Excerpt
I explain how the current financial system, established post-World War II, excludes billions of people globally, particularly in Africa. I discuss the potential of Bitcoin to provide financial inclusion and self-sovereignty amidst the challenges of scams and distrust. Join me as I explore the hidden repression of international financial regulations and the opportunities Bitcoin offers for Africa’s economic future.
Transcript
The system is built on fiat money and it’s built on the organizations that were basically set up after the Second World War. So when we had the conference in Bretton Woods when the US was the winner of the Second World War, they basically invited old white men. I have nothing against old white men, okay, but it was like 60 white men from Europe and the US who basically decided the fate of the world for the coming 50, 60, 70, or maybe 100 years. We don’t know how long the hegemony of the petrodollar is going to last, but basically those people started international organizations and the financial system of regulations that basically is now excluding two billion people worldwide because they can’t have IDs. So they don’t have papers, they can’t KYC themselves, or they are too poor to have a bank account, or the banks are not there where they live because it’s too costly to have a bank somewhere out there in the rural region. So basically there are no banks. And even more, most people in African countries don’t want to be in a bank, they don’t want to have a bank account because they are totally unreliable, very bureaucratic, very expensive, and it’s basically something that happens to everyone and anyone here and there that they close your bank account. And even more if you’re basically an activist working for freedom and against these authoritarian rulers that are holding on to power in many of these countries for decades, actually. And so that’s where Bitcoin comes in, and where I see, or many of us bitcoiners see, a great potential. But it’s also difficult because there have been so many scams around Bitcoin. You know, like shicoiners copy Bitcoin in a way and in the African regions where I have been, the first question people ask me is mostly, “Bitcoin, is it not a scam?” Because everyone has been scammed in one way or another. And so there’s a lot of distrust and sometimes I have the feeling that people don’t want to use Bitcoin because they can’t believe it’s true. And they rather go with what they know, with the problems that fiat money is bringing them because they are aware of it. They already manage, you know, they know their ways around and what to do. So sometimes I’m really, to be honest, a little bit disappointed that people don’t see the advantages that Bitcoin could bring them. And also, I have to be quite honest about that, I think because we think, or before I went to African countries, I really thought, yeah, people are using Bitcoin. No, most of them are using USDT. Yeah, they want stablecoins. For instance, in Zimbabwe, 80% of the people who use cryptocurrency use USDT and 20% use bitcoin. And so that’s also interesting because people don’t understand it seems that the inflation they have on their own money is basically losing them more. So they lose more value with the inflation than if they were to sit out the volatility of bitcoin. But of course, the problem is people can’t save like we can, so they need to spend immediately, or they can’t risk losing any value because they don’t have a lot. So there are many opportunities, but still the system that the US and European countries have built is basically built on rules that favor them. And also, like exactly what Alex Gladstein is also always saying, it’s a hidden regression with all these credits and loans that the International Monetary Fund, etc., are giving to Zambia or Zimbabwe or all these countries. They’re basically indebting those countries, and that’s a deadly spiral in a way, I would say. And on the other hand, I always say, yeah, but with Bitcoin those countries can use their vast natural resources to mine bitcoin and build their self-sovereign monetary basis. But I don’t think that these governments, like in Zimbabwe for instance, want that because then they wouldn’t have their own system anymore, the fiat system with which they make their money. So I believe a lot of people also in these areas or authoritarian leaderships, they use Bitcoin, I’m quite sure about that, but they don’t want their people to use it, of course.
