0:00

Why I feel

0:02

perhaps Bitcoin and its properties appeal

0:05

more to me than to some

0:07

other people. I was lucky to have strange

0:09

experiences as a kid, which I feel

0:12

made the advantages of a money which you

0:14

can carry in your head or which you

0:16

can bring with you when you cross a border.

0:20

Or if the worst happened and you just had to drop

0:22

everything and go, what could you take with you? Hello

0:24

there, how are you all doing? Are you having a good week? I am heading out

0:26

to Miami on Friday. I cannot wait to see you all. Talk a little

0:29

bit of Bitcoin

0:29

and hang out. We've

0:34

also got our live event now. We've got Lynn Alden,

0:37

Jeff Snyder, Troy Cross and Harry Suttock for

0:39

a live WBD podcast recording. If

0:42

you want to get yourself a ticket, head over to whatbitcoindid.com

0:45

and click on WBD live. Anyway,

0:47

welcome to the What Bitcoin Did podcast, which is brought

0:49

to you by Iris Energy, the largest

0:51

NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100%

0:53

renewable energy. I'm your

0:56

host, Peter McCormack, and today I have Freddie

0:58

Niu on the show for possibly the poshest

0:59

WBD ever. Now

1:02

Freddie has recently co-founded Bitcoin Policy

1:04

UK, and he is going to be spearheading

1:06

this nonprofit trying to educate and evangelize

1:09

Bitcoin to politicians and policymakers here

1:11

in the UK. After spending time with

1:13

David Zell and some of the other people working

1:15

with the Bitcoin Policy Institute in the US, it

1:18

has become abundantly clear how important

1:20

this role is. So I'm very glad someone is finally

1:22

going to take up this role in the UK

1:24

and try and make a difference here. So a massive

1:27

shout out to Freddie and for all of his team for

1:29

what they're doing. I will definitely be keeping tabs on

1:31

this and supporting them any way I can. Anyway,

1:33

in this show, we get into Freddie's background, how he

1:35

grew up in Zimbabwe, and how his family escaped

1:38

hyperinflation in a very unique way.

1:40

It's a mad, mad story. I hope you enjoy this. If

1:42

you have any questions about this or anything else, you know you can

1:44

drop me an email. It's hello at whatbitcoindid.com.

1:50

How many interviews have you done? I

1:53

have not done any for about 20 years. So

1:55

not on this subject at all. No. How

1:58

old are you? Yeah,

2:00

younger than me. When are you 44? November. Just

2:03

after my birthday. It's about a year older. Yeah,

2:05

we're both 70s babies. Yeah, 78.

2:09

We got to live through the brilliance of the 80s. 80s

2:13

as a little kid and in the 90s as

2:16

thinking we're becoming adults. Pre-internet. I'm

2:19

indoctrinating my kids. We're working them through

2:21

Back to the Future. We're starting on Indiana

2:23

Jones. Oh my God, you'd be recording

2:26

by the way. Yeah. Amazing, we'll just carry

2:28

on. Okay, Back to the

2:30

Future. I've done all three. Yeah,

2:32

third one's shit. I have a

2:34

soft spot for all of them. There's the, but you know,

2:37

third one is definitely the least good. Yeah,

2:40

I

2:42

think when I was a kid, the second one was the best, but it's

2:44

the one that's aged the worst. Yeah,

2:47

I think that, well, the sexual morays in the whole Back

2:49

to the Future thing is not something I noticed at the time. But

2:52

going back in time and then getting hit on by your mum

2:55

is- Is a bit weird. Yeah, it's more

2:57

noticeable as an adult as well. I think the first

2:59

one's brilliant. Raiders of the Lost Ark

3:01

is my brother's favorite film of all time. Also,

3:04

I was so disappointed at the end of that one because you remember

3:06

when the Ark opens and it all goes

3:08

pear shaped. That scared the shit out

3:10

of me for the longest time.

3:12

And then I watched it again with my kids and they

3:14

just didn't care. It's because

3:16

things have changed. So do you remember when

3:18

you first saw Alien and the Alien

3:20

comes out the stomach? Yeah. It was

3:22

like terrifying. Absolutely. In space. I

3:25

remember when we went to Thailand, my

3:28

daughter must've been about

3:30

eight years old. And she was like, can

3:32

I watch the Alien film? I was like, no. She was like, please.

3:35

I was like, no. Anyway,

3:37

she put it on and I didn't realize. I looked over at

3:39

you and I said, you're watching the Alien film. She said, yeah.

3:42

And it was literally that big. I said, you need

3:44

to turn this off. And it bursts out of the

3:46

stomach

3:47

and goes, yum, yum, yum, yum, across the room. But

3:49

it looks so shit and she's

3:51

cracking up. She thinks it's fucking hilarious.

3:54

That's heart breaking. Yeah. I think it's

3:56

things just aren't,

3:58

cameras have moved on, especially. effects

4:00

are moved on. The shooting monster

4:02

isn't as scary anymore. My children watch too much stuff.

4:05

It's just... Templar Doom or Raiders

4:08

of the Lost Ark? I probably could have

4:10

Raiders. I like

4:12

the horror in Templar Doom. I dig the Qalimah,

4:15

grabbing the guys' homos.

4:18

You know, what's his name? Short stuff?

4:21

Yes. You know, he's the guy who just won the Oscar.

4:23

I know. I didn't know until I

4:26

read about it. Yeah. So he's... Are we

4:28

talking in foreign language? We're famous. What

4:31

was the film? No, no, we're Gen X. What was

4:33

the film I couldn't believe you hadn't seen and I made things

4:35

watch? I think it was Back to the Future. I watched it. Back to the Future. Did you like it?

4:37

Yeah, I watched it on a plane. It was actually pretty good. It was better than I thought it

4:39

was going to be. Yeah, Back to the Future's a good film.

4:41

That's the greatest review it's ever had. Back to the Future,

4:44

better than I thought it was going to be. Back to the

4:46

Future's an incredible film. I

4:49

think the second one as well, because you

4:51

realise they reshot all the pieces of the first

4:53

film with the second guy back in

4:55

time and then that just blows your mind. You think, I

4:57

assume he was... It depends

4:59

on whether you ascribe to the first Terminator's linear

5:02

theory of time or the second one's loop

5:04

theory. Maybe

5:06

that's the long way around. One of the terminators has got

5:08

one theory of time and the other one's got another. Oh,

5:10

hold on. Terminator 1. The first

5:13

one's the loop theory because he'd come back. Yeah.

5:16

Kyle Reese had come back and he'd already come back to become

5:18

John Connor's father.

5:20

Yes. And then no matter what Skynet did, there

5:22

was always going to happen in that loop. Yes, I remember now.

5:25

And then in T2, they suddenly realised, aren't we changing

5:27

things now while we're talking? When

5:29

they joined up Miles, the man was the addictive,

5:32

responsible is Miles Bennett Dyson. I

5:35

love T2. The best

5:37

film. I loved it. I remember because that

5:40

came out of time. Have

5:42

you ever seen the South Park movie? Yes,

5:44

of a bigger, longer run cut. Yes, but do

5:46

you know at the very start, they're excited and go to the cinema.

5:49

I had the same experience with Terminator 2 because

5:51

I must have been 13. 1991, July 4th, it came

5:53

out. 13, yeah,

5:56

you got bloody hell. That's weird. Sorry.

5:59

So I was 13.

5:59

My favorite

6:02

band in the world was Guns N' Roses. And

6:04

so the trailer comes out and they're playing You Could Be

6:06

Mine from usual illusion two.

6:09

And there's like explosions, the truck goes

6:11

off the bridge and I was like, fuck, we gotta go and see this. So

6:13

me and all my mates, we went down there. You

6:15

got in? No, there were like four tickets

6:17

for Terminator 2. And they're like, how

6:20

old are you? We're like 15, have you got any ID? No.

6:23

And we can go in. Actually, we might not even got asked for ID,

6:25

they might've just said no. Because yeah,

6:27

that was the days where you didn't really carry ID as a 13

6:30

year old. And so now I didn't get to go

6:32

into the cinema and see it. I wouldn't see something really shit

6:34

instead like The Little Mermaid. I

6:38

know

6:39

that was a different story. No, we used to have a cinema

6:41

in Bedford, that was it. There was a cinema in

6:43

Bedford, you used to have two screens

6:45

and you'd go up, there's a beautiful cinema, you'd go

6:47

up a set of stairs and

6:50

you take a right to the screen two

6:52

and a left to screen one. Screen one was unbelievable.

6:54

It had two tiers in the cinema,

6:57

big amphitheatre. Anyway, if

6:59

you wanted to go and see the adult film, you'd

7:01

pay for the kids film and go in. So Flatliners

7:04

was on, I was 12, couldn't get

7:06

in. The Little Mermaid was on,

7:08

so I paid for The Little Mermaid but just walked into Flatliners.

7:11

That was a good old days. Coming, I

7:13

haven't let my kids watch T2 yet,

7:15

but that's gonna be a special experience. How

7:17

old are they? Oh, they're 10 and eight. Yeah,

7:20

yeah, it's 10 year old, a boy. Oh no,

7:23

both girls. Okay. I can

7:25

already do the lines, you know, if I say to them,

7:26

I look up at the sky and say, there's a storm coming and

7:29

they'll turn on and say, I know. Have

7:32

they watched Die Hard? Not yet,

7:34

but that's on Christmas movie this coming year. So

7:36

the interesting difference with girls over

7:38

boys is girls love horror

7:40

films.

7:42

So my son and his mates didn't care,

7:45

they wanted to watch adventure films. My daughter, she's

7:47

now 13, or they want to watch his horror films.

7:50

And the worst horror, literally

7:52

the gross. Yeah, so there's

7:54

something, they had them all over for sleep

7:56

the other night. She was like, can we watch this, like

7:58

Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

7:59

I was like, no, absolutely

8:02

not. And then they want to watch some other film.

8:04

And I read the description. It was like,

8:06

demonic acts

8:09

murderer comes back from hell

8:11

to mutilate

8:13

babysitters, some bullshit. I was like, what the fuck? That's

8:15

all they want to watch. It's funny. And my wife said the same thing

8:17

when she was young. She absolutely loved the child's play films.

8:20

Oh, yeah. Oh, where is he? In the

8:22

back. Is he? I've got a great story.

8:24

I've got a fucking brilliant, do you want to grab him? Yeah.

8:27

I've got a brilliant child's play story. So

8:30

my daughters into horror films, I was like, you need

8:32

to watch child's play. I was like, that was my film

8:34

as a kid, right? And she watched

8:36

it. She loved it. And when I was out in,

8:39

where was I? I was in Austin. And

8:41

they had one of those stores which had

8:43

all film memorability,

8:46

posters and things from films

8:48

and stuff. And I walked past the window. There's a fucking chucky

8:51

doll in the window. I'm like, I'm having that. Fuck. Yeah.

8:53

Did you meet last year at some Miami 2022,

8:56

Kyra Gardner? Did

8:58

you bump into her? She was at the whale party. What?

9:01

She, her dad did all the special effects

9:04

of the chucky films. And she's just made a short film.

9:06

Oh my God, that's horrific. Isn't it horrific? Anyway,

9:08

so this is the mad.

9:12

OK, so this is the maddest story, right? So I buy

9:14

the doll and I bring it back from my daughter.

9:17

And she's like, that's freaky. She loves it, but

9:19

hates it. And so we go through this process

9:21

of like hiding it in each other's stuff. Like

9:23

I put it in a school bag, she put it in my bed. And

9:26

he said like two things. And

9:28

then about six months after I bought him, he started

9:30

saying new stuff. Oh. Yeah. You're

9:33

joking. No. Kill my knife.

9:36

I'll be back. I'll always

9:38

come back. So that's what he said. He said that. OK. I

9:41

hope I have a problem with killing. Didn't

9:43

say that. I want a little killing of him. What's

9:45

wrong with that? Yeah. I

9:48

needed that. And you still keep it in your house. He

9:51

never said that. So he never said, hi, I'm chucky, I want to play.

9:53

So I was really pissed off about him not saying that.

9:56

So I was like, that's the one thing you want him to say. Yeah,

9:58

and he passed six months in. He started. say new things.

10:00

And I was like, okay, either one,

10:03

this doll is actually possessed, which is freaky,

10:06

or two, they've put a time

10:08

delay on the things he says, which really fucks

10:10

with you. That would be really funny if

10:12

they did that. That really fucks with you. Sorry.

10:14

Anyway, so this is your wife's favorite. She

10:17

loved these. She loved those. And yeah,

10:19

so in Miami last year, I met this

10:21

director whose dad had done all the

10:23

special effects for Chucky. And then she

10:26

had, I think she actually just finally released

10:28

it, which is great news. Because

10:31

she's really talented. She's

10:33

released a documentary about living with Chucky.

10:36

You should watch it. So that's out? Yeah, I think

10:38

it's out. Oh, I need to see that. I

10:40

think, I can't remember the name of the film, but her name's

10:42

Kyra Gardner. So I recently

10:45

watched a documentary

10:47

about the making of Nightmare

10:49

on Elm Street.

10:51

So they have not aged too well.

10:53

But the original one is brilliant. The original

10:56

one's really, really good still. Cause it's just

10:58

straight in there. I don't, like horror

11:00

films now, it's always the same. It's like two blow. Well, essentially

11:02

it's usually three guys, two girls. One

11:04

of the guys is a virgin, so doesn't get to talk to

11:06

anyone. One of them's a jock. He's not dying. Yeah.

11:09

And him and his girlfriend always get to sneak off and

11:11

have a snog. You know, they're going to snag. And

11:13

then there's like the nerdy kind of couple who kind

11:16

of like, it's literally the same set up every

11:18

time. Then they go somewhere and then they're drinking.

11:20

And it's like, it's

11:21

such a formula. But do you remember

11:23

the original Nightmare on Elm Street? It's fucking

11:25

terrifying. It started with murder straight away,

11:27

like instant death. And, um, and

11:30

there was, so they struggled to get financing

11:32

for that film for a long time.

11:35

They couldn't get it financed. They eventually did. And it's one

11:37

of the most successful franchises ever. Have

11:39

you seen it? I have seen it, but so

11:41

long ago, I can't really remember. I mean, there was like six

11:43

and then there was like the follow up Freddy's nightmares.

11:47

Yeah. The last one was not that long ago. Yeah. But

11:49

it, you know, there's a boomer kind of film. Do

11:53

you have a favorite film?

11:55

I probably got to be T two if I was put

11:57

on the spot. Oh really? I've never seen it. I've

12:00

never seen T2. I've never seen Terminator 1 either. Ooh,

12:02

ooh, ooh. Please watch them in the right order. Yeah, okay.

12:05

Do it spoiler free. Watch the first Terminator and

12:07

the second one without knowing anything about it. I'll download

12:09

and watch them on the playback. You know what?

12:11

I don't mind the third one. It's not brilliant,

12:14

but it's not terrible. I'm with you actually. Also,

12:16

the ending of the third one. It's brilliant. I

12:19

don't want to spoil it down.

12:20

Yeah. That rescues the hot. Suddenly

12:22

you think, oh my god, what have they done there?

12:24

Yeah, so it makes it all make sense. When

12:27

he's gone later, we'll do the interpretation.

12:29

I imagine it'll be the same. I even didn't

12:31

mind the resurrection one. That was okay,

12:34

the Christian Bale one.

12:35

I thought that wasn't too bad.

12:37

I mean, look, I've got to lay my cards on the table. I've

12:39

never seen a Terminator film I haven't enjoyed. Although

12:42

if you're being a purist, I go for the first two.

12:45

Yeah, first two. First one's brilliant.

12:48

Second one is uniquely brilliant

12:50

because the effects, I mean, the effects now look shit. But

12:52

when you got shot and then you got a molten chest,

12:55

it was like, what? How did they do that? I

12:57

mean, also the story of the second

13:00

one is so powerful. I

13:02

try to base all my parenting around that scene in the

13:04

desert when, seriously, you know, watching John with

13:06

the machine was suddenly so clear that

13:08

the Terminator would never come home drunk and hit

13:10

him. It would never, never happen. How old were

13:12

you when The Matrix came out?

13:13

What year was that, 1990? Do

13:16

you remember it coming out and watching it? No, I don't remember

13:18

it coming out, but I've obviously watched it. Did you watch it quite

13:20

young and think it was like effects or unbelievable? Yeah,

13:22

yeah. Yeah, so that was our Terminator. I've not watched it

13:25

back in ages. I've watched it back in ages. It holds up. I've

13:27

watched it again last year and it's still great. Yeah.

13:32

Did you see The New Matrix? Yeah, I did. It

13:34

was just horrifically bad. I

13:36

haven't seen it yet. I thought the second and

13:38

third Matrix were both pretty bad as well. They were. Basically,

13:41

every time you wanted them in The Matrix, every

13:43

time they were in that

13:45

underground place, it was just fucking shit.

13:47

Really piss me off. Now, ET is my favourite film. I

13:50

love ET. That was the first 80s film we showed

13:52

the daughter of my daughters. That was

13:54

a weird film.

13:56

Everyone seemed to see it on pirate before ET

13:58

actually came out. Did

14:01

they? Yeah. That's funny. E.T.

14:04

So in the olden days... Do you buy it off your ice

14:06

cream? No, in the olden days. What you used to have,

14:09

my dad will remember this, you used to have a guy who would come

14:11

around your house with a suitcase.

14:13

You'd open the suitcase and you would rent a video from him

14:15

and he would come back the next night and get all the details. Rent

14:17

like a pirated video? No, dad,

14:20

were they pirates? Remember the old guy with the suitcase

14:22

used to come around? Yeah, it's pirates. So

14:24

yeah, but literally you're walking

14:26

your house with a suitcase, it's a big suitcase, fill

14:28

it up and it was like a mini blockbuster

14:31

and you go, I want that one. The original pirate

14:33

bay. Yeah, and I remember one time we

14:35

all wanted stand by me, you've seen stand by me. Is

14:38

that the... Stephen King. Yeah,

14:41

Stephen King. Have you seen it? I think

14:43

so.

14:43

You've got to see it if you haven't. I'm like you

14:45

with names, I can't remember films. So

14:49

we got stand by me, we always wanted it, my dad

14:51

got it, but my dad watched it first and

14:53

we all wanted to see it and he said, no, it's too much swearing, you

14:55

can't watch it. I

14:57

was like... They riffed on the

15:00

pirate stuff we were just talking about in... Did you see

15:03

that series called White Gold? Yes. That

15:05

was good. That was good. But do you remember

15:08

one of the characters was pirating ET

15:10

up in the office? Oh, you're right. Yeah,

15:12

so...

15:13

There you go. Oh my God, that was true.

15:15

Yeah, no, it was true. So I remember

15:17

it because I remember when it got released, I was

15:19

like, hold on, I saw this a year ago. Everyone

15:22

had seen it pirated. There he is. Do

15:25

you know the story of the... It was the ET computer

15:27

game that never got

15:29

released. It's in landfill in Nevada or somewhere.

15:32

So what happened? They made... You

15:34

should look it up. So they made an ET game for Atari. It

15:37

was probably one of the most expensive games to make ever.

15:40

Something stupid like that. When they eventually released it, it

15:42

was so shit.

15:44

It was... No, it was going for release. And

15:47

they were so embarrassed, they basically wouldn't

15:49

release it and then put it all in a landfill so no one

15:51

could get it. And then someone went and dug it up

15:53

so you can... It's quite rare. You

15:55

can go first. No way.

15:57

Most gas than Bitcoin. Yeah,

16:00

all these films. I think that Danny... It looks

16:02

really shit. It is really shit. Danny Ants in

16:04

Gremlins? No. But

16:06

why would I have? Because it's brilliant.

16:09

I've seen films perform my time there, pretty much. Yeah,

16:11

but is that actually a good film? Gremlins is incredible. Gremlins

16:13

is incredible. Sometimes it's nice to go back and, you know,

16:15

see... It's like you give books 20 years to...

16:19

Yeah, exactly. Are they going to survive

16:21

the test of time? There's a website called

16:23

Ruthless Reviews. I'm trying to work my way through.

16:26

It's absolutely freaking hilarious reviews of all these bad

16:28

80s action films. Then they have a categorisation,

16:30

you know, entire

16:33

film described in fewer words than are in this sentence.

16:37

And then, like, Top Gun is... Hot,

16:39

sweaty studs, take showers, fly planes. Are

16:42

you Top Gun was

16:44

good? Yeah, it was, it was actually. I had a film block

16:46

before the podcast. It

16:49

was called Fuck Off Film. Oh, yeah, I've heard you talk about that. Yeah,

16:51

it's called Fuck Off Film. And

16:53

I used to do really offensive film reviews. And then

16:56

I used to interview the last guy in the credits. Oh,

16:58

yeah, I listened. One of your shows,

17:00

you spent three quarters of it talking about movies.

17:04

Yeah, that'd have been normal. I'm so sorry. That

17:06

was in there.

17:07

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was in there, wasn't it? Yeah,

17:09

he's going to read the seven projects. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:12

I really enjoyed that show, but... There's

17:14

a lot of films. Well, I like films as well as Bitcoins.

17:17

Well, so the funny thing is, when we do something like this, what,

17:19

we can go in 10 minutes?

17:21

I'm so sorry. You

17:23

know you haven't got the time on that. Yeah, we don't need

17:25

that. Oh, we had it yesterday. Yeah. When

17:31

we do stuff like this, you get people

17:33

who write in, they'll be like, oh my God, that's amazing. I loved it.

17:36

Do more non-Bitcoin stuff. And then you get half the

17:38

other people going, but can go, I need to listen

17:40

to you from Bitcoin.

17:41

Cut all this other shit, or they'll put a little

17:44

timestamp in YouTube. Bitcoin

17:46

starts here. Bitcoin starts here. So maybe

17:48

we should do like 30 seconds of Bitcoin. And then you want to thank you

17:50

for having me on. Of course, man. I'm

17:53

not sure where you are with your drink at the moment, but I

17:55

wanted to... I'm back drinking. Oh, you're

17:57

excellent. Just a little thank you for having me

17:59

on.

17:59

That goes very nicely with barbecue

18:02

brisket. Burn ends, blended

18:04

whiskey, small batch, smooth, oh

18:07

wow. That looks cool. That is very, that's

18:09

very kind. Thank you. Thank you.

18:12

Oh, I'm gonna have to smell it. If

18:16

you've got some like slow cooked. Wow.

18:25

That tastes like a blend of bourbon

18:28

and scotch. Oh, is it? It

18:30

is, it's quite unusual. I've not had, given to

18:32

me by a Norwegian friend originally. And

18:34

then I

18:36

loved it and got a lot more. Peter

18:38

didn't show you finished single malt scotch. Oh,

18:40

interesting. Yeah, I'm more

18:43

of a bourbon, like I find scotch a bit too

18:45

harsh, but I do like bourbon, but

18:47

that's, you know what I'm trying. I don't like whiskey.

18:50

I know you don't. But you have, you always end up having one when

18:52

we have that.

18:53

Do you have a bourbon with like barbecue?

18:55

Oh, I like that though. Yeah. That's

18:58

because that. It's like a bit sweeter.

19:00

Yeah, exactly. I think it gets the sweetness from the Tennessee mash.

19:02

And then. Do you wanna join? Yeah, go on.

19:05

We can get glasses if you want. Let's just get fucking back. What's the

19:07

time? We could get the little

19:09

glasses. Yeah, back in the not drinking

19:12

phase. No, we can't start drinking. We can have a little one.

19:14

Should I get glasses? Yeah, let's get glasses. So

19:17

we met up in Scotland. I forgot we met up in Scotland.

19:19

I've got my Bedford house over there. I bought it from your

19:21

daughter actually. Oh, I just thought that was like

19:23

some of our merch line. No, that's mine.

19:25

Oh, fantastic. I got lots of smiles

19:27

on the train. Yes, you

19:29

would have come in to Bedford. No, we're like, why has it got Bedford

19:31

out? We're about to win the league.

19:34

I know, I follow your updates. It's very exciting.

19:36

Yeah, we're gonna win the league on, I think on Monday.

19:39

So we could have, there's

19:41

winning it and there's mathematically winning it. So three

19:43

more points we've won it,

19:44

but there is a scenario where if we lose every game

19:46

and the other team wins every game and they turn over a 40 goal

19:49

difference that they can win the league. So that's mathematically.

19:51

So we can win it on Saturday kind of, but

19:54

mathematically on Monday, Eastern

19:56

Monday at home against our local rivals.

19:59

That's gonna be a big one.

19:59

That's a big game. That's a big game. Oh

20:02

shit, Danny, you gave me the date. I'm in Norway. Oh, when

20:04

do you go? I'm gonna be flying, we're

20:06

flying on Monday, Monday, Tuesday. When are

20:08

you back? 16th, I think you fly back. Oh

20:11

God, you're gonna be away for our live event. Thank

20:14

you very much. No, thank you, it's your whiskey. What the fuck

20:16

are we doing drinking a whiskey at 12? It's

20:19

on me. I'm gonna get some care emails saying,

20:21

P, what are you doing? You did so well. Right,

20:25

so we met up in Scotland up at the UK

20:28

conference, which I think by the way, they did a brilliant job on.

20:29

Absolutely loved it. It was such a good

20:32

atmosphere. Yeah. Like

20:34

I said, I was in Miami last year, and obviously that's

20:36

Miami, loved it. But the

20:39

combination of fantastic

20:42

atmosphere, really great people speaking, really

20:44

great attendees, I just all came together

20:46

and it was a lovely event. You've reminded

20:49

me a little bit of the first Bitcoin,

20:51

well, I can't say Miami, because

20:54

it was in San Francisco, but the first Bitcoin conference,

20:56

Bitcoin 2019. That

20:58

was 2000 people, 1900 people, very small.

21:02

One auditorium that

21:05

probably held 1000 people. It

21:08

was in like an industrial building where

21:10

you kind of went up through a ramp to

21:14

where the like exhibitors were and then up another

21:16

ramp. And then there was like a roof terrace with,

21:19

excuse me, a roof terrace with all the food

21:22

and street food. And basically you're either watching

21:24

a talk or hanging out by the

21:26

food. And there was only two real plays, two

21:28

or three places ago, so everyone kept together. It was kind

21:31

of like a hangout, a party festival.

21:34

And I've been blown away by how much

21:36

they've grown this.

21:38

And if I was them, I would grow exactly the same, because

21:40

if you have 25,000 people come in, you're

21:43

gonna be making 20 times

21:45

what they had, revenue rise, and that's amazing.

21:47

But I did miss that smaller intimate

21:49

thing. Yeah, it was just so nice to be able

21:51

to wander around. And I mean, that was where I first met

21:53

you, just saying hi, and I pumped

21:56

into, I was saying Danny, I met Jeff

21:58

there as well. I'd chat with him.

21:59

Couldn't have been nicer. Yeah, lovely guy. He's

22:02

here next Friday in Bedford. I've

22:04

timed everything so badly. You have timed it badly.

22:06

You miss an hour and a half of it. Hold

22:09

on. Aneta,

22:13

you're on

22:15

the video camera. Wave to the podcast.

22:17

Wave to the podcast. Aneta,

22:22

so we're

22:26

going to be an hour and a half in here.

22:29

Did you want to just, what do you want to do? You

22:31

and I, OK. I

22:35

don't know if you can edit that out, but that's. I kind of hope

22:37

not. That's an Etta. It's my

22:40

Polish wife. Who

22:42

doesn't live here. She's

22:44

amazing. Yeah, so anyway, great conference

22:47

and we're going to expand ours next year

22:49

to four

22:50

conference here in Bedford. Fantastic.

22:53

Yeah, we've secured when I announce it, we've

22:55

secured three excellent. Well,

22:57

we've got nods from three excellent keynotes. I'll

22:59

tell you afterwards. That's a terrific idea. It's going to

23:01

be the Bedford Corn Exchange. Probably

23:04

a two day event with, what, I believe

23:08

six to seven hundred people if we can do it. If we

23:10

can put it off. So next Friday, the test.

23:12

One, just give us the date and we'll lock

23:15

it in. We don't know. So what I want to do

23:17

is I want to, this one's really cool

23:19

because we've got the event on the Friday and then it's the last Bedford

23:22

home game of the season. So everyone

23:24

can come to the event and come watch the football. It's got

23:26

a real nice synergy to it. For those people

23:28

who, not everyone likes the football thing, but those who

23:30

do like the football can do both. But you can spend your Bitcoin at

23:32

the club, right? You can. You

23:34

can buy a jersey. We can have some

23:37

limited edition ones, Satoshi 21 ones. Hopefully

23:40

they will say league champions. But

23:43

yes, we're going to do that, but they did a great job. So

23:45

shame you didn't win the league in 2021. Yeah,

23:48

I mean, that would have been particularly hard. Firstly,

23:51

I didn't own the club. And

23:54

was there were there even any games in 21? There

23:56

was well, so 2021. No.

24:00

Because of Covid 21 22. Yes But

24:04

I guess you could claim it's 21 Winning

24:06

the cup in 21 would have been good. But anyway anyway,

24:09

so how many have you been in the UK?

24:12

So came back from zoom in 1996. So

24:15

been here for quite a long time now Okay,

24:17

as you can tell from my strong Zimbabwean accent

24:20

The UK has has rubbed

24:22

off on me. You've got that you've got that soldier

24:25

accent. Oh Interesting.

24:27

Yeah, I think so. There's a well, there's a similarity

24:30

between the Zimbabwe accent the clipped vowels

24:32

and

24:33

And that like the old-school

24:35

posh British accent. Yeah

24:37

Although both kinds

24:39

of accent lead to a lot of mockery Yes,

24:43

that kind of like public school lieutenant

24:47

or colonel whatever is it you become I don't know Yeah,

24:50

yeah, you know you've you've got to wear a striped tie

24:52

at all times It doesn't matter if you're not wearing any other clothes as

24:54

long as you got on the striped tie You're probably a

24:56

tire that goes down. So Zimbabwe

24:59

in 1996. So is that at the height of

25:01

the violence and reclaiming

25:03

of the farms actually wasn't too bad back then

25:05

so

25:06

the Process of kind of moving

25:09

farms out of white ownership back into into

25:11

blacks and Barbie ownership Sides

25:14

my memory is going to be faulty heads. So it's sort of

25:16

mid 90s And

25:18

then they accelerated towards the end of the decade and then got particularly

25:21

bad like 98 99 2000s Was

25:24

that under Mugabe that under Mugabe? Yeah, but

25:26

was inflation still hit high then it

25:28

was pretty bad Even when I was a teenager, so

25:30

okay

25:31

a

25:32

Lot of my pegging to inflation

25:35

is associated with pocket money So like

25:37

my first two I've still got the $2 bill that I got when

25:39

my first tooth came out Um, yeah, I stuck

25:41

in a piggy bank found it years later Rather

25:44

sadly it now sits on my wall together with a

25:46

hundred billion dollar bill

25:48

Which represents about the same value,

25:51

but I keep them together on a display

25:54

Awesome pretty pretty heavy inflation. Pretty

25:56

pretty horrific. Um, it

25:59

was running at a

25:59

between 20 to 50% inflation

26:02

when I was a teenager. Which is moderately

26:04

good for Zimbabwe, but if that hit us,

26:06

that would be horrendous. 50% inflation is insane.

26:09

You lose half your purchasing power in a single

26:11

year. How old were you? 16 when

26:14

we left. Okay, but how old were you? So when

26:16

you start,

26:18

like as a child, I was aware

26:20

of inflation. I've talked about this on the podcast, on the news.

26:22

You say, they'll say inflation is just

26:25

above a target of 2%. And

26:27

I always just thought it was like a sign of growth.

26:30

You know, okay, great, that's their target. They want this. I

26:32

never really paid any of attention to it properly

26:35

until we made this show. And I

26:37

had no need as a kid to understand it. But

26:39

as a kid, did you naturally understand

26:42

it because of what was happening? I think from

26:44

a perspective of knowing your purchasing power

26:46

is diminishing and as a

26:48

kid, you're aware that the

26:50

money you're getting, the money you're earning is diminishing

26:53

in its ability to purchase things. So

26:56

silly example I often use is deposits

26:59

for bottles. So

27:00

as Mob, we always had a Coke bottle

27:02

deposit system. And

27:05

a Coke used to be $2, but

27:07

you'd get a dollar back if you took the glass bottle back to

27:11

the store. That's a good return. It was good. Yeah,

27:13

it was fantastic. And particularly for scrappy

27:15

kids like us, so

27:17

loads of people would drink these things at our rugby games

27:19

at the weekend. And if you

27:21

stay behind after the match, you go around and collect 30,

27:24

40 different bottles. Do

27:26

you know what the modern version of that is? So

27:29

at Bedford Rugby Club, they have reusable

27:31

cups. Yeah, they do it at Twigam as well. Yeah, and you

27:33

basically see these kids going around and say, you're done with your cup.

27:35

And everyone's like, oh, go on then. And so you see

27:37

these kids walking around with like a tower of cups

27:40

up under their arm, going over their shoulder. And

27:42

you're looking like, that's

27:43

fucking 30 quid there. And so

27:45

they take them back and they get a pound for each one and

27:47

they go around and do it again. These kids are making 40, 50, 60 pounds

27:50

at a rugby match. Yeah, that's a great idea.

27:52

You can't say no. No, I want

27:55

my pound. Fuck off, 10-year-old. No,

27:58

the kids are clearing it up.

27:59

they're making some pocket money. Yeah, good for them. But

28:02

it becomes noticeable when the price of the

28:04

Coke wildly accelerates beyond

28:06

the price of the deposit. Right. And

28:09

that's the kind of thing you notice as a kid, or the

28:11

fact that you're, instead of getting $2 for

28:13

a tooth,

28:15

that's not really buying it anymore. And

28:17

you maybe need to be getting $10, $15, $20 for a tooth. And

28:21

it very quickly begins to accelerate out of control. And

28:24

I mean, I want this to be probably the best working

28:27

example we have in recent history

28:29

of how it accelerates. At

28:31

one point, the government stopped putting out official

28:33

inflation figures because they were

28:35

meaningless. They were so big, you can't even imagine the number.

28:39

And can I ask what trade your parents

28:41

were in? Sure, so, I mean, you see

28:44

from my parents, I lived in various odd places. So

28:46

I was raised by my stepdad and my mom. My

28:48

parents separated when I was about four or five years old.

28:52

And my stepdad's job was, he was with the British council.

28:54

Okay. So for anyone who hasn't

28:56

heard of the British council, they're like the cultural wing

28:59

of Britain's self-publicity

29:02

abroad. So they organize

29:05

things like scholarships and they

29:08

bring plays

29:09

and performers over to

29:11

different locations. And they set up

29:13

links between universities and those

29:15

jurisdictions and jurisdictions

29:17

back home.

29:20

And so we were sent off to, turned off the Middle

29:22

East when I was five.

29:24

And then obviously

29:26

various things happened there, which

29:29

we'd make it into. And then Zim was my dad's last posting.

29:32

And after his posting

29:35

finished, we retired up there. Would

29:37

he have been paid in pounds or local

29:40

currency? Interesting. So we actually

29:42

saw both sides of it in Zim.

29:44

So he was paid in pounds when he was still employed

29:46

by the British council, but

29:48

he retired in 89.

29:50

And then he

29:52

took a bit of time out and then he began teaching.

29:54

And it was really noticeable at that point. So up

29:56

until then he'd been paid in sterling.

29:58

And then when he began to. in teaching, he was paid

30:01

in local currency. And

30:04

our

30:05

family's personal financial circumstances

30:08

took a massive nosedive at that point. It actually became

30:10

quite tough. Because of the inflation.

30:13

Well, you paid in local currency. And

30:16

as we're seeing in the UK at the moment,

30:18

typically when inflation is going insane,

30:21

salaries never keep pace with inflation. And

30:24

that's the kind of thing that precipitates the strikes

30:26

that we see at the moment.

30:27

And you will have seen the pronouncements from Andrew

30:29

Bailey recently talking about, be

30:33

very, very good if you didn't increase your

30:35

prices or if you didn't

30:37

ask for a pay rise. Yeah, just stop printing

30:40

money, Andrew. You fucking prick. Well, did you see

30:42

the telegraph from yesterday? Oh my God, I was thinking

30:44

about that. Oh, I did. I saw

30:46

you tweeted that. Yeah, I mean, I took that from Dominic Frisbee,

30:48

hat tip mate. Yeah, that it's

30:51

got nothing to do with them. I thought

30:53

the telegraph's headline

30:55

was quite funny. They were clearly

30:57

taking the piss. They

30:59

said, rampant inflation has nothing to do with our wanton

31:02

money printing or something like that. Yeah. So,

31:06

okay, so you're experiencing that, your

31:08

father and mother's wealth

31:11

is eviscerating before their rise. Yeah,

31:14

pretty much at an astonishingly fast

31:17

pace. I mean, it's difficult to

31:19

describe, unless you've experienced

31:21

it, how

31:22

the loss of 50% of your purchasing power year

31:24

on year

31:25

feels. And we know, in this

31:28

world, there's really no free education

31:30

to speak of. There are some government schools

31:32

and there are some bigger privately owned schools,

31:34

but broadly speaking, everyone pays

31:39

to attend school. Everyone's

31:41

earning in some

31:42

Zim dollars, as they were then,

31:45

paying Zim dollars in the schools, upping

31:47

their prices. And obviously,

31:49

the horrific thing with

31:50

a global inflation is that none

31:53

of the price increases ever keep up with each other. There

31:55

are always some that are increasing faster than others.

31:58

And the ones that increase faster than others tend to be.

31:59

the absolute necessities, you

32:02

know, food, water, housing, electricity.

32:05

And then there's this horrendous lag

32:07

where

32:09

your income is not keeping pace with

32:11

your outgoings

32:13

and then what choice you have other than to strike. Yeah,

32:16

I mean, this is the highest inflation

32:19

I've lived through. And I don't know if it was high

32:21

when I was a kid, but it's the highest I've lived

32:23

through and I'm, yeah, I'm

32:26

noticing things. So whatever they claim the inflation

32:28

is, I think they say about 10%. I

32:30

think depending on what it is, it's between 10 and 20%. So

32:34

we've seen a massive increase in our energy prices.

32:38

I've just bought a bar, which I close on

32:40

today. Thank you.

32:43

And everybody is raising their prices.

32:45

And,

32:47

you know, various other

32:49

things with property insurance,

32:52

my insurance has gone up. I'm seeing it all. But

32:55

at the same time, we're not raising

32:57

our prices on the podcast.

32:59

So, you know, we're not raising our drinks

33:01

in the bar because we know everyone's being hit. But

33:03

at the same time, you have to rethink your staff. They

33:06

have to be paid. So everything you

33:08

don't want to go goes up and everything you want to go

33:10

up goes up. And so that's

33:12

my experience at 10 to 20%. It's annoying.

33:14

It's survivable. You rethink, rethink

33:17

or reshuffle. If you took that to 50%.

33:21

I actually don't know. I

33:23

can't envisage the consequences, especially

33:27

if that was year after year.

33:29

I cannot imagine one that's more. Tends to accelerate

33:31

as well. Yeah. And there

33:34

are also all kinds of other second order consequences,

33:36

which may be unseen at the beginning of the process.

33:38

And one of the most obvious is that people stop saving.

33:42

So if you know that your money is going

33:44

to be worth half this time next year

33:46

as what it's worth today,

33:48

why the hell would you put in your bank? Spend

33:50

it. But even at 10% inflation,

33:54

I'm looking at the money in my bank and thinking, well, I

33:57

should do something. I think it's six years. So

33:59

at 10%. since inflation doesn't the

34:01

maths work? It's five or six years you've lost half your purchasing

34:03

power.

34:04

Well, because it's compounded though. Exactly.

34:07

So I think it would, I would

34:09

have estimated six years you've lost it all. I don't know,

34:11

I'd have to do the maths. It's

34:13

a weird bit of maths. Yeah, no, it's an inverse. Yeah,

34:16

exactly. I know you're probably right, yeah. Yeah,

34:19

I mean, I'm even looking at anything I have, which is cash

34:22

now, I'm thinking I should spend it or

34:24

put it somewhere, but then

34:26

does that compound inflation because you're spending

34:28

more? Well, again, it gets to the root problem of all of this.

34:31

Why the hell should you have to spend your time thinking

34:33

about this instead of doing something productive with your time?

34:35

It means everyone has to be a financial engineer.

34:38

And that's a gigantic waste of your time, talents,

34:41

brainpower and

34:43

people shouldn't have to do that kind of stuff. And

34:45

so,

34:47

was this

34:49

happening prior to Mugabe or can you blame

34:51

all of this on Mugabe? It was,

34:55

a lot of it was to do with

34:57

what happened to the economy. So

34:59

Zimbabwe, I mean, I have to say, cards on the table,

35:02

I love living in Zimbabwe. It was a wonderful

35:04

place to grow up.

35:05

It had the most fantastic climate in the world.

35:07

Harare is one of the only cities, definitely

35:10

one of the only capital cities, I think, where you

35:12

don't need heating or

35:15

air conditioning.

35:17

Lovely climate. And

35:19

the education system in Zimbabwe was terrific.

35:23

Genuinely, Hananha is a wonderful place

35:26

to grow up. And how integrated was it between

35:28

the blacks and the whites? For my generation, pretty

35:30

good. So we were too young to remember

35:33

much segregation. And

35:35

actually, our school had let the first

35:37

black people to attend in the sixties. So

35:40

there had been two or three different generations. Like

35:42

I was at school with a boy called Douglas Chingoka and his

35:45

uncle, I think it was Peter Chingoka, had been one of the first

35:47

black kids at St. George's. But

35:49

would it have been

35:51

all levels of prosperity mixing?

35:54

Or was it the

35:56

more fortunate, wealthy blacks

35:58

mixing with the...

35:59

the historic white population? Yeah, that's a

36:02

good question.

36:04

So, independence in Zim happened in 1918. Yeah.

36:07

Just missed it, actually, April the 4th, I think it was. OK.

36:10

No, April the 8th. Were you born there?

36:12

No, so I was born in London. OK. And

36:15

then moved to Syria when I was 5, and

36:17

then onto Zim when I was 8. OK.

36:21

So our class was pretty

36:24

interd. I was minority white, so

36:26

the majority of my school was

36:28

black. We had a reasonably weak Asian community

36:30

as well. But we'd all

36:32

grown up in a freezing bar where

36:35

it was independent. And to

36:38

this day, we've still got WhatsApp groups

36:40

going with my class from Zim.

36:42

And there's very

36:44

good rates, certainly, mixed

36:47

in terms of races. But the

36:49

economic point of your age is completely valid.

36:53

There's a huge stratification in terms

36:55

of, sorry. It's fine. In terms

36:57

of where you sit in the

36:59

wealth stratum.

37:02

And there was no real middle class to speak

37:04

of previously in Zimbabwe. So a

37:06

lot of Western society have got like a free stratum

37:08

of

37:09

societies. You've got

37:11

largely divided in terms of wealth. In

37:13

Zim and a lot of other countries of that nature, you tend

37:15

to have sort of two divides. You have an elite, and

37:18

then you have a larger group of people at the bottom. Right.

37:21

And it's very hard to move between those. In

37:23

fact, it's harder to move, obviously, between the lower

37:26

levels and the elite

37:28

than it is to move between the clauses in

37:30

the UK. Difficult, though, that could be as well.

37:33

Right. Do you know about this, the redistribution

37:35

of the farms? I mean, yeah, I've heard about it. I don't

37:37

know in detail, though. Yeah. I mean, you should probably

37:40

explain it better than I would. But

37:42

my question with regards to that

37:44

is, I'm fully

37:46

aware that the program

37:48

to redistribute the farms was chaotic,

37:52

badly thought through, dangerous,

37:54

led to death, murder of farmers,

37:58

fear and people fleeing the country.

37:59

and then a destruction of the productivity of

38:02

the farms because they were handed over to people who

38:04

didn't know how to operate a farm. Like, wherever a

38:06

lot of that, please add context where I've got

38:08

it wrong. But was there any validity

38:11

to the idea that there should

38:14

be something done

38:17

to redistribute opportunity? I

38:19

think almost everyone you speak to would say, yes, that

38:21

should have happened, because these were by and

38:24

large farms which had been

38:26

taken from, in some cases, ancestral

38:29

lands. And

38:31

people had been forcibly moved off their territory.

38:34

Not necessarily by the farmers who were operating the farms at the time,

38:37

but maybe by their ancestors or by people 100 years

38:39

ago. So

38:41

the question of distribution

38:43

of land is very, very difficult

38:46

to talk about, because I think

38:49

most people would agree with the

38:51

aims and goals, which was to try and give

38:53

people back their land which had been forcibly taken

38:55

from them. By forcibly taking

38:57

it from current owners? It could have been done in

39:00

a more thoughtful and

39:02

better way. For

39:05

example, your point about

39:08

giving the farms to people. So a lot of the farms

39:10

in Zimbabwe were absolutely gigantic. Some of them

39:12

were the size of small counties in the UK. Wow,

39:15

OK. And to manage a farm of that size,

39:17

you needed an army of people, an enormous

39:19

amount of infrastructure to manage a farm that big.

39:22

If, at independence,

39:24

people had started to be trained how

39:26

to manage those farms, and if there had been

39:29

some form of compulsory purchase of those farms

39:32

at market value, and then when

39:34

those farms were purchased, black farmers

39:36

had been put in, they knew what they were doing. And a

39:39

lot of the farms were split up. And

39:42

you lose some of the economy of scale if you split

39:45

up a gigantic tobacco farm and try and run it

39:47

as 80,000 small tobacco farms. It

39:49

doesn't really work. So I

39:52

think the spirit of land redistribution

39:54

was right in so far as this

39:57

land was unlawfully taken in many cases.

39:59

from people whose ancestral land

40:02

it was, but the way

40:04

in which it happened was unfortunately

40:07

chaotic and ultimately led to a lot

40:10

of the destruction of

40:11

the agricultural prosperity of Zimbabwe, which

40:14

itself precipitated a lot of the inflation. Yeah.

40:19

Where did the idea come from? Was

40:21

it directly from Mugabe and was

40:23

it kind of a populist idea or was

40:26

there an ongoing generational

40:28

debate regarding this? It's an old

40:31

idea. So there were a couple of different liberation

40:33

struggles in Zimbabwe. They were called the

40:35

Chimaeringas, which

40:37

roughly translates as liberation war. The

40:39

one that most people would be familiar with is the war that was

40:41

fought against Ian Smith's religion

40:45

army. There was a guerrilla war in the

40:47

late 70s and very early 80s. And

40:51

to be honest, a lot of it did boil down to land. Blacks

40:53

and Barbans were moved off land. They were concentrated

40:56

into, it was never as bad as apartheid

40:59

in South Africa, which was much more horrific.

41:02

But blacks

41:04

and Barbans were treated as second-class citizens and

41:07

that's awful, it shouldn't have happened.

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43:34

How is Zimbabwe now? What

43:37

do you know? I'm still in touch with

43:39

a lot of people there and my

43:41

friends up here. The inflation is

43:44

going nuts again. Okay. Not as

43:47

bad as it was. I think the

43:49

rate is 150%. At

43:52

least it wasn't last time I checked. I mean, that's still horrific. I

43:54

mean, it's still insane. And

43:57

they went through various periods of striking.

43:59

zeros off the nodes. The

44:03

US dollar was used as in many developing

44:06

nations as currency, and then the US dollar

44:08

was arbitrarily banned.

44:10

The government banned people from putting prices up.

44:12

The tried and tested

44:14

means of controlling inflation. Which never works.

44:17

Absolutely never works. Yeah, which is down

44:19

to 92%. Oh, okay. That's

44:21

good. Manageable. Yeah, I mean, look, we've seen loose

44:25

calls for price

44:28

controls in the US. I think I saw Elizabeth Warren talking

44:30

about

44:30

price gouging with air. I mean,

44:33

it's always the same as the problem is caused

44:35

by the fuckos within government.

44:37

And then their ideas are the ones which exacerbate

44:40

the problems, which is just, it's a typical

44:44

story that's repeatedly told country

44:46

to country to country.

44:49

But it's really interesting to meet someone who's lived through it.

44:51

When I went out to Venezuela a few years

44:53

ago, what was super interesting to me is everything

44:56

is priced in the Bolivar and you have to use the Bolivar,

44:58

but everyone wanted the dollar. And then actually there were five

45:00

currencies. There was people

45:03

using the Bolivar because they had to,

45:05

people wanting the dollar because they knew it

45:07

was stable. Some people using

45:09

the Colombian peso because they

45:12

wanted that because the border nation. You

45:15

had the Petro, that ridiculous,

45:18

yeah, I mean, it was a ridiculous cryptocurrency that

45:20

didn't work and people just didn't exist. I don't

45:22

know, but I met one lady had it

45:24

and she just reclaimed the money from it. And then

45:26

you had Bitcoin, of course, and then obviously

45:28

a plethora of other shit coins, but people

45:31

were choosing what they wanted to use, but they had

45:33

to use the Bolivar. But what they naturally

45:36

knew is I wanted the dollar. I

45:38

wanted the dollar. I've never, there's never

45:40

been a time in the UK where people

45:42

have been like, oh, I need an alternative to the pound

45:45

because the pound, the inflation. Yeah,

45:47

some people say they need Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is like a

45:49

weird thing where you've got to get all the timing right

45:51

and you've got to be patient. It's not like an instant.

45:54

It's not like, oh, I know inflation is going to hit me every

45:56

single week. So I want the dollar. You

45:58

can buy Bitcoin.

45:59

to avoid power inflation and be down the following

46:02

week. So it's a weird alternative. But

46:04

I've also seen in Cambodia, when

46:06

I went to Cambodia it was similar in the cities, people wanted

46:09

the dollar. So I've experienced

46:11

that scenario and I've seen it. When

46:14

you were there, were people trying to get alternative currencies?

46:17

Was it harder? It hadn't got to the point

46:19

where it was a, it's kind

46:21

of an existential need.

46:23

So when we were in the same, we were faced

46:25

with problems like capital controls,

46:27

getting money out of your country. It's a fairly

46:29

obvious point, but there's not a huge demand

46:32

for Zimbabwe dollars outside of Zimbabwe. And

46:34

there wasn't even in the 1990s. One

46:37

of the great things the US obviously has is that there's gigantic

46:39

demand for US dollars all over the world, as you've just described.

46:43

And that enables them to export some of their inflation

46:45

because they've artificially increased the demand for US dollars

46:48

in multiple different jurisdictions, like Zimbabwe,

46:51

who need dollars.

46:53

So if you want to leave Zimbabwe,

46:57

it's very hard now. And even when we left,

46:59

it was extremely difficult to do so. You

47:02

mean difficult to leave in terms of what

47:04

you take with you? What you take with you. So

47:08

actually the way we did leave, I

47:11

think I meant to kneel. Danny told me this

47:13

morning. I've got a picture of the car in

47:15

there. Oh, you got to show me that. Well,

47:18

tell the story. I'll tell the story. So we, like

47:21

I said, my dad had been in the British council, retired out

47:23

there. We bought a little chicken farm, which we ran

47:25

for a few years. We had five or

47:27

six acres, orchard, bunch

47:29

of chickens. My dad was teaching. And then he eventually

47:32

retired from teaching as well.

47:35

He wrote a book randomly. That was how

47:37

I met Mugabe, actually, when I was 15. You

47:40

met Mugabe? Yeah, yeah. I

47:43

always thought it was unusual that he decided to

47:45

be only the second person to have

47:47

a moustache in that design. I

47:51

mean, I always thought it was unusual as a tyrant to

47:55

decide actually, of all the moustaches

47:57

I'm going to choose, I'm going to match Hitler.

47:59

Thing is, he was a popular president.

48:02

And I mean, remember, again, a lot

48:04

of Zimbabweans will feel conflicted about Mugabe. The

48:06

guy was a war hero, and he

48:08

won his country back from the British. Yeah.

48:11

And I think that underlies

48:13

a lot of his, a lot of the policies

48:16

that came later. Yeah. You know,

48:18

he fought against the oppressor, and he won.

48:20

And

48:21

that carried him an enormous length of time. That enabled

48:24

him to stay in power, even though the economy

48:26

was collapsing, and there was some opposition.

48:28

And he eventually began to repress that

48:30

opposition quite violently. But power corrupts

48:32

my friend. Yeah, it's, I,

48:36

to this day, I don't really, personally, I don't really know what

48:38

to think about Mugabe, because I grew up

48:40

in a country that was wealthy and prosperous,

48:43

in no small part through

48:45

what he and Zani were done.

48:47

But then Zimbabwe is suffering

48:49

now. I'm

48:53

just very sad, to be honest. Yeah. But

48:56

it's that really tricky thing.

48:58

This is where I look at Venezuela,

49:01

El Salvador,

49:03

with guard, because I've obviously

49:05

met Mugabe on a few occasions.

49:07

I've interviewed him twice. How many dictators

49:09

have we met between us? How

49:11

many? Dictators have we met between us? We've met a few.

49:13

Yeah.

49:16

I haven't met Rishi Sunak, but anyway. He's

49:19

not a dictator yet. Yeah. He's a

49:22

conservative government that was displaying. I've

49:24

met Sunak. Have you? Yeah. I

49:26

think he's fucking terrible.

49:29

He's very small. Is he? But

49:31

I'm quite small. I think everyone's small compared

49:33

to you. I don't know. I've seen a Danny. Freddy's

49:37

shoulder's about the breadth of the table.

49:42

Who could tell if more me or George from

49:44

Coindesk?

49:45

Ooh. I might be

49:48

on you. George

49:50

is about Danny's build, but

49:52

a bit shorter.

49:53

But he, yeah. Curious. He's shifting tin,

49:55

though. Yeah, but look at this guy's arms.

49:58

I don't mind. Exactly.

50:01

So I've obviously

50:03

met him and in preparation

50:05

for the interviews I've done my research

50:08

on Venezuela, the history of corruption

50:10

within the government, presidents

50:13

fleeing and hiding out in Nicaragua

50:16

or arrested or

50:18

accidentally dying who all pilfered

50:20

the country and essentially

50:22

never given

50:24

El Salvador a chance. And the thing about Bukhale

50:27

is he's certainly

50:29

showing

50:31

the traits

50:33

of a dictator, but potentially a benevolent

50:36

dictator, which if only

50:38

time will tell and he will be judged in

50:40

time, but at the moment he is changing the fortunes

50:43

of that country, he's made it significantly

50:46

safer. He's brought tourism into countries, boosted

50:48

the economy. I mean, he has changed

50:50

the fortunes of El Salvador. There

50:52

are questions with regards to human rights,

50:54

with regards to the rounding up of gang members

50:57

and imprisoning in people

50:59

without fair trial, etc, which Alex

51:01

Gladstein

51:01

has highlighted. But he's

51:04

changed the fortunes of that country.

51:07

The Constitution says only one term. They

51:09

found ways around that to have a second term.

51:12

People do. And which, by the way, I

51:14

think he needs a second term. I mean, one

51:16

that isn't enough to do the job he's doing and he

51:18

could be replaced by somebody who would screw up everything

51:20

he's done. I think

51:22

the test of time will be when times

51:25

turn bad and people turn on him. How does he react? Does

51:27

he accept it and step down? Does

51:30

he arrest journalists? Does

51:32

he imprison opposition? Does he go

51:34

down that route that many

51:36

previous dictators, tyrants

51:39

have gone down or does he accept it? I mean, I like the guy. I

51:44

hold him with high regard and I

51:47

wish the best for him in that country. But I'm

51:49

also very guarded because history

51:52

has told us how this plays out again

51:54

and again. Yeah, that's completely

51:56

true. I mean, personally, I just don't

51:59

feel as though...

51:59

I can judge Robert MacCabe. You

52:02

know, my memories and

52:04

feelings towards Zimbabwe are coloured by the very

52:06

happy upbringing and childhood I had there. And

52:09

I know that his popularity was in no

52:12

small part to begin with because of what he'd

52:14

done. I mean, the kind of political prison there for quite

52:16

a long time. And

52:19

I don't feel I have to withhold judgment.

52:21

You know, I love growing up there.

52:24

I know that terrible things have happened since

52:26

it's a very difficult situation. But Nelson Mandela

52:29

was also imprisoned,

52:29

political prisoner, fought

52:32

for South Africa and died

52:34

a global hero, somebody

52:37

who stood up for fairness,

52:39

democracy, you know, human rights.

52:42

And was

52:44

somebody, everyone,

52:47

I've never

52:49

heard a post-release

52:51

criticism of him. Of course I've heard criticism

52:53

of him as a freedom fighter or he was

52:55

accused of being a terrorist. Yeah.

52:58

But from his release, I've

53:01

never heard anyone say anything bad about him. Mugabe's

53:06

kind of gone the opposite direction in that yes,

53:08

he, yeah, and I don't know the history, you know

53:10

better than me, but I think he destroyed

53:12

that economy and he has to take responsibility for that. Or

53:14

he had to, I mean, he's dead now, so. Yeah. And

53:19

to be honest, the facts, the facts were you themselves.

53:21

Whether you attribute blame to a particular person or to a particular

53:24

policy, the economy did collapse. The

53:26

currency did hyperinflate. And as

53:29

Denny said, 90% inflation is not brilliant.

53:33

And the country's gone through waves

53:35

and waves of economic collapse, not just

53:38

sinkhole, but you know, over a couple

53:40

of decades now. Was his party Zaunupia?

53:42

Zaunupia, yeah. Yeah, are they still ruling

53:45

parties? Yeah, there's

53:48

a few, I mean, Morgan Swangarai

53:50

was, he was head of the MDC, the

53:52

Movement for Democratic Change. And

53:55

he made some strides towards,

53:59

having a second party, but

54:02

it's always a complicated

54:04

place. Right. Have

54:07

you been back? The clothes, I went

54:09

back for a wedding to the northern

54:12

border of Zambia. So

54:14

sadly, I've never been back to Harare, but I

54:17

have friends, though, who are talking about random

54:20

example. The municipal water

54:22

supply is now so poor that

54:24

people are sinking boreholes in their gardens,

54:28

which wasn't like that when I was there.

54:32

So you may have a reason to go back. I

54:34

mean, I'd love to go back, particularly with my kids,

54:36

so they can see where I grew up and

54:38

why I have a weird accent. I'd

54:42

like to go. It's a wonderful country.

54:44

I mean, seriously, go to Whangi,

54:46

to the National Park, go to Victoria

54:48

Falls, the Eastern Islands. I've not actually

54:50

been to Africa. We

54:53

were planning to go out there and make films in

54:56

April.

54:58

So April 20 or April 19? No,

55:00

April 20. April 20. And obviously,

55:02

all the borders closed. Well,

55:04

the potential for gridless, for example, to start

55:07

hydro mining in... One

55:09

of my... We have a sort of Zimbabwe,

55:11

Bitcoin group, and I keep on banging

55:13

on about a town. You know the Kariba

55:15

Dam? Well, I mean, I know the name.

55:18

One of the biggest dams in the world. So the

55:20

Lake Kariba is the size of Wales. And

55:22

the hydropower from that dam powers

55:25

a gigantic amount of Zimbabwe's electricity.

55:27

It's just made for sticking a Bitcoin mine in there.

55:31

And that instant foreign

55:33

currency for the country.

55:35

And the Eastern Highlands are full of little rivers. All

55:37

of those could be dammed. They could have a small gridless

55:39

mining unit stuck on them. Well,

55:41

we're planning to go out there. So

55:44

our next films should be out in the next

55:46

few days, covering mining out in the US. And we want

55:48

to follow that by looking at what gridless is doing in Kenya.

55:50

So if I go,

55:52

I'll let you know. If you want to come out and you want to meet me in

55:54

Zimbabwe, you know, I'd love to go and see you. That'd

55:56

be epic. We should bring your kids. Yeah, we shouldn't do

55:59

that. I don't know if I'll bring mine.

55:59

But we need to get into the car.

56:02

Oh, yeah, the car. That was a long story.

56:04

Yeah, so it was a long intro. Damn, you're not sure with the fucking

56:06

car. I'm so sorry. I am rambling a lot. No,

56:09

no, it's good. Okay. So,

56:12

start at the beginning. We plan to

56:14

come back to the UK for, you know, to first of the year, school

56:16

and go to university and so on. I'm the eldest of four kids. And

56:20

we sold out the house. And then you're left with

56:22

this problem. I've got all these ZIM dollars, which is

56:24

depreciating like 40, 50% a year. And

56:27

how the fuck do I get them out of the country? I'm allowed

56:29

to swear. Okay, thank you.

56:31

I mean, I get written all the time. Can

56:33

you start swearing? I'm listening to this in the car with my

56:35

Georgia. And I'm like, yeah, fuck, sorry. Sorry, but if I swear

56:37

in a posh voice, it doesn't really... It's

56:40

barely a swear word. I tell you. What is it?

56:42

Stephen

56:46

Fry, I think he said. He said, why

56:48

are all words relating to

56:50

making love considered swear words?

56:53

But words relating to murder

56:56

and death aren't. That's

56:58

a good point. Yeah. He's

57:00

fucking right. That's not a podcast. Yeah,

57:03

look, I just, I have a foul mouth. So

57:05

do I. My father's learned how bad it is recently.

57:09

My children put a swear jar at home and I'm repeatedly

57:12

penalized. Is

57:14

the jar full? It's brimming over.

57:17

Yeah, my children swear in them. I tell them not to.

57:20

But they occasionally had little one slips

57:22

out here or there. Mine just think it's so

57:24

funny. Sorry, anyway, Danny. The car, the car. Get

57:27

to the fucking car, man. One

57:29

thing that a lot of people in Zim do is they buy a car

57:31

and then you drive it over the border.

57:33

Literally all of your wealth is sitting in that car.

57:37

There's no facility to send Zimbabwe dollars

57:39

to the UK at that time. You could exchange.

57:42

The exchange rate was terrible and it was getting worse every

57:44

day. Was there a black market exchange rate and a real

57:46

exchange rate? Yeah, as in most developing nations.

57:49

It's also very hard to get your

57:51

bank in the UK to give you pounds for

57:53

Zim dollars because the bank in the UK, like we said, there's no market

57:56

for Zimbapri dollars. So,

57:59

hey, there may be no market.

57:59

and be the exchange rate of deteriorating day

58:02

by day. So we bought

58:04

a Rolls Royce,

58:05

a Rolls Royce of a Shadow.

58:07

And then we

58:09

drove over the border. We

58:13

packed all of our staff into a shipping container

58:16

and then said goodbye and

58:18

licked it. How far did you take the car? 2,500 miles

58:20

roughly. Two. So

58:22

we drove from Harare down through Zimbabwe

58:25

through Mashmingo, Great Zimbabwe, which is

58:27

near where Anita Posh was. Oh, she's amazing.

58:30

I pinged her some sats. She was standing at Great Zimbabwe,

58:33

which is if anyone hasn't Googleed, it

58:36

is a sort of dates

58:38

back to the middle ages. And it's a gigantic set

58:41

of stone fortifications and buildings down

58:43

in the south of the country. Yeah,

58:45

she was on Twitter, I said, I'm in Zimbabwe and

58:47

I said, oh, fucking hell, stick an invoice in

58:49

the size she did. And I pinged her some sats. She's

58:51

an absolute Bitcoin hero. She's brilliant, isn't

58:53

she? I love her. Yeah. Yeah,

58:56

so anyway, we drove down through the hall of Zim, across

58:58

the Limpopo River at the south, probably

59:00

my dad kept playing this great, great, green, greasy Limpopo,

59:03

if you know your justice stories. Didn't

59:05

you make cakes? It

59:08

may have been a remote cousin. So

59:12

this is even older than boomer stuffed.

59:16

And then we drove down through the hall of South

59:18

Africa over a space of about two weeks.

59:21

Absolutely incredible journey

59:23

through the Rachansburg mountains, through

59:26

the garden

59:27

route, the

59:29

Boar War battlefield, Zulu battlefield, the

59:31

Sandwana, Rorke Strift.

59:34

You mentioned the Michael Caine film, Zulu.

59:37

Yeah, of course. Yeah, so being there. Please tell

59:39

me you've seen that. You have not

59:41

seen Zulu. No. We're watching

59:43

that tonight. Okay. Do you know? I've never heard

59:46

of it. You've not heard of Zulu?

59:48

No. I've got some- I promise

59:50

you, it's incredible. All right,

59:52

we'll watch it tonight. It is good fun.

59:54

I think it's Michael Caine's best film. Wow.

59:56

I have some Zulu spears that were supposedly

59:59

picked up from one of the-

59:59

battlefields. My great-grandmother had

1:00:02

been born in South Africa and

1:00:04

had collected various weapons and bits

1:00:06

and pieces. And then we

1:00:08

ended up in Cape Town with a car,

1:00:11

drive the car into a container, and then we sailed from

1:00:13

Cape Town

1:00:15

all the way around Africa and

1:00:17

then

1:00:18

we arrived in Tittlebury.

1:00:21

The most random, I mean, it was a subtle weird

1:00:23

ending to the journey. It was cold and gray and rainy

1:00:26

and utterly fucking bizarre because

1:00:29

they unloaded our car, opened the container,

1:00:31

my

1:00:32

dad walked into the container and then

1:00:35

reverses out and then we drive off. And

1:00:37

no one stamped our passports. There's no record of us coming into

1:00:39

the country. So were they right-hand drives?

1:00:42

This was exported, so I've got a random...

1:00:45

Sorry, sorry for the people listening. That's the car

1:00:47

in Barbanton. That's the town where my... Absolute

1:00:51

classic Rolls Royce.

1:00:54

That's very cool. We'll have to show it to

1:00:56

the camera. That's

1:00:59

an absolute classic. It's funny, I'm

1:01:02

going to imagine, tell me if I'm wrong, that car journey

1:01:05

is one of your

1:01:06

best childhood memories. Oh, without a doubt,

1:01:08

it was just astonishing. I mean... We

1:01:10

did a similar one. We went on holiday to Yugoslavia

1:01:13

pre-Balkans War. I must have been...

1:01:16

God, what have I been, five? Do you

1:01:19

remember the year? I've never followed. Yeah,

1:01:21

I've never. So we had

1:01:23

a Yugoslavian family move in next door to our... I've

1:01:25

told this on the podcast and my mum

1:01:27

made a real effort to make them feel welcome,

1:01:30

like help them learn English and settle in. And after

1:01:34

a year or so, they moved back to Yugoslavia

1:01:36

and they invited us out. And I

1:01:39

still don't know why we didn't... Did they not fly there?

1:01:42

Oh, I remember. My dad had

1:01:44

to take over a... In Yugoslavia, you can't

1:01:46

get good things like cameras and TVs and stuff.

1:01:49

Absolute shit. And so the

1:01:51

guy who... The father

1:01:54

wanted some of this stuff. So we drove

1:01:56

and it was a two day drive through...

1:01:58

I can't even remember where we probably went through France,

1:02:01

Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Germany. It went through

1:02:03

all these... All these cars drove all the way to Yugoslavia.

1:02:05

It took 48 hours. It was a two-day

1:02:07

drive and it's one of my happiest... I

1:02:09

don't remember much from BM5, but

1:02:12

I remember this journey, so many little bits. I remember the sausages

1:02:14

that were disgusting that we ate in Germany. What

1:02:16

year were you doing this? Well, so

1:02:18

I would have been about five, so about 83, 84. Okay,

1:02:21

because we did a similar drive when we went to Syria,

1:02:24

but that would have been 80, I would have missed you by a year,

1:02:26

but we would have been on the same... Similar journey,

1:02:29

yeah. And we drove all the way there. I

1:02:32

can't remember hardly anything from BM5, but

1:02:34

I remember that. I remember the bunk

1:02:36

beds we stayed in. I remember in the car, because

1:02:39

back then there were phones or anything. We're

1:02:42

all in the back of a... Was it the Mazda, the white Mazda?

1:02:44

Yeah, back of a white Mazda. There's no headrest.

1:02:48

Was it the Renault? It was

1:02:49

the Renault. The Renault 18. You

1:02:51

slept on the parcel shelf. Yeah, so I'd sleep

1:02:53

on the parcel shelf. My brother would sleep on the back seat

1:02:56

and my sister would sleep in the footwell. Brilliant.

1:02:59

My equivalent of an iPad was an Etch-a-Sketch.

1:03:02

I'd be playing with an Etch-a-Sketch. And I remember

1:03:05

getting to Belgrade and we went

1:03:07

out and we got watermelon. I remember us going to the

1:03:09

coast and we needed matches and me and their son

1:03:11

went out and went into every tent, stealing

1:03:13

people. We had like an arm full of matches. I

1:03:16

remember so much of that, and I can't remember much else,

1:03:18

much harder, but that's such

1:03:19

distinct memories. Yeah, very much so.

1:03:21

And my brother was the same age when we did this drive.

1:03:23

And I think this is one of his earliest memories. He was

1:03:26

five when we left. So you

1:03:28

got into the UK and sold the Rolls Royce and rebuilt

1:03:30

the life. Yeah, although I did notice

1:03:32

it took my dad quite a long time to sell the car.

1:03:36

Did he not want to sell it? I suspect not. He

1:03:38

absolutely fucking loved it. I mean, it was a gorgeous

1:03:41

machine. Yeah. Eventually

1:03:44

under pressure, he bowed down

1:03:46

and the car was sadly sold. But

1:03:49

that represented what

1:03:50

our life ends in Broadway, in that vehicle.

1:03:53

And what was it like trying to resettle

1:03:55

in the UK? Pretty hard.

1:03:57

I mean, I still feel like I've been here for a long time

1:03:59

now.

1:03:59

and I still feel like a bit of an alien. Yeah.

1:04:04

You know, I spent the majority of my childhood

1:04:06

overseas

1:04:08

with people who had very different values, very

1:04:11

different obsessions.

1:04:14

I mean, not being mean about the UK,

1:04:17

but it is a very easy place

1:04:19

in some ways to live compared

1:04:21

to some of the places where I grew up. And

1:04:25

again, I don't wanna judge anyone for

1:04:28

having the benefit of that ease.

1:04:30

Actually, slight segue. I

1:04:32

don't know if you've read the SAS Survival

1:04:35

Guide to surviving in different jurisdictions, because...

1:04:37

No, I mean, but we're pretty safe around

1:04:39

here, I've heard that. Well, yeah, that's kind of the point

1:04:41

of the story. It goes through various

1:04:44

different environments in which to survive, and then the

1:04:46

bit on basically the UK and

1:04:48

Western Europe is incredibly dismissive. It

1:04:50

says, you know, survival is easy,

1:04:53

full stop. And then it goes on to more interesting places. But

1:04:57

we skipped over Syria as well.

1:05:00

Yeah. We'll

1:05:03

come back to set, though. Let's do it. What was

1:05:05

Syria like? Because was it very

1:05:07

obviously very different from it is now?

1:05:10

Very different, I mean,

1:05:13

possibly the easiest way to describe Syria is it's so

1:05:16

old. It's been inhabited for such a long time.

1:05:18

And there's so much ancient stuff there.

1:05:22

It is mind boggling

1:05:24

on the one hand, on the other. I feel

1:05:26

desperately sad because I'm aware that a lot of that may

1:05:28

have been destroyed in the

1:05:31

wars.

1:05:33

I find it

1:05:36

difficult to talk about Syria

1:05:37

because I was there

1:05:39

when I was very young, and it's

1:05:42

probably the place I've lived where the

1:05:44

worst things have happened. And

1:05:48

my friends at school, for example, I don't even

1:05:50

know if a

1:05:51

lot of them are still alive. Yeah.

1:05:53

I was so young, I didn't know what all their surnames,

1:05:56

I can remember their first name, I can remember YL,

1:05:58

Sinan.

1:05:59

Catherine Haddock, what got her surname?

1:06:02

Roger.

1:06:03

How old were you? I was nearly seven when

1:06:05

we left. Okay, so quite young. Quite

1:06:07

young. But I didn't really

1:06:09

get sick of either one of these people. We left, I don't

1:06:12

know if, is it worth going to a bit of how

1:06:15

we left or why it happened so abruptly? Is it pertinent?

1:06:19

I think it's pertinent. So I raised, I raised Sirian

1:06:21

Zimbabwe because I think they have an interesting

1:06:23

segue into Bitcoin for two reasons. So

1:06:25

Zimbabwe, I think is a useful illustration of

1:06:27

how difficult capital controls can be and

1:06:30

how extraordinarily difficult it is for a lot

1:06:32

of people to live in the world to move money from one country

1:06:34

to another.

1:06:35

And part of the reason for the long

1:06:37

and elaborate story about the Rolls Royce is that

1:06:40

those capital controls of an act of demand

1:06:42

for the Zimbabwe dollar

1:06:44

result in you having to take quite outlandish

1:06:47

steps to move money from one

1:06:49

country to another.

1:06:50

That is your Bitcoin

1:06:53

in 19, what, 90? That's

1:06:57

your 1996 Bitcoin. Yeah.

1:06:59

So today I could

1:07:00

cross a border

1:07:02

naked with that in my head.

1:07:04

Yeah.

1:07:05

But back then that wasn't possible. Yeah.

1:07:08

Syria's, I raised

1:07:10

Syria not necessarily to talk about the country

1:07:13

or my experiences there, but the experience of leaving

1:07:15

it. Yeah. So

1:07:17

very briefly to recap, in sort

1:07:19

of late, mid to

1:07:22

late 86, there was something

1:07:24

called the Hindawi affair happened. It was an international

1:07:26

incident when a guy called Hindawi attempted

1:07:29

a bomb on aircraft by putting some explosives

1:07:31

into his pregnant girlfriend's luggage.

1:07:34

Thankfully he was caught. The

1:07:38

bomb was diffused. No one died,

1:07:40

thank God. But

1:07:43

the result of that meant

1:07:45

that Syria broke off diplomatic relations with

1:07:47

the UK and the UK likewise. So

1:07:51

the embassy knew that they were gonna have to get out. They

1:07:53

were all being evacuated. We didn't know that we were included

1:07:56

within the expulsion order, because we, like

1:07:58

I said at the beginning, we weren't quite sure.

1:07:59

connected to the embassy. But

1:08:02

I can still remember an

1:08:04

official from the embassy coming to our

1:08:06

house. We lived on the ground floor, this

1:08:09

block flat's called the Kawate buildings in Damascus.

1:08:14

And this guy comes and knocks on the

1:08:16

door and my

1:08:18

mum and my dad are both immensely

1:08:20

agitated and

1:08:22

and they come in and they

1:08:25

just start grabbing packing cases.

1:08:27

We'd moved there two years before packing

1:08:33

cases come out of the cupboards and they

1:08:34

just start going for it. And we

1:08:37

were given 48 hours notice to get out of the country.

1:08:40

How do you share it? To leave everything. And

1:08:43

now this was my home at the time.

1:08:45

I could barely remember London. Yeah

1:08:50

and my parents just they stayed up for 48 hours.

1:08:53

They packed the whole house.

1:08:54

There were soldiers in the garden,

1:08:57

Syrian army soldiers.

1:09:00

And then

1:09:01

we were escorted to the border by

1:09:06

the Syrian army and Turkish border.

1:09:08

Tartus, there's a port on the coast. And

1:09:12

stuck on a ferry and told to fuck

1:09:15

off.

1:09:16

Jesus. And that was it 48 hours

1:09:18

start to finish boom.

1:09:21

So I've raised

1:09:24

that as I think

1:09:27

a lot of the ideas behind our chat are sort

1:09:30

of angling towards

1:09:32

why I feel

1:09:34

perhaps Bitcoin and its properties appeal

1:09:36

more to me than

1:09:38

to some other people that

1:09:40

my contemporaries work in the City of London or

1:09:42

in finance or in law. I

1:09:45

was lucky to have

1:09:46

strange experiences as a kid

1:09:49

which I feel made the advantages of a money

1:09:51

which you can carry in your head or

1:09:54

which you can bring with you when you

1:09:56

cross a border. Or

1:09:58

if you if the worst

1:09:59

and you just had to drop everything and go,

1:10:02

what could you take with you? I think that's

1:10:04

what it was and for me. So we've traveled a

1:10:06

lot making this show, and the

1:10:09

hardest place to explain Bitcoin to is

1:10:11

here in Bedford with my friends. Like, it's just

1:10:13

so difficult. I try and explain to

1:10:16

them, I've told them for years about inflation

1:10:18

that's coming, I've told them about risks of banks, I've

1:10:20

told them everything, but

1:10:23

you almost have to go through more

1:10:25

horrific experiences, more, a genuine

1:10:28

crisis to understand it. And

1:10:32

I just can't get them to consider

1:10:34

it. When I was in Argentina,

1:10:36

or I was there long as

1:10:38

in Uruguay, but talking to Argentinians, and you

1:10:40

explained to them, they're like, yeah, I get that. Yeah,

1:10:43

well, we used to keep our, we bought a house for cash, we

1:10:45

used to keep our, we never kept money in the bank, or

1:10:48

most places in South America, it's very easy.

1:10:51

People like Anita or Toyo in Africa, it's very easy. When

1:10:54

I was at the border with Venezuela and Colombia,

1:10:56

and Cucata, very easy. It's very

1:10:59

easy to explain to these people who've gone through crisis,

1:11:02

suffered forfeiture, suffered hyperinflation,

1:11:04

like they naturally get it.

1:11:06

It's almost like

1:11:08

I'm waiting for a crisis. I can

1:11:10

sit there and explain to people, everything

1:11:13

I've learned about the banks,

1:11:15

central banks,

1:11:16

high inflation, CBDCs, it's

1:11:22

like I'm fishing without bait.

1:11:24

I feel like I've got the best bait in the

1:11:26

world, and nobody's taken the line. It's

1:11:29

the difference between show and tell. If

1:11:31

someone has experienced something, or you can show

1:11:33

them a story,

1:11:35

that's so much more powerful

1:11:37

than lecturing them about it. And to

1:11:39

be honest, I've spent a lot of time, I think,

1:11:42

poorly lecturing people about

1:11:44

why they should

1:11:45

read about Bitcoin. I don't even tell people to buy it, so

1:11:47

just go and read about it. Yeah, I mean, on the

1:11:49

Real Bedford website now, we said, I've

1:11:52

written an article called, Why You Should Not Buy Bitcoin.

1:11:55

And the whole article is about

1:11:57

why you should learn about it. Oh, right.

1:11:59

Just learn about it because it's

1:12:02

going to arm you and better prepare you for the

1:12:04

world we live in. Apart from anything else, it's absolutely

1:12:07

mind blowing. Yeah. The more... I mean,

1:12:10

fucking hell, I think a few years ago, I thought I knew so much

1:12:12

about it. And then, yeah, the more... It's like a, you know,

1:12:14

Socratic dialectic. The more I read about

1:12:16

it, the more I realise how ignorant I am. Yeah.

1:12:19

And, you know, the more Bitcoin

1:12:21

humbles you, doesn't it? The more... Yeah,

1:12:23

and I think the more I learn, the

1:12:25

more I realise how insidious...

1:12:29

Central bank control over money

1:12:31

is how insidious our governments are.

1:12:34

The thing... I think you get to like

1:12:37

peer through the veil a little bit more, or behind

1:12:39

the veil a little bit more. And

1:12:41

I think it becomes... It's like in the matrix

1:12:44

when you can disseminate... Everything's

1:12:47

going to green numbers. Yeah, and the green

1:12:49

numbers, you start to see them. You can

1:12:51

just see stuff. So, you know,

1:12:53

where historically I would have... I

1:12:55

mentioned the other day, I went to the shop to get a

1:12:57

coffee in the morning when there's Costa crappy

1:13:00

machine ones. And there's a guy buying three

1:13:02

newspapers. He's buying Times. What

1:13:04

do you got? Times? A mirror... What

1:13:07

was it? Start. He got a broad sheet. Yeah,

1:13:11

he got a highbrow.

1:13:15

Broad sheet. He bought himself the

1:13:17

lowbrow daily mail and then a tabloid.

1:13:20

And I just thought, you're going to read these and accept

1:13:23

it. I assume you're going to move on. I

1:13:25

mean, I'm making an assumption here, but

1:13:27

I just watched the news. I'll see Rishi Sunak

1:13:29

or whoever. And I just... I know the bullshit

1:13:32

that's been said to us now. I just see it. And

1:13:35

that's because of Bitcoin. I think I can see it. Oh,

1:13:38

completely. I mean, something as simple as...

1:13:41

I think in some ways it's better to start with thinking

1:13:43

about money rather than thinking about Bitcoin. If

1:13:47

you... And starting with something as simple

1:13:49

as house prices.

1:13:51

So there's an argument to be made to

1:13:53

say that you can draw a direct line from the unaffordability

1:13:55

of housing straight to the bank's

1:13:58

ability to create new money without any cost.

1:13:59

themselves.

1:14:01

And if you break it down into small logical pieces,

1:14:04

I think

1:14:04

it can flow quite logically.

1:14:08

So obviously you start with

1:14:10

housing is expensive. True.

1:14:13

How do most people buy houses? They

1:14:16

get a mortgage. Exactly. If

1:14:20

no one could get a mortgage, what do you think would happen

1:14:22

to house prices? They would fall.

1:14:24

They would fall, exactly. And

1:14:26

that's a good thing.

1:14:28

So when a bank, when you go to a bank and you

1:14:30

ask for a mortgage, where does it get

1:14:33

that money? Well,

1:14:35

you would ideally it would be lending based

1:14:37

on depositors, but it's

1:14:39

true. Well, it's partially

1:14:41

true. It's leveraged the positive income.

1:14:44

Did you, did

1:14:45

you read the, um, the bank of England's paper

1:14:47

on stablecoins a couple of years ago? No, there's

1:14:49

a really interesting paragraph in that at the

1:14:51

beginning. Does it say we're fucking liars

1:14:54

and we're going to fuck you. No, they're quite on. They're quite honest.

1:14:56

They talk about

1:14:59

the nature of money. It's

1:15:02

if you can't put up our far, far view, it was their,

1:15:04

it was their consultation paper on stablecoins. I think

1:15:06

it was, it's in paragraph one and they talk about

1:15:08

the two kinds of money that exist in, in

1:15:10

Britain at the moment. And this is true for most developed economies.

1:15:13

The, the first, the first

1:15:16

kind of money is it's a liability of the

1:15:18

central bank. So they're not lying. They're

1:15:20

not trying to hide this. They're quite open. The pound

1:15:22

in your hand is a liability of the central

1:15:24

bank. And I think the one

1:15:27

thing I'd like to try and move away from is the concept of Fiat

1:15:29

money towards liability money. Yeah.

1:15:32

I like that versus commodity

1:15:34

money, which is Bitcoin. Yeah.

1:15:36

Um, every single pound note,

1:15:39

no 10 pound note that you hold is a liability

1:15:41

of the central bank. It fucking says it on it. I promised

1:15:43

to pay the bear on demand, the sum of 10 pounds, even

1:15:46

worse than that. The next paragraph they go on and they

1:15:48

say, um, the second kind of money

1:15:50

is created by commercial banks when they make loans.

1:15:53

And you hang up. I thought commercial

1:15:55

banks lent out deposits. No, it's liabilities all the

1:15:57

way through.

1:15:59

down, every single

1:16:02

piece of sterling that

1:16:04

exists is someone else's liability.

1:16:08

And

1:16:08

once you get your head around that, you

1:16:11

suddenly realize the attraction of a money that doesn't have

1:16:13

any counterparty risk,

1:16:15

that you can access 24-7, that no one can confiscate from

1:16:18

you if you use it properly and

1:16:20

if you custody it properly.

1:16:23

So I mean, coming back to the mortgage point,

1:16:25

these fucking banks are creating

1:16:28

money out of thin air at the moment you sign

1:16:30

your mortgage paper and they are creating as

1:16:32

much money as a normal person will earn in their entire

1:16:35

lifetime

1:16:36

because you may only pay your mortgage off just before you retire.

1:16:40

And the second

1:16:42

order effects of that are astonishing. That money

1:16:44

is pumped into the system. I mean, like I said,

1:16:47

you could draw a direct line, unaffordability of housing

1:16:49

straight

1:16:49

to the bank's ability to create that money. I

1:16:53

mean, fucking hell, if you're putting a hundred grand deposit down

1:16:55

and you're buying a billion pound

1:16:57

house, 900,000 new pounds are being created by that bank

1:16:59

and pumped into the system at no

1:17:02

cost. Do we need to lock the top up? I think we should probably have

1:17:04

to talk about it. Do you know what the weird thing is? You

1:17:06

finish that glass and I don't think you stop talking

1:17:09

and I haven't seen you pick it up. So

1:17:11

there's some kind of voodoo going on there. Have you

1:17:13

seen him pick that glass up and drink it? I

1:17:15

quite like that. It's

1:17:18

really nice. I'm

1:17:19

pleased. It's the first whisky

1:17:22

I've liked. It's the

1:17:24

weird blend of the rye and the... You

1:17:26

might be a scotch guy then. I constantly have imposter

1:17:28

syndrome around Bitcoiners who drink whisky. Danny

1:17:33

will have an old fashioned or maybe... I

1:17:35

actually don't mind that. That's all right. I love

1:17:37

an old fashioned.

1:17:38

Yeah. That's like me having a latte

1:17:40

when you have a black coffee. Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:43

It's like coffee maxi. Okay. The counterpoint

1:17:45

and counterargument to that is

1:17:48

credit, the opportunity

1:17:50

to access credit can drive productivity.

1:17:52

In that credit makes things

1:17:55

available to people starting businesses,

1:17:58

buying a home, being able to offer...

1:17:59

So that

1:18:02

is the counterpoint to that is that a lot of

1:18:04

credit has created productivity and when credit dries

1:18:06

up economies store. We've

1:18:08

had a drive of credit right now with interest

1:18:11

rates so high is hard to now look

1:18:13

there's a good side to that because the shitty

1:18:15

Silicon Valley startups who raise an enormous

1:18:18

amount of money and end up

1:18:20

IPO in before they've really made any money. I mean,

1:18:23

look at Twitter at the moment. It's worth 44 billion

1:18:25

still not profitable. Has it ever been profitable? Well,

1:18:28

I think the acquisition

1:18:29

debt there was about 19 billion. So I don't

1:18:33

know what the coupon on that interest is, but

1:18:36

they're going to need to make a gigantic amount of money

1:18:38

every single day in order to service that debt. Isn't

1:18:41

it a billion a year to service

1:18:43

this? Is that right? Is it the interest on the debt? It's

1:18:45

either to service the loan or the interest on the debt,

1:18:47

which is why he's pushing so hard this Twitter

1:18:49

money. Yeah, which I've fallen for. Yeah,

1:18:52

a billion dollars a year. Yeah, a billion dollars a year. That's

1:18:54

crazy. But yeah, so the

1:18:56

good side is that yes. That's true.

1:18:58

I mean, have you read Farrah Fakis's

1:18:59

book, Letters to My Daughter? No, let me keep

1:19:02

it on there.

1:19:04

He's really interesting in credit. So he's got quite

1:19:06

a nice story there where he

1:19:08

talks about creditors pulling tomorrow's

1:19:11

profits to be able to spend today in order

1:19:13

to grow your business. Yeah. And

1:19:15

to be honest, I think it's undeniable that there are benefits

1:19:17

in that. And I bring up house prices

1:19:20

because I think that is a particular

1:19:22

sector where the increase

1:19:24

in prices has been disproportionate

1:19:27

to the benefit to

1:19:29

the general population. Yeah.

1:19:32

And

1:19:33

one of the areas has been people

1:19:35

with fabulous amounts of wealth

1:19:37

knowing that they can't park it in the bank because

1:19:40

they're not going to get the interest. So they might as

1:19:42

well buy houses, which houses are another form

1:19:44

of Bitcoin in some ways. They're a store of value. They

1:19:47

always tend to go up in price. We're not building any

1:19:49

new land apart from in the South China Sea. And

1:19:53

so they are a good investment and they are a solid

1:19:55

investment. And I mean, I've thought of I don't have

1:19:57

a second house, but I've thought of buying a second house.

1:19:59

to put money. And so you

1:20:02

have this mass ownership of properties

1:20:04

by landlords. Yeah. Well, it's the financialization

1:20:07

of everything that we talked about earlier. Yeah. If your

1:20:09

money is continually using value by you sitting

1:20:11

in the bank, you need to find other things to do with

1:20:13

it. What's the quote?

1:20:15

When the Jeff Booth one? Oh, when

1:20:18

money isn't scarce, everything else is. Everything else is paraphrasing.

1:20:20

Yeah. Paraphrasing, yeah. And

1:20:23

so, I mean, I think to me, it's, I mean,

1:20:26

I remember

1:20:27

growing up, there was

1:20:30

an advert on YouTube

1:20:32

for one of the building societies and it said,

1:20:35

7.4% interest on your deposits. So whatever.

1:20:37

So you can earn a high interest. So there's an incentive

1:20:40

to save, which was obviously

1:20:42

a good thing. And then there was a cost to borrow.

1:20:45

And so whilst we've hit these four or five percent interest

1:20:48

rates, which is get the shit out of people, especially

1:20:50

people who are going off fixed rate mortgages

1:20:52

to variable rates, trying to renegotiate them, actually,

1:20:55

historically, this is normal to

1:20:57

have a cost of capital, which we should have.

1:20:59

And I think it goes back to Stephen

1:21:02

Lubka, doesn't it? Where Stephen Lubka talks about zero

1:21:04

percent interest rates. They distort the market.

1:21:07

There shouldn't be a cost of capital. Yes. But

1:21:09

it's the rate of change that's the problem. It's

1:21:12

the rate of, well, there's two problems. The rate of change

1:21:14

out of nor percent

1:21:15

was, was really hard

1:21:18

and it's it's fucked a lot of things up.

1:21:21

But going to zero

1:21:23

percent interest rates was

1:21:26

putting off the inevitable market

1:21:28

correction that's required. It's a

1:21:30

bit of a toss up, is it? Would the pain

1:21:32

of not dropping

1:21:35

interest rates

1:21:36

during those periods of general

1:21:38

global crisis and calamity have been

1:21:40

worse than the pain of the unwind? Both

1:21:43

scenarios, I believe, are painful. I'm

1:21:45

of the view that we probably should have taken that first pain

1:21:48

and not dropped to zero. Boom and bust.

1:21:51

It's an old economic,

1:21:53

it's economics 101. I studied boom and

1:21:55

bust cycles. Ray Dalio talks about boom and bust

1:21:57

cycles. You have a boom. You have a boom. credit

1:22:00

expansion, then you have the correction,

1:22:02

you have credit contraction. And

1:22:04

look, there are good times

1:22:06

and there are bad times, but I think, again,

1:22:09

this is me from my uneducated point of view,

1:22:11

I'd much rather Lynn Ordon explain this, but from

1:22:14

my simple point of view is what I've seen

1:22:16

is as we kick this can down the road, which

1:22:18

I think is a problem of the political

1:22:20

cycle, nobody wants

1:22:22

to lead us into a recession, but

1:22:25

as we've kicked the can down the road, essentially what

1:22:27

we do is we

1:22:29

widen the wealth gap to

1:22:32

unacceptable levels. Between those who have assets

1:22:35

and those who don't. Exactly. And returning

1:22:37

to the liability point earlier, once

1:22:39

you understand that all fiat money

1:22:41

is essentially a liability either

1:22:44

of your commercial bank or

1:22:46

of your government, then the

1:22:48

next conclusion is,

1:22:53

is that reliance on the liability

1:22:55

is all fine and well, until

1:22:58

you begin to lose faith in the person on whom you're relying

1:23:01

or the person who owes you that

1:23:03

obligation. Commercial

1:23:05

banking is an example, you deposit

1:23:07

a hundred pounds into Barclays. You

1:23:10

don't own that money anymore. What you own

1:23:12

is a claim on that money against Barclays.

1:23:15

So you are a creditor of Barclays in

1:23:17

respect to that hundred pounds. And we've seen very

1:23:19

clearly over the last few months, that

1:23:21

as soon as lots of people suddenly realize that Barclays

1:23:23

may not be good for that hundred quid anymore,

1:23:26

out it comes. Up to 80,000 pound

1:23:28

you're protected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But do you

1:23:30

really want to go through the ball ache of waiting

1:23:32

for the government to reimburse you? No, if I can

1:23:34

get my money out, I'm getting my money out. That's how bank runs

1:23:36

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1:26:23

Well I don't know if you've prepared for it,

1:26:25

but I have. I'm a financial

1:26:28

prepper now. Do

1:26:31

you have eight different banks? No,

1:26:33

but I have a couple of banks. But

1:26:36

I also have pockets of cash distributed

1:26:39

around the country. Random locations,

1:26:42

like really weird and random locations. This

1:26:44

is interesting. If I never, I mean, obviously

1:26:46

I would never say that on a podcast, but

1:26:50

I hope these locations are secure.

1:26:52

Oh, no, no. First, one that's secure locations.

1:26:54

Is there a treasure map? No. Well,

1:26:57

actually my brother has a treasure map. But

1:26:59

secondly, they're not amounts so large

1:27:02

that it's worth coming around with a $5 wrench.

1:27:05

I might as well buy the $5 wrench off you for $500. It's

1:27:07

just small amounts of pockets, but if at any

1:27:09

time I need, I know I can go and get it. So

1:27:11

if the bank closes down and I need cash, I'm

1:27:14

like, there's that location. There's a

1:27:16

thousand pound there. It's

1:27:19

a two hour drive,

1:27:19

but I have to go and do it. So there's no point like. Why

1:27:22

not just have Bitcoin? No, I have Bitcoin as well.

1:27:24

But why do you need the cash? Because I want every

1:27:26

scenario. What scenario would there be that

1:27:28

you need cash, not Bitcoin? Go

1:27:30

into the shops and buy a loaf of bread. But

1:27:33

this is like financial Armageddon prepping.

1:27:35

No, no. Bank failure. Bank

1:27:37

failure.

1:27:38

Bank failure. Bank failure. I can't get any money

1:27:41

out of the bank that day. Truckers,

1:27:44

I do something

1:27:47

in the line of our business that

1:27:50

means I get my bank account switched off. And

1:27:52

that happened. People had their bank accounts switched off and they couldn't

1:27:54

pay their mortgage. They couldn't get money out to buy groceries.

1:27:58

I think it's a.

1:27:59

I think it's a far

1:28:02

out risk that's getting nearer. You're talking

1:28:04

about tail risk. Yeah. I'm obsessed

1:28:06

with tail risk. Yeah. So I've

1:28:08

got... I'm just increasing my plans for

1:28:10

every single one. Yeah. I have six months of food in

1:28:12

my basement and a generator. Okay. So

1:28:15

you're an actual rapper. Tin pineapple. You've

1:28:18

got a shotgun license yet? I haven't got a shotgun license. I have some... Well,

1:28:22

you know... I have some explosives. You need the license.

1:28:25

Just for the record. And speaking

1:28:27

as a lawyer, I have no explosives on my property. Do you

1:28:29

have a Rolls-O-Royce?

1:28:29

Just in case. Sadly, no.

1:28:34

No, but tail risk is an interesting thing to explore.

1:28:37

And I think it appeals

1:28:39

to a lot of people who understand the value in Bitcoin. So

1:28:42

like we were saying about the UK, why is it so hard

1:28:44

to explain to people in the UK

1:28:46

why Bitcoin is useful? And

1:28:49

I think in some...

1:28:50

And Danny's court is good on this as well, isn't he? Yeah.

1:28:53

Coin court, yeah.

1:28:55

We live in a country where we don't,

1:28:58

in many cases, need Bitcoin yet. I'm being

1:29:00

completely honest, and this is a person who loves and obsesses

1:29:03

about Bitcoin much more than my wife

1:29:05

is happy with. We

1:29:08

live in a country where, by and large, you can

1:29:11

tap your card in a point of sale terminal, and

1:29:13

that works. And broadly

1:29:15

speaking, technologies are adopted when and if

1:29:17

they become useful.

1:29:19

And for many people, Bitcoin already is useful. You

1:29:21

know, it's a store of wealth. Your currency

1:29:23

may be evaporating at 70% a year. In

1:29:27

Lebanon, you can mine Bitcoin, and

1:29:29

you have access to a global financial system that

1:29:32

is permissionless, and you can just participate in

1:29:35

Zimbabwe. I mean, they're running out of physical

1:29:37

currency now. So if

1:29:40

you have a... You don't even need a smartphone. You

1:29:42

can use a feature phone. Bitcoin

1:29:44

and cars, you have kids who are finally

1:29:47

being able to get paid

1:29:48

for services, not have

1:29:50

the other eight people who live in their rooms

1:29:52

stealing the money from them. To

1:29:55

those people, it's obvious. This is what particularly

1:29:57

pisses me off about someone like Elizabeth Warren

1:29:59

with her...

1:29:59

anti-crypto army, which by the way, most Bitcoiners

1:30:02

are in an anti-crypto army, but what

1:30:04

particularly pisses me off is, she

1:30:06

doesn't understand the second order effects

1:30:09

of what she's doing. She thinks of

1:30:11

in the USA that she wants, for

1:30:14

whatever reason, I don't know her intentions, but for

1:30:16

whatever reason, she's taken it upon herself

1:30:18

to attack Bitcoin.

1:30:20

But she doesn't understand that this is a lifeline

1:30:23

for people in living under authoritarian

1:30:26

regimes or activists around the

1:30:28

world, people living under hyperinflation, people

1:30:30

living in Lebanon can mine Bitcoin and buy their groceries.

1:30:33

She doesn't understand how important a

1:30:35

tool this is. But that's why I care. And

1:30:37

I mean, I feel like, I

1:30:40

judge myself a lot about this. I feel as though my

1:30:44

wife says I come on far too aggressively about how

1:30:46

brilliant Bitcoin is.

1:30:49

So I think in some ways I need to dial back and

1:30:52

start talking about the money instead or about the benefits

1:30:54

and about how

1:30:56

exciting it, I mean, my pin tweet

1:30:58

is at Elizabeth Warren. I don't... My

1:31:03

film coming out in the next week is called Dear

1:31:05

Elizabeth. Is the text is my one. Yeah,

1:31:07

we've delayed it by about a week. I

1:31:10

need to watch this. And it ends with a letter

1:31:12

I've written to her. It should be out

1:31:14

when this show drops. Yeah. Oh,

1:31:16

fantastic. Okay, so

1:31:18

we spent a long time getting to this point, but the real

1:31:21

point is,

1:31:23

we've taken more

1:31:24

of an interest in the UK recently

1:31:26

and that we've neglected it. We're

1:31:29

a media company that makes a Bitcoin podcast that

1:31:32

cares about Bitcoin. It spends most of the time

1:31:34

in the US because that's where a

1:31:36

lot of the activity is. And in doing so, we've

1:31:38

neglected it. I don't mean this

1:31:42

as a flex, but we have one of the

1:31:44

largest shows, maybe the largest dedicated

1:31:46

to the subject. And it's

1:31:48

in Bedford. It's from Bedford, UK, and

1:31:51

we've neglected the UK. So we've been

1:31:53

trying to build a relationship with Danny and Molly at Coin

1:31:55

Corner. We've been trying to build a relationship with British

1:31:57

people. We're starting to put events on here. We're

1:32:00

trying to do more here, but I feel

1:32:02

like we're so behind

1:32:04

the curve here in the UK. I

1:32:07

fear legislation more than here because at least in

1:32:09

the US, there are some people, senators

1:32:12

in Congress, that

1:32:14

are doing something to fight and protect Bitcoiners

1:32:16

there. And I feel like we've got

1:32:19

lobbying for, probably in associations,

1:32:21

the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and

1:32:25

Coin Center who are working to

1:32:28

actually educate people on what this is and why it's important.

1:32:31

And I'm fully aware that we're not doing anything

1:32:33

here. Well, I'm not.

1:32:35

You're doing more than you think. I

1:32:38

was fanboying at the beginning about how much I love the show. But

1:32:41

we could do, like, I'm really, I'm

1:32:44

giving you a layup to say. Shall I

1:32:46

give a bit of, I probably should have started at the beginning of the

1:32:48

show with a bit of background, but if you haven't

1:32:52

stopped listening to the show at this point. The

1:32:54

poshish show we've ever done. Am

1:32:56

I really the poshish person you've had on the show? You just sound posh

1:32:58

and you're making me speak posh. My

1:33:00

proper accent is a proper benefit accent, mate. But

1:33:04

I think Americans have been like, these

1:33:06

people are so posh. They're so civilized. British

1:33:09

people are like, who are these fucking twats? Yeah,

1:33:11

so I'm in two second part of history.

1:33:14

So I'm a lawyer by training. I spent

1:33:16

a long time working in M&A in the city doing

1:33:20

startup and private equity and then during the financial

1:33:22

crisis, moved into special situations.

1:33:25

So a lot of insolvency and restructuring work. And

1:33:28

then segwayed out of that, spent

1:33:31

nearly a year looking after my kids while my wife was

1:33:33

starting up a business.

1:33:34

And then I

1:33:36

wanted to work in startups and in FinTech. And

1:33:39

I've been been interested in Bitcoin for a long time. I started

1:33:42

reading about in 2013, started node running

1:33:44

in 2015. And I've

1:33:47

been working. I don't

1:33:49

have a huge public presence. I'm generally

1:33:51

quite a private person and have

1:33:53

been doing a lot of the background. I

1:33:57

imagine a lot of Bitcoiners do.

1:33:59

I landed a job at a FinTech firm called Curve,

1:34:02

and we helped to put together their first

1:34:05

cryptocurrency product. So we were sponsoring

1:34:07

Miami last year. Yeah. And

1:34:09

you may have seen, we had a tent out in the food

1:34:12

court. Yeah, but

1:34:14

I know another curve. And there are multiple

1:34:16

curves. Yeah, there's a DeFi curve. Is there a

1:34:18

gaming curve? There may be. It's...

1:34:21

So an old client of mine from my old

1:34:23

days in advertising, a guy called Stuart Dinsley works

1:34:25

for Curve. But I think they're gaming.

1:34:28

Yeah, they're gaming. So the curve

1:34:29

I worked for, I was saying

1:34:32

to Danny earlier, they're basically a digital

1:34:34

wallet with a physical card on top. Okay. And

1:34:36

the idea is that you can provision whichever,

1:34:38

whichever of your digital cards

1:34:41

you want to act as the payment vehicle

1:34:44

behind your curve card. And

1:34:47

the reason why we were in Miami last year was because we'd

1:34:49

come up with a crypto cashback.

1:34:52

Unfortunately, I was not able to sway

1:34:55

opinion at Curve that it should be a Bitcoin cashback.

1:34:57

So, you know... Damn it. I

1:35:00

mean, mate, the amount of... I

1:35:02

basically had to get our CEO to wear a muzzle

1:35:04

not to have him talk about Solana at...

1:35:08

Exactly.

1:35:08

Anyway,

1:35:12

so the basic principle, the selling

1:35:14

point for Bitcoin is was you could earn cashback

1:35:17

on your underlying cards and also you could earn

1:35:19

Bitcoin cashback on your curve card. And

1:35:21

that would just be provisioned into your wallet.

1:35:24

And we've just enabled with

1:35:27

rule to self-castity as well.

1:35:29

So that's available now. You have a card, you can get Bitcoin

1:35:31

cashback. Yeah. Wow. I won that card.

1:35:33

I'll send you over a free link. Yeah, please do. Oh,

1:35:35

awesome. I'll show you off the show. Well,

1:35:38

I mean, I've got a BA Amex

1:35:40

one and my BA points, they're fucking so

1:35:42

shit. I've got so many of them. There's a limit to how many you

1:35:45

can use. They're always on shitty flights at shitty

1:35:47

times that you don't want. Never in the school holidays.

1:35:49

Never in the school holidays. Yeah, they're just a waste of fucking

1:35:51

time. Like I've got them there. They're just doing

1:35:53

nothing for me. Give me

1:35:55

a sec. I'll show you off the show. All right, cool. Anyway,

1:35:58

sorry to...

1:35:59

I appreciate I've been burbling on it. How

1:36:02

have we been going? We have been going for an hour and a half.

1:36:04

Bloody hell. I'm so sorry. I'm

1:36:06

trying to be quick. We haven't even talked about any of the law yet. I know.

1:36:11

Then we'll get me real hard on one of the tasks of

1:36:13

another law. Anyway,

1:36:16

so I've been working with Curve for a while.

1:36:18

And then as part of my work with Curve, I decided

1:36:20

to respond to a lot of the government consultations on

1:36:22

cryptocurrency. So I

1:36:25

submitted evidence to the FCA crypto

1:36:27

sprint, which they held last year, to HM

1:36:30

Treasury, to HMRC on

1:36:32

taxation of crypto assets, and

1:36:34

to a big piece of evidence to parliament.

1:36:37

So I've begun to do some

1:36:40

legal advocacy. And

1:36:43

my main aim there is that

1:36:45

I want to help politicians. Politicians and bienners

1:36:47

do not understand

1:36:49

cryptocurrency and Bitcoin least of all. The

1:36:53

current legislation, which we can talk about. I mean, I know

1:36:55

you've got a few of the bills that are currently

1:36:57

going through parliament. A

1:36:59

lot of those are not

1:37:01

necessarily bad pieces of legislation, but

1:37:03

I think some of them exhibit a

1:37:06

lack of understanding of how Bitcoin

1:37:08

works at a protocol level in particular.

1:37:11

And

1:37:13

once you begin to understand the protocol level,

1:37:15

you understand that the legislation is perhaps not appropriate

1:37:19

for what they're trying to regulate. So what I want to

1:37:21

try and do is to ensure that politicians

1:37:23

have the tools and education available

1:37:26

to them to make good regulation. I'm

1:37:29

relatively libertarian, but I'm also conscious

1:37:31

that regulation is coming.

1:37:33

And if it's inevitable, I want it to be good regulation. And

1:37:35

I want it to be made by people who are informed and know what

1:37:37

they're talking about. So

1:37:39

the pin tweet I mentioned earlier to Elizabeth Warren,

1:37:42

that was a game I played with my two daughters. We

1:37:44

said, have you done that? We sat down with a coin. I

1:37:47

put a zero on one side and a one on the other,

1:37:49

and we flipped it 256 times. Have

1:37:52

you ever done this? No. It's absolutely

1:37:54

fucking mind blowing.

1:37:57

You generate a binary number 256 times.

1:37:59

stages long, write

1:38:01

that down, feed it into a piece of software

1:38:04

that converts it into hexadecimal.

1:38:06

You take that hexadecimal number, you feed it into

1:38:08

another piece of software, and it spits out

1:38:10

a private key.

1:38:12

And then you put that private key into blue wallet,

1:38:14

and

1:38:15

then there's a fucking wallet there. And

1:38:18

it just... Danny, Danny, Danny, what's

1:38:20

he talking about? The

1:38:22

process of doing that literally blew

1:38:24

my fucking mind. And

1:38:27

the one thing I couldn't get my head around

1:38:29

was, before

1:38:31

we'd written down that number, did

1:38:34

it exist?

1:38:35

Did it exist in the universe of

1:38:37

potential numbers that exist

1:38:40

within the search space of the Bitcoin

1:38:42

elliptical curve cryptography?

1:38:45

Or did we create that number?

1:38:48

So what I did with my girls, okay, I've got

1:38:50

a wallet, so I put some SATs in there. And then

1:38:53

I deleted the wallet.

1:38:54

And I said to the kids, you've got to recreate the

1:38:56

process of what we just did. You've got the binary

1:38:59

string. If you can...

1:39:01

Christmas treasure hunt. If you can complete

1:39:04

that process,

1:39:06

then you get the Bitcoin.

1:39:08

That's amazing. That is very, very, very

1:39:10

cool. They did it. Wow. All

1:39:14

I gave them was the websites they needed to go to to

1:39:16

put the numbers in. Seriously, it's just so much

1:39:18

fun. Yeah, well, I'm going to have to do this. Have

1:39:21

you ever read the book about the

1:39:23

Winklevoss twins? The Bitcoin billionaires.

1:39:25

Yes. The whole part where they're

1:39:27

trying to come up with their private keys and the rolling

1:39:30

of the dice. With this air gap computer. Air

1:39:32

gap computer. I wasn't air gapped, I'm sorry. Trying

1:39:34

to avoid

1:39:35

any scenario where there could be cameras. Like thinking

1:39:37

that whole thing through blew

1:39:40

my mind. It's like I was saying earlier, the

1:39:42

more I learn about Bitcoin, the more ignorant I realise

1:39:44

I am. I got the idea from

1:39:47

Gigi. And I think this gets into the impossibility of... The legal

1:39:54

reason for that story is the impossibility

1:39:56

of banning Bitcoin. So

1:39:58

when people say, oh, you know, the government.

1:39:59

I'm gonna get a bandage. So I said- They'll

1:40:02

make it hard. They will make

1:40:04

it,

1:40:04

they can make it as hard as they like.

1:40:07

But at the same time, if I can sit in my room

1:40:09

and generate a private key by flipping a coin,

1:40:12

and then once I've generated that private

1:40:14

key, I can transact with anyone in the

1:40:16

world

1:40:17

freely without any KYC.

1:40:22

I mean- It's unstoppable. It's unstoppable.

1:40:25

And I think once politicians realize it's

1:40:27

unstoppable, then you need to,

1:40:29

when you sit down and have a sensible conversation,

1:40:33

this technology has been invented. It's out in the wild.

1:40:35

You cannot shut it down.

1:40:37

Let us see how we can use it to our advantage

1:40:40

rather than to fight a fruitless fight against

1:40:42

something you cannot win. Yeah.

1:40:44

Well, it's also in this time where we've

1:40:46

post Brexit, we have this opportunity

1:40:49

to lead across Europe and

1:40:52

you occasionally see these little

1:40:54

flirtations with it from within government. Yeah,

1:40:56

we want to be leaders in FinTech or

1:40:58

crypto and then nothing ever happens.

1:41:01

I just think, these fucking idiots are missing opportunity.

1:41:03

Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the legislation that's

1:41:05

actually going through Parliament? Please do. I mean, I've not

1:41:07

looked at my notes once. I'm,

1:41:11

please control me if I'm verbal. Everything

1:41:13

is fine. Okay. You carry

1:41:15

on. So I think that, so the note,

1:41:18

the notes like I looked at, a lot of this started with the

1:41:19