POLITICAL EVOLUTION & BITCOIN POLICY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM | Freddie New

Summary

Podcast Summary: POLITICAL EVOLUTION & BITCOIN POLICY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM | Freddie New

Podcast Information:

• Title: THE Bitcoin Podcast
• Host: Walker America
• Episode Title: POLITICAL EVOLUTION & BITCOIN POLICY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM | Freddie New
• Release Date: June 20, 2025

Overview: In this enlightening episode of THE Bitcoin Podcast, host Walker America engages in a deep and multifaceted conversation with Freddie New and Peter (last name not specified), focusing on the intersection of political evolution in the United Kingdom and Bitcoin policy. The discussion traverses from personal anecdotes about Bitcoin adoption to intricate analyses of the UK's political landscape, legislative challenges, and the broader economic implications of Bitcoin in modern society.

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1. Personal Journeys with Bitcoin

Freddie and Peter share their personal experiences with Bitcoin, highlighting their initial skepticism and gradual realization of its significance.

• Freddie’s Optimism:

  • Freddie (00:00): "I'm fundamentally an optimist. I don't think that collapse is inevitable."

• Peter’s Supportive Commentary:

  • Peter (00:07): "We have agency, we can go out."

• Bitcoin as a Dual Movement:

  • Freddie (00:27): "Bitcoin is both a top down movement and a bottom up movement."

Key Insights:

• Bitcoin serves as both an individual financial safeguard and a broader legislative objective.
• Engagement with elected representatives is crucial for Bitcoin advocacy.

2. Bitcoin Adoption Challenges

The conversation delves into the difficulties faced by Bitcoin enthusiasts in promoting its adoption, especially in legislative environments.

• Navigating UK Politics:

  • Freddie (00:56): "Why don't our elected officials see this?"

• Strategic Communication:

  • Peter (01:06): Advocating for Bitcoin without directly naming it to gain initial acceptance.

Key Insights:

• Indirectly presenting Bitcoin's benefits can pave the way for broader acceptance.
• Legislative resistance is a significant barrier to Bitcoin policy implementation.

3. The UK's Political Landscape

Freddie provides a historical and contemporary analysis of the UK's political system, emphasizing its impact on Bitcoin policy.

• Historical Context:

  • Freddie (19:57): Discusses the Norman Conquest and its lasting influence on UK property law.

• Evolution of Political Parties:

  • Peter (40:35): Traces the development from the Tories and Whigs to the modern Conservative and Labour Parties.

• Current Political Climate:

  • Freddie (42:00): "Many people in the United Kingdom no longer feel that they are represented by their political parties."

Key Insights:

• The UK's complex property laws and historical political evolutions create unique challenges for Bitcoin policy.
• Political disenchantment is driving the rise of non-conventional parties like the Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage.

4. Bitcoin Policy and Legislative Efforts

Freddie and Peter discuss ongoing legislative efforts and the strategic importance of Bitcoin at the national level.

• Reform Party’s Stance:

  • Freddie (53:30): "Nigel Farage announced in Vegas... establishing the strategic Bitcoin reserve."

• Taxation and Capital Gains:

  • Freddie (53:37): "They want to reduce capital gains on cryptocurrency sales."

Notable Quote:

• Freddie (56:37): "We've been lobbying the Labour government to acknowledge that this asset is valuable."

Key Insights:

• Legislative efforts are focusing on reducing tax burdens to facilitate Bitcoin transactions.
• The establishment of a national Bitcoin reserve is seen as a strategic move, mirroring efforts like the US's Lummis-Gillibrand bill.

5. Economic Implications and Inflation

The discussion highlights how Bitcoin serves as a hedge against inflation and the broader economic instability faced by nations.

• Rule of 72 Explained:

  • Freddie (34:58): "At a 2% inflation rate, your money roughly halves over the course of your working life."

• Global Inflation Examples:

  • Freddie (35:56): References inflation rates in the UK, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.

Key Insights:

• Bitcoin offers a means to preserve wealth in the face of persistent inflation.
• Economic instability in various countries underscores the need for decentralized financial solutions like Bitcoin.

6. Renewable Energy and Bitcoin Mining

Freddie and Peter explore the relationship between renewable energy sectors in the UK and Bitcoin mining, addressing economic and environmental aspects.

• Curtailment Costs:

  • Freddie (79:03): "The Labour government seem completely resistant to engaging with us on this particular point."

• Energy Efficiency:

  • Peter (80:34): Discusses how high energy costs impact the UK's economy and infrastructure development.

Key Insights:

• Bitcoin mining can efficiently utilize excess renewable energy, reducing wastage and supporting the energy grid.
• Legislative resistance hinders the potential synergy between renewable energy and Bitcoin mining.

7. Future Outlook and Call to Action

The episode concludes with an optimistic yet pragmatic outlook on Bitcoin's role in nation-building and economic stability.

• Agency and Collective Effort:

  • Freddie (89:39): "We have agency, we can go out."

• Encouraging Political Engagement:

  • Freddie (93:33): "We are a representative democracy. They need to represent our views."

Key Insights:

• Collective advocacy and policy engagement are essential for embedding Bitcoin into national financial strategies.
• Optimism remains a driving force, with the belief that societal collapse is not inevitable.

8. Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Freddie (00:00): "I'm fundamentally an optimist. I don't think that collapse is inevitable."
• Freddie (56:37): "We've been lobbying the Labour government to acknowledge that this asset is valuable."
• Freddie (89:39): "We have agency, we can go out."
• Freddie (93:33): "We are a representative democracy. They need to represent our views."
• Freddy & Peter (End): Reiterated the opening sentiments of optimism and agency, tying back to the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night."

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Conclusion: This episode of THE Bitcoin Podcast offers a comprehensive exploration of Bitcoin's potential role within the UK's evolving political and economic landscapes. Through personal narratives, historical contexts, and policy analyses, Freddie New and Peter illuminate the challenges and opportunities that lie at the intersection of decentralized finance and national governance. The conversation underscores the importance of proactive advocacy, strategic legislative engagement, and the collective optimism necessary to harness Bitcoin's transformative potential.

For listeners seeking to understand the nuanced dynamics of Bitcoin policy in the UK and its broader implications, this episode serves as an invaluable resource, blending expert insights with actionable strategies for fostering meaningful change.

Transcript

[Freddy]

I'm fundamentally an optimist. I don't think that collapse is inevitable. I don't believe that you, you need to, you know, do not go gentle.

[Peter]

Into that good night, you know, rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[Freddy]

Don't just sit back and say that, you know, decline is inevitable.

[Peter]

We have agency, we can go out.

[Freddy]

I mean, your entire nation is an.

[Peter]

Example of this to the rest of us.

[Freddy]

You don't need to sit back and.

[Peter]

Let the king tell you what to do.

[Freddy]

Although technically in the UK we do. But I was talking about this with Peter the last time I spoke with him.

[Peter]

You know, you can start small.

[Freddy]

And for, for me, bitcoin is both a top down movement and a bottom up movement. So individual people realizing that government isn't going to come and save them and preserving their wealth in bitcoin is a valid and valuable thing that you can do. But at the same time, we should also engage with our elected representatives and try and educate them to understand the same thing. I jotted down something while you were speaking earlier and why don't our elected officials see this? And I think for some of us.

[Peter]

In the UK the problem is solely talking about bitcoin.

[Freddy]

If you ask them, would you like, we have this sovereign debt problem. Nothing stops this train. We should hedge ourselves with this with.

[Peter]

A pristine form of collateral that no.

[Freddy]

Other country can debase or dilute. Without mentioning bitcoin, they say, well, that sounds brilliant. Well, let's get some of that pristine collateral. And then once the idea is planted, then the specifics kind of solve themselves.

[Walker]

Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin continues to create new blocks every 10 minutes and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. If you are listening to this right now, remember you are still early. Find me on [e-mail] Walker and this [e-mail] Titcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search WalkerAmerica and find this podcast on X and Instagram at itcoin podcast. Head to the show notes for sponsor links. Head to substack.com walker America to get episodes emailed to you and head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk.

[Unknown]

Do you say, do you say Noster or Noster with your British accent?

[Peter]

I'd probably go for a short O Noster.

[Freddy]

But you know what, given that it's notes and other stuff Transmitted by relays. Maybe it should be nostr. That's a really interesting question.

[Unknown]

I think I'm one of the only few people who is still or has maybe not even still. Like, I started out saying nostr because I was like, well, there's only one S, you know, so this is like nost. This makes sense to me. So it's nostr. And I've stuck with it. Even Carla has now started saying nostr. My own wife abandoning my pronunciation team. But I've let it slide. But, yeah, I'm always curious. I wasn't sure how the British tongue would interpret this, but at least your.

[Freddy]

Wife says nosta or nosta. If I say it, my wife immediately falls asleep. Or maybe it's like a defensive mechanism. I don't know.

[Unknown]

People would often ask me, how do I get my wife to be into bitcoin? And I'm not sure if yours is into bitcoin or what the situation is, but. But people would always ask me this, and I'm like, well, I'm not the best person to ask about how do you. Because we got into it at the same time. Her parents escaped communism. Her dad was a computer scientist. She hates the government. It just. You're primed for this.

[Freddy]

Yeah. They seem like natural fits.

[Walker]

They really are.

[Unknown]

And so unless you're, you know, you have a lot of those boxes checked, I feel like it's perhaps not as. Not as easy. And I do. I sympathize with people who have difficulty getting their significant others to, let's say, have the same amount of care. But I think it's also something where it's like, if as long as one of you in the relationship is aware of it and taking care of it and saving the value of your time and energy in Bitcoin, well, okay, that's at least good enough. Like, you're. You're as a family unit, you are taking care of. I don't know.

[Freddy]

Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. It's like having, you know, some families have one breadwinner, some have two breadwinners.

[Unknown]

Exactly.

[Freddy]

You can just be the bitcoin breadwinner for your family. And my wife wants to talk about other things other than the collapse of the state and hard money and sovereign debt defaults. Some people like to talk about other stuff, and that's so strange.

[Unknown]

I can't imagine why. But, yeah, I mean, even Carla gets tired of bitcoin talk. But it's also like, we. Especially when we were making videos very consistently, it's like we talked about bitcoin a lot as just a necessity. So it was like, okay, if we're done with this, done making videos today, no more bitcoin talk. Let's cut it off. Stop it. Stop it for now. And then it's like, don't say bitcoin. It's like, well, bitcoin just comes up naturally, so you can't quite help.

[Freddy]

Your videos are absolutely class. I do have to say, I remember watching them. It's like two, three years ago. You started a lot, maybe in the pandemic, wasn't it?

[Unknown]

It was during the pandemic. Let's see. I think we started making them in 20, like May, end of May 2021. So I think it was right after, like the first blow off top, if I'm getting my months right. Like that first.

[Freddy]

Yeah, I think it was the first top.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And then there was the second fake.

[Freddy]

Out top in October, November that year.

[Unknown]

When it was like, oh, it's the super cycle for sure this time. And I was very green in the space at that point. We'd just been. I heard about bitcoin back in, like, you know, 2014. Ignored it, of course. Thought it was some stupid nerd thing. Heard about it again in 2017. Thought I couldn't. I was like, well, I can't afford a full bitcoin by any means, so I guess I'll just buy one of these litecoin things. I don't. I still don't think litecoin has recovered the price that I. I managed to, like, time the. The top in 2017 perfectly with my, like, 1 Litecoin or 2 Litecoin purchase. It was like, then I was like, ignored until 2020. And then, oh, maybe I should actually spend some time and pay attention to this.

[Walker]

It seems that it's still around.

[Unknown]

How odd. I would have thought this would have been done by now. I feel like that's an experience for a lot of people. I'm very impressed anyone who hears about bitcoin and the very first time it just clicks. But I think that's the exception, not the rule.

[Freddy]

Oh, absolutely. Then that accords completely with my experience. I first came across it in similar time to you, actually. Like 2013, 2014, when I was writing.

[Peter]

A paper on the Cypriot banking cr.

[Freddy]

And to my shame, I remember reading, reading quite a bit about it and then actually laughing because, you know, the Winklevoss twins, they got stiffed over by Mark Zuckerberg and then they put their money in bitcoin.

[Peter]

Oh, ha ha. And then it crashed how funny.

[Freddy]

And in retrospect, I was a complete idiot. But, you know, I'm okay with that. It's. I always feel if I had bought in 2013, there's absolutely no way I.

[Peter]

Would have hodled until now.

[Freddy]

So, yeah, absolutely, I'm with you there.

[Unknown]

I think that the people who say, like, oh, I wish I would have known about it back at this time or that time, realistically, you wouldn't have held onto it. And if you did know about it, you probably would have. Just knowing about it didn't mean you were going to pay attention to it, as is evidenced by yourself and me and countless other people I've talked to. Basically, almost everyone's bitcoin story is that ignored it. Ignored it. Finally paid attention to it years later, and, you know, are now going to bitcoin conferences and deep down the rabbit hole. But, like, it takes time. So that's why I'm. I try to lead with empathy when it comes to people, let's say even politicians, or perhaps especially politicians, not grokking bitcoin right away. Now, if you've had something explained to you many, many, many times in very detailed ways and, you know, convincing ways by many people, and you still choose to keep ignoring it or worse, deriding it, that's where I have less sympathy. But I can't fault somebody for dismissing bitcoin the first or second time that it happens to pop across their radar. But, I mean, I know just. I'm sure this is a frustration you feel most intimately given that you are actively in talks with policymakers, regulators, folks in the House of Lords and Commons, which, you know, you guys have such nice names for things over there.

[Freddy]

It's basically. It's basically the Senate and the House of Representatives. It's just different names.

[Unknown]

It's like, it's. But I mean, it basically sounds like it's like the House of Rich and the House of Poors, you know, is like, kind of like what it. It sounds like that a little bit.

[Freddy]

The actual name is worse.

[Peter]

It's the Lord Spiritual and Temporal.

[Unknown]

No, it's not. Is it really?

[Freddy]

It is, yeah. Because originally they used. You used to get an automatic seat in the House of Lords by virtue of being a bishop.

[Peter]

So the bishops had some seats in the House of Lords, and so they were the Lord Spiritual and then the Lord's temporal were a combination of the Law Lords. So when you became a senior enough judge, you also got a seat in the House of Lords as one of the Law Lords.

[Freddy]

And then you also had A combination of hereditary peerages and, and life peerages as well. It's. It's very complex. Also quite funny from, from the perspective of a United States citizen, that is.

[Unknown]

So I'm always fascinated because I love listening to Peter McCormick show, honestly, perhaps more so now that it's less about Bitcoin, because I get to learn more about the uk and also I listened to his episode that he had with you, and I was just thinking the whole time I'm like, is Peter about to foment insurrection pretty soon I'm getting that vibe. Or maybe not insurrection. Maybe it's. Revolution is a better word. I don't know what I'm allowed to say in the uk.

[Freddy]

Well, it's funny, I live in the town where Tom Payne came from, and.

[Peter]

Obviously you'll know of Tom Payne because.

[Freddy]

He was, he was instrumental in a.

[Peter]

Lot of the thinking behind the American Revolution. And so he was fascinated by the.

[Freddy]

French Revolution and then was. Was part of the intellectual movement that really drove the American Revolution. And actually my Twitter profile, I've got a quote from, from Tom Payne on.

[Peter]

My, on my profile.

[Freddy]

It. It's. I become, I'm going to miss. I'm going to misquote this now, but it's in my banner ad.

[Peter]

I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.

[Freddy]

I love that.

[Peter]

That's up on the town hall in the town where I live.

[Freddy]

And then obviously he came over to.

[Peter]

The United States and he was instrumental.

[Freddy]

In the thinking that underlies the United States Constitution, which is a document for which I have an enormous amount of time and respect.

[Peter]

It's a fantastic creation.

[Freddy]

An utterly extraordinary.

[Peter]

Thing for humanity to have done.

[Freddy]

And I, I was saying to, I was saying to someone, I met it in Vegas actually, how, how much I enjoy visiting the United States.

[Peter]

I always leave with an immense sense.

[Freddy]

Of optimism about, you know, despite the problems that the country has, like all.

[Peter]

Like all countries have.

[Freddy]

It's, it's fantastic to visit a place where there is a real attitude that.

[Peter]

You, you can, you can just do things.

[Freddy]

Which is one of my favorite memes.

[Unknown]

It's a great meme. It's a great meme. And you know, honestly, I love hearing that from folks, you know, non US Citizens, you know, folks from wherever it may be, especially from our former colonizer. It's nice to, Nice to hear that kind of thing. No, hey, it's.

[Freddy]

We were also colonized. I'm a Zimbabwean. South African originally.

[Unknown]

So there you go. So I really. Yeah, I can't hold it against you for the generational trauma from which I suffer, but I think that it's such an important thing that many Americans often forget. They forget that a lot of the world still views America and has continued to, as a place of hope and of, you can just do things and a place where you can make, you know, carve out a life for yourself regardless of your circumstances. And I think perhaps in many ways, that's gotten more difficult to do than depending on what you want to look at as, you know, the heyday of American growth and these things. But in other ways, thanks to technology, it's gotten a lot easier to do. Now, I think we can, of course, get into the fact that thanks to the monetary system, it's made it more difficult for the average person to get by unequivocally. But that doesn't preclude you from being able to achieve something in this country. And there is still, I think, that sense of. At least I feel it. And certainly the bitcoiners that I talk to feel it. Certainly even many of my, quote normie friends feel it. You can just do things. And America is still, despite all of its faults, in my biased opinion, it's still the greatest country in the world. Now, we can debate that, but it's great because it's ultimately an idea based on incredibly strong founding documents that. Whose entire purpose is to respect individual rights, to respect property, to respect speech, to respect the right to defend oneself. And that's incredibly important. And it is a rarity in this world to have that and to have something like that baked into your, let's say, societal fabric. From its conception, that is rare and.

[Freddy]

It'S something that should be treasured. I think it's almost unique.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Freddy]

I read something recently which struck me really quite profoundly, which was America.

[Peter]

It said, America is the only society.

[Freddy]

Where people came together and decided how.

[Peter]

Much power they were going to cede to their rulers.

[Freddy]

In almost every other society in human history, any.

[Peter]

Any transfer of power from the rulers to the ruled had been very gradual.

[Freddy]

And after a long period of oppression in America, you. I mean, you know as well as.

[Peter]

I do, you genuinely had a fresh start.

[Freddy]

You.

[Peter]

You threw everything off, and then you.

[Freddy]

Then you sat down and decided, all right, this is. This is how much power we're going to give to the people who govern us thus far and no further. It is genuinely.

[Unknown]

It is remarkable. And you have to look back at the. The foresight that some of these men had and just marvel at it a little bit. Like, especially given their age. And, you know, now we look at. I mean, my God, like, it's. It's insane. I mean, like, I was, I don't know, reasonably well developed for that age, but I was still just a. I was a moron. You know, like, when I look back, you know. Yeah, like, I was successful as a. As a young adult, but, like, I don't think I had my shit together enough to be able to lead a revolution and then draft documents, founding documents that would stand for hundreds of years after the fact and be used as a model for what liberty can be like. Nope, I definitely wasn't. I'm sorry, I wasn't nearly there. So. It's remarkable what they were able to do.

[Freddy]

Had you needed to, perhaps, I'm sure you would have risen to the occasion and, you know, cometh the hour, cometh the man. It's. It's a combination of ability and circumstances in it.

[Unknown]

That's. I mean, that's definitely fair. I am. I am curious, you know, to. Because I'd be remiss if I had a, you know, guest from the United Kingdom on my show and did not speak of this United Kingdom. How united is the kingdom right now as a starting point?

[Freddy]

Well, that's a very interesting question.

[Peter]

I think we are.

[Freddy]

We are in a strange position in the uk So I don't.

[Peter]

I don't know how much.

[Freddy]

How familiar you are with.

[Peter]

With our sort of party political system.

[Unknown]

So I'd love to actually dive into it a little bit because, like, I'm kind of fascinated by it. And honestly, I think it's very interesting to learn how other political models work because we're used to our Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola democracy here in the U.S. you know, if it's okay if you don't like Coke, there's Pepsi and vice versa. That's not the case in most other places in the world. And I think the UK is obviously a fascinating example of something quite different.

[Walker]

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[Unknown]

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[Freddy]

Well, I mean, not to give you too much of a history lesson, but the. I suppose maybe in summary, the UK is an interesting example of a society completely opposite to the one I described earlier. Whereas in the United States, you decided how much power you were going to give to your rulers, in the UK the rulers have pretty much had, say, since. Let's go back a thousand years, back to the Norman Conquest slight. Sidebar.

[Peter]

One of the reasons we have such weird property law in the United Kingdom is because when the Norman conquest happened.

[Freddy]

In 1066, William the Conqueror declared the.

[Peter]

Whole of England and Wales, not Scotland.

[Freddy]

Because they didn't conquer Scotland.

[Peter]

They declared the whole of England and Wales his personal estate.

[Freddy]

So basically, he took the whole of.

[Peter]

Those two countries as his property. And so in the UK to this day, if you buy a house. So I own my house as freehold.

[Freddy]

But it's called freehold because the Crown.

[Peter]

Has deigned to let me occupy it.

[Freddy]

For as long as I or my heirs inherit it.

[Peter]

And if I die intestate or if my children were to die without issue, then the title to my property would devolve to the Crown because ultimately the Crown owns all of the land in England and Wales.

[Freddy]

I love that expression on your face.

[Unknown]

I mean, it's my. I mean, that's. That's kind of mind blowing and okay, you know, devil's advocate. It's like in the US it's like, do you really own your land? Like, yes, we have strong property laws, but also, if you don't pay your, excuse me, your property taxes, well, you will see very quickly that you do not actually have control of that property in a meaningful way. You. You're renting it from the government with a little bit more. A little bit more protection. Right. But it's. But ultimately, again, if you don't pay your property taxes, they will come and kick in your door and they will drag you out. And like, I know this because I have not personal experience. I've heard many anecdotes of people who were not fond of paying their property taxes, and it did not go well for them. They were quickly removed.

[Freddy]

Yeah. Which is pretty awful. And you know, and coming back to what I think is obviously a common theme for bitcoiners, it's very.

[Peter]

Even though you think you own the.

[Freddy]

House in which you live or the land on which you live, it's very.

[Peter]

Difficult for you to maintain title to that unless you comply with certain conditions.

[Freddy]

Whether those are property taxes or A.

[Peter]

Line of a chain of title or so on.

[Freddy]

So even something as fundamental as the place where you live and grow up and bring up your kids is not necessarily something that you can be guaranteed.

[Peter]

To own in perpetuity unless you tick.

[Freddy]

Certain boxes, which again is, I think, something that not many people think about.

[Peter]

Very deeply until it becomes acute.

[Freddy]

It was interesting what you were saying earlier about Carla and how she really understands Grox bitcoin quite quickly because its.

[Peter]

Use case has been obvious to her.

[Freddy]

From her life experience.

[Peter]

I've lived in two failed states. I lived in Syria, I lived in Zimbabwe.

[Freddy]

When we left Syria, we had to leave with 48 hours notice.

[Peter]

We had to drop everything.

[Freddy]

We were thrown out of the country at gunpoint and put on a boat and we were given, I shit you not, 48 hours notice to do that. And that was pretty hairy for my parents. Had we had bitcoin, it would have.

[Peter]

Been trivial for us to cross the.

[Freddy]

Border and to get our property out of the country.

[Peter]

And then Zimbabwe, when we left, we.

[Freddy]

It was extraordinarily difficult even then in the late 90s to get our money out of the country. We'd sold our house.

[Peter]

No one wants Zim dollars very hard.

[Freddy]

There's not really much market outside Zimbabwe for Zimbabwe dollars. It may surprise you. Well, you know, you're shocked.

[Peter]

I can see big market inside Zimbabwe for US dollars.

[Freddy]

Obviously everyone likes the US dollar. We bought a car and drove it across the border and then sailed it.

[Peter]

Back to the UK and then sold it.

[Freddy]

So very complicated to do in the.

[Peter]

In the late 90s.

[Freddy]

So I think those are some of the reasons why, despite the fact that I sound like a very posh Brit, I kind of got the point of bitcoin earlier than some of my contemporaries who have a similar background and worked.

[Peter]

In a similar field.

[Freddy]

The idea of a property that is.

[Peter]

Absolutely yours, that you can transfer across.

[Freddy]

Borders, that you can hold in your head is quite extraordinary. And to people who've had this kind of. I always feel if we need to explain bitcoin to, you know, you probably.

[Peter]

Don'T really need it.

[Freddy]

Yet I know that everyone does need.

[Peter]

Bitcoin because of invisible threats like inflation or the debasement of your currency by, by the currency issuer.

[Freddy]

But in, as you were saying earlier, to be a bit, bit empathetic to those kind of people, those are less obvious problems to a lot of people. And although they're true, they're not necessarily.

[Peter]

Apparent if you're trying to cross a.

[Freddy]

Border in a war zone.

[Peter]

It's Fucking apparent that you need to.

[Freddy]

Have some way of getting your money over the border, otherwise you're going to.

[Peter]

Have nothing on the other side.

[Freddy]

So I think maybe my point is.

[Peter]

That there are degrees of how apparent.

[Freddy]

The importance of bitcoin is. I don't know if that rings maybe.

[Unknown]

Like a satoshi's hierarchy of needs, so to speak.

[Freddy]

You should patent that.

[Unknown]

Maybe. But it would feel wrong to patent it. Or patent it, as you say, with Satoshi's name in there. That would. That would feel somehow against the spirit. But I will say, you know, I can coin it. I can't be the first, though. You ever think something and you're like, that's really smart. But there's just no chance that somebody else hasn't thought of this. And, you know, a thousand people have thought of this.

[Walker]

No.

[Freddy]

Or watch it. There's a beautiful line in there when. Heck, it's a play originally about an.

[Peter]

Inspirational history teacher who's teaching this class.

[Freddy]

Of boys in a very eccentric and inspirational way. A little bit like the Dead Poet Society. And he's.

[Peter]

There's a wonderful line when he says.

[Freddy]

It'S incredible when you have an idea.

[Peter]

That you think is completely unique to you. And then you read something ancient, something.

[Freddy]

Like out of Shakespeare or some.

[Peter]

Or something written by Plato, and you.

[Freddy]

Saw that someone one and a half thousand years ago, 3,000 years ago, had the same idea. And the line is, it's as though.

[Peter]

A hand has reached out of the page and taken yours.

[Freddy]

So there's something wonderful about having the same idea that someone else had before.

[Unknown]

It's very true. Although perhaps. Yeah, it's a much more positive way of looking at it, that it's not about, oh, you know, you're unoriginal. It's that perhaps some ideas are just out there in this informational grid waiting to be snatched up by a curious mind. And perhaps yours is curious enough to grasp it. And then for other people, you just realize they go through life never being curious about anything.

[Freddy]

And that. That's one of the things that makes me really sad. Really, really sad. And it's one of the things that annoys me about my friends. We were talking about my wife not being interested, that interested in bitcoin. I find bitcoin utterly fascinating. And I can be boring about it for hours. I'm astonished that not everyone wants to.

[Peter]

Be as boring as I can be.

[Unknown]

Well, you know, perhaps they're just not appreciative enough of your posh British accent because they also have British accents. So, you know, but we Americans, we hear the, the accent of our former colonizer and we think, like, they must.

[Walker]

Be saying something intelligent.

[Unknown]

I'm not even listening, but the sounds are good. It's funny that I was asking, actually, some, some Romanians, I was like, you know, so you guys, obviously English is a second language for you. When you hear Americans speak or people from the, you know, the UK speak, do you think that the UK folks sound smarter? You know, like, just inherently? Because a lot of, you know, Americans have this weird, like, British language sound smarter thing and they're like, no, like, they're just both speaking English with a different accent. Like, like we speak with an accent. I was like, okay, great. All right. So it's just us Americans who have some, again, weird generational trauma about this. Somehow you guys, you guys left some vestiges of the former colonialist in US that's funny.

[Freddy]

I.

[Peter]

Because I always just assumed that you wanted me to play a baddie in.

[Freddy]

One of your movies or James Bond. So there are only two alternatives available. People who sound like me.

[Unknown]

Yeah, that's fair. It's fair.

[Freddy]

And you know, if it makes you feel any better, I got teased a lot when I came because not many British people actually sound like me anymore. So I got, I, obviously at school in Zimbabwe till I was 16.

[Peter]

Then I came back to the UK, went to school in Wales, which is.

[Freddy]

Where my dad grew up, and I got abused savagely and brutally for sounding like a posh pufter.

[Walker]

In Wales.

[Unknown]

They sound particularly interesting. I think that's.

[Peter]

Yes.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So I can imagine you were in the small minority there.

[Freddy]

Yes, I was also very small back then, which I think is one of.

[Peter]

The reasons why I'm enormous now.

[Unknown]

That's fair.

[Freddy]

There's some deep seated trauma going on there.

[Unknown]

I, I saw your, your. This is a slight divergence. But speaking of you being massive, I saw your response to, to Arnold Schwarzenegger and his. That was. First of all, that's. I can't imagine going through that. We don't have to, like, get into that at all, but just wanted to say, like, damn, that was. That was really intense. And it says a lot about, I think who you are today makes a lot of sense given what you had to battle through, if that makes sense.

[Freddy]

Thanks, man. No, no, it's just, it's a long time ago. I honestly don't mind talking about if you want to spend like two minutes on it. I'm just for context, if anyone didn't. Didn't read it. So obviously I follow Schwarzenegger and I'm an enormous Schwarzenegger fan. And what did he. He tweeted something around, around how training helped him.

[Peter]

Some, Some days he woke up and.

[Freddy]

He felt that he. He saw in black and white, but he went to the gym and then every time he left he felt as though he was now seeing in color. It's like neither wizard of Oz or. And I tweeted back to him and I said, yeah, you know, I had this terrible experience when I was younger. My, My parents, when I was 21, well, they were both killed in a car accident. I was doing my exams in second year at university, so obviously not sugarcoating it, pretty awful experience.

[Peter]

And my brother and sister were 10 and 12 at the time. My.

[Freddy]

My other sister was 18, so we had to drop everything and go down to.

[Peter]

Each of them were at boarding school at the time.

[Freddy]

So we had to go one. First my sister, then my brother and yeah, literally the worst thing I've ever done to tell them that their parents weren't going to come back, but it was going to be okay. Yeah, it was. That was awful. And you know, I mentioned that in the post, Arnie, and then I said, you know, and you know, again, not sugarcoating it for a long time. I was probably clinically depressed, I assume, but I think if you have. That, if you have a kind of responsibility. And we did. We, my brothers were 10 and 12, so we had no choice but, but.

[Peter]

To look after them.

[Freddy]

We'd been overseas for a long time.

[Peter]

We'd lost touch with a lot of our family in the uk.

[Freddy]

We were sort of between homes at.

[Peter]

The time, so we didn't have anywhere to go.

[Freddy]

So the next few years was a process of sort of rebuilding, rebuilding our lives, reconnecting with our family.

[Peter]

We moved in with my great aunt.

[Freddy]

Who was incredibly kind and gave the kids a home.

[Peter]

I mainly stayed at university.

[Freddy]

I was at Cambridge at the time. Phoebe, my sister, stayed with sort of foster family.

[Peter]

But then, then we shared, we shared.

[Freddy]

Responsibility for the, for the two young kids. And I said to Ani, you know, I, I just, I had no desire to do anything.

[Peter]

I had no inclination to do anything. I.

[Freddy]

But I went to the gym every.

[Peter]

Day and that was the one thing I did.

[Freddy]

And you know, I just would go as I didn't have a choice about it. And then eventually, over time, I think that that was essentially the only piece of my life I had any control.

[Peter]

Over at that point. And it was incredibly helpful in, I.

[Freddy]

Think, rebuilding after an awful experience. Yeah. And anyway, so I'm an enormous fan of Arnie. I have a. I have a post of him up in my. My home gym now, the original Terminator poster. And then out of the blue, he, like, retweeted me at the weekend. So, I mean, obviously, the most exciting thing to happen to me this week is coming on your podcast. The second most exciting thing is.

[Unknown]

Getting.

[Freddy]

A retweet from Arnie.

[Unknown]

I mean, it's pretty incredible because he's just such an icon. And despite. He had some strange takes during COVID but I still have a huge amount of respect for that guy. And also, I think Pumping Iron is probably one of the best documentaries ever made. Just, like, I watched it a few times, and every time afterwards, I'm like, I need to. I need to hit the weights hard after this. Like, really, really hard. I appreciate you sharing that, though, and I didn't mean to derail, but I think, again, it. I mean, that's a really impossibly difficult thing to go through, especially at that age. But to have that, to know that you needed to take care of your. Your family still, because you were the. You know, you're the eldest. Like, I have an immense amount of respect for that. And again, I think it says a lot about who you are today. And, you know, I mean, clearly you feel some sense of responsibility for. For the United Kingdom, more broadly given, like, the. And don't mind me trying to tie this in here, but, like, the work that you're doing right now is pretty thankless, I would imagine, from a. In terms of, like, yeah, Bitcoiners are, you know, applaud you. Thank you. But more broadly, it's like, again, trying to get people to pay attention to something that most of them are completely ignoring. Or you have. What's that guy who keeps going around, the brilliant maths guy who's talking about how everything's the rich people's fault. And he was.

[Freddy]

Jeremy Stevenson.

[Walker]

Yes.

[Unknown]

Guy just really rubs me the wrong way.

[Freddy]

He does. He's. I mean, I hate to say this, I. I don't tend to block people on. On Twitter, he's. Or mute them. He's one of the few words that I have muted on Twitter. He became so unbearable. If anyone hasn't seen him, don't Google him, don't look him up, don't give him the oxygen publicity. His solution to everything is taxing. Taxing rich people. And he hates Bitcoin.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Freddy]

Which I find odd. But I think it comes back to your. Again, your point earlier.

[Peter]

So many people don't realize that they need Bitcoin.

[Freddy]

And a lot of the, A lot of the need for bitcoin in complex.

[Peter]

Western societies isn't completely obvious.

[Freddy]

You know about the rule of 72?

[Unknown]

No, I don't think so.

[Freddy]

Oh, I love this one of my. So it's very simple.

[Peter]

You take.

[Freddy]

It's a mathematical equation to effectively work.

[Peter]

Out how quickly it takes for your money to halve in value given a.

[Freddy]

Particular rate of inflation.

[Unknown]

So now I do know. But can you explain it though, for the, for the folks that may be saying I have.

[Freddy]

So let's take the arbitrary roughly 2% inflation rate, which is what most governments target. So at a 2% inflation rate, your.

[Peter]

Money roughly halves over the course of your working life. So let's say you had a hundred.

[Freddy]

Dollars in your checking account. When you leave college, if you work.

[Peter]

For 35 years and retire, that hundred dollars will only buy you $50 worth of stuff at the end of that, that period, which over a working lifetime.

[Freddy]

Is kind of low enough for you not to hit the streets with your sidearm. But any higher than that and it becomes exponentially faster. So, you know, at 10 or 11%.

[Peter]

Your money halves in seven years.

[Freddy]

And we hit 11% in the UK.

[Peter]

Not so long ago.

[Freddy]

And in Turkey, they hit 70%. And in Zimbabwe, where I grew up, the rate of inflation actually hit a rate that's so high that at its worst, no one actually knows what it was. It was so high and so rampant that it was effectively meaningless.

[Peter]

We left when the rate of inflation in Zim was 50, 60%. I had friends who stayed and lived there for a much longer time than we did, and their parents literally had their entire life savings wiped out.

[Freddy]

So let's say over the course of.

[Peter]

Your lifetime, you'd save $200,000 that you thought you were going to retire on. By the time they came to retire, a loaf of bread was a trillion dollars.

[Freddy]

So your $200,000 was completely meaningless by that point.

[Unknown]

It's actually insane. And again, in the US and the uk, sure, especially during COVID we had some, some pretty gnarly inflation. And of course, because in the US they increased the money supply by like 40% over the course of a few years. So, yeah, and it turns out if you look back, it's like, oh, yeah, in terms of price inflation, didn't see it right away. I wonder why. Well, because it fed into a giant asset boom, like there was asset inflation. So of course you didn't see it in consumer prices right away until the cantillon effect allowed it to trickle on down. But even in these cases, okay, it's not to diminish that, but it's like, compared to the US is like the prettiest horse at the glue factory. Again, not mine. I think I'm stealing from Greg Foss there. But it's a good one. It's like, yeah, it's at the glue factory, but hey, it's the best looking horse there. And certain places in the world, it's like, it's impossible for you to conceptualize what that looked like, what that looked like in Weimar Germany, what that looked like in Zimbabwe, unless you lived it. It's like, you know, you can read all you want about it, but the people who were there on the ground just saw absolutely everything they'd ever worked for go. And I mean, it's just so criminal ultimately. Like, that's, that's, it's the worst kind of theft. It's stealing someone's life's energy, their life's economic energy. And I think that that's like, we, more fundamentally, we really need to start calling that what it is, which is just, it's, you're stealing people's life. And I think that that's just so, so messed up. And yet it happens again and again. And every year they, they state that their goal in most, you know, developed nations is to steal your life by 2% per year. Like, they tell you that's their goal. And it's actually, of course, much more than that. But it's wild to me. And I know, I mean, right now, the, so the UK right now, you know, was asking about the, you know, is the United Kingdom United. But more broadly, I mean, there's obviously a lot of social, let's say, unrest happening. Fair to say. I mean, we've got our share of it over here, but I think you guys have a different flavor of it over there. Can you, can you talk about that? I mean, cost of living has obviously gotten a lot higher in the UK as well. I know there's the different winter fuel allowances and all this. I also know that you, you know, the UK is like, basically spending over a billion dollars a year just to have wind, wind turbines turn off because the grid can't handle the excess, you know, load, which is, that's fun. A whole nother thing we can get into. But, like, what, what is happening over there as a, as a citizen, what do you see? Do you see also like a light at the end of the tunnel? Like, what is your read on this?

[Freddy]

Right now, okay, I must apologize first, I got distracted earlier in terms of our weird property. We're going to talk a little bit about party policy. So let me give you sort of a minute or so on that, Freddie.

[Unknown]

It's a safe space for tangents, by the way. So you're good.

[Freddy]

Yeah, I went on a proper tangent there. It's like kind of slingshot around Jupiter out into the outer reaches of the solar system there.

[Unknown]

I'm here for it.

[Freddy]

So we started in 1066 with William taking the Scotland, not Scotland, but Wales.

[Peter]

And England as his personal estate.

[Freddy]

Weird property law. And then over time the landowners and the barons effectively evolved into our Parliament. So roundabout in the 1200s, Parliament began to. Parliament was effectively created on a mountain.

[Peter]

Called Simon de Montfort.

[Freddy]

Again close to where I live.

[Peter]

There was a battle between parliamentarians and the King's men.

[Freddy]

So the. Again, the location where I live was.

[Peter]

Effectively key towards effectively taking some power away from the King and giving it to the people. And that increased gradually over time. By the time of the sort of late 1800s, you had sort of two predominant political parties in the UK. You had the Tories who tended to.

[Freddy]

Be landowning gentry, and they have effectively.

[Peter]

Evolved into the modern Conservative Party, so.

[Freddy]

Slightly right of center.

[Peter]

And then you had the Whigs who.

[Freddy]

Were kind of more left wing intelligentsia.

[Peter]

I suppose, and they evolved into the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party's last big swan song was around about the time of the First World War when David Lloyd George was Prime Minister.

[Freddy]

And following the the First World War, the. There was a huge rise in the Labour Party which effectively represented people who worked in the factories, people who didn't own the means of production, but were.

[Peter]

Inspired by some of the thinking of.

[Freddy]

Karl Marx and trying to represent effectively.

[Peter]

The working man, who is no longer necessarily a farm laborer, but now perhaps a factory worker.

[Freddy]

So there was effectively as society evolved.

[Peter]

The political parties representing different factions of society evolved. And where to.

[Freddy]

Your actual question, where I think this is beginning to break down in the.

[Peter]

United Kingdom, is that many, many people here no longer feel that they are represented by the people who are supposedly representing them in Parliament.

[Freddy]

So in the United Kingdom, as in most advanced democracies, we have not a.

[Peter]

Direct democracy, but a representative democracy.

[Freddy]

And it's the same systems in the United States.

[Peter]

You elect a representative who is supposed.

[Freddy]

To speak for you in Congress or.

[Peter]

Speak for you in Parliament.

[Freddy]

Broadly the same idea. I think a lot of people in.

[Peter]

The United Kingdom no longer feel that.

[Freddy]

Their concerns or their wishes or their.

[Peter]

Desires of being represented by their political parties. And that's why we have such an interesting. We're at such an interesting inflection point in the uk, where we are seeing.

[Freddy]

The rise of other non conventional parties.

[Peter]

Like the Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage.

[Freddy]

You probably heard him speak in Las Vegas. So Farage is a controversial figure.

[Peter]

He was effectively behind the Brexit movement.

[Freddy]

In the uk, where the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

[Peter]

Whether you're a supporter or an opponent.

[Freddy]

Of that, that would have enabled the United Kingdom to effectively have an opportunity to write more of its own laws than previously.

[Peter]

Farage remains a controversial figure because a.

[Freddy]

Good 50% of the country didn't vote for that. And it was a very, very close vote, you know, 16 million versus 17 million. So broadly, 50, 50. Not dissimilar to the way the presidential elections go in the United States.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Freddy]

But again, and certainly for me, one of the interesting things, looking at the recent U.S. election, I think I've developed a bit more personal humility in trying to understand the point of view of the people who might not vote the.

[Peter]

Way that I do.

[Freddy]

A lot of my friends in the United Kingdom will say, oh, God, isn't it terrible that Donald Trump has been elected? But I increasingly feel that 50% of the, of the country voted for Trump and he actually got a bigger majority.

[Peter]

This time than he did previously.

[Freddy]

And like I said earlier, the majority of the Americans that I've met personally, I really like. And it's impossible for me to think.

[Peter]

That 50% of a country are bad people.

[Freddy]

So how do you then square that circle? And maybe it's to your curiosity point. I feel there's a lack of intellectual curiosity in simply branding people who disagree with you politically as, you know, effectively.

[Peter]

Non people, which I think is where we've kind of got to in sort of partisan terms.

[Freddy]

So kind of where we are in political terms at the moment. In the uk, you have.

[Peter]

Everyone was angry with the Tories because.

[Freddy]

They had, I think, you know, few people would dispute this. They had not done a good job.

[Peter]

In the previous 14 years when they were in power. However, labor have come into power and I think statistically they have lost popularity.

[Freddy]

At a quicker rate than any government.

[Peter]

In recorded history, which, you know, quite an achievement.

[Unknown]

Good for them.

[Freddy]

Well done them.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Freddy]

And reform are gaining a lot of.

[Peter]

Support as a result.

[Freddy]

And a lot of my intellectual friends who work in the City or work in Finance are saying, isn't this dreadful that reform is seeing such, such a surge in popularity? But then as you say, you know.

[Peter]

We'Re wasting a billion pounds a year on curtailment. All of our roads are falling apart.

[Freddy]

No one can get a doctor's appointment.

[Peter]

I haven't seen a doctor for four years.

[Freddy]

Our country is not functioning and people are angry at that and they want something different. And that's a very febrile political atmosphere.

[Peter]

For anyone to operate in.

[Unknown]

I'm, I'm curious too. I mean, can you explain a little bit? So, because it seems to me, and from, you know, obviously I listen to, to Peter's show still a lot because I first of all love, love his show and was glad that he left a little bit of a vacancy in the bitcoin podcast space to. For me to slip into. Before that, you know, four old Danny Knowles had to come back in and revive what bitcoin did. But possibly a rising. He's, he's. I love Danny and I'm glad he is crushing it because we need more bitcoin podcasts, not less. But I digress. The point being, to me it sounds like both of the conservatives and you know, like the, let's say the liberals are obviously, you know, liberal leftists, but it sounds like your conservatives have also drifted quite, quite left in many ways in the sense in not too dissimilar away from how things have happened in America where what's the one tie that binds the, you know, the two clashing sides? Well, they both continue to vote for more of your tax dollars to be spent. They both continue to vote for more money to be printed effectively by running massive budget deficits. They both continue to basically not do anything meaningful to try and shrink the size of government or improve individual liberties at a fundamental level. And they both continue to basically engage in a game of can kicking down the road, which doesn't really seem to benefit the people that much. So is, you know, is reform coming in? Like, is this a. I mean, from the people I've talked to, because I have some friends in the UK as well. Like, this seems like a real legitimate third, you know, kind of this, this other part that's really coming in with some strength and getting some actual backing from them. Like, is that the vibe that you're feeling as well?

[Freddy]

I think it is and I think.

[Peter]

It'S very much underestimated by the political establishment.

[Freddy]

So if you read many of the.

[Peter]

Newspapers and the prevailing.

[Freddy]

I suppose. Right. Think in the United Kingdom, it would be that reform is easily to be.

[Peter]

Dismissed and it's impossible for them ever to form a serious government. I think that underestimates what is going on.

[Freddy]

But again, trying to think yourself into.

[Peter]

The shoes of the other side.

[Freddy]

And, you know, I'm sure you do this with Bitcoin as well. I quiz myself a lot.

[Peter]

Why don't my friends understand what's going on?

[Freddy]

Why don't they do this? And it's, it's a fun. I mean, on the one hand it's very frustrating, but on the other hand it's really interesting to try and think.

[Peter]

Your way into someone else's head.

[Freddy]

And I suspect it's because the magnitude.

[Peter]

Of acknowledging what perhaps might be happening.

[Freddy]

Is just too great. So it becomes almost like a religious position. So your, effectively your religion, your religion is that the government of the United Kingdom is either going to be labor or Conservative, and it can't be any of the others. But you forget that like I said earlier, David Lloyd George was a liberal, and at that time it was the Tories and the Liberals and the Labour Party then came out of nowhere in the 1920s, 1910s and 1920s, and then it became the second force in British politics and the Liberal Party effectively disappeared.

[Peter]

To a small rump. They didn't hold power again until 2010. It was almost a century. And that was only in coalition.

[Unknown]

That's wild.

[Peter]

Yeah, it's mad.

[Freddy]

But it's always interesting. And I think education to look back and understand that. Actually, Douglas Adams segueing again slightly. Douglas Adams made an interesting point comparing.

[Peter]

This to technological advancement. You always assume that the world into which you were born is a normal world, don't you?

[Freddy]

So Adam said that in terms of technology, anything that already exists when you're born is normal.

[Peter]

Anything invented between when you're 15 and 30 is really exciting and you can.

[Freddy]

Get a career in it.

[Peter]

Anything invented after you're 40 is wrong and against the natural order of things.

[Freddy]

So.

[Unknown]

I mean, that pretty well breaks down. Like, that's a good lens, a good kind of heuristic to understand why people react the way that they do to things like something like Bitcoin or to anything. I mean, it's the same. You look at the way that the older generations treated social media. I always think it's funny. I remember a lot of the boomer generation. The Facebooks are going to melt your brains and turn you into God knows only what. And now it's like, who are the only people left on Facebook, at least in the U.S. well, it's primarily the boomers, which is just somehow hilarious to me. It's like they were the ones who were decrying it the most. And now they're the only ones left there being confused about an AI generated Jesus riding a rhinoceros and thinking it's like a real photo or something. Like it's. It's mind blowing.

[Freddy]

I mean, that sounds awesome. I haven't seen that, but that sounds really.

[Unknown]

It does.

[Freddy]

It does.

[Unknown]

I'll generate one after this, put it out there for the boomers and see how many I can. I can trick with it.

[Freddy]

Oh, brilliant.

[Unknown]

But okay, so this is a legitimate, kind of legitimate political movement that's happening. You think they're garnering significant support? Is the bring this around to bitcoin a little bit too? Is the Reform Party, obviously? I mean, you know, you've got Farage speaking at the bitcoin conference. Are they more pro bitcoin than the establishment parties? Is that fair to say?

[Peter]

I'd say yes.

[Freddy]

Ahead of this, this chat, I was.

[Peter]

Thinking about some of the differences between.

[Freddy]

The US position on bitcoin and the UK position on bitcoin.

[Peter]

And one of the key differentiating factors is that until recently, we have had no political support in the United Kingdom for bitcoin at all. So in the United States, you've got.

[Freddy]

Interesting cross party support actually, you know, from Senator Lummis. Everyone knows about Senator Gillibrand. The Lummis Gillibrand bill, which was drafted.

[Peter]

Before the election, was actually a good piece of legislation.

[Freddy]

I read it at the time and I thought that was a useful step forward. We've got people like Tom Emmer, you have Cory Booker, Eric Adams. You have people from both sides of the aisle who I think are beginning.

[Peter]

To understand how important bitcoin is and.

[Freddy]

The strategic importance that it holds for the.

[Peter]

For a nation wanting to have a.

[Freddy]

Secure monetary foundation and monetary future in a rapidly changing world, which is effectively.

[Peter]

A low trust world.

[Freddy]

The United Kingdom basically has its pants down and its head in the sand.

[Peter]

Both at the same time waiting to be taken from behind by some country.

[Freddy]

That understands bitcoin better. That's a horrible image and I wish I hadn't said that, but I mean, sorry, that came unbidden to my mind. That probably indicates some of the deep seated psychological issues that I have.

[Unknown]

That's okay. That's okay. It's a safe space here.

[Freddy]

Yeah, well, so it's interesting you ask about what reform we're doing differently. So the, the thing that Nigel Farage announced in Vegas was, I think as. As seminal as the executive order from, from Donald Trump's administration establishing the strategic bitcoin reserve, which I Have to say I was astonished to read the quality.

[Peter]

Of the drafting and that document was.

[Freddy]

Was amazing. There are a lot of work done into it. I was not expecting there to be.

[Peter]

Such a clear differentiation between Bitcoin and other crypto assets.

[Freddy]

I thought it was going to be just a conglomeration of all of the shitcoins plus Bitcoin. But there was a clear divide there.

[Peter]

Between Bitcoin in the reserve, everything else in the stockpile.

[Freddy]

We're going to use the stockpile, we're going to keep the reserve.

[Peter]

Fantastic.

[Freddy]

The Farage bill was really interesting. So I did a sort of quick fire interview on this with the Institute.

[Peter]

Of Economic affairs just after it was.

[Freddy]

Published and I pulled it up on my second screen here.

[Peter]

So I think they hit some really interesting points.

[Freddy]

So they want to reduce capital gains on cryptocurrency sales, which is a key.

[Peter]

Blocker in terms of using it as money. At the moment in the UK and I think in the US as well.

[Freddy]

Every transaction is essentially a chargeable event which slows the velocity of money. It's insane. And there are already countries like Germany and like the Czech Republic who recognize.

[Peter]

That if there's been a holding period, then any use of it as money thereafter should be exempt from cgt.

[Freddy]

That actually the Lummis Gillibrand bill that I mentioned before took a really interesting perspective. I think they had a $200 de minimis amount. Yeah, yeah. So in other words, you know, you're buying, at least buy food.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah.

[Freddy]

It doesn't matter.

[Peter]

No.

[Freddy]

Cgt, the banking non discrimination big one.

[Peter]

In the reform bill.

[Freddy]

We've seen a lot of business, a lot of bitcoin businesses in the UK being refused. Refused bank accounts. Actually. Funny we mentioned this just before this call. Obviously. I run Bitcoin Policy UK with, with Susie, who's, who's the CEO and my co founder.

[Peter]

We've been applying for a second bank.

[Freddy]

Account because the bank that we currently.

[Peter]

Bank with was threatened to close our account.

[Freddy]

And the second bank that we've spoken to has just said that they will not bank us.

[Peter]

They've not given any reasons.

[Freddy]

But we suspect this because of what we do.

[Unknown]

But that is just insane. Like you're a policy institute, it's a think tank. Are you guys, you're a nonprofit over there? I'm not sure. Okay, so same as like the Bitcoin Policy Institute in the US here, but they deem that you are somehow too risky to bank essentially.

[Freddy]

They won't give us any reasons. They just say that they can't bank us, but all of us are volunteers.

[Peter]

No one takes a salary. We're funded solely by donations and by some corporate memberships.

[Freddy]

We have very, very low running costs and somehow we are too risky to bank, which is pretty offensive. So it's hard not to like what we're reading in the reform document at the moment.

[Peter]

A sovereign bitcoin reserve fund. Interestingly, the reform guys didn't mention the.

[Freddy]

Fact that the UK is already the third biggest nation state holder of bitcoin.

[Peter]

Which we have flagged to them directly. And I'll come back to that actually in a second.

[Freddy]

Paying taxes in cryptocurrency in taxes in bitcoin. So that would enable I suppose a.

[Peter]

Feeder fund for the sovereign reserve to.

[Freddy]

Exist if I were to pay taxes. We've already given some feedback on this which is that if this bill is.

[Peter]

Ever passed, they need to ensure that any taxes that are paid in bitcoin are not subject to cgt.

[Freddy]

So I shouldn't have to pay CGT on top of my tax.

[Peter]

And then rapid policy making timelines who.

[Freddy]

Can be crossed with that fantastic idea. So I think what they've done here, they've really kicked the Overton window open and other parties now have to respond to what they've done here because I.

[Peter]

Think the last point to note on.

[Freddy]

This before I shut up is that there are actually 12% of the British adults public own cryptocurrency of one kind or another.

[Peter]

Most of that's bitcoin. That's about 7 million people.

[Freddy]

There's a big chunk of votes there most definitely.

[Unknown]

And how much, how much bitcoin does the UK have right now as a result of. I'm assuming it's similar to the US where it's various law enforcement activities, things like that, confiscations. What is the number that they're at?

[Peter]

61,000 plus.

[Freddy]

It's a huge amount.

[Unknown]

It's a lot of coins.

[Freddy]

Six and a half billion dollars.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah. Have there been any proposals or plans that are like they going the way of Germany where it's like we should sell this off, we should get rid of this and use the, the proceeds to fund xyz?

[Freddy]

Well unfortunately I think that's probably what's going to happen. So it's. We have been lobbying the labor government.

[Peter]

For some time to take this seriously.

[Freddy]

To acknowledge that this asset is valuable.

[Peter]

It's of strategic importance that even if.

[Freddy]

They don't like bitcoin, they owe it to the people that they represent to.

[Peter]

Learn how to hold it. To use it, to safeguard it, to use it for the good of the nation.

[Freddy]

The response that we've got so far is that, yeah, they're not really that interested and it's not really ours. It's down to the Proceeds of Crime act, because this is a confiscation. There's a piece of legislation in the United Kingdom called Poker Proceeds of Crime act, under that if assets are confiscated and there's a successful confiscation order put in by the government, what happens at the end is the assets are sold, half of it goes to the Home.

[Peter]

Office, which is like our Department of.

[Freddy]

Homeland affairs, and then half of it.

[Peter]

Goes to law enforcement.

[Freddy]

So at the moment, the latest. It actually is funny coincidence, I was sitting three rows back from the front.

[Peter]

Waiting to hear Vice President Vance speak at Bitcoin 2025. And then a reply drops into my inbox from Emma Reynolds, who is the City Minister in the United Kingdom, who.

[Freddy]

Has responsibility for this area of policy, saying, yeah, we don't think Bitcoin is.

[Peter]

A good asset for us to have.

[Freddy]

And, yeah, we know that, we know that, we've got a lot of it, but we're not going to amend Poker.

[Peter]

To allow us to keep it.

[Freddy]

So, yeah, at the moment it's going to be sold.

[Unknown]

Was this the letter that you'd posted on your X account that was basically saying it doesn't align with our objectives for this fund, which is basically. They're essentially saying it was too risky for them in so many words. Right, yeah. Which is just seems kind of absurd that if you look at how long they've held it. I don't know how long they have held it for, but presumably it's appreciated massively in price in the amount of time that they've held it. So you would think that that would be the risk would be to get rid of it, but I don't know. I'm not a politician.

[Freddy]

It's funny you say that. So Emma Reynolds spoke at a digital assets conference in May and said, we're not going to consider having a bitcoin strategic reserve. Within a week, the amount of the.

[Peter]

Bitcoin that we'd have, we. We hold as a Nation increased by $300 million.

[Freddy]

So I did flag that to her. It's like, dude, you, you've made, you made 300 million in a week without doing anything. Just.

[Unknown]

I mean, it's just. It's just kind of insane. And, and what just continues to sort of boggle my mind is that, again, I get it. And as we Discussed earlier. I have empathy for people that don't get bitcoin right away. I didn't. So it would be quite hypocritical of me to think that somebody else should. Yeah, exactly. Most of us didn't. That's okay. What I do take issue with is when you have an organization, a policy institute like you guys are running with the UK Bitcoin Policy Institute, and you have people who are basically feeding you information, like really good high signal information, and you're getting fed all of this, it's delivered to you on a silver platter. And yet you still, at that point, it's a choice to remain willfully ignorant in my mind. And that's what I think is. It's frustrating. And we see this in the US too. We have a better situation obviously than the uk, but still you see it. I mean, you still have your Elizabeth Warrens, let's say she's a. She's a special breed.

[Freddy]

Yeah. Even before I started I started work on actual policy, I was already being as irritating to Elizabeth Warren as I could, actually. Interesting. Something you mentioned earlier made me remember this. The question of whether ideas exist in.

[Peter]

The ether and you reach out and find them.

[Freddy]

So my kids and I, in response to Elizabeth Warren's original piece of drafting, I think, which would have designated every.

[Peter]

Node runner as a money service business.

[Freddy]

So my kids and I, we played a little game one Christmas to illustrate how stupid that idea was. Because my kids and I, we built a small Raspberry PI together long time ago now, three, four years. And then we run a node on it. And it was a computer science project. Particularly my younger daughter, she likes building stuff. We build computers together. And I thought that was a fun project for us to do together.

[Unknown]

That's awesome.

[Freddy]

It was, it was awesome. And then this Christmas, we, we, I.

[Peter]

Put a 0 and a 1 on.

[Freddy]

Either side of a coin and we flipped it 256 times, generated this huge binary number, converted to hexadecimals, generated a private key, and then set up a wallet. I then put $10 of Bitcoin in it and deleted the wallet. And I said to the kids, right.

[Peter]

You have to recreate.

[Freddy]

This is your, this is your Christmas treasure hunt. You've got to recreate the steps that we just did. And then, then you get the bitcoin at the end and they did it. It took them like three weeks to like work through everything we'd done. And then I put a little video of it up on, on Twitter saying, you know, Elizabeth Warren, this is completely stupid.

[Peter]

Are you going to say that my.

[Freddy]

Children flipping a coin in my living room are a money service business? Your legislation is absolutely absurd. It just makes, I mean, I think to your point, that's one of the things that frustrates me so much. If you, you may have original opinions, but unless you test those, unless you.

[Peter]

Test your priors against objective reality, how.

[Freddy]

Can you ever move on or achieve a greater level of understanding?

[Unknown]

Amen. And I mean there's the flip side of this, which is, and we've forestalled this a bit on the US side, but I know there's just speaking of CBDCs, which I view as kind of the antithesis of Bitcoin, CBDCs are peak fiat, all the worst parts of fiat. Made even worse without the only decent part of fiat, which is the ability to anonymously exchange cash. That's the one good thing that fiat still has going for it. That's great, but let's take that away. Let's give money an expiration date. Let's just make it a government coupon essentially that we can track and surveil and you know, keep a, keep an eye on you to make sure you're not stepping out of line and shut you off from the system at any time. But I saw the, the Big Brother Watch report that just come out. Can you, can you talk about that a little bit? Is the UK government, so they're, they're planning to pilot a digital pound. What's the situation there? Is there a good pushback against that as well?

[Freddy]

There is. So the situation is not as dire as it may appear in the United Kingdom.

[Peter]

So again, delving a little bit into, into UK politics.

[Freddy]

So like most countries, the United Kingdom.

[Peter]

Is considering a digital power, the cbdc. Ultimately, I think a lot of these ideas stem from Facebook's creation of the.

[Freddy]

Diem or Libra coin, which made a lot of central banks shit the bed a few years ago, you know, including.

[Peter]

The Fed before the Trump administration. And that really led to a lot of the efforts that we see today to create central bank digital currencies. Now there's a bit of crossover between the BP UK work and Big Brother Watch. We've collaborated loosely in the past to feedback to the bank of England.

[Freddy]

We actually got together, we got more.

[Peter]

Than 50,000 responses from the public and.

[Freddy]

Other organizations sent into the bank of England, the majority of them negative, effectively.

[Peter]

Saying people do not want this stuff.

[Freddy]

And these are the reasons why I wrote a very long piece on it.

[Peter]

Which is still on our website.

[Freddy]

Big Brother Watch sent in a piece as well.

[Peter]

So Big Brother Watcher, an institution that.

[Freddy]

Pushes for individual liberty, privacy rights, freedom.

[Peter]

To transact and so on.

[Freddy]

So there's a good deal of crossover between our work and their work. We know the team there, we collaborate with them and also actually collaborate with Alex Gladstein's team at the Human Rights.

[Peter]

Foundation on the same ideas. So the fundamental principle here is the freedom to transact. You and I should have the unfettered.

[Freddy]

Ability to transact freely for any, for.

[Peter]

Any lawful purpose and no one should.

[Freddy]

Be able to stop that. So the. I was at, I was in Parliament like a year and a half ago.

[Peter]

On this and then again this week.

[Freddy]

And there's actually a lot of, a.

[Peter]

Lot of pushback in Parliament against this. Not all parliamentarians are completely on board.

[Freddy]

With this and the.

[Peter]

Again being slightly geeky for a second.

[Freddy]

So if a political. Sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm a geek at heart. So I have to like go down.

[Unknown]

These rabbit holes, put your sorries in a sack and throw them into, throw.

[Walker]

Them into the river.

[Freddy]

Oh, awesome. So when I. When a political party elected the United Kingdom, they have a manifesto when they're, when they're competing for. So when they're doing, going through their.

[Peter]

Hustings and so on during the election, they, they have a series of, of.

[Freddy]

Things, of items that are in the.

[Peter]

Manifesto which they are campaigning on.

[Freddy]

And there's a convention in the United Kingdom which states that if something is.

[Peter]

In the manifesto, then the House of.

[Freddy]

Lords won't block it. Now, the way that laws are made in the United Kingdom, the laws need.

[Peter]

To pass first the House of Commons.

[Freddy]

And then the House of Lords and.

[Peter]

Then they receive Royal Assent from the King.

[Freddy]

Brilliant and ridiculous at the same time.

[Walker]

Royal assent, wow.

[Peter]

No kings.

[Freddy]

So the.

[Peter]

Interestingly for this Parliament, a CBDC wasn't in the manifesto. So that the first useful thing to note is that at least until 2029.

[Freddy]

This is creating CBDC was not a commitment of the current government, which is a good thing.

[Peter]

There's a lot of opposition, particularly in the House of Lords, towards creating a cbdc, not least from a former Governor of the bank of England who is now a Lord, Mervyn King.

[Freddy]

The Lords released a brilliant report a couple of years ago which call CBDCs.

[Peter]

A solution in search of a problem.

[Freddy]

And there's a lot of debate. It's actually if anyone's interested, it's worth.

[Peter]

Reading the transcript of that whole debate.

[Freddy]

If anyone has any time to do so. There's pushback From Mervyn King, there's pushback.

[Peter]

From another Lord, Lord Desai. Lord Desai is very worried about access.

[Freddy]

To cash for the unbanked, for those who can't pass KYC and so on. It's an important problem. The latest data from our financial regulator.

[Peter]

In the UK shows that we have.

[Freddy]

At least a million people in the UK who still don't have a bank account, million adults. So those people wouldn't be able to.

[Peter]

Pass KYC to get a bank account.

[Freddy]

Can'T pass KYC to use the cbdc. So there's a lot. First thing to note, I think, is.

[Peter]

There'S a lot of pushback, definitely in.

[Freddy]

The Lords, also in the Commons as well. And the second key thing to note is that because of that pushback, that that creates a reasonable firebreak between where.

[Peter]

We are now and between the creation of a cbdc.

[Freddy]

Because the bank of England act, the piece of legislation that gives the bank.

[Peter]

Of England its powers, doesn't allow the.

[Freddy]

Bank of England actually to issue money.

[Peter]

To the public in the form that.

[Freddy]

A CBDC would require. And this previous government acknowledged this. In fact, I've got documentation from them that says we wouldn't effectively be able.

[Peter]

To create a CBDC without passing a.

[Freddy]

New piece of legislation. And my personal opinion, I think the.

[Peter]

Law would back this up, is that.

[Freddy]

It would be very difficult to get.

[Peter]

That piece of legislation passed in the first place.

[Freddy]

And secondly, you have to wonder what on earth is going to be the.

[Peter]

Purpose of a CBDC other than financial repression?

[Freddy]

And people don't like that. And the more, the more that people.

[Peter]

Learn about the cbdc, the less they like it.

[Freddy]

So there's a real need in the.

[Peter]

UK at the moment, and probably in.

[Freddy]

The US as well, to let your representatives know that you don't want this.

[Peter]

And you don't like it, and if.

[Freddy]

People vote for it, you're going to vote them out. And politicians need to remember that they work for us. They don't. We, as we said earlier, we're a representative democracy. They need to represent our views and our desires in Parliament, not the other way around.

[Unknown]

Do you? I mean, I agree. The sad thing is it feels like without radical change, whether that be in the US or in the UK or anywhere, that is just something that we continue to say and to shout from the rooftops, but that never actually really happens because the incentive structure is so broken. I mean, you know. You know what I mean? And I don't mean to sound doomery, but you get to a point where you just realize how Entrenched these systems are. You know, if you're like you and I, you'd probably say, well, this ultimately comes back to a, you know, a broken incentive system driven by a broken monetary system. And is there anything that's ever, you know, like what really breaks this? What, what, you know, what, what stops this train, if anything, you know, and, and you know, is, is that something you're, you're hopeful for? You mentioned that the UK is at this inflection point. Is that an inflection point where there starts to be enough unrest, enough dissatisfaction on behalf of the populace that you actually see them start to demand change? Or is this one of those things where sometimes I think change is really real, change is forced from without, it's forced from a parallel system versus happening from within because the existing system doesn't have an incentive to change itself.

[Freddy]

You know, I think that's very profound.

[Peter]

And actually fundamentally true. No one who benefits from the existing.

[Freddy]

System will ever try to change it. And again, drawing from my own personal experience of living in two essentially failed and failing societies, what you tend to see, and again, looking at previous examples, what you tend to see is a regime that hangs on to the advantages.

[Peter]

Of the collapsing system.

[Freddy]

So in Syria, I lived under the rule of President Assad's father and that.

[Peter]

Was already a failing society.

[Freddy]

And then it became even more so.

[Peter]

After Assad Sr. Died. But you still have a situation where.

[Freddy]

The regime has enormous power but, you know, basic services are no longer functioning and people are beginning to have to.

[Peter]

Take things into their own hands again.

[Freddy]

And it's interesting to be that we're.

[Peter]

Beginning to see that in the United Kingdom now I mentioned earlier, our road's not functioning.

[Freddy]

There's a huge amount of shoplifting in stores. You know, it's very, very difficult to see a doctor. It's not many people are noticing this at the moment, but fundamentally this is.

[Peter]

This is how complex societies collapse.

[Freddy]

I know a lot of, a lot of people may have a fantasy about some kind of, you know, I don't know, 12 monkey style collapse where you end up, you know, wearing leather clothes and wandering around on the rooftops and.

[Peter]

Just shooting lions and stuff.

[Freddy]

That tends not to happen. What you see is a, it's a gradual in shittening of everything. You know, your roads stop functioning. There stops being gas or petrol in your, in your fuel stations.

[Peter]

Things get harder to buy in the stores.

[Freddy]

You know, maybe your school stops functioning so the parents have to pay more to keep the roof fixed or to pay the teacher salaries and These things.

[Peter]

Happen at a slow pace, but over time.

[Freddy]

Then you look, you look back 20.

[Peter]

Years and think, oh, shit, you know.

[Freddy]

20 years ago, I used to be able to see a doctor and my roads weren't full of potholes. But now I'm going out and I'm.

[Peter]

Filling in potholes myself on my road.

[Freddy]

And I'm repairing my own car and I'm brewing biodiesel in my backyard because I've got a. You know, this is how fundamentally how complex societies collapse. And, you know, I, I don't want.

[Peter]

To crow here, but I have seen.

[Freddy]

It happen twice before and more so in Zimbabwe. You know, in Zimbabwe, there was a great meme actually before memes really existed, which was, you know, we'll. Don't worry, we'll make.

[Peter]

We'll make a plan. You'll always make a plan.

[Freddy]

You know, everything may go to shit, but you're still going to make a plan and you're going to be okay because, you know, because you're a bore and it's going to be fine. And this, I think, although a lot of people haven't realized it yet, is.

[Peter]

Kind of where the UK is heading at the moment.

[Freddy]

And a significant reason for this is the gigantic, I mean, dragging it slightly back to Bitcoin.

[Peter]

The gigantic issue that I see personally.

[Freddy]

Is that the, the liabilities of the.

[Peter]

State are so great now that it is impossible for the state to fund them.

[Freddy]

And I know in the United States.

[Peter]

The data, the Debt is about 37 trillion.

[Freddy]

In the UK, it's about 3 trillion already. Our annual payments, not to pay down.

[Peter]

The debt, but just on interest payments, are bigger than defense and bigger than education.

[Freddy]

For us, they sit only behind welfare and pensions. And at the current rate of acceleration, God knows it's not going to be too long before they're the biggest expense in the country. And that's just unsustainable.

[Unknown]

Goes back to Lyn Alden's nothing stops this train meme because I think will go down as one of the top economic memes, not the top economic meme of this century. It continues to be proven true.

[Walker]

But that's the thing.

[Unknown]

It seems like people who are in government, well, I would think that they know this. They should know this at least. They should see the basically unsustainable path that everyone is on. But I feel like there's just kind of this tacit acknowledgment that we're like, well, what else are we supposed to do? Nothing stops this train. The only thing we can do is continue to debase the currency because anything else is going to cause total system collapse. And we don't want that on our watch. At least wait until we're out and we've gotten ours from the system and then we can maybe have some total system collapse. But it seems to me that more and more governments will be forced to come to the realization that holding Bitcoin as a nation state is probably the only way they're going to be able to actually have a functioning society in the decades to come. Now you can think what you will about. Well, I don't think that governments should be holding Bitcoin. Bitcoin's for the individuals. And it's like, yeah, actually bitcoin is for anyone. It doesn't matter. Bitcoin doesn't care. That's the whole point. If bitcoin could care, it wouldn't be Bitcoin and then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Bitcoin is winning. This is what it looks like when something becomes, starts becoming a dominant monetary asset and store of value and eventually medium exchange a unit of account. Of course everyone's going to want to use it because it's the best. If it wasn't the best, they wouldn't want to use it. And again, we're back full circle. So putting that aside, I always like to kind of add that disclaimer because some people think, you know, again, I don't want the US Government. It doesn't matter what you want. Doesn't.

[Freddy]

I agree with you. You know, I, I'm, I mean, my, our message into the UK is effectively, if you weren't holding the 61,000 Bitcoin, we would, we would be indifferent. I don't, but I completely agree with you. I don't want governments to hold it, but I think it's inevitable if bitcoin is successful. Money.

[Unknown]

Yep, exactly. And so, you know, but the, the thing is, it seems like again, most governments that we already know what Germany did with it, perhaps UK is in the same path. What, as a, as a policy institute. What are you guys like, is this what you're most focused on right. Right now? Is it some of these other things, some of these other, you know, let's say, guidances that you've given to the Reform Party. Where, where is your key focus right now? What do you all view as the, the most important thing for, let's say, Bitcoin, Bitcoin adoption, Bitcoin holders, whatever it may be in, in the uk?

[Freddy]

Good question. So we probably have a couple of key Limbs.

[Peter]

So I think first, firstly, we want.

[Freddy]

To make it as easy as possible for everyone in the UK to hold, use and transact in Bitcoin as possible. And so within that are wrapped up.

[Peter]

Ideas around it being CGT exempt if being used for payments, a holding period, after which it becomes EGT exempt, and so on. And the general point there is that most economists will agree that a greater velocity of money in the economy is.

[Freddy]

Good and that increases growth, that increases.

[Peter]

Enterprise, it increases the ability for people to use their monies they see fit in a productive economy.

[Freddy]

So there are really no downsides in.

[Peter]

Increasing the velocity of money in the economy. And as a sidebar to that is.

[Freddy]

The point that although the government has.

[Peter]

The CGT rules in place, they don't.

[Freddy]

Seem to get a huge amount of money out of that, mainly because either people hoddle or they don't declare. So they may have a CGT rule in place, but they're not getting any tax out of it.

[Peter]

Second is around the freedom to transact.

[Freddy]

And that ties in with the.

[Peter]

The fact that no one should be.

[Freddy]

Denied access to banking services and access to exchanges if they want to move.

[Peter]

Money from Fiat to Bitcoin or Bitcoin.

[Freddy]

To Fiat or have their account closed because they happen to have transferred money.

[Peter]

To Coinbase or to Coincorner, for example. Actually, shout out to Coincorner. They did ask a question underneath your tweet.

[Freddy]

Coincorner are obviously my favorite bitcoin exchange in the uk.

[Peter]

So shout out to Molly and her questionnaires. And then thirdly is really the fact.

[Freddy]

That Bitcoin is obviously currently held by the government. They need to learn how to use it and to do so on behalf of the nation.

[Peter]

An additional point is, and you mentioned curtailment earlier, which is an interesting point.

[Freddy]

For the uk, maybe worth spending a second on that.

[Peter]

We have a large number of renewable energy generation plants in the uk, and.

[Freddy]

I'm sure you know and your listeners will know that an interesting thing about renewable generation is that it's obviously an.

[Peter]

Intermittent supply and sometimes it produces more.

[Freddy]

Electricity than the grid needs and sometimes.

[Peter]

More electricity than the grid can take. You can either divert that to battery.

[Freddy]

Storage or curtail it, which is effectively when the plants get paid to spin.

[Peter]

Idly or to turn off.

[Freddy]

At the moment, that curtailment cost in.

[Peter]

The UK is paid by.

[Freddy]

By me, basically by all of the users of electricity. It's added to our bills. It's one of the reasons we have.

[Peter]

The highest industrial electricity costs in the world and one of the highest domestic costs in the world.

[Freddy]

And as you know, if you have.

[Peter]

Really high power costs, that has an.

[Freddy]

Impact on literally everything else in your country. You're not going to develop new steel plants, you're not going to build new weapons, you're not going to develop AI, you're not going to build new steel, new factories, new nuclear. You're not effectively high energy costs throttle everything else. There are no countries in the world which have a low amount of energy usage and a high amount of, and.

[Peter]

A high standard of living, basically.

[Freddy]

So it's a real problem. And the Labour government seem completely resistant.

[Peter]

To engaging with us on this particular point.

[Freddy]

One of our contacts, ex journalist from Coindesk, he spoke directly to Ed Miliband.

[Peter]

On this particular issue around the integration of bitcoin miners with renewable energy generation plants and how they could provide a commercial solution for that wasted power.

[Freddy]

Miliband shut him down and said, but bitcoin is useless. So that's the kind of attitude we have from the government at the moment.

[Walker]

That's just so frustrating because here you've.

[Unknown]

Got this problem which everyone would acknowledge is a problem. It's costing. However, my, like the recent figures I saw was like over a billion, over.

[Walker]

A billion a year.

[Unknown]

It's a lot of money and that's being born by the taxpayers and consumers of energy, as you said, like throttling the economy. You have this solution sitting right there. You, you have the, these, this incredible technology that can literally take all of that energy that you're otherwise just wasting and turn it into the hardest money that has ever existed.

[Freddy]

It's like magic.

[Unknown]

And instead you say, well, but it's not good for anything.

[Walker]

It's good for the literal problem that.

[Unknown]

You have right here. This thing we're discussing. It's good. I mean, it's good for many other things, but it literally solves your problem. And then to say, no, sorry, it's just not good for anything. That is truly sad. It's sad to see that you have.

[Walker]

A solution staring you in the face.

[Unknown]

And you say, no, I'm sorry, I just can't see what it'd be good for.

[Freddy]

No, this is, this is amazed to your point earlier. You, you have some empathy with people.

[Peter]

Who may not understand it.

[Freddy]

You know, you and I, I didn't understand it when we first encountered it. I had many touch points before I finally took another look at it. And, you know, my eventual touch point was, why hasn't this thing died yet? I thought it was going to die like five years ago.

[Peter]

Why is it still around.

[Freddy]

And that was purely in the spirit of mild curiosity. It's the lack of. And actually, you know what? I don't have a good answer to this. It's the complete lack of curiosity that I completely fail to understand. And perhaps it's just because you and I are very, very different people from the kind of people who go into government. Maybe they genuinely are so different that we couldn't get on with them at a party.

[Unknown]

Do you think we'll start to see in, you know, around the world, let's say, but maybe specifically in the. In the UK here, do you think we'll start to see a lot more. You know, there's. There's a new generation coming up, right? The old guard. What is it? Progress advances one funeral at a time. Again, I'm just to clarify for the UA or UK censors out there, you know, I'm not suggesting violence. I'm suggesting peaceful and natural cause based. Passing on.

[Freddy]

Just wanted to be Planck quote originally.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Don'T worry about the senses.

[Freddy]

That's a legitimate astrophysicist talking there.

[Unknown]

Okay, so they'll let that one slide. Just wanted to make sure.

[Freddy]

Just fall back on Planck.

[Unknown]

Yeah, that's perfect. But do we start to see, is that really what happens? This change that we're talking about, this acceptance of bitcoin as the only thing that's going to save your nation, whatever nation, that may be the only thing that's going to save you as an individual, the only thing that's going to save your household is that something that has to just happen naturally through the passing of time? As these folks who learned about bitcoin too late in life and to your point earlier said, I hate that whatever that is, it's new and it's scary and I don't like it. Is that the only way that we get forward? Do we start to see a new political class come up and a new economic class come up that are bitcoin native or close to it? This youngest generation is now, but we've got a lot of hardcore bitcoiners out there who dislike the state and want nothing to do with politics. But there's gotta be a lot of them who say, you know what? Somebody has to step up. I just need to like, I need to go and do this. Like that's the only way that things are going to change or is that just a futile endeavor? And again, we just need to let bitcoin do its thing from the side, let the existing system implode, come down in Ashes and a new phoenix rises from those ashes down the line.

[Freddy]

There's such a complex question.

[Unknown]

I know.

[Freddy]

Again, no, no, it's a. It's a really good question. And again, I'm not sure I'm going to have a clear answer to that because there are so many different pieces to unpack there. I mean, one is addressing your last point. Are we going to see more people.

[Peter]

Rising up who want to do something about it? I hope so.

[Freddy]

One problem we've had in the UK is, as I mentioned, there are 7 million of us in the UK, but not many of us are out there in public. And I have to say, I was.

[Peter]

A non for a really long time.

[Freddy]

And I'm still uncomfortable about being out in public. And my aim over the longer term.

[Peter]

Is to make myself irrelevant and to.

[Freddy]

Disappear once again into anonymity. I don't particularly enjoy being public.

[Peter]

I'm naturally quite an introvert.

[Freddy]

And I'm not necessarily doing this because I enjoy it.

[Peter]

I'm doing it because I think it's important.

[Freddy]

And also no one else was doing it. You know, we had a lot of shitcoiner advocacy in the uk. We didn't have any bitcoin advocacy until we started this group. So for whatever reason, I feel it needed to be done.

[Peter]

And I hope at some point I'm.

[Freddy]

Going to be able to pass it.

[Peter]

On to someone else.

[Freddy]

Hopefully some of the 7 million that.

[Peter]

We know that we have in the.

[Freddy]

UK will be willing to step up and to do this. To your point around realizing that you need to do something, I really hope.

[Peter]

That it's going to happen.

[Freddy]

Obviously every podcast needs to have some.

[Peter]

Kind of reference to the.

[Freddy]

To the Roman Empire, naturally. Well, actually being completely technical, this is.

[Peter]

This is pre Empire. This is to the Roman Republic.

[Freddy]

Full disclosure, I studied classics at university, so I have a certain affinity for this.

[Unknown]

So you think about the Roman Empire or the Roman Republic, like many times a day then?

[Freddy]

Not just many. Many times a day.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Freddy]

Not in one. So have you heard of Cincinnatus or Kincanatus, depending on your pronunciation?

[Walker]

Yes.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Freddy]

So he was.

[Peter]

He's held up as one of the prime examples of Roman honor.

[Freddy]

So the Romans had an interesting system.

[Peter]

Pre Empire, they had a consular system where they would have effectively two heads.

[Freddy]

Of state who are elected for one year at a time, and they would.

[Peter]

Serve as dual consuls, one domestic and one foreign. So one would be responsible for the. For the outer reaches of the empire.

[Freddy]

And the other would govern at home in Rome.

[Peter]

But in times of crisis, they could set aside the consular system and appoint a dictator, a dictator for a short.

[Freddy]

Period of time, who would then step.

[Peter]

Down after the period of crisis was over. So the interesting thing about Julius Caesar was he was appointed dictator for life.

[Freddy]

Which eventually became imperator General or emperor.

[Peter]

Under Augustus Primus and Gepatres first among equals.

[Freddy]

So King Cannotus is held up as.

[Peter]

This incredible example of Roman virtue. He had retired from public life, he.

[Freddy]

Was running his farm and the con, the, the, the, the.

[Peter]

The Republic had had a period of crisis and they came to him and they said we, we want to appoint you dictator. And he agreed to come and, and serve as dictator for a short period of time.

[Freddy]

And then when the crisis was over, he set aside his office, he resigned.

[Peter]

His roles and he went back to his farm.

[Freddy]

So he, he's held up as this incredible. And you know, he, he's an aspirational figure. For me. That, that's the, that's the kind of.

[Peter]

Person I think we, we. There's a job that needs to be.

[Freddy]

Done and some of us need to.

[Peter]

Step up and do it.

[Freddy]

And then when it's done, you step.

[Peter]

Back and you vanish.

[Freddy]

That's kind of where I would like us all to be. But there are a lot more kinkanati out there and I'd like to exhort them to come forward and be part of this because I think it's incredibly important and I'm fundamentally an optimist. I don't think that collapse is inevitable. I don't believe that you need to do not go gentle into that good.

[Peter]

Night Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[Freddy]

Don't just sit back and say that decline is inevitable.

[Peter]

We have agency, we can go out.

[Freddy]

I mean your entire nation is an.

[Peter]

Example of this to the rest of us.

[Freddy]

You don't need to sit back and.

[Peter]

Let the king tell you what to do.

[Freddy]

Although technically in the UK we do. But I was talking about this with.

[Peter]

Peter the last time I spoke with him.

[Freddy]

You can start small and for me, Bitcoin is both a top down movement.

[Peter]

And a bottom up movement.

[Freddy]

Individual people realizing the government isn't going to come and save them and preserving their wealth in Bitcoin is a valid.

[Peter]

And valuable thing that you can do. But at the same time we should.

[Freddy]

Also engage with our elected representatives and.

[Peter]

Try and educate them to understand the same thing.

[Freddy]

I jotted down something while you were speaking earlier. Why don't our elected officials see this? And I think for some of us.

[Peter]

In the UK the problem is solely talking about bitcoin if you ask them.

[Freddy]

Would you like, we have the sovereign debt problem, nothing stops his train.

[Peter]

We should hedge ourselves with a pristine.

[Freddy]

Form of collateral that no other country can debase or dilute. Without mentioning Bitcoin, they say, well, that sounds brilliant. Well, let's get some of that pristine collateral. And then once the idea is planted, then the specifics kind of sold themselves.

[Unknown]

I like that approach. It's like just get them to agree and then mentioned, you know, it's the foot in the door versus the door in the face of bitcoin. Because there is a lot of baggage, for better or worse, that comes along that's associated with bitcoin. There's been a lot of, you know, there's been a lot of terrible reporting on it for many years. Some of that's improving. It's been a lot of, you know, just, let's say, bad information out there. And yes, there's, you know, do your own research, like, sure, but a lot of the folks that are actually in charge of making the laws don't do their own research. They rely on other people to do it for them. And so they need to be presented with it. And maybe you need to, you know, foot in the door of them and, you know, just a sly, roundabout way, let's say, you know, get that, get that Trojan horse through the door.

[Freddy]

Yeah.

[Peter]

If it, if it worked for Hayek.

[Freddy]

Then it could work for us as well.

[Unknown]

Exactly. Well, Fred, I want to be conscious of your time here because I know you have a stop. Is there anything we didn't get a chance to cover? We've gone down several different rabbit holes. Anything else either with your work at the Policy Institute or just generally that you wanted to make sure we covered, or did we do an okay job?

[Freddy]

I think I'm pretty happy, actually. We covered a lot of stuff that I wasn't expecting to cover. I didn't expect to talk about the, the later Roman Republic, but, you know, I'm glad that we got a chance to do that and, you know, maybe some people will dig up to dig up the history of Kinkanatus and.

[Unknown]

I hope so. I. I hope so. Where, where do you want to send people? I'll link everything in the show notes as well, so people can go check out the work you're doing. And is there anything that they can do to, to, you know, if you are a UK citizen or just a citizen of somewhere else in the world, what can people do to support the work that you guys continue to do?

[Freddy]

You're very kind. So you'll have a link to our website. That's bitcoinpolicy.uk I'm most active on Twitter.

[Peter]

Or X. I'm just ready new.

[Freddy]

So most of the work we publish, I will also publish on my own personal Twitter as well. If you are in the uk, keep.

[Peter]

An eye on our website, particularly the work portfolio. So we are, as I mentioned earlier, we are shortly going to be having some template letters for you to reach.

[Freddy]

Out to your MPs, whether it be in terms of understanding bitcoin or financial freedom or pushing back against CBDCs. We built an API that will enable you to pull up your representative's email very easily and very quickly and easily.

[Peter]

Copy that template and send it into your mp.

[Freddy]

And like I said earlier, top down and bottom up. So the top down movements MPs need to understand there's a big voter block here and there's a lot of us.

[Peter]

And we're motivated and we care a.

[Freddy]

Lot and eventually this will become an election issue for them. That's probably my main ask. So thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

[Unknown]

Absolutely. I hope that we can do this in person sometime. It was a good opportunity to meet you in the flesh in Vegas. And yeah, I'm going to be in our own nation's capital here. Not that Vegas is the capital, but just speaking of policy stuff, because our US BDC Policy Institute is doing a summit here. I think it's next week, 25th, 26th.

[Freddy]

You're supposed to be coming to that. Very sadly, I can't make it. It's my last week in my fiat job.

[Unknown]

Ah, okay.

[Freddy]

Very sadly.

[Unknown]

Does that mean you're moving to bitcoin Focus full time or another fiat job as well?

[Freddy]

This is a bit of a spoiler, actually. Yeah, I am moving full time into bitcoin, so.

[Walker]

All right.

[Freddy]

From August.

[Walker]

Wow.

[Unknown]

Well, congratulations then. That's fantastic.

[Freddy]

Thank you. I'll be glad.

[Unknown]

Wow. Wow. Big moment. But now I'm so much more bullish on bitcoin policy in the uk. Succeeding, mate.

[Freddy]

Thank you. Well, look, I've been a fan and an admirer of your podcast for a long time and also of your videos. So thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

[Unknown]

The pleasure was mine and I look forward to doing it again. Hopefully with some great updates about shockingly positive of advancements in the UK's stance on Bitcoin policy. I'm an optimist as well.

[Peter]

Brilliant.

[Freddy]

We should all.

[Unknown]

Amen to that. Thanks so much, Freddy.

[Freddy]

Thanks again. All the best.

[Walker]

And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on [e-mail] walker and this [e-mail] on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Tcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links and head to substack.comwalkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.