POLITICAL EVOLUTION & BITCOIN POLICY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM | Freddie New - THE Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm fundamentally an optimist.

(00:01):
I don't think that collapse is inevitable.
I don't believe that you need to, you know,
do not go gentle into that good night, you know,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Don't just sit back and say that, you know,
decline is inevitable.
We have agency.
We can go out.
I mean, your entire nation is an example of this to the rest of us.
You know, you don't need to sit back and let the king tell you what to do,

(00:23):
although technically in the UK we do.
But I was talking about this with Peter the last time I spoke with him.
You know, you can start small.
And for me, Bitcoin is both a top-down movement and a bottom-up movement.
So individual people realizing that government isn't going to come and save them
and preserving their wealth in Bitcoin is a valid and valuable thing that you can do.
But at the same time, we should also engage with our elected representatives

(00:46):
and try and educate them to understand the same thing.
I jotted down something while you were speaking earlier.
Why don't our elected officials see this?
and I think for some of us in the UK
the problem is solely talking about Bitcoin
if you ask them, would you like
we have this sovereign debt problem, nothing stops this train
we should hedge ourselves
with a pristine form of collateral

(01:07):
that no other country can debase
or dilute
without mentioning Bitcoin, they say, well that sounds brilliant
well let's get some of that pristine collateral
and then once the idea is planted
then the specifics kind of
solve themselves
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs.

(01:30):
My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin Podcast.
Bitcoin continues to create new blocks every 10 minutes
and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
If you are listening to this right now, remember, you are still early.
Find me on Noster at primal.net slash Walker and this podcast at primal.net slash titcoin.

(01:53):
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Head to the show notes for sponsor links.
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And head to bitcoinpodcast.net for everything else.

(02:13):
Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk.
Do you say Noster or Noster with your British accent?
I'd probably go for a short O, Noster, but you know what?

(02:34):
Given that it's notes and other stuff transmitted by relays, maybe it should be Noster.
That's a pretty interesting question.
I think I'm one of the only few people who is still, or has maybe not even still, like I started out saying Noster because I was like, well, there's only one S, you know, so this is like Nost.
This makes sense to me, so it's Noster.

(02:54):
And I've stuck with it.
Even Carla has now started saying Noster, my own wife, abandoning my pronunciation team.
But I've let it slide.
But yeah, I'm always curious.
I wasn't sure how the British tongue would interpret this.
But at least your wife says Noster or Noster.
If I say it, my wife immediately falls asleep.
Or maybe it's like a defensive mechanism.

(03:14):
I don't know.
You know, people would often ask me,
oh, how do I get my wife to be into Bitcoin?
And I'm not sure if yours is into Bitcoin
or what the situation is.
But people would always ask me this.
And I'm like, well, I'm not the best person to ask
about how do you, because we got into it at the same time.

(03:36):
Her parents escaped communism.
Like her, you know, her dad was a computer scientist.
Like she hates the government.
It's just, you're primed for this, you know?
And they seem like natural fits.
They really are.
Like, and so unless you're, you know, you have a lot of those boxes checked, I feel like it's perhaps not as, not as easy.
And I do, I do, I sympathize with people who have difficulty getting their significant others to, let's say, have the same amount of care.

(04:02):
But I think it's also something where it's like if as long as one of you in the relationship is aware of it and taking care of it and saving the value of your time and energy in Bitcoin, well, okay, that's at least good enough.
Like you're as a family unit, you are taking care of.
I don't know.
Yeah, no, you're right.
It's like having, you know, some families have one breadwinner, some have two breadwinners.
Exactly.

(04:23):
You can just be the Bitcoin breadwinner for your family.
And, you know, my wife wants to talk about other things other than the collapse of the state.
and hard money and sovereign debt defaults.
You know, some people like to talk about other stuff.
So strange.
I can't imagine why.
But yeah, I mean, even Carla gets tired of Bitcoin talk.

(04:46):
But it's also like, you know,
especially when we were making videos very consistently,
it's like we talked about Bitcoin a lot
as just a necessity.
So it was like, okay, if we're done with this,
like done making videos for the day,
like no more Bitcoin talk.
Let's cut it off.
Stop it.
Stop it for now.
And then it's like, you know, like, don't say Bitcoin.
It's like, well, Bitcoin just comes up naturally.
So you can't quite help it sometimes.

(05:06):
Your videos are absolutely class.
I do have to say, I remember watching them.
It's like two, three years ago, you started a lot.
Yeah, it was during the pandemic.
Let's see, I think we started making them in 20, like May, end of May, 2021.
So I think it was right after like the first blow off top,

(05:27):
if I'm getting my months right, like that first.
uh yeah i think it was the point was the first top yeah and then there was the second fake out top in
october november that year when it was like oh it's the super cycle for sure this time and i
i was very green in the space at that point you know we'd uh just been we heard about bitcoin

(05:48):
back in like you know 2014 uh ignored it of course thought it was some stupid nerd thing
uh heard about it again in 2017 thought i couldn't i was like well i can't afford a full bitcoin by
any means so i guess i'll just buy one of these litecoin things i don't i still don't think
litecoin has recovered the price that i managed to like time the the top in 2017 perfectly with

(06:13):
my like one litecoin or two litecoin purchase it was like then i was like ignored it again until
2020 and then oh maybe i should actually spend some time and pay attention to this it seems that
it's still around. How odd. Like I would have thought this would have been, you know, done by
now. I feel like that's an experience for a lot of people. I'm very impressed. Anyone who hears
about Bitcoin and the very first time it just like, it just clicks. But I think that's the

(06:36):
exception, not the rule. Oh, absolutely. Then that, that accords complete with my experience.
I first came across it in a similar time to you, actually, like 2013, 2014, when I was,
I was writing a paper on the Cypriot banking crisis. And to my shame, I remember reading,
reading quite a bit about it and then actually laughing because you know the Winkervoss twins

(06:56):
they got stiffed over by Mark Zuckerberg and then they put their money in Bitcoin oh ha ha and then
it crashed how funny uh and in you know in retrospect I was a complete idiot but you know
I'm okay with that it's I always feel if I if I had bought in 2013 there's absolutely no way I
would have hodled until now so yeah absolutely I'm with you there I think that the people who say

(07:19):
like oh i wish i would have known about it back at this time or that time you know like realistically
you wouldn't have held on to it and if you did know about it you probably would have you know
like just knowing about it didn't mean you were going to pay attention to it like as is evidenced
by yourself and me and countless other people i've talked to basically almost everyone's bitcoin
story is that ignored it ignored it finally paid attention to it years later and you know are are

(07:43):
now going to bitcoin conferences and deep down the rabbit hole but like it takes time so that's why i'm
I try to lead with empathy when it comes to people, let's say even politicians, or perhaps especially politicians, not grokking Bitcoin right away.
Now, if you've had something explained to you many, many, many times in very detailed ways and convincing ways by many people, and you still choose to keep ignoring it or worse, deriding it, that's where I have less sympathy.

(08:18):
but i can i can't fault somebody for dismissing bitcoin the first or second time that it happens
to pop across their radar but i mean i know just i'm sure this is a frustration you feel most
intimately given that you are actively in talks with policymakers regulators uh folks in the

(08:39):
house of lords and commons which you know you guys have such nice names for things over there
it's basically it's basically the senate and the house of representatives it's just different names
it's like it's but i mean it basically sounds like it's like the house of of rich and the house of
you know is like kind of like what it it sounds like that a little bit the actual name is worse
it's the lord spiritual and temporal no it's not is it really it is yeah because originally they

(09:04):
used you used to get an automatic seat in the house of lords by virtue of being a bishop
so the bishops had some seats in the house of lords and so they were the lord spiritual
and then the lord's temporal were a combination of the law lords so when you became a senior
enough judge, you also got a seat in the House of Lords as one of the law lords. And then you also
had a combination of hereditary peerages and life peerages as well. It's very complex. Also quite

(09:29):
funny from the perspective of a United States citizen. I'm always fascinated because I love
listening to Peter McCormick's show, honestly, perhaps more so now that it's less about Bitcoin,
because I get to learn more about the UK.
And also I listened to his episode that he had with you
and I was just thinking the whole time,
I'm like, is Peter about to like foment insurrection

(09:53):
like pretty soon?
I'm getting that vibe or maybe not insurrection.
Maybe it's revolution is a better word.
I don't know what I'm allowed to say in the UK.
Well, it's funny.
I live in the town where Tom Paine came from
and obviously you'll know of Tom Paine
because he was instrumental in a lot of the thinking
behind the American Revolution.
And so he was fascinated by the French Revolution and then was part of the intellectual movement that really drove the American Revolution.

(10:19):
And actually, my Twitter profile, I've got a quote from Tom Payne on my profile.
I'm going to misquote this now, but it's in my banner.
I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud as if they were all knaves and fools.
I love that. That's up on the town hall in the town where I live.

(10:40):
and then obviously he came over to the United States and he was instrumental in the thinking
that underlies the United States Constitution which is a document for which I have an enormous
amount of time and respect it's a fantastic creation uh an utterly extraordinary thing for
humanity to have done um and I I was saying to I was saying to someone I met in Vegas actually

(11:03):
how much I enjoy visiting the United States I always leave with an immense sense of optimism
about, you know, despite the problems that the country has, like all countries have,
it's fantastic to visit a place where there is a real attitude that you can just do things,
which is one of my favorite memes.

(11:23):
It's a great meme. It's a great meme.
And, you know, honestly, I love hearing that from folks, you know, non-US citizens,
you know, folks from wherever it may be, especially from our former colonizer.
it's nice to nice to hear that kind of thing no hey it's uh we were also colonized i'm i'm i'm
as zimbabwean south african originally so there you go so i i really yeah i i can't hold it against

(11:48):
you uh for the generational trauma from which i suffer uh but but i i think that it's it's such
an important thing that many americans often forget that they forget that a lot of the world
still views America and has continued to as a place of hope and of you can just do things
and a place where you can make, you know, carve out a life for yourself, regardless of your

(12:12):
circumstances. And I think perhaps in many ways that's gotten more difficult to do than
depending on what you want to look at as, you know, the heyday of, you know, American growth
and these things. But in other ways, thanks to technology, it's gotten, it's gotten a lot easier
to do. Now, I think, you know, we can, of course, get into the fact that thanks to the

(12:33):
monetary system, it's made it more difficult for the average person to get by unequivocally.
But that doesn't preclude you from being able to achieve something in this country. And there is
still, I think, that sense of, at least I feel it, and certainly the Bitcoiners that I talk to
feel it. Certainly even many of my, quote, normie friends feel it. You can just do things. And,

(12:56):
And, you know, America is still, despite all of its faults, in my biased opinion, it's still the greatest country in the world.
Now, we can debate that.
But it's great because it's ultimately an idea based on incredibly strong founding documents whose entire purpose is to respect individual rights, to respect property, to respect speech, to respect the right to defend oneself.

(13:22):
And that's incredibly important.
And it is a rarity in this world to have that and to have something like that baked into your, let's say, societal fabric from its conception.
That is rare.
And it's something that should be treasured.
I think it's almost unique.
Yeah.
I read something recently which struck me really quite profoundly, which was America.

(13:43):
It's saying America is the only society where people came together and decided how much power they were going to cede to their rulers in almost every other society in human history.
any transfer of power from the rulers to the ruled had been very gradual and after a long
period of oppression. In America, I mean, you know as well as I do, you genuinely had a fresh start.

(14:07):
You threw everything off and then you sat down and decided, all right, this is how much power
we're going to give to the people who govern us thus far and no further. It's genuinely incredible.
It is remarkable. And you have to look back at the, the foresight that some of these men had and just marvel at it a little bit, like, especially given their age. And, you know, now we look at, I mean, my God, like it's, it's insane. I mean, like I was, I don't know, reasonably well developed for that age, but I was still just a, I was a, I was a moron, you know, like when I look back, you know, yeah, like I was successful as a, as a young adult, but like,

(14:46):
I don't think I had my shit together enough to be able to lead a revolution and then draft
documents, founding documents that would stand for hundreds of years after the fact and be used as a
model for what liberty can be. Like, nope, I definitely wasn't. I'm sorry. I wasn't nearly
there. So it's remarkable what they were able to do. Had you needed to, perhaps I'm sure you would

(15:09):
have risen to the occasion. And, you know, cometh the hour cometh the man. It's a combination of
ability and circumstances, isn't it? That's, I mean, that's definitely fair. I am curious,
you know, because I'd be remiss if I had a, you know, a guest from the United Kingdom on my show

(15:30):
and did not speak of this United Kingdom. How united is the kingdom right now as a starting
point? Well, that's a very interesting question. I think we are in a strange position in the UK.
So I don't know how familiar you are with our party political system.
I'd love to actually dive into it a little bit because I'm kind of fascinated by it.

(15:55):
And honestly, I think it's very interesting to learn how other political models work because we're used to our Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola democracy here in the US.
It's okay.
If you don't like Coke, there's Pepsi and vice versa.
That's not the case in most other places in the world.
and I think the UK is obviously a fascinating example of something quite different.

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(19:26):
That's B-I-T-K-I-T dot T-O.
Well, I mean, not to give you too much of a history lesson, but I suppose maybe in summary,
the UK is an interesting example of a society completely opposite to the one I described earlier,
whereas in the United States you decided how much power you were going to give to your rulers.

(19:47):
In the UK, the rulers have pretty much had say.
Let's go back a thousand years, back to the Norman Conquest.
Slight sidebar, one of the reasons we have such weird property law in the United Kingdom
is because when the Norman Conquest happened in 1066,
William the Conqueror declared the whole of England and Wales,
not Scotland because they didn't conquer Scotland,

(20:09):
they declared the whole of England and Wales his personal estate.
so basically he took the whole of those two countries as his property and so in the UK
to this day if you buy a house so I own my house as freehold but it's called freehold because the
crown has deigned to let me occupy it for as long as I or my heirs inherit it and if I die in test

(20:34):
date or if my children were to die without issue then the title to my property would devolve to
the crown because ultimately the crown owns all of the land in england and wales i love that
expression on your face i mean it's my i mean that's it's kind of mind-blowing and okay you
know devil's advocate it's like in the u.s it's like do you really own your land like yes we have

(20:55):
strong property laws but also if you don't pay your excuse me your property taxes well you will
see very quickly uh that you do not actually have control of that property in a meaningful way you
you're renting it from the government with a little bit more,
a little bit more protection. Right. But it's, but ultimately, again,
if you don't pay your property taxes,

(21:15):
they will come and kick in your door and they will drag you out.
And I like, I know this because I have not personal experience.
I've heard many anecdotes of people who were not fond of paying their property
taxes and it did not go well for them. They were quickly removed.
Yeah. Which is, which is pretty awful. And you know,

(21:36):
and coming back to what I think is obviously a common theme for Bitcoin is it's very,
even though you think you own the house in which you live or the land on which you live,
it's very difficult for you to maintain title to that unless you comply with certain conditions,
whether those are property taxes or a chain of title or so on.

(21:56):
So even something as fundamental as the place where you live and grow up and bring up your kids
is not necessarily something that you can be guaranteed to own in perpetuity unless you tick
certain boxes which again is I think something that not many people think about very deeply
until it becomes acute it was interesting what you were saying earlier about about Carla and how

(22:17):
she really understands Grok's Bitcoin quite quickly because you know its use case has been
obvious to her from her life experience you know I escaped from I've lived in two failed states I
lived in Syria, I lived in Zimbabwe. When we left Syria, we had to leave with 48 hours notice.

(22:38):
We had to drop everything. We were thrown out of the country at gunpoint and put on a boat.
And we were given, I shit you not, 48 hours notice to do that. And that was pretty hairy
for my parents. Had we had Bitcoin, it would have been trivial for us to cross the border
and to get our property out of the country.

(23:01):
And then Zimbabwe, when we left,
it was extraordinarily difficult even then in the late 90s
to get our money out of the country.
We'd sold our house.
No one wants Zimbabwe dollars.
It's very hard.
There's not really much market outside Zimbabwe
for Zimbabwe dollars.
It may surprise you.
I'm shocked.
Well, you know, you're shocked.
I can see big market inside Zimbabwe for US dollars, obviously.

(23:24):
Everyone likes the US dollar.
we bought a car and drove it across the border and then sailed it back to the UK and then sold it so
very complicated to do in the in the late 90s so I think those are some of the reasons why despite
the fact that I sound like a very posh bridge I kind of got the point of Bitcoin earlier than some

(23:46):
of my contemporaries who have a similar background and worked in a similar field the idea of a
property that is absolutely yours that you can transfer across borders that you can you can hold
in your head is quite extraordinary and to to people who had this kind of i was always feel if if we need to explain bitcoin to you you probably don really need it yet I know that everyone does need Bitcoin because of invisible threats like inflation or the debasement of your currency by the currency issuer

(24:18):
But as you were saying earlier, to be a bit empathetic to those kind of people, those are less obvious problems to a lot of people.
And although they're true, they're not necessarily apparent.
if you're trying to cross a border in a war zone,
it's fucking apparent that you need to have some way of getting your money over the border.
Otherwise, you're going to have nothing on the other side.

(24:42):
So I think maybe my point is that there are degrees of how apparent the importance of Bitcoin is.
I don't know if that rings any bells.
I mean, maybe like a Satoshi's hierarchy of needs, so to speak.
You should pay some of that.
maybe but it would feel it would feel wrong uh to uh to patent it or patent it as you say uh

(25:04):
with satoshi's name in there you know that would that would feel somehow uh against the the spirit
but i will say you know i can uh i can coin it i can't be the first though you ever think something
and you're like that's really smart but there's just no chance that somebody else hasn't thought
of this and you know a thousand people haven't thought of this no uh watch it there's a beautiful

(25:25):
line in there when hector it's a it's a play originally about uh an inspirational history
teacher who's teaching this class of boys in a very eccentric and inspirational way a little bit
like the dead poet society um and he's there's a wonderful line when he says it's incredible when
you have an idea that you think is completely unique to you and then you read something

(25:46):
ancient something like out of shakespeare or some or something written by plato and you saw that
someone one and a half thousand years ago, three thousand years ago, had the same idea.
And the line is, it's as though a hand has reached out of the page and taken yours.
That's something wonderful about having the same idea that someone else had before.

(26:07):
It's very true. Although perhaps you, yeah, that's a much more positive way of looking at it,
that it's not about, oh, you know, you're unoriginal. Perhaps some ideas are just,
are out there in this informational grid waiting to be snatched up by a curious mind. And perhaps
yours is curious enough to grasp it. And then for other people, you just realize they go through

(26:28):
life never being curious about anything. And that's one of the things that make me really sad,
really, really sad. And it's one of the things that annoys me about my friends. We were talking
about my wife not being interested, that interest in Bitcoin. I find Bitcoin utterly fascinating,
and I can be boring about it for hours.
I'm astonished that not everyone wants to be as boring as I can be.

(26:51):
Well, you know, perhaps they're just not appreciative enough
of your posh British accent because they also have British accents.
So, you know, but we Americans, we hear the accent of our former colonizer
and we think like they must be saying something intelligent.
I'm not even listening, but the sounds are good.
It's funny that I was asking actually some Romanians.
I was like, you know, so you guys, obviously English is a second language for you.

(27:14):
When you hear Americans speak or people from the, you know, the UK speak, do you think that the UK
folks sound smarter? Uh, you know, like just inherently, because a lot of them, you know,
Americans have this weird, like British language sounds smarter thing. And they're like, no,
like they're just both speaking English with a different accent. Like, like we speak with an
accent. I was like, okay, great. All right. So it's just us Americans who have some, again,

(27:38):
weird generational trauma about this somehow you guys you guys left some vestiges of the former
colonialist in us that's funny i because i always just assumed that you wanted me to play a baddie
in one of your movies or james bond so i there are there are only two alternatives available
people who sound like me yeah that's fair it's fair and you know if it makes you feel any better

(27:58):
i got teased a lot when i came because not many british people actually sound like me anymore
So I got, I was at school in Zimbabwe until I was 16.
Then I came back to the UK, went to school in Wales, which is where my dad grew up.
And I got abused savagely and brutally for sounding like a posh pofter.
In Wales, they sound particularly interesting, I think.

(28:22):
Yes.
Yeah.
So I can imagine.
You were in the small minority there.
Yes.
I was also very small back then, which I think is one of the reasons why I'm enormous now.
uh it's fair there's some deep-seated trauma going on there i i saw your uh your this is a
slight divergence but speaking of you being massive i saw your uh response to uh to arnold

(28:45):
schwarzenberger and his i was first of all that's i can't imagine going through that we don't have to
like get into that at all but just wanted to say like damn that was uh that was really intense and
And it says a lot about, I think, who you are today makes a lot of sense given what you had to battle through, if that makes sense.

(29:07):
Thanks, man.
No, it's a long time ago.
I honestly don't mind talking about it if you want to spend like two minutes on it.
I mean, just for context, if anyone didn't read it.
So obviously I follow Schwarzenegger and I'm an enormous Schwarzenegger fan.
and he tweeted something around how training helped him.

(29:33):
Some days he woke up and he felt that he saw in black and white,
but he went to the gym and then every time he left,
he felt as though he was not seeing in colour.
It's like the Wizard of Oz.
And I tweeted back to him and I said,
yeah, you know, I had this terrible experience when I was younger.
My parents, when I was 21,
well, they were both killed in a car accident.
uh it was doing my exams in second year at university um so obviously not sugar coding

(30:00):
it pretty awful experience uh and my brother and sister were 10 and 12 at the time my my other
sister was 18 um so we had to drop everything and uh and go down to they each of them were
boarding school at the time so we had to go one first first uh first my sister then my brother

(30:20):
and yeah, it was horrible.
Literally the worst thing I've ever done
to tell them that their parents weren't going to come back.
But it was going to be okay.
Yeah, that was awful.

(30:41):
And I mentioned that in the post to Arnie
and then I said, you know,
and again, not sugarcoating it for a long time.
I was probably clinically depressed, I assume.
But I think if you have that, if you have a kind of responsibility,
and we did, my brothers and sisters were 10 and 12,
so we had no choice but to look after them.

(31:03):
We'd been overseas for a long time.
We'd lost touch with a lot of our family in the UK.
We were sort of between homes at the time,
so we didn't have anywhere to go.
So the next few years was a process of sort of rebuilding,
rebuilding our lives, reconnecting with our family. We moved in with my great-aunt who was

(31:24):
incredibly kind and gave the kids a home. I mainly stayed at university. I was at Cambridge at the
time. Phoebe, my sister, stayed with a sort of foster family but then we shared responsibility
for the two young kids and I said to Ani, you know, I just, I had no desire to do anything. I

(31:45):
I had no inclination to do anything.
But I went to the gym every day.
And that was the one thing I did.
And, you know, I just would go as I didn't have a choice about it.
And then eventually, over time, I think that was essentially the only piece of my life I had any control over at that point.
And it was incredibly helpful in, I think, rebuilding after an awful experience.

(32:08):
Yeah, and anyway, so I'm an enormous fan of Arnie.
I have a post of him up in my home gym now.
the original Terminator poster.
And then out of the blue, he retweeted me at the weekend.
So obviously the most exciting thing to happen to me this week
is coming on your podcast.
The second most exciting thing.

(32:30):
I was getting a retweet from Arnie.
I mean, it's pretty incredible because he's just such an icon.
And despite, you know, like, you know,
he had some strange takes during COVID.
Uh, but I, you know, uh, I still have like a huge amount of respect for, for that guy.
And also like, I think pumping iron is probably one of the best documentaries ever made of

(32:53):
just like, I've watched it a few times and every time afterwards, I'm like, I need to,
I need to hit the, hit the weights hard after this, like really, really hard.
I appreciate you sharing that though.
And I didn't mean to derail, but I think again, it, I mean, that's a, that's a really
impossibly difficult thing to go through, especially at that age, but to have that,

(33:14):
uh, to know that you needed to take care of your, your family still, because you were the, you know,
you're the eldest. Like I have, uh, an immense amount of respect for that. And again, I think
it says a lot about who you are today. And, you know, I mean, clearly you feel, uh, uh, some sense
of responsibility for, for the United kingdom more broadly, given like the word and don't mind me

(33:36):
trying to tie this in here, but like the work that you're doing right now is pretty thankless.
I would imagine from a, in terms of like, yeah, Bitcoiners are, you know, applaud you. Thank you.
But more broadly, it's like, again, trying to get people to pay attention to something that
most of them are completely ignoring, or you have a, what's, what's that guy who keeps going around

(33:59):
the, the, the brilliant maths guy who was talking about how everything's everything's the rich
people's fault and he was yes guy just really rubs me the wrong way he does he's i mean i hate
to say this i i don't tend to block people in on twitter he's or mute them he's one of the few
words that i have muted on twitter he became so unbearable um if anyone hasn't seen him don't

(34:24):
google him don't look him up don't give him the oxygen publicity his solution to everything is
taxing rich people and uh he hates bitcoin yeah which i find odd but i think it comes back to your
again your point earlier so many people don't realize that they need bitcoin
and a lot of the a lot of the need for bitcoin in complex um you know western societies isn't

(34:51):
completely obvious you know about the rule of 72 no i don't think so oh i love this one of my so
So it's very simple. It's a mathematical equation to effectively work out how quickly it takes for your money to halve in value given a particular rate of inflation.
Now I do know. But can you explain it, though, for the folks that may be saying I have no idea what's going on?

(35:16):
Let's take the arbitrary roughly 2% inflation rate, which is what most governments target.
So at a 2% inflation rate, your money roughly halves over the course of your working life.
so let's say you had a hundred dollars in your checking account when you leave college uh if you
work for 35 years and retire that hundred dollars will only buy you fifty dollars worth of stuff at

(35:38):
the end of that that period which over a working lifetime is kind of low enough for you not to hit
the streets with your uh with your sidearm but any higher than that and it becomes exponentially
faster. So, you know, at 10 or 11%, your money halves in seven years. And we hit 11% in the UK

(36:01):
not so long ago. And in Turkey, they hit 70%. And in Zimbabwe, where I grew up, the rate of
inflation actually hit a rate that's so high that at its worst, no one actually knows what it was.
It was so high and so rapid that it was effectively meaningless. And we left when the rate of

(36:21):
inflation in Zim was 50-60%. I had friends who stayed and lived there for a much longer time
than we did, and their parents literally had their entire life savings wiped out. So let's say
over the course of your lifetime you'd saved $200,000 Zim that you thought you were going to
retire on. By the time they came to retire, a loaf of bread was a trillion dollars.

(36:46):
So your $200,000 was completely meaningless by that point.
So it's actually insane. And again, in the US and the UK, sure, we've, especially during COVID, we had some pretty gnarly inflation. And, you know, of course, because in the US, they increased the money supply by like 40% over the course of a few years, you know, so yeah, and it turns out, if you look back, it's like, oh, yeah, in terms of price inflation, you know, didn't see it right away.

(37:16):
I wonder why. Well, because it fed into a giant asset boom, like there was asset inflation. So of
course you didn't see it in consumer prices right away until the Cantillon effect allowed it to
trickle on down. But even in these cases, okay, you know, it's not to diminish that, but it's like
compared to, you know, the U S is like the prettiest horse at the glue factory. Uh, again,

(37:39):
not, not mine. I think I'm stealing from, uh, from Greg Foss there, but it, but it's a good one.
You know, it's like, yeah, it's, it's at the glue factory, but Hey, it's the, it's the best looking
horse there, you know, and certain places in the world, it's like, I, it's impossible for you to
conceptualize what that looked like, like what that looked like in, you know, Weimar Germany,
what that looked like in Zimbabwe, unless you lived it, it's like, you know, you can read all

(38:01):
you want about it, but the people who were there on the ground just saw absolutely everything they'd
ever worked for go. And I mean, they, it's just so criminal ultimately. Like that's, that is,
it's the worst kind of theft. It's stealing someone's life's energy, their life's economic
energy. And I think that that's like, we, uh, more fundamentally, we really need to start,

(38:27):
you know, calling that what it is, which is just, it's, you're stealing people's life.
And I think that that's just so, so messed up. And yet it happens again and again. And every year they state that their goal in most, you know, developed nations is to steal your life by 2% per year. They tell you that's their goal. And it's actually, of course, much more than that. But it's wild to me.

(38:51):
And I know, I mean, right now, the UK right now, I was asking about the, you know, is the United Kingdom united?
But more broadly, I mean, there's obviously a lot of social, let's say, unrest happening.
Fair to say.
I mean, we've got our share of it over here, but I think you guys have a different flavor of it over there.

(39:12):
Can you talk about that?
I mean, cost of living has obviously gotten a lot higher in the UK as well.
I know there's the different winter fuel allowances and all this.
I also know that the UK is basically spending over a billion dollars a year just to have wind turbines turn off because the grid can't handle the excess load, which is a whole other thing we can get into.

(39:36):
But what is happening over there?
As a citizen, what do you see?
Do you see also a light at the end of the tunnel?
What is your read on this right now?
Okay, I must apologize first.
I got distracted earlier in terms of our weird property.
We're going to talk a little bit about party policy.
Yeah, yeah.
So let me give you sort of a minute or so on that.

(39:56):
Freddie, it's a safe space for tangents, by the way.
So you're good.
Yeah, I went on a proper tangent there.
It's like a slingshot around Jupiter
out of the outer reaches of the solar system there.
I'm here for it.
So we started in 1066 with William taking Scotland,
not Scotland, but Wales and England as his personal estate,
weird property law.
And then over time, the landowners and the barons effectively evolved into our parliament.

(40:23):
So round about in the 1200s, parliament was effectively created on a remount called Simon de Montfort.
Again, close to where I live, there was a battle between parliamentarians and the king's men.
So again, the location where I live was effectively key towards effectively taking some power away from the king and giving it to the people.

(40:48):
And that increased gradually over time.
By the time of the sort of late 1800s, you had sort of two predominant political parties in the UK.
You had the Tories, who tended to be landowning gentry.
And they effectively evolved into the modern Conservative Party, so slightly right of centre.
and then you had the Whigs who were kind of more left-wing intelligentsia I suppose

(41:13):
and they evolved into the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party's last big swan song was around
about the time of the First World War when David Lloyd George was Prime Minister and following the
First World War there was a huge rise in the Labour Party which effectively represented people
who worked in the factories, people who didn't own the means of production, but were inspired by

(41:38):
some of the thinking of Karl Marx, and tried to represent effectively the working man, who was no
longer necessarily a farm labourer, but now perhaps a factory worker. So there was effectively, as
society evolved, the political parties representing different factions of society evolved. And where
to your actual question, where I think this is beginning to break down in the United Kingdom is

(42:01):
that many, many people here no longer feel that they are represented by the people who are
supposedly representing them in Parliament. So in the United Kingdom, as in most advanced
democracies, we have not a direct democracy, but a representative democracy. And it's the same
system as in the United States, you elect a representative who is supposed to speak for you

(42:21):
in Congress or speak for you in Parliament. Broadly the same idea. I think a lot of people
in the United Kingdom no longer feel that their concerns or their wishes or their desires are
being represented by their political parties. And that's why we have such an interesting,
we're at such an interesting inflection point in the UK, where we are seeing the rise of

(42:43):
other non-conventional parties, like the Reform Party led by Nigel Farage. You probably heard
him speak in Las Vegas. So Farage is a controversial figure. He was effectively behind the Brexit
movement in the UK, where the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, whether you're a

(43:03):
supporter or an opponent of that, that would have enabled the United Kingdom to effectively have an
opportunity to write more of its own laws than previously. Farage remains a controversial figure
because a good 50% of the country didn't vote for that. And it was a very, very close vote,
you know, 16 million versus 17 million. So broadly 50-50, not dissimilar to the way the presidential

(43:28):
elections go in the United States. But again, and certainly for me, one of the interesting things
looking at the recent US election, I think I've developed a bit more personal humility in trying
to understand the point of view of the people who might not vote the way that I do. You know,
a lot of my friends in the United Kingdom will say, oh God, isn't it terrible that

(43:52):
that Donald Trump has been elected. But I increasingly feel that, you know, 50% of the
country voted for Trump, and he actually got a bigger, he got a bigger majority this time than
he did previously. So, and like I said earlier, the majority of the Americans that I've met
personally, I really like, and it's impossible for me to think that 50% of a country are bad people.

(44:19):
So how do you then square that circle? And maybe it's to your curiosity point. I feel there's a lack of intellectual curiosity in simply branding people who disagree with you politically as effectively non-people, which I think is where we've kind of got to in sort of partisan terms.
terms. So kind of where we are in political terms at the moment in the UK, you have everyone was

(44:44):
angry with the Tories because they had, I think, you know, few people would dispute this, they had
not done a good job in the previous 14 years when they were in power. However, Labour have come into
power. And I think statistically, they have lost popularity at a quicker rate than any government
in recorded history, which is quite an achievement. Good for them. Well done them.

(45:06):
yeah and and reform are gaining a lot of support as a result and a lot of my
intellectual friends who you know who work in the city or work in finance are saying isn't this
dreadful that reform is reform is seeing such such a surge in popularity but then as you say

(45:29):
you know we're wasting a billion pounds a year on curtailment all of our roads are falling apart
no one can get a doctor's appointment i haven't seen a doctor for four years
it's uh our country is not functioning and people are angry at that and they want something
different and that's a very febrile political atmosphere for anyone to operate in

(45:54):
i'm i'm curious doing can you explain a little bit uh so because it seems to me and from
you know obviously i listen to uh to peter's show still a lot because i um first of all love love
his show um and you know was glad that he left a little bit of a vacancy in the bitcoin podcast
space uh to for me to slip into before that you know for old danny knolls had to come back in and

(46:17):
revive what bitcoin did but i also believe a rising time he's he's i love danny um and i'm
glad he is crushing it uh because we need more bitcoin podcasts not less uh but i digress the
point being, to me, it sounds like both of the conservatives and, you know, like the, let's say
the liberals are obviously, you know, liberal leftist, but it sounds like your conservatives

(46:39):
have also drifted quite, quite left in many ways, in the sense it's not too dissimilar away from
how things have happened in America, where what's the one tie that binds the, you know, the, the two
clashing sides. Well, they both continue to vote for more of your tax dollars to be spent. They
They both continue to vote for more money to be printed effectively by running massive budget deficits.

(47:02):
They both continue to basically not do anything meaningful to try and shrink the size of government or improve individual liberties at a fundamental level.
And they both continue to basically engage in a game of can kicking down the road, which doesn't really seem to benefit the people that much.
So is, you know, is reform coming in?

(47:23):
Like, is this a, I mean, from the people I've talked to, because I have some friends in the UK as well, like, this seems like a real legitimate third, you know, kind of this, this other part, it's really coming in with some strength and getting some actual backing from them.
Like, is that the vibe that you're feeling as well?
I think it is.
And I think it's very much underestimated by the political establishment.

(47:45):
so most if you read many of the newspapers and the prevailing i suppose right think in the united
kingdom it would be that reform is easily to be dismissed and it's impossible for them ever to
form a serious government i think that underestimates what is going on but again try to think yourself

(48:06):
into the shoes of of the other side and you know you i sure you do this with bitcoin as well i i I quiz myself a lot why don my friends understand what going on why don they do this and it it a fun I mean on the
one hand it's very frustrating but on the other hand it's really interesting to try and think your
way into someone else's head and I suspect it's because the magnitude of acknowledging what perhaps

(48:33):
might be happening it's just too great so it becomes almost like a religious position
so your effectively your religion but your religion is that the government of the united
kingdom is either going to be labor or conservative and it can't be any of the others but you forget
that like like i said earlier david lord george was a liberal and at that time it was the tories
and the liberals and the labor party then came out of nowhere in the 1920s 1910s and 1920s and then

(48:58):
it became the second force in in in british politics and the liberal party effectively
disappeared to a small rump. They didn't hold power again until 2010. It was almost a century,
and that was only in coalition. That's wild. Yeah, it's mad. But it's always interesting,
and I think education, to look back and understand that you... Actually, Douglas Adams,

(49:24):
segueing again slightly, Douglas Adams made an interesting point, comparing this to
technological advancement. You always assume that the world into which you were born is a normal
world, don't you? So Adam said that in terms of technology, anything that already exists when
you're born is normal. Anything invented between when you're 15 and 30 is really exciting and you

(49:45):
can get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 40 is wrong and against the natural order
of things. I mean, that pretty well breaks down, like that's a good lens, a good kind of heuristic
to understand how, why people react the way that they do to things like, you know, something like
Bitcoin or, or to anything. I mean, you know, it's, it's the same way. Like you look at the way that,

(50:08):
uh, the older generations treated social media. And I always think it's funny. I remember, you
know, a lot of the boomer generation, you know, the Facebooks are going to, you know, melt your
brains and turn you into God knows only what. And now it's like, who are the only people like left
on Facebook, at least in the U S well, it's primarily the boomers, like, which is just
somehow hilarious to me it's like they were the ones who were decrying it the most and now they're

(50:30):
the only ones left there being confused about an ai generated jesus riding a rhinoceros and thinking
it's like a real photo or something like it's it's mind-blowing i mean that sounds awesome i haven't
seen that but that sounds really it does it does i'll gen i'll generate one after this put it out
there for the boomers and see how many i can uh i can trick with it oh brilliant but okay so so this

(50:52):
is a legitimate kind of a legitimate political movement that's happening you think they're
garnering significant support is the to bring this around to bitcoin a little bit too is the
reform party obviously i mean you know you've got faraj speaking at the bitcoin conference
are they more pro bitcoin than the establishment parties is that fair to say i'd say yes on your

(51:12):
ahead of this this chat i was thinking about some of the differences between the u.s position on
Bitcoin and the UK position on Bitcoin. And one of the key differentiating factors is that
until recently, we have had no political support in the United Kingdom for Bitcoin at all.
So in the United States, you've got interesting cross-party support, actually, you know,
from Senator Lummis, everyone knows about Senator Gillibrand, the Lummis-Gillibrand bill,

(51:36):
which was drafted before the election, was actually a good piece of legislation. I read it at the time,
and I thought that was a useful step forward. We've got people like Tom Emmer,
now you have cory booker eric adams you have people from both sides of the aisle who i think
are beginning to understand how important bitcoin is and the strategic importance that it holds for

(51:56):
you know for a nation wanting to have a secure monetary foundation and monetary future in
a rapidly changing world which is effectively a low trust world the united kingdom basically has
its pants down and its head in the sand, both at the same time waiting to be taken from behind
by some country that understands Bitcoin better. That's a horrible image. And I wish I hadn't said

(52:21):
that. But that came unbidden to my mind that probably probably indicates some of the deep
seated psychological issues that I have. No, that's okay. That's okay. It's a safe space here.
yeah well um so it's interesting you ask about what reform we're doing differently so
the the thing that nigel farage announced in vegas was i think as as seminal as the

(52:49):
executive order from from donald trump's administration um establishing the strategic
bitcoin reserve which i have to say i was astonished to read at the the quality of the
drafting and that document was amazing. A lot of work had done into it. I was not expecting there
to be such a clear differentiation between Bitcoin and other crypto assets. I thought it was going to

(53:11):
be just a conglomeration of all of the shitcoins plus Bitcoin. There was a clear divide there
between Bitcoin in a reserve, everything else in the stockpile. We're going to use the stockpile.
We're going to keep the reserve. Fantastic. The Farage bill was really interesting. So I did a
I did a sort of quickfire interview on this with the Institute of Economic Affairs just after it was published.

(53:34):
And I pulled it up on my second screen here.
So I think they hit some really interesting points.
So they want to reduce capital gains on cryptocurrency sales, which is a key blocker in terms of using it as money.
At the moment in the UK and I think in the US as well, every transaction is essentially a chargeable event, which slows the velocity of money.

(53:57):
It's insane, isn't it?
yeah and you know there are already countries like germany and like the czech republic
uh who recognize that if you if you there's been a holding period then any use of it as money
thereafter should be exempt from cgt uh that actually the lamis gillibrand bill that i mentioned
before took a really interesting perspective with i think they had a 200 de minimis amount

(54:18):
yeah yeah yeah so in other words you know you buy food yeah yeah it doesn't matter no cgt um
the banking non-discrimination big one in the reform bill um we've seen a lot of business a
lot of bitcoin businesses in the uk um being refused uh refused bank accounts actually funny
we mentioned this just before this call um obviously i run bitcoin policy uk with with

(54:44):
with suzy who's the ceo and my co-founder we've been applying for a second bank account because
the bank that we currently bank with was threatened to close our account
And the second bank we've spoken to has just said that they will not bank us.
They've not given any reasons.
That's absurd.
But we suspect it's because of what we do.

(55:04):
But that is just insane.
Like you're a policy institute.
Like it's a think tank.
Are you guys – you're a nonprofit over there?
I'm not sure how they're –
We're a nonprofit.
Okay, so same as like the Bitcoin Policy Institute in the U.S. here.
but they deem that you are somehow too risky to bank essentially?

(55:26):
They won't give us any reasons.
They just say that they can't bank us.
But all of us are volunteers.
No one takes a salary.
We're funded solely by donations and by some corporate memberships.
We have very, very low running costs
and somehow we are too risky to bank,

(55:47):
which is pretty offensive.
uh so it's hard not to like what we're reading in the in the reform document at the moment
um a sovereign bitcoin reserve fund um they interestingly they didn't the reform guys
didn't mention the fact that the uk is already the third biggest nation state holder of bitcoin
which we have flagged to them directly um and i'll come back to that actually in a second

(56:11):
paying taxes in cryptocurrency in taxes in bitcoin so that would enable i suppose
a feeder fund for the sovereign reserve to exist you know if i were to pay taxes
we've already given some feedback on this which is that um if they if this bill is ever passed
they need to ensure that any taxes that are paid in bitcoin are not subject to cgt so i shouldn't

(56:32):
i shouldn't have to pay cgt on top of my tax and then rapid policy making timelines who can who can
be crossed with that fantastic idea so you know i think what they've what they've done here they
really kick the Everton window open. And other parties now have to respond to what they've done
here. Because I think the last point to note on this before I shut up is that there are actually

(56:54):
12% of the British adults public own cryptocurrency of one kind or another.
Most of that's Bitcoin. That's about 7 million people. There's a big chunk of votes there.
Most definitely. And how much Bitcoin does the UK have right now as a result of,
I'm assuming it's similar to the US where it's various law enforcement activities, things like that, confiscations.

(57:16):
What is the number that they're at?
61,000 plus.
It's a huge amount.
It's a lot of corn.
Six and a half billion dollars.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have there been any proposals or plans that are like going the way of Germany where it's like, we should sell this off.
We should get rid of this and use the proceeds to fund XYZ.

(57:37):
Well, unfortunately, I think that's probably what's going to happen.
So we have been lobbying the Labour government for some time to take this seriously,
to acknowledge that this asset is valuable, it's of strategic importance,
that even if they don't like Bitcoin, they owe it to the people that they represent

(57:58):
to learn how to hold it, to use it, to safeguard it, to use it for the good of the nation.
The response that we've got so far is that, yeah, they're not really that interested,
and it's not really ours, it's down to the Proceeds of Crime Act,
because this is a confiscation. There's a piece of legislation in the United Kingdom called POCA,
Proceeds of Crime Act. Under that, if assets are confiscated and there's a successful confiscation

(58:22):
order put in by the government, what happens at the end is the assets are sold, half of it goes
to the Home Office, which is like our Department of Homeland Affairs, and then half of it goes to
law enforcement. So at the moment, the latest, actually it's a funny coincidence, I was sitting
three rows back from the front, waiting to hear Vice President Vance speak at Bitcoin 2025.

(58:44):
And then a reply drops into my inbox from Emma Reynolds, who is the city minister in the United
Kingdom, who has responsibility for this area of policy, saying, yeah, we don't think Bitcoin
is a good asset for us to have. And yeah, we know that we've got a lot of it, but we're not
going to amend poker to allow us to keep it so yeah at the moment it's going to be sold

(59:09):
got i saw was this the uh the letter that you had you'd posted on your uh x account that was
basically like saying it doesn't align with our uh you know our our objectives for this one which
is you know to to basically they're essentially saying it was too risky uh for them you know in
in so many words right yeah which is just exactly right seems kind of absurd that if you look at

(59:31):
like how long they've held it. I don't know how long they have held it for, but presumably it's
appreciated massively in price in the amount of time that they've held it. So you would think that
that would be the risk would be to get rid of it. But I don't know. I'm not a politician.
It's funny you say that. So Emma Reynolds spoke at a digital assets conference in May and said,

(59:53):
we're not going to consider having a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Within a week, the amount
of the Bitcoin that we hold as a nation increased by $300 million.
So I did flag that to her.
It's like, dude, you've made $300 million in a week
without doing anything.

(01:00:14):
I mean, it's just kind of insane.
And what just continues to sort of boggle my mind is that, again, I get it.
And as we discussed earlier, I have empathy for people that don't get Bitcoin right away.
I didn't.
So it would be quite hypocritical of me to think that somebody else should.

(01:00:35):
Yeah, exactly.
Most of us didn't.
That's okay.
What I do take issue with is when you have, you know, an organization, a policy institute,
like you guys are running with the UK Bitcoin Policy Institute, and you have people who are
basically feeding you information, like really good high signal information, and you're getting
fed all of this.
you know it's delivered to you on a silver platter and yet you still at that point it's it's a choice

(01:00:59):
to remain willfully ignorant in my mind and that's that's what i think is it's it's frustrating you
know and we see this in the u.s too we have a better situation obviously uh than the uk but
still you see it i mean you still have your uh you know your your elizabeth warrens let's say
she's a she's a special breed yeah i mean even before i started um i started work on on actual

(01:01:25):
policy i was already um being as irritating to elizabeth warren as i could actually interesting
something you mentioned earlier made me remember this the the the question of whether whether
ideas exist in the ether and and you reach out and find them um so my my kids and i in response
to Elizabeth Warren's original piece of drafting, I think,

(01:01:46):
which would have designated every node runner
as a money service business.
So my kids and I, we played a little game one Christmas
to illustrate how stupid that idea was
because my kids and I, we built a small Raspberry Pi together
a long time ago now, three, four years.
And then we run a node on it.
And it was a computer science project,

(01:02:07):
particularly my younger daughter.
She likes building stuff.
we build we build computers together and i thought that was a fun project for us to do together
that's awesome it was it was awesome um and then this christmas we we i put a zero and a one on
either side of a coin and we flipped it 256 times generated this huge binary number converted to

(01:02:27):
hexadecimals generated a private key and then set up a wallet i then put ten dollars of bitcoin in it
and deleted the wallet and i said to the kids right you have to recreate this is your this is
your christmas treasure hunt you've got to recreate the steps that we just did and then then you get
the bitcoin at the end uh and they did it took them like three weeks to like work through everything

(01:02:50):
we've done uh and then i put a little video of it up on on twitter saying you know elizabeth
this is completely stupid are you going to say that my children flipping a coin in my living room
are a money service business your legislation is absolutely absurd it just makes i mean it i think

(01:03:11):
as to your point is that's one of the things that frustrates me so much if you you you may have
original opinions but unless you test those unless you test your priors against objective reality
how can you ever move on or or achieve a greater level of understanding
amen and i mean then there's the flip side of this which is and we've forestalled this a bit

(01:03:34):
on the u.s side but i know there's uh uh just speaking of cbdcs that you know which is i view
as kind of the the antithesis of bitcoin it's the cbdcs are our peak fiat uh they're all the
worst parts of fiat made even worse without the only decent part of fiat which is the ability to
anonymous anonymously exchange cash like that that's that's the one good thing that fiat still

(01:03:55):
going forward. It's like, that's great. But let's take that away. Let's give money an expiration
date. Let's just make it a government coupon, essentially, that we can track and surveil and
keep an eye on you to make sure you're not stepping out of line and shut you off from
the system at any time. But I saw the Big Brother Watch report just come out. Can you talk about

(01:04:16):
that a little bit? Is the UK government, so they're planning to pilot a digital pound?
What's the situation there? Is there a good pushback against that as well?
there is so the situation is not as dire as it may appear in the United Kingdom so again delving a
little bit into into UK politics so the like most countries the United Kingdom is considering a

(01:04:38):
digital power the CBDC ultimately I think a lot of these ideas stem from Facebook's creation of
the Diem or Libra coin which made a lot of central banks shit the bed a few years ago
you know, including the Fed before the Trump administration.
And that really led to a lot of the efforts that we see today
to create central bank digital currencies.

(01:05:00):
Now, there's a bit of crossover between the BP UK work and Big Brother Watch.
We've collaborated loosely in the past to feedback to the Bank of England.
We actually got, together we got more than 50,000 responses from the public
and other organizations sent into the Bank of England,
the majority of them negative um effectively saying people do not want this stuff and this is

(01:05:23):
that these are the reasons why um i wrote a very long piece on it which is still on our website
big brother watch sent in a piece as well so big brother watch are an institution that uh pushes
um for you know individual liberty privacy rights freedom to transact and so on so there's a good
deal of crossover between our work and their work we know the team there we collaborate with them

(01:05:44):
and also actually collaborate with Alex Gladstein's team at the Human Rights Foundation on the same ideas.
So the fundamental principle here is the freedom to transact.
You and I should have the unfettered ability to transact freely for any lawful purpose,
and no one should be able to stop that.
So I was in Parliament like a year and a half ago on this, and then again this week.

(01:06:10):
And there's actually a lot of pushback in Parliament against this.
So not all parliamentarians are completely on board with this.
And the, again, being slightly geeky for a second.
So if a political, sorry, I'm so sorry.
I'm a geek at heart.
So I have to like go down these rabbit holes.
Put your sorries in a sack and throw them into the river.

(01:06:32):
Awesome.
So when a political party elected to the United Kingdom,
they have a manifesto when they're competing.
So when they're going through their hustings and so on,
during the election, they have a series of things, of items that are in the manifesto,
which they are campaigning on. And there's a convention in the United Kingdom, which states

(01:06:53):
that if something is in the manifesto, then the House of Lords won't block it. Now, the way that
laws are made in the United Kingdom, the laws need to pass first the House of Commons,
and then the House of Lords, and then they receive royal assent from the king. Brilliant.
and ridiculous at the same time.

(01:07:13):
Royal percent.
Wow.
No kings.
So interestingly, for this parliament,
a CBDC wasn't in the manifesto.
So the first useful thing to note is that
at least until 2029,
creating a CBDC was not a commitment
of the current government,
which is a good thing.

(01:07:34):
There's a lot of opposition,
particularly in the House of Lords,
towards creating a CBDC,
not least from a former governor
of the Bank of England, who is now a lord, Mervyn King. The Lords released a brilliant
report a couple of years ago, which called CBDCs a solution in search of a problem.
And there's a lot of debate. Actually, if anyone's interested, it's worth reading the

(01:07:55):
transcript of that whole debate, if anyone has any time to do so. There's pushback from
Mervyn King, there's pushback from another lord, Lord Desai. Lord Desai is very worried
about access to cash for the unbanked, for those who can't pass KYC and so on. It's an important
problem. The latest data from our financial regulator in the UK shows that we have at least

(01:08:16):
a million people in the UK who still don't have a bank account, a million adults. So those people
wouldn't be able to pass KYC to get a bank account, can't pass KYC to use the CBDC.
So the first thing to note, I think, is there's a lot of pushback definitely in the Lords,
also in the commons as well and the second key thing to note is that because of that pushback

(01:08:39):
that that creates a reasonable fire break between where we are now and between the creation of a
CBDC because the Bank of England Act the piece of legislation that gives the Bank of England its
powers doesn't allow the Bank of England actually to issue money to the public in the form that a
CBDC would require, and the previous government acknowledged this. In fact, I've got documentation

(01:09:03):
from them that says we wouldn't effectively be able to create a CBDC without passing a new
piece of legislation. And my personal opinion, and I think the law would back this up, is that
it would be very difficult to get that piece of legislation passed in the first place.
And secondly, you have to wonder what on earth is going to be the purpose of a CBDC other than

(01:09:27):
financial repression and you know people don't like that and the more the more that people learn
about the cbdc the less they like it so there's a real need in the uk at the moment and probably
the us as well to let your representatives know that you don't want this and you don't like it
and if people vote for it you're going to vote them out and politicians need to remember that

(01:09:50):
they work for us they don't we as we said earlier that we're a representative democracy
they need to represent our views and our desires in parliament not the other way around
do you i mean i agree the sad thing is it feels like without radical change whether that be in

(01:10:13):
the u.s or in the uk or anywhere that is just something that we continue to say and to shout
from the rooftops, but that never actually really happens because the incentive structure is so
broken. I mean, you know what I mean? And I don't mean to sound doomery, but you get to a point where
you just realize how entrenched these systems are. You know, if you're like you and I, you'd

(01:10:35):
probably say, well, this ultimately comes back to a, you know, a broken incentive system driven by
a broken monetary system. And is there anything that's ever, you know, like what really breaks
this? What, what, you know, uh, what, what stops this train, if anything, you know, and, and, you
know, is, is that something you're, you're hopeful for? You mentioned that the UK is at this inflection
point. Is that an inflection point where there starts to be, uh, enough unrest, enough dissatisfaction

(01:11:01):
on behalf of the populace that you actually see them, you know, start to demand change? Or is this
one of those things where, you know, sometimes I think change is really, uh, real change is forced
from without, it's forced from a parallel system versus happening from within. Because the existing
system doesn't have an incentive to change itself, you know? I think that's very profound and actually

(01:11:26):
fundamentally true. No one who benefits from the existing system will ever try to change it. And
again, drawing from my own personal experience of living in two essentially failed and failing
societies, what you tend to see, and again looking at previous examples, what you tend to see

(01:11:47):
is a regime that hangs on to the advantages of the collapsing system. So in Syria I lived under
the rule of President Assad's father and that was already a failing society and then it became
even more so after Assad Sr. died. But you still have a situation where the regime has enormous

(01:12:10):
power but basic services are no longer functioning and people are beginning to have to take things into their own hands again And it interesting that we beginning to see that in the United Kingdom now I mentioned earlier our roads are not functioning
There's a huge amount of shoplifting in stores.

(01:12:32):
It's very, very difficult to see a doctor.
Not many people are noticing this at the moment,
but fundamentally this is how complex societies collapse.
I know a lot of people may have a fantasy about some kind of,
you know, I don't know, 12 monkey star collapse where you end up, you know, wearing leather
clothes and wandering around on the rooftops and just shooting lions and stuff. That tends

(01:12:56):
not to happen. What you see is a gradual enchickening of everything. You know, your roads
stop functioning. There stops being gas or petrol in your fuel stations. Things get harder to buy
in the stores. Maybe your school stops functioning, so the parents have to pay more to keep the roof

(01:13:17):
fixed or to pay the teacher salaries. And these things happen at a slow pace, but over time,
then you look back 20 years and think, oh shit, 20 years ago I used to be able to see a doctor,
and my roads weren't full of potholes. But now I'm going out and I'm filling in potholes myself
on my road and I'm repairing my own car and I'm brewing biodiesel in my backyard because I've got

(01:13:41):
you know this is how fundamentally how complex societies collapse and you know I don't want to
crow here but I have seen it happen twice before and more so in Zimbabwe you know in Zimbabwe there
was a great meme actually before memes really existed which was you know we'll don't worry we'll
make it will make a plan you'll always make a plan you know everything may go to shit but you're

(01:14:06):
still going to make a plan and you're going to be okay because you know because you're a bore and
it's going to be fine and this i think although a lot of people haven't realized it yet is kind of
where the uk is heading at the moment and a significant reason for this is the gigantic i
mean the dragging it slightly back to bitcoin the gigantic issue that i see personally is that the

(01:14:28):
the liabilities of the state are so great now that it is impossible for the state to fund them
and i know in the united states the data the debt is about 37 trillion in the uk it's about
three trillion already our annual payments not to pay down the debt but just on interest payments
are bigger than defense and bigger than education for us they sit only behind welfare and and

(01:14:54):
pensions and the current rate of acceleration god knows i mean it's not going to be too long
before they're the biggest expense in the country and that that's just unsustainable
goes back to you know lynn alden's nothing stops this train meme because it's like
you know it's which is i think will go down as one of the top uh economic memes not the top

(01:15:17):
economic meme of of this century uh it continues to be proven true but that's the thing
it seems like people who are in government,
well,
I would think that they know this.
They should know this at least.
Like they should see the,
the basically unsustainable path that everyone is on.

(01:15:37):
But I feel like there's just kind of this tacit acknowledgement that like,
well,
you know,
what else are we supposed to do?
Like nothing stops this train.
We literally,
the only thing we can do is continue to debase the currency because anything
else is going to cause total system collapse.
And we don't want that on our watch.
Like at least wait until, you know, we're out and, and, you know, we've, we've gotten
ours from the system and that then we can maybe have some total system collapse.

(01:16:00):
But it seems to me that more and more governments will be forced to come to the realization that
holding Bitcoin as a nation state is probably the only way they're going to be able to actually
have a functioning society in the decades to come.

(01:16:21):
now you can think what you will about you know well i don't think that governments should be
holding bitcoin bitcoin's for the individuals and it's like yeah actually bitcoin is for anyone it
doesn't matter bitcoin doesn't care that's the whole point if bitcoin could care it wouldn't be
bitcoin and then we wouldn't be having this conversation bitcoin is winning this is what
it looks like when something becomes starts becoming a dominant monetary asset and store

(01:16:43):
value and eventually medium exchange a unit of account of course everyone's going to want to use
it because it's the best if it wasn't the best they wouldn't want to use it and again we're back
full circle so putting that aside now i always like to kind of add that disclaimer because some
people think you know again i don't want the u.s government it doesn't matter what you want
doesn't i agree with you you know i i'm i mean my our message into the uk is

(01:17:05):
effectively if you weren't holding the 61 000 bitcoin we would we would be indifferent i don't
i but i completely agree with you i don't want governments to hold it but i think it's inevitable
if Bitcoin is successful money.
Yeah, exactly.
And so, you know, but the thing is,
it seems like, again, most governments,

(01:17:26):
we already know what Germany did with it.
Perhaps the UK is in the same path.
As a policy institute, what are you guys,
like, is this what you're most focused on right now?
Is it some of these other things,
some of these other, you know,
let's say guidances that you've given to the reform party?
where where is your key focus right now what do you all view as the the most important thing for

(01:17:49):
let's say bitcoin bitcoin adoption bitcoin holders whatever it may be in in the uk
good question so we probably have a couple of key limbs so i think first firstly we want to make it
as easy as possible for everyone in the uk to hold use and transact in bitcoin as possible
and so within that are wrapped up ideas around it being cgt exempt if being used for payments

(01:18:15):
a holding period after which it is it becomes cgt exempt and so on and the general point there is
that most economists will agree that a greater velocity of money in the economy is good and that
increases growth that increases enterprise it increases the ability for people to use their
money as they see fit in a productive economy so there are really no downsides in in increasing the

(01:18:38):
velocity of money in the economy. And as a sidebar to that is the point that although the government
has the CGT rules in place, they don't seem to get a huge amount of money out of that, mainly
because either people hodl or they don't declare. So, you know, they may have a CGT rule in place,
but they're not getting any tax out of it. Second is around the freedom to transact, and that ties

(01:19:02):
in with the fact that no one should be denied access to banking services and access to exchanges
if they want to move money from fiat to bitcoin or bitcoin to fiat or have their account closed
because they happen to have transferred money to coinbase or to coin corner for example
actually shout out to coin corner they did ask a question underneath your tweet

(01:19:24):
coin corner are obviously my favorite bitcoin exchange in the uk so you know shout out to
molly and her and her question there um and then thirdly is is really the fact that um bitcoin uh
is obviously currently held by the government they need to learn how to use it and to to do so on
behalf of the nation an additional point is and you mentioned curtailment earlier which is an

(01:19:48):
interesting point for the uk uh maybe worth spending a second on that yeah we have a large
number of renewable energy generation plants in the UK and I'm sure you know and your listeners
will know that an interesting thing about renewable generation is that it's obviously
an intermittent supply and sometimes it produces more electricity than the grid needs and sometimes

(01:20:11):
more electricity than the grid can take. You can either divert that to battery storage or
curtail it which is effectively when the plants get paid to spin idly or to turn off.
at the moment that uh curtailment cost in the uk is paid by by me basically by all of the users of
electricity it's added to our bills it's one of the reasons we have the highest industrial

(01:20:35):
electricity costs in the world and one of the highest domestic costs in the world
and as you know if you have really high power costs that has an impact on literally everything
else in your country you're not going to develop new steel plants you're not going to build new
weapons, you're not going to develop AI, you're not going to build new steel, new factories, new
nuclear, you're not effectively high energy costs throttle everything else. There are no countries

(01:20:59):
in the world which have a low amount of energy usage and a high amount of and a high standard
of living basically. So it's a real problem and the Labour government seem completely resistant
to engaging with us on this particular point.
One of our contacts, an ex-journalist from Coindesk,

(01:21:20):
he spoke directly to Ed Miliband on this particular issue
around the integration of Bitcoin miners
with renewable energy generation plants
and how they could provide a commercial solution
for that wasted power.
Miliband shut him down and said,
but Bitcoin is useless.
So that's the kind of attitude we have
in the government at the moment.
that that's just so frustrating because here you've got this problem which everyone would

(01:21:46):
acknowledge is a problem it's costing however my like the recent figures i saw was like over a
billion over a billion a year it's a lot of money and that's being borne by the taxpayers and
consumers of energy as you said throttle like throttling the economy you have this solution
sitting right there. You have this incredible technology that can literally take all of that

(01:22:10):
energy that you're otherwise just wasting and turn it into the hardest money that has ever existed.
It's like magic.
And instead you say, well, but it's not good for anything. It's good for the literal problem that
you have right here. This thing we're discussing. It's good. I mean, it's good for many other things,
but it literally solves your problem. And then to say, no, sorry, it's just not good for anything.

(01:22:33):
Like that is truly like it's sad.
It's sad to see that.
You have a solution staring you in the face and you say, no, sorry, I just can't see what it'd be good for.
No, this is – I mean it's to your point earlier.
You have some empathy with people who may not understand it.
You know, you and I, I didn't understand it when we first encountered it.

(01:22:54):
I had many touch points before I finally took another look at it.
And, you know, my eventual touch point was why hasn't this thing died yet?
I thought it was going to die like five years ago.
Why is it still around?
And that was purely in the spirit of mild curiosity.
It's the lack of...

(01:23:15):
And as you know what, I don't have a good answer to this.
It's the complete lack of curiosity that I've completely failed to understand.
And perhaps it's just because you and I are very, very different people
from the kind of people who go into government.
Maybe they genuinely are so different that we couldn't get on with them at a party.
Do you think we'll start to see around the world, let's say, but maybe specifically in the UK here, do you think we'll start to see a lot more?

(01:23:44):
There's a new generation coming up, right?
The old guard, what is it?
Progress advances one funeral at a time.
Just to clarify for the UK censors out there, I'm not suggesting violence.
I'm suggesting peaceful and natural cause-based passing on.
just want to be a max blank quote originally yeah yeah no don't worry don't worry don't worry about

(01:24:07):
the sensors it that's that's a legitimate astrophysicist talking there okay so they'll
let that one slide just wanted to make sure just just fall back on plank yeah that's that's perfect
but you know do we start to see does the is that really what happens like this change that we're
talking about this acceptance of of of bitcoin is the only thing that's going to save your nation

(01:24:29):
whatever nation that may be, the only thing that's going to save you as an individual,
the only thing that's going to save your household. Is that something that has to just happen
naturally through the passing of time? As these folks who learned about Bitcoin too late in life,
and to your point earlier said, I hate that, whatever that is, it's new and it's scary and
I don't like it. Is that the only way that we get forward? Do we start to see a new political class

(01:24:52):
come up and a new economic class come up that are, you know, Bitcoin, uh, Bitcoin native, uh,
you know, or close to it. Like this youngest generation is now, but we've got a lot of
hardcore Bitcoiners out there who dislike the state and want nothing to do with politics.
Uh, but there's gotta be a lot of them who say, you know what? Somebody has to step up. I just

(01:25:13):
need to like, I need to go and do this. Like, that's the only way that things are going to
change. Or is that just a futile endeavor? And again, we just need to let Bitcoin do its thing
from the side, let the existing system implode, come down in ashes, and a new phoenix rises from
those ashes down the line? It's such a complex question. I know, I'm sorry. I laid a big one up
there. No, no, it's a really good question. And again, I'm not sure I'm going to have a clear

(01:25:36):
answer to that, because there are so many different pieces to unpack there. I mean,
one is, addressing your last point, are we going to see more people rising up who want to do
something about it. I hope so. One problem we've had in the UK is, as I mentioned, there are 7
million of us in the UK, but not many of us are out there in public. And I have to say, I was a

(01:25:59):
non for a really long time, and I'm still uncomfortable about being out in public. And
my aim over the longer term is to make myself irrelevant and to disappear once again into
anonymity. I don't particularly enjoy being public. I'm naturally quite an introvert,

(01:26:20):
and I'm not necessarily doing this because I enjoy it. I'm doing it because I think it's important.
And also no one else was doing it. You know, we had a lot of shitcoiner advocacy in the UK. We
didn't have any Bitcoin advocacy until we started this group. So for whatever reason, I feel it
needed to be done and i hope at some point i'm going to be able to pass it on to someone else

(01:26:43):
hopefully some of the seven million that we know that we have in the uk are we willing to
to step up and and to do this to to your point around realizing that you need to do something
i really hope that is going to happen uh obviously every podcast needs to have some kind of reference
to the to the roman empire um naturally all that well actually being completely technical this is

(01:27:08):
this is pre-empire. This is to the Roman Republic. Full disclosure, I studied classics at university,
so I have a certain affinity for this. Do you think about the Roman Empire or the
Roman Republic like many times a day then? Not just once. Yes, many, many times a day. Okay.
Not just once. Have you heard of Cincinnatus or Quincinnatus, depending on your pronunciation?

(01:27:28):
Yes. Yeah. So he's held up as one of the prime examples of Roman honor. So the Romans had an
interesting system. Pre-Empire, they had a consular system where they would have two,
effectively two heads of state who are elected for one year at a time, and they would serve as
dual consuls, one domestic and one foreign. So one would be responsible for the outer reaches

(01:27:52):
of the empire and the other would govern at home in Rome. But in times of crisis, they could set
aside the consular system and appoint a dictator for a short period of time, who would then step
down after the period of crisis was over. So the interesting thing about Julius Caesar was he was
appointed dictator for life, which eventually became imperator, general, or emperor, under

(01:28:14):
Augustus, primus interpatris, first among equals. So Quincanatus is held up as this incredible
example of Roman virtue. He had retired from public life, and he was running his farm,
and the republic had hit a period of crisis, and they came to him, and they said,
we want to appoint you dictator and he agreed to come and and serve as dictator for a short period

(01:28:38):
of time and then when the crisis was over he set aside his office he resigned his roles he went
back to his farm so he he's held up as this incredible and you know he he's an aspirational
figure for me that that's the that's the kind of person i think we we should aspire to be
you know there's this there's a job that needs to be done and some of us need need to step up and do

(01:28:58):
it and then when it's done you step back and you vanish that that that that's kind of what where i
would like us all to be but you know that there are a lot more there are a lot more kink and arty
out there and i'd like to exhort them to come forward and be be part of this because i think
it's it's incredibly important and i'm fundamentally an optimist i don't i don't i don't think that

(01:29:23):
collapse is inevitable i i don't believe that you you need to you know do not go gentle into
that good night you know rage rage against the dying of the light don't just sit back and act
and and say that you know decline is inevitable we have agency we can go other i mean your your
entire nation is an example of this to the rest of us you know you don't need to sit back and let

(01:29:47):
the king tell you what to do although technically in the uk we do um but no you you you i was talking
about this with peter the last time i spoke with him you know you you can start small and for me
bitcoin is both a top-down movement and a bottom-up movement so individual people realizing
the government isn't going to come and save them and preserving their wealth in bitcoin

(01:30:10):
is a valid and valuable thing that you can do but at the same time we should also engage with our
elected representatives and try and educate them to understand the same thing. I jotted down
something while you were speaking earlier, you know, why don't our elected officials see this?
And I think for some of us in the UK, the problem is solely talking about Bitcoin.

(01:30:33):
If you ask them, would you like, we have this sovereign debt problem, nothing stops this train,
we should hedge ourselves with a pristine form of collateral that no other country can debase
or dilute without mentioning Bitcoin.
They say, well, that sounds brilliant.
Well, let's get some of that pristine collateral.

(01:30:54):
And then once the idea is planted,
then the specifics kind of solve themselves.
I like that approach.
It's like, just get them to agree and then mention,
it's the foot in the door versus the door in the face of Bitcoin.
Because there is a lot of baggage, for better or worse,
that comes along that's associated with Bitcoin.
there's been a lot of uh you know there's been a lot of terrible reporting on it for many years

(01:31:20):
some of that's improving it's been a lot of uh you know just let's say bad information out there
and yes there's uh you know do your own research like sure but a lot of the folks that are actually
in charge of making the laws don't do their own research they rely on other people to do it for
them and so they need to be presented with it and maybe you need to you know foot in the door of

(01:31:41):
and just a sly roundabout way, let's say.
Get that Trojan horse through the door.
Yeah, if it worked for Hayek,
then it could work for us as well.
Exactly.
Well, Freddie, I want to be conscious of your time here
because I know you have a stop.
Is there anything we didn't get a chance to cover?

(01:32:02):
We've gone down several different rabbit holes.
Anything else either with your work at the Policy Institute
or just generally that you wanted to make sure we covered?
Or did we do an okay job?
I think I'm pretty happy, actually.
We covered a lot of stuff that I wasn't expecting to cover.
I didn't expect to talk about the later Roman Republic,

(01:32:22):
but I'm glad that we got a chance to do that.
And maybe some people will dig up the history of Kink and Artus.
I hope so.
I hope so.
Where do you want to send people?
So I'll link everything in the show notes as well so people can go check out the work you're doing.
And is there anything that they can do to, you know, if you are a UK citizen or just a citizen of somewhere else in the world, what can people do to support the work that you guys continue to do?

(01:32:52):
You're very kind.
So you'll have a link to our website.
That's BitcoinPolicy.uk.
I'm most active on Twitter or X.
I'm just at Freddy New.
So most of the work we publish, I will also publish on my own personal Twitter as well.
If you are in the UK, keep an eye on our website, particularly the work portfolio.
So we are, as I mentioned earlier, we are shortly going to be having some template letters for you to reach out to your MPs,

(01:33:18):
whether it be in terms of understanding Bitcoin or financial freedom or pushing back against CBDCs.
We built an API that will enable you to pull up your representative's email very easily
and very quickly and easily copy that template and send it into your MP.
And like I said earlier, top-down and bottom-up.
so the top-down movements MPs need to understand there's a big voter block here

(01:33:40):
and there's a lot of us and we're motivated and we care a lot
and eventually this will become an election issue for them.
That's probably my main ask.
So thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Absolutely. I hope that we can do this in person sometime.
It was a good opportunity to meet you in the flesh in Vegas.
And yeah, I'm going to be in our own nation's capital here.

(01:34:04):
not that Vegas is the capital of any, you know, but just speaking of policy stuff,
because our U.S. BDC Policy Institute is doing a summit here.
I think it's next week, 25th, 26th.
We're supposed to be coming to that.
Very sadly, I can't make it.
It's my last week in my fiat job.
Ah, okay.
Very sadly.

(01:34:25):
Does that mean you're moving to Bitcoin-focused full-time or another fiat job as well?
This is a bit of a spoiler, actually.
Yeah, I am moving full-time into Bitcoin.
All right.
From August.
Wow. Well, congratulations then. That's fantastic.
Thank you.
I'll be joining you.
Wow. Wow. Big moment.
But now I'm so much more bullish on Bitcoin policy in the UK succeeding.

(01:34:50):
Mate, thank you.
Well, look, I've been a fan and an admirer of your podcast for a long time and also your videos.
So thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
The pleasure was mine and I look forward to doing it again.
hopefully with some great updates about shockingly positive advancements in the UK's stance on Bitcoin policy.

(01:35:11):
I'm an optimist as well.
Brilliant.
There we go.
Amen to that.
Thanks so much, Freddie.
Thanks again.
All the best.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.

(01:35:32):
Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet.
Find me on Noster at primal.net slash Walker and this podcast at primal.net slash Titcoin.
On X, YouTube and Rumble, just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Titcoin podcast.

(01:35:56):
Head to the show notes to grab sponsor links, head to substack.com slash at Walker America to get episodes emailed to you and head to Bitcoin podcast.net for everything else.
Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast.

(01:36:18):
Until next time, stay free.
you

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POLITICAL EVOLUTION & BITCOIN POLICY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM | Freddie New

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}POLITICAL EVOLUTION & BITCOIN POLICY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM | Freddie New