Correcting BBC misinformation on Bitcoin

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast, brought to you by Bold. So for American listeners, you can buy Bitcoin over at getbold.io. Now joining me today on the show is Susie Violet Ward, aka Decentrusus. Susie is the co-founder and CEO of Bitcoin Policy UK, and also a journalist and contributor. Editor at Forbes. So first of all, welcome to the show, Susie.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, pleasure to be here.

So, I know you've been, doing a lot to, let's say, advocate for Bitcoin in the UK and also commentate a little bit on what's going on on the regulatory and the lawmaking front of it. I wanted to start, I know you were clashing with, the BBC a little bit. So, why don't we start there? What, what have, what have, has

It's a really good question. So I thought I would focus on just one article, and it came out last-- no, it came out November 23rd, and it was "Every Bitcoin transaction or payment uses a swimming pool's worth of water." And as soon as it came out, everyone was like, "Good grief, here we go again." And so I thought, right, okay, I'll put a Freedom of Information request in to see if I can find out how they fact-checked it, because they clearly couldn't have, because everything in the article was- wrong. The source of the article was Alex Davies. We know how much mis-- this information he pumps out. So I asked them, more about how they checked their source and how they fact-checked the information that they had in the article. They came back and said that the BBC were protected under journalism and art, and they didn't have to give me that information. If it had been any other news organization, so for example, Sky or someone who-- or a, an organization that wasn't funded by, by the state. Exactly. So, so the BBC is funded by people that are forced, forced to pay for it basically. You don't really have a choice, well, you do, but you have to say that you don't watch any live TV at all, and then they can actually, make it quite difficult for you. And I think people have even gone to jail for refusing to pay their TV license. Although I don't think that's the case anymore. But,

I, I, I couldn't believe that they were saying that they wouldn't release this information because the BBC treated FOI requests differently to other news organizations just because of the way that it was funded. So when they came back and said that they couldn't give me this information, I tried really hard to put in, A complaint. So I, I was looking on their website, it's n-not easy to find how to complain about these things at all. There were several ways that I could do it, and every single time it was something that just like, "Oh yeah, we've got your request, we might get in contact with you." And I'm like, "Mm." What, what does that mean? There was no case reference, nothing. It was, it was really tricky. So I wrote to the journalist, I wrote to the crypto correspondent, I was trying to find every which way I could to try and, Find out how they fact-checked this article, because we reading it would know that it couldn't have been fact-checked. the journalist who wrote the article didn't respond to me. I know that he received my emails because the crypto correspondent at the BBC confirmed that he had even forwarded them on. And then eventually, I got an email from some senior editor somewhere saying, "Fill out this form, here's a link." So I thought, "Okay, alright." So I fill out the form, submit it, and, they just come back. I submit all the evidence and they come back with something completely different to what I wrote. I think one of the, one of their defenses to a sixteen page rebuttal written by the Digital Asset Research Institute, so it was solid, was that other news out-outlets had also published the same information. I don't think that's a defense.

Yeah, it's not, absolutely. And I think it's, it's unusual, this, you know, at this time they're still repeat- regurgitating this very long re-debunked, you know, post without also, I, I believe as you pointed out, no conflict of interest disclosure or, information about that, that this individual works for the Dutch Central Bank, and there have been many papers and many rebuttals of this. In fact, I've hosted a debate episode, with this individual. And, Ben Gagnon from, BitFarms. and so it's, it's quite concerning. let's, let's, I wanna ask you the question, why is this a concern? How many people will, let's say, see a headline from the BBC and then take that as, you know, that's the truth?

So there's a really brilliant website called Bitcoin Perception, and they analyze all Bitcoin coverage from neutral,

I'm gonna say bad, good, but, you know, negative, positive, neutral.

Yeah.

And they can show it by outlet as well. So what they showed was that the BBC and all the other n-normal mainstream media outlets, including The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, they're all Putting out negative information, sometimes it's neutral. So all of this has been analyzed, very, very rarely is it ever positive, which I find Mind-blowing, considering all the amazing things that Bitcoin does. When you think about how it helps separate money and state, it stops weaponizing money, it can help-- it's helping the global south, it's a, a freedom technology, it's USG credentials, you know, it mitigates, it mitigates methane. There, there's so many incredible properties, and it's a system that's never been hacked. It's almost perfect money. So how on earth can these news outlets constantly be pumping out negative and at best neutral information and never anything positive? Yeah, it's,

it's quite concerning, and I'm, I'm curious, do you think it's just, you know, it's like the same way people thought about the internet in the early days, or maybe how governments didn't like VoIP technology in the early days, and then later over time, a lot of them now use VoIP, and it's, it's ubiquitous, it's just everywhere. So is it, is it more in that camp where it's just something new, and let's say the power structure that exists today or the legacy power structures? Maybe they don't, they don't wanna take a, a, a, a kind eye or a, a, a positive light to these things.

It's really difficult to tell. So when I put the post out that you're talking about, when I said that the BBC can't be held accountable. A few people rightly pointed out that I called it misinformation opposed to disinformation, because it does seem like it's being done deliberately, but I, I can't prove that, and it's really difficult to know where the line is between malice and incompetence. So I, I can't quite work it out. All I know is that the career that I had before this, I was an accountant, I was a financial analyst, I was a Cognos developer, and only- Then did I study the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of Bitcoin before I felt like I was qualified to write about it? I've done some research into the journalists that do write about Bitcoin, and they are writers. They left university as journalists, and they haven't got any tech background, they haven't got any finance background, and all they do is write, which is fine. I just don't see how you can write about a technology like Bitcoin that's so deep and so vast without putting in the work.

I see, yeah, and I, I think you're right, it takes a lot of, perhaps that's one of those things where, when people are first new to something, and if, if you're just a writer who's not a specialist in that area, maybe they're just sort of very quickly trying to churn out- Articles and p-content and whatever it is nowadays, it, it could also be just down to incompetence, right? Or just kind of not having enough time to really dig deep before writing these articles, and then obviously when they come out, they go on, you know, they might go on the front page or they kind of get reposted elsewhere, or they get, let's say, maybe it's posted one time on BBC, but then people seeing it somewhere else on their feed, they sort of see it come up on their feed saying this big, you know, eye-catching title about- How negative it is, I, I wonder if it's, if, if some of it just comes down to that.

Yeah. who, who knows? It's, it's, it's almost impossible to tell. And I think it goes across almost everything where it's difficult to know what's incompetence and what's actually by design, because there's so much incompetence that it muddies the waters sufficiently, sufficiently for people not to be able to work it out.

I see, yeah. And I think the other aspect here, as, as you were pointing out, is that there have been numerous, numerous rebuttals of this kind of transaction, you know, Bitcoin uses a one pool of worth of water or these kinds of crazy numbers because it's, it's the It's just sort of a malicious, almost like a maliciously crafted, fact, or maliciously, not, not maliciously crafted fact. It's more like a maliciously crafted interpretation as opposed to a benign interpretation of the energy use of Bitcoin.

It's just written based on zero understanding. And, and going back to your point about how it spreads across multiple media outlets, after that BBC article was posted, there were fourteen other outlets that then published the information. That was obviously one of the BBC's defense in, in, in why they said that they, they had done it, because other people had as well. If they'd got their news from the BBC, the BBC are constantly going Going on about how we need to stop the spread of misinformation, and they're the worst perpetrator. if fourteen outlets have just went and, and published exactly the same nonsense, and then- And then they say that they need to control misinformation. It's, it, it's bonkers.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. And I think, I, I do think it's changing over time, and I believe, you know, the website, Fernando's website, the Bitcoin Perception Project. Of

course you have, 'cause it's brilliant, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so he, he's been doing that, and it's, I think it's, as I, I've only been casually following it, but as I understand, it is changing See more positive perception and positive articles written about Bitcoin as opposed to just being this, just kind of having these really drive-by negative takes that could be dispelled even with a basic Google search or a basic search engine query.

It's changing very slowly, however, the damage has already been done. So people haven't paid attention and have dismissed it as an ocean-boiling Ponzi scheme for many, many years because of what they've read. How many articles and how many years is it going to take to undo that damage?

Yeah, I think you're right. It, it, it, it will just take time. So I guess, I guess if we had to just kinda quickly spell out why are some of those claims wrong, I guess here's how I would say it. I think it's misunderstanding Bitcoin as a retail level transactional layer when really you should think of it more like a settlement layer upon which there are many, many other layers that can be built and other things that can be Bitcoin transactions, even if they don't necessarily hit the chain in terms of going on Bitcoin's blockchain and counting as a As an on-chain transaction, as the some of these metrics are trying to count- All

they didn't take into account Lightning, yes, exactly like you say, they didn't take into account the Lightning network.

Right. And whether it's Lightning or other layers or even just kind of custodial to custodial, let's say internal transfers inside of exchanges and custodians, those aren't hitting the Bitcoin blockchain and this kind of aspect of it. And also comparing the standard versus another standard. So as an example, what is the cost of the fiat standard? What is the cost of all the wars and all These other societal consequences that we all face, as opposed to the cost of a gold standard or the cost of a Bitcoin standard. And so I think once you start to zoom out and see it in that light, it's a very different conversation. It's not just about like, "Oh, what is the per transaction cost?" In this sort of malicious interpretation, that has been, let's say, promulgated by, people who are against Bitcoin for other reasons. so I guess that's kind of the quick answer, you know, just for anyone listening. And I guess let's, let's go on to some of the other topics that I know you've been writing about and speaking about. I know you were talking about the FATF travel rule compliance aspect of it. so do you wanna just explain a little bit about this concept? I know I've done episodes kind of going into this, but just, you know, for people who haven't heard those, what, what, how would you introduce this concept for people? What is the FATF travel rule? Why does that matter?

Yeah, why does it matter? And why isn't it talked about more? That's, that's also another thing that I want to know, is it stands for the Financial Action Task Force. And they say that they want to take global action against money laundering and terrorism, and they say that they research how money is laundered and how terrorism is funded, and they come up with rules to try and counteract this. The organization, was made up of seven G seven countries in 1989, I believe, and they are unelected. So the seven- Seven countries that have come together, nobody asked for, to make these rules to fix something that the financial system has never been able to fix. So the actual quote of the amount of illicit activities that happens in the global system is three to five percent. I mean, that's a huge figure For TradFi, and that figure hasn't changed in decades, which makes me think it's either made up or Or, or nothing's changing. I, either way, it just proves that they haven't cracked it in Tragfy, so I don't know why they're applying the same rules to Bitcoin and other cryptos. So, you know, this, this rule was, is not new. It was brought in in 2012 to o-oversee the, the transactions within the, the traditional financial system, and it's been proven to have absolutely no effect. In fact, there was a Freedom of Information request that was put in in Germany, that showed that there was no evidence at all linking the travel rule to reduce a reduction in money laundering. And then obviously, you know, that, that's a global initiative, but we also, it feeds into MiCA, which is a Europe-European initiative, and then we obviously have the tax part of it, which is carve the crypto asset reporting framework, which It is, i-it's just a mess. It's, it, it's just a complete,

it, it's, it's a real erosion of our privacy, and it feeds into the mainstream media narrative because they can convince people that it's needed. So they willingly give over everything. Like, they're fine. Look, okay, we wanna stop terrorists, of course, take all of my data. And so it's, it's all part of kind of convincing people that this oversight is required, but it actually- It violates some of our laws. I mean, even, we've got a law in the UK, or, sorry, it's Article 8, and it's part of the European, Convention of Human Rights. And it basically prevents, it's, it's the, the right to respect privacy and family life,

and all of these rules go against it. The CBDCs that they want to implement go against Article eight. They don't even know if, if the, the crypto asset framework i-is gonna provide accurate data. In fact, there's a lot to suggest that it won't be accurate. I mean, I don't know if you've been following the work that Lola's been doing on chain analysis, but she's, she's proven that e-chain analysis Reports aren't accurate, so all of a sudden you're gonna have them taking people's names, addresses, their date of birth, calculating tax

And all for something that won't

actually reduce any kind of crime or money laundering, because they'd probably just use JP Morgan or HSBC, it's much easier. I mean, they've been doing that for years completely unchallenged. A-a-and, and you don't even know if it's accurate, and the whole time you're giving these people All of your data, and it's just one big honeypot for hackers.

Yeah. I

don't, I don't want them looking after my data, I don't want them storing it, transmitting it, handing it over to institutions. It's, it's, it's terrifying.

Yeah, so look, there's a lot there. Let me just try to summarize some of the key points just so everyone can follow along. So FATF, Financial Action Task Force, it's this kind of, as I understand, it started out of a project in like the OECD, but I think What's happened is it's kind of metamorphosed and it's, it's sort of become this big kind of beast that in a way controls a lot of tradfi and Also now attempting to sort of leverage some of these controls and laws into the world of Bitcoin and, you know, crypto companies basically. And so When people are doing bank transfers around the world, they might be doing a wire from, you know, one country to another. Really what's going on in many cases, it's like Swift messaging is going on in the background. And so really these banks are doing com-all this kind of legal compliance, and they're doing things like their AML and sanctions checks, anti-money laundering, et cetera. Now, as you said, it's-- there's a bit of a pretense here that it's, it's to stop the, the evil, you know, the money laundering and the terrorists and But in practice, it's not really actually catching that much crime, and so this travel rule in particular is one example where TradFi banks are required to give information to each other. So as an example, if I am doing a transaction to you, Susie, my, you know, my bank is required to sort of share this information And sort of give a certain amount of information about me and maybe certain, y-uh, other identifiers about that transaction. And so what's happening now is some of this so-called travel rule is being, let's say, pushed as a compliance requirement onto Bitcoin and crypto companies and exchanges, which is sort of requiring them to also try to- Attach information in their own, let's say, proprietary network, if it's from one crypto exchange to another, that, let's say, I'm trying to instruct My crypto exchange to transfer to your account at another crypto exchange, that it would kind of do that parallel thing. But at the same time, remember, Bitcoin is also this peer-to-peer network that you could just be totally-- there's not an identifier necessarily of my name attached to that Bitcoin transaction that's happening on chain. So I guess that's kind of where they're trying to put this square peg into a round hole and say, "Well, we want you to just do this trans-- kind of do this travel rule compliance." Anyway. Have I got that right, or at least,

sort of

loosely what's happening there?

Yes, and, and because it, it was already implemented in 2012 in traditional finance, and it's been proven not to work It seems even more insane that you would now incorporate it into this.

Yeah, and I think, I'm really

good record of not working for goodness' sake.

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's, it's funny that, when things fail, when there are proven to be money laundering examples or whatever, when there's like a terrorist or something like this, that it sort of, it-- these events are often leveraged to try to get the public to support even more stringent AML and san-- sanctions laws and FATF travel rule compliance and all these kinds of things. And so- You know, there's kind of the, again, coming back to the incompetence or malice or just kind of, is it the result of the system that drives it this way or are there intentional forces trying to drive it this way? Whichever one of those it is, I think it, it is perhaps worthwhile noting that sometimes it's the people who push for some of these things. Like, I'll give you an example, right? During, the early days of the COVID hysteria, there were citizens of countries who were kind of yelling at their governments To do lockdowns, right? Because they had been put into so much fear. And so I think in a similar way, now of course, from a principle perspective, I'm against AML and sanctions laws in general because they impinge on the private property rights of, you know, businesses and individuals to do what they wish with their private property. Of course, you know, there should be efforts to stop genuine crimes, but I think AML and sanctions laws are just more like a compliance step and not the crime itself, at least, at least that's how I'm, I'm seeing it Yeah, o-other people can have their own view, but I think coming back to my point about, I think there is an element of people sometimes- They get scared and then they push inadvertently for more of these things, right? Because they sort of say, "Look, these banks, they're doing all this money laundering. We need the state to come in and be the policeman, right? " In their, in their mind, that they think that, you know, the banks need to be kept on a leash, a tight leash by the regulators. Therefore, we need more regulation, more AML, more sanctions compliance, et cetera. Like that's what they would say now. Of course, I'm against that, but- What do you think? Do you think it's actually citizens who are pushing for this kind of thing, or is it just more like, there, there's kind of interest that sort of push for greater and greater- Stranglehold on financial systems.

I don't think citizens are pushing for it because I don't think they're aware of it until it's actually implemented, and then they get convinced that it's needed.

Right.

So by the time it gets implemented, it's too late, and that's when the, you know, the, the fear comes in. I mean, the expression comes to mind, you can make a, a poor man eat anything, a rich man buy anything, and a scared man do anything.

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Of news articles constantly coming out saying, "Oh, look at this big money laundering scandal," da da da da da, and so it would sort of rile and stoke this kind of anti-bank, hatred or anti-bank kind of rhetoric amongst the population. And so then, then in that environment, there's more appetite for, "Ah, we need to regulate these banks harder, they're, they're, you know, you need to keep them on a tighter leash, do this, do this other thing." And so you can sort of see on one el-- on one side of

up anti bank hatred, and then on the other hand, as you said, in many cases, citizens are simply unaware of these things, right? So they don't know about AML laws, sanctions laws. All they see is the bank teller is saying, "Hey, Tell me why you wanna withdraw your own money. Give me a source of funds. And so then they're getting rightly outraged about that because they think, "Wait, wait, that's-- it's my money. Why are you asking me what I wanna do with it? Why are you stopping me from accessing my own funds?"

I had it the other day. I went, I wanted to get out some cash just, just so I had like a little stash of cash. And the lady was quizzing me on why I was taking it out, and obviously I wasn't very happy about it, but I knew that she was doing her job, so I didn't want to get too upset, so I just said that I was researching how they were taking cash out of our system and told her all about CBDCs and how I was gonna do an experiment for the next month to see if I could live off, live off a cash standard, and then basically gave her this whole great big lecture and she's just, "Just take the money, seriously, just."

Because on On her side, she's probably got, she or he, they've probably got, you know, targets of how quickly they move these transactions. On their side, they've just probably got a tick of compliance box, they've probably got like a drop down menu, and they're just like, "Look, Susie, I just want one of these drop down menus, I'm gonna pick it on there." And somewhere in the backend, in their compliance systems, that's where they're running the kind of transaction monitoring and the kind of advanced logic of like, "Oh, how many, how many withdrawals

we, we can't shoot the messenger, right?

No, and I wasn't, and I, but I, I took it as an opportunity to tell her about CBDCs because I thought being a cashier in a bank, it w- it's in- it's useful information to her. And so I, obviously I wa- I didn't, I didn't know- Yeah. I'm not accusing you of shooting

the messenger, but I'm just explaining how, you know, it's kind of like, people are sort of cogs in a machine and they don't necessarily have

Yeah, of course, and I think because very few people have seen it from, from go to, you know, from go to finish, you know, because, they just see their little part of the, the mechanism that we're all part of, and then you sort of have You know, different parts of this puzzle that are all, I guess the net result of it is that we're all sort of feeling like this kind of stranglehold just over time of more and more KYC, more and more AML sanctions, blah, blah, blah, blah, and- You know, where, where are we ending up with all of this, compliance and regulation that isn't really stopping crimes, but everyone's feeling the pain of it, and it's obviously making it more difficult, in many cases for people who, you know, wanna adopt Bitcoin?

And it's dangerous.

Right. So do you wanna explain a little bit on that, because, that, that's something that may not be clear to people. Why is it creating danger for everyday individuals?

If you've got all this information happening for these transactions and they're collecting How much you've got, your name, your address, your date of birth, and it's all sitting there on a centralized database, and it's being transferred to another centralized database, and then it gets hacked. And people have, I mean, there are instances. I think, Freddy, my colleague Freddy, wrote, a piece where he, he was saying, you know, Jameson, Jameson Lott had actually been subject to a SWAT team because they, they picked up-

Yeah, so for people who don't know, this is the practice known as swatting, and basically it's like when somebody figures out your home address and they- They falsely call the police line and say, "Oh, look, something bad is going on here, send the team there." And then basically, it's very risky because the police might go and break down the door or throw in flashbangs or grenades or whatever, and people get injured out of this too.

Yeah, and I think it even happened to, to Hal Finney as well. Right, yeah, I

think, I, I, yeah, I don't know the detail, but I believe some kids found out his address and, you know, people sometimes do all kinds of crazy things when people get doxed online, right? And so I, I believe this was the case where Jameson then, from then on, went on to become like this, you know, he, he was already kind of cypherpunk leaning, but then he went really into it and, you know, really, tried to mask his identity and address and all these kinds of things.

But it was, it was years later.

Not the point, though, is it? It, it, it, you can-- it can be done, and it's there, and especially when people like, "What if someone's got a lot of Bitcoin?"

Yeah, and I mean, when you think about travel rule compliance and it's kind of getting attached, here's your name, here's the amount of the transfer, you could reasonably assume they have that much Bitcoin, obviously. So, yeah, there's a lot of risk around these things that isn't being, let's say, communicated to the everyday person, right? Because if you talk to the everyday person on the street, their interactions are just kind of like, "Oh, the teller at the bank said this or whatever," they're not sort of thinking about, "Okay, here's the problem

Nigel Farage had this, debanking, saga maybe one or two years ago, and that was like a relatively big, well-known bank he got debanked for political reasons, and that drove, as I understand, a m-more of a conversation around being able to use cash, physical cash in the UK.

That conversation lasted for a very short amount of time and now everybody's forgotten and moved on. And but what he did highlight was two hundred and fifty million people in the UK are de-banked every year. And they're not given a reason. And when, when Farage asked for the details on his account, I think at first he found it very, very difficult to actually get the information, and then eventually it came through, and I think there was like forty plus pages, and it was mostly all related to his political views. That, that's terrifying because a lot of people don't like Farage, so they're happy to accept that's The thing, because they don't like his political views, but one day they'll come for them too when they say something that, something that I saw on the news this morning. I can't believe it, they actually want to ban certain controversial topics in pubs now.

Ridiculous. So how, how do they plan to actually do that?

I think the barmaid can turn around and say, "I find that offensive, can you please stop talking about it?"

And then you're just expected to not talk about it and that's it, like? It's ridiculous, but, I mean, yeah, I, I think, I think part of it is how do you best convey this kind of concept and message to people in a way that they can grasp it, right? Like, in another example, in more recent kind of years, I think we are starting to see more, more of a nationalist, right-leaning kind of anti-globalist sentiment, right? There's this sentiment of, "Hey, they're taking away our sovereignty," right? Like in the EU, there are nations off the, off the top of my head, there are nations that are more so-called Euroskeptic, right? I think off the top of my head, places like Hungary, Poland, maybe Czech Republic, like this kind of-- they're sort of seeing it like, "Hey, those bureaucrats over in Brussels, they're taking away from our national sovereignty." And so maybe there's a similar kind of, element to that here with AMLO and sanctions laws and the way FATF is- Sort of taking away individual nation sovereignty in some sense.

But why does that have to be a left-right issue? That's just the divide that has to be created so people fight each other. We're, we're all on the same team. When, when you boil it down You find out, and when you actually talk to people, which is, this is why conversations in pubs shouldn't be stopped on controversial subjects, because otherwise, how else do you thrash out these ideas? But we should-- I think the terms left and right is actually what, where, where the problem lies, because most people do agree on most things.

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And this can happen where maybe your wallet doesn't have RBF or CPFP, or it might help you in situations where it's impractical to go and re-sign, so for example, multisig with keys in different locations. And thirdly, even in some Lightning scenarios, perhaps a forced close, you might not be able to use RBF, and so in this case, the mempool accelerator can help you out. So keep it in mind, and you can find out more over at mempool.space/accelerator. So, I mean, yes and no. I, I agree on some of it. I think they-- something like this, it shouldn't be a left or right issue. You know, I think it, it should be seen as, People should sort of agree about certain issues, things like freedom of speech and, being able to have your, financial affairs not being totally surveilled on by the state, or, you know, that unfortunately, it seems that's where we are, isn't it? I think the left and right thing, I- I think there's probably some underlying kind of psychological or biological, the way people think about things. for example, if you have a more, let's say, egalitarian mindset, you'll tend to- You know, you'll think more in a left aligned way, whereas if you have, if you don't agree with egalitarianism, you'll sort of maybe be more right aligned. and some of that is just kind of, that's just gonna exist, we can't stop that. but I think on certain issues, it, yes, people, you know, and I'll give you another example, in the US context, there has been, let's say, debankings on both sides, right? So on the left sort of leaning side, it'll be like those drug dispensaries Whereas on the right leaning side, it's more like the guns, the gun shops and these kinds of things. So depending on which side is in power, you know, you might see different Groups who are debanked or attacked, from a regulatory and legal perspective, and so who knows now, the, you know, where that goes, if, for example, the Trove Point two point oh conversation in the US, where, where exactly does that go? Do they try to walk it back? Do they try to, you know, allow, you know, Bitcoin and crypto companies to, have fiat rails and have fiat banking, because I think that's the other aspect of it. I, I think this kind of comes into another conversation I know you've been talking about, which is around the concept of whether the UK is gonna become a so-called crypto hub. So, do you wanna just explain a bit of your thoughts on that?

There's no way we're gonna become a crypto hub. So we, we had a conservative government up, in, up until recently, and our prime minister was called Rishi Sunak, and he did hold some cri- crypto and Bitcoin. he was probably the closest thing that we had to a, a, a PM that actually understood it, but- They, it was still so toxic. So I spoke to somebody the other day who said that they went to the Labour Party conference at the same time that we had a Conservative government in, and they were trying to reach out to Labour MPs to try and get them to be a part of their, digital assets APPG, which is an all-party parliamentary group that is held, In, in Parliament. And nobody wanted to be a part of it because they didn't want to put their head above the parapet. It was too toxic. The, the term like Bitcoin and crypto and the fact that they don't understand the difference as well is also- Another big issue, but, it was too toxic. But I don't understand how it could have been a toxic subject when the actual prime minister was saying that they wanted to be a crypto hub. I couldn't quite get over the disconnect between those two things. So it's confusingly One other thing is that the same, early 2024, the same week that the US Bitcoin spot ETF was approved, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority made it harder for retail investors to buy Bitcoin. They put on these, A questionnaire that you had to fill in, I think one of the questions was, "Are you buying more than ten percent of your net wealth? If so, you can't proceed." Sorry, but, but I can go and put half a million pounds on black.

Right, at the casino.

And that's fine. Right,

and gambling winnings aren't taxed in the UK, from what I understand. Sorry,

say that again.

Gambling winnings aren't taxed in the UK, from what I've heard.

No, that's, yes, I know, and it- If, if only, I know. Yeah, you, you can't have your cake and eat it, can you? so, so the funny thing is, is that same week that the US were signaling, so the black re- BlackRock gets on board, the US approve a Bitcoin spot ETF, and then that same week, the, the UK, who, the, the, the center of financial services that wants to be a crypto hub, stops retail investors from investing in the best performing asset of the decade. From that date To the end of the year, Bitcoin went up a hundred percent in that time period, and they're there to protect investors.

Yeah, I think it's, it's like you, you could have made an argument about, you know, paternalism and government trying to protect people from this kind of crazy wacko thing in the early years of Bitcoin, but here we are now, you know, sixteen years into Bitcoin and at that time, fifteen years into Bitcoin. I mean, it's ridiculous, to think, that, you know, pe- people can have Bitcoin ETFs in different countries around the world, and yet there's this paternalistic sort of, "Oh, no, no, you're not allowed to store this amount of, you know, this amount of your portfolio or your net worth in Bitcoin." and I know people have been sort of fighting this in, in various countries, Especially because even people who want to put some of their retirement account, into Bitcoin or Bitcoin proxies like MicroStrategy and things like this, they are running into issues also.

Yeah, well, you can, you can actually- That's the one good thing that the FCA did do is they forced us into proxies like MicroStrategy, which has done really, really well So a-actually, like, indirectly, they actually did us a favor, but that's not the point.

Right. And so the, these questionnaires and these kind of, I think Maybe there's a perception of, oh, well, London and, you know, is a big financial hub, therefore, it's got to be super regulated and this kind of thing. I guess, is that, is that what's going through their minds? I don't, I don't know, I don't know. I'm trying to guess. Why are they, why are they being so, restrictive of new technology and of this, you know, incredible, savings tool of Bitcoin?

It depends who you ask.

Most people would think that it's In, by it, they just don't want to.

That it's malicious.

Right.

However, there's- There's a large part of me that thinks that it really

is incompetence.

Right. Or just ignorance maybe. I,

I, and, and i-ignorance, absolutely, because you know how much effort that you've put into learning about this. Like you probably even think about it in your sleep. I know, I know I do.

Maybe, yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. The, these regulators don't. But for them, Bitcoin is just, well, it's just, it's just a, it's in, it's funny internet money, isn't it? I mean, they haven't put in the work, they don't understand it, and if they read mainstream media, even, you know Trusted news outlets, it's constant, going back to the beginning, it's constantly telling you that it's a bad idea.

Yeah. I, I- So I'm curious then, do you have any thoughts on how to turn this around? Is it a matter of time? Is it a matter of talking to the right people? Is it a matter of, you know, bottom up, trying to get enough people, to understand and to speak about these things? What are your thoughts there on trying to turn this tide?

I, well, I do my best through writing. I try really hard to write as many well-researched articles as I possibly can, just so that I can put out the good stuff

that

is actually, you know, has been researched and fact-checked, which is something that we know that they don't.

You're asking a lot from the BBC, though. You're asking too much. You're asking too much of the BBC to actually fact-check their, Bitcoin-related articles.

I still can't get over it. When to go to stage two complaints and then have a four page letter that still doesn't answer any of the points that you put forward. If I- Operated like that, I get raked over the coals. I just don't know how they get away with it.

Yeah, I think it's just, it's just gonna take a lot more work from, the people who have done their research on Bitcoin and, you know, we need people out there to fact-check the BBC, so, get it, get out there and, make sure. one other thing, I know you were talking a little bit about, and maybe it's a commemorative coin, a George Orwell coin.

Tomorrow, 9 AM UK time, you will be able to buy a £2 George Orwell coin that says, "Big Brother is watching you." And I don't know- Are they

being satirical? Are they trying to bait or troll people here? Are they, you know, they serious? Like, what's the deal? I can't work that out either. I mean, every-

Every time you ask me a question, I go back to, like, is it malice, is it incompetence? I just, I just, I just can't work it out. Because at first, I, I really, before I posted about that, I really looked into it. I thought, "They are taking the Mickey. Like, is this a tribute? Are they mocking us?" What's going on? I even found the artist that, that designed the coin, and I emailed them and asked them a few questions and said, "Would they be willing to talk to me about their thought process behind the design?" And then the Royal Mint actually sent me an email this morning and said, "I'm so sorry, Henry won't be able to talk to you. He's not available." I don't think I won't be able to talk to you or just on this particular subject.

Ridiculous. And it's like, I mean, is it sort of, is it meant to be like a humiliation ritual? It's like, they're imagining, you know, British citizens walking around and panging each other with the coin that says "Big Brother is watching." Like, is that meant to be like a warning or is it meant to be like, you know, "We have power over you and you can't do anything about it?" Like what? Or, or,

or is it just someone thought it was a good idea, didn't understand the implications, and then had that "oh no" moment? What have I done?

Bizarre, absolutely bizarre. okay, so look, I know you're also the CEO of Bitcoin Policy UK, so do you wanna just tell us a little bit about what you're doing on that front, to try to move the needle there?

So yes. So we obviously we advocate for Bitcoin in the UK. There's no good resources, the education is poor. MPs don't understand Bitcoin, let alone the difference between Bitcoin and crypto. Their consultation documents, when it comes to CBDCs or the CARF rules or any, any of these regulations, we're here. Well, Freddy, good grief, like the, the- The consultation documents that he writes are phenomenal, and so every time something comes out, he responds to it very, very diligently, and we're there just basically to keep an eye on what's going on and make sure that we can educate and advocate properly for businesses. And retail, of course, because they're, they're being left out. Yeah.

'Cause hey, Bitcoin is a bottom-up, you know, revolution. And so, do you wanna just explain, you know, if people wanna support you guys, what can they do?

Good question. they could reach out to me. We've actually, we are working on memberships at the moment, so we have a range of memberships that you can, help to support us. If we don't have funding, we won't be able to operate, and if we don't operate, then it'll be left up to Crypto UK to do the talking, which I don't really think is a good idea. So, if you do, I can, I can give you the, membership details, and then people can reach out to me directly.

Just

through funding, basically. Great. Okay, so yeah, look, I think it's one of those things where, you know, it, it would be nice, it would be nice if, you know, we didn't, have to sort of engage politically, but, I think for people who are, you know, in these countries and you're in a, if you're in a democracy, then You know, it's kind of like you kinda have to engage to not get run over, and so I think that's, that's kinda how I'm seeing it, if you, you know, if you live in a democracy and you have to contend with, you know, the powers that be, it's, it's better that they are at least not, coming with misconceptions about, you know, what Bitcoin is, and hopefully you can at least- Stave off the worst of the, of bad regulations and laws that might come. so yeah.

People think that Bitcoin will do its thing, and it will, it absolutely will. Bitcoin doesn't need it, that's true, but if you live in a country that is just prohibiting this kind of investment and this kind of innovation, and you want to stay in that country, then you have to do something about it. You can't ignore it. So an example of, obviously, central bank digital currencies, the bank- Bank of England put out a consultation for CBDCs, that was an example of the kind of thing that Freddy would respond to, because they're pushing it outside of anybody understanding it, going back to George Orwell. I mean, even, even George Orwell didn't predict programmable money. Like that just closes the loop. I mean, his dystopian future is even worse. We're not only living it, but we're living it and then some.

Right, yeah. As in the, the reality that came, in some ways, is even worse, right? And so, because I guess it would have been hard to imagine, obviously, the creation of Bitcoin and the creation of kind of the way things got digitized, right? Everything just became digitized, and now, yeah, there are, what's the saying? "You will live to experience horrors beyond your imagination," or I was saying, I, I butchered it, but something like that. so yeah, so listeners check it out, make sure if you're a UK listener, you share this out, and, Susie, any, any final comment? anything else you wanna mention before we finish up for today?

No, nothing. I think you've covered everything.

Okay, great. Well, listeners, links will be in the show notes. It's u k dot bitcoin policy dot net, and of course, I will link to Susie's articles on Forbes also. So, Susie, thanks for joining me today.

Thank you.