 Well, this is the last set of news. They got top stores in crypto and break them down into bite size piece. Today instead of talking about the news, what I did was by popular demand. I put together the interview with Simon Dixon. We actually separated into three parts because it was great information. That was just easier to digest. But a lot of people have been asking, can we just put this all together because I was piecemealing it out over three to five days. And we already did those days. You can go back and check it all out. But to make it easy, just to put it in one place, I combined everything together with the Simon Dixon interview. And also, if you're asking yourself, well, who the heck is Simon Dixon? Great question. And Simon Dixon, he is one of those OG Bitcoin investors from 2010. If you can believe that. And he has been everywhere on every different types of show that you can imagine. CMBC Squawk Box. He's been on London Real and all the different news rags and things like that. Also, he's one of those early investors with Max Kaiser there. And they've done things, you know, that invest in a small little companies like like Kraken and Bitfinex and Bitstamp and Ethereum. There's those small little companies and they've done pretty good as far as like actual returns, 20,000 percent, whatever else. So you can check it out at your wish. There's also he's got a Twitter account, which I will link in the description. And also, if you want to find his YouTube channel and access to all the other stuff on every one of my videos from now on, if you go in the description and just scroll down to where it says YouTube channel recommendations, these are the guys and gals and people that I watch at least once a week here and there. Coin Bureau, C.T.R. Larson, best answers in the cryptoverse hash, hashoshi, big E crypto crypto stash and you'll notice this new one, Simon Dixon. So if you click on that, it'll take you to his YouTube channel and you can check him out. But here's what we did. We did the interview and it was three questions. Really it was past, present and future. I asked him, what was it like back then getting into crypto? Because you probably were considered insane to get into something like that. Also in right now in the present day, is it all a Ponzi as far as crypto and digital assets and not just crypto, but also central banks? And then we finished up with the question, which is, what's it going to take for mass adoption? I mean, what does it really take to get into that to push it into the forefront of the public consciousness? And he answered these fantastic. So I'm going to just going to leave it to Simon and let's take a listen to the actual full interview. All right, so everybody, as promised, I brought in somebody who could give us a little levity of the situation, especially what's what is going on in the world. So let me introduce you, if you don't already know, to Simon Dixon. We already did the intro before. So Simon, welcome on to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, man, it is a pleasure. So I've been watching some of the videos you have been around for like we talked about for quite some time. So you can tell us how it used to be. So I've really got three questions for you. And of course, we can go for a very long time and I will hope to have you back so we can really get dig into it. But the first one is, I just want to talk about a little history of how things used to be. Because before I mean, Bitcoin, I mean, the narrative has changed, but the reality behind Bitcoin really has it. The next I want to talk about is it all a Ponzi and you would this is something that you had said in an interview a bit ago about how central banks fiat, it's really just a big Ponzi scheme, one is just to talk about that, which I think could help people realize where Bitcoin is going. And lastly, what's going to lead to mass adoption? Because since you've been here since the early days, you've heard it all. And me and you've heard the whole thing, which is, guess what, ETFs are coming and the big, the big industries are coming and it's all going to happen pretty much. Where is it really going to go? So let's just start with the very first one. Tell us a little bit about the history. Because in 2000, you correct me, I'm wrong, 2011 or 2010, when you got into crypto Bitcoin? Yes, I was right. I was writing a book, Bank to the Future, Protect your future before governments go bust. And it was the first published book in the world to include Bitcoin, started writing it in 2011. And I launched it at the first Bitcoin conference in the world when we could only really attract a handful of people that was about 50 people in the room in Prague. Crazy. So back then, like, I mean, just to fast forward. So there wasn't really much of an audience because that's just how it was. So the narrative though, I mean, people would probably call you crazy back then. Like how can you get into this digital token that has no value whatsoever and has nothing behind it? Because, you know, this US dollar, this is what counts. Yeah. So for me, I got into Bitcoin out of desperation before I got involved in the Bitcoin community. I was part of a community called the Monetary Reform Community, and that was a bunch of very old people. I was one of the youngest people to be involved in the community and we would meet up and discuss the problems with banking. It was the reason why I wrote the book, Bank to the Future, Protect your future before governments go bust. And I was in frustration out of speaking to so many politicians and trying to get through banking reform and some of the reforms we talked about in the book. Yeah. My wife said to me, one crazy idea, why don't we just create a bank that is actually built upon sustainable principles? And so we set ourself on that adventure in 2009. At the time, we were giving lectures all around the world to anyone that would listen around the coming up financial crisis. I left investment banking in 2006 and no one would listen. Once the financial crisis became a thing, more people were willing to listen and then they solved the problems with the cause of the problems. And so in order to try and demonstrate what a bank should look like, we started finding out what it would take to launch a bank. In the end, I was told that I'd have to retire as the CEO of the bank by the regulators and we'd have to employ an adult that knew what they were doing. I was also told that I'd need to live 60 million in reserves at the Bank of England and I was told that I would have to rehypothecate people's money and it was impossible to not operate a bank off a Ponzi scheme. So it was pretty frustrating for me and out of sheer desperation and frustration, I got a message on Facebook from a person in the monetary reform community called Johnny Bitcoin and he said, I've sold my house, I've sold everything and I've moved into a squat in the old street with a bunch of developers that are working on this thing called Bitcoin. So it intrigued me, researched it a little bit further and we were so in debt trying to create a bank where my wife and myself had left our well-paying jobs at the time. We were about two to three years into trying to make this happen and we just took our last bit of credit card debt and decided to go to Prague and find out what this Bitcoin thing was all about and I was the only finance guy in the room. There were two finance guys actually myself and Max Kaiser and that's where I first met Max. We later went on to invest in many companies that built the industry and really the energy in the room just really got me because I wanted to create a bank where people could own their own money, people could spend their own money and it was based upon sound monetary principles, the money that wasn't created by debt. And when I found Bitcoin, myself and my wife were like holy shit, we don't need to create a bank, we can just build on top of this thing. And it should never have succeeded. It was, you know, we were just pure desperation trying to figure out whether this system could work and we just decided to pivot the company and just support the industry so we started investing in companies like BitPay and then later companies like Coinbase Kraken, BitStamp, Bitfinex and many, many of the early companies that were building the industry. And that was really the foundation of it in terms of what was the mood like at the time. It was, I get a lot of nostalgia about those times because we were really in a shared vision. There was only Bitcoin, there was nothing else. In fact, the week of the conference, the price of Bitcoin crashed from $30 to $3. So there was a 90% correction during that time and no one really cared about price. Everyone was really there for the mission. It was us versus the banks. I was welcomed as a finance guy that could actually give some, you know, finance experience. I was the evil banker in the Bitcoin conference. And we were really just on a mission to provide freedom to transact for as many people as possible in this impossible mission where we were never going to succeed. That is amazing. And I just want to, for everybody listening right now, what Simon just said, it crashed from $30 to $3. And everybody at that conference was like, man, not a big deal. And that's because me and Simon come from different, different pasts. And when we got in, obviously Simon got in the very beginning. I got in 2017 when everything was going up because I'm like, this sounds like a pretty good deal. Then in 2018, it crashed. And it's going to sound funny now, just like it sounds funny when Simon says it, but it crashed from $19,000 down to around $5,000, $6,000. So $30 to $3,000, $20,000 to $5,000. And then of course, when we hit our all time high, we're on $68,000, $69,000. And it dropped all the way down to, I mean, roughly $30,000. And people in four or five more years, when it goes to who knows how I could be, $250,000 and drops down to $100,000, these are the things, I think, just to take a look forward about what it is. So Simon, that's awesome. And I appreciate those stories because you can't know where you're going until you know where you've been, which leads me to the next point. And you talked about it just a little bit. Is it all a ponzi? Because when you, because you've gotten together with a lot of the leaders throughout, as far as like with parliament and different organizations and of course the different people that create the laws, is this all a ponzi scheme as far as the banks, as far as the central banks, as far as the fiat system? And how is it all working right now? Because we're seeing a lot of things going on in the world, as far as sanctions and things like that. So for two decades, I've been obsessing over that question. And people, you go down the rabbit hole. And it wasn't until my second decade that I discovered Bitcoin that gave everyone the example the world needed to understand some of the challenges we were trying to share with people. So since the early days, I've been really for two decades now preaching three things. And that is when you deposit your money at a bank, the bank becomes the legal owner of that money. Once they become the legal owner of that money, they can actually spend it as they choose. And every time they you deposit funds at a bank, you're actually got somebody else's debt. And so we end up in a scenario where governments have actually outsourced the process of creating digital currency. So before Bitcoin, we were talking about digital currency in terms of a digital balance at your bank account, which was compared to cash. And the governments gave banks the ability to create digital currency every time they issue a loan. And this ends up in a scenario where you have more debt than money in the world. And when you have more debt than money, you always have to find a new market for your debt. And so in the book, I was trying to share with people that it looks like it's disasters that cause these increases in government debt, individual debt, corporate debt, central bank debt. But you always have to rehypothecate in order to have an economy because money is debt. And so my my lifetime work has been trying to find and help people give them illustrations about the implications of it. So when the answer, when the question is, is it a Ponzi scheme? The answer is it by definition, it is a Ponzi scheme. There is more debt than money. And in order to find the money to repay the debt, you either have to have the destruction of the economy. And there's all sorts of financial innovation that has happened over the over the decades to rehypothecate debt, take it from the individual to the corporation, from the corporation to the government, from the government to the central bank. So when I look at all these financial events that occur, it really is just passing on the hot potato. So you have in the 20s, you had all the individuals that were over speculating. Regulations came through and then we have reforms where the money is actually moved over to more Keynesian thoughts of economics. Keynesian states that in downward markets, the government has to supplement the economy. What everyone forgets in Keynesian economics is it says in the good times, you need to repay the money. So but they can't repay the money because it ends up in a depressive effect because money is debt. And so every time you repay that debt, money disappears from the economy. And you have a some kind of systemic risk event. And so you have that, you know, the financial crisis was the repackaging of all the banking debt. So essentially it was taking all the individual mortgages, package them up into products that were sold via investment banks to your pension fund. Your pension fund is pulling together all the money that then becomes the package of the debt for all the individuals. And then when the bank takes too much exposure, it's ensured the retail banks are insured by another Ponzi scheme where only 1% of federal insurance exists in order to cover it doesn't factor in a bank a bank failure. It just factors in one bank going down at a time. And therefore you need to rely upon either bailings, which is the Cyprus case, or bailouts, which is where you get taxpayers to pay and the government takes on the debt. When the government can't take on the debt, they need to rehypothecate it through the central bank and you end up exactly where we are today, where you have an economy where there is no return. There is one final outcome and this is why in 2016, I started trying to tell the Bitcoin community the significance of central bank digital currencies. And central bank digital currencies are money that is created not by debt. It is money that is created directly either by the government through some kind of fiscal and monetary union, or the central bank direct, but it's not backed by debt. So what I see a central bank digital currency as is a deleveraging effect in order to unwind the debt based Ponzi scheme. So if you have money at a bank and the bank goes bust, you won't lose your money. It will be replaced by a central bank digital currency. But in the way of opting into that, in order to deleverage the economy, you have a fundamental shift in the way our economies are organised, from a free market economy to a socialist economy to a communist led, you know, fully government controlled fiat monetary system that then needs an honest money and sound money to compete with it. And that brings us to where I see we're going over the next decade. Shoo, that was scary. That was scary, Simon. I got to be honest with you, which I guess will lead me to my next and last question, which is this. We've been around for quite some time. You've been around way longer. But what leads to mass adoption? Since you've been here for so long, you probably heard all the different narratives about what could actually bring this to a head. Do you think times like right now with Ukraine being invaded by Russia and the different sanctions that are going on or the different governments that are trying to shut down centralised exchanges, maybe people can realise that Bitcoin is a good thing. What actually leads to mass adoption? Yeah, so the rhetoric around mass adoption has been a real back and forth rhetoric for a long time is because Bitcoin has different things to different people. So when I wrote the book Bank to the Future, I said banks do three things. When you deposit money at a bank, they own it. When they own it, they can spend it as they choose. And they can redirect it and they create it every time they issue a loan. Well, Bitcoin is the exact opposite. So Bitcoin allows you to own your own money. Bitcoin allows you to spend your own money so that it takes out middle people. And it has a monetary policy that anyone can rely upon because it's embedded in maths and code and never changes. And so when someone asks me what is Bitcoin adoption, the demand for Bitcoin, there is a fixed supply. The supply will never change. Everyone knows what it is into the future. And you can calculate it to the Satoshi at every point in time. But the demand for it always changes. And the demand for it is based upon people discovering that there are reasons to own their own money. So the original use cases were buying drugs online. And then that moved into things like gambling where there was censorship within money. And then that later moved into people discovering that banks own their own money when the bank bells in and they lose their deposits. And then it leads to the second thing, which is people discovering that the user experience suspended money is being ruined by a couple of agendas and a couple of agendas that the government are not going to change. The government wants tax and the government wants to take out the bad people. And so because of those two forces that are going to get more and more aggressive, they use financial institutions in the middle like Bank to the Future, for example, we are a regulated institution. And we have to adhere to all of the rules and regulations. And therefore you end up in the middle. And when they have to do law enforcement, they want to get lower risk. And so in order to have lower risk because they'll get fine shut down or extreme cases put in prison, if someone does money laundering through their financial institution, you end up with many financial exclusion, incredibly cost expensive transactions, incredibly, you know, implements in technology in order to try and do surveillance at a rate in order to adhere to the regulations that the financial system requires you to adhere to. What is game changing is allowing the individual to have their own money, spend it as they choose and then have law enforcement get to decide how they want to get all out the bad actors, because every time you commit crime, you're creating immutable records of your crime. And the third thing is understanding that money supply being fixed is good for your savings and is good for your wealth. So digital hard sound money has created 69 million percent returns over the last 13 years. I don't think you'll get another 69 million percent returns. However, the returns have been every single year, with the exception of a few years, significantly higher than any other any other asset class in history. So you get this wealth effect. No one wants to be Bitcoin pizza guy and Bitcoin pizza guy person that spent 10,000 on two pizzas. For being Bitcoin pizza guy, we've all spent our Bitcoin. I gave away more Bitcoin than I can imagine in your days to anybody that would accept it and receive it. And so the demand for Bitcoin is based upon those three factors. The government's doing a fantastic a fantastic job of letting people know that you're about to be victimized by the financial system due to political leaders that are going to be imposing sanctions on each other for their each other's actions. This is going to hit people at the highest level because their currencies are being destroyed, their savings are being destroyed through no thought of their own other than their leaders deciding for political reasons that financial weapons of mass destruction need to be thrown around at each other. And so if you get caught in the middle of the wrong bank, then you're at the mercy of a bank bailing. If you get caught in the middle of trying to transact with somebody in Canada that want because you want to support, you know, some kind of, you know, protest against being forced to give up your job in order to have an injection in you, then you shouldn't be censored from that transaction in peaceful protest. And if your government decides to hyperinflate away your savings, then you need an exit from that. So the reality is, is this function of those three things and every year we get a new reason for people to learn the lesson that the demand for Bitcoin always increases relative to its supply. Perfect. Perfect response right there. And I can, I can totally see it. Hopefully people will figure it all out as time goes on. But that's why they have people like us to spread the information to get to educated as much as we possibly can. So Simon, you've said it all today. Thank you so much for stopping by. We appreciate it. I'm going to have to get you on the show as things go down the pipe later on because I think somebody with your rationality as far as what you know in the past could help out a lot of people. Awesome. Yeah. You know, I regularly give content on Twitter as well. So I do that and I've got a YouTube channel and I just try and help people. I really appreciate the work that you're doing because I just think that there's so much change in this world today. I always end with you are alive at the most interesting and exciting time in financial history. Some people are going to be on the wrong side of the change. Others are going to be on the right side of that change. And the more education people can get, the more likely they are to be on the right side of just a rapidly changing fast-paced economy. Couldn't have said it better. And that's and that's it. So everybody, if you want to follow Simon over at Twitter, it's at Simon Dixon Twitter and then also for his YouTube channel, I've linked both in the description below so you can check them out. Great advice. Simon, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. All right, so that's it. So I hope you enjoyed that interview. I thought it was great myself and I want to say thanks again for Simon for stopping by. If you like today's video, give it a thumbs up. Also consider subscribing. I think we talk about our time sensitive. But that is it for today. So thanks so much for watching the full interview and I'll see you in the next one.