Godfrey Bloom, Austrian economist, former politician, and libertarian author joins me to talk about what governments will do to Bitcoin. We discuss:

• Commonalities and differences with gold
• What he’s learned since first buying Bitcoin
• How governments may attempt to control Bitcoin
• How some people will use Bitcoin in spite of control
• Govt bans vs regulation
• Building a movement

Godfrey Bloom’s Links:

• Twitter: @Goddersbloom
• Website: godfreybloom.uk

Prior episode: 

• SLP217 Exploring Bitcoin With Godfrey Bloom

Sponsors:

• Swan Bitcoin
• Hodl Hodl
• Unchained Capital (code LIVERA)
• CypherSafe (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
• Compass Mining

Stephan Livera links:

• Show notes and website
• Follow me on twitter @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast
• Patreon @stephanlivera

Podcast Transcript

Stephan Livera:

Godfrey welcome back to the show. It’s great to speak with you again,

Godfrey Bloom:

A pleasure and thank you very much for inviting me again.

Stephan Livera:

So Godfrey let’s get an update from you. How are things and how has your Bitcoin ride been so far since we last spoke?

Godfrey Bloom:

It has been fruitful. I bought it in October, I think it was and I got out on top of the spike rolled it back into gold, which was for technical reasons down, artificial reasons down. And I’m back into Bitcoin again. So it’s been an exciting ride and I’ve learned a whole heap more about the whole concept than when we last spoke. So, yeah, it’s been fun. It’s been exciting.

Stephan Livera:

That’s great to hear now. I guess, I would caution though. I mean, for me personally, I’m a HODLer and I would be very, very careful about selling out Bitcoin because I would be so careful that I wouldn’t be able to accumulate back at the same to get it again. So, and of course there’s taxes and blah, blah, blah, accounting costs and so on. But I think it’s more, it’ll be more interesting for listeners to hear a little bit more about what have you learned in that interim period from October 20, to now, early February, 2021?

Godfrey Bloom:

Well, I’ve always obviously understood Bitcoin and known about Bitcoin and I just haven’t been an investor. So although I’ve as green to investing in Bitcoin. I, wasn’t green to the concept of Bitcoin and of course I’m a huge supporter of not just Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. But I’m a huge supporter of anything, which isn’t fiat currency. And that’s where I start from, if it isn’t fiat currency, it’s good. And that is my view, but I haven’t changed my view when I first spoke to the you and some stuff and other stuff I’ve done with other hosts across the globe. I haven’t changed my view. I still don’t see gold and I’m a gold bug, a well known gold bug. I don’t see golden Bitcoin just not being compatible. I just see that it’s a diversion of your investment portfolio. And of course I am a boring or retired, boring investment manager for 35 years in the city. And even more boring than that, I managed fixed interest. It doesn’t get more boring than that. Although, I have to say with all due humility, I was quite good at it and I won prizes for it. So I know that about investment and I know about diversification and Bitcoin, I believe takes a big part of that.

Stephan Livera:

Yes so I guess for you then, what is it that you see are the key differences then in how we have to think about when we’re buying Bitcoin or investing in Bitcoin as, as compared to investing in and holding gold?

Godfrey Bloom:

Well, Gold and Bitcoin share a lot of the same characteristics. They do diverge as you go further down the path. But first of all, I’d just like to make clear my point of view, leaving Bitcoin and gold aside, just for a moment we must understand, and I know Bitcoiners understand this, and it’s the same as gold bugs. We’re not different beasts here. We were all on the same. The goal is the same, we might be taking slightly different paths, but the goal is the same. And that is to get out of the clutches of state money. Now what we must bear in mind. I think a lot of people don’t fully understand this because they haven’t been involved in politics. I came into politics very late in life. I’m an investment banker, a fund manager, and that was 35 years.

Godfrey Bloom:

I came in obviously to fight for Brexit. I wanted self-government again for the United Kingdom, and that’s why I came into it. It wasn’t party politics with a small P I just wanted my country back. It was as simple as that. So it was a one stop piece of political, but I was in the belly of the beast for 10 years. I spent 10 years in the European parliament and five of them on the economic and monetary affairs committee. So if you will, I understand how the political thinking, the regulatory thinking is, and the bureaucracy thinks, and you must accept, and everybody must accept. And of course, most people watching your channel here will already accept this because otherwise they wouldn’t be in Bitcoin or they wouldn’t even be tuned into you. The role of the state. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s America doesn’t matter whether it’s Europe room or China, it doesn’t matter.

Godfrey Bloom:

The state sees itself and its goal is complete and total control of the citizen. That is its aim. Now the only difference between medieval Kings, who stole your money and stole your capital and maybe even stole your wives, the medieval Kings did it for their own benefit. So better food, better, everything. They stole it. Well, they didn’t wear on their sleeve. It’s this appalling fakery that we have with modern governments who steal our money because it’s for our benefit. They steal our money because it’s going to save the planet or it’s going to save us from some sort of pandemic. If there’s always a wonderful reason with modern governments, how much better, it’s a bit like being mugged in the street, bashed over the head and have your money taken, and then the robber whispers in your ear, but the money’s going in a good cause.

Godfrey Bloom:

And that’s what happens at the moment. It’s all in the good cause. It’s for your benefit. At the moment we are living under martial law in the United Kingdom, we’re locked in our houses. We have to explain to policeman if our journey is necessary, we didn’t have this in the war. We have never been. So this is about total iron control by the state. And the sad thing is we are all like sheep. Great Britain, now is a nation of sheep, we walk along with masks over our faces. When even the world health organization every medical body will tell you that that cough masks over your face will do nothing to stop you, either transmitting or getting a virus. It’s about state control. We must wear them because it’s about state control.

Godfrey Bloom:

And that is how we flag out. We are servants of the state by wearing this mouse, which everybody knows. Every single doctor knows is useless, but we have to wear them. We have to wear this mask. So this is the sort of problem you’ve got. It’s all about control. Now, if you buy gold and I’m a gold bug, and I always have been. That what you’ve done. If you buy gold, you have stepped outside that part of control. You stepped outside the government controlling money. And because of the government control doesn’t control money, they can’t control you, Not really. It’s all about money and of course we know that from Rothschild, I think it was a hundred years ago. And he said, it doesn’t matter who you vote for it who controls the money is actually running your life.

Godfrey Bloom:

So we know that to be, and both Gold and Bitcoin are a way of getting out of that trap. But I know with gold and it has similarities with Bitcoin. It isn’t as simple as that just buying gold or buying Bitcoin, doesn’t take you out of their control. My experience so far, not only with gold bugs, but also with Bitcoin bugs, is that they think it does. And it doesn’t. And I know how the government manipulates and can steal gold potentially steal gold. I also know they can use exactly the same trick to steal Bitcoin.

Stephan Livera:

Interesting. So I guess one way to consider this is in what way will the government attempt to control this thing? So, the common ones, so up to now have been things like, Oh, we need to stop the terrorists. So we need to stop the money laundering. Therefore we need X, Y, and Z. If you are a bank or a financial institution, you must do X, Y, and Z. That’s probably the main vector for control that I see currently though, that could change. What do you see as the main, I guess, ostensible reasons for a government to levy additional controls onto Bitcoin?

Godfrey Bloom:

Well, that’s a wonderful Stephan that’s a marvelous oxymoron, a sensible government. There is no such thing as a sensible government. They’re all sociopaths and crooks, which is why we need golden. We need Bitcoin to get out. So you won’t have a rational excuse for trying to steal our gold or Bitcoin, any more than there’s a rational excuse for martial law, with a virus which killed in great Britain, fewer people than the 1957, 1958, 1968 and 2010 virus that this isn’t to do with science or pandemic. This is because they’re crunching up control. They need to control. And it is my suspicion perhaps hypothesis that they are seeing how far they can go. And it’s not just Great Britain by controlling the population physically, when the collapse of fiat currencies comes about now, this is where I think they do.

Godfrey Bloom:

And they’ve been trying to do this, of course, for many years, when it comes to gold, forget Bitcoin, let’s just park Bitcoin for just a minute and talk about gold. How do they do this with gold? Well, we know that when Nixon came off the gold standard in 1971 and went onto the pet trade dollar, he printed money. He just printed dollars. Everybody watching your show knows that they know that otherwise it wouldn’t be watching your channel. So they know. So what’s actually happening here is of course we know that the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen. Now the dollar in 1971 today is worth 8 cents. We also know that just this century alone is only 20 years. We know that fiat currency against gold basket of fiat currency against gold has fallen by 80%. Now this is, this is gold, and this is why the central banks and their political associates partners in crime.

Godfrey Bloom:

If you prefer, they want to control gold. So how do they do this? Now? Let’s look at my gold holdings. I have gold coins in a security vault in London. So don’t come rob me, anybody, because they’re not here. They’re in a security vault in London, and that’s where they are. And it’s not a bank incidentally. It’s not a bank. Which the state no, it’s just a private security vote. So my gold coins in there when I bought them, made me gold was a thousand dollars an ounce. And now that it’s $1,850 an ounce, what it is, I haven’t made any money, particularly on gold. What’s happened. It preserved the purchasing power because what it would buy 10 years ago, it will buy today. And that’s what gold all about. And that gold coin will buy you bed breakfast and evening meal, but a gold sovereign a hundred years old would have bought you a bed breakfast and an evening meal in any capital city in the world.

Godfrey Bloom:

It will do the same today, no more, no less. So it doesn’t make money. It protects your money. And gold has been doing that for 5,000 years, which is why I’m a Gold bug, but this is how the crafty bit, the state does, it manipulates the price. You would imagine that it would be purchase and sale of bullion that actually drove the price of gold bullion. But of course it isn’t it’s paper gold. So we know that paper gold there’s 800 pieces of paper for every piece of gold or roundabout that as I explained in my book, but, this is how it’s worked. And they therefore can gamble on the price of gold, suppress the price of gold, who allows this to happen, which in any other field would be illegal. And that’s the SEC that is wall street, Regulators allow this to happen, allow people to sell food, go that they don’t have.

Godfrey Bloom:

And that’s because it suits the central banks for people not to run, to go. They do want gold to be at the price. It should be, which today should be at least $3,000 an ounce it, so that they can manipulate to suppress the price of gold and JP Morgan and people like that made massive amounts of money doing that. And every now and again, SEC put a token fine on. They fine them, but J people could just laugh and make up that fine, probably in six or seven weeks in the trading and manipulating the price. So they can, they can do this. Now, when we have this big collapse in fiat currency in Great Britain, I’m not sure what it’s like in Australia or America, but I suspect it’s probably the same. If I buy 50,000 pounds worth of gold coins from a gold coin dealer bullion dealer in London, I use (inaudible) but it could be anybody else.

Godfrey Bloom:

They buy that, that is registered with the regulatory authority because I could be a drug dealer. And they’re trying to save everybody from drug dealers. So they’re not doing it because they’re nosy or greedy or nasty. They doesn’t save us all. They’re going to save us all from the nasty drug dealers, but they’re not, of course what they’re doing is they want to make absolutely sure. They know I’ve got that gold. So like the French in 1720, the Americans and Roosevelt in in the 1930s can come and steal it when they run out of their own gold, which I suspect has already happened. So what they need to do is they can’t have the key to my vault in London. They can’t have that. But here’s the rub and this is where it comes in line with Bitcoin, right?

Godfrey Bloom:

And it’s no different. They can come along and say, give me your gold. We know you’ve got the gold or tell us where it is. If I don’t tell them, they then lock me up and suspend the rules of habeas Corpus. Now you may be familiar. I’m sure you are familiar down there with the situation with Julia Assange because he’s one of your countrymen he’s been locked up for over a year or going back now, I mean, locked up at embassies or et cetera, et cetera. Plus they suspended the writ of habeas Corpus. He’s just, he’s just got off a month. There’s the judge, very junior judge said, no, the Americans can’t have him because the stitch up between the Americans and the British, the CIA and the [inaudible] because we were all in bed together. So they went, but they won’t release him.

Godfrey Bloom:

Now, all they have to do then with me, if I don’t give them the gold, my gold is they at a fixed price. They will say, we’ll, buy it $2,000 an ounce, but we’ll now on the world, real dark. Is it $5,000 an ounce? This is what Roosevelt did. Oh, what a great man. Roosevelt was sorta what a wonderful president. He was in American history. But anyway, they will. And they can do that. They can lock me up without the Writ of Habeas Corpus. And eventually I will give up the key to my gold. So the price of gold, isn’t the trading of gold. It’s not me selling or buying or people like be buying or selling gold. And it isn’t really secure, no matter how much I pay for wonderful electronic vaults in London, all the rest of it, because all the state need to do is come and knock on my door and lock me up without a Writ of Habeas Corpus, until I gave it up. Bitcoin is no different

Godfrey Bloom:

By all means. I’m open to persuasion that this isn’t the case. Let’s say they bring in the law, the IRS bring in law, HMRC, bring in a law, whichever tech that they could bring a law. And they say holding non-state cryptocurrency, is now illegal, which is no flight of fancy, really like with these guys bad as they’re going to get. And then they can easily because they’ve got access to your bank accounts and your regulators have to hold the bank accounts for the last six years in this country. I can’t believe you said you have in Australia. They can say, there’s a transaction here. Where did it go? And if we think it went to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, so you then suspend. Here’s another major thing that’s happened in many other aspects in the principles of English law, which is the same in Australia. And the same in America, the presumption of innocence is gone. The tax and regulatory authorities do not presume innocence and I’ve run financial service companies. They come in I have to prove that I’m not guilty of any misdemeanor under their laws. So you lose the presumption of innocence. They have access to your bank accounts and they can do exactly the same thing under suspicion as they have done with Julian Assange for different reasons and say, we think you hold Bitcoin. If you didn’t tell us where your Bitcoin is, we won’t release you.

Stephan Livera:

So look certainly Godfrey. I think some of these things are maybe longer term they are potentially possible. I just think we are a long way from this kind of like straight up Bitcoin being banned conversation, at least in the Western countries, the USA, the UK, Australia. I think we are a long way from that kind of scenario occurring. And I think it’s just like from the conversations that I’m having with people who are a little bit connected into the scene in terms of the US or Australia. I’m not as familiar with the UK, but the conversation that I’m hearing from people, and of course it could change. These things could change, but currently the situation is more about, I think governments are more concerned with things like KYC, AML laws and KYCing the customers and so on.

Stephan Livera:

Then they are about some kind of serious monetary threat. And I think in many ways, it’s almost like the kinds of people who have to understand it. They’re often the last to understand it, right? The central bankers are the last people to understand how you can have this money that’s evolving and forming from the bottom up. And so I think that’s one important point. I think it’s also important to recognize that people can more easily transferred their Bitcoin than their gold internationally without using a custodian. And I think that is a really key important point that we have to recognize here, because ultimately if you sense that things are going the wrong way in your country, Bitcoin holders can literally send their Bitcoin and store them in some other jurisdiction. And so it just there’s this competitive pressure between the jurisdictions. So I think it will be more like capital will flow in the direction of those countries with less restrictions over time.

Stephan Livera:

And so here’s the other thing as well. This became a bit of a meme in a prior cycle, but essentially this whole idea of, Oh, China is banning Bitcoin. And it just kind of, it just happened so many times that China was banning or unbanning Bitcoin, that it just didn’t really matter at the end of the day. So ultimately there will still be the ability for people to earn Bitcoin in a peer to peer fashion or to purchase it in a peer to peer fashion, or to be at home to mine it in that way. So I just think there’s too many sort of ways that people can slip through the cracks. And there’s too many ways that governments essentially are in competition with each other because they have to compete. Even today, if we look at something like the whole digital nomad thing that we’re seeing more and more people who are trying to take on that idea and we’re seeing governments who are trying to say, Hey, come here.

Stephan Livera:

We want you here, let’s have a word virtual workers program visa let’s have a digital nomad visa. And so I think in a similar sense, we’re seeing some parts of the world that are very supportive of Bitcoin. So recent example is the Miami mayor. I forgot his name, but I think he was recently saying, yeah, let’s like buy some Bitcoin and have it on our books and we’ll try and encourage people to come here. We’re seeing regulation and legislation rather in Wyoming of the USA, which is very sort of promising in that regard in terms of full reserve banking and so on. So I just think it’s while it’s possible that some countries or some States or some towns will be very anti Bitcoin, there’ll also be those that are very pro Bitcoin and any Bitcoin holder will have an incentive to just take, to just pick up and leave. So I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that idea?

Godfrey Bloom:

Well, I think Stephan five years ago, I would have agreed with you on all that. But because as I said again, I’m talking to you from a country, the United Kingdom of all countries under martial law. Moreover, we’re seeing the coming together now, whether it’s at Davos or Doha the world economic forum, we’re seeing every senior world leader or retired leader saying build back better, the new normal. And I think when we say collapse of fiat currency, I think all previous games are off the board. It isn’t going to be, Oh, this place has he ‘s more welcoming. So this Singapore, for example, is more liberal in these matters or whatever it is. I would have agreed with you up until a few years ago, but I wouldn’t have understood that in a democracy that they can deconstruct the constitution, drive a coach and horses through the principles of English law and hold you without a writ of Habeas Corpus.

Godfrey Bloom:

So the whole game plan has changed. So it means if you have the, obviously if there’s a collapse effect counts and they want to replace it with state crypto currency. Which defeats the entire object as we would both agree and incidentally, let me just say, I’m a big, I’m not saying this is going to happen tomorrow morning or even next year. What I am saying is that we must not be naive about these dangers when we see a totalitarian system of government. So we have the Fed, we have the ECB, we have the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan everybody getting together to then say, we will agree that we must control Bitcoin, whether that means that the facilitators, as the SEC do running a on gold, which controls the price to a very large extent, not a total extent.

Godfrey Bloom:

And I would also Stephan. And I take your point and goldbugs know this, you can’t do that forever. You can’t cheat the system forever, but in all fairness, that’d be cheating the gold system. Now for over 25 years, they’d be faking the gold system. You can go quite a long time with this. So there’s lots of tools that the central banks. If they get together can do and yes you’re quite right. You can transfer it. It’s easy to transfer relatively easy if you don’t have counterparty risk in Bitcoin, which I accept and I didn’t take and I’m an investor. I’m an investor in Bitcoin. I understand this. So you can do this. But the thing that makes me uneasy is yes, they can’t get Bitcoin any more than they can get my gold coins, but they can get me and they can get it on the flimsiest of excuses.

Godfrey Bloom:

And I have to say, Stephan, you and Max Kaiser are the first, guy’s going to be banged up in solitary confinement without a Writ of Habeas Corpus, until they tell the state where the Bitcoin is, they can’t get at the Bitcoin. I’m still on the learning curve a little bit, Stephan, let’s say that there is a jurisdiction, which is Bitcoin friendly, very Bitcoin friendly. How are they going to stand up to the rest of the world, central banking system? What is going to happen if this central banking agreement a UN agreement or something which is already happening these agreements already taking place, they don’t get much publicity, but they’re taking place. What happens when these people say the ultimate problem, of course Bitcoin has it is to be a store of wealth.

Godfrey Bloom:

Okay? But access to be money. It has to be relatively acceptable for goods and services. Now, if I want to buy a new car in a couple of years, time, I want to go down to my dealer. And I want to buy a new car for say, 30,000 pounds. I got 30,000 pounds worth a Bitcoin. He can’t take it because it’s illegal for him to take Bitcoin. And that just isn’t in England, that’s in America and that’s in the European union, which it will be the state can’t let me go and buy anything significant with Bitcoin because they’ve lost control. They’ve lost control. So they will have to put these blocks in place. Now, as you say up until now, they’d be muffing about drug dealing and this, that and the other so on and so forth. But even Switzerland, lets information go to the authorities in the European union, Switzerland about Russian money, even Switzerland.

Godfrey Bloom:

And of course the Swiss Goldbug say put your gold in Switzerland Godfrey because they can’t get it. Well, they don’t need to get it any more than London. They get me, or they get the holder or a supposed holder. And we’re not on our death certificates at the moment on our death certificates for COVID 19, the real number of deaths in the United Kingdom at the moment for people who aren’t already old and is about 6,000. And we’ve had a massive publicity complaint saying it’s a hundred thousand. So, and people believe it, people are gullible. And we’ve seen the behavior of our police, your police in Melbourne, which is shocking, shocking. We’ve seen all this. There is nothing the government won’t do to save their own arses and their own bankers. We’re dealing with gangsters here. Oh, well, they need to make a reason, or it would be sensible. And coming back to your original oxymoron in sensible government, sensible governments.

Stephan Livera:

Just to clarify, I didn’t say extensible, I didn’t say sensible, just to clarify, I didn’t say sensible. I was saying ostensible. So that obviously I agree with you, they’re not sensible. They’ll have to give some reason that to the normies sounds like a good reason, right? And that’s where the whole, all drug laundering, whatever drug, boom, money laundering, whatever But certainly I take your point there, but I think Bitcoin currently. I guess it’s a discussion about what happens in the future. So as we speak today, Bitcoin is call it what $640 billion as a market. I think we aren’t even in the serious ballpark of being of governments doing anything close to that until we get to 5 trillion or like 10 trillion, like we probably need another 10X from here before it even starts to be a serious consideration in that, in that kind of conversation.

Stephan Livera:

And I think it really depends on who you look at and who you listen to because there are already some US politicians who actually are very positive speak positively on Bitcoin. They see it as a store of value and they see it as a way that perhaps because these tend to be conservative or libertarian politicians themselves. And they tend to see issues with how US government and obviously many governments around the world are in a very high level of debt. And so they see it, like there is a need for this kind of neutral store of value. And so I think it really does matter where the public conversation on Bitcoin goes. And I think the other point to think about as well is let’s say we hit a 10X, well, we’re probably also going to see a 10X in the number of people who hold Bitcoin. And at what point do they become a political voting block on which it would not be feasible to do these kinds of, Bitcoin bans or going after people for it? I think that is also part of the conversation. And I think it’s sort of similar to the idea of once Uber got popular enough, it just wasn’t politically feasible to ban it. Yes, they could regulate it, but they weren’t able to ban it.

Godfrey Bloom:

All of which I take your point and I certainly take your point to numbers and I think it will get, it has to get to the 10 trillion. It has to get much bigger than it is now to register. Interestingly enough, that’s true of gold because the average percentage of a portfolio investment portfolio in gold is probably averaging less than 2%. So the same, the same arguments apply to gold which is where they go along the same path or just parallel paths in many, many ways and all of this I understand, but it. Even if they don’t ban Bitcoin, there’s many ways of making Bitcoin uncomfortable. So you have to turn it back into whatever is the state currency of the day in order to transact. So what most people want is alignment, and I wish it would come about.

Godfrey Bloom:

I’m a true believer because I think Bitcoin will be fantastic. It’s so sensible. You’ve got a Bitcoin, you’ve got a credit card thing with Bitcoin and you could buy shops and go everywhere and you buy Bitcoin and which is not degradable as a currency. It’s wonderful. It’s a brilliant concept. I think it’s absolutely fantastic. But having worked for 10 years in the belly of the beast, knowing what these people are, how evil they are and how sociopathic they are. I wouldn’t have believed even only two years ago, even knowing this in politics, that I could be locked in my house here for a fake pandemic. And the police will lock me up or fine me 800 pounds on the spot. If they find anybody in my house who shouldn’t be there having a cup of tea, this is where we’re going.

Godfrey Bloom:

And I think the problem that we have with so many people is they don’t fully understand. And this isn’t even a real crisis. This is a fake crisis when there’s a real crisis, which is the collapse of our banks and the collapse of, their all games are off. They will do whatever they think they have to do to preserve themselves, not the vote voting, voting suspended. They cancel the elections, the London elections, the worst elections, they’ve all been canceled. They can select say that no protest instead of me, because people are sheep. Yeah. So they’ve actually got rid of the election, Jennifer, one about electoral popularity. And then when it comes to electrical popularity, of course, what happens to the voting system? Well, we just saw in America, we’ve just seen some shenanigans in America where of any banana Republic where did the rest of the world?

Godfrey Bloom:

And it’s the same hair instantly. It’s the same in England when it comes to voting, there’s no ID requirements, no nothing. They can fiddle elections, they can suspend elections, they could suspend habeas corpus. And if they make it, if they make it illegal for the acceptance in these main countries to accept Bitcoin in exchange, because you know you have to transfer your Bitcoin into something else. If you want to spend it, now, you could preserve your wealth with it, but it becomes emotional. This is also true to an extent with gold. And please don’t think I’m going down the gold versus Bitcoin, because I’m trying to have a conversation there to help everybody make decisions, diversified portfolios. But if I put a handful of gold sovereigns in my pocket. I know that they will be acceptable in Buenos Aires, Delhi, New York Paris.

Godfrey Bloom:

They will accept them. And there’s no electronic transfer. So once they’re in my pocket, I fully understand that if I wanted to do a transaction in Hong Kong to buy something in Hong Kong gold is very much more difficult. The Bitcoin would be if Bitcoin wasn’t interfered with, by the state. But I think what we need to do is think about what might be happening and looking at government behavior in the last year. All governments in a year or two’s time when a real catastrophe hits, we don’t have a real, this pandemic isn’t real Oh, it’s fake, but they’re putting in the leavers of power already. There, all the leavers of power motivating the police, politicizing the police giving police extra powers. All these things are happening. The regulator’s powers over here have grown in the last 25 years.

Godfrey Bloom:

I mean, I was probably the city negotiation committee or consultants committee in 1986. I’m an old geezer. I’m an old man. I’ve seen it all before. And it was going to be light touch regulation. Self-Regulation it’s now in the United Kingdom, full million words in the regulator. The reformative was, it is impossible to survive a regulatory inspection without breaking the rules. It is simply impossible. You couldn’t do it. And this is one of the problems and there’s millions of other regulations, rules, and regulations. All I’m suggesting here, all I’m suggesting is I’m not saying gold’s better than Bitcoin because it isn’t is a similar kind of thing. And it has the same kind of problems. There is, if you will, there is a degree of complacency with both goldbugs and Bitcoin bugs, who, because they’ve made that step, they bought their gold, or they bought their Bitcoin.

Godfrey Bloom:

That they’re going to be okay. Am I going to feeling that it’s not going to be okay, either for me as a gold bug or a Bitcoin holder. And I think we need to start thinking about that, accepting that I think if Bitcoin holders and goldbugs, don’t accept, these coming dangers down the path, we are more likely to fall foul of them. Let’s think about them and let’s see how that we can circumnavigate them when they come and when they do come and they will come not next year, not the year after necessarily, they will certainly come. We’ve gotta be ready for that.

Stephan Livera:

Okay. So Godfrey, let’s talk a little bit about, okay. So you’re saying this idea of merely purchasing Bitcoin is not enough. And I think I can agree with you there. What would you suggest that Bitcoin people should be doing in addition over and above merely buying Bitcoin in your view?

Godfrey Bloom:

Well, I’m afraid I don’t have a golden, I don’t have a wonderful solution any more than I do with gold. And I’m an expert on gold. I’m not an expert on Bitcoin. I just think, unless I think what we should be doing as it gets bigger, we should be forming a serious lobby group, all big business. And in Washington, of course, and in Brussels where I worked, there were 10,000 lobbyists in Brussels, and this is designed for big business. They don’t like small businesses. They don’t like the self employed, big government they can’t control them. They hate what they can’t control. Now, what governments want is big companies in line with banks. They want it all big and the political government. Now I don’t use the term fascism in a pejorative term. I don’t use it. That’s crass. That sort of thing that students do they mouth up fascist because they don’t understand what fascism means I do.

Godfrey Bloom:

And you’ve got to understand that it’s a political system. It may be good, it may be bad. It depends on your point of view, but there’s no communism. But fascism basically is a system where it’s a joint of big business politicians and bureaucracy. The state controls the levers of power, the levers of industry. Whereas communism has the ownership of them. They’re the two subtle differences if they’re indeed subtle at all. So we’ve got to understand that. So lobbying, and actually this will help when it gets bigger and more people have Bitcoin and we need perhaps one or two big companies who would accept Bitcoin across the counter. And people get used to buying stuff with Bitcoin, so if you go into a Mercedes dealer. The Mercedes and I think this would be a monster step forward. I’m sure you’d agree with me on this. If Mercedes were to say, we will accept Bitcoin in all our showrooms all over the world, that will be, and then BMW would have to do the same when it gets to 10 trillion.

Godfrey Bloom:

Stephan, these big companies will have to do that, but we’ve already seen, let’s take the flip side on the automobile companies. It’s all going to be electric. And we’re talking in this country about electric cars by 2030, I think it is. You could not, or net zero carbon emissions. You could not conceive of a more ludicrous policy, an expensive policy than this, its not being costed. Nobody knows about it, but it’s green. It’s green. Well, fantastic. Isn’t it? And it’s the same old story. The big guys can ride it out. And the little guys get screwed. Look at the aviation industry. There will be nobody to save the aviation industry in a year’s time. I work as a consultant. I’m a director of a company which services training aviation companies. And I can tell you governments hate aviation industries because they’re not green and people can travel about, they don’t like people traveling about.

Godfrey Bloom:

Don’t like people traveling about I’ll come to Australia. We were supposed to be in Australia. I got go, we get turned away at the airport. Now. I don’t know know whether you know this, down in Oz, I can’t go to the airport. And finally, well, without a good reason, I’ve got to prove I’ve got a good reason to fly anywhere. You see where I’m coming from for this. You can see where I’m coming from. Just trying to think about, Oh, how it might pan out now. And this is the situation now already. We live in times unimaginable. And I think it’s going to get worse, but big business, the way to handle it because everything is about money. Follow the money trail. Every single decision that is made in the Inn on the planet, follow the money trail. Now, if big business comes on board with Bitcoin, maybe the pressure to accept Bitcoin globally in exchange for goods. And don’t forget, money has to be readily available and understood and accessible for goods and services. That is something that Bitcoin called claim at the moment. I certainly hope that it will. And I’m a big supporter and I hope it does. I don’t hope it does just about as Max Kaiser does.

Godfrey Bloom:

Would you call him spend because he’s got, he’s got to take it back into dollars or he’s got to sell it for currency. He can’t get out. And I saw him interviewed the other day, Max, who’s probably the biggest, most popular well-known supporter of Bitcoin for many years. And he was asked, what are you going to do with it? And to be brutally frank he didn’t know that well.

Stephan Livera:

for him, it’s a protest as well. It’s not just about money.

New Speaker:

I understand that. We all agree that everybody on this every Goldbug agrees with that, we all hate big state. We hate governments. We hate government money. We’re all exactly on the same side, but we really don’t want to have our head in the sand on this one. Okay.

Stephan Livera:

Of course. And look, I think you make a lot of good points Godfrey, and I think this is one of those points where there might be some disagreement even amongst the Bitcoin world. So I’ll give you one view that is prominent in the Bitcoin world though it’s not the only view. So in the Bitcoin world, as you might’ve seen, there’s the crypto anarchist view or kind of loosely the anarcho capitalist version of a crypto person. And so these, both these people would say something more like they might say something more like, look, we don’t need the government. We just want to build open-source software. And we just build technology and we can just kind of get away without, by advancing the technology, making it easy for people to maybe use it more privately or transact and secure their clients and things like that.

Stephan Livera:

Whereas my view is more like we need a bit of that, but we actually need a multi-pronged strategy. So I do agree that as Bitcoin rises in value, it will make sense for a lot of Bitcoin holders to put some money into Bitcoin lobbying, right? To try to make sure that Bitcoin stays legal, that you can run your Bitcoin node, that you can hold your private keys, that mining is legal, all of these kinds of things. And I see it like a multi-pronged strategy. So in one way, we’re spending time out there teaching the public, Hey guys, this is how you can take your financial sovereignty back with Bitcoin. And here’s the and let’s develop the technology and let’s make it easy for people to use it and hold it. But also I think we have to put some resources and some effort into this whole lobbying approach to keep it legal.

Stephan Livera:

And there are arguments that we can prosecute internally that are at least internally consistent to government right now. I’m obviously I think you and I are libertarians and we want government to be either small or zero and in the anarcho-capitalist camp. But even for them, we can say, Hey, look, if you don’t support this, that you’re going to lose a lot of jobs. You’re going to lose a lot of overall competitiveness and people will flow to other States and other areas. So I think that is an angle that people can try to push. And especially as you mentioned, if we hit a 10x, say Bitcoin goes to 10 trillion, we’re talking a solid almost 20 times what the size is today. So there’ll be 20 times more people who are using it all over the world.

Stephan Livera:

So I think that’s an interesting angle that we might see. And I think it’s also important to recognize that a lot of this technology has been built and is being used even in spite of bans. So for example, in Pakistan despite governments being anti Bitcoin, you’re seeing daily trade volumes increasing. You’re seeing people using home mining. We’re seeing people using Bitcoin as a way to get around sanctions. And this is a thing that even in the Iranian situation where there are groups of Iranian listeners and some who have translated episodes of my podcast as educational material. And they’re talking about, Oh, Hey, let’s use Bitcoin to get around sanctions. And I guess it’s a complicated story because in some ways government will, instead of necessarily banning it, they’ll more try to control and regulate and say, okay, you’re allowed to hold this Bitcoin, but you need to hold it in this kind of government account or in this kind of certain kind of exchange or this kind of way, or we need to be able to see what you’re doing, but at the same time, there’s just so many cracks all over the world that we might have this kind of regulated world and let’s say a more free market Bitcoin world or black market or gray market world, but the borders are porous.

Stephan Livera:

People can just like send them in and out. And I think that will be the case for some time to come. What’s your view?

Godfrey Bloom:

I agree with you entirely on all that. And when I said ban Bitcoin, I mean, let me just rephrase that a little bit when I say ban, but there’s all sorts of things government can do without banning it. They just make it so difficult and awkward. And certainly of course it’s the same. You mentioned Pakistan, or it’s the same with India, which banned gold. I can’t take my gold coins into India because if I could take my gold coins into India, I could live very well for quite a long time or just a handful. Because there’s a premium because the banning means a premium on that as we all know. So yes, the ban banning, it isn’t that they’ll actually ban it, but they can make your life or they can make the transactions or the live it to it.

Godfrey Bloom:

Then of course, you’ve got to say what happens when you’ve got such powerful things as so central banks all the main central banks, and you’ve got your and. We know that we’re not quite sure where this is going, but we don’t know the input from people like George Soros, bill Gates all these people who have, who have wealth beyond human imagination who’ve bought the newspapers here. They’ve bought mainstream TV here, and they are all supporting lockdown. You are not allowed to go on TV, even if you’re supporting the world trade organization, which says lockdowns don’t work. And we all know they don’t work. We all that that’s painfully obvious. If they work, we wouldn’t be in, locked down free in the United Kingdom. Wouldn’t be really, I mean, you don’t need the brains of an Bishop, but nobody’s allowed to come on mainstream TV and say that. So they control the media TV, they control everything and people, we don’t even know. We don’t even know. And certain don’t have the wellbeing of mankind.

Godfrey Bloom:

You didn’t get to be a multi-billionaire when being kind dear me, No, this is about they’re all sociopath’s. They have to be. You have, I used to share this with you if I may, Stephan and I was a young man, I used to be under the impression that somehow billionaires had something extra, they had an extra dynamic in their head, which made the cleverer than the rest of us, which is why they’re multi-billionaires of course now I’m an old man I’ve met multibillionaires. I understand they have something missing in their head. They have no empathy. They have no compassion. They have no moral compass. That is how they got to be multibillionaires not because they’re good guys. They’re not like the multibillionaires of yesteryear like Carnegie and some of the great philanthropists of the 19th century who used all this wealth, pro bono publicly but which they did not feel the Lord Nuffield and all these things. We know these guys, these guys produce foundations, which make it a tax haven for them, and then trying to manipulate global politics. These are bad people.

Stephan Livera:

And you’re right. That in many cases, businessman seek to use the state to beat down their competition, to entrench themselves against their competition. And so it’s, I guess it’s a complicated situation because when you’re trying to explain, well, hold on, there are some billionaires who maybe you could argue, okay, they’ve made their money, honestly, and others who maybe have made their money using the government, using the guns or the threat of the government to beat down their competition, or to sort of manipulate the scenario to their advantage at, in an unjust way. Right. so I guess at the end of the day, it just comes down to how many people really value freedom and how many people will, I guess you make a very good point that, a couple of years ago, it would have been, this all would have been unfathomable, right?

Stephan Livera:

This idea that people would just willingly accept the destruction of their livelihoods, their way of life, their businesses, all of these things. But I think that maybe there’s something different about this, because we’re talking about money, your stored wealth over your life. And I think in many countries around the world, not just the, you know, the Western US, UK, Australia, Canada, et cetera, a lot of other countries where they have a weaker currency. And for them, they have a very strong incentive to try to store some value if they can. And I think a lot of those countries around the world will just that fact of people all buying Bitcoin around the world, it just makes it very difficult to effectively control. So even as you’re saying, okay, maybe it’s not an outright ban, but even controlling, it might just be very, I think it will end up being very difficult, given the availability of the technology, the availability of smartphones, availability of cheap computers, like Raspberry Pi machines and things that we can use to run Bitcoin full nodes.

Stephan Livera:

And so on that, I think it just changes the calculus around trying to stop people from doing it, because I think it’s just one of those things where the it’s like an asymmetry it’s cheaper for you to store it and secure it and put it in multiple jurisdictions and do all those kinds of things than it is for people to sort of go around and stopping everyone. So I think you’re right, of course governments of the world could go after Max Kaiser or any other famous kind of Bitcoin people, but they’re not going to be able to help everyone.

Godfrey Bloom:

Yes. I think I think you have a valid point and I think, well, I knew something would come out of this conversation because it always does. It did last time. And I think both of us have suddenly gone.That’s a good point. And it needs thinking about. My experience so far since October with people outside yourself and the professionals, if you will is that, a lot of people haven’t taken it as far in their heads as they should, but I think what’s come out of this is as Bitcoin gets bigger and it will get bigger of that there’s no doubt. I don’t doubt that the price of Bitcoin will go up over a period of time. All that I think is a given and it’s a given with gold as well. It’s a given because it’s the question of destruction of fiat currencies.

Godfrey Bloom:

I think there was no one sponsor or organized sponsorship for gold to stop the cheating and facilitating of the SEC cheating the price or manipulating the price of gold, because the powers that be the politicians and the central bankers didn’t want that very difficult thing to lobby against. So what with Bitcoin is has to be, it has to turn into a mass movement if you will on your hypothesis, with which I don’t dispute, it has to be a mass movement. The pressure has to be political, to an extent with a small P, but it also has to carry, it has to carry big business with it. The pressure has to be big business. So somebody has to and I think the first big international company. I mean, it doesn’t really matter who it is, but I would say automobiles are the natural, the natural thing. Whether it’s Volkswagen or whoever it is. But then of course, don’t forget Volkswagen is heavily owned by the state as well, the German state. So think these things are terribly and you mentioned earlier about how multibillionaires get their money using the state Tesla. Of course.

Stephan Livera:

That’s awesome. It’s an interesting example, Godfrey, because funnily enough, now of course I grant you that Tesla has arguably been a recipient of government subsidies in terms of loans and their whole renewable aspect of it. However, Elon Musk has come out in very much in favor of Bitcoin. He’s been talking about it, he’s been saying, I know he’s been saying, Oh, I wish I got I was supporting it earlier. I late to the party. He’s he’s been saying some of these things. And I think it’s kind of funny as well, that the point you mentioned about the movement, I think that’s a very strong point. It’s that just as we’re seeing now with this whole wall street bets, GameStop phenomenon, I think many of those same kinds of people in a year or two, some of those people could come into the Bitcoin world and that same kind of passion and movement might well come into the Bitcoin world. And that could potentially infuse a society with this idea of, Hey, we want justice. We want monetary justice. Bitcoin is our way of seeking justice.

Godfrey Bloom:

I hope so. Because that would really please me. Because I’m a supporter of crypto currencies outside the state, a huge supporter. And that’s what I’d like. One of the problems that I’ve noticed recently in the last year in Britain is that people don’t value their Liberty as much as I do or much as I thought they would. This martial law that we have has gone virtually protested, not in Eastern Europe, they’re pushing back in Italy, they’re pushing back, but in Britain there’s been virtually no pushback at all. People seem to be quite happy to walk around with muzzles on do, as they’re told and all the rest of it. Admittedly, the government’s giving a lot of people money to stay at home. And of course the entire public sector on full pay, staying at home.

Godfrey Bloom:

So we’ve got millions and millions of people who are not affected, but the idea that people, I think people value freedom more when they’ve come out of a totalitarian system. So your Poles and your East Germans, your Czechs the people from Eastern central Europe who have been in this terrible Soviet Soviet system, value it more than we do the tub with great Britain. This, we haven’t been invaded since 10 66. We have a tendency somehow, and I sometimes wonder how to win all our Wars. I really don’t know how we do that, but this organized organization in this country where we do all this. So people think it can’t happen to them. And if they still conceivably believe what they hear in mainstream media, people actually listen to the BBC and believe it and pay 150 pounds a year for it.

Godfrey Bloom:

Although they moan that if they didn’t send their money to the BBC, the BBC would have to either get advertising or subscriptions like the hundred other channels that we have. But everybody sits down and writes a check and sends them a check. I think great Britain its simply inconceivable. It’s a nation of sheep, docile sheep, but that not even killer sheep. So yeah. And the other thing, and I just share this with you. Because another political leader said it to me and it sent me scratching my head about, he said, yes. People want to protect my money and so on and so forth. And that’s all understandable, but he said, we now live, this is certainly true in America. Most of the country live paycheck to paycheck.

Godfrey Bloom:

They don’t have any savings to worry about. They don’t have any investment portfolios I’m worried about money, the degradation of money, because I’m an old guy and I’ve got accumulated wealth. And I understand how many bees make five, but most people don’t. Most people think the state will go on and send you the money, whether they’re public sector, the public sector pensioners or their social welfare benefits. There is no conception in this country that this money doesn’t come from a magic tree. And we already have a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Who’s personally a very nice guy. I’ve met him. But he doesn’t understand money at all. Bless him. He hasn’t a clue. He thinks he’s already revving up to try and tax our way out of a recession. He actually believes you could tax your way out of a recession.

Godfrey Bloom:

And he’s talking about a wealth tax of 5%, a wealth tax of 5% over and above 500,000 pounds. You can’t buy a decent middle-class house in anywhere, nevermind London in great Britain for under 500 grand. So if that’s your that’s your benchmark for wealth. Everything else you’ve caught is going to be hit by 5%. But none of us have any money. You know, we’re asset rich. What are we going to sell to give the Chancellor five 5% of our wealth, which isn’t wealth. Anyway, the big guys won’t pay big guys, never pay tax. Small guys don’t pay taxes. Haven’t got any money. So it will be the middle classes that pick up on this tax yet again. And and it stifles and tax stifles and all the rest of it. He doesn’t have any concept of cutting spending. We have 12 billion pounds a year, 30 billion going in foreign aid. We send some money to China. Yeah, we do. And our foreign aid program, we have a high speed rail system, which is costing a hundred billion that gets businessmen home to Birmingham from London, 20 minutes early. That’s a lot of money, isn’t it? So a Birmingham businessman can have an extra gin and tonic before dinner.

Godfrey Bloom:

So there is no concept of, we have quangos we have indexing pensions, which costs billions, probably the because of a trillion pounds in the books, which is off records sheet with the international accounting standards, which the Chancellor, neither did your chancellor present on international accounting standards. They are all crooks. Every single one of them is a crook. And it’s going to be very, it’s just like time to bust the mafia. It’s busting the mafia and institutionalized crime. Central banking is institutionalized crime. That it. It’s going to be tough. And the only way we can beat it, you’re quite right. We all need to rise up and the more Bitcoiners, the better as you quite rightly say the more of us there are the better it is, which is why I understand the evangelism of Bitcoin is I understand that, I don’t sneer at that, but evangelism can be a little bit dangerous if you’re, it keeps you focused.

Godfrey Bloom:

Okay. In that direction, when somebody is coming up there with a bloody baseball bat. So we need to be comfortable that now I didn’t know that Elon Musk had come out in favor of Bitcoin. So you just told me something. I didn’t know that that is just the sort of level of individual that needs to come on side and if he does, and we are more people do that. But at the moment although that would be, let’s have some more people I tell you who else might be, and he’s not big. On the global stage, we have a guy called the guy who run with us was a big, it’s a big national pub chain here. It was it was a radical, a radical and he came forward. Certainly if every country would use a highly respected private sector entrepreneur, who said, I’ve got restaurants all over the country, I would accept Bitcoin and accidentally knowing the guy.

Godfrey Bloom:

He’s very likely to come down that route. If every, and it, people then see how that would grow us. If people, we used to go to get a meal out with their Bitcoin and a drink and then do that. But of course they’re all closed now. Anyway. So the States, the States closed them, but yeah, it’s gotta be Bitcoin has to be a mass movement. And it has to be grassroots is a good thing. Brexit was grassroots British, the British nation voted for Brexit because that was absolutely grassroots against the establishment MSM, the political class, the bureaucratic class all the crooks and gangsters and banks is we actually got rid of that for which I suspect we are now being punished with martial law because we voted the wrong way, the deep state or the establishment call it what you will. So there is, but it does need it needs its leaders.

Godfrey Bloom:

And on this for Bitcoin, it has to be business leaders, not political leaders, political leaders, aren’t going to be any use at all. In my view it has to be business leaders and the must be one in every free country. There must be one guy in every country who could run the flag up the mast, Oh, for independent cryptocurrency. It doesn’t have the necessary to be a bit Bitcoin. I know that’s a whole different game and I’m not knowledgeable enough to discuss that with you. But independent of state cryptocurrency is a wonderful thing and it must be the future, but we need some, we need some leaders of big business leaders in my view. I think that’s the point we could perhaps end on in full agreement perhaps.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I think so. I think it ultimately comes down to the question of how do you build a movement. And as you’re saying, having leaders can help. I think Bitcoin, in some ways, eschews having specific leaders, if you will, but in the sense that people are prominent and well-known advocates, certainly Bitcoin has those. And I think one point I would probably amend a little bit. It’s not as much about day to day like receiving Bitcoin, but more about this message of saving Bitcoin. And so I think this is where the he Michael Saylor or Jack Dorsey with Square that kind of message about not necessarily having it for day to day spending, but thinking of it as, Hey, this is I’m going to use it for my corporate treasury and as individuals, we can use it for our individual treasury and we hold it. And so that is. I think the other point around building the base, what we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to grow the base. Right?

Godfrey Bloom:

Absolutely. And I agree. And of course that’s how I use mine. That’s my Bitcoin I only there was, there was a bit of an unusual situation when I, when I, when I, it had just spiked and of course being a professional investor, I just doubled my money on Bitcoin. And I’m afraid I know what I walked away from it because there was also a fake, transactional reason for gold to be down that week, which details of which I won’t bore you, but it was technical. And you know all about that anyway there’s still technical positions, which might be coming out this very day. We’re talking about actually the fake root suppression of precious metals, but leaving, leaving that aside, that was a sort of window that, I pounced on. So I’m not a trader instantly. I’m a longterm investor on everything I do very boring, but that flipped off the screen on me.

Godfrey Bloom:

And I said that made that trade now and come back. And I did but it’s not something I intend to do much of that kind of thing. Now it’s partly diversification. Another thing that, I have experience for, because I’ve got a lot of input from Bitcoiners from all over the world on Twitter and stuff like that. But for which I now thank everybody because that’s been extremely helpful is diversification there must be if your. I would argue that never have your entire life savings in one thing in one place it’s a little bit do what I say, not do what I do because I have been very heavily involved in gold. I’m sort of, I am probably 70% gold which so but then I’ve got real estate and I’ve got other stuff and I’m building my Bitcoin.

Godfrey Bloom:

Now I’m building that diversification portfolio. But I do counsel. So when I look up the people that Twitter me Stephan, and I look them up sometimes just to see if I can get a little bit of a feel who’s coming back to me, I would say certainly 80% are free thinkers. As you would expect, people who understand the overall situation about money, but you will also find that they will be artists or musicians or all sorts of, but they’re not in the professional sphere. And therefore, perhaps don’t understand the need to diversify if that’s all they’ve got. And that would be a council, which is why I’m diversifying out of gold into Bitcoin on a very small scale, but that will grow a bit. And I think people who are a hundred percent Bitcoin might like to go just a little bit, the other track, but now that’s a personal thing.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s ultimately up to each person they’ve got to decide that based on their own situation. So I guess that’s for each person to decide their own thing. But look, I think that’s probably a good spot to finish up. So Godfrey where can listeners find you online?

Godfrey Bloom:

My website is best, which is simple. It’s just godfreybloom.uk and all my stuff’s on the articles, everything not just about Bitcoin, but about the pandemic, fake pandemic, fake statistics, and all the stuff that we all have to put up with all the time being fed bullshit by the state.

Stephan Livera:

Of course, I very much agree with you that there’s a lot of overreaction in terms of what’s going on with what’s going on with all of this stuff. But nevertheless, I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you for joining me Godfrey.

Godfrey Bloom:

Great pleasure. Thank you so much.