 What's up, everybody? Lovely to see you. It's so much fun to be in Zurich again. I think the last time I was in Zurich, I had to do a show with the National Association of Bankers. I can tell you there were a lot more suits in that room than this one. When I see too many suits in a room, I get uncomfortable. Are they trying to sell me something? Is this a funeral? What just happened? I'm very happy that today we have a lot of people from the community. It looks like the entire community turned up. Thank you so much for coming tonight. That's pretty amazing. I heard that this is now the largest meet-up event that's happened in Europe on the topic of open blockchains. Thanks so much for giving me trust and coming out for this event. Pamela did a great job. Thank you, Pamela. Wonderful work today. I hope some people actually do the inheritance planning that she talked about. It's so easy to forget. I've done mine. I'll tell you I have. Today's event is also supported by my supporters on Patreon. I want to tell you that this is part of a seven-city tour. The last five cities in this tour are all community events that are free to attend. The only reason I can do that is because my work is funded by the community directly. You can also find my Q&A and videos on Patreon. We will be releasing the video on Patreon as well first. Here are some links. You can find more information. The title of my talk is a complete diversion. I'm not really going to talk about the future of programmable money. If you've been to a few of my presentations, you already know this is a trick. Every time I do a talk, it's improvisation. I talk about a topic that I decide on the same day. The problem is, months before, the organizers can't tell me what I'm going to talk about. But we need a title. I was like, what can I make the most generic title possible that allows me to talk about absolutely anything? Thoughts on the future of programmable money. That's not what I'm going to talk about tonight. I'm also not going to talk about Libra. No, I'm not. Because even with a topic as broad as thoughts on the future of programmable money, Libra doesn't really fit. It's not really money. It's not really programmable. I don't know if it has a future. I have some thoughts. Okay, I do have some thoughts. A bit too cheeky. I did a couple of shows with Let's Talk Bitcoin on this topic. I did a video in Edinburgh, which we're going to release soon. If you want to hear my thoughts on that, it will come up. I'm sure the very first question is going to be about that. That's okay. We'll do it in the Q&A. I don't want to talk about it tonight. I want to talk about something else. So, let's talk about good technology, bad technology. That's the topic I want to talk about tonight. In 2016, President Barack Obama, while discussing cryptocurrencies, said something amazing. He said, it would be as if everybody has a Swiss bank account in their pocket. Little did he know that that is a fantastic advertisement for cryptocurrency. Exactly, it would be as if everybody had a Swiss bank account in their pocket. Of course, he didn't mean it as something positive, as something we should all be excited about. He was fear-mongering. Imagine if everybody could have a Swiss bank account in their pocket. Not just my friends, not just all of the other people in Congress, not just all of our lobbyists, all of the executives who pay for our campaigns, all of our weapons manufacturers, CEOs, all of the people I ever talked to, but everyone. Like those people. Of course, Barack Obama was wrong. Because crypto is not like having a Swiss bank account in your pocket. Crypto is like having a Swiss bank in your pocket, and you are the CEO. Because on your wallet, you can create a million addresses and accounts on your phone. You can institute international wire transfers, and you can KYC yourself. Like, know your customer. Pretty handsome guy. I see him every morning. I know him. Who is he sending to? My best friend. Know him, too. KYC done. You can have a bank account in your pocket, and with it, you can engage in some of the activities that banks do. For example, money laundering, right? So, I successfully managed to do some money laundering. Three years ago, I put a pair of my favorite jeans in the washing machine, and I kid you not, I had my hardware wallet in my front pocket. Now, very well-designed piece of hardware. It went through a whole wash cycle, spin cycle, it even went in the dryer, and then I pulled it out, and I was like, there's no way this still works. It worked. It worked. So, money laundering, done. I've achieved something in my life that most people, in order to achieve money laundering, they either need to be a banker or know a banker, right? Because who does money laundering? Banks do. It's the same as the old saying, when they interviewed a bank robber, and they said, why do you rob banks? It's because that's where their money is, right? So, why did you become a banker? It's because that's how I can do money laundering. If I have a license to bank, then it's not money laundering. Then it's just an unfortunate lapse in our compliance and monitoring program, which was unfortunately extremely profitable, but fortunately, the fine was less than the profits, so we'll just do it again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Crypto, money launders, criminals. What Barack Obama was saying was the politics of fear, and of course, he's not the only one, right? Every single politician is singing the same tune. And this idea is that privacy is something that in the hands of the people is dangerous. Of course, of course, because privacy has become a commodified right, which means that some people can afford it, but for others, the price of privacy has risen outside of their affordability. Everybody that our politicians know has privacy. Look at what happens when someone blows the whistle or tells their secrets and how they react. Look at what's happening to Julian Assange right now. Look at what happened to Chelsea Manning. Look at what happened to Thomas Drake. Look at what happened to John Kiriakou, and if you don't know who those names are, look them up. When our government commits war crimes, the only person that goes to jail is the person who told the journalist that our government commits war crimes. Yours too, right? When there's a scandal in the government, the person most likely to go to jail is the person who publishes it. But they're not a journalist, they say. They're not a journalist. Well, guess what? Journalism isn't something you are licensed for. It's not something you have a permit for. It's not a job description, as the saying goes. Journalism is to commit acts of journalism. That's who a journalist is. Anyone who commits acts of journalism is a journalist. Julian Assange is a journalist who is being persecuted for breaking the privacy of very powerful people. Do you have privacy? Hell no, because you would be criminals. You look like criminals to me, especially that guy right there. We are being constantly pushed by the politics of fear to fear privacy. To fear what happens when we democratize privacy. That's what we're talking about here. The democratization of finance is about the democratization of privacy, financial privacy. Financial privacy underpins all of our other human rights. It underpins our ability to have freedom of expression. It underpins our ability to have freedom of assembly, association, political participation, travel, torture, and due process. It just asks the people in Hong Kong who are buying tickets in the train with cash, because they knew the last time they went to a protest, half of them got rounded up by the government. Because of their little smart cards, not so smart anymore. Give me good old paper and cash. Privacy is a fundamental human right. Financial privacy and power is something that we tonight, through our participation in events like this, are seizing back. That right is not given to us. We always had it. We have the right to exercise our financial privacy. We are simply taking it back. In many cases, it wasn't even taken from us. Our neighbors in fear, and maybe some of our relatives in fear, allowed the government, gave it to the government, conceded this right. The idea is somehow that if people have financial privacy, the world will descend into chaos. For thousands of years, we transacted using peer-to-peer, anonymous, verifiable money called cash, that no one could track, that had no names attached to it, the world did not descend into chaos. In fact, many of the greatest achievements of civilization happened during that era. Yet now we must be fearful. The underlying idea in the politics of fear is not recognizing the fundamental asymmetry of good and evil. The fact is that in human society, the number of people who do evil is tiny. To equal them to the number of people who do good is to ignore human nature and to engage in the politics of fear. When we engage in the politics of fear in order to punish the few people who are doing bad, by punishing everybody, by removing the capability of financial independence and sovereignty from everyone, and worse, giving that capability and the surveillance of that to a government, what does that government attract the very evil people we were talking about? Because if there is a lever of power, the people who are attracted to hold that lever of power are the worst. It is human nature. There are more people trying to do good with their financial independence and empowerment than there are trying to do evil. That asymmetry is at the core of classic liberalism. The idea that the more free people are, the more you have good outcomes in society, and that you should trust people to pursue their own self-interest, the pursuit of happiness, as we used to call it in America. If you allow people to do that, they will get a better life, and they will do better things for themselves, for their children, for their neighbors. That is human nature. We are walking away from that and creating a world in which we are trying to control everyone. In doing so, we are actually damaging our possibility of a better future. Justice Louis Brandes, a Supreme Court justice in 1927, said that the remedy for bad speech is more speech. I am paraphrasing, but that was the essence of what he said. He said that if you have bad speech, what you should do is allow others to correct the misinformation, the fallacies, to allow the truth to come forth, to remedy bad speech with more speech. The remedy for all of the evil things that can be done with technology is not less technology, it is more technology, it is good technology. For every bad thing you can do with these technologies that we are talking about tonight, you can do more things that are good. In fact, you can counteract some of the bad things that these technologies do by more people doing good things with these technologies. When our governments, our regulators, and the institutions that are barely democratic to start with anymore try to control the use of technology, what they are doing is reducing the number of good people who can use the technology in ways to do good, and counteract the evil things that a few are doing. Guess what? The people who are doing bad with this technology are not going to stop because you passed the law. If you make it illegal to trade in cryptocurrencies, only criminals trade in cryptocurrencies. Probably the very same government ministers who signed the law to make it illegal in the first place, they will be the first criminals to trade in cryptocurrency. They will probably get bribed in cryptocurrency, too, because they like the idea of having a Swiss bank account in their pocket. Imagine a world where everyone could have a Swiss bank account in their pocket. Guess what? The bad guys already do. They already have banking privacy. They can afford it. If it is not in Switzerland, it is in Panama, if it is not in Panama, it is in Malta, if it is not in Malta, it is in Hong Kong. It is going to be somewhere else next. The greatest tax haven in the world is the United States. The bad guys already have all of these tools. They can afford to. They are already breaking the law. What is one more law? It is the rest of us that don't have them. Again, we are being prevented from using technology for good in order to punish the few who are doing evil. In the process, we all lose. The answer for dictators evading sanctions with cryptocurrency is citizens evading dictators with cryptocurrency. There is a hell of a lot more citizens evading dictators than dictators evading sanctions. We should be air-dropping the technology for crypto. We should have B-52s with a cargo bay full of hardware wallets, satellite dishes, and raspberry pies, flying over North Korea and Venezuela and dropping hardware wallets on them. Guess what? Kim Young-un already has a bank account down the street. Why don't we give every one of their citizens a Swiss bank in their pocket? If people use crypto to evade taxes, what we do instead is create community fundraising projects where we come together with our neighbors and raise money for the products, the companies, facilities, and services we want. In any case, that is a cynical view. The countries that have the least amount of bureaucracy for paying taxes and where governments deliver services have the highest level of tax collections. It is not because you are afraid to go to jail and pay taxes in Switzerland. It is because you actually get something in return. What do I get in return for my taxes in the United States? Sure as hell isn't healthcare or roads. The classic question, who is going to build the roads if we stop paying taxes? All I have to say is visit Michigan in the winter and tell me about the roads. I don't think the Romans had much trouble building roads when cash was anonymous gold. It was transacted hand-to-hand. They kind of invented the idea. Bad technology is only countered with greater use of good technology. For every problem we have in crypto, you want consumer protection? Along comes a regulator. Let's create a regulatory framework for oversight. Shut up! How about we do smart contracts that do escrow for consumer protection? How about we don't try to solve a problem created by 21st-century technology with an organization from the 18th century that is full of corruption and regulatory capture? You are worried about people stealing crypto? Great. Let's create a system where you can reverse all of the transactions on the blockchain. Shut up! No. Let's use multi-sig, multi-factor multi-sig, time locks, vaulting, covenants, and smart contracts so we can fix the problems created by the introduction of any new technology with new technology. We didn't get to this modern world in which we live by saying, You know what? Cars are great, but they would be even better if we used horses to pull them, so there was less pollution. You think that's funny? It was actually suggested at the time. You can see photos of it. In the end, what this is about, what the politics of fear are about, is about removing power from you and centralizing that power. I can tell you that that encourages evil acts on a scale we can't even imagine. You think someone is buying drugs with Bitcoin? Of course they are buying drugs with Bitcoin. You can't get stabbed over TCPIP. It is a pretty good solution to a fundamental problem of asymmetric violence on the streets. But no one is funding the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen with crypto. No, that's my fucking taxpayer dollars. Nobody is fighting insurgent campaigns sponsored by intelligence agencies that are slaughtering millions with crypto. Nobody is money laundering for the drug cartels. HSBC does that. Nobody does that with crypto. If you give people access to crypto, yes, people will money launder for drug lords. Freakin' legalize it and destroy their profits. Or give people the ability to free themselves from the control of drug lords. If there are drug lords evading with crypto, what about all of the people who could evade the drug lords if they had crypto too? For every problem, we have a solution that requires us to have faith in human nature. Use that technology to do good on an asymmetric scale, because there are more people in the world who want to do good. You might think, I'm in Switzerland. What are you talking about? I don't have a corrupt government that is stealing from me. I have access to banking, pretty nice banking as well. I don't need to hide my money from the government. I'm not ruled by a dictator. We have a great system of democracy, even not just representative, but direct democracy with our propositions and federal election system. Great, fantastic, if only everybody had a system like that. If only everybody had the level of banking that you have in Switzerland. The question is, why do you need crypto? This is a question that comes up a lot. In Venezuela, in Argentina, North Korea, in half of sub-Saharan Africa, all of South America, in most of Southeast Asia, and certainly in China, people need crypto. It is a matter of life and death, freedom of slavery, a future for their children, or nothing. They need crypto. You don't. Why would you use it? Let me tell you why. Every time you use crypto, you are exercising power. You are exercising sovereign power, and that sovereign power is diverting money from a corrupt and broken system of central banks and investment banks and corrupt governments, not yours, all of them, into a system that is giving people hope. Every time you use crypto, you are helping to fund the projects that are making wallets better, decentralized exchanges better, that are funding new innovation research. How many people here are developers who work in Bitcoin or any of the other open cryptos? You are paying these people to do better work every time you use crypto, you are exercising power. The greatest lie that this generation has believed is the idea that we don't have power. That our power is meaningless, that these enormous problems that exist in the world cannot be solved, because we are too small. We have too limited power. The biggest joke is that we have all been persuaded that we can only exercise power once every four years, maybe every two years, if you are in Switzerland. We have to go vote, right? We all do the little dance of citizenry, like go to the polls, which in the US is not on a holiday, because who wants people to vote? This is a democracy, people. We cast our ballots for one of the two possible candidates, you know, blue Goldman Sachs or red Goldman Sachs. Then we get a little sticker that said, I voted, and we go home and we know none of it made any difference. Because on every important issue of the day, all of the political parties have very comfortably made sure that no one is going to challenge the status quo, so none of it matters. So you can sit back and say, I have no power. You can try to exercise power once every two years, once every four years. Or you could realize that we have all of the power. We could exercise it not once every four years, but 1,200 times every four years once a day, by choosing to use open financial products, by financing open financial products, by sharing with the world education about open financial products, by building a new economy and simultaneously withdrawing our labor, our creativity, our passion from the broken, shitty economy they are trying to tell us we are stuck in, and pouring all of that creativity into the open financial future that we are building. Exercise that power once a day. If all of us in this room do it, we change Switzerland. If all of us in the world do it, we change the world. We have enormous power. So you don't need it because you have the immense privilege of already having these financial products that are life and death for everyone else. Take that privilege and use it to exercise enormous power to create an open financial future for the entire world today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much.