Audio Transcript
Shout out to Stakwork for their help in getting our twitter spaces transcribed weekly.
Voltage - 00:00:06:
Hey, Stacy, good afternoon to you as well.
Stacy Herbert - 00:00:09:
Hi there. I have two phones with me and I realized I might have logged on with the phone that maybe is not as good a reception, but let me know if you can hear me. Okay?
Voltage - 00:00:22:
Yeah, you’re coming through great. Okay, well, sweet guys. You're in America right now or in El Salvador at the moment.
Stacy Herbert - 00:00:31:
El Salvador, baby.
Voltage - 00:00:35:
The weather lovely? The beach is treating you all good today?
Stacy Herbert - 00:00:39:
Well, Max and I are working hard, so we are not down at the beach. We are in fact up in San Salvador, which to be honest was quite cold yesterday. Just because it says tropical on the Wikipedia when you head towards El Salvador, don't be necessarily deceived by that because it was like 65 degrees last night, so I didn't have anything like a jacket to wear.
Max Keiser - 00:01:10:
Yeah, it's raining. It's raining. There's a big storm and it's been raining and we've been getting a lot of rain. It's the rainy season.
Voltage - 00:01:22:
A lot of fresh fruit down the line. It sounds like, sweet. Well, glad you all can be here. I'm excited to chat, talk a little bit about bitcoin, everything you guys are seeing. Go on. I know you all started Easy Cap, if I remember the name, but I'm really looking forward to hearing what you guys are seeing going on on the floor with Lightning in El Salvador and just hear some updates. But if you could maybe give us a quick update just the last 30 days, I'd love to hear kind of what's new going on on the local level with some of the Lightning just venture stuff and like where you are seeing value being made out there.
Stacy Herbert - 00:02:05:
Well, at the moment we've been working on a big bitcoin mining deal and the catastrophe over in the DeFi space that started with a Luna Terra UST thing that has ended up being very good for us because we are just literally putting in our order tomorrow for some more bitcoin miners. And we're getting quite a significant discount to what we had planned on just like three weeks ago, four weeks ago when we were first putting in the orders for the equipment. So that's good for us in terms of the DeFi crash as well, by the way. It also has made our job easier here in terms of creating out all the shit coiners in DeFi and all those projects showing up in a country like this hoping to overwhelm the various investors and politicians and regulators and stuff with their shit coinery. But now they're all gone and the use case of just like bitcoin only is clearer than ever, though of course, the president is a bitcoin maximalist regardless. And one other thing is that we've been working with Jimmy Song because Max and I have been for over six months now in El Salvador. Scouring everything. Doing the due diligence. Researching meeting people. And one of the things we realize that we're going to need to build companies here is that we will be needing engineers. People who could actually program bitcoin and build on bitcoin and Lightning. So we are running a course with programming bitcoin with Jimmy Song in just a few weeks. So July 18 and 19. And as some of you might know, it's like really difficult to get into the course. Once we train these people in this two day intense course, we're going to have a foundation of really great bitcoin programming talent here.
Voltage - 00:04:24:
Nice. We did a little sponsorship of the Mi Primer Bitcoin, some of the education and stuff going down there locally that's really exciting to see and be a part of in supporting. Are you guys familiar with what those guys are doing down there?
Stacy Herbert - 00:04:38:
Yeah. So it's a small country. Everybody knows everybody. So we're definitely working with all the other bitcoin educators here, so making sure that none of us are overlapping and doing stuff needlessly. So Jimmy Strong course is super top elite in terms of your program and talent to even get into that is you're already like top tier coder. You might not know how to program bitcoin, but after the course you will. Mi Primer. Yeah, we know all the guys involved with that. And we've been helping them out and we're helping them out. So they're very basic. They're in the high schools around a few high schools in the country. So I guess working with the education department and that's kind of really basic. Like, what if they start out with what is money and then explain what bitcoin is and why bitcoin? And then there's another group called Torgos Dev, which is based off of Chain Code Labs. So that's like a middle of the ground between Mi Primer and the Jimmy Song course. So as long as you have a little bit of programming talent, you could take that. And it's a boot camp style thing where it's pretty it's over as many weeks, six weeks. And then there's another intense course part at the end. But the Jimmy Song one is for already super coders in a two day intensive course. So, yeah, we have from the very bottom to the very top.
Voltage - 00:06:06:
Oh, I love it. Yeah.
Max Keiser - 00:06:10:
Chock full of talent. And it's great that the whole DeFi space is blowing up because remember the DeFi use case was that, oh, you know, we need DeFi for scaling bitcoin and bitcoin can't scale and we need all this DeFi. So this is a great case for Lightning now because you can say, well, DeFi was a scam and it all blew up and that the timing was great because the country needed to hear and see scammers in action. So now they know the third rail. Don't touch it. It's full of scammers. And they're focused on bitcoin and scaling bitcoin.
Voltage - 00:06:54:
Oh, man. When all this stuff went down, I felt like my cold storage was just like a warm winter jacket standing in the middle of freezing weather, and it was just incredible. I love hearing that a lot of these things falling on their faces. It sounds like it's kind of cleaning the air and giving a lot of maybe decision makers or people in power better clarity. Have you had conversations with some of these folks and they pumped the brakes and you're just seeing the deer and headlights look, and they're actually asking quality questions about bitcoin, wanting to learn more and understand the difference.
Max Keiser - 00:07:25:
Well, Stacy did a great job, really, for the last few months, just kind of laying the groundwork intellectually for folks and saying pretty much predicting that within a very short period of time, the ponzi bubble would collapse. And now that it has, it's a good kind of verifying what she was saying all along, that it's unsustainable and that it's in this massive bubble. So the focus never veered away from bitcoin, and the temptations put forward by these chicanery is now clearly on the back foot.
Stacy Herbert - 00:08:08:
Yeah, so what I've been doing is think about this. Bitcoin is proof of work. Nobody likes to just give there's no free bitcoin to give away anymore. They used to be in the early days when we had faucets all over the place, but nevertheless, we're in 2022 now. So we show up and we're talking to other bitcoiners and bringing bitcoiners here and trying to bring bitcoin investors here. But they do a lot of due diligence. If you're going to spend capital, if you're going to spend your bitcoin, time, and energy and money, well, you want to make sure everything is the groundwork and the foundation is there to build your company upon. With all the 20,000 shit coinbase. They print up stuff and they show up and throw it around and pretend like, hey, this is the future, and it looks like the future because they have Louis Vuitton clothes on and twerking all over the place and saying, that how rich you're going to be too, just like them. Classic con, classic ponzi. That's how they operate. And so the use case, my work was harder at the time when trying to convince, okay, well, these guys are throwing around, flying into private jets and renting Lamborghinis and impressing people like that and explaining why that was actually going to fall apart and it was just a scam. And only that one individual founder driving around in a Lamborghini and flying in on a private jet, only that person is going to be a billionaire. Nobody else will. So obviously when it all collapsed, it was hard to miss. That's what will happen.
Max Keiser - 00:09:59:
Yeah, Jimmy Swagger of alt coins. It's like, Hi, I'm Jimmy Swagger. Send me money, because Jesus loves you. He loves you and he wants you to help me buy a jet. He wants you to help me to buy this mansion. That's how much Jesus loves you, right? So you've got all these televangelists on social media getting these nickels and dimes because they're going to make some DeFi return and it's quite atrocious, really.
Stacy Herbert - 00:10:33:
Anyway, I think Max is breaking up a little bit on my side. But I do want to say it hasn't been super difficult. It's just like what I'm saying is that the learning curve here has been very steep. El Zonte is already hyperbitcoinnized, they're fully on board. Lightning Nicolas Burtey and the guys at Bitcoin Beach did an amazing job there. The more the education process happened with the President himself was already orange pilled. He's a bitcoin maximalist. He's just talking to other people in the government and explaining to them the difference how crypto is not bitcoin and they're not the same thing. That took a while, but the results, if you're here, you'll see them. Like when you speak to people now after all these months of us really talking to everybody every single day has been quite extraordinary. And I really look forward to after this bear market, because I always believe from my own personal experience and observations, is that the bear markets are really where the true bitcoiners is created. And on the other side of this, we entered it with President Bukele bitcoin maximalist and we're going to exit it, I think, with his entire government, the entire country bitcoin maximalist. And I can't wait to see what happens on the other side.
Voltage - 00:12:08:
Yeah. So one thing I'm really interested in, I know you guys just become a part of a lot of these conversations and probably have a little bit better insight than others. But one thing I've really enjoyed seeing is just how mining has just become more of like a common conversation and democratized and it just seems like people have access to it. And I know there's been some issues with Compass and there's new providers that are providing miners like River, but it seems like obviously you guys are getting into mining. A lot of others are like, are there different resources people are actively using beyond I know the volcanoes are like an option, but are there other natural resources that, you know, people are tapping into currently, whether it be El Salvador or other countries that maybe is just not on the radar.
Stacy Herbert - 00:12:56:
So the energy costs, the electricity costs here in El Salvador are pretty high in terms of it can't compete on price with Texas and Texas is the behemoth in the room now that it's more difficult than China. Obviously during the rainy season in China, they had extraordinarily cheap electricity prices. So that's what we're doing here is first we're running it's basically like a proof of concept. The land we bought and the operation we're setting up is part solar and part hydro. There's a lot of hydro potential here. The thing about geothermal versus hydro is that with hydro, there's a lot more standardization in the there's fewer parts obviously, but there's also more standardization, so it's cheaper to set up with geothermal. It lasts a very long time. If you can find the right hotspot, you have to drill like you do for oil. So those can be costly. Like, we were exploring in Mexico and it cost up to $10 million to drill one hole and look for set up the rig and try to find a proper hotspot for geothermal. If you found it, then okay, you have electricity for the next 200 years. But if you don't find it, then you have to go spend a whole bunch more to find a spot. And you might not find it after five or six, seven attempts. So in terms of what we're focusing on, we're just focusing on El Salvador, and just for the purpose of securing the network here in El Salvador, which is the first bitcoin nation. So it needs to have more bitcoin mining. So that's what we're doing is exploring ways to get that price down. We will have a competitive in our operation. It will be competitive to Texas rates.
Voltage - 00:15:11:
That's awesome. Very cool. And I'm interested in some of these things. I've seen some kind of just tools and things people are building. And I know it's very early stage, but where mining revenue can be funneled into a Lightning node and deployed into Lightning and you can just better manage your capital and add value to the network. What do you guys know on that front? I know we're again. Very early. But have you heard any talk of just how to integrate mining revenue into Lightning just to build almost like a full service or full stack mining and just like. I guess. Non custodial yield or opportunity for people thinking in that way. If that makes sense. To just always be leveraging their bitcoin to power the network. Secure it to help layer two things like that.
Stacy Herbert - 00:16:01:
Well, on that side, you would have to talk to our partner, the one who's actually doing the technical side of our bitcoin mining operation. I can invite them onto the call for that, but obviously you have to see that a lot of the bitcoin miners that we thought were managing their treasury well got liquidated in the last few days. And I'm sure they're not happy liquidating at $20,000. I know, for example, Bitfarms, I'm not picking on any in particular, but I saw that they had to liquidate 3000 bitcoin in the past week. So in terms of treasury management, it seems like this bear market might cause some of these miners, these bigger mining operations, to look at a better way to manage their treasury, because that seems like a pretty bad way to do it, to be liquidated at $20,000. In particular I've been looking at is what you've been doing with Adam Curry and Podcasting 2.0, and the content creator economy, that's our background is in content creation. So I've been noticing all the work that you doing with Adam. And fact, Adam is my go to guy. Like, when I was setting up my Voltage node, he walked me through literally every single step. And anytime I somehow managed to lock myself out or whatever, he walks me through every single step with that. Podcasting index and Podcasting 2.0 is the sort of thing that I personally know about and looking at and interested in.
Voltage - 00:17:57:
Absolutely, yeah. I started toying with Fountain today and I'm just earning sats, listening to What Bitcoin Did in different podcasts. It's super interesting having that experience. Cool.
Stacy Herbert - 00:18:08:
Who pays you there? I've seen that. I've seen these people. You get paid to listen to a podcast? Like, who's paying? Like the podcast creator or the sponsors, the advertisers.
Voltage - 00:18:22:
One thing we did is we allocated a little bit of budget to put an ad in there to test the beta, to see how it works. It's for people who do listen to our ad, but I haven't actually encountered or clicked on an ad yet. I've only been listening and getting paid, so I'm actually not 100% sure on that.
Stacy Herbert - 00:18:40:
It would be good to know. You don't want to end up being like, where's the yield coming from?
Voltage - 00:18:47:
Yeah, absolutely. Now one thing I'd love to get some perspective on too, is over the next couple of years, we have El Salvador building their foundations. There's a lot of countries, obviously, that showed up in the last month or two. What was the event like? The banking event were like 44 nations or central banks or whatever showed up. And I read that the plan was to be in El Salvador a couple of years in advance. It just happened to be like a stroke of luck that it was right after they adopted Bitcoin. But if you can speak a little bit to that. Like. What regions or nations are really on the defense potentially considering this. I know some of you might not be able to share. But where you seeing like. Further advancement and just like. This bridge being gapped from like. El Salvador to these other nations that are adopting. Is there any insight there you can share that could give us some bullish feels?
Stacy Herbert - 00:19:46:
Well, I'll speak a little bit and then Max probably has more insight, but yeah. So Nicolas Burtey was kind of organized the whole Bitcoin side of those 44 central bankers. 32 central bankers and twelve financial authorities, I think it was. And he did a whole orange pill session with Chimbetta of Bitcoin Beach. So I believe that it went very well. At that time we were in the States, but they told me that the faces, obviously, of the central bankers were just like, in total amazement and they were focused on financial inclusion. I think that it's AFI. Maybe financial inclusion is the actual reason why these central bankers were meeting. Like, it is an annual event that they meet at various places around the world. And yes, you're right, so they happen to be there. In terms of the next nations, I think you're having places like Nigeria just naturally hyperbitcoinnized without any law. And we saw that last year, remember those senators? And we're saying there's nothing we could do to stop this. And that's because of just the global financial, the problems with the global fiat system here. We're a nation of entrepreneurs and businessmen and people importing and exporting, mostly importing. They were importing cars from Japan and China and used cars. And there were no dollars. They couldn't access dollars to import their cars. But they had people in Nigeria who wanted cars and they needed to find a way to be able to pay the vendor in Japan or China. And the only option was bitcoin because there were no dollars, because of all the global financial crisis caused by the pandemic and lockdowns and things like that. In terms of this region, I think President Bukele is extremely popular not only in El Salvador, but the five central American nations of the trade zone. So I think his popularity and how it goes here will roll over and impact places like Guatemala is nearby, or Honduras. I think Honduras was very interested in it. And I think the US stepped in to intervene in the past few months. But Central American countries and Latin American countries, you're already seeing them actually speak. You see candidates for office mentioning what's happening in El Salvador. Anywhere that has the US dollar or some other currency as their own, they don't already have their own way to print money. It's just a natural, for early adopters for bitcoin.
Max Keiser - 00:22:36:
Oh, yeah, those guys, they were getting together really, I've been planned in advance and they just happened to be there or here. And so bitcoin was on the agenda and they were down in El Zonte and they had that orange eureka moment where they were sending back forth and just that magical feeling of empowerment that comes with that. So they'll go back to their respective countries and percolate in the population. So it was a mass orange pilling. And these are countries that are primed for bitcoin. So I think in six months now, the seed after having been planted, we're going to start hearing back how these seeds are growing.
Voltage - 00:23:25:
Yeah. Like, Stacy, you mentioned financial inclusion. Whenever these people are meeting and talking about financial inclusion, what was the topic? Was it primarily just having access to bitcoin and creating education? Is it bringing like Lightning rails to local communities to just kind of add some of these, I guess, daily operational efficiencies for remittances? Are these countries wanting or central banks wanting to actually run a node and provide value locally there and build a culture? Like how did they frame that up? I know it's a learning curve for some of them.
Stacy Herbert - 00:24:00:
It's literally like basically the global financial banking all banks all around the world, no matter what, is basically part of the US Dollar system, right? So these people in these countries have no access to any banking services simply because they're too high risk. Essentially, their $50 is not worth the possibility of being extradited to the United States for somebody sending $5 to the wrong person. So, like, in El Salvador, it was before the bitcoin law, it was like 70% of the population didn't have a bank account or banking services. And even in El Zonte, I spoke to local retail outlets where they were saying. That they don't have an ATM. They have no ATM still like a banking ATM in El Zonte, and the nearest one was in, like, El Tunco, which is like a 20 minute cab ride away. So they would get a lot of surfers in from around the world coming to El Zonte, and they would come from Europe, and they would be like, oh, I only have Euros. Can I buy this coffee? And they would say, no, we only take dollars. And then these retail outlets would be asked all the time, well, how about bitcoin? Do you take bitcoin? Because there were just no banking facilities locally for even tourists to use. So that's the sort of financial inclusion they're looking at. These are like their own communities and their own countries that just have no banking services and probably will never have the legacy banking service. There will never be a city bank in El Zonte, and the same thing across much of Latin America or Africa and parts of Asia. So that's what they were looking at, and that's what they were interested in. Mostly. They were surprised about how fast it was is what I heard from Nicolas. They couldn't believe how instant it was and how permissionless, like, how fast they could download it on their own wallet. There was no paperwork. There was no KYC. There was no, like, going to a bank and filling out forms and getting approval and all that stuff. It was just like they could do it on their phone and instantly.
Voltage - 00:26:41:
I love it. Nate, I've been firing off questions. If you had any, feel free to share one as well.
Nate - 00:26:50:
Cool. Yeah, I've been just listening and enjoying the conversation. Max, Stacy, thanks for hanging out with us a little bit. I've actually been thinking lately about how the other nation states that are, like, the size of El Salvador or watching El Salvador really closely that maybe would have taken the leap to get a little bit more involved in Bitcoin have maybe sort of because of the stranglehold they're under from the IMF and stuff, right? Like, their loans might be in jeopardy. Like, the IMF is making threats and stuff. What do you guys think that they need to see from a country like El Salvador who's giving the middle finger to the IMF before they say, you know what? We'll give the middle finger also.
Max Keiser - 00:27:39:
Yeah, it's definitely being closely monitored. And the IMF and all the central banks are tied to this whole fiat money world. So we have faith that the fiat money world will continue to disintegrate. And this is what's happening. So the fiat money world runs on fiat money. All the bureaucrats are paid in fiat money and it's all losing value. So it's just a matter of attrition fiat bankers are dying.
Stacy Herbert - 00:28:16:
I think two folds, you need to see two things. One of them has already happened, and that was February 26, 2022, when the US and its allies seized $630,000,000,000 worth of dollar and euro reserves from Russia. And not to comment at all on whatever, on the war itself. I'm just saying the act of seizing treasuries turned treasuries to no longer fungible your property. If you're saving, it's not a safer nation. And this is also something that we have found in terms of the notion of.
Nate - 00:29:05:
Oh, Stacy, you're breaking up a little bit.
Stacy Herbert - 00:29:10:
Let me see. In terms of can you hear me now?
Nate - 00:29:16:
Yeah, I think that's better.
Stacy Herbert - 00:29:21:
Notion of getting wrecked, it's a great way to learn for an individual. Right now, a lot of people are getting wrecked on shit coins, on NFT, on DeFi, on all the latest wave of scams. They're getting wrecked. But on a nation state level, it's not a viable option to, like, oops, I bet on Solana for our nation. And now it's like, shut down for a few days. So in terms of what other nations need, in terms of what to follow, El Salvador is they need to see that bitcoin continue. Like, that bitcoin stays up, like 99, 98% of the time that it has through its history and that it remains solid while all these other things, are falling, we also need to see the economic boom here and again. It's still quite early. It'll be a year. September 7, that bitcoin law actually passed in El Salvador. So when we get the numbers about how much more investment there's been, how much more billions of dollars have actually been spent by tourists coming here, we know being here for the last few months is like the number of people who come here for every event we hold. Like, people fly in from all over the world, as far away as India. Somebody flew in for one of our public events here. Loads of Europeans coming. And those are regions that didn't come as often as, like, say, America, which is very close by, obviously. But once we see those numbers and they could show that data and show what it means to be a bitcoin nation and how it attracts people, I call it Renaissance 2.0. It's like the new Florence. When Florence had the most perfect money in the world at that time, it attracted not only a lot of successful merchants, but then they successful merchants attracted more artists and architects and discoverers and explorers and people like that. So the excellence followed the perfect money.
Voltage - 00:31:43:
Absolutely. Very good. Well, right around this time, I know we might have a few more questions than normal. I'd love to let a couple of folks up and maybe let them raise their hands. So feel free, I'll pop you up here. But until then, as far as your guy’s vision over the next two to three years at Voltage, we're really making infrastructure to help businesses or individuals be able to run nodes, scale, get data and insights with some of our new products and offering liquidity. Just trying to make the Lightning Network as resilient and powerful as possible with noncustodial solutions. But I know that's a big thing that's needed right now. That seems to be what's hot in the venture world from what I've just seen others invest in. But as far as the next step beyond that, where do you guys see the most need? Maybe beyond like, infrastructure and just simple user experience that's going to get more people adopting what's next for bitcoin in the future where we really need the execution?
Stacy Herbert - 00:32:45:
Yeah, I guess like what you're just talking about there in terms of from what I see, people are kind of the shit. Michael Saylor is right, that it does overwhelm a lot of newbies like that. There are thousands and thousands of shit coins with a huge marketing budget to confuse days and confuse the population. It is almost a crime, a financial crime, economic crime against the population. So education is really important and it's nonstop. You have to constantly reiterate this. But I think we've also seen that there is some sort of desire to have what could be built on Lightning and also Liquid in terms of more digital assets, sort of infrastructure on top of bitcoin. But again, what we're dealing with right now is this more basic in terms of just understanding the difference between Lightning, for example, when you have bitcoin and then you have to explain Lightning to somebody who's new, I think they get really confused by all the shit points out there claiming to offer the same thing.
Voltage - 00:34:15:
Yeah, that makes sense. And as far as education, what do you see being the most impactful thing? One thing that's really fascinating to me is the growing popularity of platforms like TikTok, how it gets more engagement than Netflix and Facebook and Instagram. Do you see that being a good tool to reach the next generation? Like, are people using that in different areas? And what do you think of the best educational tool is beyond just like sitting down and helping someone one on one?
Max Keiser - 00:34:47:
Yeah, well, the one on one experience is invaluable and the kickback experience sometimes can hit on the subconscious level and mesmerize people into getting involved in a lot of garbage. So the human face to human face is generally the best way. And so I think in countries down here where there's more community, there's more. Kind of chance to get together. You're going to have greater penetration in the community with this message. I think that that's an advantage, actually, that some of these countries have.
Stacy Herbert - 00:35:29:
However, I am bringing Michelle Fan down to El Salvador at the end of July, and I do think it's important to be able to tell your own story and using social media and using TikTok. I don't know how to use TikTok, but Michelle Fan does. And she's going to teach Salvadorans how to tell their own story because obviously the media is looking at the US. Media in particular is looking at El Salvador. So why not be here in El Salvador, Salvadoran, and tell your own story? The personal stories are also really important. So, for example, I did a class at Bitcoin Beach at Hope House, where I brought Natalie brunel. The two of us did a session with a lot of young women in the community there and about media presentation and talking on camera as all these news crews were there, like how to tell your side of the story, how to speak to the press, cell phones of the young women. Posted a photo of herself with me on Instagram. And, well, a fake Stacy reached out to her and said, hey, it was great to meet you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and chatted to the woman for a while. They had communication, blah. And of course, what happened, she invited the young woman in El Salvador, in El Zonte, to profit off of some forex trading and bitcoin and blah, blah, blah. So she ended up sending this woman or this person, this fake Stacy, her entire family's life savings.
Voltage - 00:37:14:
Oh, man.
Stacy Herbert - 00:37:15:
Yeah. Now, I've helped her get that back. We gave that back to her, but in exchange, we've had her teaching. So she was like, in total trauma, crying, embarrassed, like totally humiliated, scared for her family. But we turned it around. I said, make this an empowering positive event for yourself, because you can now go out and teach your community. You can stand up in front of other people in Elvis, other people in Elsa or the whole La Libertad and speak to them about your experience and how not to get defrauded like that, because this is something that they need to watch out for. So she's flourishing now. She's becoming an educator, and she has a real, genuine story to tell, and it's a powerful one. And you can see and you can't hide her true feelings, like how embarrassing it was for her. So I think that is very powerful, and her experience will help save a lot of people in the area that she gets to speak to.
Voltage - 00:38:29:
That's incredible. I love that. It's a good message. Well, we had a couple of folks jump up. Hash, mate. What's up? Feel free to yeah.
Hash Mate 21 - 00:38:37:
Hi, everybody. Well, first I want to say to everybody in Max and States, thanks for work you're doing you've done a lot to me to bring me into the protocol, but I have a comment to make and I have a question to make. So my comment is that I actually sold a lot of my properties in the western world and I'm actually currently working on moving to El Salvador. So I will be there when I say soon. I don't know when that's going to happen, but I need to go through the process and I'm very happy with that. I bought the dip, so I just by moving there, I'll be risking my whole, I guess, financial situation. The question that I have is in terms of the I don't know if you're familiar, you can comment on that, but in terms of the volcano bonds and in general, as far as I'm told, they're not yet available. But are they going to be available soon? Do we know about terms of like financial requirements and things like that?
Max Keiser - 00:39:37:
Canopons yes, they've got basically ready to go. The government has taken a bit of a zag into the area of crime fighting, very serious about getting these gangs and bring them into detention. And as such, the laws are required. The new securities laws are in a queue down there at the assembly waiting to be approved. And once that they get to that piece of the legislature, they should be off and running. But as at the moment, they're not available. But as soon as the paperwork is done, they will be ready to go.
Hash Mate 21 - 00:40:26:
Okay. Because my goal is it's actually good because I'm not yet ready to participate in terms of like be completely ready to actually start building there. But what I would do is just my plan is basically buy properties, invest in the bonds, which is going to help the local economy, which is where I'm going to live, obviously. And then when everything collapse around us, I'm just going to jump to the circular economy and get rid of all kinds of fiat price. It's irrelevant.
Stacy Herbert - 00:40:58:
You don't sound American. Well, if you're not American, then you're totally fine with buying the volcano buds until they are issued and they're ready to sell. We don't know if they'll be available for Americans. But the other thing you asked about was in terms of economic liberty, this model of economic liberty, I think it's important to understand just how much extortion was happening to this country internationally and domestically. The mass exodus of its population of millions of people over the past 40 years was, I think, a great tragedy and one that is reversing now. And because you need your best and brightest here, you don't want them leaving your country because your human capital, your people, are the most important of anything. In terms of the Ms 13, which was a gang coming out of California, which after the Civil War ended in 92, then CoinJoin sent them all back here in 94. The extortion that was going on was extraordinary. Just one example of what was happening is there about 5000 APIs RIAs in El Salvador, and most of them are owned and operated by women. And they were on average paying $10 a day in extortion to Ms 13 and the other gang that's now ended. So that's like $19 million, almost over $18 million a year that will remain in the economy, remain with the women who run these 5000 APIs. Rios but multiply that by all businesses all across the economy, which we're having to pay the extortion every week or month or whatever, I don't know when extortion is collect their money, but that should be a huge boost to the GDP. But also, like when all of this volcano bond is sold as the economy grows and grows and grows, and as more investors come in betting on these bitcoin companies and the new financial system which will be built upon bitcoin, I hope and I believe that the president will make like he says he wants this to be the Singapore of Latin America. And if that happens, you definitely don't want extortionists in the economy shaking down, especially the most vulnerable and poorest people here. So I think that's a good thing that the extortion has ended and that they can therefore participate in the new economic liberty model.
Hash Mate 21 - 00:44:08:
Yeah, and also just last comment and let somebody speak. I mean, the way I see into is and as you see into, obviously you're the first monero we're starting there from ground zero. So basically it's going to be an explosive growth in terms of real economic, in real terms, in terms of productivity, in terms of standard of life. So that's what I'm concerned about. And, yeah, I'm very excited about that.
Voltage - 00:44:35:
Awesome. Thanks, Hash Mate. Well, Nomad21, I see you up here next. Give it a shout. Hi, folks.
NomadTwentyOne - 00:44:44:
Thanks for having me. I had a question. I'm a Canadian who watched his country literally become a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, like what happened to my country. And I was terrified of what was happening. So I packed everything I had into a van and I got out because I would watch Max and Stacy or Tone vase and people like that recommending that whoever's in there, you probably should get out while you still can. And I really felt that pressure, so I did end up doing that. I'm roaming around the USA right now. But my question for you folks today, Max and Stacy, and thank you very much. Do you see El Salvador as potentially a place where someone with a substantial amount of bitcoin could perhaps get to investment wise or become a legal resident in some respect or in some way? And maybe how would you go about doing that?
Max Keiser - 00:45:56:
Right. Yeah. So if there may think the counter situation, the speed at which things rapidly change, I think that's an important lesson. I think people assume that, oh, yeah. Countries can go down the path of authoritarianism, but it would happen over a period of time, and I'd have a lot of time to think about it, but the counter shows it can happen in six months. You can go suddenly become an authoritarian.
NomadTwentyOne - 00:46:23:
Dictatorship faster than a snapshot from Gila Flor.
Max Keiser - 00:46:28:
Right, exactly. So as far as here, included in this new package of laws that are making their way through the assembly is immigration laws, and they want to make it very competitive with other countries that are attracting folks nomads. And skilled folks and working folks and those who are the huddled masses. You're in British Free, they'll be welcome here in the land of freedom. And so those loans are, again, part of this view of legislation that will open us up. So they realize that at this moment in time, El Salvador can attract 100,000 skilled people very quickly, and that will immediately use GDP.
NomadTwentyOne - 00:47:35:
In the meantime, do you feel that it's safe maybe roaming around the United States and staying places like maybe Nashville or Austin?
Max Keiser - 00:47:56:
In what regard? In terms of your physical safety from marauding bandits or bureaucrats and tax collections, basically.
NomadTwentyOne - 00:48:06:
Marauding global resetters.
Max Keiser - 00:48:12:
Yeah. Well, I mean, you got to stay one step ahead of the global resetters. So they definitely are on the move, and they're coordinating their agenda. They're coordinating their message. And you hear phrases like built back better repeated in bureaucratic centers all over the world simultaneously. So somebody there's a clearing house for this new agenda, and, yeah, they're on the march, so you got to stay agile. But that's always been true. We've been lulled into a certain sense of complacency, particularly in the US. Because we've had a 40 year bull market in the bond market, and we've had the benefit of having world reserve currency. And quality of life is pretty good, even on a minimum wage comparatively, to the rest of the world. But these dynamics are shifting.
NomadTwentyOne - 00:49:05:
Okay. To close. Nomad.
Voltage - 00:49:08:
Hey, sorry, but I appreciate the questions. We have two others real quick. I wanted to let them ask if that's okay. Okay.
NomadTwentyOne - 00:49:14:
Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Voltage - 00:49:16:
Yes. Craig, give it a shout, and then we'll let Irina ask the last question here to wrap up.
Craig Shipp - 00:49:21:
Okay, so I just wanted to thank Max and Stacy. A friend of mine who I used to play tennis with unfortunately passed away about six years ago, but he was a Canadian friend of mine, played a lot of tennis with him down in Sarasota. He always wintered down in Sarasota, and he started orange pilling me about 2011, 2012. I was a little bit dense. I finally got it around 2013. But I wanted to thank Max and Stacy because he watched you guys all the time, I guess, on the Russia Today Show or some show like that, and he finally was able to convince me. I'm sure you hear this all the time, but I just wanted to thank you for everything you've done for the community.
Stacy Herbert - 00:50:05:
Thank you. That's super sweet.
Max Keiser - 00:50:09:
Thank you so much. Yes. Great to hear.
Voltage - 00:50:14:
Irina. Give it a shout.
Irina Heaver - 00:50:17:
Yes. Hi, everyone. Hi, guys. Again, huge fan. Stacy Max, you orange pilled me from the Russia Today show and Russian is my first language, so I was watching Russia Today all the time and here we are. So I had a question very, very specific. When it comes to, like, a general population of El Salvador, right? We're not talking about, let's say, a well of lawyer or professional living in Europe like myself. If bitcoin is 10,000 today and 65,000 tomorrow, I don't care. Right. I can hold forever. But how do, like, normal an average individual handles that? If they sell their goods or services in Bitcoin, I guess they calculated, as opposed to the US dollar. Like, how do they handle this huge price fluctuations? Because that would be a really big hit on the small business.
Max Keiser - 00:51:12:
Yeah, well, the great thing about making bitcoin legal tender and then introducing the Chivo wallet and doing it, the air drop of $30 into these wallets is you do have awareness throughout the entire country. And you have hotspots like in El Zonte and San Salvador, where there's more people are actually using it on a day to day basis. If you look at a heat map of bitcoin wallets for the country, you see every day new ones popping up here and there as this wave of adoption occurs. You're also getting people talking about the quality and the nature of this coin. You have unconfiscatability, you have uncensored resistance, but you do have volatility. So there's a give and take. That's the trade off. You have some volatility, but you also get on the other side of the ledger these incredible benefits so that's working its way through the economy and people are getting in tune with buy the dip and stacking set and dollar cost averaging. Obviously, it's a learning curve, it takes time. But it's not like the country suddenly as a whole was air dropped in this huge amount. And there's a slowdown. In fact, it's the exact opposite. The balance sheet of the country having the bitcoin that it does is unrealized loss of a few million bucks, whereas the benefit to the economy as a whole is measured in the hundreds of millions and billions. So it was a brilliant marketing genius move by the President because it changed the reference to the country. And everyone in the country has this new found smile on their face like that. The encryption of the country changed overnight. The perception of the country changed from what it was a couple of years ago, which was terrible. Suddenly it's this cutting edge in Singapore, Central America, hosting international surfing tournaments and attracting all these tourists and things so that trickles through the economy. People feel it wherever you go. The energy is rich, people are like they're drawn to it, and we know and if you believe in bitcoin, you know where this is heading. It's heading toward a much better place.
Stacy Herbert - 00:53:28:
Yeah. Also, like I said, the average poosterilla was paying $10 a day for extortion. And now they're not. So they've more than doubled their income. One man approached me, and I think. It was January or February in downtown San Salvador, where to complain that MS 13 only allowed him to keep $5 a day. And is there something I can do about it? That was the reality of their situation that is now over. I think it is like a process. It's only been nine months so far. We're a few months away from the one year anniversary. Once the extortion stops now, they could. Start building some wealth, because a lot of those people who were being extorted didn't have much wealth. Actually, if you see some of the photos, if you look at through some. Of the photos of some of the. Gang members, you see like, bunches of dollars that they have from extortion. But you see like pennies and nickels and dimes, like dimes of them. They're literally taking pennies and nickels off of people. So I think that was probably more difficult to survive than the volatility of bitcoin. But the volatility of bitcoin is certainly something that obviously it matters to everybody. Even people like us. When it falls 80%, even if it's like your fifth or 6th time experiencing it's still a little bit stressful, let's put it that way. Just because you wonder what's going to fall apart, you wonder what's going to blow up, which bank is going to blow up, which exchange is going to blow up, which ones are your friends. Are going to get wrecked. It's a process, but I think as. Hyperbitcoinnization happens and more and more nation states adopted and it's on more balance sheets and it's more mature assets, then the price will stabilize and it won't have it's still in the face of discovery. So it's very volatile now. And that is your right problem.
Irina Heaver - 00:55:43:
And another quick one, I appreciate you, the time is running out. So do people keep their earnings in bitcoin, or do they go into some sort of stablecoin? For example, in a sanctioned country, Iran 30%, maybe even more, maybe even larger percent in mind bitcoin. But then they immediately go into USDT. And it's not a known fact that Iran is one of the largest favors of USD. That's how they try to preserve their wealth. They are not allowed to use US. Dollars. They're excluded from the banking system. So do people in Salvador, I'm talking about like an average mother with two kids to feed. Would she keep it in bitcoin, or would she keep it in some sort of stablecoin to preserve some wealth?
Max Keiser - 00:56:26:
Isn't it incredible that people have that choice completely outside of the banking system and unconfiscatability? Oh, should I get in a stablecoin? Should I dollar cost average into bitcoin? This is amazing because this is the downfall of centralized banking, and those choices are all done on an individual basis and the regional and the country and all these factors play into it. And one person's risk appetite is different than another. One person's need is different than another. But this conversation is incredible that individuals that a year ago had no access to banking whatsoever are suddenly discussing international finance and shuttling between stable coins and bitcoin. I mean, because people inherently want to communicate. They want to trade. Bitcoin is a mindset. Bitcoin is a whole package that comes with it. It's just not a single tool like a screwdriver. Then you have to go get a bunch of other tools. Now, once you get the bitcoin, you're opening your mind. And when you open your mind, everything changes. So you're like, you know what? There's a big world out there, and I'm free because I can go wherever I have, and you can't take my bitcoin. So that's a mindset change. And of course, that scares people that are working. Love to be in control. So that feeling is PayPal in the general population.
