Latest / IMI Podcasts / #5 - Citizens of Bitcoin, Sovereign Individuals, and Ancestry-Based Citizenship

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#5 - Citizens of Bitcoin, Sovereign Individuals, and Ancestry-Based Citizenship · IMI Podcasts

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_04: Ladies and gentlemen, it's 7 p.m.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: in Dubai, 3 p.m.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_04: in Lisbon, 11 a.m.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: in St.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_04: Kitts.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to a new episode of the Mobility Standard, the podcast where we dissect current events, trends, and crucial questions related to investment migration.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_04: I'm your host, Christian Nesheim, editor of Investment Migration Insider, and with me in today's episode I have two co-hosts, Rohelio Kasseres and Ahmad Abbas, and our guest this week was Juri Lau, a Dutch national who's been living in Argentina for the last 16 years and who's now working on investment migration solutions tailored for crypto investors through the company that he co-founded, Citizens of Bitcoin.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_04: We spoke to Juri about Citizens of Bitcoin and how he aims to tailor mobility packages specifically suited to crypto investors.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_04: We also discussed how the increasingly large share of global assets that are non-tangible and geographically non-fixed opens up opportunities for sovereign individuals to bargain with states and to make countries compete for them.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_04: Ahmad Abbas brought up a potential new incentive scheme for high-performing employees of multinationals, company sponsorship of CBI applications through the bond investment options of the Caribbean.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: We explored the feasibility of that type of solution and how it would work in practice.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_04: Citizenship by Descent solutions are becoming an increasingly recognized and utilized avenue to enhance freedom of travel and settlement.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_04: We asked why is it that that market only now is getting so much attention?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: And does it represent a threat or an opportunity to investment migration?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Finally, Rogelio suggests that DNA test kit companies like 23andMe should become RCBI introducers by informing their users whenever European ancestry is discovered during analysis that they may qualify for citizenship in the EU.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: All of that and a great deal more in today's episode of the Mobility Standard.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: I'd like to remind you that you can follow all of IMI stories on our website, imidaly.com, on our mobile phone apps, in our free newsletters, as well as on your favorite social media network.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: You can also follow this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and most other podcast platforms.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: With the preambles out of the way, let's get this show on the road.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like, first of all, guys, uh, before we even start, we we have some explaining to do.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: So we've been away from podcasting for five or six weeks now.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's it's been a pretty long hiatus, and I know that there were some uh I don't want to call them hardcore fans, but there were some some regular listeners, even though we only we've only done four episodes prior to this.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_04: There are some people who instantly took a liking to the mobility standard.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: And um I I think we need to kind of justify uh that long hiatus.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: So the short explanation is that we've we've all been uh kind of busy with other things that have had to take precedence over this podcast.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_04: I had my wedding and then I went on a honeymoon, and so that took like five weeks, all of that together.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Rohelio and Yuri, uh you were busy preparing for the Bitcoin conference.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna talk a little bit about how that went.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um and Ahmad, uh, I don't know what you've been up to for the last five, six weeks.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_04: Just waiting for us, the rest of us to come back, I guess.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, well, you've been on your honeymoon and Rohelio's planning a trip.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, somebody had to pick up the Slack at IMI know.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's true, that's true.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: Somebody, somebody had to, somebody had to.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: So, okay, Yuri, this is your first time.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you've been in the background on the mobility standard on uh on a few occasions, sort of as a technical helper to Rohelio.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but this is the first time that people are actually gonna hear your voice, I think.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_04: So I think why don't we start by um I you know I also want to know this.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: We you know we've known each other for just a few months, but uh there's you know still some lingering questions in my mind as to who this person is, um, of course.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: But um uh so you you Yuri, you are a Dutch national originally, and now you live in Argentina.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's correct.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_04: So why don't you kind of uh give us your two-minute uh intro to Juri Lau and who he is and what he does and and how he got to where he is today.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so uh like you said I'm originally from the Netherlands.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um finished up my uh my degree there in uh Spanish literature, and uh right after my uh my college degree I I started traveling through Latin America and uh I really liked Latin America uh and and decided to uh settle here.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um was it sort of uh like an eat pray love type of adventure you had in South America?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, sort of, because I was doing uh a Portuguese course next to uh my my Spanish masters, and uh and there I met my uh now ex-wife.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh she was uh one of my teachers.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we we married like pretty quickly in Sao Paulo.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh she was doing a master's in Buenos Aires uh at the time, so we lived uh in Sao Paulo for a few months, then moved uh to Buenos Aires so she could finish her her master's, and then um uh yeah, I just uh after three years more or less we broke up and I stayed in Buenos Aires.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and afterwards uh met my current wife, and uh yeah, I've been living here for 16 years now.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: So uh yeah, it's been it's been quite a adventure.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: I see I see Rohelia's laughing here.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: What are you laughing about, Rohelia?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh is this uh the View or Oprah or something?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, in the first years uh I really uh worked mostly remote from uh Buenos Aires and then I started uh my own company here uh uh in digital marketing.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was in 2018 that that I uh met Rogelio through uh his previous company, LCR, and we started working together uh everything marketing related, so uh website, uh marketing campaigns.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, since then we uh we really you know kept working and and now we're working with uh Global RCG and mainly citizens of Bitcoin.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: That is my main role as co-founder uh with Citizens of Bitcoin, and that was also the reason why we uh had a stand and and were selected for the pitch day.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh all right, let's talk about that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, let's one step at a time, Yuri.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_04: So, number one, citizens of bitcoin.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh that that's gonna give people pause.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_04: Just just that title there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_04: So uh what's the um explain it to me like I'm uh I'm a VC, I'm a VC guy coming up to your office uh because I've heard good things about citizens of Bitcoin.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: It's an interesting name, but I don't know what it's about.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: What is citizens of bitcoin?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: So citizens of bitcoin caters to sovereign individuals uh that are interested in having uh more uh mobility options uh and that are also uh deeply into uh uh Bitcoin mainly uh or other cryptos, but uh you know we uh the name is is really catered towards uh uh Bitcoin more than anything.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and we think those two elements, uh crypto and uh global mobility assets such as alternative passports or you know, second residencies, really tie in well together.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: So uh the main match there is uh you know the mobility of this new uh asset class, which is crypto, uh, and tie that into uh the mobility asset class.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: So so, in a sense, it's the new mobility of money and the new mobility of people.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and there's a lot of overlap there, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, in this day and age, for example, uh I live in Buenos Aires, but I'm in no way a shape or form tied to the local economy.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, I work completely remote uh with companies all around the world, uh, and there's no need for me to be dependent on the uh local system.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is gonna happen more and more, and I think COVID was an accelerator for that.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um not having any dependency on you know government-issued uh fiat currency uh really gives you an extra edge uh where you know uh you can really work from anywhere um and and not be tied to uh single jurisdiction also financially.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: So I think if you go back you know a hundred years, uh most capital was physical in nature, yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: And I think over time, what what's happened since maybe the I don't know, 80s, 90s, uh is a gradual increase in the share of capital that doesn't exist in the physical realm.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: So uh, you know, look at the composition of Fortune 500.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: Tech companies, I mean, companies whose assets are chiefly not physical, not tangible.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the the share, the share of them, their representation uh of all the capital in the world, I mean, all of that is increasing.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_04: And I think uh as you point out, you know, when the pandemic came, so many people realized they could work from anywhere.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_04: And and this is only speeding up that transition from you know the majority of capital being physical to the majority of capital being virtual.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_04: And when capital is virtual, it's completely mobile as well.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: And that has obviously wide-ranging implications for all the people who own virtual capital who are not tied to a place.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: You know, go back a hundred years, like I said, you when capital was physical, you couldn't very easily uproot your factory in whatever location and and move it when there was a strike or there was uh or the government started you know really taxing you at excruciating rates.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: Now you can do that quite quite easily.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm curious to understand how that uh how that ties in with cryptocurrency and what the what the what the trends you're seeing, Yuri, right now, what are the trends you're seeing in terms of um capital becoming virtual and and and the investment migration aspect of that?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think uh you know if you look at the local economy here uh in Argentina, which is highly uh controlled in terms of uh you know the exchange rate, uh capital controls, money coming in and out.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there's a lot of limitations uh here.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we have you know black market uh uh rate, which is almost twice uh that of the official exchange rate in dollars.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um you know people um that live here try to save in dollars as much as possible because their uh local currency just uh evaporates basically.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and what we've been seeing uh in the last couple of years is really an inflow into uh into crypto and uh a lot of people starting to uh save in uh Bitcoin and uh also receiving payments from uh you know outside of Argentina uh in uh in Bitcoin.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um it just opens up uh a huge range of possibilities that you know before that moment uh weren't possible for a lot of uh developers and uh you know marketers, uh basically anybody that can work remotely uh has that option now.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and it really uh sets them apart as more as sovereign individuals and not so much dependent on you know what uh a fiat regime uh imposes on them.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_04: So you so you might be taking a big step toward becoming a sovereign individual if you keep your wealth in crypto, sure, because that's that that's a type of cash that cannot very easily be frozen or taken away from you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it you know, even though even though you have now control over your money and control over your savings, if you're living in the wrong jurisdiction, you're still kind of under the thumb of uh of that jurisdiction's government, unless you're also diversifying yourself, uh, you know, in terms of where you live, where you bank, where you I mean, if you're planting a lot of flags around the world, then obviously that helps to diversify that risk.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: But so what is the mobility aspect of this?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's one step is to get control over your money.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_04: Now you need to get control over your physical person.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, so the mobility assets uh uh or the mobility aspect tied to this uh is becoming uh more and more clear where uh, for example, uh through uh different service providers, uh people here in Argentina, for example, are now able to uh pay for services online with a credit card that is uh prepaid with crypto, for example.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh those are all things that if they would have a local credit card, they wouldn't be able to buy that because it's sort of shut off.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: So they couldn't uh you know uh buy something on Amazon.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh the how free are we really if you have no freedom of movement?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh freedom to travel, move, work, live, retire.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think the pandemic, at least in the US, crystallized uh the fragility of relying on a single residency or a single passport.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: And in this day and age where working from home uh is a trend that I don't think is coming back uh we believe that digital assets and mobility assets are very synergistic and one without the other really isn't freedom.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: We kind of need both to really uh live as a sovereign individual.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so Citizens of Bitcoin was very well received at the Bitcoin conference.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the lines uh in front of our booth were quite uh something to be seen, whether that's because Yuri was there or great t-shirts, maybe a combination of both.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: But certainly uh folks in this day and age don't want to rely on a government or a centralized bureaucracy, whether in their home country or elsewhere, to uh regulate uh their ability to travel.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and in this day and age, what's good as Bitcoin without the ability to take it where you want to be?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think, Rohelio, that we we may be seeing the beginning of a world in which states must compete for the best citizens, in which uh it becomes a a buyer's market, so to speak, uh for citizenship, where it's not about uh what was it, Kennedy say, ask ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: A reversal of that sort of uh I remember talking to Chris Kalen, uh interviewing him uh a few years ago, and he said, you need to look at citizenships as club memberships.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I always thought that was a very poignant analogy for it.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: And he said, you need to look at what do I get and what do I pay.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: And before it used to be, you know, well, you were a national of where you were born, you would, you know, root for the local national team and whatever sport you follow, you would sing the national song and and you would have that close-knit affinity, and and your nationality was very much wrapped up in your identity.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: But with the advent of remote work and the massive acceleration of it in the last year and a half, I think it'll become a lot more common for people to have sort of portfolios of citizenships and thinking of themselves, not so much as uh, you know, I am a Dutch national or I am a German, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_04: But more of a, well, I'm I'm a person in the world and uh I'm an individual and I have my family and the people I care about, and we have various nationalities.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_04: And um if we get to that scenario, and it doesn't even have to be a lot of people, it doesn't, it's not like 50% of people need to be able to work remotely or or have multiple passports, but if if just the 1%, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_04: We always talk people talk about oh, the 1%, you know, they they they own whatever 60, 70% of all the assets, yeah, okay, but the 1% in the United States pay almost half the taxes, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_04: So that means you have enormous leverage.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_04: Because if you can get that 1% of the population to say, you know what, um, we're working from home anyway, all our assets are virtual, um, we're we're not gonna put up with this type of behavior, there's not very much a government can do to stop that.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: So I I I'm curious as to what you guys are thinking.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_04: Are we are we seeing the beginning of sort of a mass movement of people becoming uh less beholden to individual countries and and seeing themselves more as free individuals that that can bargain for the best citizenships?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, lots of uh themes there you touched upon.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: I would maybe disagree in the sense that uh it's not so much about citizenships, but it's about residency rights or settlement rights, the ability to live and work where you want versus how many passports you have.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: And in this day and age, I can be very patriotic as an American and feel very strongly about my country, and I also want to be able to live and and do business in multiple places around the world and not uh uh rely only on my US passport.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I think both can coexist in a in a in a happy medium.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh competition for talent is global.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was in a very interesting call with one of our advisors yesterday where uh there's an opportunity to talk to US technology companies who have bright engineers in parts of the world that might be suffering from either COVID or uh they might be LGBTQ in countries like Russia or Poland or they might be an uh Indian Muslim and and be afraid of your situation in India.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and how can companies use mobility assets as a recruiting tool to enable them to attract the best talent and move them to places where uh they can be uh safer and more free?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yes, I I do think it's an empowerment tool at the individual level, but also at the company level.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and there's a lot of exciting opportunities that we're exploring on how to help uh US companies and other companies attract talent through mobility assets uh as a way to unlock uh freedom uh amongst others, you know.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not sure if that answered the question, but I guess that's where my thoughts are in terms of uh partly, but let's hear from uh Ahmad as well.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, this is quite interesting because I was talking to a friend recently about what Roheli was saying, empowerment of employees through companies.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking about the St.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Lucia program, how the bond option can prove uh an uh let's say the optimal tool for companies to get to reward their high-ranking employees or to reward uh offshore employees with a mobility asset as a bonus instead of direct cash.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then they would keep those employees on for five, seven years depending on the holding period.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: So what you're talking about is much more bigger than just investment migration.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree, uh it's more about getting the best.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: That has always been about that's always been the core of investment migration.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: We lose sight of that because we look into the simpler programs, but if you look at Canada, at New Zealand, at what Australia are doing, they're attracting exactly who they want.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think soon enough that will switch to the crypto crad that we're seeing.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is they we don't still have a lot of visibility into who those people are and um what they really want.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if awareness is.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: Well it's not it's not a homogenous crowd, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: The government bond in St.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Lucia, uh forgive me, that's this I'm I'm new to this, but how is that uh particularly helpful for for companies to use as a as a perk?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Please uh well, yeah.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: So um the government bond, uh 250k, you hold it for five years.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh again, we were theorizing this, we we didn't have fact.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Check it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking just about how we could use it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say you have a company, you have an employee you want to reward, you can sponsor that employee for uh Saint Toshia citizenship, you choose the bond option, you make the investment.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: As long as there's been that investment is active, he has his citizenship for five years until the holding period is over.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: If he leaves the company within that period, you just take out the amount, and this is the part we were theorizing.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how this works.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you just take back the amount, he loses his citizenship, and it's all done.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, interesting.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_04: But then the company then the company has to uh put up 250,000 for five years and get no.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I mean a lot of companies give uh huge bonuses to their top salespeople or top uh performers in a hundred thousand, hundred and fifty thousand.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is basically you're holding money, you're not actually paying it, so you're getting it back after five years.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: But Saint Lucia you can sponsor anyone.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say you have um regional manager for East Asia and he travels a lot and you want to give him a citizenship as a bonus.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can just sponsor him directly.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have to be uh a partner in the company, he doesn't have to own a share in the company or nothing.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I wasn't aware that that there was an exception for St.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Lucia under the government bond program, but they accept a company investment as a sponsor of a uh another person rather than having the person have to be the investor themselves.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_04: I think what the case is it's it's still the person applying, it's just the company putting up the money, right?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So due diligence will be a little bit different, but in most of the Caribbean um you either an entity or a person can sponsor an applicant.
• 23:51
  unknown: Okay.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um Yuri, what what would you say are the the biggest common denominators between the crypto world and the investment migration world?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: Where in that Venn diagram, uh, I mean, where do those two circles intersect?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: What's the biggest overlap?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um in in my view, the biggest overlap uh between those two is uh really the uh the mobility in and of itself.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: So you do not need to ask for uh permission to move funds.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the funds will uh arrive, you can take them with you.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: I always think about the Second World War uh in this scenario.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like what if people would have had crypto uh in that at that day and age, uh, you know, where instead of like uh having to flee with all their jewelry and and gold uh you know and being stopped at the border, uh they could have just memorized a uh 24-word siege phrase and uh and that's it, and uh pack their bags and go.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think I think that is uh super powerful.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and and for me, that is the element that best ties into uh uh second options uh in terms of residency and and citizenship.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_04: Even on a more fundamental level than that, probably the biggest uh overlap is that both crypto and investment migrations kind of serve to reduce government control of our lives, in that I mean governments control our currencies and they abuse that control by consistently issuing more currency.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, of course, they they they get to spend it first before it loses its uh value.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but invest migration also serves to liberate liberate us from the state.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and that's a little bit ironic because uh citizenship by investment, for example, essentially involves you signing up, quote unquote, for membership in additional states.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: So you're uh you're becoming a a member of more clubs and you're giving each of them some degree of control over you.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_04: But the idea is kind of that the more such state memberships you have, the less you depend on or suffer because of any of any one of those states.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's basically optionality.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so the more optionality you have, the better.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, some people have by default more optionality than others.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: For example, in my case, uh the Netherlands doesn't allow uh for Dutch citizens to have a second uh passport.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so in in my case, um I cannot uh participate in any citizenship by investment uh options, so it would only be residency options that would be uh applicable to uh to my nationality.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, but on the flip side of that, at least the Dutch nationality does give you a great deal of mobility in settlements.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, exactly.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: So in terms of mobility, uh you know, there's uh just a few passports that have one or two more countries than the Dutch passport.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's number four in the e-passport index, so that's uh a pretty good deal in terms of travel rights.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: When we're looking to uh create uh a global mobility asset portfolio for a crypto client, is it gonna differ from doing for a traditional client, let's say?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: What are the criteria and factors that we have to take into consideration for crypto investors when looking to create uh comprehensive global mobility asset portfolio?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: Great question.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one of the things that we're trying to innovate on is how to provide recommendations to clients based on their skill set, their background, their preferences that expands beyond just golden visas and alternate passports into other residency uh solutions that might or might not involve investment.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's a wide range of assets out there that either through your technical degree or professional certification uh or your network.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Your grandparents?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Your grandparents, uh the ancestry piece, an IMI daily, plug, plug, plug, read it while it's hot.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's great solutions out there that don't involve investment uh that are possible to enable freedom of movement and settlement.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_04: So so two things in what you were mentioning, Rohelio, that I want to um r riff off of.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_04: So number one um is the question of citizenship by descent.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_04: Number two is the question of what is it that crypto investors are looking for when they're considering mobility assets.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um we might start with the second one, actually.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that chiefly what uh crypto investors care about when they're uh shopping around for jurisdictions, especially the crypto investors for whom crypto represents a big share of their overall portfolio, they're thinking, look, um, I want to be able to buy and sell crypto without having to pay any kind of VAT or any kind of sales tax or anything like that.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_04: I also don't want to have to pay capital gains on my crypto gains.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, well, obviously you can eliminate all the places where they they say crypto is you know not legal.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: That's number one.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_04: But then you need to look for jurisdictions where crypto is regulated not as a commodity, not as an asset, uh fixed asset, but as a currency.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because if it's if it's regulated as a commodity or or some kind of financial security or or these types of things, then there's going to be capital gains tax on that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: And that can be, you know, in in OECD countries, that's between 20 and 30 percent, usually.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so just by just by moving, you know, maybe to a neighboring jurisdiction, it doesn't even have to be far away, you can do the same trading in crypto, but not lose 25%, 23% every time you you make that trade.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's probably number one thing.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: To tie back to what we were talking about earlier, to Ancestry and um and crypto uh specifically, what we've been seeing here uh over the past uh three to four years is a huge outflow of uh Argentines that have the option uh of uh an Italian or a Spanish passport, which is almost uh 50% of uh of the population that could apply for that or already has a second passport.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh a lot of people have started to apply now if they uh didn't have one already.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things that that we've been seeing is that since there are so many restrictions on uh having uh dollars or obtaining dollars, uh, because the the restrictions are now that you can only buy as an individual, you can only buy$200 a month uh from your pesos uh to save.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and even that is heavily restricted, and usually you cannot even buy that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that's why the black market flourished.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of people that wanted to move based on their ancestry uh passport from uh Italy, uh they had assets here with that they wanted to sell.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Now, because of all these restrictions, it's really hard to uh make that money um movable across borders.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so what we've been seeing in the last uh year uh to two years is a lot of people started to uh sell their house in uh or their property in Bitcoin, and uh through that uh you know, all legally on paper, but just uh it's a lot easier uh uh easier to move that abroad uh than uh first convert it uh to dollars, uh put it on a bank account, uh, and afterwards send it out because it just gets uh withheld, and there's a lot more uh bureaucracy around it, and uh this way it's a lot easier for people to uh you know make their assets uh more liquid and uh move based on their ancestry and uh get their assets out of the country.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you mentioned in the uh half the population of Argentina basically has some kind of uh answer.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's about 17 million, so it's a little less, uh, but that's the estimate.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that and that's one of the answers to the question, you know, why isn't the Latin American investment migration market bigger?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: So number one, uh you have a you have a first of all, they have decent passports in terms of travel, right?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_04: Uh maybe not settlement rights, but uh most Latin American passports will get you into Schengen without a visa.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: Second is that uh well there's a there's a big overlap in Latin America between the people who have European ancestry and the people who have money, frankly.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh there's a big overlap uh there.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: And those people who have European ancestry, they they a lot of the time uh they can get citizenship in Europe.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: I recently, and you mentioned this, Rahelio, I was looking into citizenship by descent, and citizenship by descent is a category of naturalization that I hadn't considered so much in the past because so much has changed in the last year and a half.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_04: If you go, if you go back to say 2018, investment migration, as we've talked about on a number of occasions, was a chiefly, you know, not a Western phenomenon.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: It was people going to the West and people from illiberal regimes, authoritarian regimes, often uh often poor countries, rich people in poor countries, right?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: Uh that's all changed now after the pandemic.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_04: Now uh we're seeing uh especially with the rise of Americans, and and I think that that is what has brought citizenship by descent to the fore uh in a way that we haven't seen in the past.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_04: Because if you look at people of European descent, outside of Europe, where are they concentrated?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_04: Well, mainly it's North and South America, and then obviously in Oceania, where the majority of people have uh European descent, and then you have you know a little bit in South Africa and scattered across the African continent.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_04: You have some in the Philippines, you have some generally in Asia, but overwhelmingly it it is a um North Central and Southern America type of thing.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um this uh citizenship by descent will apply to them mostly, and that's why we're only that's why it's waking up now that market.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_04: And so the question I want to put to you is should the investment migration industry consider that a threat or an opportunity, or uh you know, is it something that they can incorporate into their current line of business, or is it something that they should shy away from?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, it'll be it's different if you're a firm in Dubai, right?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_04: If you're a firm in Dubai, most of your clients are going to be from India and Saudi Arabia and that region, and hardly any of those people have uh ancestors in Europe.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: But if you're in your position, Rohelio, in the United States, for example, uh you you you know if you can offer uh a smooth way to citizenship by descent, then you have potentially you know 150 to 200 million potential clients.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, what's your take on that?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we're super excited about the ancestry category.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's a great value proposition for any individual, right?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: There's really no significant cost beyond the processing fees and whatever professional fee uh from my cars would charge.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: But in exchange, you get an EU passport, which is uh incredibly valuable.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, the only way to get an EU passport now through investment is uh through Malta.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's obviously not insignificantly in terms of cost.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: But as more and more countries try to attract talent, like Bulgaria just recently announcing what three generations back?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, great grandparents.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_04: Slovakia seventeen seventeen EU countries offer citizenship by descent to people whose grandparents or great grandparents, and in some cases even farther back.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_04: So uh so it's right there.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_04: 17 it's more than it's more than half of the EU countries.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: So one idea we had, uh the the question then is with that great benefit there waiting to be uh uh taken advantage of or captured by millions of people that might not even know it exists, how can we as a US-based investment firm promote this uh for folks to investigate themselves?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_04: No, uh where can we I thought this was a podcast, it's not a business consulting uh class.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, I'm just getting that.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: If we went to ancestry.com or 23andme that that has the uh you know genealogy records for so many different people, I think millions and millions of people have done it.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: I've done it myself, my family has.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you went to them and said, Hey, we'll help you process any of your clients or customers that qualify for these passports.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you you know let them know that they qualified?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: How how happy would uh someone be if they get in a mail, hey, congratulations, you're now a Slovakian uh passport.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Right, we're we're joking, but it it truly could be a a great way to uh No, you go to you go to so imagine you're a client of 23 and me and you you get your test results back and it says you need to watch your cholesterol, uh you have a predisposition uh for heart attack in your family, and uh by the way, by the way, uh five years ago, uh five generations ago, your ancestor was you know kicked out of uh kicked out of uh Poland for being German, and now you have a right to so would you like a passport with that?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I don't I don't I've never taken one of these 23andMe tests, but I can imagine that you know if they find that you have you're in the risk zone for whatever ailment because of your genetics, I can imagine that they would say, and by the way, here are some uh clinics that that can advise you on this, and and they could you know make make some advertising dollars that way or introducer fees, or what do I know?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: But they could do the same for for citizenship, right?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_04: Turns out you're a slovac.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it's a it's an opportunity that we're uh figuring out how best to pursue.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: I just had an idea on this podcast about that.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: One way is to go to the companies that have access to those types of private records and not ask them to fork it over to us, but uh to inform their clients of this benefit.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever is interested in learning more would then work with us.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: That that's something that I'm sure they'd be open to.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: But what what are the European governments?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: What are these 17 countries doing to promote uh this benefit worldwide?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what does Slovakia do to get?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_04: No, I don't think I I don't think I've ever seen a government actively promoting uh this.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: That might be a missed opportunity, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: The uh if you have if you have a certainty that there are a significant number of your people living in the US or any country, that's uh uh ad campaign.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's definitely solvable.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_04: That's it for today, folks, but we'll be back soon with another episode of the Mobility Standard.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: In the meantime, I encourage you, the listener, to send us the questions that you have about investment migration.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_04: If we're able to answer them, we'll do so during our next episode.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: I want to thank my co-hosts, the inevitable Ahmad Abbas and the illustrious Aroelio Cáceres, and remind you to follow our work on imidaily.com, the world's number one publication for investment migration, home to the internet's greatest collection of investment migration data, real estate, expert opinion, and the intelligence that you need to be a successful investment migration professional.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for listening.