Latest / Monero Talk / The Imminent Threat of CBDCs w/ Aaron Day | EPI 309

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The Imminent Threat of CBDCs w/ Aaron Day | EPI 309 · Monero Talk

• Doug All right, Aaron, how's it going, man? It's going well, how are you? Good, good, good. As I was just saying before I hit the record button is I don't really know much about you. I somehow only just discovered you. Doug I think I've been seeing your tweets on Twitter maybe over the last year or so. For some reason, our circles didn't cross even though I'm in the libertarian circle. I've gotten to pork fest a few times. Doug I feel like you're very much a part of that scene. But yeah, I never stopped to do the deep dive. And the other day I did and I watched one of your videos from when you were running for president and I was very impressed, very impressed. Doug I very much agree with the things you have to say and I think you do an amazing job at saying those things. So thanks for jumping on today. Aaron Well, thank thank you for having me. You know, I wish I wish I could have gotten my message out to more people during the actual campaign. But it is what it is. I actually I ran specifically to bring awareness to the CBDC issue, which which which we'll get into. Aaron I certainly had no expectation of winning. My actual my goal was to try to get on the debate stage in the Republican primary to to actually discuss this threat, which I think is imminent. And I think people are not they're not aware of it at all, even within the crypto community. Aaron That's probably been the most frustrating thing for me is that it seems like there's a sense of, well, it'll happen when it happens. And and in reality, in the time since Bitcoin has been launched, you know, central banks and governments have looked at Bitcoin, figured out what it's all about. Aaron And you can tell from CBDC, 1 .8 million transactions. Second, traditional finance has leapfrogged crypto in terms of ease of use. And there's already been three successful CBDC pilots in the U .S. There's an executive order authorizing the regulation of decentralized crypto and the exploration of a CBDC that that was signed into law in 2022. Aaron We're one emergency away from having CBDCs implemented in the United States. Doug I couldn't agree with you more. You just do a much better job at expressing that point of view than I think I have, and maybe that's part of the problem. But yeah, I agree. I think even your theory that we're one disaster away from some kind of executive order that just ratchets away our liberty ever further is quite accurate, especially with regards to cryptocurrency and CBDCs. Doug How do you see that coming to pass? I mean, it's just something that you can't predict, or do you have ideas of how that can perhaps even come to pass? Aaron So the way that I look at it is if you look at some of the worst legislation from a privacy perspective that's been implemented or from a financial perspective, we got the Patriot Act 45 days after 9 -11. Aaron TARP was passed 18 days after Lehman Brothers collapsed and the $2 .2 trillion CARES Act was passed 16 days after COVID was declared a pandemic on a voice vote. So there are people in Congress right now that voted for all three of those things. Aaron And actually all you have to do is look at, I was just telling a friend this today that, you know, last week I felt worse than when Lehman Brothers collapsed and when lockdowns happened, just based on what happened last week in terms of foreign aid to Ukraine and Taiwan and Israel and then this NSA, basically this dystopian expansion of NSA powers where they can basically turn all businesses into snitches for the NSA. Aaron Just a complete further, I guess, retraction of our Fourth Amendment rights. The banning of TikTok we had yesterday, the FTC came in and said you can no longer have non -competes for contracts, which regardless of whether you like non -competes or not, an agency, not even Congress, an agency unilaterally deciding how private contracts should work is not a good deal. Aaron And today the FCC on a two to one vote decided to move forward again with net neutrality. So all of that has happened within the last week. And on top of that, we've had a this Loomis bill, stablecoin bill, which will ban algorithmic stablecoins and will basically it's designed to kind of push tether out of the way and make it so that only US banks can issue stablecoins. Aaron The FBI came out with a warning today about anyone who uses crypto that's non KYC and not through a money, an official money transmission business might lose all of their crypto. So just this is all in the last week. Doug And this is the day after the DOJ convicted Samurai Wallet of money laundering. Aaron Yeah, exactly. So so so I look at this and I and I say, I mean, I got into it, I'm sorry, I got into crypto in 2012. I'm a, I'll give you a little background on my story. So I'm a serial entrepreneur. Aaron I started my first internet company in the mid 90s, sold it, then started a healthcare company that was successful, profitable. We had clients in 43 states, and it was crushed by Obamacare, Dodd Frank, and the Attorney General. Aaron And so that got me fully engaged in liberty activism. I like to say hell hath no fury like an entrepreneur scored. And so I went fully into liberty activism, I moved to the free state project. As part of the free state, I ended up running a bunch of super PACs and political organizations helped get over 100 candidates elected at the state level, ran for US Senate, intentionally to cost Kelly Senate seat, which is a longer story in and of itself. Aaron Anyway, did all of this stuff for a while for like seven years in New Hampshire, and and eventually just gave up on on the political aspect of it. So I got my first Bitcoin in 2012. And I learned about crypto from Ian Freeman and Mark edge from free talk live, if you're familiar with with that. Aaron And then from Roger Vere at a free state project event in 2012. So I've been using Bitcoin from 2012 on and when I say use it, I was never like holding it, I was actually using it for political activism, I would actually raise money for a super PAC and then pay volunteers using crypto, I would actually use it to buy plane tickets, I actually used Bitcoin for peer to peer cash. Aaron And then, you know, what happened in 2017, the hijacking, which I think is much worse, even than what Roger paints in the book, Roger tries to veer away, no pun intended from the conspiratorial aspects. Aaron But when you dig into this, there's a link between hijacking Bitcoin and developing CBDCs in the United States. But we'll get to that. 2019, I exited politics, because I realized for a whole variety of reasons that we can't vote our way out of this, and went all in on crypto completely exited fiat, and was kind of minding my own business completely. Aaron I no one saw me for like four years, I completely disconnected, I mean, at one point, I was running five liberty organizations, I was everywhere, and then I went away for four years. And I loved it, to be honest. Aaron But then the COVID pandemic happened. And then I saw friends of mine, like Ian Freeman, was basically targeted by five departments of the federal government. And he's now in federal prison for eight years, just for selling Bitcoin at the end of the day. Aaron And he was absolutely targeted. It was you know, the energy in that room, and the sentencing hearing was was something I did, it's hard to describe and express. It was very clear that he was targeted to have a chilling effect. Aaron Because Ian had introduced so many people to crypto, he was running ATMs all throughout New Hampshire, he had gotten numerous businesses throughout the state, but with a huge concentration and keen, accepting crypto, and they wanted to have a chilling effect on crypto, another free stater that I know is as Jeremy Kaufman, he was targeted by the SEC. Aaron So was basically targeted and destroyed. So I'm like, Okay, well, what's going on here? What's going on with this COVID tyranny? What's going on with wire? Why are my friends? Why are people since I'm now living off of crypto? Aaron Why are they cracking down on this? And I found what I researched, and I ended up writing this book, the final countdown. But I found that there really is there's been a movement towards kind of one world government with a digital currency, ultimately, that's backed by carbon credits with a social system that if you look at the UN agenda, 2030, 17 sustainable development goals, those are basically the aspects of a, of a social credit system. Aaron And they're there, they were at high velocity working on rolling out CBDCs across the globe. And to give an example, in 2020, there were 35 countries, just at the early exploration stage, with the exception of China, but at the kind of the research stage. Aaron Today, there are 134 countries at various stages of research, piloting or fully rolling out there are 1 .3 billion CBDC accounts globally. And this is more than the number of decentralized crypto accounts. Aaron So everything that you're seeing going on in terms of going after stuff, custody wallets, going after exchanges, going after local bitcoins, the full purpose of this is to shut off all of the alternatives so that they can roll out of CBDC, which they have already done the technical development of. Aaron And so that's how I got to where I where I am. So I wrote this book and then I decided I want to try to get a platform for this. So I decided to run for president specifically to raise awareness. OK, the Brownstone Institute focused continuing my my focus on this. Aaron So I'm going around the United States giving four hour workshops where I'm educating people about the threat of CBDCs. But then at the end of the conference, you will have a self custody crypto wallet with some crypto in it with gold in the form of of a gold back, which which are great. Aaron And you'll have a fifth of an ounce of silver. So because my book, you can read my book and you can figure out how to do this all on your own. But I found people still have fear. So it's important to actually do the in person and to actually get them set up to get over that that initial barrier. Doug We got to we got to get you down to Monero topia, Mexico, man. You fit right in. We'd love to have you Maybe we can convince you to come down Dude I totally feel free. I mean, that's just that's the same, you know different slightly different reasons But ultimately very similar reasons for as to why I ran for Congress My primary reason was Monero. Doug I saw I saw where the puck was headed with regards to The US government potentially trying to ban Monero and obviously that ties into everything you're talking about and while I ran for Congress That is when kovat hit Actually, I was one of the first people to get kovat in my in my town It was because of me that they started shutting things down and it was when I had just gotten the Essentially gotten tapped to run for Congress. Doug So like it was like Quickly I became, you know ever ever more enthusiastic With with what I saw going on in real time with kovat and like it was like such a such an eye -opener for me You've referenced a few times when you're talking about it We all do you know as they they like they are doing this who is your they and what's kind of your best guess as to who they are the people that are Appear to be You know coordinating towards a one -world government Aaron I mean, I go through this in the book, I mean, behind the scenes groups like the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, and Club of Rome. Those are kind of the behind the scenes, and then they kind of influence these public facing organizations like the WEF, UN, IMF, World Bank, and Bank of International Settlements. Aaron But those aren't the people driving the strategy, those are the people that are implementing the strategy that's being pulled behind the scenes. And literally the Trilateral Commission has been pushing these ideas since 1972 when it was founded. Aaron Brzezinski, who was kind of the Yuval Harari of kind of that era, literally wrote books about technocracy and wrote books about basically creating a new world order where elites pick scientists and engineers to run society, kind of a new, truly a new world order. Aaron This was actually the vision and the original founding of the Trilateral Commission. And so it was founded in 72, and in 73, the UN literally adopted their new international economic order. And that new international economic order, which pushes for the erosion of national boundaries and globalization, is actually the genesis of the UN 2030 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Aaron So this stuff actually goes back that far. But what the Trilateral Commission has done, and people aren't aware of this, people are like, oh, it's the US versus China, it's the US versus Russia. And in reality, the trilateral, the tri and trilateral means North America, Europe and Asia. Aaron And what they've done is they've infiltrated governments in these countries from the top down. So for instance, in Jimmy Carter's cabinet in 1976, all but one member of his cabinet was affiliated with, was on the board of a member of the Trilateral Commission, all but one. Aaron Every president since Jimmy Carter has had multiple people from the Trilateral Commission. And even to this day, we have people typically running commerce and involved with the State Department and everything else at the highest levels are associated with the Trilateral Commission. Aaron So this is a group that has 400 to 500 people. And I actually talked to a guy, Patrick Wood, who's been following the Trilateral Commission for 50 years. He's kept a database of who the members are of the Trilateral Commission. Aaron He actually sent me the full list because he's been tracking this, writing books about it and everything else. And so I think these guys are the ones that have been kind of pushing from the top down influence within governments to to kind of make these things happen. Aaron So I think they're a big player in this. And I think we're pretty late stage because this has been going on for 50 years. But now now we have the technology. Now there's AI surveillance technology. Now there are digital currencies. Aaron They're much closer to being able to implement this. And when you look at these major events like the Patriot Act and TARP and everything else, every time those things have been implemented, we've had more rights eroded and we've had more surveillance state added to the point where it's like people don't even think about how bad Covid was. Aaron I mean, they think about it as the vaccine was bad. This was bad. But literally, contact tracing was horrible. Everybody has wire open now on their device. Did they get rid of the contract tracing? No, they didn't get rid of the contact tracing. Aaron So so now we have 100000 surveillance cameras being installed in the U .S. every day. We have wireless contact tracing. All of that stuff is still in place. And so every time we go through this cycle, we're one step closer to absolute digital tyranny. Doug the rat the ratchet effect Aaron Yup. Doug Do you think crypto was invented by those who wanted to control and it being open -sourced, it doesn't matter? Or do you think it was created by the cypherpunks? Aaron I don't know. Honestly, I have waffled on this. I followed the Craig Wright thing in detail. I followed BSV. I've looked at all this stuff. I don't know what the original intent is. Was it an intention to be a backdoor CBDC? Aaron I don't know. I mean, certainly it's open source code, but that doesn't really mean anything because it turns out people aren't going around developing code for free or people aren't going around auditing code for free. Aaron If there's anything that we've learned about Bitcoin is that that's absolutely true. The devs that are working on that code are being paid by somebody. And in the case of Bitcoin, it used to be the Bitcoin Foundation. Aaron Then it was MIT. Then it was Blockstream. And then there are other very suspicious players with ties to the intelligence community that have funded some of the changes to Bitcoin to move it from this peer -to -peer cash to digital gold model. Aaron Because something's open source, again, everything is driven by incentives. And if there aren't any incentives, then you have to question the ideology of the people that are working on it. So that's something that I don't think we've really solved this how to fund open source projects well. Aaron That has been a big glaring issue. Doug Any thoughts on how that needs to be solved? Aaron I don't know how it needs to be solved, because actually there's some other complications with it. And I think Craig Wright, who, you know, BSV's actually some interesting tech, but he has just destroyed. Aaron You can't go around suing people and using lawfare and using patent trolling as a mechanism. Nobody wants to work. Exchanges don't want to work with you if you're suing them. People don't want to work with you. Aaron But there is something to the idea of, you know, it's kind of like the reason people form corporate structures is to shield from liability. So the idea that because it's an open source project, devs don't have any liability, that's not actually necessarily true under the law. Aaron So related to that, and there's kind of a reason I've experienced this directly on something unrelated, but that means that whoever funds an open source project could in theory have liability through a conspiracy claim. Aaron I actually spent five and a half years in $280 million worth of litigation for a conspiracy to commit defamation claim. So I was literally in these lawsuits. I didn't make the defamatory statements, but because I was associated with somebody that made the defamatory statements, I spent five and a half years. Aaron And ultimately my insurance company paid out $2 .25 million on this conspiracy claim. And literally I didn't even share this guy's post. It's a really long story, but what I'm trying to bring to this is this idea that there are more legal risks and there are things that you don't want to hold people up. Aaron I don't know what the answer is. Like, one of the things that I've been thinking about, what I'm worried about is we're so close with CBDCs that what I wrote in my book is we need to figure out how to get, I'm not a maxi, I'm a CBDC minimalist and I'm kind of like what combination of things will get us to be able to have an alternative. Aaron What combination will work as something that people can use in a parallel economy so that we're not stuck with CBDC. So that's the approach that I've been taking the entire time. And you look at the transactions per second. Aaron So Monero's, you know, a thousand, maybe more than that, BCH is changing. BSV actually had 50 ,000, but there are issues that make that not usable. BTC still stuck at six. So if Visa's at 65 ,000 transactions per second, you list off five coins and they're at like 5 ,000 transactions per second, we've got a real problem in terms of onboarding people. Aaron So one thing I've been saying is we need an open source point of sale system that works with multiple coins, because if you run it through a corporate entity, you have a single point of failure. So you need a way for merchants to be able to accept, I would say, multiple cryptos and even silver and gold, but that's open sourced, and you need better wallets. Aaron So here's the threshold. The threshold for me is this. When I'm going around the country, most of the people that I'm talking to are boomers that have been completely left out of crypto. And in fact, it's really interesting when being on crypto Twitter and then going and giving one of these presentations. Aaron Now, boomers have like 43 percent of the wealth in this country. They actually use Apple Pay. They use Google Pay. They use digital banking. So it's not like it's a lost cause and you can't teach, you know, old dogs new tricks. Aaron That's actually not true. But when I give my talk and I ask them questions, they say to me. More of them have heard of Sam Bankman Freed and Satoshi Nakamoto. Almost none of them have even heard of the idea that you can use cryptocurrency as money. Aaron Most think that Bitcoin is just a speculative asset and most have a negative opinion of it as a speculative asset. That's actually when you go outside of the bubble. That is what most I've been I went to 20 states last year. Aaron And I'm telling you, I would literally do these surveys at the beginning of each section of my presentation. And that is that is the state of of where we're at. And so if there's not at this point in time, when I first got Bitcoin in 2012, it was better money than existed, meaning it was actually faster, it was cheaper and it was peer to peer and no third parties, no banks and censorship resistant, all of those things. Aaron Because of this, what are the hijacking of this and turning it into digital gold. Remember, so so Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay, Google Pay and FedNow did not exist when Bitcoin launched. So literally in the payment space, the traditional financial system has just leapfrogged, entirely, crypto. Aaron And now everybody's making excuses while it was never supposed to be peer to peer cash. It's just supposed to be digital gold. And it's like, OK, so when they launch CBDCs, tell me how you can use digital gold at seven transactions per second at two hundred dollars per transaction. Aaron How are you going to onboard people? En masse. How are you going to get a boomer? A boomer is not going to want to run a lightning node. And by the way, even if, it's centralized anyway. So every time I interact with people, the answer I get back is, well, "Rome wasn't built in a day." Aaron It's taken currencies thousands of years to get to where they are. And that is not how technology works. You can't compare gold and silver being adopted 3,000 years ago to how technology is adopted today. Aaron There were 100 million Open AI users in 18 months. TikTok, Facebook, others went to a billion users in a short period of time. It's been 15 years and Bitcoin has gotten blown out of the water by traditional finance. Aaron And now CBDCs loom on the horizon and nobody's even worried about it. Their response is just hold, don't innovate, don't do any technology. It'll be digital gold first and then medium of exchange. Doug Do you think Bitcoin essentially at some point becomes like kind of completely co -opted and just not a threat to the government at all? And then, you know, maybe perhaps something else, some other crypto then takes on the disruptive role. Aaron I think it has to be a number of cryptos, just based on the short amount of time we have left. So let's say there's a terrorist attack tomorrow. We could literally have a seat. They've already drafted a digital dollar bill. Aaron They've already put together the legislation. I think Sherrod Brown has been working on this for a couple of years. I think he's the chair of the finance committee, or the financial services committee. Aaron So we get a terrorist attack, and by the way, just yesterday, the FBI said, oh, remember that attack in Russia a couple weeks ago. We're on high alert because we think that could happen here in the US. Aaron That happens, and boom, they pass a CBDC bill. And all of this uses this problem reaction solution model. Either manufacture a problem or take a crisis that organically emerged, which generates a fear -based response, and then deliver a solution that you already have prepared. Aaron That is always work. That is a 100% success rate. We have no ability to control the problem. We have no ability to control the reaction. The only thing that we can do is have an alternative solution that can scale at the moment they try to push the other thing through. Aaron So I believe that Bitcoin was intentionally hijacked. In fact, I think the evidence is kind of overwhelming. So Bitcoin went from being funded by the Bitcoin Foundation, which was a community -based effort, to being funded by MIT and this guy, Joy Ito. Aaron Joy Ito was the head of the MIT Multimedia Lab. He was also the founder of Digital Garage, which was a big VC investing in cryptocurrency. He received funding from Jeffrey Epstein. There is no doubt about where he got his funding. Aaron He literally funded the development of SegWit, funded the development of Lightning Network, and funded all three CBDC pilots, all three of them. So this idea that this went from peer -to -peer digital cash to digital gold conveniently happened at the same time and funded by the same people that worked on a United States CBDC pilot. Doug What's his name? Aaron Joy Ito, J -O -I -I -T -O, he had to step down from MIT. The whole thing is a dad. Doug Was Barry Silvertut close with him? Was he part of that group? Aaron I don't know if he was part of that group or not. I mean, certainly then when you want to go look at Blockstream, Blockstream has funding from Digital Currency Group and Joy Ito and AXA, whose president was literally the president of the Bilderberg Group. Aaron Like, you can't make this stuff up. Literally the largest investor in Blockstream was the guy who was the CEO of AXA, who was also the president of the Bilderberg Group. So they hobbled Bitcoin. They said, we're going to keep, we're going to use all these fake art. Aaron This is the best way that I've been able to come up with so far to explain what happened to Bitcoin. They basically turned it into cap and trade. Like, think Al Gore. So what did they do? So the whole carbon credit thing is we're going to manufacture scarcity. Aaron We're going to create a bunch of alarmism about the fact that the planet is going to go up in flames. We're all going to die unless we do something about carbon. So we're going to cap carbon, but then we're going to create this marketplace where people can trade carbon credits. Aaron Bitcoin did the same thing. They said, oh, it's not decentralized unless people running Raspberry Pi nodes who don't actually do anything with the network in terms of validating transactions. But we're going to say basically, even though Satoshi originally had no block size, always said it was going to be in data centers, always said they were going to be big blocks, always said it was going to compete with Visa and MasterCard. Aaron These guys said, well, that's not decentralized. We've got to create this whole scenario around if somebody in Africa can't run a Raspberry Pi node, then this network isn't decentralized. So they use that to cap the block size at one megabyte. Aaron And then they replace they introduced this concept called replace by fee, which basically said, if you want your transaction in this narrow one megabyte block to get through, you have to bid up to to pay for it. Aaron And so it's exactly like how cap and trade works, completely manufactured scarcity. And and people have bought a whole somehow Austrian economics has been hijacked and all those people somehow think, you know, I'm actually doing a review of the Bitcoin standard, like people really should reread that book based on the fact that it was written in 2018 and see how a lot of those predictions came out. Aaron You might be surprised in terms of there's a lot of doom and gloom in that book about about decentralization and about, oh, it's going to be too expensive. People aren't going to be able to afford the hard drive costs. Aaron It's going to put people out of the market. It's going to make it for elitists. And if you actually look at what's happened in terms of the price of RAM, the price of hard drive space, the price and scale of bandwidth, the whole there's nothing different about that scarcity based mindset than what the World Economic Forum and UN are doing by saying we have to create a carbon based system, social credit system and digital currency system, because if we don't control all of the variables and all the assets on the planet, we're going to go extinct. Aaron It's actually the same mentality. And it's very, very frustrating. Doug I'm going to pivot real quick and obviously very much related, how about Monero, right? So Bitcoin has been or eventually will be co -opted, right? We're watching it happen in real time. We have a cryptocurrency like Monero that's arguably built to be more resistant to being co -opted with random X mining, built to scale with dynamic blocks, private by default so it can't be surveilled, built to be resistant to government control. Doug Do you think it is possible for a cryptocurrency like Monero to prevail? Aaron I think Monero can be one of several. Here's what the issue is. So if I'm right, let's say they implement a CBDC before the election. How are we going to onboard a bunch of people really quickly? The biggest risk with Monero is that it's being delisted by exchanges. Aaron So the test that I use is this. If I'm in front of a group of boomers who have financial means and many of them have been woken up because of COVID tyranny and watching inflation and now asking, how does the Federal Reserve work, how can we onboard them? Aaron So it comes down to this is why it's like, I'm like, all right, I like Bitcoin Cash. It doesn't have all the privacy features, although you can use cash tokens and other things. But it's got a high market cap. Aaron It's available on most of the big exchanges. But it itself isn't enough. So we need Bitcoin Cash and we need Monero and we need Litecoin. So we need all of these to be able to build an arc. Because if this happens soon, the only way out is to be able to onboard people. Aaron And unfortunately, as much as I'd like to think we could onboard people before the crisis happens, that's not how people seem to work. So they'll take action when the emergency hits, but not before. So what can we do to onboard a whole bunch of people? Aaron And to that end, it means that we need to be able to have an open source point of sale system and wallet that can handle a bunch of these different cryptos. But I definitely think Monero is a part of it. Aaron But it can't be the sole part because if we have to compete with, call it 50 ,000 to 100 ,000 transactions per second today for the traditional financial system, and we know that the US CBDC can do 1 .8 million transactions per second, Monero at 1 ,000 transactions per second is not in and of itself going to be enough to create enough of a usage in a parallel economy to give people an alternative to getting stuck with CBDCs. Aaron Because at the end of the day, people have to be able to buy groceries. This is going to come down to, are you able to live on a day -to -day basis? Are you going to be able to buy the necessities that you need? Aaron It can't be just a, OK, here's a privacy coin, and I can buy stuff on the dark web. But that's not going to help you when they put in CBDCs and you're trying to buy eggs. Doug Yeah, I mean, we're seeing 100 ,000 transactions per day on Monero recently with the spam attack, Monero handled it fine, and if you listen to people like Arctic Mind, I don't know how closely you pay attention to Monero, but he tells a very good story for how Monero can scale to Visa level in tandem with the scaling of the internet infrastructure and computer hardware and in tandem with actual real world demand. Doug I hear what you're saying. Aaron I'm all for Monero, and it's in my book, is one of the recommended cryptos. Because to me, it has to be proof of work, it can't be do something that did an ICU. They're all the centralizing factors, and so Monero's always been on the list as one of the ones that's in the basket to be part of the solution. Doug I guess the question I'm getting at, though, is do you think it could be these things, whether it's Monero or Bitcoin Cash, if not co -opted the way Bitcoin was, do you think they could be stopped in other ways by governments? Doug We saw with the government just days ago, accusing Samurai Wallet of money laundering and whatnot, basically eliminating that Bitcoin privacy service overnight. Do you think the government goes to the extent of potentially trying to ban something like Monero or even just start to ban cryptos in general? Aaron Yeah, I think that that's likely. I think it's already happening. So so to me, this is why, you know, if I sound alarmist on this, I am alarmist because I've been living off of this stuff for years. And then when I see people like Ian Freeman in prison for eight years, when I when I see other people being arrested, you know, people make the statement, oh, well, the government can't get to this. Aaron I've yet to see that. I don't care whether it's it's the terraform guy or CZ or Binance or local bitcoins. We've not seen anybody escape the law. The law has been able to also extend beyond the United States and somehow managed to get they're going after Justin Tran now as well. Aaron So so if they actually ban it, and they say you're going to go to federal prison for 10 years, if we if we find you using this, well, so where are you going to be using it? If you've got to use it to like buy daily necessities, who's going to take the risk? Aaron So to me, this and the challenge that I have, because I've been doing this for almost a year, like full time is people don't have any sense of urgency. There's a sense of not knowing where CBDCs are, but not realizing if it can't be used in a parallel economy, if you can't use it on a day to day basis where you are, it's not a solution. Aaron And it would be very easy to shut it down. That's what I worry about with all of these things. They're already shutting down the on ramps and the off ramps. I talked to a guy who worked on the US CBDC. Aaron And he's taken another job. So before he actually signed the agreement with whatever project he's working on now, he said, AML is going to be used. And a money laundering stuff is going to be you're going to have to register your self custody crypto. Aaron And sure enough today, I mean, it was under the heading of KYC, but the IRS today is or no, yes, the IRS separate from the FBI. The IRS has said there's going to be a new 1099 form where you're going to have to report your self custody crypto to the IRS. Aaron Well, is that Doug What is that happening? When is that when is that coming down? I think I saw that as well Aaron I need to read the specifics of it, but it's like I saw the 1099 form, so I think it's actually happening. I don't know when it's happening. So who's going to not report if the penalty is 10 years in prison, for instance? Aaron Right. So there's this, because I've been in this since 2012, realistically, how many people actually even at this point have crypto that's not KYC with a very small percentage in general? And so, yes, they're going to throw everything at it because even executive order 14 .0 .6 .7, it says they're trying to regulate digital assets and pursue CBDC simultaneously. Aaron So it is a concerted whole of government effort to crack down decentralized digital assets to usher in CBDC. So they will throw everything at it. And yeah, they'll throw people in jail. The fact that I know people thrown in jail that didn't do anything wrong and that were targeted because they were pro -liberty icons, that's already frightening, right? Aaron So I know there are a lot of people that just hold this, well, I've got my crypto, I'm going to be fine. It's like, who are you going to trade with? Who are you going to trade with? If there are no exchanges open, what, 1 ,000 people that are all spread over geographically? Aaron How is that helpful? How does that prevent CBDCs? How does that create a parallel alternative? So I have not been successful yet in figuring out how to do this, but like, this should be DEFCON1. This should be like, we should be figuring out how to work together multiple cryptocurrencies and onboard merchants and alert people about the threat that is coming. Aaron Because once the government can program, monitor and censor your currency, it's over. I mean, our ability to protest on any political issue essentially goes away. If we thought COVID tyranny was bad and the compliance rates were high in 2020, what would it be like if they could shut off your money with the click of a mouse button or tie your ability to use your money to whether or not you have a vaccination status? Aaron That's what we're looking at. So to me, I actually view CBDCs as the biggest single threat to human liberty. And I think we're in the bottom of the ninth inning. And most people don't even know we're in a game, even people in crypto. Doug We're building XMR Bazaar, which aims to be a Monero -based peer -to -peer marketplace for buying and selling goods and services, but it's to that end, right? It's to build out the circular economy. Any other ideas on actionable things that need to be done so that we can be ready? Doug How do we just start – there has to be that demand, right? People need to want to opt out. It can't be that they're doing it out of goodwill, right? It can't be that they're forced, right? It's got to be that they want to do it. Aaron So my book actually does a good job of scaring the shit out of people. There's no other way for me to describe it, because when you read it, and it's all documented with all the sources, it's like, yeah, this is what is going on with social credit systems. Aaron This is what's going on with the MADE program. This is the state of CBDCs. This is what's going on with all these different things. And I think once people see what's going on, I mean, is it going to be everybody? Aaron No, I think with all of these things, it's like, unfortunately, we're 15 years in, and we're still not at the early adopter stage. We're still at the innovator stage. We're not anywhere near even going to mass market yet, because we've been fragmented into 20 ,000 different coins. Aaron So we have a real problem. So outside of getting merchants to accept it directly and taking a multi -coin approach, and getting a wallet, and focusing on usability, and then I add gold and silver to this. Aaron I mean, goldbacks are interesting. Physical silver is actually interesting. Some of these things that you can do now where you can actually have physical silver and gold backing a debit card, and you can actually spend the debit card, but you don't have a capital gains tax because of the way that it's structured using a directed IRA and a trust and some other things, and because of the specific nuances that Reagan passed with respect to gold and silver being officially coinage and not classified as what crypto is classified as for tax purposes. Aaron Gold and silver is starting to look more attractive to me. I'm kind of actually moving more towards, I was like 80 -20 crypto. I'm moving more to 50 -50 crypto gold and silver. Doug Okay. Aaron So that's the best thing that I've been able to come up with, but I will tell you, it's been stressful for me the last two months just because of everything that's going on within crypto. I mean, crypto is more divided than politics. Aaron I mean, people think that politics is this polarized thing. I mean, it's a church choir compared to what is happening in crypto and how entrenched people are with their specific coins. So it's almost impossible to to try to get kind of unity around, hey, maybe we need a multi coin approach just because of what we're what we're facing. Aaron And the Craig Wright thing that lawsuit took a lot of that whole process was a gigantic waste of time that delayed a lot of development. Him suing devs caused devs to get out of projects because they were looking at potentially a hundred billion dollars worth of liability. Aaron He he tortured people with a massive chilling effect and it wasted people's time and it wasted people's people's energy. And, you know, thankfully, it's it's it's resolving that that is that actually was kind of the worst timing you can imagine. Aaron So at a time when we need to be onboarding people to use peer to peer cash, there's this gigantic hundred multi party hundred billion dollar lawsuit going on that had been going on for years. So stuff like that, they've been doing a really good job of divide and conquer. Aaron So. Doug Yeah, the whole Bitcoin SV thing, I mean, you could give me your quick take on it, but I mean, I don't know why, why'd you give Bitcoin SV any difference at all, ever? Aaron why I used it. So the thing about Bitcoin SV is it actually works. It does 50 ,000 transactions per second. There are good entrepreneurs that have built projects like Twitch. Twitch is like Twitter, except it uses micropayments. Aaron So you post and it costs one cent or it costs two cents. That thing's been around for like four years. There are, you can, one of the components of a scalable blockchain is the ability to do microtransactions. Aaron So in addition to replacing fiat, being a better form of peer -to -peer cash, there's an entire new world of economic opportunity and business models that can be implemented once you have microtransactions. Aaron So now instead of being held hostage by Silicon Valley, where you are the product and your data is sold and you are basically being kind of manipulated. Doug I obviously don't disagree with the utility there of micropayments and a system that can do all that, but the architecture of the BSV system and the nature of the project itself, I mean there's other cryptos that can work towards and do that but in a decentralized preserving way. Aaron I mean, I think there's a whole argument about kind of nodes versus miners and and, you know, economic incentives driving in competition, potentially being more important than, you know, the number of nodes. Aaron And that's a whole other separate conversation. But the way that they ended up implementing it with these agreements that miners had to sign all centralized through the Bitcoin Association and with Calvin air controlling over cash rate, and then with the patent portfolio and this whole thing. Aaron So that's what made it. And I actually interacted with Craig Wright about CBDCs, because one of the things that became really frustrating for me is I'm like, Hey, but do you think central banks are looking for open permissionless blockchains? Aaron That's there are 134 projects right now. None of them are using BSV. They don't want transparency. That's not how central banks work. And he literally believes that. So I'm like, Hey, I wrote a book, here's some articles. Aaron He's like, I don't need to discuss this. I'm working on I just gave my defended my PhD thesis on CBDCs. And I'm like, okay, you know, just so I tried like I like so for me, like, I'm looking for a solution. Aaron And you know, if Bitcoin decided to go back to big blocks, I'd give them another chance. BSV, I'm like, they're good people there. There's some good ideas there. But it's unworkable based on the Doug Forget the BSV, forget the BSV, you don't want to be talking about BSV. Aaron It's really it was very fresh. It was very frustrating especially Doug So especially if you're trying to communicate to the masses about crypto, you don't want BSV in the conversation, in my opinion. Aaron No, no, no, no, no, it's a- Maybe, maybe if- Doug If you're a hardcore crypto person from the perspective of was it interesting in some ways but the overall scamminess that went with it was just a deal breaker from the get -go. Aaron Literally, the only thing that got me looking at BSV was how do we get 50 ,000 transactions per second fast to be able to compete with a CBDC? No, I get you. Doug So, so what's your, what is your take then on, you know, so BSV that the, the other thing that they were trying to achieve essentially was perfect transparency, right? They wanted nothing to do with privacy. Doug They wanted it to be kind of perfectly traceable. What don't, don't you see that as an attack vector as a way for governments to potentially, you know, co -opt. Aaron Yeah, no, absolutely. And the fact that they actually filed patents and were going out, they filed patents at N -Chain that on the second layer made it so that you could have programmable CBDCs on top of BSV. Aaron So there are privacy functions that you can build on the second layer using the scripting language in BSV, but that's not what they're pushing. They are pushing like, like if you look at the conference they have, there's London Blockchain Conference. Aaron It's like, it's like WEF companies. It's like, it's, it's the antithesis of this. And when, when I discuss this with people, and I like some of the people, some of the people are, you know, I'm friends with personally, but, but they're like, Oh, BCH, Monero, they're crime coins. Aaron And I'm like, wait a minute, what is the bigger problem right now? People buying and selling drugs or government tyranny? Like, how do you even begin to compare this? How do you even begin to look at the idea that under no set of circumstances, will drugs and, and human trafficking stop because there's a CBDC? Aaron That's like the, it's like the arguments against, against having guns. Like it's, it's, it's mind blowing. And I'm kind of like, do you really think that this is what this is all about? That's part of it that makes it, I mean, it is unusable because the community has bought into this narrative that everything's going to be transparent. Aaron And even in the end chain patents themselves, the CBDCs will not be transparent, the CBDCs that would be issued by the central banks would be on a second layer, and would be programmable, and would be and would be completely centralized, they would be issued as tokens. Aaron And so all of the arguments fall apart. And that was really frustrating. Because I tried to debate this openly for a long time with no success. Doug I'm kind of surprised you're not at the place where you think, or maybe you do, but you think that for a crypto to work, if it's trying to be used for money purposes, it needs to be private by default on the base layer so that it's fungible, so that governments can't track or trace or surveil it, and just from an economic sense, so that it can work as a money. Doug One Monero always equals one Monero. I'm surprised that doesn't play into your overall thesis of what we need. Aaron So the overall thesis is if we don't kill fiat, so fiat and CBDCs do not coexist with crypto. If we don't actually compete, if we don't have a tangible offering that people can use in a parallel economy, the privacy functionality of it doesn't matter. Aaron But in essence, we've got a crash. Fiat is already crashing, right? So we're not on the gold standard anymore. Since 2020, banks are no longer required to have reserves. So the 10% reserve requirement went away in 2020. Aaron So banks now, if you go to take a deposit out of the bank, I mean, withdraw out of the bank, the bank is counting on getting paid for commercial real estate, mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, all of the asset classes that are now reaching the 2008 levels for default. Aaron Right. So the banks are collapsing and it's a controlled demolition. In my view, the only thing that we have is speed and getting enough people on board and out of the system so that it actually crashes it faster than their controlled demolition. Aaron And then we have something that we can show people as a concrete alternative because if people don't have a concrete alternative, they will default to whatever the solution is that's being offered to the manufacturer problem. Aaron So so to me, it's kind of if we don't if we don't get scale, whether it's privacy or not privacy, we actually have to compete with with Fiat. Certainly, privacy would be would be would be good. But again, I worry about how are we going to I'm kind of pessimistic, to be honest, about our our chances in general just because of how people are not aware or not putting enough attention about how serious this problem is. Aaron It's very lackadaisical. Like it's it's it's kind of either that will never happen or they can't stop my coin. And I just don't see any example of that. All I see are people going to prison. All I see are, you know, sites being taken down by the FBI and Interpol and multiple international agencies. Aaron I'm not like, where are these guys that are outsmarting and "out-privacying" the state? So unless there are enough people. Doug Bitcoin, I think, is the most confiscated asset of all time, I mean, right? Some of the confiscations they've made had to be the top confiscations, like, you know, a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin taken away from one person and one felt -swoop bearer asset just transferred over. Aaron Yeah, no, the U .S. government has, what, 274 ,000 Bitcoin or something like that at this point? Doug Right, I'm saying Bitcoin is effectively more confiscatable than a lot of traditional assets. When you look at it to the level it's been confiscated. Aaron Yes. And in my view, the dumbest. So the whole narrative now for BTC is that it's a store of value. And the only thing that's driving the price are ETFs. ETFs are an absolute nightmare. So you basically are adding now two layers of third parties. Aaron You have BlackRock and Fidelity that you're buying ETF through and then it's being hosted at Coinbase. So now we've gone from peer to peer to now there's like a three layer system. But when you my personal belief is they allowed ETFs to make it easy to confiscate Bitcoin. Aaron Because if you want to call it digital gold, fine, let's call it digital gold. Let's look at what happened in the 1930s with FDR. So we all know FDR confiscated gold. There's another component to that. Aaron If you had your your gold in a vault or in a safety deposit box, it was instantly confiscated. If you had it in your own self custody, you were supposed to turn it in for $35 an ounce. But if you didn't, nobody was going door to door, confiscating people's gold. Aaron So the same example here, if there are tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in these ETFs that are at Coinbase, if you read the risk factors in the ETF, it says confiscation is one of the risk factors. Aaron BlackRock and Coinbase will comply in an instant if the government decides they're going to ban and confiscate crypto. But another another thing that happened in the 30s that people don't know, there were three lawsuits that went in front of the Supreme Court called the gold clause cases. Aaron And what these cases set as a precedent that said, if before gold was confiscated, if you and I had an agreement with each other where we agreed we were going to do business only using gold, the Supreme Court cases said we would now be forced to settle our private contracts using the dollar and not using gold. Aaron That is the precedent that was established. That is currently the precedent. So they could very easily say, people that have contracts in Bitcoin, you now have to take CBDC. Your Bitcoin ETF that you own, obviously, you can never hold any of the Bitcoin, but you will only be paid out in CBDC. Aaron I think it's the biggest setup in knowing that the government has this executive order 1467, knowing that they're cracking down on everybody through the FBI, through the DOJ, through the Treasury Department, through all of these different branches of government. Aaron Why would they approve an ETF? It's not like there was insurmountable pressure. I will tell you, they could have gotten out of it as easily as saying Coinbase is the custodian for this. We are currently suing Coinbase. Aaron Coinbase is potentially not a going concern. And therefore, we can't protect ETF assets securely because there's no exchange that has the right controls in place and everything else. So I actually personally believe that the ETFs are intended to be one more way of crashing BTC. Aaron And I think it'll be very successful. I saw today that there was actually $140 million of outflows from BlackRock already. So already the shine is wearing Doug That's also a positive argument for being pro -delisting. In Monero's case, you're not gonna have a scenario where the government is holding most of the Monero. They're forcing people to self -custody. Aaron Yep. So the question is, so it's kind of a time window. So how do we get so I guess my question is, what's the best way to onboard new people where the to me, the standard is it needs to be a boomer that has minimal technical experience, but can already do some online banking? Aaron How do we get them Monero today? What's the fastest, best, easiest way to do that? Doug Right now, fastest way, you just send them to Cake Wallet, and they can obtain Monero there with another crypto. They could swap into Monero from LTC. The on -ramps from Fiat to Monero aren't that good. Doug There are things like local Monero, and they sound, I think, much scarier than they are. They're actually quite user -friendly at this point. But, yeah, the on -ramps from Fiat to Monero are obviously not that great, but the on -ramps from crypto, other crypto to Monero, is very good, and it's vastly improving day by day. Doug Big things that are coming up. I don't know if you heard of Seridex. It's kind of like a Thor chain, but it's going to be Monero -based, so that's looking to be one of the major on -and -off -ramps that people will be using to go from other cryptos into Monero without KYC and without using things like local Monero or BISC. Doug So it's going to feel like you're on an instant exchange almost. It's going to be very liquid. So yeah, there are ways, and they're improving quickly. Aaron So yeah, so again, like I said, Monero is already on the list. And and then for me, it's so I do these workshops and I get people started. And I describe, you know, here's how you can pay your bills with crypto, here's how you can do, you know, your cell phone bill, here's how you can pay more, you know, here's some various alternatives, but, but it's an ongoing process. Aaron So I, you know, I have a podcast now. And I have to keep up on this, because even myself, since 2012, I mean, which cryptos I use, how you can use them, I mean, that, that change is pretty, pretty dramatically, and has actually changed pretty significantly, just since 2022. Aaron Like I used to use Bitpay. And you can't use can't use a Bitpay debit card, that got shut down when, as part of this whole government cracking down on Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank, which was completely engineered, by the way, because Silvergate and Signature Bank had competitive offerings to FedNow. Aaron So they were actually there, I believe there was an engineered run on those banks. And then that technology was shelved, literally with Signature Bank, when the bank failed, when they went through the kind of the auction process of selling it, they said to whoever buys it, you can't reengage in the crypto market for at least five years. Aaron So so clearly, this was a an intent to shut that down. So it's, this is the problem, because, you know, ultimately, you get rumors and mainstream adoption, like the amount of effort you have to spend living off of crypto, just in terms of Oh, I'm using this service, I used to be able to buy gift cards here, that doesn't work anymore. Aaron And this doesn't work. Doug Mm -hmm. Aaron off and everything, it's like, you have to you have to have a commitment to kind of staying up on it. And that's, that's the toughest part. That's why I go back. Can we get a open source multi coin wallet that works with a multi coin open source point of sale system so that so that we can eliminate the number of steps because if people are used to using Venmo, I think x payments is probably going to be the biggest threat yet. Aaron And I'm worried about the fact that that Elon Musk, when he bought Twitter and was talking about what his plans were for it, he was modeling it off of WeChat, which is essentially the basis for the social credit system in China. Aaron So I worry about Twitter ending up becoming the opposite of what it's kind of being portrayed as now, which is this free state free speech platform, I actually worry that it might become the basis of a US social credit system. Aaron And in the payment platform that he's building, I don't believe has crypto, I think it's all fiat based. So I'm a bit worried about that. But it will get huge adoption. I have no doubt that people will be using it. Aaron And it's going to be another thing competing with crypto. So how do you get people to be willing to understand what's going on, but actually spend the time knowing that it's more complicated to use crypto? Aaron That's the part that bothers me the most is knowing that crypto was better, faster, cheaper, and easier to use in 2012. And now it's like, it's still like, oh, you got to do this wallet, you have to do this, you have to go through this, you have to go through this, that's the unfortunate part is that the user experience hasn't really improved in 15 years. Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it's going to be a slowly then suddenly type of thing. You should check out, are you aware of Monerica? You should check out Monerica. It's a good resource. It shows pretty much everybody that's out there accepting Monero for goods and services. Doug So it kind of gives you some insight into the level of adoption. What do you think, I mean, let's talk about a little bit more. What do you think about this attack on samurai wallet by the federal government? Aaron I mean, so I think this stuff is it's effective, right? You already see people in the BTC community kind of lamenting what's going on. But we already had tornado cash. Now we've got this and and again, I think it's very likely that that they will ban privacy coins simply on the basis of because look at what's going on now. Aaron So now we have the United States freezing Russian assets. You have Russia freezing U .S. assets. So everybody's doing this this B .S. You know, it's a money laundering terrorism thing. And they can use that very effectively as as a as an explanation for why these things have to be shut down. Aaron I mean, it's even like they said about the samurai thing that what were they saying? Well, a hundred million dollars was used for illegal activity. I mean, I don't they don't know that that was completely made up. Aaron I read that and it's like that was just that was back of the envelope. They don't have any evidence of anything. I mean, obviously, more money laundering has happened between FTX and Ukraine than happened with the samurai wallet. Aaron But that's not that's not how government works. So I think they're going to go hard to the privacy aspect. And that's why I think that this KYC stuff with the IRS is picking up, too. There's something that there are three U .S. Aaron CBDC pilots that have been conducted. The first is Project Hamilton. And this is the replacement for retail cash. And this one can do now. I've been told originally it could do one point seven million transactions per second. Aaron They did two pilots, but I've been told that they're still working on it. They just haven't publicized the next round of results. So I've heard that it's over one point eight million transactions per second. Aaron There's Project Cedar, which is a wholesale CBDC that is for, you know, cross border payments. But the thing that everybody should be absolutely worried about is regulated liability network. And this is the thing that I think I mentioned earlier. Aaron It's a one ledger that captures CBDC transactions and all digital assets. So you will be required to register your digital assets. So when you see the IRS doing what they're doing, I saw another note today that Coinbase just entered into a partnership with the with the IRS to do something regarding monitoring and tracking cryptocurrencies. Aaron So the idea that they're building in the future to be regulated by a building network is you can only conduct transactions using CBDC. You can still tokenize assets, but the settlement for the asset transfer will happen using CBDC and everything will be registered in the system. Aaron Now, the people working on this regulated liability network pilot are MIT, who, by the way, again, was involved with all three of the CBDC pilots, the Bank of International Settlements, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a bunch of the big banks that like Citibank and whatever some of the big players are out of out of New York. Aaron So this has been going on since like October of last year. But you've seen the Bank of International Settlements come out, I think it was yesterday or today, saying this is the direction that we're working in. Aaron So they want the way that I look at the world is there there's a there's a freedom and a tyranny aspect to all of this. Right. So there's Monero, there's their privacy coins, their Z cash, there's there's Bitcoin cash, some others. Aaron There are things like Ravencoin for tokenization that do peer to peer tokenization. Right. There's no there's no third party, no smart contracts or whatever. Then on the other side, you have Lightning Network, regulated liability network, I would argue a lot of Ethereum stuff. Aaron And the difference is night and day in terms of what the outcome is. If we end up in a situation where it could be much worse than just they can shut off your cash. You go and buy a Mac book at the Apple Store and they sign a digital token to that. Aaron Now they're tracking that to the CBC transaction and now your social credit score drops and they're shutting off access to your to your computer and access to your cash. They want to tokenize everything and manage it. Aaron Even stocks is an example. The stock market is is is ridiculous. People don't even realize when you buy a publicly traded stock, you don't own the stock certificate. There's one company called DTCC that literally houses all of the physical stock stock certificates and they technically own the stock certificates. Aaron And so it's a full custody situation. They've actually been situations where their office building was flooded and like millions of stock certificates were lost. Like this is how Wall Street works. We have three day settlement times for stock transactions. Aaron So, of course, you would think to yourself, oh, wow, what a great opportunity to get rid of this third party and implement blockchains so people can trade stocks and they'll get rid of naked short selling and you'll have, you know, transparency and you'll get rid of this middleman literally in the white paper for regulated liability network. Aaron It contemplates keeping DTCC in. So when they tokenize stocks, they're not getting rid of the third party. They're actually adding more third parties and then they're tying it all to CBDCs. So. That is the scariest part of it all and that's when you hear the bank of international settlements talking about this uber ledger That's actually what they're talking about. Aaron It's this regular regulated liability network people should be aware of But I see that I and it's already I think this kyc thing is just saying listen if your assets aren't registered It's illegal and they're going to be severe probably criminal penalties if you don't have registered assets So if you're not using cbdc and your assets aren't registered, it's go to jail, which is why I go back to we have to actually There's no coexisting with this system. Aaron I mean they literally I believe want a one world technocracy Doug when do you think the CBDC comes in if you were thinking it would happen perhaps even before the next presidential election? Aaron I think it could predominantly because Biden's already signed an executive order authorizing it. So I think that from the perspective of, and by the way, the Federal Reserve has put it on their list of goals. Aaron It is a priority for the Federal Reserve. So I think that if they look at this, and there's an emergency, they're going to look at this and say, well, hey, if Biden doesn't win the election, then maybe this might get stopped. Aaron So I think that I think they're looking for an emergency to rush it in. So I think that there is a possibility that this happens before the 2020 election. And so I wait, like literally, whenever I see a new cyber attack, or warnings about a terrorist attack, it's like, that's all it will take. Aaron And everybody will agree with it, because people have agreed to, I'm hard pressed after seeing what people tolerated and put up with during COVID tyranny. I mean, lockdown in houses, businesses shut down, vaccine mandates, printing $2 .2 trillion, the fact that people and nobody rioted, there was like no massive response to that at all. Aaron So do I think that people are going to most people don't even know how banking works. They don't know how the Federal Reserve works. They don't know how fiat works. I think most people will just default into this without much of a fight, especially if it's done with terrorism or some other Doug You think it's gonna like come in the form of a stimulus check or something like what's gonna be people's first kind of interaction with CBDCs Aaron I think it'll just be a hey, we're converting your your current fiat to we're canceling cash and we're occurring and and we're converting your current fee out to CBDC so turn in your Doug Like an overnight. Okay. Well. It's overnight. Aaron Because when you look at what's happened in other countries, I mean China has rolled this out I mean They've rolled it out last year to 230 million people and now they're in the process of rolling it out to the rest of the rest Of the countries and people will say oh We can't roll it out here. Aaron We can't do it at this scale. No, we absolutely can do this It's already been done at the scale of the United States Doug And is Monero already banned at this point in this potential scenario? Like, how do you see that playing out? I mean, at what point do they further crack down? Because they want to prevent people now from opting around, right? Doug So they're implementing the CBDC. At the same time, they want to cut everybody off from the exit doors, right? Aaron Yes. So I think it'll happen at that time. They're not going to roll out CBDCs without banning it perfectly. And so this is why it's kind of like, I hope I'm wrong on this, but I mean, it's hard for me to look at, examine where the technology is, look at the executive order. Aaron I've talked to people in Congress. One of the things that I did when I was president is I gave Vivek Ramaswamy a copy of my book, I talked to him about it three times. He actually pushed Trump to come out against CBDC because I'm in New Hampshire and Trump came out of left field. Aaron And this was in part because I hounded Vivek about this issue, like hardcore, like constantly, and he talked to me, and he actually read the book. Like I was, that's awesome. I was stunned by that. Do I believe Trump? Aaron No, like, like, am I going to sit here and say, Oh gee, if Trump wins, we're state, I don't believe Trump, he didn't follow through on anything else. Doug I mean, look what you did with Operation Warp Speed, right? I mean, here's... Aaron Exactly, so in a weird perverse way that actually has somewhat backfired because there are some people that are complacent because they actually think Trump's going to win, which I doubt, and they think that he'll follow through on the CBDC thing. Aaron But I talked to Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz put in a bill in 2023, and all the bill said was, we want to stop the Federal Reserve from acting unilaterally and implementing the CBDC without Congress. Now, in theory, based on the Constitution, the Fed shouldn't be able to do that anyway. Aaron Only Congress should be able to do this to begin with. You shouldn't even need this bill. He couldn't even get a vote on the bill. He's brought it up again now, and it's circulated a little bit, but he told me to my face that bill's dead in the water. Aaron He said that the U .S. Senate doesn't understand this issue. He said he's probably the most technically competent person in the U .S. Senate on this, and was at least humble enough to say that that's probably a bad thing because he's not particularly technical. Aaron And he's like, the votes are not there in the Senate. The votes aren't good. And again, Elizabeth Warren is putting out very pro -CBDC bills. There are other things going on. In fact, Ted Cruz told me that his seat is actually up, like he might lose. Aaron He's only within like two or three points, even in Texas. So we don't even know what that makeup is going to be. But there is a real shot that Elizabeth Warren ends up being the chair of the finance committee, and she is the one who has been openly pushing for an accelerated CBDC. Aaron So if we know this, if we look at 2020, 100 percent of U .S. Senate incumbents won reelection, 94 .5 percent of congressional incumbents won reelection, and we're looking at Trump or Biden. So effectively, there is a zero percent chance that we're going to get substantive change. Aaron There isn't even a Tea Party movement going on right now. There's going to be effectively no change politically. And so just with what happened last week with the NSA and TikTok and everything else, no one in their right mind should have any confidence that Congress will block a CBDC, especially if there's a terrorism or cyber attack. Aaron There's literally no reason to believe that. So that's kind of my take. Now, CBDCs could take a couple of different forms. One is they just implement like this Project Hamilton. The other is there's a backdoor way of doing it, which is what the stablecoin bill is. Aaron I think that the stablecoin, I mean, if you're getting your stablecoin through deeply more than faith, you're programmable, like really what's the difference between that and CBDC? Doug Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. Aaron So there go there are and that was proposed by Cynthia Loomis and Gillibrand and Cynthia Loomis is this like these I do have to say this the people in crypto are that I've seen that are like working on these packs do not understand how politics work but Loomis put laser eyes at one point on her profile picture and I'm like she's been working with Gillibrand to write on on anti -money laundering on terrorism stuff on the stablecoin bill just because she put laser eyes up doesn't mean she's your friend she's clearly putting forward and leading with legislation that is not good for bitcoin it's not good for Monero it's not good for anybody and in the attempt of it is to shut down tether shut down defy and empower the banks to be the only people to have monopoly control over stablecoins that is not the outcome that anybody that likes liberty should be interested Doug It's great that you've been able to talk to all these people and actually influence them. Amazing job, man. Mission accomplished, right? When you set out to run for president, it sounds like you actually achieved something. Doug You got the ear of Ramaswami and effectively Trump. That's very cool. Any thoughts as to where somebody like Vivek might stand on Monero? I've been trying to hound him down. I would love to know what the RFK Jr. Doug thinks about Monero, if he's explained to him, if he hasn't heard of it yet. Any other politicians you could think of and what their potential take might be? Are there any potentially pro -privacy coin people out there? Aaron So when I talk to Vivek, so the interesting thing about Vivek is he liked the first half of my book, he doesn't like the second half of my book. So the second half of my book is, the first half of my book is, here's what's going on in terms of like the march towards globalization, here's what's going on with CBDCs, and here's the history of a 100% failure rate for fiat currency. Aaron The back half of the book is, here's how you get self custody, crypto gold and silver, and move out of the system. So he didn't like that approach. He didn't like that. He doesn't. And his approach on this is... Aaron Points lost. Like he's, and by the way, I think RFK is the same way. I think these people have been too heavily influenced by BTC Maxis. I think that Vivek is going on this model of we're going to back the dollar with Bitcoin, gold and silver. Aaron So he's of the opinion. I think he's delusional. Look, when you study history, there's no country that gets to the point that the United States is in that does a turnaround, right? He's out there saying, oh, you know, it's 1776 and we're going to do a, like, based on where we are with debt and the collapse of the currency and everything else, there's no historical example of a turnaround. Aaron Like the default here is collapse. People don't want to hear that. People really don't want to hear that. But I say it, and I say, disprove it. You show me. There was an analysis of 775 fiat currencies, 100% failed. Aaron The average fiat currency last 27 years, even the last five global reserve years, right? And there are seven main reasons that fiat currencies fail. The U .S. is blinking bright red on all seven of those reasons. Aaron We're not doing anything any better or any differently than any other failed fiat. So he and I have a disagreement on that. And actually, I put together a pledge that I got a bunch of libertarian candidates, presidential candidates to sign and a bunch of state reps in New Hampshire. Aaron And it basically said, if I'm elected, obviously, I'm going to veto any, you know, CBDC legislation. But the important part was like the second point of the pledge, which is if they try to implement a CBDC before the election, I will promote to my audience that they should move out of fiat and into crypto gold and silver is a way to stop CBDC. Aaron So I was trying I was trying to get Vivek to sign that. And so this was like, yeah, going and I couldn't get I couldn't quite get him there. But the libertarian candidates did. And this is so the same with RFK. Aaron RFK is I don't know if RFK understands crypto like some of the things that he said. Doug He's very he's very pro cash. I've heard him talk about the need for cash. Yeah, so it's you know It's not a leap from there Aaron No, it's not a leap from there. I mean, and I hope I hope he would get on board. And Trump shows no demonstration that he actually understands what crypto is. He came out and said he was anti CBDC because he was in New Hampshire. Aaron And it's actually a big deal. And the primary was close enough because Haley was still in and there was a whole bunch of jockeying and our governor had endorsed Haley. So it was close enough that he's kind of like, all right, I'm going to say this because because it's important in New Hampshire. Aaron But I didn't get the sense that he studied the issue more than maybe a 10 minute conversation or 15 minute conversation with the VAC. Doug You think you'd be pretty excited about an asset that you can't easily, easily, uh, confiscate. Right. Given, given his position. Aaron you should sell. So I find it, you know, privacy is a right, this whole idea of I just think my entire life, like, when did we get to this point, where the IRS is surveilling all of our transactions, like, at no point, the default was, we had cash, people were not monitoring our transactions, that was for the most of my life, how banking work. Aaron And then how we've switched to now this other model, and I see people in crypto, you know, I'm not gonna pick it, but it's some of these BSV people that are like, oh, well, this is, this is necessary for child trafficking and drugs. Aaron I'm just like, what, where did we, where did we go wrong here? Like, we'd completely, there's no reason the government should be viewing any of our transactions and the default had always been cash. So, you know, like, I'm hopefully, I think, I think Biden's going to win. Aaron But but my point is, the more candidates that I can get that are willing to side against CBDCs and talk about crypto to their audience, whether they win or lose is the benefit of the whole process. Doug Yeah, I greatly agree with that method, and you're actually doing it, so cheers to you, man, on that. I had another – oh, yes, so we're saying or you're saying that it's very much likely a scenario where there's a ban on crypto or maybe just privacy coins to begin with. Doug For people out there that, you know, on the flip side of the coin, you're saying people need to start opting out, right, prepare to opt out, start opting out, but how do we convince people to opt out when we're also telling them that the government is in fact going to try to ban these things? Doug So, like, what is the message to people? Is it fear the ban or is it fuck you to the ban, don't comply, we need to opt out. How are you – The only – Aaron I wrote this thing called the Bank Run Manifesto and it has like 1 .7 million views and my view on this is you know I mean to think that we had a revolutionary war started over a 3% tax on tea and now people are sitting here saying oh well I don't want to use self -custody assets because they might come in and implement complete digital tyranny. Aaron We are down to radical non -compliance, we are down to civil disobedience, like we absolutely cannot comply with this because and that question gets brought up a lot and it's just like are we really just going to let them after everything that's happened since 9 -11 and the Patriot Act and everything are we really just going to let them roll in and censor and track all of our purchases which is a gateway to social credit systems and everything else. Aaron Are we going to let them do that? It's not constitutional but we can't vote our way out of it so my argument is yeah it's radical non -compliance. You have to be willing to do this outside of the system and this is where we take a stand and it doesn't take 50% plus one of the people to do this. Aaron It takes two or three percent of the people to do this kind of like the revolution itself was two to three percent. It's just enough of a critical mass of people to start using these alternative assets in a parallel economy that is our best shot out and I've been close to politics for like 30 years so my stepmother started out in the Republican party as like a Broward County, Florida precinct captain and she worked her way up to become the co -chair of the RNC nationally. Aaron She was the co -chair of the RNC from 2012 to 2016 and she was Trump's ambassador to Costa Rica so I've seen the political process up close at the high level at the low level and then myself through my own activities. Aaron I have zero confidence in the political system. There is there is no way out of this which I could talk about at length but but in essence two -thirds of voters can't identify the three branches of government. Aaron These elections are determined by big data and AI coming out of the parties. The Democrat party has a much better much more sophisticated targeting system and at the end of the day most the Democrats could elect a ham sandwich because they'll run flyers and they'll have people go to nursing homes and say unless you vote for this person you're going to be kicked out on the street and poor and so these are people that are not watching debates. Aaron They're not engaged in the process. This is going to come down to literally targeting for get out the vote using AI and big data and the Dems have a gigantic massive lead over the Republicans and that that so you know I'm suspecting that there might even be like a mini blue wave coming out of this even with all the Trump theatrics and everything else because at the end of the day look at what he's doing. Aaron He's bribing people. He's saying we're going to put a cap on rent increases. We're going to put a cap on prescription drug costs for seniors. Student loans. More student loans. We are getting rid of non -competes in contracts. Aaron We're putting in net neutrality. We're going to tax the rich 44 .6% on capital gains right but only people with a million dollars a year or more. Doug Has he pitched reparations yet? Is that going to be like a last -ditch effort? Aaron he'll do whatever he needs to do and the problem is it'll work because we don't because people don't understand the constitution and it's really weird demographically looking at the generations and it's kind of like I think 35 percent of Gen Z thinks that it's okay to have government federal government surveillance cameras in the home to monitor domestic violence like like we're in a really bizarre situation it's really hard to try to cobble together you know constituents here so Doug And I ask you again, let's finish on this, like we'll kind of bring it full circle, right? So that stat is terrifying, I guess I believe it. I think I've run into quite a few of those people. What is the argument that you're making to the masses or to who do you see as the next level I guess of adoption, right? Doug So I'm one of these guys, you're one of these opt out guys, who is the target group that we can next try to bring in and what is the pitch that needs to be made to them. Aaron So what I'm doing with these seminars, so the target group, believe it or not, they're largely boomers, maybe some Gen X, but boomers. And so the Brownstone Institute has really was like one of the only groups, because all of the libertarian think tanks failed on COVID and lockdown. Aaron So the Brownstone group was formed out of that. So there are tens of thousands of people across the country that are affiliated with the Brownstone Institute. And these are people that prior to COVID, let's just say they're shocked about the level of tyranny, they had no idea that this could ever happen. Aaron And so now they're looking at inflation. Now they're looking at the Federal Reserve. These are the people they have money, they have 43% of the assets and I've been to 20 states and I've given tons of talks. Aaron I actually think that boomers that have been impacted by COVID tyranny are actually low hanging fruit, but this is where it comes down to we have to have simple solutions. That's where the challenge is, how do we make this something that's easy enough to use? Aaron And I'm getting ready to do this, my next workshop in San Jose, California on May the 11th. And I'm like going through and working through and digesting everything that's just happened with these lawsuits, the Bitcoin stuff, all the regulatory stuff to try to put together, like what is my simple, what am I giving them? Aaron What self custody wallet am I giving them? How am I, I'm giving them a gold back, I'm giving them silver. What am I going to teach them on crypto? Because it's changed since I wrote the book. It's already changed from the step by step instructions in my book from a year ago are no longer valid. Aaron And so, but I actually think that's the group. I think people that are motivated, people that have have been activated because of COVID tyranny are the early adopters. And then my approach is at some point, I'm going to get a video version of my talk after I've worked through the workshop several more times to work out because it's hard. Aaron You want to be able to express all of these complicated ideas with a lot of information. In a short period of time, when they pass the CBDC legislation, I can like blast out the online course and people can actually see a concrete alternative to when CBDC is being rolled out. Aaron Because when they roll it out, again, if your options are CBDC or lose your fiat, what are they, what are they going to pick? So it's, I'm trying to figure out how to scale up an online offering that educates and then empowers people to be onboarded to these alternative assets. Aaron So that's that's my my plan. I love it. Doug Yeah, I like your target market there. Another thing that demographic can really relate to, once again, is cash. The boomers know cash. Cash used to be a normal part of their lives. They grew up with cash being king, not in just that its value stayed pretty stable, but that they knew when they made a transaction in cash, it wasn't being surveilled by the government, effectively, is what people liked about cash, and they're watching cash get eliminated everywhere. Aaron they are and they're very, very concerned about that. And I have videos on that in the talk where it's like showing these things that just also happened in the last week, right? There's the thing in Canada where the guy couldn't take out $3 ,000 worth of cash to buy a car. Aaron There was this clip from Australia where this woman was on there and her bank was told they actually don't have any cash at all. And then if she needed cash, she needed to transfer her money out of her bank to a different bank to actually get physical cash out. Aaron So that is another good, good argument that people can relate to. But, you know, we don't have a lot of time. So I'm kind of like, and I can only be in front of so many people, like I'm trying to coordinate these events, right? Aaron This is the hardest thing for me. It's like, okay, how do I get somebody that, you know, can host a location and keep the cost relatively low? And you know, how do I find groups that I can partner with to help promote the event so I can get in front of as many people as possible? Aaron So I because I have hundreds of people from the articles that I've written that that are interested in these workshops, it's now Doug How many of these events, workshops have you done? Aaron I've only done one other of this workshop. I've done like dozens of talks. So basically this started out as a, like a two hour talk. Doug Hmm Aaron And then what I realized in talking to people after the fact is unless I set these people up with a wallet, unless I give them, you know, gold and silver and tell them where to go directly, unless that happens, all I've done is scare people. Aaron And then they're sitting there kind of like, Oh, my God, I know this is bad, but I'm too afraid to do the stuff that's in this book. So now so now we're now I'm like ramping that that piece of it up and actually the challenge to me, okay, where do I get the crypto? Aaron Where do I get the gold and silver? How do I it's there are a lot of logistics going on on on on my side of this, but it's Doug I think people in the Monero community would be willing to donate Monero for your cause if you were going to effectively give it out to people that you're onboarding. Yeah, absolutely. Throwing it out there is an idea. Aaron 100% on board with that. And I want to introduce people to multiple cryptosons. As I said, Monero has been on the list from day one, and it is still on the list. So I'm looking for, I'm not making money off of these events. Aaron My goal is to break even on each. Doug education. Aaron Um, but you know, there's travel and you know, there's the venue space and then I'm giving people a book and then I'll get, you know, so it's kind of like a time to solve for X and at the same time, not have this be a complete cashflow sink. Doug I hear you, I hear you. Well, I'll say it again, you're more than welcome to come down to Monerotopia, Mexico. Would love to have you down there. Aaron When is it so it's November? Doug November okay. Yeah, it's gonna be actually four days in Mexico City We have a live marketplace set up where you can buy and sell things with Monero. I think you'll appreciate the The circular economy efforts that we're putting in Aaron Are there any speaking opportunities available? Doug Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. That's that's that's what I was referring to. Yeah. So we could we could talk offline. Maybe get you up there as a speaker. Yeah, I'd love to. Very cool. Aaron That would actually be great. So, you know, subject to looking at logistics, it actually sounds like it would be a great opportunity. Doug Very cool, man. Well, we can leave it at that. We're almost at an hour and a half. Greatly appreciate you taking the time. Aaron No, thank you for doing this. I hope your audience finds it to be informative. I like comments and questions. I'm always open, by the way. I'm at Aaron R. Day on Twitter. And then my website is day2024 .com. Aaron I'm still using the campaign site. But that actually pushes to my book, and it pushes to the workshops, and my podcasts, and interviews, and all that other stuff. So day2024 .com and at Aaron R. Day on Twitter. Doug Very, very cool, Ben. Any chance you're going to Porkfest? Aaron Oh, I'm speaking at Pork Fest. I'm going to- Oh, you are? Doug Yeah, I didn't go last year. I greatly regret it because I think Vivek showed up, and RFK, did they both? Aaron Vivek was there, RK was there, I spoke as a presidential candidate. Doug I was so bummed that I missed that. It was because they put MoneroCon was the same date. I had to like choose between MoneroCon, like it was the one thing that took me away from it. I was so bummed that I missed. Doug It must've been amazing, huh? Aaron I was actually the chair of the Free State Project for a couple of years. That's the other thing that I would say is people should consider if you're stuck somewhere, if you're stuck in a big city, if you're stuck in a deep blue state, consider moving to New Hampshire because we do have, at one point, I know we had the highest crypto usage per capita in the US here. Aaron I don't know if that's the case now, but there are certainly, I mean, I can buy meat, I can buy any of a number of things using crypto and using goldbacks and silver. So it's already built into the community here, so that's actually quite a benefit. Aaron But other places don't have that, but I took Monero, I sold stuff at Portfest, I've sold books for Monero, my son has sold... Doug We never ran it maybe we did run it to each other because I was there in years past like selling coffee for Monero I was there two or three years This is kind of a blur Aaron I was there from like 2012 to 2016 and then I went away for, was gone for a number of years. Doug Well, yeah, you were there in the early years. I mean, that's how you discovered Bitcoin, right? That's what you're saying, right, on the outset? Aaron Yeah, I learned about it in 2011, 2012, from Ian Freeman and Mark Edge, and then, and yeah, I was one of the first 50 people to use a Bitcoin ATM. It was at the Liberty Forum event. It was like a prototype ATM, like it wasn't, you know, it's like, stick the dollar in, is it actually going to work or whatever. Aaron And so, you know, yeah, it was very early. So it's been, there's good alpha that comes out of the Free State Project. Doug Yeah, for sure for sure Alright, thank you so much man greatly appreciate you doing this. We'll keep a touch and yeah, we should get it up in a day or two