 So this is the article that Stefan was mentioning. It's about monetary policy as a means for economic control. And the most important aspects I present here during this talk, and for going more into depth, I definitely can recommend checking out the article because I can just make a brief overview on the depth of where we're going to. So yeah, let's start. You all have heard the saying, money rules the world. And I would like you to think of when was the last time that you were thinking about that? So for me, this came up frequently, actually. And one very important aspect was when I see lobbyists that were able to influence politics with the money they have. But money essentially depends on the system that it is like built around. And the structure of the monetary system actually defines how money is used. And here, Bitcoin is a freedom technology. So I see that Bitcoin brings very different properties than fiat money, which is essentially a means of control. And this is what I would like to present to you today. And first, I will lay out why fiat money is a means of control. And then I will go into the antithesis to the system, namely Bitcoin. So first, I would like to go back in time with you to the Gold Standard. And I would like to show you how lending works during the Gold Standard. So here you have a bang. This is a balance sheet of a bank. Here you see the assets that the bank owns, which is in this case, only gold. So this bank was a gold custody only. And for the gold it held in custody, it was giving out warehouse receipts. And it turned out that the people could then also use these warehouse receipts as a medium of exchange because it was not dependent on the owner or on the name on it. But you can just take this receipt and go to the gold custody and get your gold out. So what happens when a loan is given out? So first, I would like to stress that the bank is then not only operating as a gold custody anymore, but also as an investment vehicle. So it is giving out gold to the one who was lending some gold. And this influences those who were giving the gold to the bank in the first place. So essentially, those that hold these warehouse receipts that gave the gold to the bank are an investor in an investment fund. So it's both a custody and an investment fund. And if an investment fund does their business honestly, they should check out with the investors and they should explain the risk of this loan. And this is how it would work in an ideal case. And now I would like to show you how it evolved. So on the left side, we have the same as before. And then a new loan was given out. And then the balance sheet was simply extended on both sides. So it was not that this gold was given out, but just a new loan was placed under the asset as an asset, essentially. And new warehouse receipts were created that were not backed with gold. And this is essentially fraudulent behavior because imagine everyone goes back to the bank and wants to get back their gold, then the last ones will not get the gold because there are unbacked receipts in the system. And you see that the balance sheet was just extending. And this is how it worked with fraud, essentially. And now we have a look how the current system works. And you see it is basically the same makeup. And you see we also have here an extension of the balance sheet on both sides. But I will guide you through this a little bit more. So this principle applies for both central banks and banks. And I would like to show you how it works for central banks. So here we have the balance sheet of the central bank. And here on the asset side, you have the claims on loans, which is an asset. And then you have the deficits from banks, many commercial banks, and the government. And then when the central bank gives us out a new loan, it is simply added on the asset sheet. I have to change that, right? It's added to the asset sheet. And it's also added to the asset side. And it's also added to the liability side. So the bank has now a new claim on the loan. And the money is simply created out of thin air and placed on the deficit account of the debt term. So nothing is transferred here. No money is transferred. It is simply created out of thin air. And when you see this approach is exactly the same as we had here during the lending of the gold standard where we had unbacked receipts. And what happens when we extend the monetary supply? This leads to a debasement. So every monetary account is less worth. And this is inflation, essentially. And Rothbard was saying something very important on that. So he's a very famous Austrian economist. And he says, it is, in fact, difficult to see the economic or moral difference between the issuance of pseudo receipts and the appropriation of someone else's property or outright embezzlement or more directly counterfeiting. Most present legal systems do not outlaw this practice. In fact, it is considered basic banking procedure. So this means that the issuance of pseudo receipts was essentially a dispossession of someone else's property. And he also says here, as we saw before, that most present legal systems do not outlaw this practice. It's completely legal. It is even much more than that. It's basic banking procedure. And this is not the case only for central banks, but also for banks. And this has great implications. So I go into this in much more depth in my article. But what are the mechanics on credit creation? And especially, when does a bank create credit? And this is very much influenced by the refinancing rates. So at which rate can a bank get money at the central bank? The bank needs central bank money to process transactions, essentially. So when a bank has a reduced refinancing rate, the banks can borrow more at central banks, which they need for transactions. And so they can expand their business by giving out more debt, because they can much more easily refinance themselves. So and since banks are living in a competitive environment, they are reducing the interest on debt to attract new debtors. And then when the interest rate lowers, then there is more demand for debt. More people are willing to take on this debt. And so more debt is created. And this essentially leads to boom and bust cycles. So it is a boom because the interest rate was artificially reduced. And this eventually has to go into a bust because it's unsustainable. I can very much recommend the article by Ben Kaufmann, Bitcoin and the Business Psychic, who explains this mechanism in great depth. But now we continue and explain and I explain a little bit what the depth actually means for a normal person. So let's say I am getting a credit from a bank to buy a house. And then this house is a security for my credit. And when I cannot pay back my debt, then the bank may seize the house. Or they can reduce my risk rating. So essentially they have a lot of power over me when I take on a debt. And they can do so by just creating this money out of nowhere. And this goes even further with the money creation through asset purchase. So I will go back to the schema that I used before. But now I explain how money is created with asset purchase. So again, banks and central banks can create money by buying assets. Here we again have the balance sheet of the central bank. We have the asset side, which are claims on bonds, like the government bonds, which are then noted as an asset. And then you have the deposits as before with the commercial banks and the government account. And now let's assume that the central bank buys a government bond. This government bond is simply added to the asset side. And then the money is created out of thin air and placed in the deposit account of the seller of the government bond. So this is always working for commercial banks. Imagine a commercial bank is selling a government bond to the central bank. Then the commercial bank gets simply added a new number, the price for which sold the government bank to its deposit account. And the government bond is added as an asset on the balance sheet. So this means the Fed can essentially infinitely buy assets on the market. They can also exercise direct control on the economy through the selective purchase of assets. So they can decide which asset is bought more and which not. So they can decide who gets the funding. And yeah, essentially, ownership is also transferred to the Fed in the end. Relevant assets are primarily government bonds. So the central bank primarily buys government bonds, but also mortgage-backed securities, bonds from companies, and stocks. This happened most recently. They're buying ETFs, which is kind of a bundle stock. And here I would like to show you the standard employee index, what happened in the last month. We see that here was a great crash. It was in March. And you remember, it was during the lockdown. And the price of the stocks was just falling. And at one point, it magically turned upward. And yeah, maybe you can imagine already what happened. The central bank was buying up these stocks. So it was exactly on the 23rd of March, 2020, when the Fed announced that it's buying ETFs to stabilize the market, which actually means pumping up their markets, although we already have a bust. And this is a funny thing. Investors are already selling these stocks, but we're not seeing a crash. We're not seeing a complete bust because it is hidden through the program of the Federal Reserve buying up the standard and poor 500 ETF stocks. And what is happening thereby? The investors who actually did a small investment because they bought overvalued assets are bailed out because they can't just sell it to the Fed for high prices. And here the bank, of course, works as an intermediary. So I would like to rephrase the quote in the beginning or the saying in the beginning, money rules the world to those who create money out of an air rule the world. And now I show you where I actually have this pyramid from. It's on the US $1 note. And this pyramid actually explains quite nicely what we're seeing in the financial system. So I placed it like this. I consider the Fed even superior to the government and, of course, superior to banks. And I want to explain you why. But first, I would like to tell you that the Fed was actually created by many banks coming together and intending to create the Fed to get these bailouts so they can make actually more risky investments or risky procedures. So this is where the Fed is coming from. I can very much recommend the book, The Creature of Czech Island, which explains this very well. I'm just at the beginning, but it's very enlightening. And so this is actually a banking cartel. And as we saw, they are creating money out of thin air. And Rothbard calls this out as dispossession. And this is completely legalized. So it is government backed this banking cartel, essentially. So central banks exercised influence on the economy through dictating monetary policy. And this power is directly related to the ability to create money out of thin air. The banks and the central bank can both create money out of thin air. But it can only do so because it's legalized. So in theory, the government could come and say, OK, we don't want this banking procedure. Now let's go to Bitcoin. But it's not very realistic because the government is very much profiting from the system because they can easily finance themselves by just selling these government forms that are then bought up by the Federal Reserve. And so the government is very much dependent on the Federal Reserve. So I don't see this as coming. And here I have this from the Federal Reserve annual report. It actually says that the funds of the Federal Reserve are going to the Treasury. So they are working very much together. And you can see this in the annual report. Now for giving you a little bit of a context, why I thought that the Federal Reserve is actually superior to the government, I found this here. It's the hearings before the Senate and of the House of Representatives. So there was an investigation on the banking system. And this is what they found out. And I would like to just read out what they found. Quote, let us control the money of a country. And we cannot who makes its laws. This is the maxim of the House of Rochiles and the foundation principle of European banks. If a country and its people are mortgaged for the SS value of their property, and the bankers control the money, the bond holders are not the people on that country. It makes no difference whether you call it a republic or a monarchy. The people can never be free. It's the borough, it's the servant, to the lender. So what can we do with that? We now have an alternative. We have Bitcoin. And it is an alternative to the central banking system with Bitcoin. Money cannot be created out of thin air, but only through a process called mining. And Europe was calling Bitcoin a supermassive monetary gravitation object, which actually pulls in value. But I would like to think this a little bit further, because actually people are more and more coming into Bitcoin thinking about the whole theater system that we have right now, questioning this whole system, questioning centralized authorities, and more and more realizing the importance of property and freedom and the ability to be safe, which is now possible in a highly inflating currency. So I see we have a confrontation of different value systems, namely the centralized version around the Federal Reserve, which is a lot about dependence, centralization, and essentially serfdom. And then we have Bitcoin, which brings in self-sorrenty, decentralization, and freedom, because we can use these Bitcoins as a property to save for the future, and then even maybe buy a house and be completely self-dependent. Or we can think this even further, that thinking about the monetary system, this just set the stone rolling and going much more further into organizational structures. So we are questioning this whole organizational structure we have right now, and we think of alternatives. And the role of centralized authority is more and more challenged. Do we really need it? Or is a free market maybe much more reasonable? And here, Austrian economists also really much comment a plane. So I truly think that we have parallel societies forming around Bitcoin and central banking. So some people will be rather stuck in this whole system, work in these whole mechanics, bureaucracy, tax, everything. And more and more people want to have a Bitcoin Citadel, which is essentially a free private city, where only the most basic things are provided by the structure, which is defense, inner security, and the provision of, let's say, an organization to settle fights. Kind of a law thing, but competition amongst these is also very much wanted. And there is no healthcare because everyone can do this on their own. But yeah, if you don't have to pay so much to your health insurance, which is not voluntary here, but what you have to do, then you can think of alternative means, which are, for example, not supported here in Germany where I'm living. So I would be definitely better off in such a system. So I hope to see you in the Bitcoin Citadel. And I would like to end this talk with don't trust, verify, and I hope I could give you some inspirations. And I would like to invite you to really go into the depth to understand why the structure is the way I showed you and challenge everything, challenge everything that I say. And you can follow me on Twitter with at Stephanie B. Jane. Thank you.