We’re sitting at a historical crossroads where the future of money is going to be digital we’re seeing a concerted effort around the world to ban cash to reduce the availability the value and the liquidity of cash everywhere in the world we saw india demonetize the top two
Value notes they have um spain is passing a lot to make it illegal to make any transaction more than a thousand euros in cash probably the 500 euro 100 euro notes are going to disappear eventually you’re seeing this process of demonetization of removing cash from the economy
In order to funnel it all into banking systems that are under constant control and surveillance this is a very dangerous future and that’s usually because they want the taxation or they want the legislation they see either they see that money used by corrupt parties or they just use that as an excuse
To control it the biggest criminals in the world have biking licenses of their own they don’t need to money launder they own hsbc and that money launders for them you know the biggest money launderers in the world are the banks obviously because that’s where the money is the
Easiest way to money launder is if you have a banking license so of course the biggest money launderers have banking licenses these are excuses what they want to do of course is they say taxation and corruption but in fact this actually increases corruption so removing cash from an economy and putting everybody under
Surveillance doesn’t mean the criminals can’t use money anymore of course they can they will continue to do that they will always have means of doing it just means that everybody else is under surveillance so you end up surveilling the innocent what does that give you that gives you political control
We’ve never had in the history of humanity the ability to monitor everybody’s economic activity all the time and to give that power to governments without question is extremely dangerous it won’t reduce crime but it will turn governments into criminals it won’t reduce corruption but it will increase corruption of banks
And it will put people at the mercy of a system in which at a flick of a binary switch you can become a non-person went to the wrong website attended the wrong protest associated with the wrong political party express support for the wrong idea off you no longer exist you can’t buy food
You can’t buy anything you can’t earn anything and all of your money disappeared because we we don’t give you a bank account and since you can’t use cash for anything then you basically are a non-citizen you are a non-person and what this will end up doing is it will end up putting
The burden again on the most powerless in our society right the poor those who don’t have id undocumented immigrants victims of human trafficking these people are going to be suffering the burden to create this bourgeois illusion of safety and give massive powers to governments that certainly haven’t earned the trust
To have these kinds of powers criminals will have privacy the question is whether the rest of us will and so that is the the thing criminals will use these systems criminal you will bypass the rules criminals will bribe and corrupt officials and they will bypass the rules they
Will deal in gold or rolexes or cars in fact at some point in the height of the crack epidemic they try to ban cash in baltimore in the united states and criminals switch to using thai detergent as cash fungible transportable brands unforgeable and useful just crates of tide move it around
Different bright houses there will always be criminal activity that’s part of society changing the way money works only ends up punishing the innocent and so criminals will always have privacy brian do you want to also have privacy or do you want only criminals to have privacy and only governments to have privacy
The real drug financing doesn’t happen in cash it happens in millions of barrels of oil and billions of pallets of dollars transmitted through wire transfers by the banks who get caught again and again and again and again and they pay a fine that is a fraction not only of the
Criminal behavior that they profited from but of the tens of thousands of deaths they’ve directly contributed to and not a single person goes to jail and at the same time some people have the audacity to say that we need to end cash in order to stop crime we have to understand
Surveillance never stopped crime surveillance is the license given to the people who are on the top of that to control our lives they will commit crimes they will commit the worst of crimes what i call mega crimes mega is the prefix we use for millions a mega crime is one where for example
You foreclose on a million homeowners and don’t go to jail that’s a mega crime we’re doing surveillance and analytics to catch a petty drug dealer who’s selling pot for bitcoin who’s doing surveillance and analytics on lockheed martin who’s doing surveillance and analytics on the money laundering banks
Nobody do you know why none of them ever go to jail the regulators are completely captured and the very system of controlling finance from above by having levers of power over the lives of millions of people billions of people of having the audacity to cut off entire countries and
Say well they’re under sanctions they’re not privileged enough they’re not people enough to gain financial services guess who that attracts if you build levers of power like that the very worst sociopaths in our society are attracted like flies to [ __ ] to grab hold of those levers of power and destroy
All of your freedoms as quickly as they can we are building societies in which one bad election is the last election and if you don’t believe me look at what’s happened in turkey what’s happened in russia what’s happened in venezuela what happens every day to billions of people around the world
Let me end on a positive note because you’re probably a bit freaked out by all of this you should be this is serious stuff open borderless public transparent neutral censorship resistant strictly private cryptocurrencies exist they will not be regulated they cannot be regulated not by committees because they’re regulated by mathematics
They’re regulated by algorithms they provide certainty of transaction they provide programmable customer protection they provide reputation management they provide access without identity they give billions of people eventually not just a bank account in their pocket but a bank in their pocket they democratize the function of banking
And turn it into an app that everyone can access without vetting because they’ve already pre-vetted they have agreed to download the software that follows the rules of consensus and that is the only vetting required in these systems but we shouldn’t allow that we did but we can’t have people make anonymous transactions
They will but we must regulate this you can’t and you won’t because six billion people need this should we regulate crypto how much should we regulate crypto who should regulate crypto [ __ ] that crypto is about providing universal basic finance to whoever needs it everywhere in the world whether we like it or not
And what will people do with universal basic finance what they’ve done for millennia with access to cash they will build a future for their children
