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Bitcoin, War and the Endgame

Bitcoin, War and the Endgame

This presentation (by Victoria Jones) delivers a compelling and provocative historical narrative arguing that modern warfare, geopolitical conflict, and societal control are fundamentally rooted in the evolution and manipulation of money. The speaker posits that the global financial system, built on debt-based fiat currency and managed by a network of central banks under the purview of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is a sophisticated mechanism of control and wealth extraction. Nations that resist integration into this system are systematically targeted and labeled as "rogue states."

The presentation traces the origins of this system back to the 16th century, highlighting pivotal moments that replaced sound money like gold with abstract, state-controlled currency. Bitcoin is presented not merely as a new asset, but as a potential revolutionary escape from this centuries-old apparatus of control. However, its success is framed as a contested battle—an "endgame"—where the forces of centralization are actively working to co-opt or neutralize its liberating potential.

The unabridged transcript follows below
You can watch the original video here

The Honeybee and the Beekeeper: A Core Analogy

To make the complex dynamics of the financial system relatable, the speaker introduces a powerful central analogy: humanity is like a colony of honeybees, and the financial elite are the beekeepers.

  • The Honeybee's Toil: The individual honeybee, like the average person, works diligently throughout its life. It focuses on its immediate responsibilities: providing for its family, maintaining a home, and saving resources (honey) for the future. The bee operates with the belief that its hard work will lead to security and prosperity.
  • The Beekeeper's Harvest: Unbeknownst to the individual bee, it is part of a larger system—the hive—which is managed by a beekeeper. Periodically, the beekeeper comes to the hive and harvests the honey. From the bee's perspective, this is a catastrophic, unexplainable event. Its life's savings vanish, and it is left devastated, forced to start over without ever understanding the true cause of its loss.
  • The Financial System Parallel: This, the speaker argues, is a perfect metaphor for our financial system. The average person works, saves in their national currency, and invests through established channels. However, through mechanisms like inflation (the silent debasement of currency), manufactured financial crises, and bank bailouts, the "beekeeper"—the central banking and political elite—systematically extracts this saved wealth. The public is left to bear the consequences, often without comprehending that their loss was not an accident of nature but a feature of the system's design.

The Historical Genesis of a Debt-Based World

The presentation argues that the current system is not a recent invention but the result of a centuries-long evolution away from sound money. The critical turning point occurred in 16th-century England under King Henry VIII.

  • The Repeal of Usury Laws: For millennia, under strict religious and moral codes, charging interest on loans (usury) was forbidden, as it was believed to lead to damnation. Henry VIII, having already broken with the Catholic Church, was one of the first European monarchs to repeal these usury laws. This single act fundamentally altered the nature of money and commerce.
  • The Birth of Joint-Stock Companies: The legalization of interest created the possibility of profit from lending money. This incentivized collaboration and large-scale investment, leading to the formation of the first joint-stock companies. The speaker highlights the Muscovy Company and, most significantly, the East India Company, as the engines that powered the British Empire. These entities could pool vast resources to fund global trade expeditions, effectively weaponizing capital on a scale never before seen. This directly links the creation of interest-bearing money to geopolitical power and colonial expansion.

The Architecture of Control: Central Banking and Fractional Reserve

The explosion of commerce fueled by joint-stock companies necessitated a more sophisticated financial architecture. This led to the creation of central banks, with the Bank of England in 1694 serving as the crucial prototype for the modern system.

  • From Amsterdam to England: The Bank of Amsterdam was an early model, but it was a fully capitalized bank, meaning it held 100% reserves against deposits. This made it vulnerable to bank runs if a major investor failed.
  • The "Innovation" of Fractional Reserve: The Bank of England introduced a revolutionary and dangerous concept: fractional reserve banking. It was only required to hold a small fraction (e.g., 10%) of its assets as reserves, allowing it to lend out the rest. The speaker emphasizes that this gave the British government the ability to effectively "write itself a blank check," creating money out of thin air to fund its wars. This is evidenced by the national debt skyrocketing from £1.2 million to £16 million in just four years to finance William of Orange's wars.
  • The South Sea Bubble: A Blueprint for Modern Crisis Management: The presentation uses the South Sea Bubble of 1720 as a critical case study. The South Sea Company was created to absorb the massive government debt. When it inevitably collapsed, the British elite engineered a solution that has become the blueprint for every financial crisis since:
    • The Bailout: The Bank of England and the East India Company absorbed the failed company's debt, preventing a systemic collapse. The central bank was protected at all costs.
    • Socializing the Loss: The debt was socialized and remained on the government's books for nearly 300 years, finally being paid off in 2015. The public, through taxation and inflation, ultimately paid for the elite's failed speculation.
    • Contrast with France: In France, a similar scheme (the Mississippi Bubble) collapsed entirely, devastating the population and leading directly to the social upheaval of the French Revolution. Britain’s "successful" management of its crisis preserved the power of its financial elite and established the modern model of "too big to fail."

Currency as a Weapon in an Age of Conflict

The ability to manipulate currency became a primary instrument of state power and warfare.

  • The Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon Bonaparte understood the power of sound money, paying his troops in gold to ensure their loyalty. Britain, in contrast, leveraged its flexible, debt-based fiat system. By introducing the first income tax and printing money, it was able to out-fund and ultimately defeat Napoleon. The victory was followed by an indemnity payment that refilled the Bank of England's coffers, reinforcing the lesson that financial power translates directly to military victory.
  • World War I & The End of Gold: The 20th century saw the total weaponization of this system. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, all warring nations immediately abandoned the gold standard. This allowed them to fund the unprecedented scale and devastation of the war with unlimited money printing. The conflict was the first in history fought with a "blank check," financed by the future wealth of their citizens.
  • Bretton Woods and the Dollar Hegemony: After the chaos of the interwar period and World War II, the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 institutionalized a new global order. The US dollar, nominally backed by gold (but only redeemable by other central banks), was established as the world's reserve currency. This centralized global financial power in the United States and its Federal Reserve.

The Modern Fiat System and Its Global Overlord

The final evolution of this system has been the consolidation of power into a global, supranational entity.

  • The End of All Restraint: In 1971, President Nixon severed the final link between the dollar and gold, ushering in a purely fiat global system. As shown by the speaker's charts, this is the precise moment when US national debt began its exponential, vertical ascent. With no anchor to sound money, there were no limits on debt creation.
  • The Bank for International Settlements (BIS): The speaker identifies the BIS as the capstone of this global financial pyramid. Founded to manage German war reparations after WWI, it has evolved into the "central bank for central banks." It sets global banking regulations and oversees the SWIFT international payments system, giving it immense power over the world's financial plumbing.
  • The "Rebel" States: The presentation makes a crucial point: the countries consistently portrayed as global villains are precisely those who remain outside the BIS system. The list includes Iran, Russia (expelled after the Ukraine invasion), North Korea, and Venezuela. The speaker suggests that the conflicts and sanctions targeting these nations are not merely about nuclear weapons or human rights, but are punitive actions for refusing to subordinate their financial sovereignty to this Western-led global architecture. Recent events, like the bombing of Iran and Syria's forced capitulation to the SWIFT system, are presented as evidence of this ongoing financial war.

The Illusion of Prosperity and the Approaching Endgame

The speaker argues that the fiat system maintains its legitimacy by offering tangible benefits like healthcare, pensions, and social security. However, these are built on a foundation of decaying currency and ever-expanding debt.

  • The Decaying Promise: These social goods are deteriorating in quality (crumbling hospitals, underfunded pensions) as the underlying currency loses its value. They are an illusion of prosperity that masks the continuous theft of wealth through inflation.
  • The Gaslighting of Poverty: Official statistics are used to mislead the public. A chart showing a decline in global poverty is deconstructed by the speaker, who points out it is measured in a constantly debasing US dollar. When measured against a stable asset like gold, poverty is actually skyrocketing.
  • The Endgame Scenario: We are now approaching the endgame. The global debt is mathematically unsustainable. The central banking system's final move is to bring all nations under its control, creating a unified, global financial system with no exits.

Bitcoin: The Potential Escape Route

Bitcoin is presented as the first viable technological solution to escape this system of control.

  • A Return to Sound Money Principles: Bitcoin embodies the properties of sound money like gold (scarcity, divisibility, durability) but in a digital, decentralized form that cannot be easily confiscated or controlled by a central authority.
  • A Contested Future: However, its success is not guaranteed. The speaker warns that the financial elite are actively working to neutralize its revolutionary potential by:
    1. Regulating the On-Ramps: Controlling exchanges to monitor and restrict access.
    2. Framing it as an Asset, Not a Currency: Encouraging people to see Bitcoin as "digital gold"—a speculative asset to be held by institutions—rather than a peer-to-peer electronic cash system used for daily transactions. The speaker stresses that when gold was removed from public circulation, it lost its power to hold the system accountable. The same danger exists for Bitcoin.
  • The Final Battle: The true battle is over whether Bitcoin will become a tool of sovereign individuals or just another asset class absorbed into the existing financial system. The presentation concludes with a call to action for the Bitcoin community: to focus on education and building the decentralized infrastructure (running nodes, promoting self-custody) necessary to ensure Bitcoin remains a tool of liberation for the many, not just another instrument of wealth for the few.

Unabridged transcript

Today, I'm going to be talking about Bitcoin and war. I thought we could do with something a little bit more exciting, and the subtitle is 'approaching the endgame'.

Wars have always been about money, and the recent skirmishes we've witnessed with Russia and the Middle East are no different. In focusing on the justification for these wars, the mainstream media narrative focuses on the moral decrepitude of these other countries as they attempt to build their own nuclear weapons, even though the West is abundant in them. There is more to this story. In talking you through the history of money today, I want to perhaps uncover what some of the more esoteric reasons for this might be and illustrate where Bitcoin fits in with this. We are at a pivotal moment in history, and if we are to strive for the best possible outcomes, we need to appreciate just how important those outcomes will be and make sure that we're focusing on the best ones.

To focus on this talk today, I'm going to liken humanity to a honeybee. The average human being is really focused on making sure that their family is safe and well. They've got a good job, they've got enough of an income, and they're putting some money aside in case there's ever a rainy day. But unfortunately, what often tends to happen, the poor honeybee doesn't realize that it's part of a hive. From time to time, the beekeeper is going to come along and steal part of its money. Whenever this happens, the honeybee has no idea what's actually going on. The poor thing is left devastated, and it's got to start all over again. Isn't that just the perfect analogy for our financial system right now?

So how did we end up in this position? As Bitcoiners, we know that gold was money for over 3,000 years. But of course, the problem with gold is it's a physical asset, so it's prone to being stolen. I've got a couple of examples of this from history. One of which is William the Conqueror, who invaded England. The first thing he did was take inventory of all the assets he had just conquered by compiling the Domesday Book and going around Britain and figuring out what they had. The other example is Henry VIII, who obtained a great deal of wealth through the dissolution of the monasteries. When Henry VIII first came to power, there were only 12 royal palaces as part of the royal family, but by the time he died, there were 60, which just goes to show the degree to which he expanded his wealth. A big part of that came from robbing the treasures of these monasteries.

Gold has traditionally been seen as the money of kings. Silver is said to be the money of gentlemen, and paper is the money of slaves. And of course, at the moment, we're all transacting in paper money. But how did we end up in this situation?

If I take you back to Henry VIII in the 1500s, I would say this was really the point at which it all changed. At the time, most of the world was under the subjugation of their religious leaders. Most kings answered to the popes and, of course, they held strict moral codes. One of the strictest laws was the usury laws. It was banned to charge interest on money that you loaned, and this could be something that would damn your eternal soul. So, most people avoided it because they didn't want to go to hell. But of course, Henry VIII, having dissolved the monasteries and also beheaded two of his wives, clearly there was no hope for his eternal soul. So why not push back on these usury laws? He was actually one of the first people to repeal them, and this was where things really started to change.

Once you are able to charge interest on money, you create the possibility of being able to collaborate and form businesses because there's a possibility of having profit. Until you can actually invest and get a reward, there's not a lot of point in doing that. This was where the joint-stock companies first came into being. In fact, the first joint-stock company was established by his daughter, Mary I, who established the Muscovy Company that traded with Russia until 1917, which is slightly ironic because one of the first things Mary wanted to do was execute all the Protestants so they could go back to being a Catholic country. But clearly, the usury laws were not part of her agenda.

One of the most successful joint-stock trading companies that was built in this period was the East India Company, which was established by Elizabeth I. This was the secret behind the golden age of Britain. The fact that these merchants could collaborate on these big trading companies to trade all over the world really started to explode the wealth of the Western nations. But unfortunately, Elizabeth died without any children, so the throne had to go to one of her nephews, which was one of the Catholic kings. For the next hundred years, Britain was thrown into turmoil. There was civil war. They tried executing one of their monarchs. They experimented with being a republic. There was a great plague and a great fire. England really was not the best place to be in the 1600s.

However, there was another country nearby who took the idea and ran with it. The East India Company ended up becoming so large and successful, it eventually had an army that was bigger than that of the British government. However, the Dutch East India Trading Company ended up being four times larger than the English East India Company at one point, which just goes to show how successful they were. And really, this was the source of the Dutch Empire.

Once all of these merchants start collaborating, this really opens the door for financial investment and financial assets. This really was where the paper financial currency that we use today really came into being. Of course, to manage all of this, it really relies on regulation and governments. To collect the profits and then distribute the profits, there was also a need for a central bank. This is where the first central bank became established, the Bank of Amsterdam or the Wisselbank, which was established in 1604 and it was phenomenally successful. We also get the tulip bubble, which I talked about a bit more last year. This was the first example of legislation interfering in all of this paper, which contributed to the explosion of the tulip bubble and then its collapse a few years later.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, England was going through its dramas. But finally, 100 years later, they got their act together and they decided that the solution to the problem was to banish all of the Scottish kings, the Stuart kings, and instead, they were going to establish their own Protestant king so they could finally do what they wanted. This was how William of Orange was introduced to the UK in what they termed the Glorious Revolution, although many will debate whether it was all that glorious because part of what came with William of Orange was the establishment of the Bank of England.

Now, even though the Bank of Amsterdam had been incredibly successful, one of its weak points was that it was a fully capitalized bank. This meant that if one of their investors went bust and everyone found out about it, there was suddenly a run on the bank. Everyone wanted their money back because they felt that it was about to go bust. So, one of the things the Bank of England did to avoid that was it introduced a fractional reserve, which allowed them to lend up to 10% based on 1% of their assets. They thought it was a great idea. And if you've ever wondered why the world really seemed to explode from the 1700s, this was probably why. The British government effectively wrote themselves a blank check to such an extent. Even banks were set up in these days as joint-stock companies. To set up the Bank of England, they needed investors and they were able to raise £1.2 million as an initial investment. But due to the amount of money that was spent by William of Orange fighting his wars in France, that debt exploded within four years from £1.2 million to £16 million. It was absolutely horrendous. Not only that, by 1711, someone did an audit on the British government and they discovered that £9 million had been spent and this was completely unaccounted for.

Now, part of the paperwork of the Bank of England had established that any interest on the debt accrued by the Bank of England would be paid by the British public. But at that stage, they hadn't actually figured out how they were going to do that. The guy who put forward the paperwork for the Bank of England came up with another solution. He said, well, there are people doing so well with trading, why don't we set up a trading company and the profits from that company can then pay off the debt from the Bank of England? This is where the South Sea Company came from. They thought, yeah, that's a great idea. They went ahead with that plan.

However, at the same time, William Paterson had a colleague called John Law. They were both Scotsmen, and John Law was watching with fascination as Britain was implementing this plan. He was also a bit of an outlaw. He was wanted for murder after he had been involved in a duel and it had gone wrong. So he hightailed it over to France, cozied up with the Duke of Orléans and said, "Hey, do you know what they're doing in Britain? They've got this great idea. They've got this fractional reserve bank and then they're paying off the debt with this trading company. Why don't you think we should do the same thing?" They thought that was a great idea and they kind of 10xed the mission over in France, and naturally, it ended in disaster. In fact, it was so disastrous it really defined the future of these two countries.

Unfortunately, because of the way in which John Law had gone about it, when the whole thing collapsed, there really were no other options. He disappeared to Italy and the leaders of France were left to figure out a solution. What they decided to do was revalue all the property of France, issue paper notes against that currency, and they were going to manage their currency that way. It ended up being a complete disaster. The people in the cities who understood what was going on were able to take advantage of the situation and did quite nicely. But the peasants in the countryside who had no idea about these sophisticated new financial instruments had no idea. They were absolutely devastated. And of course, this is what directly contributed to the French Revolution.

Over in Britain, however, they managed the situation rather differently. Because they'd managed to keep the South Sea Company separate from the Bank of England, the first prime minister, Robert Walpole, basically confiscated the assets of the directors of the South Sea Company, distributed the profits to some of the victims who had been worst affected, and smoothed things over politically with those who were seen to have benefited through the government and also the king and the king's mistresses, who'd all been given sweet deals on the South Sea Company. That was seen as very corrupt at the time, but he smoothed all of that over. In doing that, he kind of set the precedent for the next few centuries as to how they were going to handle this situation. Ultimately, the debt that was accrued by the South Sea Company was eventually split between the Bank of England and the East India Company. In fact, that debt was kept on the books of the Bank of England for almost 300 years. It was not actually fully paid off until 2015 when it was paid off by the prime minister, George Osborne. So it was a debt that was acquired by Britain that we were paying the interest on for over 300 years. But this really was such a successful solution to the problem that it's been repeated over and over.

This really set the trajectory for both of these countries. Britain ended up with a very stable company because they'd been able to maintain the reputation of the Bank of England, whereas France became an utter basket case. By the end of the century, obviously, the French Revolution led to the rise of Napoleon. Now, considering that their currency had been devastated, one of the things that Napoleon did that really inspired loyalty with his soldiers was that he insisted on paying them in gold coins. This was part of what made Napoleon very successful.

At the same time, Britain was watching with great interest. By this stage, they were starting to realize the degree to which messing with the currency of the country can really disrupt things. As the American Revolution played out, one of the things they did was they printed fake Continentals, which really disrupted the economy and the supply lines of the southern states, which again had a huge indirect impact on the north winning the American Revolution rather than the south.

However, Napoleon's reputation was pretty solid and he was doing very well, and this meant that Britain was now going to be facing a problem of their own. How were they going to succeed in overcoming Napoleon? One of the things they discussed in Parliament was maybe they should start to ease up on their currency. Of course, there were people at the time who still knew of their grandparents who'd been around at the time of the South Sea Bubble. So people were horrified by this, and this is a political cartoon that was drawn up at the time of the prime minister William Pitt assaulting the old lady of Threadneedle Street, wanting to steal all her assets. This is where the nickname, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, was obtained by the Bank of England.

William Pitt eventually won the political argument. This was also the point at which income tax was introduced because they persuaded the population that it was their moral duty to pay income tax in order to win the wars of Napoleon. By doing all of this, they were very successful and they were able to succeed in defeating Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo.

Now, if we look at the finances for a second, in 1797 when they were talking about expanding the currency supply, at the time the Bank of England had £5.3 million in the bank, but there were £10.8 million currency notes in circulation, which meant they had a deficit of £5.5 million. So they were already in deficit. It was going to be a big risk to expand the money supply. But because their gamble paid off, they actually won an indemnity of £14 million, almost three times as much as the bullion that the Bank of England had in the bank at the time. This enabled the Bank of England to restore their coffers. Clearly, many bankers at the time breathed a huge sigh of relief. That was the point at which they decided they needed to rectify the currency and withdraw the excess currency notes from circulation. But they way overdid it. They reduced the notes in circulation by 80% down to £2.2 million, which ended up giving them a surplus of £8.9 million in the Bank of England, and of course, this created a huge financial panic. In fact, it's the most famous and the first big banking crisis, which occurred in 1825.

So Britain now had a problem. They had escaped by the skin of their teeth in attempting to manipulate the money supply. They managed to get things back on track, but they'd now created a problem in the economy. The first industrial revolution had just been gaining its feet, but this banking crisis really brought it to a screeching end because without any currency circulating in the economy, it's really difficult for businesses to survive and be successful. They needed a new plan. After the South Sea Bubble, they'd introduced a Bubble Act in 1720 which banned the formation of joint-stock companies unless you had permission from the monarch. But in order to stimulate the economy, what they did in 1825 was they repealed that.

If you consider that the 1600s were really the century of trade, the 1700s were the century of revolution, the 1800s became the century of financial panics. There were many financial panics, but there were two main ones that I've got on the board here. In 1844, the British government expanded access to the joint-stock companies because it was working so well. But this was followed three years later by the railway mania crisis. Then in 1856, they introduced the idea of limited liability, which they secured for joint-stock companies. This meant that businesses could invest, but if they were unsuccessful, the directors wouldn't become liable. Basically, a business could fail and the directors could carry on without their lives being destroyed. Of course, just one year later, this led to the panic of 1857.

Saifedean in his book, The Bitcoin Standard, talks about this period as being the Belle Époque, as an era of great prosperity. He puts that down to this being because our currency and the currency of Europe was on the gold standard. But actually, there's more to the story. There was a lot going on behind the scenes to manage the legislation of Britain. In many ways, they led the way in this legislation. That is actually the reason why Britain led the way with the industrial revolution. They created such a friendly environment for these businesses, they were able to take off like a rocket and most of Europe lagged behind.

As Britain was going through its financial panics, America was going through the same thing and they regularly had runs on banks as they would fail. They needed a solution for this. Obviously, if a bank failed, individual people's lives were devastated, and so this is where they came up with the idea for the Federal Reserve. The idea was that if one of the banks went under, the rest of the banks would provide a buffer and that would keep things going smoothly. But of course, this is an illusion. The fact that a bank would occasionally go bankrupt is what kept the monetary system honest. By creating a system whereby no one was held accountable, you just open the gates for an unlimited money supply. Of course, it's the people who own the banks who decide where that money goes. This played out in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War.

When war broke out in Europe in World War I, there were people who had grandparents who remembered the Napoleonic Wars. By this point, the elites of Europe had figured out how it was that Britain had managed to win the Napoleonic wars. So the moment the First World War broke out, the first thing all of these countries did was abandon their gold standard. This is why World War I was so devastating; it was the first time in history where a war had been fought where a blank check was written to pay the bills for this war. But not only did that make the First World War so large and so devastating, it also meant that by the time the war was over, the currencies of Europe were devastated and this gave them a real problem. How were they going to fix it?

With the end of the Napoleonic wars, the indemnity is what enabled Britain to recover their currency and really laid the foundation for the British Empire and Britain taking its role as the leader of the world's reserve currency. But when World War I was over and the bill was landed on Germany, there was no possible way in which they could pay this. That meant it wasn't possible to restore the currencies and they were left with a problem that they didn't know how to deal with.

In the interwar years between World War I and World War II, this was a big political debate. How were they going to repair their currencies? There was a convention in Geneva in 1922 when the countries got together and they came up with this agreement that they were going to exchange each other's currency and keep that in their treasury. This laid the foundation for the gold exchange standard which was introduced by Winston Churchill, who was actually chancellor before he became prime minister before World War II in 1936. This gold exchange standard is not talked about very often, but actually it was hugely impactful. What he did with this gold exchange standard was he set the price of gold at a rate similar to what it was before the First World War. He insisted that only countries could exchange gold bullion with each other, and he banned the use of gold as currency in circulation. By 1925, it was still possible to go to the bank, hand in a banknote and receive gold in exchange, but with this act he obliterated that.

As this started to kick in, a number of European banks started to fail because the currency just wasn't ready for that. That led to the stock market crisis of 1929, which then led to the Great Depression. In spite of the fact that the Federal Reserve was set up as an insurance policy for all of these bank failures, it turned out that it wasn't going to protect anyone at all because there were a series of bank failures around America that led to the Great Depression. This was the point at which America decided that they were going to confiscate the use of gold in circulation as well. This had huge impacts which I'm going to talk about later.

After the Great Depression, that led to World War II. The gold exchange standard introduced by Britain was such a failure that they decided to mimic the idea but just make America responsible for it because they now had all the gold, as they had managed to stay out of the war until the very last minute. This took place with the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944. But as part of that, people were getting pretty fed up. They'd experienced all this war, all this devastation, and some politicians were starting to ask some astute questions. How come we can create all this money for war, but what about all the poor people who have been suffering? This was where the idea of the welfare state really came into being. "Hey, if we can take over the central bank, maybe we can use some of that funding to create welfare programs for our population."

This was when the Bank of England was nationalized, and actually a series of bank nationalizations carried on across the world. This started a trend and by the end of the 1900s, we've got the European Central Bank. It's not just central banks that have been nationalized, but you've got regional banks that are now coalescing because the more banks are in a network with each other, they provide a buffer when things go wrong.

But of course, this has consequences. It looks like everything's safe and stable on the surface, but behind the scenes, the problems are just being swept under the rug. You can see this chart of US debt that starts to climb in about 1940. Then in 1971 when Nixon took America off the gold standard, it really started to skyrocket because when there were no checks and balances in the economy, the debt can take off. The governments will tell us that everything's fine as long as you let us control things, not because things are actually okay. It just means that they can disguise the problem much better if they allow for the debt. This is a problem that's occurring right around the world. Just in the last 10 years, global debt has exploded by $100 billion. Most of us here are very familiar with this problem. We're just waiting for the mathematical inevitability of this to play out and for everything to fail. We assume that Bitcoin is going to take over, but will it?

The banks have been doing this for a long time and they've got a very slick strategy. Clearly, their plan is, whenever anyone is suffering, we just need to find someone else to step in and smooth over the problem. We manage the debt in the background and everything will be okay. So it's not just about central banks anymore. The central banks have a central bank, which is the Bank for International Settlements. This was the bank that was initially set up to manage the indemnity payments that were due from Germany after the First World War. But gradually over time, it's taken on this role as being the arbiter. When central banks are struggling, they will step in and solve the problem. To this date, we have 63 central banks that are now part of this system and of course, it is responsible for managing the SWIFT system of international payments.

However, there are a few notable holdouts. Can you guess who they are? We have some rebels who have either been excluded or don't want any part of it. They include Iran. Oh, surprise surprise. Syria, Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela. There are also some smaller banks, but these are the main ones. And what does the Bank of International Settlements say is a problem with this? Well, the problem with these rebellious banks is that they fuel shadow finance and parallel systems. They make global financial stability harder to manage. They challenge the Bank of International Settlements' role as the hub of a unified international financial system. Basically, what they're saying is, as long as we're in control, everything will be okay. And you rebels are just causing problems for everybody.

But actually, it's not easy to be a rebel. It has huge implications to not be part of this system. The countries who are not part of the system are struggling because it makes coordinating international payments slow, unreliable, and expensive. Trade grinds to a halt. Foreign reserves and sovereign payments are blocked. Currencies are devalued and there are dangers with inflation. There's loss of investor and business confidence. And growth slows or reverses.

So given that this is the situation, this fiat currency system that we've been left with, what does it actually buy us? The people who are maintaining that we need to stay in control of this system will maintain that it gives us healthcare. Certainly in the UK, healthcare is almost a religion. If any politician goes after the NHS, there is literally hell to pay and they're not going to be elected again. The fact that people have got pensions when they retire; it might not be much of a pension, but it's still a pension. Access to social security; obviously, there are some people who aren't able to operate in the system as it is, and they fall outside the bounds of that and they need some help and support. Travel and immigration. Obviously, travel has really exploded through the fiat system, but we've also got a lot of immigration as well. In summary, essentially there's more of everything, it's quicker and everything's cheaper, which some people would say is a great thing.

But of course, if we contrast that with the reality. In England, you've got a number of crumbling hospitals that aren't being maintained. The closer you are to the origins of the fiat system, that's when you get the most value out of it. Over time, as the currency loses value, the hospitals start to deteriorate, healthcare becomes rationed, and care is often compromised. The same with pensions. Even private pensions are vulnerable to financial shocks. In 2022 when Liz Truss wanted to introduce a form of free-market economics in Britain, the financial system almost went into meltdown, to such an extent that she was sacked as prime minister. She was seen as completely irresponsible for suggesting it in the first place.

Social security: recently in the UK, they've tried to introduce a bill that will severely curtail welfare spending in order to support the finances of Britain. But for the average person who can't work within the original system, they rely on these social security payments to manage their lives, and so if the government comes in and randomly changes the goalposts, this creates a real problem for them. A number of caring MPs are rightly concerned about that.

Travel and immigration: a lot of people don't actually recognize that travel and also immigration supports the GDP of a country, and GDP of a country is very important because that's how countries are valued these days. But unfortunately, while that may suit the politicians, it also strains local public services, which of course is causing a lot of local outrage.

In contrast to everything being more, quicker, and cheaper, what we're really ending up with is more low-quality, more pollution, and more poverty. Poverty is an interesting one because there's a lot of gaslighting around this subject. This chart was produced by the Center for Global Development in 2014 along with an article praising the fact that over time they were managing to put a limit on poverty rates. What this chart demonstrates is that poverty rates reduced significantly in the 1800s and then they flattened off in the 1900s. But what they're not telling you here, of course, is that this data has been compiled with the US dollar. If you contrast that with a chart of the price of gold in US dollars, you can see that while the price of gold was stable, that's when we had the greatest reduction in poverty rates. But since then, even though the chart is saying that poverty rates are stable in the US dollar, if you contrast that with the price of gold in the US dollar, poverty rates are actually skyrocketing. The reality of the situation could not be more different. But this is the way in which data and statistics are used to gaslight us.

If I take you back to the first economist Adam Smith, who wrote the book The Wealth of Nations in 1776, at the time he was observing the horrors going on in France with the devaluation of their currency as they experimented with paper assets, and the contrast with Britain who managed to keep their currency stable. What he pointed out was that it was not by gold or silver, but by labor that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased. By messing with our money, these elites who run the central banking system trying to convince us that it's for our own benefit are actually stealing our wealth from us as all of this debt collects behind the scenes.

So what does that mean? Are we approaching the endgame? A lot of us as Bitcoiners assume that Bitcoin is a mathematical inevitability, but is it really? If the bankers manage to achieve their goals of getting all central banks under their domain... At the moment, they're heavily regulating the exchanges. They are closing a number of the open doorways. You've also got prominent people advocating for Bitcoin as a form of digital gold rather than a currency. But as I pointed out earlier, it was really when gold was removed as a form of currency from the local population that debt really started to skyrocket because the tangible evidence the local population has as to how their money is changing has been removed. And so it's possible to portray this grand illusion.

Recently, the US bombed Iran on the 21st of June. Lo and behold, just three days earlier, Syria first made its first transaction via the SWIFT system. They finally got Syria to capitulate. Russia used to be part of the system of the Bank of International Settlements but was expelled when they bombed Ukraine. We're constantly hearing about Rocket Man in North Korea, and Venezuela is devastated regularly by problems with inflation. Is the truth of the situation that actually these people are pushing back against the Western financial system? We understand what the problem is as Bitcoiners. We think Bitcoin is the solution. But these other countries definitely understand how they are vulnerable. In fact, there's been a huge rise in Islamic banking, who rely on Sharia law in order to ban things like usury payments, going back to the problem that first initiated this when Henry VIII rebelled against the usury laws. The problem with Sharia law, though, is that they still allow profit on investment, which unfortunately is interest by another name. It doesn't really solve the problem.

We understand that Bitcoin is a more robust solution, but who will win the battle? What will actually be? Going back to Adam Smith, he points out that money is a key cog in the great wheel of circulation, and the moment that is disrupted, everything else is affected as well.

So that's all I have to share with you today. Those of you who haven't heard of me before, which is probably 1% of you by now, this is my book, TULIP DECAY: How Bitcoin Fixes This. I also provide a number of newsletters on my website and it's possible to sign up for that. But recently, I've introduced a starter guide because obviously with this happening, it's important that we educate the world. I know many people are working on this. But for complete beginners, to help them understand what's happening with Bitcoin, we also actually need to work on the infrastructure. So, I partnered with Darren, also known as the Crypto Donkey, and we've been putting together a series of courses to try and educate people, encourage people to start owning their nodes, know what cold wallets are. We've got a series of them that it's going to take time to work on, but we've all got to start from somewhere. This is just a quick slideshow of some of the things that we're working on. Some are complete, some not so much. Those can be found at my website.com/products.

Thank you very much.