You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - This Swiss MP Says Bitcoin Is the Only Honest Money - Samuel Kullmann | Ep. 105

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

My guest today is Samuel Kullmann, a Member of Parliament from Switzerland’s Canton Bern, entrepreneur, and one of Europe’s first openly pro-Bitcoin politicians. His journey began in 2015 when the Swiss National Bank dropped its euro peg, pushing him to study money, move from gold to Bitcoin, and embrace hard-money principles. We discuss how Switzerland’s decentralized system — shared executive power, binding referendums, and a constitutional “debt brake” — aligns with Bitcoin’s ethos. Samuel details his opposition to Switzerland’s new digital ID law, warning of normalization and future linkage with CBDCs. ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS --→ Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn→ Shield your bitcoin with time-delayed transactions over multisig with BitVault: https://bit.ly/bitvault_efrat → Have you tried mining bitcoin? Stack sats directly to your wallet while saving on taxes with Abundant Mines: https://AbundantMines.com/Efrat – AFFILIATES –→ 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 –Samuel’s Twitter: https://x.com/samuelkullmann Samuel’s Nostr: [e-mail] Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Channels: https://linktr.ee/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://bit.ly/zap_efrat -- CHAPTERS –00:00 - Coming Up…01:30 - Introduction to Samuel: Swiss Politician & Bitcoin Advocate03:50 - Bitcoin Advocacy 06:40 - Politicians in Bitcoin Generally, and Specifically in Switzerland08:55 - Separating Money & State in Switzerland10:31 - Swiss Referendum System & Direct Democracy16:44 - Digital ID in Switzerland22:58 - Concerns About Digital ID Linked to CBDCs28:11 - Short Questions & Closing Remarks

When people first learn about the financial system, they feel like it will crash, everything will crash in the next 14 days. If you think politicians are not doing something you think should be done, then you can collect signatures for popular initiative and then you can propose an amendment to the constitution of Switzerland and everyone has to vote on it. Four years ago, parliament already passed a law for electronic ID, but it was designed very, very poorly. So There was some resistance in the population and they did referendums. And so quite a few made this referendum and the people rejected it with 64.4%. Having a digital ID and a retail CBDC and combining that and making it more and more programmable to have more and more control and surveillance is, of course, the worst case scenario.

In Switzerland, the politicians are being reminded again and again by direct democracy that, well, at the end, you cannot go too much against the citizens because they do have the power in the end to bring your projects down in a referendum vote. I believe that the system is robust against manipulation, not against the media manipulation, but let's say on the base layer, it's still a bit like Bitcoin. It's quite safe, I would say. Okay, good afternoon everyone, thanks for staying with us here in Lugano, Plan B, thanks for hosting us, Rumble for streaming this, thank you for our live audience here, and thank you for the live audience on Rumble that is watching us live, and I have the honor of sitting here with Samuel Kuhlman. Hey, Samuel. How are you? Shalom, Efrat. Shalom. I'm doing fine. It's good to see you here. We met a few times, but one of those times was also in Israel when you visited. That was super fun. So Samuel is a parliament member in Switzerland's

Bern Canton. Bern, I should say, right? Bern, that's how you call it. An entrepreneur and Bitcoin educator, engaged in the intersection of tech, regulation, and individual rights. He brings an inside view on how Swiss neutrality and decentralization meets digital transformation. So Samuel, what got you into Bitcoin in the first place? So there was this interesting episode when the Swiss central bank for about three years, they pegged the swiss franc to the euro at 120 and from one hour to the next they let the peg go and then one swiss franc or one euro used to be 120 and then it crashed down to 80 0.8 so there was like this 50 job in the value of the euro compared to the swiss franc

yeah and no one expected it so it like just happened suddenly the swiss central bank said we're letting the the swiss franc float free because i later learned that the european central bank started to buy government debt from greece etc for 60 billion euros a month and so i i read that and i was like what's happening here um and i remember in the great financial crisis 2008 I tried to understand what was going on but it was too complicated for me but then in 2015 I said okay I need to get to the bottom of this because things are not going well and Saifuddin Ammous describes it well when he says well when people first learn about the financial system they feel like it will crash everything will crash in the next 14 days

and they're like very super super alarmist and they think oh the end of the world has come and everything is about the great reset the shit is about to hit the fan and so on uh but then after a while you realize uh that the central bankers they can get very creative and they can kick the can down the road and somehow the system manages to go on but anyway it was the like the starting shot for me to learn about the financial system and i very quickly got into uh gold and silver and I told people around me, hey, we need to buy gold and silver and the whole financial system will crash soon. And so people started listening to me.

But I felt like for a few months, I felt I'm like the crazy guy because I knew no one else who was talking about this at this time in 2015. And then 2016, I slowly, slowly got Bitcoin on my radar. but then it was again it was too complicated and the block size war was going on and segwit and I was like what what is this it's too complicated but then it kept on coming up and in 2020 I read the bitcoin standard and that was my first gradually then suddenly moment and so I was already in the parliament then and since 2020 I was like very vocal pro bitcoin so probably the first pro-bitcoin politician in europe you think so you think you're the first one to adopt it like

at least with that public yeah like being pro-bitcoin in 2020 as a politician was a risk yeah i mean uh and then of course doing the bear market uh but i kept doing my free online webinars just to educate people i did it on the heights in 2021 i just kept doing it through the whole bear market. I had my monthly webinars just trying to orange people, people informing them what Bitcoin is. And I didn't care what the price did. And then now, more recently, of course, the interest has grown back again. But yeah, so I would say I'm the politician in Europe who's the most like in the Bitcoin community. So I run a lightning node. I have lightning channels i'm a monster uh so yeah i try to be like meetups you go to conferences yes yes

it's my fourth time here at plan b lugano so i try to really be uh in the community not just i'm not just like the politician hey uh i'm here and yeah bitcoin blockchain crypto cool and buzzwords and please vote for me no i'm i'm committed to bitcoin yes yeah and that's very unique and I've interviewed a few politicians for my podcast in the past and I think you're part of a handful of like a small group of special politicians around the world that are Bitcoiners and that get Bitcoin and some of them by the way are gold bugs like you were before and they still didn't catch up with Bitcoin but they're in the right direction and they definitely understand the importance of separating money and state and isn't that quite like a weird or interesting

position to be at where you're a politician and you represent the state in a way but you also understand the importance of separating money and state let's say let's say it like this it switzerland is a good place to be a politician so i'm in contact with many african politicians also from other places in the world and it's really tough there sometimes but in switzerland I feel of course being a politician has its challenges but I think it's one of the easiest places to be a politician. Why?

I think the different reasons so in Switzerland due to our political system but also due to the culture Swiss people like hate it when someone has too much power so the whole political system is designed in a way that

power is very much distributed on many different people so you don't have such powerful political positions in switzerland and even if you have like the most influential political position you're one of seven it's like not your it's not you're the prime minister and you like have most of the power even the highest political office you share the power with with six others and then if that is not enough the people can come and say hey we don't like that law parliament made and the government made let's have a referendum which is legally binding and where you can just bring bring any law you can you can challenge any law

and if it doesn't hold up before majority of the population it will it will just get crushed so so politicians power is very limited in switzerland um and so going back to your original question about sorry just separating money yes yes and being a politician so in switzerland we also have the debt break for debt break like that we like as politicians we limit ourselves by law that we cannot go into debt too much so for the past 30 years actually switzerland has reduced the debt um until covet unfortunately then things went a bit crazy uh but in switzerland we don't really need the money printer for state financing

so it's like having a money that the state cannot print or the central bank cannot print it's like not too outlandish in Switzerland so the political system of Switzerland but also the culture and the fact that

the Swiss franc was backed the longest by gold is a really important aspect like we have a much better understanding of hard money and so hard money is much more compatible with swissdom with our with our political institutions so bitcoin is not that that crazy and even as a politician it's not like uh oh we need the fiat money to do all the all the spending so we're quite i would say we're quite disciplined in general so how many signatures do you need for a referendum in switzerland

50,000 ballot signatures. That's not a lot. It's not too much. So it's about 1% of the electorate. Okay. And you can challenge any law? Yes. That doesn't exist in many other places around the world, right?

No. Okay. Well, it mostly never existed. And then you have to do a lot of education to educate people in order to get a referendum signed. Yes. I mean, if you go to people on the street, which many people do when they collect signatures for a referendum, you need to be able to explain why you're against it.

And some laws are a bit easier, some are more complex, so you need to be ready. So that's like taking us closer to a normal world. Second? That's taking us closer to a normal world, to a normal way in which things should operate in the world, right? you have an idea you want to get it done you have to learn how to communicate it you have to know how to explain it you shouldn't scam people because then they will find out if they go and and vet you or research what you're doing and if you have enough buy-in then you can get it done just anyone can do that grassroots yes so even myself when i was 17 years old i was not eligible

to vote yet yeah but i was able to collect signatures and we have a different form of political instrument in within our direct democracy called the popular initiative so the referendum is your um defensive tool against politicians doing something you don't like but if you think politicians are are not doing something you think should be done for example getting bitcoin into the constitution of switzerland and making the central bank hold it so that's one thing that we are working on right now then you can collect signatures for popular initiative and you need a hundred thousand signatures and then you can propose an amendment to the constitution of switzerland and everyone has to vote on it so i did this when i was 17 years old for a proposed

amendment that abolished that wanted to abolish the statute of limitations on pedophile crimes which was 15 years before so after 15 years of the pedophile crime um like it was there was a statute of limitations and the courts wouldn't hear the case anymore and there was a group of women of of mothers march blanche they called themselves after the dutroux case in belgium and they said we need to remove this and i felt as a young person uh i gathered a group of friends and we collected about 5,000 signatures for this popular initiative and really helped to bring it forward. And then the government didn't want it, the parliament didn't want it,

but the people said yes. So we got the Swiss constitution changed and then they had to amend the law because the constitution was changed. So this is the power of direct democracy in Switzerland. Was that one of your inspirations to become a politician? I was already politically interested before, like when I was 14, 15 years old. And when I was 16 years old, my family actually moved back to Switzerland.

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slash effort okay so let's go back to the digital id i i heard that recently uh it passed here in switzerland that that initiative is going to start happening um can you tell us a bit about that what's your take on it um so actually four years ago parliament already passed the law for electronic ID, but it was designed very, very poorly. So a private company would have issued it, and then there was some resistance in the population, and they did a referendum.

So it was basically Parliament. They didn't know much about IT stuff, so they just passed this thing, didn't really know what they were voting about. But then there were some IT guys who said, hey, look, this is not a good way. There are way too many dangers with this law. And so quite a few rather unknown civil society actors made this referendum and the people rejected it with 64.4%, although the government and like most major parties were for it.

And so they said, okay, then most politicians said, okay, we realized this was a bad idea with letting a private company do it. Let's have the state do it. Let's bring this forward again. So all of the major parties, immediately after the vote, they said, let's make a better version of the law. Let's make a better form of digital ID. And so the parliament and the bureaucracy, they elaborated on a new law, which in fact is better. There's no denying that. And also the technical solution is not that bad, I have to admit.

So when I read about some of the technical stuff, it felt like there was some quite good influence that felt like a bit cypherpunk way, like that with minimal data, that you'd only give like one part of the data to wherever you would show your digital ID. so they did try to um improve on it um but nevertheless the the pirate party my political party and the young uh the youth wing of the largest political party in switzerland the national conservative party uh we nevertheless said it's not good enough because uh especially also from the experiences of covid so i was unvaccinated i was in the covid resistance and if you experience this then you know what the state can do and you're suddenly an outcast of society and then you're much more aware of the dangers of digital id so we said um it still needs more improvement on the technical level we wanted unlinkability the principle of unlinkability in

the law and we want to what is that principle um that were whatever data you give here and there and there that big tech are not able to like put together a profile of you so this is we call this unlinkability and also we said if there is a law at all if there's a digital idea at all it needs to be in the law or even better in the constitution that it is that it is voluntarily without discrimination like not oh the covid vaccine is voluntary but you lose your job but it's voluntary right um real real voluntary and uh we also said uh we already need to prohibit the establishment of a social credit system in the constitution as a safeguard and then Then we can start talking about it.

But without these safeguard rails, we said this law, we need to fight against it. So we made another referendum. And you did that this past, what you're saying, those safeguards? Well, we advocated for it, but it was not in the law. So the law had some improvements, but not enough. And so we made a referendum. We got 65,000 signatures, and the vote was on the 29th of September, I think, and 50.39% of the population said yes, or of the voters.

So, I mean, it was a fight, David, against Goliath, because the parliament voted like 170 to 25 in favor of the new law, So that we got like to a 50-50 was already a major, major win. And the polls were having us at like 38% no. So that it got that close was really extraordinary. I mean, sure, amazing in terms of the numbers, but in reality, it still passed. That's the unfortunate part. If you lose by this margin, you still lose.

that's why I always say that I think democracy is just an illusion because the system is weird like it's still being enforced you're still being enforced with something that you don't want you don't choose and it's not voluntary and so hard for me to accept

I know where you're coming from I would argue as a good Swiss citizen who does think we do have one of the best political systems in the world which cannot safeguard against certain extreme things like the whole covid measures so our system partially helped partially because in all surrounding countries it was much worse yeah uh so having

direct democracy having the citizens vote three times on the covid 19 law we it forced the government to make some concessions yeah i agree so it's like i agree it's like it's not ideal it's not ideal but uh it's but it's still a bit better yeah yeah i get that um how does this tie in with future cbdc's central bank digital currencies so um some people argued against the digital id because they said it could be hacked which i as it can. But this was not my primary concern. My primary concern was that it would be totally normalized that you have to show your digital ID everywhere. Like today, maybe you show your physical ID when you want to open a bank account, when you want to travel abroad. So there are maybe

a handful of use cases a year where you have to show your physical ID. And I see the danger that with the digital id like all different kinds of services they start to demand it regularly so i think this is the greatest danger and that worst case scenario you lose access to certain things if you don't have the digital id and then central bank digital currency would be another worst case especially if it's programmed in a way to exert control and surveillance in switzerland there is a pilot project on CBDC with wholesale CBDC which I'm sure you're aware of so wholesale is not that bad because it's like the central banks with the banks and it's not for the common public yet yet so also here probably due to our system probably due to our culture the central bank

is and politics are much much slower in bringing forward cbdc because um i don't think the the people are ready yet to accept it in switzerland um so they have to move slower um but of course there there are always efforts to push it forward and having a digital id and a cbdc a retail cbdc and combining that and making it more and more programmable to have more and more control and surveillance is, of course, the worst case scenario. Absolutely. Do you think Switzerland will catch up with the EU

when it comes to the digital regulation and CBDCs? Do you think it will just be slower, but it will happen? Or what's your prediction? In many areas, in many economic areas, switzerland adopts a lot of the regulation from the european union in things that more directly affect our sovereignty like currency um there's still quite some patriotism in switzerland and like the maybe 10 of swiss citizens would want to join the european union so this is like a very very low level so for most politicians it's a non-starter to be to be too eu friendly

which is a good thing which is protecting us giving us some time some time we need to to build build solutions like like or uh or educate people so i i say if we have 50 percent of swiss citizens that are bitcoiners this will also be a political force and it will be and educating people on bitcoin will help them to think more independently to give them more responsibility teach them more responsibility help them to value freedom more so i think in switzerland we have a bit more time than in other countries what the government says we'll just do it and the government views the citizens as like the subjects like

but in Switzerland the politicians are being reminded again and again by direct democracy that well at the end you cannot go too much against the citizens because they do have the power in the end to bring your projects down in a referendum

vote if you cannot control them enough with the propaganda and so I mean there were people who said well this vote was was manipulated which i don't believe because we have a very decentralized system so uh 2 121 very interesting 21 21 municipalities count the votes and in a multi-partisan committee so shifting the vote share on a poll like on a referendum vote by two three percent you would need to collude with hundreds of people and uh like make illegal

activities uh which i don't see happening in switzerland so i believe that the system is robust against manipulation not against uh propaganda not against the media manipulation but on let's say on the base layer it's still a bit like bitcoin it's quite quite safe i would say yep all right as we're coming to the end of our time i want to take you to a series of short questions just to end up one book that you would recommend for people to take a look at um so i recently trans it's actually the latest book i translated myself it's uh called the gospel according to bitcoin what is the gospel according to bitcoin okay and it explores the parallels between bitcoin and faith nice okay where can people find it amazon definitely and

the german translation you can contact me super cool a daily habit you have which you recommend others to take or look into um i pray daily okay and you like that that for me it's very important it's been important my whole life yeah amazing what's one thing you believed five years ago that you don't no longer believe today um i got more libertarian in my political ideology so i was more more open for some leftist ideas five years ago because i saw certain injustices but did not understand the root causes enough yet now that i understand the root causes better i became more libertarian perfect a piece of advice you'd give your younger self well except of the 17 year old collecting 5 000 signatures huh well research bitcoin beautiful true sovereignty is

um not being influenced by uh by just wrong or bad things around you like if you if you have uh choosing the good amazing where should people find you and any last words as we wrap up um i'm mostly on X and of course Noster so you find me under Noster politician on Noster and yeah keep up the good work here and

looking forward to connecting and networking Samuel thank you so much thank you for sharing yourself so generously thank you for it was a pleasure thank you very much for joining us 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!