You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 93: Francis Pouliot - The Fiat Scam vs. The Bitcoin Flame

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

My guest today is Francis Pouliot, long-time Bitcoin advocate, cypherpunk entrepreneur, and CEO of Bull Bitcoin, Canada’s leading Bitcoin-only exchange. Known for his uncompromising stance on self-custody, privacy, and resistance to state overreach, Francis has been a vocal defender of Bitcoin’s founding ethos for over a decade. He is also a key figure in Bitcoin Jungle, a circular economy in Costa Rica where hundreds of merchants transact daily in Bitcoin. In this episode, Francis shares how his background in Austrian economics and libertarian politics, combined with the wake-up call of COVID, led him to relocate from Canada to Costa Rica. We explore the creation and growth of Bitcoin Jungle, why farmers markets are fertile ground for adoption, and how his “scale versus compromise” framework guides strategic decisions in building Bitcoin infrastructure. Francis opens up about the tension of running a regulated exchange while opposing KYC, his mission to make self-custody as seamless as custodial services, and why Bitcoin’s payments layer is as critical as its store-of-value function. He dismantles the “Bitcoin is hijacked” myth spread by Roger Ver & others, addresses skepticism from the red-pilled community, and explains why barter and cash cannot scale for true financial freedom. → If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS & AFFILIATES --►► 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 ►► Get 10% off on Augmented NAC, with the code YCXKQDK2 via this link: https://store.augmentednac.com/?via=efrat (Note, this is not medical advice and you should consult your MD)►► Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat ►► Get a second citizenship and a plan B to relocate to another country with Expat Money, leave your details for a follow up: https://expatmoney.com/efrat ►► Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Francis’ Twitter: https://x.com/francispouliot_ Bull Bitcoin Website: https://www.bullbitcoin.com/ Francis’ Nostr: [e-mail] 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…01:18 - Intro to Francis & His Covid Wakeup Call05:38 - Costa Rica During Covid06:38 - Francis Interest in Austrian Economics & Libertarianism09:08 - Francis Journey Into Bitcoin & Bull Bitcoin13:08 - Private Property & Self-Custody17:18 - Efrat’s Revelation of the Fiat Scam20:58 - The Birth of Bitcoin Jungle Circular Economy30:38 - Custodial vs. Non-Custodial Bitcoin Solutions35:18 - The New Revolution: Build Tech That Creates New Reality40:48 - The Circular Community in Costa Rica & Globally45:48 - Bull Bitcoin: Freedom vs. Compliance & Regulation53:38 - Struggle Between Scale & Compromise - Cypherpunk Values1:00:38 - Understanding Bitcoin: Overcoming Skepticism & Claims Against It1:04:08 - Shortcomings of Cash, Barter, Gold1:07:48 - Roger Ver Attempt To Hijack Bitcoin and Damage to Bitcoin & Freedom Community1:18:08 - Can Bitcoin Be Coopted By Those Who Hold The Most Bitcoin?1:21:08 - Resist By Minimize Interface With Fiat/Matrix/Institutions

Who will die for the fiat system? No one wants to die for the banks. Bitcoin must be used as a system of money in order for us to completely get rid of the fiat scam, right? So it's not enough for Bitcoin to be a store of value. Bitcoin also must be used for payments. You're just a free man and you have a government that oppresses you, then is the only way out of this, the revolt. But here comes Bitcoin, where Bitcoin is a peaceful revolution, where in order to achieve political and social change, our ancestors had to die in a war. We don't have to die in a war to achieve social change.

There is a peaceful mechanism. If all Bitcoin users are apathetic, Bitcoin can be co-opted, but we're not, right? And why are we not? It's because we have flame inside of us. I'm not a believer that everybody should use Bitcoin, but I'm a believer that anybody, not everybody, but anybody that is willing to take on personal ownership

and sovereignty should be able to do it regardless of their technical skills, of their education level, or of their circumstances in life. Hello and welcome to another episode of You're the Voice. I am so ecstatic to sit here with Francis Pouliot. Hello. Thank you. And hello. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for being so cool and flexible on this. We almost poked it out. Yeah, yeah. We made it. But I took responsibility. I forgot to send you the invite. So Francis, I've been following you for a long time. And I have known of you for a while before I reached out. And you are one of

those people that I really respect because when I came into Bitcoin, it was mostly because of freedom and because of the pain I have experienced in my life that had pushed me to look for creative ways to find another way of living, to get out of the matrix, to get out of the system. And I've seen you, I think it was during COVID. uh and have read some of your you know I've been following you so I've read some of your tweets and things you've been saying and then I kind of understood that you moved from Canada to Costa Rica and I was like okay one day I'm gonna have you on the podcast and we're gonna talk and here

it is happening so this is super cool and I want to dive into different directions with you in this conversation but maybe just for the sake of my audience that may not know you I'll do like a quick bio read and then we'll hit it off. So Francis Pouliot is a longtime Bitcoin advocate, entrepreneur, and the CEO of Bull Bitcoin, Canada's leading Bitcoin-only exchange, a self-described cypherpunk entrepreneur. Francis has been a principled voice for Bitcoin's original ethos, privacy, sovereignty, and separation from the fiat system. He's also known for his clarity on why Bitcoin should remain neutral, uncensored, and resistant to institutional co-option. And also, you're a big part of Bitcoin jungle in Costa Rica.

So maybe you want to just give a bit of background of what had you come to Costa Rica and how you started with this whole journey. Yeah, so I'll start with the Costa Rica story. Um, like many people, uh, I was greatly distraught and affected by the COVID lockdowns, which were an immediate and direct threat to my individual sovereignty and liberty. And up until COVID, um, we, uh, we were not free. It's not, it's not like our enslavement to the government, uh, started with COVID, but it was somewhat tolerable and it was somewhat discreet and gradual whereby, you know,

You need a permit to drive a car, you need to pay your taxes, you need government permission to do pretty much anything, but a tolerable state of servitude, whereas with COVID, it was a very direct and immediate imprisonment, right? And when COVID started, before COVID, I was not really interested that much into health. I was fully aware of the fiat scam, of course, but I was not very aware of the public health kind of scam and had never really questioned vaccines and that kind of stuff. I wasn't really interested in that stuff. And it really opened my eyes. It really, really red pilled me into, you know, health.

And so I didn't take the lockdown well at all. And I decided to prioritize my individual liberty over everything else. So I left Canada and I decided to go to Costa Rica, actually, because it was the only place in the world where you did not need a COVID test. And I tried to make it a point to never, ever in my life do a COVID test. Because for me, the ritual of sticking the thing up your nose, it was a humiliation ritual. It was a submission ritual. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. So Costa Rica didn't have the test.

So stole all my shit in Montreal and went to Costa Rica and essentially never left. Not that Costa Rica is a libertarian paradise whatsoever. However, the lockdowns were really cool there. So I went to a beach town and then I really enjoyed myself. Before that, my... How did it happen that Costa Rica was like that? It's a good question. I don't really know.

The government there is not particularly freedom-minded. I think it was mostly kind of like a glitch, like a glitch in the matrix that didn't require the COVID test. And, of course, if you move away from the city, well, you know, the first step was to move away from the city and to go to a place where you can be more physically free in a small town, which is what I did in Costa Rica. And in Costa Rica, in the edges of the country, there's just little government enforcement. So they don't have the manpower effectively. They're not efficient enough to enforce the lockdowns. So I went to a place where there was just not a lot of enforcement.

And before that, my journey into Bitcoin started out first with Austrian economics and the libertarian movement. Around when was that? Well, I became interested in libertarian politics like with the – I'm like a Ron Paul kid, Ron Paul era kid. And so, you know, 2008, 2009, 2010, I started to get interested in the libertarian movement. I was really into the kind of like legalization of drugs and, you know, interested in studying prohibition. I was studying economics and politics and became kind of like a free market advocate. And it's actually through kind of like underground libertarian Austrian economics circles that I came in touch with Bitcoin. because those two nexus of ideologies were already at the time like very closely aligned.

So like the early cypherpunks tended to be kind of like libertarian and free market people. I got in touch with Bitcoiners and my goal was to change the political system via persuasion and from the inside. I was working at a political studies institute, an economics institute, and I thought maybe we can vote our way out of this. Maybe we can convince our peers that actually less government and less regulation is better. And as a very young professional in the space of Austrian economics, I realized very quickly that we were shouting in the wind. You know, we were fighting a tide. And no matter how clever our argument is, there seems to be some kind of force out there that is preventing any change. And I didn't know that that force was the fiat system. Right.

Because even as an economics student, you don't actually learn how money is created. That is like a premise that is… It's like an underlying assumption that's never discussed and it's never challenged. It was through Bitcoin that I actually learned how money is created. What a sophisticated system is it, the FIA, to even in the academia not expose people who learn economics and business to this fact. Yes, and it's the only economist that really wrote a lot about that from a critical perspective. are, you know, Ludwig von Mises and Hayek. And you don't learn about them at school, obviously.

Today, however, I think that is a little bit more mainstream, a lot thanks to Bitcoin. And I met these Bitcoiners, and what they were describing really early on, this was like early 2013, was you can't change the system, you have to build a new one. Because the existing system is based on fiat, and fiat money is at the root cause of all of this nebulous force

that you see, Frances, that is preventing change is the fiat system and we're going to fucking destroy it. So well put. And these guys were genius level entrepreneurs and hardcore cypherpunks and they're telling me, you know that revolution that you've always been yearning for? Like I've always had the idea that I was going to be involved in some kind of like revolution. I was very obsessed with the, just the concept of revolutions in general. That's what we're doing.

We're destroying, we're destroying the state. And I'm like, I want to destroy the state too. So, you know, that sounds, that sounds great. So I was really lucky to have these mentors pull me out of my Fiat job and say, Francis, Like, we want you to work for us because I had a I had a talent, which was to be able to distill complex ideas into like blogs. You know, I was I was I was a writer. I was a political writer. OK. And I as you're probably aware, I I speak relatively well. You know, I'm good at making public speech speeches.

So they say, hey, we need we need someone that's wearing a suit that can write well and that can be the public face. the public educator for Bitcoin because we don't want to be that. They were like OPSEC kind of Bitcoiners. So I became like a public spokesperson for this group that was called the Bitcoin Embassy in Montreal. And that was the beginning of my journey.

That was in 2013. And at the time you were wearing a suit. I was wearing a suit. I was very fiat. And so these guys had the idea to create a physical Bitcoin hub and like an activist group for Bitcoin. And that was the beginning of my journey.

And then that ultimately led me to become who I am today, which is a guy who's running a Bitcoin exchange. That's a very long story, but to make it very short, I like to solve problems. And I have the problem-solving gene, I guess. And I was running this physical Bitcoin center and it was meant to be an information education center where people would literally walk into my office,

like to the first floor and ask me about Bitcoin. But the question that they were asking the most was, how do I buy some? Exactly. And then, so, okay, so there's like a Bitcoin ATM or you can, you know, wire some money to Japan and Mongoks. And they're like, well, that sounds really hard. Like, can I just give you money and can you sell me Bitcoin?

I'm like, no, I don't want to. And then, well, what if I pay you like, you know, a 5% fee? Oh, well, you know, maybe. So I started to do like OTC trading and we started an OTC desk and like one thing led to another. And then suddenly I'm running a Bitcoin exchange. And then 10 years later, here I am. You're the Voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013. empowering individuals with an open source device enabling beginners and experts to easily and

securely hold their coins i find my treasure super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family enjoy my five percent discount on treasure product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code flat i've always been influenced from from these guys they taught me the cypherpunk way they taught me i was instilled by these mentors cypherpunk values which i found to be just just a very beautiful and clear ethos i did not know what open source software was i did not know what linux was i was like a fiat normie economist but they showed me how the libertarian kind of like capitalist ideology pairs really well with this technological sovereignty and using these cryptographic techniques to self-enforce the property

rights and the individual rights that you're looking for. Because if you are concerned about your rights, there's two ways to enforce your rights. The first way is to have a government that will protect you, like the US Constitution type stuff. The other way is to take that duty and responsibility in your own hands and enforce your rights yourself through cryptography and through cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, obviously. And the moment it clicked in my head was when we were having a philosophical discussion about property rights. And I understood that up until Bitcoin, property rights were guaranteed by the state. There's like the social contract that we have with the state in a way is,

hey, I will pay you money and you will prevent my property from being stolen by my neighbor. You will have a police force. You will have an army. You'll have a justice system. So I need the state to protect my private property. Even if I have a gun, you know,

it's like we don't have guns, you know, in our society. But like generally we rely on the state. But with Bitcoin, my private property is protected by cryptography and a decentralized network. So I can enforce the rights to my own – I can own my wealth without relying on a third party. And to me, when that clicked, I was like, this is the greatest revolution of all time and this is what I want to dedicate my life to and I want to make that a reality. Hence, as you mentioned in my bio, like my – me holding the flame of self-custody and cypherpunk values, that's why I'm at Bitcoin. I'm in Bitcoin because I believe in private property ownership of money and I believe in freedom of transaction, freedom of speech.

And this is 100% my reason for existing as a person in Bitcoin is to make sure that this property of Bitcoin is not only preserved, but is improved and is made easier for anybody that has the willingness to take the responsibility of their own wealth, of their sovereignty, should be able to do it. So I'm not a believer that everybody should use Bitcoin, but I'm a believer that anybody, not everybody, but anybody that is willing to take on personal ownership and sovereignty should be able to do it regardless of their technical skills, of their education level, or of their circumstances in life. Beautiful. And as you speak, what I am envisioning is that needle and thread and you're simply just weaving your way through libertarianism and free market economics and Austrian economics, obviously, and sovereignty, human rights. And it's like it's all coming together with that thread is Bitcoin. It's like answering all these things and is able to like tie this whole thing together into such a beautiful quilt of disciplines and areas. And it just gives solutions to so many of these problems that you touched on. And that's exactly what I felt when I was introduced to it and put the time in to, you know, do my own studying into Bitcoin. And I felt like I have this beautiful revelation of a truly revolutionary technology that is able to answer so many of these things that were bothering me in life.

And I think that similarly to you, I was woken up during COVID, but I did not have the background of fiat and understanding economics at all. I mean, I was doing marketing and business for 20 years before that. But just like you, I never questioned money and I took it as granted and the underlying assumption was there and everything was fine. But then when COVID hit me so hard, I was like, okay, they are okay to do this to me on a personal level and infringe my bodily autonomy and my rights. What would prevent them to go after my private property next? And I have to learn in order to be smart enough, in order to protect myself for the next attack that is coming. And I'm sure it will come in one shape or form. and then I started learning about money

and it was the movie which I've learned only a few days ago that was created produced by Dominic Frisby you know Dominic? I saw him at the conference right so did you know that he's the one behind the documentary

Four Horsemen have you watched the Four Horsemen? no I haven't it is the most brilliant documentary I think it's an hour and a half it's free on YouTube more than 10 million people viewed it and it was done about 11 years ago

and it actually just tells the story of fiat actually the fiat scam it has nothing to do with bitcoin yet so it's only fiat but by watching that movie it was my crash course into the fiat scam and my eyes went like that by the end of that movie and i was like fuck this is a way bigger scam than the health scam yeah yeah and and because that was like a couple of years after COVID has started already. And it felt like that was my missing piece. And when that fell into place, my friend that started feeding me with Bitcoin stuff at the time, it was like, thank you, because now I understand why I need Bitcoin, because now I understand the real problem that this solves. And what a beauty, like what a great ray of light it was for me to kind of

discover that this exists because I think that have I not discovered it at that time I would probably get depressed with the state of the world and where it's going and understanding the powers and how they are manipulating our lives and so the moment I discovered it I had felt so hopeful and so optimistic again and then discovering projects like yours like many other people we're like wow this is actually happening people are actually building other ways of living so can you now touch on maybe um bitcoin um sorry what's it called jungle bitcoin jungle bitcoin jungle i know why i'm getting it mixed up because my friend in israel the one that had orange peeled me ben he has a business in israel called crypto jungle so i keep okay yeah i keep mixing it up

Sorry. So can you share a bit about Bitcoin Jungle? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the premise of Bitcoin Jungle is that Bitcoin is a means of payment. It's not just a store of value. And that's because there's two parts to the Bitcoin story. Bitcoin is digital gold and it's also digital cash. So the digital gold aspect of Bitcoin solves to a large degree the fiat scam. So because the money cannot be debased, government cannot finance their terrorist regimes, which is war and enslavement of the population through taxes and through regulations.

Bitcoin as a digital gold system solves a lot of that. But there's a lot of things that digital gold doesn't solve, which is freedom of ownership, freedom of transaction. Bitcoin must be used as a system of money in order for us to completely get rid of the fiat scam. So it's not enough for Bitcoin to be a store of value. Bitcoin also must be used for payments. And I've always been a very strong proponent of Bitcoin as a payments technology. And so Bitcoin Jungle is a circular economy. So what is a circular economy in the context of Bitcoin?

It's kind of a misnomer, but the concept of a circular economy is that you take a region of the world and you create a critical mass of merchants in that region so that Bitcoin becomes ubiquitous in a specific location, right? So the concept has been tried in many places, but became specifically spectacularly successful in a place called Bitcoin Beach in El Zante, in El Salvador, where a wallet was created the Bitcoin Beach wallet, and a community was created to try to orange pill this beach town, which ultimately led to what we know today

as the kind of like El Salvador Bitcoin, you know, meme or whatever you want to call it, meta. And this place in Costa Rica, which is now known as Bitcoin Jungle in the southwest of Costa Rica, had a critical mass of Bitcoiners already there for other reasons. And those reasons are simply that a lot of people who move to Costa Rica are people who like to live off the grid.

They're really into like plant medicine and yoga and surfing. So the mindset is like adventurer, you know, risk taker, independent thinkers, just spontaneously converge to Costa Rica. And it turns out that a lot of them are bit corners for the same reason. Their brain is wired the same way. Like if you want to live off the grid, outside of the health system, you want to homeschool, you want to have a home birth, and you want to build a homestead, you are already like, you're already ideologically aligned to financial ownership, right? So a lot of Bitcoiners in that region, and these Bitcoiners got together and said, hey, like Bitcoin Beach is really successful. Why don't we try that here? So this group of people created their own wallet,

which is called Bitcoin Jungle, and we started to orange pill merchants. It started with the farmer's market because there's no more pure capitalism than a farmer's market that's run by locals. Payments are done in cash. There's no permits to sell whatever you want. You have milk, you sell your milk.

You have beef, you sell your beef. You have vegetables, you sell your vegetables. You don't go through any third parties. There's no third party. It's direct to producer. So these are very fertile grounds for Bitcoin adoption for ideological reasons and also for practical reasons, which is that these people don't accept credit cards because they don't have the skill or they don't have the willingness to incorporate and create a corporation. You're not going to create a corporation to sell coconuts and get a bank account and PayPal account just to sell some coconuts, right? Whereas to download a Bitcoin wallet does not require permission and does not require you to have a corporation and does not require any bank account or proof of address or anything.

You just download the app. So it's a very fertile ground. So we started to orange pill these farmers markets. There's like three major farmers markets and we started to orange pill merchants. And slowly but surely, we reached a critical mass of merchant adoption, so much so that the merchants are now spending Bitcoin with each other. And it created this meme of, hey, if you want to spend your Bitcoin and if you want to live on a Bitcoin standard, you can actually do that in Bitcoin Jungle. So a lot of Bitcoiners moved, myself included. I joined Bitcoin Jungle about six months to a year after it was originally created, moved to this part of Costa Rica.

And now we have a kind of like citadel, you know, where, you know, Bitcoiners talk about the concept of a citadel. A citadel is really a place where Bitcoiners are living in the same area on a Bitcoin standard, trying to create a life which is as less dependent as possible on state institutions and on traditional financial institutions. So that's what we've achieved there. And what I really like to share about this project is that it is like Bitcoin payments work. It is possible to live on a Bitcoin standard.

All it takes is a little bit of hard work. And once you reach a critical mass, this thing really takes off. So, you know, I have a lot of hats in Bitcoin. I work in open source projects. I run a more traditional Bitcoin exchange company, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin. But Bitcoin Jungle is really a passion project. But it's also a selfish project because I want to buy the beef in Bitcoin. So in order for me to achieve that, I need to orange peel the butcher.

I want to create a society where if there is a fiat collapse, I'm still going to get the stuff that I want to buy, right? So that's why people say like, how do you orange pill? How do you choose who to orange pill? Well, first of all, I orange pill the people who I depend on, right? Which is mostly like food and mechanics and rent and that kind of stuff. So Bitcoin Jungle is a very grassroots and there's no, you know, it's a little complicated. there's no real leader it's it's it's a very like disorganized grassroots project um that has no corporate or commercial backing there's no vcs behind it it's driven by the passion of

bitcoiners to create a a case study almost like we're trying to we're trying to prove a point with bitcoin jungle which is that like bitcoin is for payments and it does actually work so that when you have a segment of the Bitcoin crypto sphere, which is telling you that no, stable coins are for payments. Bitcoin is for store of value. The banks work really well. We should just use Bitcoin for our corporate treasuries and stop playing with these little payments toys. That's not the point of Bitcoin. The point of Bitcoin is to become super fucking rich. Bitcoin payments don't work they don't scale it's like no like we have proven that it works we've proven that it scales we've proven that regardless of your level of education you can get into bitcoin like whenever

i you know whenever i orange pill someone in costa rica the conversation goes like this like hey do you accept bitcoin payments and they say no and i say why not usually what they say is well i don't know like i don't i don't have the app like well let me show you how to use the app there is no excuse anymore i download the app we make a bitcoin payment and there you go you accept bitcoin and and that's it 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 mikhail thorpe and his team at expat money can help mikhail is the world's leading expat consultant on a mission to free you from broken systems he's been an expat

for 25 years, lived in nine different countries and has helped hundreds of people with second residencies and passports, offshore banking, international investing, and many other essential tools. If you're serious about protecting your wealth and your family, it's not enough to hope things will get better. You need a plan B in another country. The team at Expat Money can help you build it legally, safely, and without wasting years of research. Visit expatmoney.com slash eflat and leave your details for a follow-up. In a world hypnotized and sleepwalking towards totalitarian control and digital enforcement, awakened voices rise to inspire change and radiate hope. In December 2024, I had the honor of hosting Professor Matthias Desmet

at a conference I produced called New Totalitarian Order. This masterclass is now recorded and available to watch the conference explores the psychology behind global mass processes offering a behind the scenes look at science economics and human potential it addresses challenging global agendas mass formation transhumanism consciousness societal change and the path to transformation click the link in the show notes to access three and a half hours of exclusive presentations in-depth content and my fireside chat with professor desma use my code AFRAT for 10% off. I hope you find great value in it.

Of course, Bitcoin Jungle is a custodial wallet. And that's, initially when I first heard about Bitcoin Jungle, I was like, fuck these guys. Like, it's a custodial wallet. I don't want to get involved with custodians. I ended up getting involved with them anyway

because they're so cool and they are all cypherpunks also. But my thinking now is like we need this to work in a non-custodial way also, right? So that's what I've been focusing on for the last three, four years. My goal is to make the self-custodial experience of Bitcoin as seamless, easy, and pain-free and frictionless as the custodial experience. So that when you are using a self-custodial wallet and a custodial wallet, the argument for the custodial wallet is that, well, it's easy. But what if we made the self-custodial experience just as easy? And that's where I see my role in the space.

My role is to create products that are so good that they feel like they're custodial. So that's what I've dedicated maybe. And Bull Bitcoin has always been a non-custodial exchange from the beginning. So I always refuse. So there is no option to leave your coins on the exchange. No, you can't. When you buy Bitcoin, you have to put your Bitcoin address before you buy, right? Because that's how it works in the cash physical world, right?

And that's where I came from because I was running a cash-based OTC desk at the Bitcoin Embassy and we had a Bitcoin ATM. and there is no better experience than you put the cash in the machine and then you end up with the coins in your wallet. And I'm like, for me, this is the peak. Put the cash in and the coins are in your wallet. That's it. Like that's really all people want.

Like people just want to receive the coins on their wallet. So I'm like, we should have an online app that replicates kind of like that physical cash ATM model. But it's not enough to have a non-custodial exchange. You need to have the whole non-custodial payments and wallet ecosystem. So that has been my, you know, Bull Bitcoin as a company makes profits,

but the whole point of Bull Bitcoin for me is to finance the open source non-custodial work that I do. And I think that's what makes Bull Bitcoin special. It's like, we're not just, we could have been a custodial exchange and unfortunately we would have made a lot more money. like custodial exchanges make more money than not custodial exchanges because because it's just easier for people to use custodial exchange so you have more clients we could have sold the

shit coins um like kraken for example you know or bitfinex or whatever um but one of our core principles is like never never create a product or service that you don't personally use and like we i don't use shit coins so i'm not going to create a product i don't believe in shit coins i'm not going to sell something that i believe in because when i sell something i'm selling utxos i'm selling self-custody i'm selling the stuff that i believe in and i'm selling this to my friends to my parents you know so like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna sell shit coins to my mom you know um so if i'm not gonna sell shit coins to my mom what why would i sell it to this guy's mom or to this guy right um so only sell products that that we believe in and uh and yeah so i'm

And I'm just so blessed to be able to bring what excites me most about this like Bitcoin builder ecosystem is like bringing a vision into reality. And when I see people using Bitcoin Jungle, using Bull Bitcoin, using the Bull Bitcoin wallet, I cannot describe like the joy that I feel by it's almost spiritual. like there's like very esoteric i don't know what my religion is at this point you know but what i what i believe in is that when i orange pill someone and they take self-custody of their bitcoins like i am getting karma out of it this right i i certainly get personal joy and satisfaction but i i really think like i am like fucking morpheus in the matrix you know i am liberating this person and selfishly like that gives like i derive like a lot of pleasure from that and with this open source technological ecosystem and like collaboration with other

developers and creating things that are tools which when used why like if a lot of people use these tools we are achieving a revolution so how how does a revolution happen it's for me it's by building apps and making sure that these apps are being used. And the revolution happened spontaneously. And what I really like about Bitcoin, we talked about also being blackpilled. So I was first blackpilled when I was a young economist by being cynically thinking, we're never going to change the system. And then I was blackpilled with COVID.

And there's a moment in time where, okay, I'm being locked down in my house. So there's a curfew. They're making me put a fucking diaper on my face. Now they want to force vax me and force vax my kids. Like, how do I fight back? Well, I mean, historically, we take arms and we revolt violently against the government. But I don't want to do that. Like, people don't want to do that.

Like, we don't want to die in a war. We don't want to be in a civil war. So let's say that you are a revolutionary and you are being, or no, you're just a free man or a free woman, right? You're not even revolutionary. I just want to be left alone. And you have a government that oppresses you, then is the only way out of this the revolt? But here comes Bitcoin, where Bitcoin is a peaceful revolution, where in order to achieve political and social change, our ancestors had to die in a war. We don't have to die in a war to achieve social change.

There is a peaceful mechanism that we can use to achieve the same, if not larger, degree of social and political change, which is Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is, for me, a way to channel all that anger, all that frustration, all of that black-pilled energy that you have. Instead of channeling it in either despair or violence, let's channel it towards creative building, right? And again, thank you for the COVID lockdowns. Thank you, governments, for oppressing us. Because even if I was already red-pilled, that like triple red-pilled me and that woke a lot of people up and a large portion of the people that woke up had the same thought process that we were talking about, which is, all right, now that I have figured out the health scam and the fiat scam, then you end up in the rabbit hole and hopefully you find Bitcoin. and just side note like

and that's why us as educators we need to make sure that they find Bitcoin right we need to make sure that in their journey like

they end up in Bitcoin so like education advocacy for Bitcoin is like critically important not to orange pill the masses but

to orange pill the people who are who are seekers seeking answers yeah and then you find Bitcoin and then channel all of that

to to participating in this thing and you know you don't need to apply to the Bitcoin CEO for a job if you want to help Bitcoin, you know, you can just do things.

You can just use whatever skillset you have. You can set up a podcast. You can set up a podcast. You can educate. You can learn to code. You can create a service. You can invest. You can advise.

You can work in customer support. You can do all sorts of things. You can do everything in Bitcoin. Everything is to be built. You can even be a carpenter. Like everything. And also, you can just accept Bitcoin for payments for your services and your goods. That's good enough.

You can buy Bitcoin and hold it for your family. There's like all sorts of degrees of involvement in Bitcoin that you can have. The ultimate degree is like, you know, you start, you launch a Bitcoin company, right? But there's like all sorts of different degrees. Absolutely. And I'm just so, you know, my best friend and designer at Bull Bitcoin, Madex, you know, he has this. Hold on. You just said the secret word.

Yeah. You've got the same one. And you'll notice that on almost all of his art, he writes, thank you, Satoshi. So grateful. I am so, so, so grateful because without Satoshi, without Bitcoin, what would we be doing right now? We wouldn't be in the same spot. We wouldn't be sitting here. We wouldn't be sitting here and we would probably be either nihilistically numb or forever, forever angry.

Absolutely. And we would just be perpetuating the matrix more and more. Yeah, yeah. It would take over humanity. Imagine how bad it is to know that you're in a new matrix, but you can't leave. I know. That's the worst. Horrible.

Yeah. And now we have a way out. Exactly. Okay. Fascinating. I had like a dozen questions to ask you as you were speaking, but obviously I didn't want to interrupt you. But let me try and recap some of them. So first of all, how many people today live in the Bitcoin jungle community, more or less?

I have no idea. Okay, so as I said, we are very disorganized. It's a loose association of people. I would say that there's like a dozen people that are involved more than others into actually running things. I would say that there's a few hundred people that are, like, in the circle of Bitcoin jungle, probably a few thousands that – multiple thousands, actually, that use Bitcoin. So I would say, like, there's different layers of involvement in Bitcoin jungle because, you know, someone that accepts – is someone that's just accepting Bitcoin payments for his coconuts, is he part of Bitcoin jungle? Yes. But he's not like he's not like involved in in in organizing events and stuff like that.

But like if you count all of that people like there's worth thousands. Again, the number of merchants, it's it's really hard to determine because there's no like there's no like KYC or registration. So anybody can be a merchant. I would say that there's like about 500 merchants that have self-assigned themselves a pin on our map. Because you can choose to register yourself on our map. Just so that people know who you are and what you do and they can... Yeah. And by the way, the Bitcoin Jungle map, if you ever like doubt, just go on the Bitcoin Jungle app and you look at the map.

Like, it's crazy. You know, there's like streets where you have like 30 different merchants on the same street. But of course, there's, you know, your chiropractor, your surf instructor that they're not on the map. So I think we are, I use the figure 700 merchants accepting Bitcoin. That's the one that makes the most sense to me, anywhere between 500 and 1,000. And that concept exists in other parts of the world. I'm going to name drop a few because... And let's see if the ones you name drop have been on my podcast because they probably have been.

So let's do it. Tando in Kenya. Have you heard about these guys? Yes, I heard. There is a... Ekasi. Ekasi in South Africa and Whitland also, which is in South Africa. There is one in...

Berlin. Yes, there's one in Berlin. There's obviously Bitcoin Beach and Berlin in El Salvador. There's one in Peru, which I forget the name. Yes, Isa was talking about. Yeah, the one in Peru. There's BTC Isla. There's BTC...

There's Mayan Bitcoin. There's one in Vancouver. Madera, free Madera. There's free Madera. There's prior Bitcoin in Brazil. Is there one in Lugano? I think there's one in Lugano. I don't think it's...

It's different. I think it's a little different. I think Lugano is like a little bit more corporate. There's a Bitcoin Valley somewhere in Italy. So there's all of these little hubs that are popping up. What about the US? I think there's a map somewhere of all these circular Bitcoin economies. There is a union even.

I mean, not a union, a hub. Yeah, well, there's... For all the circular economies. Yeah, there's the Federation of Circular Economies, which... And there are so many. That's the point. There's tons. There's tons.

And like, they're always popping up. And I think that it's hard for me to explain why the mentality is different in emerging markets than in... Because you don't really see that in the US, right? and like yeah that's why i was asking in western countries it's not the same um there's because i've now spent like a week in austin texas and we went to farmer's market and some of them have already been orange peeled by my friends and some have been orange peeled yeah when i was there and we did some videos and and told them about it and sorry trezor for putting my shoes on your couch but I think you'll forgive me.

But it was such a ripe environment to do it. And they were so open to it. And everyone we had spoken to immediately downloaded the wallet and we paid them in Bitcoin. And it was like, come on, the people, like the Bitcoiners of Austin, how come you're not orange-pilling the whole place? There's a new farmer's market in Calgary called Sats Market.

I really see farmer's markets as being the prime fertile for Bitcoin adoption. So if you are looking to start a circular economy, the best way is to start with the farmer's market. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Okay, so that was about Bitcoin jungle and the circular economy and then Boole. OK, so Boo, this is an interesting one for me when I when I'm thinking of you and what you stand for and then thinking about the fact that you have a regulated exchange and that one of your core values is to burn the state down. then how do you handle that intersection with the government or the institution being the one enforcing that regulation over you saying, okay, you want to be a regulated exchange? No problem. But here are the rules and regulations that you have to respect and comply with.

And you have to do KYC to know who your customer is so that we know that they're not involved in any anti-money laundering activities etc and criminal activities and you for sure i assume do not like kyc but you have to do it and how do you handle this this polarity this um you know this this difference in perceptions it uh it really sucks um it really sucks so the reason why I run an exchange is through this circumstance of events where as I said like one day I just kind of like woke up and I realized I was running an exchange right and uh that's if if I had to uh to redo my entire life um would I choose running an exchange I mean it has brought me to where I am um so as you said it finances it finances all that kind of stuff but it really really sucks so

So a lot of what we have to do at an exchange is tied to government regulations. So there's many things that we have to do. There's KYC, but mostly also interfacing with banking. So ironically, the banks enforce measures that you have to put more strongly than exchanges. As an exchange, you are basically a fiat business. Yeah. Because you're buying Bitcoin, but you're sending me a bank transfer. You're selling Bitcoin, I'm sending you a bank transfer.

If you want to pay a bill with Bitcoin, I'm sending a bank transfer. So our business is basically to send and receive bank transfers and also to send and receive Bitcoin. The Bitcoin part is great. We have built our own self-hosted Bitcoin payments infrastructure. So we don't use any third parties to handle Bitcoin payments. It's all engineering work. It's all free. It's all creativity. whereas running a Bitcoin exchange means dealing with banks and governments pretty much all the time.

So the way that I convince myself that I'm doing the right thing by running a KYC business is by defending the user as much as possible and more than others. How do you do that? So our philosophy is minimum level compliance to be legal, right? So to never be over-compliant and to protect data as much as possible, to fight back, because every time institutions try to take an inch, they eventually end up taking a mile. So we try to cede no territory at all, right? So, you know, like in Canada, there are exemptions for no KYC transactions.

So you don't have to do KYC if you sell below $1,000 per day per transaction and a certain amount per day. So obviously we allow that, right? Often there is arbitrary data requests by governments that happens to all the exchanges. And every single time I fight them. And so far we have been extremely successful in fighting arbitrary data requests by governments. Because, you know, a government might do something like, hey, like, can you just give me all of this data? And then my favorite word in the English language is no. And then you fight back and then you find the line, which is, okay, like that is the actual line that the government has set, you know, legally.

So, of course, like we can't break the law. We can't not comply because if we do that, then bull bitcoin goes out of business. and honestly it wouldn't be the end of the world because I would work on wallets and something else

like I don't need I don't need bull bitcoin to exist to survive and you know like personally you know

so it's not like I don't have investors also so like I can do whatever the fuck I want however

this is kind of a cop out but also like if so we we try to do as best as we can and protect the

cypherpunk's values as much as we can and there are other exchanges that that do that but there's very very few there's very very few like um i'm not even sure i want to name drop but like there's there's there's a very very very small like one percent of all exchanges that actively fight back and if bull bitcoin doesn't exist then it's coinbase that wins right um so so it's another way of decentralizing this specific segment right it's it's offering the the the it's making the least worst the least the least worst product possible but i gotta say it is it is definitely soul crushing and uh it's the worst part of my life is dealing with regulation and and banks i would much rather

just work on the wallet. But if I work, and that's the other thing, as you mentioned, and as I mentioned, it's like, okay, so if Bull Bitcoin doesn't make profits,

and in Bitcoin, pretty much the only thing that makes profits is exchanges. Right? Like some mining stuff makes profits, but like exchanges make profits.

And without the profits of Bull Bitcoin, how am I going to finance the stuff that I do with the wallet? Like Bitcoin Jungle, for example, is largely financed

by the profits that bull bitcoin makes right right so if if bull bitcoin disappears then then we have to rely on and there are there are ways you know there's the human rights foundation gives grants and you know very grateful they've they supported bitcoin jungle um open sats again very grateful to open sats they have supported bitcoin jungle in the past a lot of the developers but also like a lot of the technologies that we build at bull bitcoin um is stuff that would never have been financed right it's very very experimental stuff and stuff that you know it's it's expensive to build these tools so uh yeah i uh i cannot wait for bull bitcoin to become obsolete i'm like the genie

in aladdin like i feel like i'm shackled and um you know the first time that i considered bull bitcoin a business i we had four employees at the time and we had like this big meeting it's like like let's decide what are our company goals and values and mission and the number one is we must obsolete ourselves the goal of bull bitcoin is to disappear because if there is no fiat there is no need for fiat on ramp and off ramp which is which is our niche yeah and i want that to happen because when that happens there's tons of other stuff to work on you know i'm excited about wallets technologies about second layer payment solutions about backup solutions about security about privacy tools so there's tons of other stuff to work on yep um so let's let's uh please adopt

Bitcoin as soon as possible, because the faster we have hyper Bitcoinization, the sooner I can retire from dealing with banks and governments. Wow, great. And I'm sorry if I've asked a question that is kind of putting salt on a wound. No, I didn't mean to. And I'm really happy to talk about that. Because that's always been the one thing that doesn't sit right with me. It's Yeah, I gathered. That's why I've asked it. And if it offers you any comfort, I believe that people like us that have a very strong mission and are doing what they're doing, not for the money, but for actually serving humanity and making a significant difference in the world, we have to kind of become dirty a little bit on the way there. because we are trying to help people get from a very dirty reality into something much better and cleaner. I wish there was a chart because I could be doing something else.

Like, for example, a good example is like Vexel, for example. So Vexel is like the pure, fully uncompromised vision of the peer-to-peer Bitcoin trade. It's a peer-to-peer market, cash for Bitcoin. Shout out to Vexel. They're fucking awesome. And just for people to be aware, Vexel is like a sister company of Trezor that is hosting us now in this building, the Satoshi Labs building. So, yeah, shout out.

BISC, Peach, Huddle Huddle, there's all sorts of peer-to-peer, like I could be doing peer-to-peer exchanges. I have this chart, which is a chart of scale versus compromise, where typically if you want to scale, there needs to be a level of compromise at some point. And there's two ways. One way is to compromise from the beginning and to scale really fast and dirty. And this is like the Coinbase way, right? To be like, who gives a fuck? All in. Right.

Who gives a, like. Crypto. Like, you sell out from the beginning and then you get like 100 million users. The other way is to find a level of compromise that you are comfortable with. Yeah. And without going over that line, try to scale as much as possible. So you have like the ideal outcome is full scale with no compromise. Right.

My contention is that it's – I don't want to say it's impossible, but like it's very, very, very unlikely and difficult to get to – you know, like everybody that's used a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange knows that it's like at this moment in time, it's not for anyone. And like, you know, if I want to buy a car with Bitcoin, I'm going to need to have like a fiat off-ramp to buy it. To do it with cash and meet someone there, it just doesn't scale really, really well. So if we want to get to a level of adoption which is large enough to get to that revolution, I think that a small amount of compromise is required. And then what you have to do is you have to set the level of compromise where you're no longer willing to compromise anymore and go as far as you can in there. So I'm trying to get to that spot. Right. I'm trying to get to the spot of maximal scale and minimum compromise.

And I have a maximum compromise level. You have your own boundaries. I have my own boundary. And I'm going to go as far as I can in that boundary. And I think I can go pretty far. But at the same time, that's why I don't see companies like Vexel or Peach or Huddle Huddle. I'm almost jealous of them that they are compromising way less than me. But also I realized that I'm scaling more.

So we all have our kind of thing. But the goal and that's why that benchmark is the cypherpunk ethos. Like when you're talking about compromise, like what are you compromising on? It's the cypherpunk ethos. So that is what keeps you – that's when I said I'm a cypherpunk entrepreneur. It's like every time you do something, you have to use the cypherpunk ethos as a benchmark. Like, am I in line with it? Yes or no?

Okay. If it's yes, great. If it's no, how much have I compromised on it? And every time you compromise, you need to be like, do I really need to compromise? Like, what am I gaining for this compromise? Is it marginal utility? Like, am I getting 10x scale? Am I getting 100x scale?

Am I getting 2x scale? Am I getting 1.1 scale? And you have to decide, like, is the scale that I'm getting worth it? And that's, for example, the rationale behind Bitcoin Jungle, for example. It's like when I first, as I mentioned, when I first heard about Bitcoin Jungle, I was like, you guys are fucking custodial wallet. Like, that's not how you're supposed to do Bitcoin. And these guys were like, hey, man, like, chill first. And then let's go to the farmer's market and let's spend some stats everywhere.

And, you know, let's see what we've achieved here. We've achieved something fucking awesome, right, by compromising on self-custody. And I was like, self-custody is not something I'm willing to compromise on. But, you know, they kind of, you know, made me understand, like, that would not have been possible with Phoenix Wallet. I'm sorry. It just wouldn't, right? But what we have to do is, like, always check, like, okay, so let's – maybe we can roll back. Maybe we can – and that's the goal with Bitcoin Jungle, by the way, is to eventually transition to a self-custodial model, right?

We must never forget that, like, like we, like that compromise was made to achieve a certain level of skill, but, and how do you, how do you achieve that, that skill compromised sweet spot through technology, through open source apps, through innovative solutions, right? So that's why I'm so bullish on Bitcoin. It's like for people who don't know about Bitcoin technology, I can explain. There's multiple different technologies that are being achieved right now. There's the liquid network. There's stuff that Aqua Wallet is working on, which is the same space as what Bull Bitcoin is working on. There's other solutions like the ARK network, the ARK protocol. So we're not satisfied with the current spot we're at from compromise to scale.

so how do we move that it's it's by building the technologies and like over time the technologies get better and that trade-off becomes less and less and less significant so as long as people are building as long as you have radical cypherpunk builders who are dedicating their life to building these things we are we are moving the needle down the compromise scale and further up the scale scale. Beautiful. I love the way you put it, the scale versus compromise metric. It's really beautiful. And we didn't even need a chart for you to explain it. It's well done. No, no, it's well done. Okay, great. And I want you to help me out with something. Because a lot of my audience is like you and I have been red pilled during COVID. And they are struggling with

understanding maybe what I want from them when I try to orange pill them. I mean, I don't actively try to orange pill them, but I do this podcast and other work so that they follow and read and they're like, what the hell does she want from us? Why is she so gang ho on Bitcoin? And I think that one of the pitfalls for this specific group is the whole um the whole understanding of cash and fiat there's so much into cash will protect us cash is king and um and then they're also afraid of digital because of cbdc's and stuff they think that bitcoin is a cbdc or maybe It normalizes the CBDC discussion and once you get into Bitcoin, they'll also control you. So they're in this place where they're so afraid of money and what it can become,

where what they're actually missing, what I tell them all the time that they're missing, is that they don't understand that when there's an invention that its time has come or an idea that its time has come, there is nothing to stop it and it's going to happen, the digitization of the monetary system is happening, whether we like it or not. And so how would you approach the skeptics that have already understood that we are being scammed in many areas of our lives, and now there's someone telling them, knock, knock, it's happening also with your money. And if you do want to prepare yourself, you better understand what money is, not just cash,

but money and why Bitcoin is the solution for it. And I'll just add one more thing to it. There is a big movement in the freedom truth movement that is listening to Bitcoin is hijacked and Roger Ver's stuff and the book, they keep posting that book on my posts and stuff and then like nothing to do with Roger himself. He may be a great guy, I don't know him personally, but just the fact that people are resisting

Bitcoin so much because they are still obsessed with the block size wars and things like that. How do I get over this with my audience? Can you help me please? That's also something that I struggle with because a lot of my audience is... In that camp? In that camp, hippies, natural healers, skeptics, people who are – and sometimes that does happen quite regularly where I'm trying to orange peel someone and say I don't trust the government and the banks. And for me, Bitcoin is created by the CIA and the solution is barter. And then the first argument is scale.

which is that if we – and they have the intuition that the root of problems is related to money, and they think it is money. They think money is the root. Money is evil. Right. And, of course, the leap that they're missing, it's that, no, no, you're right. You're right that money is the root of all problems, but it's fiat money. That's the root of all problems because money itself is the root of all good.

That's what it should be. But fiat money is the root of – So you've identified fiat money as being the root of all problems. But if we go back to barter, that's fine. But we lose all the progress that we've made as a civilization, whether that's technology, health, communications. I mean, hey, like you're a yoga person that moved to Costa Rica. You think you're going to be able to, you know, do anything. like yeah sure we can we can go back to being like you know uh pre-civilization species living

in the jungle you know um but you know you better start enjoying mangoes and fruits because that's all we're gonna get right and uh uh we're not going to be able to expand our minds through technology and knowledge and communications and like reach a higher level of of of enlightenment made unconscious as a species by fucking living in the jungle eating mangoes and coconuts um so cash so so barter doesn't scale so cash obviously come fine um i think cash is great i think cash is a great cypherpunk tool absolutely the problem with cash is that it uh loses its value over time right so fiat cash loses its value over time um so of course all right well let's do gold yeah well the problem is gold is that you can't fucking move it you can't use it for payments i'm sorry

like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be like it's it's it's it's impractical and there are other arguments against gold like the fact that we don't know what the supply is and and potentially the supply of gold is fucking infinite like I don't know how much gold there is in the space in asteroids in the earth um I don't know how much gold is being produced by magma you know by the forces of pressure right now I have no idea I don't even know how gold is made to be honest but i don't know um but there are practical problems with gold which is that gold is very easy to censor and to stop because it is something physical whereas and so is cash by the way like so bitcoin is practically more censorship resistant because you don't like let's say

that you want to move gold from from i don't know from canada to paraguay like how the fuck you're going to do that like you can't you can't like and you know ask ask the jews in europe that were fleeing uh the nazi regime um and you know that left with their gold and their jewelry like how much of them reached their destination with their wealth intact like you know probably not a lot of them you know so if you want to be able to move and and mobility is key to individual sovereignty the ability from move to one jurisdiction to another uh and to play the jurisdictional arbitrage game that is emerging is key to being a free person. If you want to be mobile, you need to have your wealth move with you and try to do that with cash and gold. It's

just not feasible. And Roger has done an incredible of damage to Bitcoin. It's really, really, really sad. So first of all, the block size wars proves that Bitcoin can't be hijacked. So his entire scheme to frame it as a hijacking of Bitcoin, not only is wrong, but is the complete opposite of what happened because he tried to fucking hijack Bitcoin and he failed, right? That's what actually happened. And by the way, like I was there and that's how I became, that's how I became a Bitcoin influencer, by the way, like quote, quote, because before the block size wars, I mean, I was kind of like known because I was running the Bitcoin embassy and the Bitcoin and the Bitcoin meetup in Montreal and I was like in the space a little bit but like I

wasn't like you know really consequential before I don't know maybe I'm maybe I'm misrepresenting myself but I definitely like became a prominent voice for the cypherpunk side of Bitcoin versus the corporate side of Bitcoin and Roger was on the corporate side of Bitcoin so Roger was allied with Coinbase, with Blockchain.info, with BitPay. Roger was allied with Barry Silbert and the Digital Currency Group, ETFs. Roger was Wall Street. Roger was the big Chinese mining firms. Roger was Silicon Valley money investors. He was the establishment trying to hijack Bitcoin because he wanted Bitcoin to change. And he thought that he was so important because he was Bitcoin Jesus

and a lot of credit goes to him for what he did in Bitcoin early on and he was full of self-importance. He said, hey, I want Bitcoin to change. How does he want Bitcoin to change? He wants Bitcoin to compromise. So what he wanted was to change the rules of Bitcoin, which is the one thing that makes Bitcoin unique

is that the rules cannot change because if the rules can't change, Then the question arises, who decides what the new rules are? Okay, now we need to have a governance mechanism to change the rules. Who is part of that governance mechanism? Well, in Roger's mind, it's him and his fucking cronies from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. So he wants to change the rules of Bitcoin in order to make Bitcoin more centralized, but cheaper and faster to use. which is not even something

that he would have achieved but that's what he wanted to achieve so not only his idea would not have worked his idea was let's compromise on the fact that Bitcoin is not governable

let's make Bitcoin governable let's put me and my friends at the top and let's change the rules to achieve a goal which is slightly lower transaction fees he tried to hijack Bitcoin

what we demonstrated the cypherpunk side and that's how i became for example friends with samson and blockstream that's why that's why a lot of us by the way like you see all these og cypherpunk people like why are we all friends it's through this camaraderie where we're like we need to stop this hijacking of bitcoin through this cypherpunk technological means so there was a conflict and obviously even though they had all the money and the power we had the technology and the resolve we won he lost he lost a lot of money because of that and it's an insane level of money an unfathomable level of money he still has a lot but he lost a lot of money because of of his failed coup d'etat against bitcoin and he's bitter and resentful and he's trying to get you bitter

and resentful like him fuck roger ver okay fuck this guy like he was one of my heroes because I got when I got into Bitcoin I was fanboy of Roger the damage that he has done by convincing people that Bitcoin is a hijack

erases all of his previous advocacy and I'm sorry to say fuck this guy he's trying to sell you something else yeah he's trying to sell you his new Bitcoin

right right and he's bitter and resentful so fuck this guy and it doesn't work either and it doesn't work it's not working for him right

Because there is nothing to do with what he's trying to sell. And like it's – Roger is right because he advocates for individual freedom. He's right about a lot of things. So it's tempting to believe Roger because he's well-spoken and he's dedicated and he's motivated for human freedom and free markets. But when it comes to Bitcoin, he's a fucking moron, OK? So don't listen to this guy. Bitcoin is not hijacked. If Bitcoin was hijackable and hijacked, like, don't you think, like, would they really allow Bitcoin to continue to exist?

Like, Bitcoin is being used for good. It's also being used for bad. And a lot of the ways that Bitcoin is being used are not things that very powerful people support, things that really powerful people oppose dramatically. So if it was hijackable, maybe they're waiting to hijack it in the future. Okay, come on. People have tried to hijack it and it has failed. So on the contrary, you should look at Roger's book and Roger's ideas of Bitcoin is hijacked as being like, no, actually, think of it like this. He tried to hijack Bitcoin and it didn't work.

And that's what actually happened. And he has done so much damage out of pure resentment. So Bitcoin is not hijacked. And the solution is not barter. Barter doesn't scale. Cash is limited. Cash is great. Cash value melts over time and is not – you need money that works on the internet.

I'm sorry, okay? Otherwise, you're not going to get nice things, okay? Right. So cash and gold don't don't transport over communications channels and physically also don't transport really well. So you're left with Bitcoin. Right. And also like, OK. It's it's it's very tempting. And I get it because so many things have been scams. and so many people that you thought like in my case roger but so many people that you thought were were on our side are not yeah like politicians that said the right things but when they go into power they fucking start bombing other countries like like there is we are continuously disappointed

and the black pill is almost addictive you know it's like bitcoin is too good to be true and like and like no I get it I get why they fall for that and I totally get it and in order for someone to really understand Bitcoin

like I do requires a lot of time in Bitcoin understanding the technology and it's like it really makes me sad because if you could see Bitcoin like I see like when you know So you never stop learning in Bitcoin, but really like at some point, like I've been in it for 12 years, like I understand Bitcoin, right?

So people say, oh, you never really understand Bitcoin. I mean, OK, like, yeah, theoretically, but like I understand Bitcoin fully and I wish you could see what I see because I can see the whole picture of how it all works and how it all comes together and why it is actually resistant to co-option. And I can't even even if we had even if we had six hours, if we had six hours, I could probably go a long way. But like even after six hours, I really couldn't fully make you see the picture that I have in my head. It takes it takes a long time. So, you know, unfortunately, you're going to have to take my word for it. And I hope I'm more convincing than Roger that Bitcoin is not co-optable. But the evidence is Bitcoin has been working for 16 years and it goes directly against – and a lot of people are going to say, well, yeah, Trump and BlackRock and like all these big guys, like they got into Bitcoin.

So if they are pro-Bitcoin – Because they have no choice. Because they have no choice. They have to join. They have to join and like – They actually understood that they cannot win that. And like even like guys like, you know, like Bitcoin does not – there is no way for the U.S. government to remain in its current form and Bitcoin existing. So some of them have understood, but some of them have not understood.

Like, the U.S. government and the way that it's financed and structured cannot exist if Bitcoin becomes the global dominant form of money. And the fact that you have the U.S. administration supporting Bitcoin is, it's almost like, shh, don't, don't. I know, don't talk too loudly. Like, should we tell them that we're fucking killing, like, we're destroying them? Like, and then that if they leave us alone, we're going to, or should we pretend that we're on the same team? Like, what should we do? Like, this is fucking crazy. I never thought that they would support their own doom.

But I think that they, they're dramatically underestimating Bitcoin. I think they think Bitcoin is a toy. You know, like Trump at the Bitcoin conference and when he announced, I don't know, he did this speech. Yeah, play with your Bitcoin. Have fun with your crypto, you know. Yeah, have fun with your Bitcoin. He clearly did not understand what we're doing, which is great. And like other companies like BlackRock, you cannot separate BlackRock from government.

They are the financial establishment. However, contrary to politicians, they are intelligent. And they also are like, they hedge their bets, right? That's what they do. They hedge, you know, they're a fucking hedge fund. you know so they hedge and um i think that they have a selfish reason to get into bitcoin but very so the sailor and all these institutional guys which some of them are worse than others some of them are great some of them are you know um you have all sorts of characters but like

people are used to the idea that who he who controls the money controls the governance in bitcoin it doesn't work like that right bitcoin is not proof of stake it's not ethereum like you can have a million bitcoins and still not have the power and how can i back up this claim because it happened in 2017 because you had roger the guy who had the most bitcoin in the world and brian armstrong and coinbase and all these guys that combined had way more bitcoins than sailor like they had way more bitcoins than sailor and blackrock like all of these uh early crypto OVCs like just, you know, Barry Silbert and all these guys like they were sitting on stashes of million plus plus bitcoins. They tried to take it over.

I'm not afraid of BlackRock. I'm not afraid of Trump taking over Bitcoin. It's just not something that we have. We always have to be vigilant because Bitcoin is an organism and it's like an organism being attacked by a virus. Like we need antibodies to fight that. Right. And the antibodies are the cypherpunks. Right.

Within the ecosystem. So we have to be vigilant and develop a healthy culture of resistance to co-option. If all Bitcoin users are apathetic, Bitcoin can be co-opted. Absolutely. But we're not, right? And why are we not? It's because we have like a flame inside of us. And like, how are you sure that this flame is going to remain alive forever?

I mean, come to a fucking Bitcoin conference. Exactly. meet us and you'll understand that like some of us would would die for Bitcoin

yeah and like you know I don't want to die because I have I have a little daughter now and I like my life but you know

like I'm I'm willing to go all the way you know and like who will die for the fiat system no one no one wants to die for the banks

yeah unfortunately people do because they're they're being manipulated into thinking they're fighting an enemy in war where actually they're dying for you know

the petrodollar system But if they were told, like, you will die for the fiat banking system, like, no, nobody wants to do that. They will always fold. So two things I'm going to say for this beautiful, epic, amazing riff that you gave here, which I love, and it's going to go so viral. One is, we are the immune system of this organism. And we replicate. And we replicate. And speaking of replicating, I always say we cannot print more Bitcoin,

but especially us women Bitcoiners, we can print Bitcoiners. So that's one superpower we have. And two is on a personal note, I have decided not to participate in the matrix anymore as much as I can because it's very hard to do that 100% obviously and so one of the first steps I have taken is to pull my son out of that reality of fiat wars that serve someone else's interests and petrodollar and my son now doesn't live in Israel anymore and he's not going to go to the army and he's not going to die in a war for someone and I think that is one of the most

difficult things for people that they fear change so much that they do not want to understand things deeply because deep down inside they know that once they go deep on something and they realize something just as they did during covid they would actually have to take change in their life make change yeah exactly you have to take action you have to change things in your life and they're kind of tired and they don't want to do it again and i have bad news for you you may have to do it again if you want to keep your sovereignty and you want to keep your freedom and that is more important for you than being comfortable in life yeah and i get it like people should not have to always be fighting for their rights we should be producing and enjoying our lives exactly but

but that's why we do the hard work for you you just come in and huddle or whatever and you said something that i uh that i want to mention which is that um there is a moment in my bitcoin journey where i realized that when i hold fiat money i am allowing the government to debase me to finance itself and i am complicit in everything the government does even though like no matter what i do just by holding fiat i am complicit and i and i am i am and i am an enabler of war and enslavement by the virtue of holding fiat and my mindset became i am boycotting fiat i am not i'm not like i'm not like fucking all in on bitcoin bro you know like let's go dgen And like, I'm going to buy fucking big.

I'm like, my mindset was like, I will boycott fiat, right? I will boycott the system. And, you know, there's movements in Bitcoin, which we call the NGU movement. NGU means number go up. It means like the price of Bitcoin is going to go up. That is an important part of Bitcoin too. It's not, I like to make fun of the people who are in it for the money. But it is an important part of Bitcoin because that's how Bitcoin security works and that's how the Bitcoin revolution is financed.

So by boycotting fiat, you are emotionally and spiritually rewarded. And it also turns out that because we are in a period of transfer of wealth from the fiat system to the Bitcoin system and because we are earlier than others, you also benefit economically over time. So it's like boycotting fiat is an economically and spiritually rewarding move. And, you know, you can be the person that tells their grandkids like, well, you know, I thought Bitcoin was a CBDC, so I decided to hold fiat. You know, like, grandpa, but that doesn't make sense. If you thought Bitcoin was bad because it was a CBDC, like, why were you holding your money at Chase Manhattan? And it's like, well, son, I was fucking retarded. So you can be that grandfather that tells their grandchildren that, you know, he listened to a fucking guy called Roger Veronline.

And then he decided to leave his money in the bank instead of buying Bitcoin. Or you can be the person that was like, hey. Let me make an effort and try and learn. Yeah. I actually took my life in my own hands. And I took a principled stand. That was also – so like the whole Saylor thing about like understanding the scarcity of Bitcoin, it's a little cringe. But also like it is an economically sound argument to believe that because of the scarcity of Bitcoin and because it has properties that are valuable, more people in the future will want Bitcoin than they do today.

mm-hmm sailor believes that the properties that make bitcoin valuable or i don't want to put words in his mouth but the general theory is that it's it's a great asset for collateral i believe that it's the payment layer of bitcoin the censorship resistant free payments use case of bitcoin which creates demand for the bitcoin asset over time right so do do people favor freedom of ownership and property rights. And do people like to be able to transact with whoever they want without permission? Yes, a lot of us do. Will more people in the future want that than today? I think so. Because I think the world is going in a bad direction. And I think the worse the world gets, the most people value the core proposition of Bitcoin. And there's a limited

amount of it so just it's i think it's an economically sound decision to to to to hold bitcoin but once you combine the economically sound decision and the philosophical spiritual emotional like i'm going to take a stand and i'm going to fucking opt out of this and i'm going to hold bitcoin as a matter of principle then it's it's just like it's just like it's the perfect the perfect thing to do just do the right thing and get fucking rewarded financially for doing it why aren't you doing it exactly yesterday yeah and speaking of payments one of the things that that group of people always says is but i can't go to the grocery store today and buy something with bitcoin well actually you can you can depending where you live and what you build

yes right so you can but yes if you're in a western country then you may not meet that use case, in a day-to-day basis, because where you live and the fiat situation in your country is probably not bad enough for it to emerge yet as a payment mechanism. But that exists, like layer two payments, that works. When I actually sit down with some of my good friends from the freedom movement that are no-coiners, that don't have any Bitcoin, and they ask me questions because Roger Ver is kind of eating their head in and they believe him. So they ask me questions and I answer them in the end of this annoying discussion which I don't even want to have

but now I don't need to have it anymore because you've done the work for me and I'm going to clip that what you've just done and just send it to everyone but when I sit with them I just go after a few minutes just leave me alone I don't give a fuck

don't buy Bitcoin for all I care I mean whatever live your life I don't want to sit here and have this argument with you but let's just do just one thing can you please download a wallet and then they do And then I send them sats and then they go, so you can use Bitcoin as money?

Yes, you can. We've just done that. All right. It works. So shut the fuck up. That's why I said like when I orange pill someone, I just download the app and I just do, I just send them a little bit of money. And it's like the proof is in the pudding. Exactly.

So and, you know, there's a really good documentary that's going to come out about Bitcoin jungle. It's called The Hummingbird Tribe. It's wonderfully done. When is it coming out? It's been in the works for a while. Okay. Who's done it? It's called Director Hoddle.

He's called Matt and Paul Keating, which is the surfer from Bitcoin Jungle. Yeah, of course. And there is an interview with a character there, which is a woman living in the jungle. And, you know, the interviewer asks her, like, what is it about Bitcoin, you know, that you like? And then she just says, like, well, the first time I tried to receive a Bitcoin payment, I felt emotionally and spiritually I can't explain it I can't

like she's like I can't explain that when I receive Bitcoin payments I just feel great and it's like there is a cerebral argument to Bitcoin but there is also a kind of emotional and spiritual

hard to explain argument like when you're getting paid with Bitcoin like you're there's all sorts of elements to it which is like the person who is paying you by the way is valuing your service oh yeah

very well Oh, yeah. Because they're using the good money to pay you, not the shitty money to pay you. Right. And you are having a direct transfer. And like some people feel that like in their soul, like something special just happened here. Right. um so just download the wallet and like send the payment and like get paid and like try try to sell something for bitcoin to someone in your life just as a you know just as a thing like like make something like i don't know bake an apple pie and sell it for bitcoin to someone and and see and and see a lemonade stand yes something yes and see just as an experiment if you're curious like see how you feel like no no right like write down how you feel after that Beautiful.

I'm sure you're going to feel great. Well, that is a beautiful way to end our beautiful discussion. I knew that I'm going to have fun with you, but I had a lot more fun than what I had anticipated. You are so awesome. I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. But I think you're going to have me as a guest in Costa Rica very soon. Yes. Because I am so curious to be there, hang out with you guys, and just see everything you've built.

We'll go around the farmer's market. We'll buy tons of food, and we'll cook a great dinner. I am so coming. Every ingredient of your dinner, pay for it with Bitcoin. Oh, that is going to be so awesome. That feels good, too. I can't wait for the spiritual experience to be had when we do that. It would be so amazing.

Well, Francis, thank you so much for everything you do. Thanks. I had a blast. It was awesome. I really enjoyed this podcast. But not just for this podcast. Thank you for who you are, what you stand for, the fact you are not fearful. You are so inspirational.

You keep speaking out despite, first of all, being in this space forever and ever. And also, you know, the powers that be that try to silence us. And you are a force to be reckoned with. And I really appreciate you. So thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks so much. Thanks for being with us.

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