← Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Coin Stories with Natalie Brunell
Simon Dixon: The American Empire Is Being Dismantled on Purpose...Here's Who Benefits
01:22:21
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- [00:00]
A
I believe right now we are in a shift to multipolarity, and we have created an environment where our governments are fully captured. And once you understand the rules and who's in charge, it's easier to understand where we go next. And our media is just propaganda 100%, and algorithms are utilized in order to weaponize us as almost like products. But you vote with your money is how you win. If you think that you vote and your politicians need your vote, you're going to lose this game. Because the politicians and the president and the prime minister, investors, they all work for lobbies. Hey, everyone.
- [00:40]
B
Welcome back. I have Simon Dixon on the show. He's a bitcoin og. A lot of you may be familiar with him. He's been going viral on several other shows, so I thought it was time for him to join me on COIN Stories. A lot of my audience wanted to hear from you. So, Simon, thanks for joining me.
- [00:56]
A
Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to this one.
- [00:59]
B
Okay, so I went on a binge spree watching a bunch of your interviews, like, back to back to back, and I have to say, I walked away feeling really depressed about the state of the world. I don't know if you intended that, but I would just kind of love to zoom out and get sort of your views on the state of where we are, because I know that half of my audience is sort of feeling like there's no hope anymore and you just have to fend for yourself, protect your family. And then the other half is very much like, no, we can really fix the core issues. Bitcoin might be a part of that. We can heal, we can come together, we can reunite. And I just some. And I feel like I oscillate between the two camps. So can you tell me a little bit about just where you see things and why maybe you are more in sort of the. Hey, let's focus on. Focus locally, really about the local community and what you can do for each other. Because a lot of the bigger things seem like they're so structural that they can't be fixed.
- [02:05]
A
Yeah. So I guess, like, to summarize, where I'm at is depending on where you live. People either are very inspired by me or very depressed by me because I feel the world is. Is changing. And I've studied, you know, change of empires, and it's great for some and awful for others. And so I always want to give people an accurate representation. I've always said people get very tribal when you're on social media, and they think that I'm like shilling for a country or shilling for China, or you've got Trump derangement syndrome or something like that. I've come to realize in geopolitics you kind of have a human hat and an analytical hat. And the analytical hat is very different. It's against our nature, it's against everything that makes us human. And our human hat is the natural state of being. And so I've learned to separate the two because I used to work in investment banking and we would construct deals that I consider to be morally outrageous, but I still had to do my job. And so I've got hands on experience of pretty much 25 years of trying to change the financial system, both politically, both trying to understand it from a monetary perspective, both in entrepreneurship as an investor and, you know, from multiple angles. And, you know, the. It kind of helped me understand that the world is not often as we ideologically would like it to be. And so I believe right now we are in a shift to multipolarity. That means that the American Empire continued the work of the British Empire, that continued the work of the Dutch Empire. But now there is no handover aligned empire. And we have created an environment where our governments are fully captured. And once you understand the rules and who's in charge, it's easier to understand where we go next. From my model. And so I don't see our governments as people that represent the people. I see them as subordinate to real power, whether that be what I call a financial industrial complex or a military industrial complex or a technical industrial complex. And our media is just propaganda 100%. There is nothing truthful in the media. And algorithms are utilized in order to weaponize us as almost like products. And so once you understand those rules, you recognize that there are some governments that are more sovereign than others. And so they're able to work for their people. But it comes with a lot of authority. So when you look around the world, you have different models that are revealing themselves. And the ones that we came to believe in the west was the best way is inevitably predictably and guaranteed coming to an end. And so if you live in the west and you live in America and you live in Europe or you live in the uk, then you have to understand how our governments actually work. And once you know the rules, I think it's easier to win. But at the same time, we have been incredibly oppressive over the global South. So our iPhone required crimes against humanity on six different continents in order to arrive in our hand where we were obfuscated away from the reality of how all the components got there and what had to happen to get it there. And now we're discovering it and we're seeing it in real time with energy, commodities and everything. And so the fall of the west is the rise of the global south, collapsing birth rates in China and the west is meaning that things need to change from the countries that are still have a young population that are still having children, whether that be Southeast Asia or Africa. And so what I want to leave with people is that doomerism in one region is the opportunity of a lifetime in another region. And we have the opportunity to be sovereign individuals, free from our country, free from corporate capture, free from the financial systems and individual sovereignty. So put that all together and there is a lot of hope and a lot of pessimism. But I don't care about popularity. I only care about accuracy. So I can help people make better decisions based upon the reality. As I see it. And I won't sugarcoat it.
- [06:59]
B
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- [09:51]
A
Yeah. So the first thing I have to do is cause people always want to put me in a box. They want to say you're a communist, you're a capitalist, you're a socialist, you're a democrat, you're a Republican, you're a lefty, you're a far right. I reject all of those labels. I think those labels were psyops in themselves because our education system is funded by a corporate agenda. And when I talk about corporations people think I'm anti capitalist or something like that. And when I talk about things that work in a banking system, they think I just reject. I look at what works and I look at sovereignty and I look at a bunch of psyops that we got to forget pretty much everything we were taught. So I went through the human indoctrination campaign of doing economics degrees and masters in economics and still was not taught how money actually works in reality. And the implication that has so often we call something capitalism and realize it is based upon a foundation of a communistic monetary system, or we're looking at communism and realize that actually state banking actually directs money in the right flow that actually supports enterprise. And so just try and forget everything you know and have been taught. And when I look at the west, it's a recognition of that really who's in charge right now is what I call a financial industrial complex. It consists of several players. It consists of those that create fiat currency, which is the private retail, commercial banks. They create fiat currency every time they issue a loan. And they have a mechanism for socializing losses and privatizing gains, which is called central banking. And the central banks are all connected via the bank for International Settlements. Now, once you create money, you effectively. These Western systems are fundamentally built upon a Ponzi scheme. And that Ponzi scheme is designed whereby the only way to continue the economy is to roll over the debt. And in a game where there's not enough money to pay off the debt. And so you create this perpetual growth and perpetual Ponzi scheme that always leads to individuals being what I call collateralized debt obligations. You are a product of the financial industrial complex. I'll call it a fic. Right now, for now, companies need to play the game, the debt game better. The closer they are to the central bank and the bond markets, the more likely they are to be able to leverage up their net worth. But it means with leverage comes subordination, because you work for the bank, you work for the investment bank, you work for whoever provides your capital and they have terms and conditions, which means that you become subordinate to the financial industrial complex that's done through investment banking. The other side of that is we hand over all of our money to the fic, whether it be through insurance contracts, whether it be through our pension, whether it be through trying to simplify investing through ETFs and exchange traded funds. Effectively, we hand over to asset managers all of the control over the largest pools of capital in the world come together. They control the ability to create money. They turn individuals into debt products. They control corporate corporations, they get board seats on every single public company. They control access to the bond market, the stock market, the equity market. They control access to capital. They can privatize the losses and socialize the losses and privatize the gains. And they can use our money in order to control us. And so to me, this financial industrial complex, it is the largest lobby. So basically all politicians are subordinate to this financial structure. And this lobby Structure. All companies need access to capital and they are subordinate to this structure and all individuals in order to survive to be in the inflation ache rate, you end up either a collateralized debt obligation in debt dependency or you become one of the few that essentially gets co opted into the system because you know how to play the assets and they tend to have public companies and you work for Wall street effectively to get access to your capital or you exit the system and that's the hope. That's kind of what Bitcoin gave us. They gave us a way to boycott it. But you vote with your money is how you win. If you think that you vote and your politicians need your vote, you're going to lose this game. Because they, the politicians and the presidents and the prime ministers, they all work for lobbies.
- [15:11]
B
Well, you bring up kind of a sad reality which is that do our votes actually matter? Because it seems like no matter who is elected, regardless of the party, you know, we ping pong back and forth, right? It's something I've said constantly on the show. We go red to blue, blue to red, back and forth. And yet the standard of living seems to deteriorate for the average person because it's just getting so much more expensive to afford the same quality of life. And we have this rise in populism and even the populist candidates seem captured. Is that what you're saying?
- [15:44]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And you know finance is the number one mechanism for leveraging somebody. So debt dependency, they do it for countries, corporations and individuals. You know that that takes away your sovereignty. And most people in order to beat the system, they have to collateralize their assets and then they become dependent upon the lender. And so that that is like, you know, financial control is weaponized. I call it based upon Bitcoin's proof of work. I call it a proof of weapons network. You know, we. It weaponizes media, it weaponizes technology, it weaponizes finance, it weaponizes military as well. But yes, the politicians are effectively auctioning their services off to the highest bidder. And it's a pay to play service. And so the whole left, right psyop is a mechanism for making you still believe that you can change by simply changing the politician or voting for another side. But what you get is the same power structure has captured both the left and the right of the ideology. This has always been throughout history. It's called strategic tension. You create a tension between the left and the right, the Republican, the Democrat, the labor and the conservative. And that distracts people into always believing that Their system can be changed through a political means, when in reality, they are subordinate to financial capture. And so you are much better off analyzing what BlackRock is doing with their money than you are determining what Trump is going to be doing as his next policy. It will reveal significantly more to you just by following the money and realizing that most politicians are investing in the opposite of what they're telling you to do. And they make significant money through corruption. And just by following those monetary flows, you can tune out of the media and you can tune out of politics. And to me, it's allowed me to predict things that most people can't really see in the moment. Amongst all the noise, I think that
- [18:10]
B
there was this really powerful coalition that came together to elect Trump in the last election that actually brought together some folks that were former Democrat. Again, kind of a populist uprising. Right. We want to hold the government accountable. They wanted to do Doge. They wanted the Epstein files out. They didn't want wars. I mean, he campaigned on all of those things. Right. And I think now so, so much of his base is saying, wait a second, what just happened here? We're not getting the accountability, you know, we're not taking the money out of government through Doge. There are so many people who are in these Epstein files that were like, why are they not arrested? Right. And why are we now in this Iran war? So what happened there? Because it seemed like he had this great opportunity. At least 50% of the country was like, this is what we want. And now people are like, what the heck? I can't trust anyone that goes into the White House.
- [19:10]
A
Yeah. So if you. I've been documenting my predictions by following the money for about 15 years. And so I publish everything on YouTube. And if you look back when the Russia, Ukraine war started, I said, this is going to lead to a set of circumstances that will probably lead to the reelection of Trump, who will be installed in order to go to war with Iran. And you can go back at all these things. I've got them all documented because I just follow his backers in the previous administration, this administration and the World Economic Forum agendas of what business people want. When you follow all of those together, you then look at who funded the Trump administration. Well, in the second Trump administration, the biggest funder was Elon Musk. Elon Musk is part of the PayPal mafia. The PayPal mafia is all over the Trump administration, whether it be from David Sachs on the crypto and AI policy to Peter Thiel and David Karp. Sorry, Alex. Karp, sorry, from Palantir. And also X, which I consider to be a movement towards a social credit score and programmable money. If you look across all those funders, you know that Elon Works is a node in the technical industrial complex. Then you look at his second largest backer, it was the Mellon banking dynasty. And so big node in the financial industrial complex, mainly more aligned with the asset managers like BlackRock, State street and Vanguard, less aligned with the investment banks, JP Morgan and those types. Then you look at his third largest funder, which was Mariam Adelston, who's connected to Israel. Israel is a node in the military industrial complex. And so you know there's going to be those top three will tell you there's going to be a push to the surveillance state, there's going to be a massive wealth transfer vehicle. And the third one will be there'll be war, because those are the three backers. And you can look back through their history and then you can start to look at where money was allocated through the big beautiful bill. So the first thing he did is he did Doge. Doge was a data collection exercise to steal data and integrate it with both XXAI and Palantir. But you know that it was a farce because what did it do? Well, it ended up saying that it was going to pay down the debt, the deficit. That means the end of the US world reserve currency. America can't pay down its debt. America's largest export is debt, it's US Treasuries. If you pay down your debt, America will weaken the dollar and it no longer is the world reserve currency. So you can't have a reduction in your deficit. And world reserve currency, it's a choice. It's called Triffin's Dilemma. And so that was a lie. You couldn't pay down the debt. So what was it really? Well, I think it was a data collection exercise. Immediately he announced the Stargate, which was a big investment in AI robotics, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, which is mainly connected to the military industrial complex. A lot of technology was beta tested in all the war zones. So immediately you can see that side of the agenda. What was the next thing he did? He did tariffs, if you understood. So I was covering what tariffs would do on Liberation Day, April 2. I said this does three things. It pushes everyone towards China and BRICS is the first thing. The second thing it does is it makes American small business bankrupt because the tariff is paid by the importer and America is an importer by definition because it has Got the world reserve currency. So it would be a tax on American small business. Once you have a tax on American small business, you have bankruptcies of small business. The banks and financial institutions do mergers and acquisitions. You also have the export dependent countries. Their businesses will go bankrupt as well because it will reset the order and they won't be able to afford those higher prices. So you get massive merger and acquisition activity for the financial industrial complex. BlackRock's assets under administration went up from 12 trillion to 14 trillion. And then they went up from their technology, Aladdin being used by $25 trillion of sovereign wealth fund asset managers, central banks and various other things. So what was the end result? It was the World Economic Forum's goal of transitioning to a multipolar world. That's what tariffs did. It took us to a multipolar world, it accelerated it. The next thing he did is he released the Epstein files. What was in the Epstein files. So the people that control the Epstein files, the financial industrial complex, the Deep State, they'd already settled. JP Morgan had settled $285 million with the some victims. Deutsche bank had already settled. The banks and financial institutions had already settled with the victims. But by releasing the Epstein files, you reveal much of the constructs of the Deep State that propped up the dollar. So it took down usaid, which was a mechanism for funding covert wars that prop up the dollar and get everyone on IMF debt. It took down the national endowment of democracy, which is how America does color revolutions, to install dictators around the world and replace democracies like they did in Iran. You also the you, you effectively revealed and removed complete trust in every establishment within America. But no one gets arrested. So this is a strategic weakening of the dollar and a strategic deconstruction of the Fed. Now he gets to use a narrative which is very convenient, which is why he was installed. His narrative is we're doing it for maga. We're taking on the Deep State, we're taking down the British bankers and all that type of stuff. And then you have another operation like Q which makes all the people comply, thinking as they're deconstructing the US empire. He's doing it to make America great again. And so you have that and then finally you get the war, which was Mariam Adelston connected to Israel. He was also funded by. He installed his son, Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner was part of the Charles Kushner family, which was Epstein. Before Epstein, he blackmailed his family. Trump was mentored by Roy Combs. He made money laundering money through Trump Towers for the Russian mafia. When you understand and follow all the money, you know that Trump was perfect for this role. And he is an actor and he is acting. And so that was the war. And the war led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is effectively the end of the post World War II Bretton woods order. There were two things. You created the currency backed by dollars that ended in 71 with the Vietnamese, the Vietnamese War. But it was also protecting all the ports, the international waters so that trade could flow. This is now going to set up a toll booth model in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, everywhere. That effectively ends U.S. commitment to the rest of the world to protect international waters. It shrinks it into a regional power and allows for China to rise as effectively the infrastructure base of the world. And energy was the mechanism for sitting down with all the world powers and effectively saying, where is all the energy going to flow which moves the world into multipolarity.
- [27:35]
B
So it sounds like this is a coordinated plan to destroy the dollar's role as global reserve currency. I would love for you to talk about how and why, but also there's an interesting piece to this which is what replaces the dollar. And we've already seen it was the Financial Times that reported that Iran is accepting Bitcoin for those tolls that they've set up in the Strait of Hormuz. But now the United States is coming in and blockading it. I mean, there's a lot of chaos there. But I've heard you say in other shows, you don't think this is going to erupt into like a nuclear World War three situation. It will ultimately resolve soon. It has to resolve soon because of the energy issues. So, like, again, why. Why are we dismantling the dollar system especially because, like, we benefited so much from it.
- [28:22]
A
Well, elites benefited from it, but Americans didn't. So America benefited from in post World War II that it effectively, you know, built the military industrial complex. It was a recipient of all the gold from the wars, from the British Empire and the Dutch Empire. Wall street funded all three factions of the post World War II world. Wall street funded. You know, there was a Bolshevik revolution that led to the overthrow of the Russian Tsar and replacement with the Soviet Union. Communism was funded by Wall Street. The fascist Hitler uprising as a result of the Valmont Republic, that was funded by Wall street as well. The creation of the Federal Reserve. The brother, the Warburg families was the governor of the Federal Reserve. And Also on the Rice bank board, which is the German central bank. They then created the bank for International Settlements and they installed the Federal reserve in the UK. That then led to World War I, World War II, the Bretton woods system, IMF, World bank, all that order. It was an extraction vehicle to create a K shaped economy where effectively you rent out the US military to try and get all the resources in the world, get everyone addicted to dollars. But it's a Ponzi scheme. So you always have to roll over, roll over, roll over, roll over forever. Which means new war, new war, new war, new war, new war, new war. That's what you have to do. And so America was built upon war externally, while internally it created a debt based consumption economy. And so what that means is it turned all the Americans into debt based consumers. It turned the corporations through Wall street into securitized, financialized and now tokenized products. And it bankrupted governments all around the world through currency wars. But the condition was that you must purchase and lend those dollars back to the U.S. government. And what that did, the consequence of that is that everybody, the, the wealth just keeps getting more and more divided into the hands of the financial industrial complex. Now we're at the end of that debt cycle. When you have rampant inflation, it has side effects on people because people can't look after their families. Men feel demasculated, they have to get their whole family to work with them. They can't keep up with the Joneses, their wages are not increasing at the same rate of inflation. You also have technical psyops to get people addicted to pornography. Women choose onlyfans as a mechanism for surviving. This leads to suicide, increase in suicide rate, drug addiction, all those things. Sadly those are all business models by financial industrial complex portfolio companies. They turned doctors into drug dealers, they turned economists into debt dealers, they poisoned food, they wanted people addicted to drugs. The CIA is responsible for all drug trafficking. All of these constructs were mechanisms and everything was a lie, sadly. So once you understand that, you kind of understand. So now we end up in a situation where 10% of institutions and billionaires control 92% of the stock market. And those institutions are global. So the financial industrial complex is not just UK. $65 trillion of assets were sold to foreign investors. China, the Gulf countries, all around the world. So therefore if the financial industrial complex controls, has most of a massive chunk of the assets and the government is subordinate to the financial industrial complex, you now have global governance and they just use countries to extract resources, manufacture wars and eventually that has a Massive impact on birth rates. You get an aging population and people that can't have children and don't have children. That's the demographic reality today. So they look at that and say, well, if I'm looking at a spreadsheet of the world, we need to basically build a manufacturing base in Africa, Southeast Asia. We need to partner with China. We need to take the financial systems and dominate systems that we built here and we need to use war in order to build them out in other countries and get a. And move to multipolarity because otherwise China's going to end up as the dominant empire. And we don't control China because China, the government is no one's subordinate to the government in China. And so this was just a reality. So you asset strip as much as you can before you change the empire. It happened to Britain, it happened to the Dutch, and now it's happening to the Americans.
- [33:39]
B
But again, if the plan is to essentially de dollarize and remove American hegemony, what replaces it? Because no one trusts anyone, right? And we're not going to move to the Chinese yuan. If anything, I feel like we're taking a step back with everyone buying gold, central banks accumulating gold. But that's. It brings us back to the same thing that led us to the fiat system, right? It's an opaque system. It doesn't settle quickly. You have to trust each other and what's, what's in Fort Knox and what's in China's central bank. So like I just don't understand what, how could that be the plan when it seems like that plan just puts us right back to where we were, which the dollar was the most trusted. It was the cleanest of all the dirty socks.
- [34:26]
A
What replaces it is multipolar central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and neutral reserve assets. Right now gold has become the world reserve asset. It's taken over U.S. treasuries. There is foreign central banks have been selling down their Treasuries which gives them dollars, which they then use to buy gold. So gold obliterated the dollar. When this transition accelerated, we then have many of the pilot projects. So Enbridge was a project that was a network of central bank digital currencies that was created by the bank for International Settlements. The bank for International Settlements handed that project over and it was launched out of Hong Kong and uae. And so the Gulf countries started building their alternative payment rails. India started building their alternative payment rails. China built a system called SIPs, which is a barter system where 110 countries connected to it. But you can't control China's currency. They got capital control. So you're not going to store your reserves in the Chinese yuan. And they don't really want you to because they want to control that part of the layer. And so effectively we just had regime change today in Hungary, which was the holdout vote of the European Union. The European Union was a Bank for International Settlements project. They created the European Central Bank. They were the ones behind the Hitler regime and that side of the fascism ideology. They have now got full autonomy on the European digital currency. In America they did Genius act and Clarity Act. So Genius act was a mechanism for building out effectively the surveillance state with stablecoins. It put all the stablecoins in the jurisdiction of the Bank Secrecy act, which is effectively programmable surveillance dollar. But it's privatized. Remember how America works? America is for extracting private value. Europe is for concentrating power. But they're controlled by the same financial industrial complex. And so then you plug in through Enbridge, a network of central bank digital currencies. And then you as an individual, you have to work on your sovereign. And so we started to notice that they tried to centralize Bitcoin as much as possible within America. So they launched Bitcoin treasury companies, they launched ETFs, they tried to co opt many of the bitcoiners into launching borrow against your Bitcoin. You had Jeffrey Epstein connected, Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald, that started trying to securitize all the Bitcoin companies. You had concentration in the public market of Bitcoin miners. And so they tried to get as much Bitcoin into Wall street wrappers and vehicles as possible. They put us through a price correction through Jane street, you know, through the ETFs and all those mechanisms. But they tried to flush out as many of the weak hands, they use leverage. They tried to get everyone levered up on their Bitcoin and they're trying to centralize as much of it as they can. And so they're holding Bitcoin, the central banks are holding gold. They built the central bank digital currency Network. China built SIPs. And America's transitioning to stablecoins, but the banks want to control it. So for Clarity act, they made it that the yield can only go to those that have a banking license. So you have to plug into the Federal Reserve System, which is plugged together by FedNow, a central bank digital currency. So they built this global. And Trump effectively put David Sachs in to achieve that with other paypal mafia members like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
- [38:52]
B
So what role will Bitcoin play? Because I feel like if it was going to be a threat to the government, they could have squashed it a long time ago. And you or I, anyone right now can purchase Bitcoin and take it into self custody and it can be used as a sovereign tool to escape this current system. So I mean, how will it be assimilated into I guess, the greater financial system? And do you think that we will be able to protect ourselves with Bitcoin or are they going to try to usher us into, I guess, all of these sort of more traditional vehicles of ways of investing in Bitcoin?
- [39:34]
A
The answer is yes, they're going to make it tax incentive for you to hold your Bitcoin in a Wall street wrapper. They're going to use the tax system to try and make you leverage up your Bitcoin and borrow against it. They're going to make it where in order to beat inflation, you want to leverage up further. And so you short the fiat currency, borrow against your bitcoin, hold it in custody and then hold it with a bank. They're going to do all of that. They want you to hold your Bitcoin in custody, but they don't want to remove self custody. The reason is, is because they want it. And so if you look at the British Empire, while they were building out the whole control grid, the British East India Company, the Bank of England, bankrupting the UK government through the bond market, what they did is they created a series of islands where essentially elites could escape. I live on one of those islands. And the reason that they have that is because they want to use it. They want to use the tax code, they want to use the safety of those islands and they want an escape valve while they try and control everybody else and centralize everybody else. And so they similarly want to use bitcoin in self custody just like Iran did. Iran said, okay, you can pay for our shipments in Bitcoin. They're the largest sovereign miner in the world. They've been mining bitcoin, I believe with nuclear energy. You know, that's one of the geopolitical plays that's going on here. It's not nuclear weapons, it's nuclear energy that they're scared about. You know, Iran would become one of the most powerful countries in the world, which is why the British Empire and CIA and MI6 have been targeting it for all these decades. Because they don't want it to have its oil, they don't want it to have its ports and they don't want any competition to the dollar or they didn't. Now they do, now they're okay with it. So bitcoin is. You have to rethink about it. I had a debate. I know one of your favorite guests is Jeff Booth. I did a debate with Jeff Booth and look, I'd prefer the world to be what he thinks it's going to be, but I don't think it will be. So he thinks bitcoin fixes everything. I think the financial industrial complex is consolidating power and it's accelerating and they'll centralize as much bitcoin as possible to help them. But you can resist it, you can boycott it. And so self custody is how you boycott it. Running your own node, holding it in self custody and using jurisdictional arbitrage to own it in a structure where they can't seize it from you. And that's your job. I believe that if enough people boycott it, then we can take down the system. But I don't think people will. The vast majority will borrow against it, leverage it, hold it in custody, buy it through a bank and they'll look for that convenience and won't run a node. So if that changes for any reason, then maybe bitcoin could fix it, but instead it will concentrate power more in the financial industrial complex and it will allow you to exit and genuinely exit. So this drives people to sovereign power. You need to think about you, your family, your community, and you need to boycott the system. And that's what bitcoin does. If you want to boycott the Federal Reserve and the bank for international system, then you own bitcoin. If you want to boycott BlackRock and the money managers, you don't own it through an etf, you own it in self custody. If you want to boycott the banks, you don't mind fiat currency and give it to them, to the custodians. You keep it without leveraging it and borrowing against it. If you want to boycott the transnational global system that is managing these operations of suppression like the one we're going through right now, then you use your bitcoin to build parallel economies, local economies, just like they did in Bitcoin beach in El Salvador, just like they did in other places. You spend local, you create lightning network channels, you allow people to create parallel opt out systems, you build constructs where effectively a group of you get together, you purchase assets together, you build a foundation, you work on your local supply chains within your community, you pull together your investment and use Bitcoin lightning nodes, various other things into to build sovereign power. Everybody needs to build sovereign power because what I think we're witnessing is all governments are going into 1984 Orwellian police and surveillance state nightmares and many of them are being deconstructed. The federal government is being deconstructed in America. Everything goes more local, everything goes more community based and Bitcoin allows you to do that. So save yourself, save your family, save your community and then maybe you can fix the system.
- [44:42]
B
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- [47:55]
A
You're completely right. And the saddest thing is the best time to accumulate is when no one cares. And the worst time to accumulate is when everyone cares. And that's been the entire history of bitcoin. But I've been here since when it was $3 in 2011. And the very first time it got traction was when we had the Cypriot bailouts. Bail ins, rather not bailouts. When people realize. Russian oligarchs realized that they lost all their wealth in the Cypriot banking system. And that really created like the first narrative and wave of adoption. Then we had all sorts of different events. Obviously we had the global financial crisis prior to that. That's what led to the creation of bitcoin. Once Lehman Brothers went bustling. But that was just a bit earlier, the foundation story. But it wasn't until the European debt crisis that we started to see a lot of adoption. Now people get bitcoin when they have to. And the story of bitcoin, the story that makes bitcoin different from Gold is self custody. And so every time people realize you need to self custody, that's when you realize what bitcoin does for you. When you need to flee a country, when you need sovereign independence, when you need wealth that is not inside the banking system. And all of that is going to happen and everyone's going to discover why they, why they need bitcoin because that's where our world is going, there's no doubt about it. And so every time people realize they need self custody, whether it be Mount Gox blowing up, whether it be Operation Choke Point 2.0, when you know the financial system kind of blew up, all of the scams that were happening and people were borrowing against their bitcoin and trying to receive yield and all that stuff. Bitcoin gets adoption through disaster. It's always been that way, that corrects the price. And then people run away and they start selling their bitcoin at the bottom. And then they wait until we knit ne meet new all time highs, until they start, you know, coming back in again. The the story of bitcoin. And I'm blessed to have made because I've been saying the same thing for where are we now? 15 years now. When I first discovered bitcoin, I said that I will own a bit more bitcoin every single month and I don't care how much. And at certain points, once my, once my debt is worth like only 10% of my net worth in bitcoin, then I'll sell some bitcoin and pay down the debt. I did that very early. I went from deep in debt to effectively owning more bitcoin every single month since $3. And I've been telling people to do that the whole way. And I've got a network of people that are completely sovereign, completely free with wealth they never imagined was possible. But here's the consistent thing they did. They didn't get distracted, they didn't use leverage, they didn't trade. And they did the most simple thing, which is own more bitcoin this month than last month. And they kept doing it regardless of price. They ignored the price. And that strategy over the next 10 years is still the strategy that I think I'll be telling people as well. And this is the bit that lives me to the sad reality of the world. Jeff Booth believes that everyone will figure that out. I don't think they will. A tiny minority will figure it out. And I've been shouting as loud as I can and much of what I predicted in terms of the sheer corruption and Ponzi scheme nature of fiat currency turned out to be true and more and more people are involved and we've got a bigger and bigger market cap. The adoption is always, you know, going up, still a minority of people that are going to do this. So sadly, I think it's way more likely that a small minority of people are going to be protected and they're probably the future people that are going to be able to try and figure out how to lobby the financial industrial complex or reform the financial industrial complex interchange. But I don't think everyone will. I think it will still be a minority.
- [52:31]
B
Well, I think what's been tough for a lot of people is that bitcoin hasn't been life changing in the last cycle for most people. Right? I mean if you're a working class person, if you, even if you have a good salary, it's not like accumulating a couple bitcoin now you can retire. And I think they see the early cohort, which you would be in as sort of, I mean, that's over. That time is over. Those types of gains are behind us. Those people were very lucky and smart and all that. But that's never gonna happen for me. And think about the folks that got in at like 2021, because I remember going to that conference and people were buying like crazy at 50k, 60k. They've just done a round trip in five years and I think they're sitting there going, well, think of all the things I could have invested in that wouldn't have had the roller coaster and the volatility and the headache. And they're obviously maybe not as invested in the freedom, technology and all the things that we spend our time talking about if we're really deep in the rabbit hole. But I think for a lot of people it's like, wasn't this supposed to go to 200k? Wasn't this supposed to go to a million? We heard these price predictions and we don't see that happening. So do you think that that's still ahead of us? Like how do you think that bitcoin will take a certain percentage of like that global wealth chart that we see? Or do you think that maybe it will be a slower burn and that the, the early adopters truly like the folks, the cohort you're in, you guys are the ones that were able to have your lives truly changed and you don't have to worry about the financial, you know, stress of today in the same way that people today are like, I don't, I'm not going to get to a point where bitcoin can retire me.
- [54:20]
A
Yeah, I completely understand that and I completely empathize with it because I remember what it was like to feel that way. And yeah, look, there's diminishing returns over time. It would be completely irresponsible of me to say that something like that could ever happen again. It won't. It's done. But you got to look at. So firstly, I own bitcoin that I purchased at $125,000 because I still do the same thing. Now, why do I still do the same thing? Firstly, you have to measure your wealth in bitcoin. So the people that said I did that round trip in five years is true. But how much bitcoin did you end up at the end of it? If you bought it, did a round trip, and you still got the same amount of bitcoin, then you failed. You did it wrong. If you bought it and you kept buying it and you bought it at higher prices, lower prices, higher prices, lower prices, and now you have significantly more bitcoin at the same price, then you just got to wait and continue doing what you did. I can't guarantee that the same thing. Well, it definitely won't be the same thing. I can guarantee that. But will it continue? So I look at the world and I say, right, when I earn my fiat currency, what am I going to save it in? So I've either got to play the currency game. And what's performing right now? Swiss francs, the Brazilian currency, any of the commodity countries, they're all outperforming the dollar in the Chinese yuan. And then you got the dollar and then you got further down. Right. I don't want to own a currency. Why? Because I got to hold it at a bank, and then if I hold it at a bank, I then got to lend it to the government. I don't trust the government. Right. So the bond market's out, the currency market's out. Obviously, I need enough money to have six to 12 months worth of expenses or I need to have a job where I can manage that. The first basis, you have to be spending less than you earn and you have to have money to invest the difference. I had to make a very hard decision because I was deep in debt. I'm not saying that this is a good decision, but I decided to default on my debt and invest it in bitcoin instead. There's consequences to that. I'm not saying that's a good decision, but that's what I had to do to break the cycle back in the day. But what else am I going to put the money in? Okay, well, I could put it in gold. So when you look at gold, and I love gold and I own gold and I still believe that gold is a good hedge against a world where the entire Internet, you know, some dystopian future where all infrastructure, all energy and all Internet goes down. Then you want some gold for that, that scenario, but you want it in self custody. And so I'm like, well, do I have a setup where I can hold gold in self custody? Yeah, mainly for rich people, right? You can have some little coins or something. But what you tend to do is say, no, I'll give it to a custodian. So now you're in the custody game again. So you wanted to do banks, you wanted to do bonds, you wanted to do commodities, and you ended up in the custody game. So now I got a trust, now I got counterparty risk, now I got to diversify my custodians, I got to figure out what I got to do. Is there going to be a great taking? What's going to happen? So then you're like, okay, I got to go stocks. All right, well who owns the stocks? All right, so now I need a BlackRock, Fidelity account, E Trade account, whoever it is, all right, they own the stock and who's underneath them? All right, the clearinghouse owns the stock. Who's the clearinghouse? What are they guaranteed? You end up in the custody game and you're like, okay, look, you can play that game, but you're always going to end up in the custody game. And so if you see bitcoin as a self custody story, in a world where you have to be sovereign, your company has to be sovereign, your country hopefully will be sovereign, but you don't control that. And you want to live in a country where it allows you to be as sovereign as possible. And those don't tend to be the big countries and big empires. Then you know, you're, you realize you're in a self custody story. Okay, right? So now I'm building self custody. I need to value my wealth in bitcoin. And bitcoin only now am I going to keep my fiat currency. Of course I'm not going to keep my fiat currency. And you go through the cycle and you end up back at bitcoin. And so once you end up in a situation when your goal in life is to accumulate as much bitcoin as possible and have a financial plan around how you utilize it, but never end up reducing too much of your bitcoin, then you need a 10 year plan no matter what. And that's. There's no stopping that reality. You have to start today if you haven't started. And you need to have at least a 10 year plan and there's nothing that's going to change that. If you want to go down to a one year plan, what are you going to do? I'm going to buy some shit coin that someone sent me a white paper for and I'm going to gamble and I'm going to try and make 1000x returns. And everybody that I've seen, some people end up, they tend to be the people that create the coins. Everyone else tells you about their 1000x story, but they don't tell you about all the coins where they lost all the money and they're still pretty much in the same position. Or they scam people and they're dealing with all the fallout from scamming people.
- [59:53]
B
Yeah, it's true. Do you think that bitcoin's survival and ultimate success is an inevitability? Like it's 100% certain, or do you have some concerns about Black Swan events or existential threats that could come?
- [60:09]
A
Yeah, we should never think like that. We should always be focusing on the centralization risks. So Bitcoin has pockets of centralization in an ecosystem that is decentralized, whether it be the miners, whether it be the nodes, whether it be those that own it, whether it be the developers, whether it be the ecosystem of companies around it. We have always had attack vectors, including Jeffrey Epstein, where he would, or somebody would try and centralize parts of the ecosystem and they would use these. We've had so many over time and I've always covered them, but right now we are in a questioning nodes and developers, part of the ecosystem. And we are improving because we actually started ignoring what developers were doing and we started focusing on treasury companies and ETFs and Wall street and stablecoins while actually we ended up in a pretty centralized developer ecosystem. And thankfully people were paying attention to that. And so we started creating alternative nodes and we started questioning alternative developers. We started talking about developers and any potential that they may have been compromised. And we started questioning and we have an open source boardroom. This always happens. This happens during the block war debate. This happened when Ghash IO got almost 50% of the hash power through a cloud mining scam. This happened when almost everybody held their Bitcoin in Mount Gox. This happened when China had 60% of the hash power. And now we've moved over to American Wall Street. Public companies having too much of the hash power. We also have the need for energy grids. What do they look like? What's the geographical diversification? Do we have countries that are mining, that hate each other? Do we have too much in the public market or too much in the private market? Is private companies like Tether, have they created too much control over certain parts? It is a constant state. Quantum computing, all stuff like that. That is why until we reach the stage where all of that is known, then you'll be at the stable pricing point. This is the asymmetric opportunity, which is why Bitcoin over the long term is more likely to succeed. Is it inevitability? No. But as long as we always question and stick to the bitcoin ethos, which is why Wall street is attacking us. Wall street is attacking us because they want to have as many parts of the ecosystem in their infrastructure. And we fight back with self custody, we fight back by running nodes, we fight back with alternative implementations, we fight back by keeping as many parts of the ecosystem as decentralized as we possibly can and never going into one jurisdiction, one structure, and always fighting back. And Bitcoin, the reason that it gives me faith is because every time we've gone to that danger territory, the community calls it out, changes, innovates something and we prove that how anti fragile Bitcoin is. Nothing else did that. Every other coin, every other thing, every other psyop, every other infiltration attempt, Bitcoin's the only one that ever really has that open source boardroom and community of people. And I do think we let that slip with the developer community and I think we snap right back and everybody's saying, right, how do we get to work and make sure that Bitcoin's not compromised and remains as decentralized as it can be?
- [64:05]
B
So are you worried about any of the quantum risks that people discuss and whether we're going to be able to reach consensus to move in the right direction with that?
- [64:14]
A
Well, I do worry about it to the point that we need to inspire everybody to think about what we need to do. And I'm not worried because I do think that there is factors of the community that have started working on right. Which addresses are exposed from the early addresses. Right. That's a small number. What do we need to do in order to improve transaction fees on quantum resistant addresses? And then what is it going to look like if we need to hard fork asic Equipment to quantum resistant hardware. Do we need to do that? What's the alternative? So I appreciate the voices that are pushing that. And then there's a psyop. There's always a psyop. So Google comes along and says they can do it. That accelerates what we need to do as a community. And so do I worry about it? Well, I own gold because I don't think that bitcoin is a 100% guarantee. But that's just my hedgehog. That's just sound risk management. Do I think bitcoin is going to figure out how to get over quantum technology? Absolutely.
- [65:22]
B
Well, I think that that leads me to an interesting question because again, you're in different shoes. You were able to retire off bitcoin. You're an angel investor. I feel like if I was in your shoes, I'd be one of those people who, I would still have most of my net worth in bitcoin, but I would have enough in other assets and properties and things like that where if bitcoin somehow failed, I'd still be fine. Right. Like, I would assume that you guys are sort of in that boat. But for the average person today, let's say they have, you know, a job and maybe they have a family, they're earning enough to own a house and. And that's probably actually better than most people today. How much, like, what portion of their net worth do you think should be in bitcoin? Coin versus maybe other assets and hedges?
- [66:10]
A
Yeah, impossible for me to say. The reason I used to be a financial advisor. And when you do financial advising, you sit down with someone, you figure out their debt, their college, their obligations, their age, all of their different circumstances. So I'm very reluctant to give such generic advice and also things to think about. So I've hit a stage in my life where I believe how I allocate my money has a spiritual energy to it. And so I believe when I understand how the banking system, how the stock market, how the bond market works and what it contributes to as I spend my time doing that, if I were to allocate my financial energy to has a spiritual cost. Because my life and my experience has told me that every time I've done that and I ended up like one of the largest creditors in Celsius, and I spent two years working with creditors because 650,000 victims had literally, we lost people, we had suicides, we had people that left their country. We have people that put their entire 401k into Celsius and they were at an age when they couldn't start again and you know, they had to move in with that. Like I saw so many people. And even how I got into bitcoin in the first place. My father lost his entire pension in the stock market 25 years ago in the 2000.com boom and bust. And it was such a traumatic experience for me. He asked me, you know, what happened to my money. And it kind of kicked off my obsession for 25 years and understanding everything about money.
- [68:01]
B
Wow.
- [68:02]
A
Because I wanted to help my father. And there's something very spiritual in this.
- [68:07]
B
Yeah.
- [68:07]
A
The day that when I decided to borrow against my bitcoin, some of my bitcoin, you know, I was, it was just a small amount for me, but I put it in Celsius. And the very day that all of this, they suspended withdrawals and I was one of the seventh largest creditor in the bankruptcy. I knew I shouldn't have been doing this. I knew I shouldn't have been borrowing against my bitcoin. I knew it was against what I personally believe I should be doing. Just for me, I lost it. And the very same day that Celsius shut down, my father passed away the very same day.
- [68:51]
B
Wow.
- [68:53]
A
And I decided my whole journey with my father over those 25 years was around. He asked me the question and I became obsessed with money because he lost all his money. And so there were all these pensioners around me that lost all their money. And I kind of like lost myself for two years in reading every single court document, turning up to every single court appearance, fighting as hard as I could to get people back as much of their bitcoin as I possibly can. It became a borderline obsession for me. I was up day and night like working on that case because it allowed me to kind of forget that I saw in all these pensioners, I saw my father. And to me there is a spiritual energy that comes with wealth accumulation. And I found in my life, every time I do something that I know is morally wrong, I end up losing that money. And it's happened to me time and time again. Every time I've done something that was a hard decision, but the right moral decision, I end up making like the highest investments I've ever made. And so I think that there is a spiritual energy connected with money. And there's something about bitcoin in self custody allowing me to opt out that gives me comfort. And by following a long term investment strategy and knowing that the creation of bitcoin doesn't come with interest and doesn't contribute to the banking system. There's something that gives me a spiritual push in the right direction. And I personally believe people should consider these things. Like, I know it's not perfect, right? I do a lot of boycotting because I think it's important from that lesson, but it's not perfect. I still need an iPhone with a bunch of AI and I know all that stuff. But do you spiritually and energetically move towards better for the world, or are you spiritually and energetically contributing to worse for the world? And in my experience, that's what's really made the difference for me. I never imagined that I could be in the position that I am in today because I just didn't think it was possible. But it's a continuation of that journey. And so to me, how you allocate your money, how you spend your money is actually what determines, I think, your financial outcome. And I think it's a really important factor that most people don't consider.
- [71:34]
B
Wow, that is a really such a powerful, powerful story. And I agree with you, because a lot of people compare themselves today, right? Social media is the perfect vehicle for comparing how you stand with regards to others and how much money they have. And just because someone is successful in a certain moment doesn't mean that they'll keep it. And I agree with you. I think sometimes when people accumulate wealth in an immoral, unethical way, they lose it eventually. They don't hold on to it. And I agree with you. I think that that's something to really think about in our own lives, like the spiritual component of our savings, our wealth, our money. And that's one of my favorite things, truly, about bitcoin. It's why I narrated God Bless Bitcoin. I think that bitcoin is the most moral form of money. And that movie looked at, like, different religions, and it didn't tell you that bitcoin is a specific religion or anything like that. But it's just this idea of morality, that there is no usury, that there. There is. There's nothing that anyone could really, truly corrupt if the network remains decentralized. And I think that that is so powerful, but so many people, it's like staring them in the face and they just ignore it still. So I guess where I want to wrap up is sort of on that message of just sort of hope, I guess, because I think a lot of people do, they. They want to believe that the world will be better, especially if they have children. They want to leave the world a better place for their children. And for their families. You mentioned before, just like, you know, really making sure that your local community is strong, building up sort of what you can. Right. And maybe being of service to those around you. But is there anything else, any other takeaways that we, we should have when the world around us feels like it's just chaotic in every direction and it also sometimes feels like it's just going to inevitably get worse and worse and worse and we're going to have to protect ourselves in any way possible because the powers that be will try to tax and extract and do all the things that they've been doing, but on a greater scale.
- [73:41]
A
Yeah, I really appreciate that message as well, because I'm a Muslim myself. And so we believe that God can take away all my bitcoin and my wealth as much as it can give me wealth, in order to try and make a difference in the world. And so I think what I try and remind myself is that above the financial industrial complex there is a much, much bigger plan, and that is God's plan. Whatever your belief may be, however you connect with God. And so to me, that gives me the comfort of knowing that life is a test and you're going to be thrown good things and bad things and you're going to be given a choice. And your choice is, do I allow that to take me down a worse place or do I allow that to take me to a better place? And so then when you think like that, it doesn't matter what the world throws at you. And I found the more sovereign you can be, the more you're able to tap into that type of content because, you know, these, these debt traps, these financial products, they, they kind of take us to our worst version of ourself. And I believe it's why there was really, you know, divine guidance in Christianity and Islam around usury. And I really looked at the different financial products and bitcoin really is not, you know, it's not created with usury. And so if you think about it, when things get really, really the first thing is what's bad for one country is great for another country. So people should think about where they want to live. And even if you want to stay in your country, I think what's bad for cities isn't going to be bad for rural areas. And so whatever your circumstance is, just try and optimize around, around that and just recognize we, we are on earth. You know, we are but a tiny, tiny contribution to the, you know, the, the, the, the whole civilization of we are just a Speck. And our job is just to fulfill whatever we were brought on this earth to do. And no matter how bad it throws at us, you know, it's about what do we do with that. And so just work on your mental strength all the things they don't want you to do. Just look at the World Economic Forum, right? They want us doom scrolling all day with algorithms that make us hate each other. They want us broke where inflation is growing at a faster than wages. They want women and men to hate each other. They want us to be engaging in all sorts of degeneracy. You know, they want us, everything they want us to do. Just do the opposite of what the World Economic Forum wants you to do and you'll probably be going to be in a good place. And I think you'll tap into that spiritual part. I think it's worth again, I hate overwhelming people with stuff because it almost takes like years to get through this. I think a lot of people, they want to get everything right straight away. And perfection I found to be a real big problem. There is nothing, there's no perfection. There's always going to be. All right, I need to learn self custody. Initially I bought it on the exchange. Now I'm going to get that wallet and finally I'm going to get that wallet out and thinks, oh, I bought the wrong one and I'm going to try the next. You know, you're never going to get it right. You just got to directionally be moving in a direction and you've got to start thinking about multiple jurisdictions, multiple passports. You know, what happens if I need to leave my country? What does it look like? I just think, and even if none of the bad stuff that I think is definitely going to happen, if it doesn't happen, you'll be way more prepared in this beautiful world and this beautiful utopia. So it's about not allowing it to take over your psychology, but actually radical realism and preparing for the worst and reacting in a better way every time bad comes to you. Those are the kind of the things that just keep me going. And I know it's easy for me to say because my finances kind of took me on paper, but I know it can be taken away. I don't take any of it for granted. I'm always working on how do I never be in that position ever again. And part of that is just taking the right action because I do not take it for granted at all.
- [78:21]
B
Yeah, no, it's such good advice. I mean, we're all in the same boat and I think that a lot of us, we're divided by the apparatuses around us, including media and these institutions. But we have so much more in common than we do. That divides us. And I think if we lean into those things that make us spiritually rich and the ways that we can be of service and find what we're good at that we can share with the world, I think that that's where a lot of blessings tend to manifest for sure. And it happened for me with bitcoin. Honestly. It's like when you find like minded people and you take the skill set that you had and you apply it there where you think it could help others, like magic can happen. And so I think that if we don't focus on all the terrible things that are happening around us, but really like what can we do? What can we do to make things better? Um, how can we be the best version of ourselves? I think that that is truly what will bring us more fulfillment and move us in the right direction collectively, especially if a lot of people do it. Um, so Simon, this has been really great to chat with you. I feel like I could, we could go on for, for hours. Um, and the multi jurisdictional thing, it's some something I've actually been thinking about recently because I'm like gosh, if I were to move somewhere, where would I go? Because I can't think of so many places have gone in the wrong direction. It's like where do you go where your rights won't be infringed on and where you'll have that sovereign and you could live that, that lifestyle that bitcoiners imagine in the citadels, right where you grow your own things and you're not overly taxed and there are no capital controls. It's like where does that exist? Because honestly so many places are not like that anymore. But it's food for thought. I hope we can chat a little bit more. Where can people find your work?
- [80:08]
A
So I'm, I give real time updates on X. I do a lot of X spaces where I, I, I, I tend to analyze everything in terms of financial flows which is the opposite of what they're telling you in the media and what the politicians are telling you. So people find me a bit strange because whenever anything happens I, I follow the money and kind of analyze it in real time. So I post all those real time updates on X. I contribute to spaces. I also every single week as a discipline. Again, it's not for everybody but every Friday I go through everything that happened this week in bitcoin tech, this week in macro and this week in geopolitics. And I do like three, four hours where I just follow all the monetary flows and try and make predictions around what happens next week. It's so long. And so what I do is I chuck that into AI and then I ask AI to summarize it in 15 minutes and then I publish those on my blog@simondixon.com and you've been right.
- [81:13]
B
Have your predictions been mostly coming true?
- [81:16]
A
I mean, I get things wrong, but directionally I think I've been able to get people ahead of a lot of stuff. Follow the money. It's the truth. Money moves the world, and when you follow it, you realize that media is taking you in the opposite direction.
- [81:33]
B
Yeah, it's true. It's true. Well, Simon, thank you so much. This has been so valuable to get a chance to talk to you. I know my audience has been waiting for it. So thanks so much and hopefully we'll get a chance to meet in person soon.
- [81:44]
A
Great. Thank you.
- [81:45]
B
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of Coin Stories. Make sure you're subscribed to the show so you don't miss any new episodes. If you can, turn on those notifications and leave us a positive review, they really help the show grow organically with new listeners. We have a free weekly newsletter. You can sign up at the News block substack. Com. This show is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing should constitute as financial investment advice, and you should always do your own research. I'm always open to feedback and guest suggestions, so please feel free to reach my team at info at talkingbitcoin. Com. I'll see you next time.