amazing consultations and writes pages and pages i just had lunch with him oh did you yeah so you got the man he's the man yeah um and we also try and advocate for mining. And we're trying to create proof of concepts in the UK to show that it can make business sense. So across a whole array of different Bitcoin angles. And your role in

Starting point is 00:03:47 Bitcoin policy? I'm the CEO. Relatively new? So yes, December. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, it's difficult. It's very difficult. Yes. It's like pushing a boulder uphill. So you're trying to advocate for something that most people don't understand. And even people who you think that Bitcoin naturally fits with them. All of their ethoses seem to suggest that Bitcoin would be the perfect thing. They still think that it boils the oceans, that it's a Ponzi scheme and that it's for criminals. So having to unwind that damage is really difficult. Sounds very familiar. And your personal journey into Bitcoin, where did it start? I started off as an accountant. Well, I suppose going right back. So what really led me to Bitcoin was I was an accountant and then

Starting point is 00:04:35 a financial analyst I worked in IT and then became a developer for a system called Cognos and I think all of those individual parts led me to Bitcoin so when I started learning about it I had the IT and the finance background that gave me the added advantage and it just all clicked into place. And that happened when like and how in terms of like when did you have the aha moment that happens a lot I don't think there was ever any one moment so the reason why I first bought bitcoin is because I wanted to buy some dogecoin we have it on record now and the only the only reason um I bought it a dogecoin and xrp so I'm gonna make a clip out of that Susie, you're done. That's it. That's it. Susie's erased from the Bitcoin community.

Starting point is 00:05:35 I've learned my lesson. So I bought the Bitcoin and then I split it and I bought a little, it was only 70 quid's worth. It was only a tiny amount. But because I had, I was just curious, like, how do you buy this stuff? Like, how do you do it? It's completely different to the normal finance, TradFi. And I was, it was curiosity, basically. and when was it that would be in 2020 2021 okay yeah and then it was just incremental yeah and you just start learning about it and then once you it just becomes so interesting that you almost can't stop she's a bit like me like once you recently like you come into it and once you see what this world is yeah i just want to dive deeper and deeper yeah and it does take young

Starting point is 00:06:22 people talk about rabbit holes and yes i mean they're everywhere everywhere everywhere yeah okay so um given that your role in the uk is talking with regulators and educating retail etc what's your current assessment of the bitcoin policy status in the uk in terms of adoption public perception and obviously regulation okay it's it's a very hostile environment and i was on a panel the other day at the financial times digital asset summit i saw yeah and they it was a compliance panel and what was quite funny about that panel is i wasn't supposed to be on it so this this shows how little the financial times understand about bitcoin they originally put me on a staking panel so i tried to i tried to explain to them that may be funnier

Starting point is 00:07:17 as we go go on i tried to explain that bitcoin was proof of work and perhaps i wasn't the best person to be on a staking panel and they were like no no it's fine you'll bring a different angle to it and i'm like yes i think i will i'm not sure you want my angle no so we had the pre-panel discussion and i think there was there was a moment when the penny dropped that maybe i wasn't the right person for that panel and then the conversation ended very quickly the lady coordinating it said right i don't want anyone to be uncomfortable on this panel shut it down and then And the next thing I know, I've been put on a compliance panel. So when I was on this compliance panel, there was a chap from Revolut.

Starting point is 00:07:59 And he said, well, we may have missed the opportunity for a first mover advantage in the UK, but I think we have an opportunity for a second mover advantage. I'm like, are you kidding me? With what? With crypto? With Bitcoin and crypto, yeah. And I was like, we are so far behind. We will never catch up. The best we can hope for is just that we're just not left as far behind as we might be.

Starting point is 00:08:24 But we'll never have a first or second mover advantage. It's quite a dire situation. And even though the FCA have had consultations and they understand the difference between Bitcoin and crypto, they're still treating them in exactly the same way. And until that changes, I just don't see how we can move forward properly. We literally have the same problems in Israel. It's exactly the same. everything that you just said is the things that i'm battling on with israeli regulators and bankers too right so the i don't know if you have it too but the banking system in israel is

Starting point is 00:08:56 terrible when it comes to crypto and bitcoin with the on off ramps yeah it's terrible they're making it really difficult for people to buy bitcoin and so early 2024 um the same week that a bitcoin spot ETF was brought out in the U.S., the FCA made it really difficult for people to buy Bitcoin. And then in 2024, it went up by 100%. So if they're there to protect investors and they've got a growth mandate, then I think that's a fail. In Israel, if you try and send shekels from your bank account to a regulated crypto broker, right, it's regulated, you still get a text message that You are sending money to buy a very risky asset. You shouldn't do it.

Starting point is 00:09:45 And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Insane. 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

Starting point is 00:10:02 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 products by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code FLAT. What about the public adoption? Or understanding of it?

Starting point is 00:10:22 No, because they've all been conditioned by the BBC, haven't they? And mainstream media. And so there's this absolutely fantastic platform website called Bitcoin Perception. Yes. Have you seen it? Yes.

Starting point is 00:10:38 And they analyze... The sentiment. Exactly. And so across all of the different media, mainstream media outlets, so the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, Financial Times, the BBC. And it's all negative with a very small slither of balanced and almost no positive. Well, I know I've written... You're the only one who wrote a list.

Starting point is 00:11:00 I've written over 140 articles across two different publications. and it's about all the amazing things that bitcoin can do how on earth can they not find something other than number go up how is there not another journalist that can do that in the whole uk it's because it's no longer journalism it's yeah it's because it's a different kind of as you said conditioned and they don't want to be unpopular and be cast out if they start speaking differently than the mainstream narrative well i think it is controlled but it's also the clickbait aspect of it so for me to be able to do the right thing and write about it in an honest way i have to disassociate myself from the fiat system because i know that if i write a

Starting point is 00:11:54 number go up article like what will the bitcoin price do in 2025 i know that that will do really really well yeah but if i go and um interview four different miners that are all implementing amazing mining solutions globally that can take me three four days and it will get a fraction of the views it won't have the same i won't so for example if i get over a certain amount then i get paid but extra so i'm incentivized to write those clickbaity articles yeah but i don't want to because it's not newsworthy so I have to take a financial hit in order to be able to actually do it and put the time in knowing that I'm not going to be rewarded for it financially but knowing that the reward will be through the educational aspect beautiful yes you want to

Starting point is 00:12:46 go for city of London yes so basically we know there's the city of London and we know that it's most important financial hub definitely in the UK probably in the world and we I know from people that are on the ground that there are changes in terms of their perception of Bitcoin and their adoption of the space what are you feeling from the financial and banking institutions there yeah like you say the UK have a history in financial services and computer science and yet we don't seem to be doing very well with either i really don't think people in the city take it seriously and i don't think even when they see what's happening in the us and wall street yeah like so yeah yeah they they just don't so at this um a financial time to just um summit

Starting point is 00:13:40 yeah there was a lady called emma reynolds and she she's an mp and she said no it's not for us we're different we're different we're different how are we different it's a different fiat system yeah exactly it's crazy they just don't they don't understand it because the education has been poor because they've been reading these appalling mainstream media articles because when i was explaining my background it was a history in finance and it yes and then i understood and then i did the hundreds if not thousands of hours well when you're a journalist you've just gone to journalism school yes it's not the same thing yeah so i just don't think that they have they can't put the time in to write about something that's this broad and complicated

Starting point is 00:14:28 sad but true okay you've been vocal about failures in mainstream media coverage of bitcoin can you share the story of your experience with the bbc i can um maybe not all of it yeah yeah Yeah, I know it's a long one, but just a TLDR version and kind of your insights about it. Yes. So the BBC have written many articles that have not been correct. But I decided there was one particular article that I wanted to try and see because it was so obviously false and wrong and easy to prove. so the headline was every bitcoin payment uses a swimming pool's worth of water bitcoin mining doesn't use water even even the ones that are called in hydro are in closed loop

Starting point is 00:15:21 systems they don't really use water it was just ridiculous the problem is is this was written or the source of the document was a dutch central banker and he had been discredited in 2018 so and they didn't even put that down as a conflict of interest the fact that a dutch central banker and a central bank writes about yeah and and they want to disseminate or bitcoin is going to disseminate the banking industry and they didn't think that that was you know the fact that he'd been discredited in 2018 so i tried to put in a freedom of information request to ask them how they'd fact-checked the article yes because there's no way that they could have back checked it because it was completely wrong so they came back and said that the bbc were

Starting point is 00:16:09 exempt from giving any information because it was covered under journalism and arts it's like are you kidding if it had been sky or something that wasn't fun it was the way that it the bbc gets funded then they are they don't have to release they're protected in a way yeah they're completely unbelievable and that was the first time that i thought hang on there's something really wrong here. So once I realised I couldn't get the information for it being fact checked, I decided to try and find out how else I could pursue this. So I went to the, I think it's called the Information Commission's office, the ICO, to see if I could get the BBC's decision overturned. They upheld the BBC's decision and I couldn't find out how to raise a formal complaint.

Starting point is 00:16:57 i've done it through the internet somehow but nothing came back it was like it was just going out into yes it's like how do i do this i wrote to the journalist who wrote the article i wrote to their crypto correspondent i wrote to their press office i was just getting even mailed in the post i did i did yeah so i will never forget that so silly to a post box because it had a photo of her putting a letter in a they asked me to send it literally everything and it got to the stage where it was just getting so silly I had to I won't even go into it because the ins and outs of how complicated and explaining it would be boring but it basically it took me 13 months of going through every every single thing that they told me to do I did to prove that it

Starting point is 00:17:49 was a dead end so it was exhausting and it was very time consuming and then after about 10 months they were like you have to go to stage two complaints and then after another few months 13 months in total they went like that's it no we're not doing anything and this is a transparent democracy right allegedly yeah just goes to show what we've been going through during covid and during all the other crises where they're feeding us with information that is easily debunked but they would not they would not watch they would not give us access to it and yeah thank you for doing what you've done and it's provable it's provable did you try and take it like publicly in terms of like confronting the bbc as in on twitter it was because i actually

Starting point is 00:18:36 did half of the investigation without going to twitter i wanted to do it yeah without that when i started hitting brick walls that's when i started going to social media and trying to raise awareness of it that way and still nothing very surprising okay yeah no i was cynical um so you've been worrying about the damaging legislation that's happening in the uk right now um tell us what is happening why should we be concerned as as bitcoin heirs uh what's happening right now so as i said previously the worst part is not understanding the difference between bitcoin and crypto and the legislators so for example at the fca i recently learned that every time somebody is asked to look into bitcoin and then they understand it they then leave and they they

Starting point is 00:19:33 think that that's why things are so dire because as soon as somebody's somebody gets a good understanding of what's actually going on they're like oh this shit and then they're kind of out so like they just cut am i allowed to i'm sorry did i yeah okay all right cool of course you're the voice so it's it's very difficult when you've got groups of legislators and you've got mps and you've got policymakers and none of them understand it like they still think it's a joke they actually just think it's laughable and what about what they're doing you recently spoke i think it was at that conference about kyc and the danger it poses what is that little no kyc because it is it's very dangerous i want one of them go on it's it's very dangerous and i don't think that they

Starting point is 00:20:29 understand can you say a bit more why why is it dangerous so there's a new um it's new in the crypto world but it's called the fat f travel rule and it's a rule that was implemented in tradfi in the traditional system and it was the g7 countries it was set up in france and they came together and said right we need information to travel with transactions because we want to stop money laundering and they've had it in the current system and it hasn't worked and now they want to bring it into crypto but we know that we've seen examples of where people have been kidnapped their fingers chopped off like there's real world implications around and it doesn't even stop money laundering so they're collecting all of this information

Starting point is 00:21:27 it's a honeypot for hackers it's proven not to work it's dangerous and yet they want to bring it into crypto and bitcoin so that they want they are bringing it yeah it's already implemented right um i don't know when can you do i mean kyc is now oh sorry kyc is a general thing yeah i was talking about the travel rule i think it's already implemented i think it's already a must in most places right now uh yes i think it was the end of last year wasn't it that it came in yeah terrifying definitely terrifying there's no reason for it either and it doesn't even work yeah it's it doesn't work it gets the bankers and the crypto financial institutions to spend tons of money on compliance and regulation having teams of tens of people just to go through kyt

Starting point is 00:22:25 of every transaction and all that. Just to stop, there's a report from 2019 about stopping somewhere between 0.1% to 0.2% of all annual money laundering. So it's stopping, I think, 15 billion a year out of some trillions. And it's just preposterous. It is preposterous. Yes, it's an excellent way of describing it. Okay, so we have another place that's happening, and even more so, and that's the EU, which has been going through many kind of variations into communism, but one of them also is happening when it comes to crypto and KYC and MICA, M-I-C-A. What can you tell us about what's happening right now in MICA as opposed to the UK and

Starting point is 00:23:19 take on that so mika was new legislation that was created for the eu i do have some issues with that because i've actually written another article where i could prove that these altcoins were funding their own research to then influence mika policy and you can actually trace it amazing um whereas in the uk we didn't create anything new necessarily we just fitted it into kind of old AML legislation. So I don't know, either or. Yeah, they're both bad, but pick your bad. Tired of feeling like your freedom and future are fading away? Do you live in a country with growing inflation, crazy housing prices, weird culture and a chaotic economy? You're not alone. And my friend Mikel Thorpe and his team at Expat Money can help. Mikel is the

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Starting point is 00:25:48 um is the push for extreme surveillance a sign of desperation from legacy institutions or something more long-term in your opinion um do you know what a lot of people this is what i've realized most people working in these industries and pushing for these things they think they're doing the right thing for sure and that's almost worse yeah in a way um they really believe in they still believe in the system absolutely that's one of the things ben and i talk a lot about in the context of cbdc's in Israel. It's like he spends quite a bit of time with the bankers, the central bankers and the teams around it and people who develop technology around that. And we both, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:42 obviously hate and resist CBDC as much as we can. It is going forward. And he keeps saying, you know, they really don't understand what they're doing. They really think that they're doing the right thing. And I believe him. Like I've seen some of these people talk. I can, you know, I can read body language and energy and stuff they are being sincere when they talk about it they really don't see that they're doing anything wrong no because they they simply are unaware of all the risks and they don't really take it into consideration no so you're right what is worse yeah so if you've got people that genuinely believe in what they're doing and they're trying to push something forward that they think is good for people

Starting point is 00:27:23 and maybe, you know, will serve them in some way or keep them safe or keep other people safe. It's like the mass surveillance that we have at the moment where everything is being recorded. Cameras all around. Everywhere. Facial recognition. It's getting crazy. More than a million cameras around London, CCTVs.

Starting point is 00:27:44 It's insane. But that's capturing innocent people all the time. yes and the people that it doesn't stop anything it's not solving crime no it's easier to tax when you've got everything recorded you can simply email the the fine or whatever it is directly by recognizing the license plate or your face or yeah walks even yeah yeah or your transactions yeah everything everything is being and it's and most people are good and most people are law abiding no the system has flipped so if in a democracy you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty now you're guilty until proven innocent and you have to be the one

Starting point is 00:28:38 proving that you're innocent as well uh so for example a cctv camera can send you a report for something that you allegedly did but if you didn't do it now you have to prove that you didn't do it yep um and uh that happens obviously with crypto and banks right so my bank asked me for reports of my KYT transactions going back all the way the all the time that I'm in in the industry and I told them fuck you not gonna happen it's your job to prove that I'm allegedly money launderer or whatever if i'm a criminal you need to prove that i'm a criminal you need to do your job the law enforcement agencies need to do your their job i'm not going to pay uh 10 000 for a report that sums down all my transactions just so i can liquidate some funds to the bank what i'll do

Starting point is 00:29:28 is i'll get non-kyc debit card that's associated with my my crypto and i'll just use that as money um so that's uh at least my perspective yeah agreed yes it's madness the whole thing is madness but people don't really see it because they're all being conditioned to it's like tax for a long long time i thought that you needed to pay tax in for a functioning society that it was a moral obligation if you wanted to look after people and i really truly believed that for a a long time and then when I really understood what they spent our tax money on and I started feeling like actually paying tax was immoral in a lot of ways when it funds war and debt interest and fiscal mismanagement and it's not going to go towards the ambulance that might save me if I have

Starting point is 00:30:19 a heart attack it won't be there unless you don't pay tax oh yeah you always have to pay extra for the ambulance yeah absolutely absolutely and that's a big thing i think a lot of bitcoiners are now looking into taxation and looking at natural law and how they can start learning more about their state specific legislation around taxing and what can they do to not evade that but really like reclaim back the power so and it's a whole other rabbit hole speaking of rabbit holes which I am aware of but I have not dived into it and I think that you know it's it's difficult because this is so ingrained in our society in our culture and the way we think that breaking through that is very difficult but I think that's another rabbit hole

Starting point is 00:31:16 to to explore. People think that if you've got nothing to hide then why can't you be surveilled like that was that's always the thing that comes up the most and i've got nothing to hide right but i think they know everything about me anyway i'm basically myself at some point you know i don't want them to know everything about me no well you want i mean i do share quite a bit why do you want these but yeah but that's voluntary i i'm happy to share what i want to share i don't want them to know everything about me it's a combination i think of two things like or not a combination but on the one hand you have a big brother tv shows reality shows that let you just go into people's lives and make it normalize right so you feel like it's okay to be in some another person's

Starting point is 00:32:05 life and to become a part of it in a way so then when you're violated when your privacy is valid you're like okay but i see his so it's okay yeah and not social social media so the fact that in In order to feel that you are part of society, you have to share and show everything that you do and that you're allegedly happy. So these kind of mechanisms are part of letting go of our privacy. And on the other hand, you have the cypherpunk manifesto, which I believe you probably read, which is privacy is not secrecy. the fact that i don't want people to know something about me doesn't mean that i want to hide it and it's uh for example i can donate funds to bb's campaign in israel i'm not i'm not bb netanyahu the prime minister which half of the country hates oh yeah half of the country

Starting point is 00:33:02 hates him the other half loves him like he's the king and and but i for example let's say that i do play this part in politics if i want to donate to some uh party i want it to be private yes because else it could affect my work relations it could of course it could affect other parts of my life um you could get debanked yes exactly like nigel uh farge yeah yeah i heard he's coming yes he is yeah frank's gonna be interviewing him that's amazing that's so cool isn't it it is very cool is he into bitcoin he is he's very much a bitcoiner yeah um he's gone very quiet on it i actually said you guys have to bring him to the forefront a bit more in the uk well he's quite toxic isn't he yeah yeah um and i i mean for me this is a test of my apolitical stance right and

Starting point is 00:33:54 i'd rather bitcoin wasn't politicized okay um so i wouldn't want to necessarily push any fair body because in the in within bitcoin policy uk it's amazing we've got a mix across every single political very good party so a couple of lib dems couple of conservatives couple of labor a couple of reform couple of um i don't knows yet we all agree on bitcoin nice and that's incredible that is the power because i don't think that's ever really happened before with anything and so i really really need to keep it apolitical as much as possible however i did send him a bitcoin manifesto uh mid may so he is has been in receipt of our bitcoin manifesto very cool yeah he was on what bitcoin did a few years ago when they debunked him uh and he talked

Starting point is 00:34:53 He talked about Bitcoin. He talked about the competition. And he was at Bitcoin Amsterdam, I think in 2022, and speaking there then. Makes sense. Your recent Forbes article raised some red flags about the idea of strategic Bitcoin reserve under Trump. What are the risks around the centralization of mining and state level custody of Bitcoin? So currently the U.S. have about 40% of the hash rate.

Starting point is 00:35:27 The U.K. has got like 0.1% to 0.23%. So we are so behind. When it comes to Marathon, have proven that it's possible to censor transactions. So with the OFAC transactions, you can keep them out of blocks. So the more hash rate they have, the more they're going to be able to do this. Trump has openly said that he wants all the bitcoins to be mined in America and he wants all the mining to be there. And because the hash rate is so high and then second is like Russia and China. So they're the top three.

Starting point is 00:36:05 So I think it's very much a short term risk, the centralization of mining. And it's not just about hash rate. It's also about hardware, templates and mining pools. So there's lots of issues there. where it's not really distributed but there are some at the conference there are some amazing solutions so you've got the little bit axes and you've got heat bit and if we can start putting mining into heating and anything that generates heat like i saw um at the conference that uh an amazing little coffee mug warmer oh wow so you can mine bitcoin and warm your coffee

Starting point is 00:36:44 nice i like it wow all these g is that anything that generates heat because one kilowatt in is one kilowatt out so if you're not mining bitcoin but you're doing something that generates heat then you're missing a trick yeah and so that's how true decentralization happens so i do think that it's very much a short-term risk what's happening in america however long term i think that once game theory plays out and people start to understand it i think it will then start to decentralize in the way that it needs to and of course because bitcoin is anti-fragile it needs to withstand these attacks issues you know if it doesn't survive them then it really doesn't deserve to exist in my opinion yeah are you sure about the number that 40 percent is uh

Starting point is 00:37:38 of the hash rate is uh in the u.s or is it mining polls no no mining pools are a lot higher than that so the top two mining i think the top four mining pools make up about 83 i'm talking specifically about hash rate yeah okay cool okay so um that's uh definitely an important topic to talk about but one that is uh definitely a big part of what we do in israel and what we talk about and we mentioned it is cbdc uh so uh i've been working on a piece 10 000 words it came out almost a book wow about the digital audio version i don't think i'll have time to read it yeah yeah i'm splitting it i'm splitting it to five uh parts yeah um and we want to know what's happening with a digital pound right so uh where do things stand right now we know that there's a large team

Starting point is 00:38:34 working on it we know that they're not even sure if they want to do it or at least that's what i heard um yeah so we had a consultation and a lot of people responded um i don't think they listened recently um it was a couple of years ago now time goes so quickly i can't actually remember like yeah it could it would probably a couple of years ago but feels like two weeks maybe um so it was a little while ago and they i mean i don't even know if they know whether or not it's going to be on a blockchain or if it's just going to be a centralized database like they've lumped it into crypto like it's digital money but like they don't even know the kind of infrastructure and when you look at the kind of person that's going to need to build it and

Starting point is 00:39:18 implement it no one who understands that tech you're not going to get a decent person to do it because anyone who gets what they're doing will not do it so we've seen many i don't think we should stop fighting don't get me wrong however i am quite hopeful because when you look at you know places where you would expect it to take off like china it's not being successful and nigeria you know everywhere that it has actually been rolled out it's not it's not working so look they'll just spend a lot of taxpayers money like they usually do it will ultimately fail um but i do think we're at an inflection point where we will be choosing authoritarianism or freedom and i think that we need to keep focused on on making sure that we

Starting point is 00:40:11 take the freedom route because with the the surveillance with the threat of cbdc's with the overreach with kyc is all heading in one direction and it is it is terrifying i do think people are starting to wake up do you get that feeling yes yes maybe less where we are but yeah but around the world yeah yeah we we were both uh against lockdowns against vaccines and all that during COVID and that's the first time we really saw like how much of the herd mentality has been embedded in our DNA in the society DNA and those were very I know for me I can't say for a frat but I assume it's the same very dark times right because you had very little hope that it can change it seemed like the surveillance state's end game is imminent

Starting point is 00:41:08 But then many things happened with also the vaccines and a lot of truth came out and Fauci and all of that. And that opened people's eyes substantially to higher numbers than what we saw. So it's definitely given hope. But the problem that Efrat and I are talking a lot about is that even with people when they wake up to something specific, Like, for example, they can understand why Bitcoin is important, that if you fix the money, you fix the world. But they don't allocate the same resources in their mentality and their mind to asking, is climate change real? Should I be also looking with the same critical thinking at this problem or else? More of the narrative, not the problem.

Starting point is 00:41:57 Yeah, so they're not taking a rabbit hole that they already woke up to and implementing the same thing to other stuff. So that's the problem because they can tell you, on the one hand, yes, Bitcoin is amazing, but on the other, climate change is real, we're all about to die, you know? Although with climate change, I think that it's once again a very complicated subject just like bitcoin is so i'm not not as comfortable saying that something's real or or not real because i have spoken to climate scientists around the world that say that this i know that temperatures change but the speed at which the the temperatures are increasing is quicker than

Starting point is 00:42:46 the ecosystems can keep up with it and so there are side effects to that however it the the waters get muddied because the solutions that governments want to implement are a nonsense yeah or taxing you on your carbon emissions it makes no sense so you can believe both things to be real like you can think that humans are causing a problem which is causing temperatures to rise faster than than our current ecosystems can cope i think that that's if you would speak to a climate scientist they would say that that's a fact but you can also say that absolutely everything that the government is doing is not going to solve a single thing it's just causing more harm like in the uk we've got net zero i mean what what does that even mean

Starting point is 00:43:37 what is that i just heard this statistic it means death that's what it means net zero like zero what zero carbon there is no life without carbon carbon is the source of life it's ridiculous And it's so ridiculous that I heard the statistic, I'm not sure about the final numbers, but if Canada goes to net zero, which it already, much more than that, it's already positive because of all the trees that they have, which are somewhat not counted in the statistics. But even if they make it as they measure it to net zero, then what China does in, I think, three or five days, that's what Canada has just dropped. And it's just absolutely nonsense. Yeah, it's crazy. Before I wrap up with your hopeful message to end with, is there anything else, any other topic or project that you want to bring up? you want to talk about or mention that you think is important for our audiences to hear about and

Starting point is 00:44:43 be aware of no i the only thing i would say is that it's important to study bitcoin i don't really like telling people to buy it because you can only stomach the volatility if you understand what you're holding so you know if you say oh buy bitcoin and then they buy it at the top and then it crashes if they don't understand what they're buying they're going to freak out and sell it and then they're going to hate bitcoin because they bought at the top and sold at the bottom but i would just say any message to anyone listening would be just study bitcoin and do you also think that they need to spend at least 100 hours to get it that's very daunting isn't it it is yeah that's why i'm asking yeah i'd say just start off with something the first

Starting point is 00:45:30 documentary or book or something that interests you like what is it that really gets you what what is the one thing because bitcoin has so many different aspects to it the the freedom money aspect or the number go up aspect the mining you know methane mitigation energy solutions like what is it that interests you and then go off and look at that and it will then take you off in many different directions absolutely we'll put a link to your column at forbes yes and your eggs wherever else yeah you want and um do you want to yeah finish with my favorite question yes the frat's favorite question when she uh uh closes down the interviews is what gives you hope especially given some pessimistic potential stuff we talked about it's very simple bitcoin gives me hope awesome

Starting point is 00:46:27 so you keep doing what you're doing because you're doing great work and i love following your work i learn a lot from you and thank you for the help you've been providing me with some of my writing along the way yeah i love it normally xrp stuff she's the pro i want to fact check stuff with susie about xrp although she started from xrp yeah yeah but doesn't that is that better almost because then you've been on that journey haven't you it's like every everyone has to go through their shit queening phase like they just do and actually i think it makes you understand it more i mean there's a handful of people that started off as maxis but not really yeah no stop it never had a shit going in my life bitcoin only bitcoin wow maybe it's thanks to him

Starting point is 00:47:16 but actually you you you told me at one point do you want to do it this way or i'm like non-kyc bitcoin only don't even offer me anything else let's do it yeah that well that's very rare it was i guess it was meant to be yeah suze love you thank you so much for coming on the pod me guys 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.

You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 86: Susie Violet Ward - Fixing the UK's Broken Bitcoin Policy

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