You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - What’s the Problem? The Story Behind Bitcoin’s Most Viral Film - Joe Bryan | Ep. 106

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

My guest today is Joe Bryan, tech entrepreneur & former Goldman Sachs derivatives trader turned Bitcoin educator and creator of the viral film What’s the Problem. After a decade building tech businesses, Joe set out to craft a story that explains why the world needs Bitcoin. His film, now translated into more than 40 languages, uses Pixar-style storytelling to reveal how the fiat system quietly steals from everyone and why separating money from the state is essential. We discuss the compounding creep of digital control, the rise of digital IDs and CBDCs, Bitcoin’s evolution into “perfect money,” and Joe’s mission to help the world see and resist the problem before it’s too late.► 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 –Joe’s Twitter: https://x.com/satmojoe Joe’s Film “What's The Problem?” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtFOxNbmD38 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 Up01:30 - Intro to Joe & The Viral Video “What’s The Problem”07:35 - The Problem With The Fiat System 10:45 - UK’s Digital IDs & State of Control14:30 - Ad Break: Trezor, BitVault & Abundant Mines17:10 - Tradeoffs Between Security & Sovereignty in The Digital Identity Era20:40 - Can Bitcoin Be Scaled & Mass Adopted?22:30 - Joe’s Visit At The Swedish Parliament25:50 - Rapid Fireside Questions & Closing Thoughts

Digital IDs are the final step in weaponizing the money against us. We already live in a fiat system where we are structurally being stolen from and we have zero sovereignty over our money other than in cash form and even that's weak. CBDCs are tyranny in a box and they can only be delivered after a digital ID. And so digital ID, the only reason is control and further empowerment of the state to eventually steal everything from everybody. The reason we even have a fiat layer to our money is because gold didn't work. Gold fell short of being perfect money.

That's why we had the paper layer. There is no compromise needed with Bitcoin. It is perfect money. We live in a fiat system where the greatest trick of the fiat system is to convince people they're getting wealthier as they're getting stolen from. It's very hard to reverse engineer the set of issues that we experience in our lives that are continually growing in size but deteriorating our existence. People are trapped within the fiat system and they have not had the mental framework in their mind in which to slot Bitcoin.

They never question the small changes and it's the accumulation of those which is the biggest danger. If everyone in the world could just watch what's the problem, we'd be able to accelerate things massively because you cannot unsee it once you've seen it and you just see the world differently. Good morning. We're live streamed on my Rumble channel, so hi to everyone that's watching from all over the world. I'm Aflat Fenikzen. I have a podcast called You're the Voice,

and I am super happy to be here in Lugano. Plan B, thanks for hosting me. Thanks for hosting us for this beautiful conference, and thank you so much, Joe, for joining me this morning. Delighted to be here. So thank you. Thank you, Efrat. Thank you. Okay, we're going to start with Joe Bryan. If you guys don't know Joe, listen up. Joe Bryan is the creator of What's the Problem? How many of you have watched the movie What's the Problem? All right, about 30% of you. Cool. You guys have homework to do. Joe has spent the past 10 years building tech businesses. He's a former Goldman Sachs derivative trader turned Bitcoin educator who uses storytelling and sharp economic insights to expose the flaws of the fiat system and frame Bitcoin as the solution.

Let's start with the first question. How many views did the film get to today and how many translated languages? And if you can give us, like, a short description of what the film's about. Sure. Um... Well, it's in the millions now, but I don't know precise numbers, because it's primarily on X.

I posted it on X as a 39-minute video, embedded, and I just put the YouTube link below it. Originally to probably about 200 bots. And within a week, it had been shared and re-shared, and then Michael Saylor shared it with the world, world and now it's out the box and i can't no longer track who then the number of views but i know that the youtube link below which is not the primary is 350 000 now on a brand new youtube account with a single video so it's it's clearly spreading around the world and when i

launched it i just i just hoped enough people would watch it i wouldn't be embarrassed by the view account and so reaching this stage is just wonderful and i was inundated and continued to be inundated by bitcoiners from around the world who get in touch and say can i translate this into my language and so we've gone from a single video in english to having more than 40 full translations by bitcoiners around the world of the video in the subtitles we've got 30 full languages of the deck the slide deck in the video in the native language with the speaker notes with the transcript open to everybody on the website you can go and download it you can present it we've covered a large percentage of the world's population that and that can now access this

locally in person from bitcoiners and we've even got 10 brand new videos where it's somebody speaking their native language and the video has been sliced spliced to have the native language slides in the video right they're all now on youtube and we've even had people go and remake the video completely we had one in icelandic class week somebody else talking another bitcoin are talking recreating the entire video localized for iceland and so this is just something that now is viral and it's open for everybody i'm sure everyone that hasn't watched it is now curious what the movie is about and why is it so successful well it's a it's a bitcoin i say movie's probably a bit grand a bitcoin video that doesn't talk about that doesn't

mention Bitcoin for 30 minutes, but it means, well, the reason I created it was I was invited by a friend to go and visit him for a weekend with 15 of his friends from his life. And I didn't know them. And he said, can you all bring something to talk about? Everyone brings something to talk about for half an hour. We'll create a nice weekend of content and we'll have a great time. And I'd never had to take what was in my head, what we all carry in our heads, and actually put it down in a way that I can structurally communicate it to someone. And I thought in 30 minutes, I'm not going to be able to explain Bitcoin to someone. But if I change my target to be after 30 minutes, I want them to learn about Bitcoin. That's much more achievable.

And so I just made a story, a story which explains why the world is the way it is today from first principles with Pixar characters. And it can be watched by anyone of any age, any background, sex, religion, political leaning. It's no sharp edges and you cannot watch it and not come away with understanding why we need Bitcoin and Bitcoin being the way we separate money and state. and that if you can take the world and within half an hour when they get asked the question why do we need bitcoin it's to separate money and state yeah then they're at the starting line and then it's on them to take that forward if they are so motivated but at least they have a

mental view of the world a mental framework in which to slot bitcoin because i think what we sorry this is a long answer but i think what we perhaps struggle with as a community is that we talk about the solution and it's like anything no one can really appreciate or value a solution unless you really understand the problem but no one most people don't have a view of the world in which to neatly slot bitcoin and so you give them that skeletal mental framework and they just slot bitcoin in it's like okay i get it now you can't force them to then learn about it but most most do most do and i would assert that mostly in the west people don't see the problem because it's so hidden from sight it it is so it is so sophisticated and genius the way the fiat

system is implemented and you are not understanding that you are being stolen from until you reach a really bad situation and that's that's what it explains right well absolutely i mean we live in a fiat system where the greatest trick of the fiat system is to convince people they're getting wealthier as they're getting stolen from and it's very hard to reverse engineer the set of issues that we experienced in our lives that are continually growing and growing in size but deteriorating our existence and tie them back to a root cause but if you turn it around and you run it the other way it becomes super easy it's like imagine we started here and then we made some very small decisions what naturally happens and we end up with today and they're very you know

everyone then has a map in their mind and humans remember stories they tend not to remember lectures yeah if you want to be a good communicator you want to learn how to communicate effectively storytelling is one of the best ways of doing that so in today's reality where we just mentioned the the fiat system where the government can press that big red button that we have in the movie and just print more money and make us poorer whenever they want and in the age of digital control what do most people miss and don't pay attention to um well i mean the context there is in the video i've abstracted the entire financial system just to a single big red button that can be pressed at any time which which undermines both the quantity of money and the censorship

resistant nature of money and this is where we lead to today but i think most people are humans generally are not very good at compounding and you know we we think about compounding in in sort of compounding of interest and things scaling over time and becoming exponential but we experience this every day for the small changes that get forced upon us it's a small change here it's a small change here it's a small change here but those small changes add up to tyranny tyranny and it's like the boiling frog and while people are trapped within the fiat system and they have not had the mental framework in their mind in which to slot bitcoin they never question the small changes and it's the cult the accumulation of

those which is the biggest danger and everyone feels it everybody everybody knows there is something wrong they just haven't been shown the map and so if everyone in the world could just watch what's the problem we'd be able to accelerate things massively because you cannot unsee it once you've seen it and you just see the world differently yeah it suddenly it suddenly makes sense and you can see through the nonsense yeah it it it gives you the it gives you a radar that you did not have before. A mental framework. And speaking of tyranny, the UK is rapidly advancing digital IDs. What are the risks involved in that? Can you tell us a bit about the state of things in the UK these days? Well, I mean, the UK is in a terrible place

and rapidly going off a cliff. And how does it tie into? Well, I mean, in much like the rest of the world all of a sudden um digital ids are the are the hot topic and it's no coincidence that this is happening everywhere at the same time all with different excuses as to why and the excuses are tailored to whatever the political agenda is in the country for us it's stopping illegal immigration which is just totally nonsense um and it's it's such a flimsy article that they argument that they really struggle to keep a straight face when they deliver it but digital ids are the are the final step in weaponizing the money against us so we already live in a fiat system where we are structurally being stolen from and we have a limited with zero sovereignty

over our money other than in cash form and even that's weak it is not actively being weaponized against us the money is the money it still retains fungibility so every dollar is the same as every other dollar you still require permission you can't hold it yourself etc etc so it's still terrible but digital ids allow the weaponization of it to such an extent that it will imprison us forever It is, CBDCs are tyranny in a box, and they can only be delivered after a digital ID. And so digital ID, the only reason is control and further empowerment of the state to eventually steal everything from everybody. And so make no mistake about this, digital IDs is the line. It's here and no further.

And this goes to every country around the world. And I would go further as to say, most places right now, we still live in a society where you can buy Bitcoin. There are hurdles, there are challenges, there's more and more regulatory friction that gets put up, some places more than others. But you can still exchange fiat for Bitcoin. In a CBDC world, that becomes potentially near impossible. And so they're trying to close the gates. Like, go watch the video. The second thing Fiatello does in the video is that once the wall cracks

and the value and the people start leaving, he tries to block it. It's just CBDCs. Once you make the money programmable, you can stop it being exchanged for Bitcoin. And then you're trapped in the system. so when cbdc's come it is the wall getting put up permanently and then acquiring bitcoin for people who do not own it means not being able to do it through fiat and having to do it through other ways so if we're serious about making bitcoin the money of the world we absolutely cannot compromise on digital id we cannot compromise on cbdc's and it's on each of us to

try and hold the line wherever we are in the world and we do that best by educating other people help them realize what is happening to them before it is too late you're the voice is brought to you by trezor the original bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013 empowering individuals with an open source device enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins. I find my Trezor super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family. Enjoy my 5% discount on Trezor product by clicking the link in the show notes and using the code AFLAT. Self-custody is powerful, but what if someone forces you to unlock your wallet? Bitcoin settles instantly and that freedom can also be a risk.

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Their customer care is unusual. clients speak to a real person for self-custody education, privacy consulting, and even visiting their site. They serve clients from around the world, but U.S. investors specifically enjoy a big tax benefit and 100% bonus depreciation. This is more than just mining Bitcoin. It's about freedom, privacy, and purpose. You can book a free strategy call, see how it works, and mine some of your first Bitcoin for free with a special offer for my audience. Learn more on AbundantMinds.com slash Efrat. So these are all preliminary steps and we have to be vigilant and aware enough to see them as what they are and not disregard them. Oh, digital ID, it has nothing to do with money.

You have to be smarter than that and see a few steps ahead. Totally agree with you. What are the social trade-offs between security and sovereignty in this emerging digital identity era? It's hard. It's hard, isn't it? I mean, we've all made that. I mean, I would imagine most people here have made that first on-chain transaction where, you know, there is no safety net and you feel for the first time that you actually control your money. That is a hard barrier to get people over but over time in much like the way that the internet has evolved from the early 90s bitcoin the ux and the products around bitcoin are constantly evolving to make the trade-offs between those two things as as limited as possible you know if you'd said to someone in the 90s

in 2025 everyone walk around with phones and ipads and children and all old people would be on the internet all the time you'd be like of course not right because you hadn't thought about the cumulative effect of technological and user experience iteration which happens gradually with leaps but gradually over time as people find best practices they replicate them they share them they iterate upon them and so bitcoin is just undergoing the same technical journey so you have the adoption cycle but you also have the same underlying technology and ux trend so in 20 years time, 10 years time, maybe even faster, you're not going to have the same level of trade-offs that you have today where somebody can lose their life savings to try and make an on-chain

transaction and they get spoofed or something like this. Those things will probably always have an edge case, but their surface area of risk will be massively reduced and it will become more more easy for everybody especially when when bitcoin becomes the active money on a day-to-day basis because bitcoin is money it's not an asset it's not an asset you lock away in a vault it's money it's money we don't the reason we have a fiat layer some bankers which is your uh past would disagree with you but i love hearing it from you oh well they would disagree because they don't understand that's the problem i mean it's on them um but this takes time the reason we even have a fiat layer to our money is because gold didn't work gold fell short of being perfect money

that's why we had the paper layer there is no there is no compromise needed with bitcoin it is perfect money it is the money for the world it's what we're all going to use spend save our economic energy in and but we need to normalize that it's on it's on us like we are the most motivated consumer segment on the planet we're like vegans on steroids right but in a really positive way because we care about this thing so much we will make irrational economic decisions to help other people understand to help this become the money of the world we're just not utilizing all our full power. So I want to tap into your experience as a digital tech entrepreneur for the past 10 years and take you into the future. Do you think Bitcoin has what it takes to scale securely and in an

efficient manner to cater for a widespread adoption of this technology? Absolutely. absolutely absolutely yeah the light the lightning network is amazing absolutely amazing and you see um more and more innovation around the sides using lightning as the the pipes of value lightning is going to replace the entire global financial payments infrastructure they just don't realize it yet right we're just early like if you've used a lightning wallet and you pay someone instantly and you're both self-sovereign it's like a perfect wow moment yes wow moment yeah and we just need more people to experience that wow moment and the fact that the merchant will receive the money instantly the bank's not going to reverse the transaction after three months

they're not going to get charged eight percent on a credit card that they have a direct relationship with you as the consumer and you prioritize spending money with them because they accept bitcoin it becomes a competitive advantage for them bitcoin is a competitive advantage for absolutely everybody that embraces it and the rationale the logical conclusion is you embrace bitcoin you do not fight it because if you fight it you lose and this is why bitcoin will inevitably sweep over the world right but it needs to be driven from our day-to-day actions and the biggest thing we can do right now is two things two things spend bitcoin normalize bitcoin as money and fight digital IDs those are the two things beautiful and I know yes please yes

fight digital IDs I know you recently visited Sweden can you tell us a bit about that visit that's interesting I mean if you told me at the start of the year in January when I released the video to nobody that I'll be invited to the Swedish parliament to talk to their MPs about bitcoin and i feel like that's never gonna happen um but yeah it happened i was there a few weeks ago it was great i delivered what's the problem in person to the swedish parliament to members of the swedish parliament we can't force everyone to sit down and watch a presentation about bitcoin unfortunately it was optional but we had around a dozen swedish mps in their contingent there And I had to tailor the message slightly, dampen down the it's all your fault rhetoric.

But they were very receptive. It was very fiat, very fiat mindset. But the ball is rolling. And the week later, they sent a bill to parliament to the establishment of a strategic Bitcoin reserve for discussion. Wow. And so. Looks like it's shaping up. It's early days and the ball has started rolling.

but i mean sweden specifically they have a gargantuan amount of free energy and they're worried about their geopolitical stability of the countries around them and they want independence they're not they're not subject to the eu they have their own they're not in the euro they have their own currency they have green they have green oil right they're just not monetizing it and they could to give you a sense of scale if they stopped selling their energy to norway for effectively zero and they mined bitcoin instead they could mine 70 000 bitcoin a year and that would put them in the top three holders of any nation state in one year they have the they have at their fingertips if they wish to grasp it the ability

to become a global superpower powered by Bitcoin. Wow. And you said those things to those people? Did they hear you say that? Exactly, exactly that, yeah. Were they blown away? Were they skeptical? I think it was a lot to take in.

But I hope on reflection, they will see that Bitcoin is like for everyone, a competitive advantage for them. You do not lose votes being pro-Bitcoin. You win all the votes for being pro-Bitcoin for the people who for them is the only thing that matters. I'm a one-issue voter. If you're going to help Bitcoin win, I will vote for you.

I probably wouldn't have voted otherwise. You activate a voter base. You win all of the votes. Nobody is a one-issue anti-Bitcoin voter. They don't exist. They care about other things. So it's nonsensical not to be the most pro-Bitcoin candidate you could possibly be.

definitely can help countries with sovereignty absolutely and stop being so dependent on zones eurozone and bricks etc so they just have to open their minds to it become humble and curious well the ball has started rolling let's see how far it how far it goes beautiful thank you for sharing okay i have a few questions rapid quick hit questions kind of okay we'll take them one at a time five of them really short but i'm curious to hear your answers so one book that significantly shifted your world view or feel free to give me two if you've got two i've got two i mean the first the first one is a very short book you can get it for five pounds or five euros on amazon and it's what there's what what has the government done to our money by what's it called

what what has the government done to our money by rothbard written 60 years ago you can read it in 40 minutes i would encourage absolutely everybody to read that book um and then the second one which i imagine a bunch of people have already read is atlas shrugged a wonderful book they say why the it's a thousand pages of small short read short read of small text i would encourage audio book as opposed to physical book um to try and get through it but it is just the most wonderful book it is bitcoin it is bitcoin it's i don't ascribe to everything in the book because she's the creative objectivism and there's no mention of family and these sorts of things in there so you know take it you know in that context but she describes

it is you know people talk about 1984 or animal farm or these as being representations of a dystopian future or warnings around the dangers of socialism none of them describe the world of today like Ayn Rand does in At The Shrugged. It is like it is written in 2025 and she wrote it in the late 50s, early 60s. She was a Bitcoiner. It's just Bitcoin didn't exist. You know, they...

It is a society split between the producers and the people who are not the producers. And the people who are the producers... Parasites. I call them the parasites. Yeah, that's not the terminology she uses. It's producers and the looters and the intellectuals. But it's today.

And it's the producers who drive value, who create productivity. Like the default for us, the default state of the world is poverty. It is not prosperity. So the question is not what causes poverty. The question is what causes prosperity. And so we live in the West,

well in all of the world now where the viewpoint through which we think about everything from a top-down perspective is 180 degrees the wrong way around and in a in rand's book when you push people too far they say no and they just opt out they opt out into a new system a new system where value is recognized where you don't get things for free you've you contribute a new benefit and they even end up using a new money which they will only work for and it's just bitcoin it is a bitcoin book written 40 years before bitcoin was even was even produced and i would encourage absolutely everybody to to to read that perfect all right four more short okay a daily habit you have which you recommend others to take or look into okay i

I mean, not entirely obvious. However, I tried to go on the treadmill every day. And so the reason I do that is to let my mind wander. Because when we're going through our routines and our daily lives, we have very few times where we sort of switch off and we disconnect. And I don't have a TV on. I put music on and I just let my mind go for half an hour. And it goes into different areas.

and it allows me to reflect on things and process things and be creative in a way that I would not be able to achieve without doing that. What's the one thing you believed five years ago that you don't believe anymore today? That this time it was different. You know, we're educated to believe that we have reached a level of awareness

post-World War II, a level of awareness and righteousness in the way that we have set up our civilization, that we will never repeat the things that have happened in the past. But it's just absolutely not true. We are rapidly hurtling towards exactly the same things and history just repeats i i also it's not a book recommendation but i listened to the history of rome by mike dunke mike duncan um and it's it's a couple of hundred episodes each half an hour long and he recounts the entire history of the roman empire from pre-founding through to um you know i mean it doesn't go all the way to the turks taking constantinople it sort of draws a a bit shorter than that few hundred years but you just see history repeat yep it just goes over and

over and over again because humans are humans and when you give people exorbitant power they destroy everything and there is no greater exorbitant power than having access to a big red button that's right and and this is the entire fiat system so we've built ourselves on on democracy but democracy has been corrupted. We've built ourselves on free market capitalism. Free market capitalism has been corrupted. We are rapidly hurtling towards socialism and the destruction of everything in the West. So you need to learn about Bitcoin. You need to opt out. You need to build the parallel systems. The only way we fix this, it's the only way we fix this because with bitcoin this time it is different so fill in a blank true sovereignty is

being able to say no perfect perfect we have to wrap up where can people follow you um you can find me on x at satmojo s-a-t-m-o-j-o-e i'm on linkedin for people who still live there you can find me because i still you know i'm building businesses and you know i need to be in the real you know in the non-bitcoin world as well to try and bring as many people across as possible and to watch the video just go to whatstheproblem.org or just google what's the problem it's right on the first page now wherever you are in the world on google and so just watch it please help yourselves to all the materials i would love and i've met so many people these last couple of days who are giving this presentation in their local language, in their

own communities. This is for everybody. We need everyone in the world to watch it or understand the content and then we can fix things. Wonderful. Joe, thank you so much for your vision, for putting it into action and for your grand warning for everyone. I truly appreciate your work and what You do. Thank you for being with us. Thanks, Eppa. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Please take a minute to give this episode a like, a comment, and subscribe or follow.

And please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives. Till next time. Thank you.