← The Peter McCormack Show
The Peter McCormack Show
Max Keiser & Stacy Herbert on the Death of Paper Money and why Bitcoin is so Important - WBD024
00:51:08
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- [00:01]
Max Keiser
Welcome to the what Bitcoin did podcast.
- [00:06]
Peter McCormack
Hi there. How are you all? Have you all had a great week? Are you all enjoying the football? Are you watching the World Cup? I am. I am glued to every single game and I think it's pretty clear now that England are going to win it. I think we're obviously playing the best football in the entire tournament. We pushed Colombia aside, we're going to crush Sweden this weekend and it will be two more wins before we are crowned champions. So I'm sorry for any of you disappointed, hoping your team will win, but we're going to win it. So, on to this week's interview. I have an absolute cracker. I've got Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert. And if you've been into bitcoin long enough, you will probably know Max from the Kaiser Report, which he recalls alongside Stacey. I met them a while ago when I was in Raleigh, in North Carolina, interviewing Jamison Lopp. I met them at the Jimmy Song meetup and I said a quick hello, asked if we could do an interview, and I've been pestering them pretty much since talking to Stacy and luckily they were in London. They'd been touring around Europe and agreed to meet up with me. I was a bit late. I am very sorry about that. There was a problem in the taxi. Half of London had been shut down, so I got there a bit late. But we did manage to record a good 45 minutes. So, yeah, I hope you enjoy this. We get into some pretty juicy topics. We discuss Brexit, which Max and Stacey both have quite strong views on. And also, you know what, they're quite critical of the British government and the monarchy. And if you follow them on Twitter, they say some pretty outrageous things. So, yeah, I did want to meet them, but they do occasionally overstep. Mark and Max did do that once, which really pissed me off. He thinks Marmite is disgusting and I.
- [01:45]
Stacy Herbert
Completely disagree with him and I had to take this up with him.
- [01:48]
Peter McCormack
So, yeah, I hope you enjoyed the interview. It's a pretty cool one as ever.
- [01:52]
Stacy Herbert
What am I going to say?
- [01:53]
Peter McCormack
You know what I'm going to say. I'm going to ask you to support the show. Please, please do. It's very, very important. We have seen a big boost this week. I'm now part of the let's Talk Bitcoin Network. So anyone listening to there, I do hope you enjoy the show. I do ask this, though, every week. Can you leave me a review on it? It supports the show. It helps increase reach. If people are looking For Bitcoin podcasts, then it helps it come higher. So, yes, if you're happy to leave a review that's really useful and I know some of you do. I get emails from people telling me they've left reviews and I am grateful for each and every one. So thank you for that. Also, you can follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Steemit, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Medium. My handle on everyone is otbitcoindid. And if you reach out to me, if you want to talk to me, I will pretty much reply to anyone as long as you don't want me to promote some nonsense ICO, please check out my website. It's www.whabbitcoindid.com. i have training resource on there, I have a blog, I have a newsletter. So if you register there, you'll get my updates. And please do share the show out with your friends. I see it shared on Twitter quite regularly and that's really cool. It's really helpful and it gets these interviews into a wider audience. So, yeah, but if you don't mind doing that, that's cool. Okay, so onto the interview. I hope you enjoy it, as ever. If you have any questions, do feel free to reach out to me. My email address is hellohatbitcoindid.com and if you have any, I will most likely reply to you. Okay, onto the interview. Hi, Max. Hi, Stacey. Thank you for coming to meet me here in London today. I don't think there's a better place for us to start than talk about Brexit. So, Max, it would be great to hear your perspective on this.
- [03:29]
Max Keiser
Makes sense or it's not consistent with what we've seen in the eu. The way the EU treated Greece, for example, is the same way they're treating Great Britain. So, you know, they're quite nasty in their negotiations. So economically makes no sense and they are not going to negotiate in good faith. And the UK is at the very most, would end up kind of where they started. There's no win for the UK economically. You can change the color of your passport and it might feel good, but you're not going to have any economic benefit whatsoever as a result of Brexit.
- [04:06]
Stacy Herbert
So why do you think we've ended up in this position where it's happened and the political elite have allowed it?
- [04:12]
Max Keiser
Well, you know, David Cameron was kind of pushed into a corner where he pushed the referendum out into the future and then he was pushed to do it and then he did a simple 50% or 51% majority, which seemed a bit strange and I think it was quite by accident. But if you give people in the uk, particularly in the north, an opportunity to put two fingers up to David Cameron, they're going to do it, you know, because he's part of the establishment and everyone outside of London, you know, there's a huge risk between London and everyone else and the rest of the country was like, hey, sawed off, David Cameron, you know, we're going to vote, we know you want this, so we're going to. So it was all very personal and it felt great for a week or so, but it doesn't make any economic sense.
- [04:55]
Stacy Herbert
Do you think there's a chance it won't happen?
- [04:59]
Max Keiser
I think that there is a lot of pressure to postpone it. And look, I mean, governments like to become bigger. That's one of the things governments like to do. And Brexit means hiring another 20 or 30,000 bureaucrats in the United Kingdom to deal with this. So government loves this. It completely repudiates everything that was talked about over the past 20 years about making government smaller and being more entrepreneurial and we want to reduce the size of government, et cetera, but this just increases the size of government. So the government, to the extent that they like this because it creates a lot more government jobs, they're going to keep hiring people. So, and then in the end they probably will do it because the government, this is a pro government, this is a government work program for government bureaucrats and they love this kind of work because it's meaningless, it's high pay and they will, they love it.
- [06:02]
Stacy Herbert
Do you not think, though it's kind of obvious that it's like to me as a, I mean, I voted to remain, but it's become more obvious since the vote that it's a bad idea than it was beforehand. Do you not think it's. I don't know if you saw the demonstrations recently, but there's kind of growing pressure against it. I can't see why the political elite have anything to gain from this.
- [06:24]
Max Keiser
There was a huge protest against the Iraq invasion, you know, shock and awe. There was 2 million people in the streets. You know, the biggest post war demonstration ever in this country. But they went ahead and did it. I don't. The public has no agency in this country, in my opinion. They are routinely subjected to the propaganda of the state through the BBC, which is the farthest thing you can possibly get from being impartial. And the public makes do. But they live in a very strict, controlling, authoritarian regime called the British government, slash monarchy.
- [07:03]
Stacy Herbert
So you're not a fan of the UK monarchy or the government or the way we do things here? Or is it this something you've seen across the world? You know, what's a good example for you?
- [07:14]
Max Keiser
Well, I mean, as far as this country goes, I am particularly distasteful of it because of the presence of the monarchy, but that's because I'm American. And you know, we already fought against the monarchy and it's still very fresh in our minds. I was just in France. The revolution is very fresh in their minds. They re quote it all the time. So I just have a historical, you know, combatant attitude toward a monarchy. And so when I meet people who are royalists who actually love the monarchy and the hair on the back of my neck stands up, I feel revolted by it.
- [07:52]
Stacy Herbert
What do you hate about the monarchy? Is it just the fact that it's an unelected rich family, privileged?
- [07:59]
Max Keiser
Because it's the opposite of the Enlightenment? You had monarchy, the Middle Ages, then you had the Enlightenment and you had the rights of man and you had democratically elected governments and the Constitution of the United States, the government by and for the people, which is a novel approach. And so that's the way forward. Going back to the Middle Ages doesn't appeal to me. Although the serfs in the Middle Ages probably live better than the majority of the poor in both the UK and America. But nevertheless, I don't think returning to the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, no matter how good it looks on Game of Thrones, I don't think it's really what is in everyone's best interest.
- [08:43]
Stacy Herbert
Do you not see, though, the Royal Family just as something for tourism?
- [08:47]
Max Keiser
No. Because they own an incredible amount of the global surface of the earth. Something like 30% or so of the land mass on planet Earth is owned by the Royal Family. They have a lot of say in policy, more than people like to really talk about. And they weigh in on all kinds of issues. And certainly through their land owning position, they have incredible sway on the direction of this country. For example, in the banking industry, it's 90% geared toward lending into the property market. They are, in the case of Royal bank of Scotland, they actually have contempt for small businesses. You know, Royal bank of Scotland, notice the word royal. They killed off 30,000 small businesses to chop it up and sell for pieces. That's not entrepreneurial, that's not even democratic. That's feudalism. So you have. It's still very Much alive. So if you're not in the property business or the property ladder, you're considered to be contemptible. And that's a holdover from these land barons and this mentality from the Middle Ages. How.
- [09:59]
Stacy Herbert
How about Marmite? Are we okay to keep that?
- [10:02]
Max Keiser
Well, you know, Marmite is kind of a unique local delicacy that is easily identifiable with Great Britain. So when you say Marmite, there's no place else except Australia with their imitation of Vegemite that I'm aware of that has this food stuff that's made from rancid bar drippings that you spread on toast.
- [10:26]
Stacy Herbert
I can appreciate a lot of what you say, but I thought you stepped over the line with Marmite.
- [10:30]
Max Keiser
That's most of the reaction I get a lot of times is the Marmite's going too far.
- [10:35]
Stacy Herbert
So I know you as a bitcoin activist and a bitcoin fan, and that's obviously where I first came to discover you. But obviously going back in time, on YouTube, I've seen some of your videos pre bitcoin, some of your news interviews. I've seen you argue with bankers. And it seems like you've been some kind of economic activist for a long time. And other people probably don't know that. A lot of people will just know you as Max from the Kaiser Report. So can you tell me, because I don't know. It'd be good for me to know. Can you tell me where this kind of economic activism came from, this fight against the banks, the governments? What's the background here?
- [11:17]
Max Keiser
Well, I was a stockbroker on Wall street for many years. And so I made a lot of friends in high places, wealthy, rich, powerful people. And I don't see any difference between my years as a stockbroker and my years as a financial activist. I'm fighting for different asset classes. Gold, silver, bitcoin, against fiat money, against the same people. The same people are in power as they were then. And so I'm still basically an advocate for my clients. The population of the world that is has would be better off adopting hard money like gold, silver and bitcoin. So I don't see any difference.
- [12:00]
Stacy Herbert
Is that the Aristotle thing? I saw you talk about what represents good money.
- [12:05]
Max Keiser
Aristotle said that good money is fungible, portable, divisible, desirable, and identified gold as being the perfect store of money. Here you've got the bank, the original bank of England, set up by a famous mathematician here in the uk. His name constantly eludes me. The. Not the fellow. Newton. Yes, Isaac Newton. He was a Big gold standard advocate and for similar reasons. And so this has been a thread throughout monetary and economic history. The fiat money system, by the way. Okay, you've got 5,000 years of gold as money. Okay, let's look at the fiat money system. Well, the average lifespan of fiat money, paper money is 27 years, and they've all gone to zero.
- [12:59]
Stacy Herbert
So I saw you talk about that before, actually. Where does that come from?
- [13:02]
Max Keiser
It comes from central bank papers and bank of International Settlements and other banking research entities that do research into paper money and fiat money. And so this data is collated and that, that's what you end up with. Fiat money is it's all gone to zero. None of it has lasted.
- [13:25]
Stacy Herbert
What does go to zero mean, though? Like, if you talk about the current situation, say the US Dollar, The US Dollar, how does that go to zero?
- [13:34]
Max Keiser
Well, historically, during the re, you had the continental. It went to zero. You had the greenback during the civil war, went to zero. The US dollar, current iteration, goes to zero. Against a central bank failure that's cooked into the system at the moment and periodically throughout history, there's always a return to gold. And they say, okay, all the paper money is worthless, like they did at the Bretton Woods Agreement after World War II, and we're going to restart it all. It's going to be based on gold again. And all the paper money is essentially being reassigned a new value. Your current money is worthless. Look at what happened in India recently. They said all those paper notes are worthless. We're going to redo the entire system. Okay, that's another paper money system that went to zero.
- [14:24]
Stacy Herbert
Is that the 500 rupee note they just eliminated or something?
- [14:26]
Unknown
The demonetization?
- [14:28]
Max Keiser
Yeah, so they just declared demonetization. So that's just another example that money went to zero. If you had that money in your pocket, went to zero by my French francs From, you know, 20 years ago, it's not worth anything, are they? Because it went to zero replace with the euro. The euro then would last for a while, probably will also go to zero. It's already under tremendous stress. That's what it means. It means it's. You have paper money and you can't use it anymore because it's just a piece of paper. They replace it with another piece of paper that's good for a while and then that is useless. Meanwhile, the purchasing power keeps eroding and you have this problem with fiat money, which is that it's a horrible store of value.
- [15:09]
Stacy Herbert
And before we just expand on that a bit further, with you as well, Stacy, what's your background, and were you similar to Max before you met him? Were you fighting the banks? Or is this something that since you've become the posh and Becks of the economy.
- [15:26]
Unknown
The posh and Becks.
- [15:27]
Max Keiser
Wow.
- [15:28]
Unknown
Yeah, I worked in Hollywood, so I had always worked in stories, which, by the way, the basic text you read there is also by Aristotle. Aristotle rules Hollywood screenwriting and Hollywood, and Aristotle is the basic framework by which you understand monetary policy. So the guy was smart. But, yeah, I worked in Hollywood, and when I first met Max and he was telling me all these stories about being a banker, it really offended my sense of what was a good story. Like, the bad guy can't win like that over and over without any justice. And I really didn't believe Max at first that these things were possible, that it was there all around me. And then I started reading the Financial Times every day, and they were openly talking about these things. And actually, Noam Chomsky says it's a good way to learn information is read Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, because they're not. They do inform their class of people all these stories that are happening. It's important for them to know, and they're quite open about it. But most people are taught that unless you have an economics degree, unless you're a special person with banking background or any of this stuff, you can't read this stuff. You know, it's only for the elite to look at this. But it's very plain and simple stories they're telling there, and it's pretty shocking. They obfuscate with fancy words like credit default, swap. And you peasants can't understand this, but at the end of the day, they're just simple tools to basically control a lot of the financial system and yet create an illusion of a meritocracy, that it's your fault if you're not winning. It's your fault there's something you're doing wrong. And so I was fascinated by the fact that this was happening all around me, and I somehow did not see it.
- [17:34]
Stacy Herbert
Okay, is there any correlation here between what you were doing in Hollywood and I read about an exchange to do.
- [17:42]
Unknown
With Hollywood Stock Exchange. Yeah.
- [17:44]
Stacy Herbert
Is that. Was that like a meeting of the minds?
- [17:47]
Unknown
No, we met in the south of France. I had actually left Hollywood in 94, moved here, and Max moved to Hollywood in 94.
- [17:57]
Max Keiser
In 1995. Yeah. Then I created the Hollywood Stock Exchange in 1996.
- [18:03]
Stacy Herbert
Right. So you've become more of an activist and more aware since you've met Max, and this has become like a teamwork thing.
- [18:09]
Unknown
I did study economics at UCLA just simply because it was a liberal arts education there. So I had to take mathematics courses, which really put me off. Like, the options were like calculus and geometry and all this stuff that I was like, oh, no, I can't do that. So I took economics. That was one of the options within mathematics. So I did study economics and I knew. And my mother worked at Sherrison, Lehman Hunt. She was a broker. So I did have a bit of background.
- [18:42]
Stacy Herbert
Okay, so ultimately then, your goal here is to make people more aware of what things you think most of the population aren't really aware of.
- [18:51]
Max Keiser
Well, our primary goal is content. We make content.
- [18:55]
Stacy Herbert
But the content has an objective. Right? There's a story behind it.
- [18:59]
Max Keiser
Well, we're journalists and we cover this world, the financial world and economics world. And at the moment, and for the last 15 years, the story has been that it's driven by a very corrupt banking, global banking and central banking system. You know, if the story changes, we'll cover it if it changes. But that hasn't changed in 15 years. I mean, I haven't known it to change in 30 years.
- [19:27]
Unknown
One thing that we do have that no other financial news program has and why I think we kind of stand out is, again, my background in film and working on scripts and working a lot of television products and films, is that one of the basic things about filmmaking is the fewer words you can say is the better, because it's a visual medium, a visual storytelling medium. And juxtaposing images is the ultimate in storytelling. So if you could tell something by just juxtaposing images from one scene to the next, it tells you. It can tell you a lot about the character, about the story. I do that when we look for headlines. I juxtapose headlines. So I tell you everything you need to know by all the data is out there. Thousands of articles and headlines a day, and the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, everything. All these headlines out there, and most news is presented like that headline, headline, headline, headline, headline, headline, headline. And they don't tell you a story. They don't provide any context for you. Where we provide the context of juxtaposing headlines, like, here's a headline from today. Oh, by the way, here's a headline from four years ago. And this is telling you the story of what happened in those four years.
- [20:56]
Stacy Herbert
But there is also, like a naked truth to the way you tell things. There isn't any censorship. You don't hold Back.
- [21:03]
Unknown
No.
- [21:04]
Stacy Herbert
Whereas if you're watching any standard interview on Sky News between a bunch of commentators, anything to do with the economy, it's quite standard. You bring Max in the middle and there's a. You're not afraid to.
- [21:19]
Unknown
Well, they present it. They present it. And all those people in the news, by the way, the people who show up on Sky News, they believe in, it's an elite endeavor, that the economics and finance are for the elites and that the ordinary person cannot possibly understand this. And I think they themselves are also intimidated by these headlines and news that they feel like they don't know what it's about. But it's if, if you understand, you know, if you've ever watched a Martin Scorsese film, I mean that tells you all you need to know about the banking system. It's just ordinary thugs working in an ordinary way. These are not high falutin concepts. And by the way, nobody knows anything. That's one of the basic tenets of what Max and I do as investors is like really nobody knows anything. They might be brilliant economists in their field and win Nobel economics prizes and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, if they knew what they were doing, well, there wouldn't be tens of thousands of textbooks on economics and tens of thousands of new theories coming up all the time because. Well, I thought we already knew what it was all about. Right. But nobody knows any argue with each other. Yeah, and the markets wouldn't crash and recessions wouldn't happen and all these things like if they knew what they were doing.
- [22:41]
Stacy Herbert
Right.
- [22:42]
Unknown
So nobody knows.
- [22:43]
Stacy Herbert
So it kind of makes sense. And I understand now why you discovered and got into Bitcoin. So earlier I see it's like $3 and I understand why that makes sense from your point of view. But then at the same time, how do you feel with the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan now starting to dip their toes into the world of Bitcoin?
- [23:06]
Max Keiser
Well, it was talked about in the early days that as they got more successful it would attract Wall street and attract bankers and central bankers. And the fact is that they can't compete, so they will. Already we've had a few failures where banking consortium have tried to create similar products and similar coins, but they have basically failed. And Bitcoin keeps getting stronger. It's got Now, I think 40,000 quadrillion calculations per second. So that hash rate keeps growing. It's growing at 1,000% a year. It's compounding. So that's a force of nature that cannot be overcome by any bank or group of bankers in the establishment. It's like shoveling sand against the sea. There's nothing that they can do at this point. They are responding to shareholder requests because they have a fiduciary responsibility to respond and pretend like they are going to be competitive. But there is now nothing they can do.
- [24:14]
Stacy Herbert
But they are involved. They have trading desks. Do you fear any, you know, because you talked a lot about manipulation in the gold and silver markets or across all markets. Do you fear that the banks could come in and manipulate the bitcoin markets to its detriment?
- [24:30]
Max Keiser
Well, they're involved in a trading desk which adds liquidity. And so look, Bitcoin is a messaging app that's growing like a technology. Gold is a commodity of which 99% of all of gold ever going to be mined has already been mined. That's a diminishing, wasting, scarce resource that is in short supply. And so there is a lot you can do in the banking sector to manipulate that price. But in the case of bitcoin, you have to look at like Facebook or Google or any other messaging app or technological app that's exploding in growth rates, then devouring the landscape. So Bitcoin is devouring fiat currencies. It will devour probably the Venezuelan currency or the Argentinian currency, One of these currencies as is works its way up the food chain before it devours the British pound or devours the Japanese yen. And it's this what I call a black hole. It's just sucking in all this bad fiat paper. And to be able to manipulate it, it's there is you need to have hash power to manipulate it, which nobody has the hash power. There's no computer system or systems or combination of systems equal to the bitcoin hash power. Now, in the case of gold, you can create paper gold and manipulate gold. It's a lot easier to do that, but you can't. This is where bitcoin shines. That's one of the reasons why it's superior to gold.
- [26:08]
Unknown
And I have to say that banks at the moment, how they manage to always win and why Jamie Dimon's a billionaire and why Lloyd Blankfein is a billionaire, when it's just a mere utility. Really, the banking system is they have asymmetric information. They have private ledgers that only they know whether the gold is there. Only they know whether the commodity is there. Only they know whether the asset is truly there. Whereas bitcoin is a public ledger. And all can see what is happening. There. So it's harder to play games if it's publicly auditable.
- [26:46]
Stacy Herbert
So I interviewed. Do you know Alejandro Mercado?
- [26:51]
Unknown
No.
- [26:52]
Stacy Herbert
He's a guy who's involved. He writes for Caracas Chronicles and he's from Venezuela. He works in crypto as well. I interviewed him recently and he was talking about how bitcoin is being used in Venezuela. Very interesting interview. So do you see the bitcoin takeover starting in basket case countries where the fiat currency is collapsing and then it's spreading across the world in that way? And can you see a world realistically where bitcoin would become the primary currency in a country like the UK or America?
- [27:29]
Max Keiser
Well, the coin is definitely huge in Venezuela, Argentina, and it's also now huge in Africa. So countries across Africa are now using bitcoin and crypto mining because it leapfrogs the entire infrastructure. You don't need a third party, you don't need a central bank. The unbanked, as they're called, can now become banked. And so it's flourishing, it's thriving, and a lot of companies are relocating and there's a lot of jurisdiction shopping where companies in the crypto space are going to countries that are friendly as far as the legal framework. So that's growing. And the legacy system that's concentrated in the uk, US and Japan are going to be the last to get devoured. But devoured they will be.
- [28:22]
Unknown
I would also add that, you know, bitcoin, you're responsible for yourself. It's genuine individual economic sovereignty. And some people prefer to be subjects. They love the queen. They want to be subjects. They don't want to be citizens. Being a citizen, a genuine citizen is a very difficult thing. And it requires always being curious, always learning, always keeping on top of things, always understanding the political and economic reality around you. A lot of people don't want that. It's hard work to be a citizen. Look at the French people. They're annoying, but they're citizens. They fight all the time. They fight their government. Their government is terrified of the people. That's very few countries where you see that the government is actually afraid of the people. So I think there will. There is a global class of people who want economic sovereignty. It's hard work, I have to say. It's been hard work to maintain. All the onus is on you. There's nobody to bail you out. There's nobody who you can offload all the responsibility to and then sue when they fail to, you know, on your behalf. Like you're responsible for Yourself. So whether or not it could become like a country would want something like that or that even most of the citizens would, I don't know or subjects, you know. But certainly it's not going away that it's kind of now what the gold standard used to be in forcing countries around the world to be honest and to develop sound policies. Because if you had a basket case economy, you had to send gold, your national wealth overseas to other countries. They haven't had that discipline since we had the US dollar standard. But now the Bitcoin standard is forcing certainly the global financial system to have to operate in a more sound, responsible way.
- [30:35]
Stacy Herbert
So it's a change in the way money works in the country. But do you automatically see that will then change government and change policy and change the fundamental nature of how a country works?
- [30:47]
Unknown
Well, it provides a better example. So during the 50s, 60s, 70s, because capitalism was so good and strong and providing so much wealth creation and opportunity and fair distribution of wealth, because there was this thing called communism that was an alternative that they had to compete with that system and that ideology here. When you see all this economic sovereignty and people able to totally be free, completely free, no government restriction on what this person can do as an individual, that provides an alternative to see how those people get to live. See how Binance can set up a firm and you know, if, if one country doesn't want them, they move to Malta and they could live and be and do and create any way they want. That provides in this globalized world an alternative that governments have to be a little bit more, a little less abusive to their own population. They have to be a little bit less violent in terms of seizing assets and taking from taxes and things like that. They have to provide a better option for them.
- [32:05]
Stacy Herbert
And using taxes for missiles to attack countries, which is most people's, a lot of people's problems.
- [32:11]
Unknown
Well, as Americans, yes, we obviously are the biggest of all.
- [32:16]
Stacy Herbert
It's funny you say that because one of my questions here was to ask you, is capitalism failing? Because 200 trillion debt in the US and I think I saw that you put it's growing, the Debt is growing 36% quicker than the economy.
- [32:32]
Unknown
Yes, debt's growing faster than the economy.
- [32:36]
Stacy Herbert
Is this where fiat fails?
- [32:38]
Unknown
Well, feudalism always fails. It's just a different form of feudalism. We have a lot of gatekeepers, a lot of oligopolies, a lot of the big four accounting firms, the big four banks, the big four telecom companies. It's always, you know, like I said, they've Got better since the feudal times. And that's why it's kind of a neo feudalism is they pretend it's all meritocracy, really. It's anybody can become rich, anybody can set up a company and be, you know, run the world and be a huge success, be a Steve Jobs. And there are people like Steve Jobs who end up becoming fabulously wealthy and creating a product that everybody wants. But at the end of the day, there's a certain point where they all become oligopolies. Mark Zuckerberg basically started from nothing, from a well off family, obviously from Harvard, but nevertheless, now he has an oligopoly. This is part of the tech giants that run Facebook and Google have had something like 95% of all new ad revenue went through those two companies alone. That becomes a dangerous situation. And it's a form of feudalism. Whether or not it's free markets or capitalism, I don't know. There seems to be some sort of barrier to entry that otherwise, I mean, capitalism and free markets would suggest that all of that profit that Facebook and Google are gaining, it would drive people to compete. Right. They want to grab some of that pie. But why is that pie only being divided between two companies?
- [34:17]
Stacy Herbert
Is it because the barrier to entry is too high now?
- [34:21]
Unknown
I think it is. And you see all this well meaning stuff of like, oh, we need to protect our democracy from all these ideas out there on the Internet and Twitter and I mean, they might say it's the scary Putin guy, but at the end of the day what they're saying, what the media is telling you is we need to shut things down. We can't allow all that free speech. Let's have Facebook monitor everything and keep the news out and keep and tell, you know, have our government tell you what is the good news to read and what, what these sources are. So that's going to consolidate their power by giving them this power, this authority to control the flow of information, but.
- [35:05]
Stacy Herbert
Also the technology and the flow of money kind of keeps them in this monopoly position. Because if you think with Facebook they can pretty much buy anyone they want now. So if a photo app comes along, they buy Instagram for a billion, which seems really cheap now. They paid 19 billion for WhatsApp.
- [35:23]
Unknown
Yeah, they buy up the competition as soon as anybody might compete. They, we offer the CEO a deal they can't refuse.
- [35:29]
Stacy Herbert
And I read rumors yesterday of a Facebook interest in Coinbase. I'm not sure if you saw that.
- [35:35]
Unknown
Yeah, they're definitely doing something with a crypto, without doubt.
- [35:38]
Stacy Herbert
But they could, I mean they could buy up. I mean, I'm sure they could have. I mean Coinbase was valued at 8 billion. But I'm sure if Facebook wanted to buy them, it'd go for a lot more, but they could afford it. And then they could end up monopolizing the on ramp for crypto. And I would assume you guys would distrust what they would do with the data and their relationship with the government and that data.
- [35:59]
Unknown
Well, you can't stop anybody from coming up. You can't control. Certainly like Coinbase for example, is very good for an ordinary person who doesn't have time to research Bitcoin and how to access it and how to keep it on your own wallet and how to keep your own private keys. For some, like I said, a lot of people don't like the responsibility of having their own sovereignty. It's difficult. I always liken it to a western. If you look at any of those Clint Eastwood films, it was a hard freaking work to be a sovereign man out there with no law. You had to guard all your gold, you had to defend your own property, you had to fight off all the bad guys. It was hard work. So a lot of people like to just hand over their private keys to somebody. You take the responsibility and I'll sue you if you get it wrong. But they're giving up a lot of power to certain companies.
- [36:57]
Stacy Herbert
Are you a fan of Coinbase?
- [37:00]
Max Keiser
Well, we're. Am I my fan of Coinbase? Yeah, they're a good company. They are growing. They provided, as was mentioned, a non ramp and the crypto world. But Facebook, if it has its own token again, it can't compete with bitcoin's hash rate. It'll just be like a token used on their website. It would drive interest in cryptocurrency, it would drive interest in bitcoin and. But it would wouldn't change the path of bitcoin in terms of bitcoin now being considered as a strategic reserve for central banks. Bitcoin being accumulated by sovereign wealth funds.
- [37:51]
Stacy Herbert
So do you believe that's happening? Do you believe governments?
- [37:53]
Max Keiser
That's the path that it's on. So the price is on Track to hit 100,000 per coin and go beyond that. So that path is not going to be stopped by Facebook. Facebook is just would be another distraction on the path of bitcoin toward ubiquity and toward kind of the global bitcoin standard.
- [38:24]
Unknown
And by the way, they're also competing that one of their competitors is Twitter and Jack is definitely he's been an earlier involvement in bitcoin and more on the cypherpunk side. So he's a. He's more of a bitcoin maximalist, whereas probably Facebook is coming up with their own coin and crypto, I'm pretty sure.
- [38:47]
Stacy Herbert
Needs to fix the eth giveaways, though, the relentless, true giveaways.
- [38:53]
Max Keiser
Right. Well, they've modified, they've tweaked the platform many times. You know, they've done lots of stuff, so I'm sure they're working on it.
- [39:00]
Stacy Herbert
So outside of bitcoin, and I'll come to Maxcoin, but where else do you have interest in crypto? What other projects do you like? Are you keen on ICOs? Are you keen on other crypto coins, the ICOs?
- [39:14]
Max Keiser
Not really, because they would be more appropriate as considered a security offering. And so it's a very different beast, if you will. And then in the crypto space.
- [39:27]
Stacy Herbert
But why is that not something you're keen on?
- [39:31]
Max Keiser
Because I'm still totally fascinated by bitcoin and love the story so much, and If I had 100 hours a day I could spend looking at 30,000 white papers. I don't. I don't. I haven't seen anything, and there's no reason yet to dissuade me from being completely bitcoin maximalist, as it's known. And. But there are projects that are out there that we know the people involved and, you know, we look at them and, you know, there's. There's interesting combinations.
- [40:08]
Unknown
I also want to jump in and say, we have, like, we're involved with the Sun X, which has their own token. And I like that because one thing I've always said over the years is people say, should I buy bitcoin? Should I buy it now? Is it the right price? And one thing I've always done is earn bitcoin because I'm not like a adrenaline junkie trader. A lot of people get really high on losing great deals of money. I just would rather. If I lose, I lose my time. Like, okay, I spent eight hours earning that bitcoin. Sunex has this program. It is a token. It is an ICO and it's an ongoing ICO where you can basically from $10 invest in a solar panel on projects that they have. Like, they're doing something with a UN development program in Moldova right now. They have a program down in South Africa, and you invest in their solar panels and you collect a billion bitcoin stream of revenue from that.
- [41:08]
Stacy Herbert
That's very cool.
- [41:09]
Unknown
That's a great way to earn bitcoin. We also have mines.com so we're very anti censorship and this is a censorship resistant online platform. Kind of like Steemit, kind of like Facebook, kind of like Twitter all in one. And so we're advisors to them and they'll be doing an ico but they in the future, but not right now, they're developing their platform. A lot of ICOs I think, I mean I don't mind it myself because I find it like as if you're disrupting the VC system then great. But I do think a lot of people, I don't think perhaps intentionally but they raised far too much money. People got a little bit crazy and gave too much money to these guys.
- [42:02]
Stacy Herbert
But also the time they raised. I was seeing the, I saw a table the other day.
- [42:06]
Peter McCormack
Digix. Is it Digix Dao.
- [42:09]
Stacy Herbert
There are. Because they raised in 2016 at the price of ETH. Back then they now sell on quarter of a billion dollars in eth.
- [42:16]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. So we, you know I'm interested in trying out some stuff like because I'm not an engineer and I have to do to learn. So we have been bitcoin maximalists and we have our bitcoin investments but we are like branching out into these other things in order to learn like the masternode system or the delegated proof of stake. With eos we're involved with a block producer candidate EOS Fish rocks. For me that's like doing is helping me understand not only what people are trying to do, what, what the technologists and engineers are doing because if they tell me, if they, if you read about it on a paper delegated proof of stake like I don't know what they're talking about but if I do it then I, I see. Oh, now I understand and now I understand bitcoin better. Like I, you know somebody who's an engineer like Jimmy Song or Jameson Lobb and those guys, they can under, they don't need to do. They already understand what the terms are and what's going on and the concept. So you know there's a lot of stuff.
- [43:27]
Stacy Herbert
I think the ICOs are quite good as well. Like you said, it disrupts the VC model where I've raised money from venture capital before and it's weighted entirely out of your favor. Sure you have to be very lucky to exit with any life changing money. But also again it disrupts the banking system for small businesses raising funds hopefully in the future. And I thought that's kind of interesting.
- [43:49]
Unknown
Yeah, well, there's also another company Max is an advisor on, which is Suite. And that's kind of like, you know, kind of like a natural offshoot of Hollywood Stock Exchange.
- [44:03]
Stacy Herbert
And tell me about maxcoin. Shouldn't you be a maxcoin maximalist?
- [44:09]
Unknown
We are maxcoin maximalists as well. Like this is, this is a great story because we again, like we wanted to learn on kai's report in 20 end of 2013, there were all of these new altcoins coming on and I had only barely gotten my head around bitcoin after two years. And we were like, well, what is what? How are all these coins being developed? And does this ruin the case for bitcoin? Like, if so many coins could just be created. So two young cryptographer students from University of Bristol reached out to us and said that we can come on your program and create a coin. So they came on the program and created the coin live. So we went through the experience of actually choosing the various elements that go into a coin and just being presented with those options each step of the way.
- [45:01]
Stacy Herbert
Like a menu.
- [45:02]
Unknown
Yeah. Made you think. And then we even went through the process. They did say, by the way, you know, whether or not you want to film this, but when you generate the Genesis block, it says failed, it will tell you that you failed. But that's the notice that comes up. And I said, yeah, if that's what happens and show it. A lot of people in the comments were like, failed. But you know, that was what it was supposed to do. Nevertheless, they went back to school, University of Bristol, and Nigel Smart was their professor. He's a very famous cryptographer. He ripped out a lot of the stuff we had put in. Like SHA256, he said, that's created by the NSA. We don't want that in there. And he put SHA3 in it, which is at the time I didn't understand this. In 2014, I didn't really understand it until questions were being posed this in the past year about bitcoin and quantum resistance. And they're thinking one of the options is that they could fork to SHA3. And Nigel Smart also put in schnorr signatures, which is now being considered for bitcoin as well, in order to reduce the block size and all these sort of things. Anyway, our coin had all these advanced features in it from way back in 2014. And these new developers have found the coin and been working on it and we have a really great team of devs on it.
- [46:20]
Stacy Herbert
So what's the, what's the objective with it? Where are you taking, how far can you take this? Could this be a competitor currency to the others? Is that your goal?
- [46:27]
Unknown
Well, it's a competitive market. If the, you know, I think it's a great coin. If other people think it, then the price could go up.
- [46:36]
Stacy Herbert
And what are your challenges with it then? Has it gone from just a baby project to something quite serious? Because I look, I mean the price has done fantastically well recently.
- [46:45]
Unknown
This is because of these amazing team of developers on it. We even have a 15 year old developer who first learned about Bitcoin when he was 8 because watching Kaiser report. So he is training to be a developer and he's done an amazing job. Kid named Oliver Morris and now they're helping out with StartCoin as well, which is another project we have.
- [47:09]
Stacy Herbert
What's StartCoin?
- [47:10]
Unknown
StartCoin is a project. So we were before the masternode system and before ICOs we had a site called start join.com with crowdfunding and it had its own crypto is one of the first sites to do that where basically you would be rewarded in the crypto by sharing the projects and participating in the economy. Then kind of the whole scene got disrupted by ICOs and by masternode systems and the treasuries that emerge like Dash from that. So they're working on a roadmap for that coin now based on all the success they've had with maxcoin and bringing that back from the brink of death.
- [48:03]
Peter McCormack
And how do you keep on top.
- [48:04]
Stacy Herbert
Of all of this? This seems like a lot.
- [48:08]
Unknown
As long as we're learning.
- [48:10]
Max Keiser
Yeah, just follow Twitter.
- [48:12]
Stacy Herbert
Well, listen, look, I'm conscious of time and I appreciate the time you've given me and I'm sorry we started late. I do have one final question. I've got loads I didn't cover. I'd love to do this again sometime but there was one thing I wanted to ask about Max because it's. For me it's something that's really important right now. I've got a 14 year old son and I've got an 8 year old daughter and I have little faith in the education system anymore. I believe. I don't think it's grown with the economy, it's grown with technology and I don't think it's evolved and I question the need to go to university to get 50,000 in the UK, 50,000 pound of debt, probably much more in the US and to then face a life possibly of just from one debt to another. What are your views on the education system and the college system? And where do you think we're going with this?
- [49:07]
Max Keiser
Well, yeah, this guy, Oliver Morris, who's a developer who's working for us, he's being homeschooled. His dad, who's in the uk, noticed that his son had an interest in programming and he said, well, those courses are not going to be offered for many years. And by then his interest might be gone. So he pulled him out of school and he homeschooled him. So I think that's the lesson really is that this system is not really fit for purpose. And if you do have an interest, pull them out. Homeschool him.
- [49:36]
Stacy Herbert
Right, okay. Really appreciate your time. And can you tell people how to get hold of you, how to stay in touch, who you want to hear from? If you want to hear from anyone.
- [49:46]
Unknown
Go to Twitter and I'm tacyherbert. S T A C Y H E.
- [49:49]
Max Keiser
R B E R T yeah, I'm at Twitter too. Max Kaiser.
- [49:54]
Stacy Herbert
I will share those in the show notes. Appreciate your time. Enjoy the rest of your time in London and hopefully we'll see you again soon.
- [50:00]
Max Keiser
Thanks, Peter.
- [50:05]
Peter McCormack
Okay, what did you make of that? Did you enjoy it? I was really glad to get them both on the show. And, you know, I did originally target having an interview with Max. He is quite a big personality in the crypto world. But actually, I thought Stacy was bloody brilliant too. I think, if anything, she was a star of the show, probably because Max does this all the time and Stacey maybe not so much. And yeah, I really enjoyed, you know, I enjoyed them both. But it was really good to hear from Stacy rather than seeing her just put the questions to Max, hear her opinions a bit more. And I think next time I'll probably do an interview with Stacey on her own if she wants to. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. But, yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. Please do support the show. Please leave me a review on itunes. Please do share this out with your friends and family. Please do follow me on social media and get in touch. My handle on everything is@whatbitcoindid. And feel free to email me. It's hellohotbitcoindid.com and I look forward to hearing from you. Okay, see you all next week.
- [51:00]
Stacy Herbert
Bye.