Like what do you think the people’s responsibly to that action? And also I hope you have like awesome security because you’re like totally a threat to the establishment. You’re awesome!
Thank you, Thank you, Fortunately, you’re wrong about that last thing, so I’m not a threat at all.
Ideas are powerful and ideas change the future more effectively than any other thing in the history of humanity. Not people, ideas and the good news is that Bitcoin isn’t people its ideas. There’s a lot of people behind it, but fundamentally, it’s an idea. And in one really beautiful way it’s an idea that has been distilled into some mathematical formulas and put together as software so that idea now runs on the internet.
And it doesn’t run in one place on the internet, it’s an idea that has been set free and runs everywhere. And it’s an idea that now that it’s a bit better understood.
It’s so simple to implement that among the hundreds and hundreds of people who contribute to this code there are people who could pick up this idea and recreate it in a weekend and write that code all over again in a variety that we’ve never seen before.
Which makes this idea very very dangerous, because it’s an idea that’s completely unstoppable. Now, governments have a problem with unstoppable things. Primarily because their general application of power is to stop things.
And when you talk to people in government’s there is something funny that happens which is they assume that you are questioning their authority. They assume that you are questioning whether they are duly authorized. That they have the moral authority to stop cryptocurrencies, to stop blockchain, to stop Bitcoin. I’m not questioning their authority. That’s a political question which isn’t very interesting to me. I’m questioning their ability. It’s a whole other question. They can have all the authority in the world, zero ability to act on that authority.
How are government’s going to react? I recently did a little study, which I’m going to release, a public domain, which is a mash-up between the world’s freedom index, which is a score of every country in the world on Civil and Political liberties, which is done by an independent organization, very very respected, backed by many international institutions, versus the legal status of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in each country.
If you lay those two maps over each other. It’s a perfect match. Free countries – free Bitcoin, not free countries – not free Bitcoin. And then you suddenly realize – Bitcoin isn’t being tested by governments, governments are being tested by Bitcoin. It forces them to reveal their true colors.
Countries that do not respect the individual freedoms of their own citizens are against crypto currencies. Countries that do respect the individual freedoms of their citizens support or at least allow, or they think they allow crypto currencies to continue.
And so, what’s really interesting is that when you have an idea that it’s powerful and freeing that idea is like a mirror you put up to your government and you see what’s reflected back.
What system of government do you have? Well, here’s a litmus test, how do they feel about this, because it’s an idea that’s powerful and gives people freedom. This is the state today, free countries allow the use of these technologies.
It’s gonna be the state forever. And the reason is that this is an idea that’s very powerful and very freeing. And so even governments that appear to be free will be challenged by this test and eventually they will fail it. They will fail it now when things are hunky-dory, they’ll fail it when they need to because their own currency is suffering. So, when you see crises, there’s a need for a scapegoat, right? And that scapegoat has to be something convenient.
I expect that governments will not react well to this phenomenon. We’ve seen how the government of Turkey, the government of India, the government of Venezuela have acted. They call people who use Bitcoin “terrorists”.Are there any terrorists in this room? Idon’t think so.Ironic of course, because the main sponsors of terrorism are some of these governments, right back at you!
But they will do that, they will use propaganda and misinformation to tell people that bitcoin is used to buy drugs, the bitcoin is used to fund criminal activities, the bitcoin is used to fund terrorism. As if there’s any form of money that is not used to do those things.
And this is a great irony because money is a tool to convey value and if you’re conveying value, of course you’re going to use it to convey value on things that are not strictly legal, or at least in this country or that country, they’re not strictly legal. All money has been used to do that forever. The illegal activities themselves have been used as money.
Do you know what you can buy drugs with? Anything! Everything! There is nothing you can’t buy drugs with!
So the idea that this is the problem is ironic. Governments will react poorly,they’ll try to stop it. They’ll fail to stop it. They’ll try to demonize it, they’ll fail to demonize it because in the end people will see that when it becomes a choice between the future of their children and obeying a stupid law. Guess what wins every time and that’s exactly what’s happening in Venezuela.
So I’m very positive that with the right powerful idea we can get a world that is much more free than it is today. But it won’t be without a fight and most of that fight will be about propaganda