{ "episodeId": "SLP625", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "maya_parbhoe": { "name": "Maya Parbhoe", "role": "guest", "tag": "MAYA" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:11", "start": 11.15, "text": "Hi everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast brought to you by Bold. Over at Bold, you can buy Bitcoin and you can use the two of three vault where you hold two keys to store your Bitcoin. For American listeners, that is getbold.io. Now joining me today is Maya Parbhoe, she is a presidential candidate and also- So a Bitcoin evangelist and an entrepreneur, and, wanted to chat with Maya because I think there's some interesting things going on with the campaign and, what Maya is doing. So Maya, first of all, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "00:42", "start": 41.72, "text": "Thank you. Thank you for having me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:44", "start": 44.37, "text": "Great. So, I know you, have this presidential campaign and you've got, you know, the Bitcoin advocacy aspect of it. So, can you just give us a, just a kind of a brief of you, who you are and a little bit of your kind of what you've been doing with the world of Bitcoin first, and then we'll sort of get into the Suriname, presidential campaign stuff." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "01:05", "start": 64.58, "text": "so I've been an entrepreneur since I was about fifteen years old. I come from a family of entrepreneurs here in Sur I was born and raised, in this country. I have a background in business administration. I did a couple of executive programs, one at Yale on capital markets and one at Oxford, Oxford, the Fintech and Fintech Lab, in twenty eighteen. And in the Bitcoin space, one of my best friends told me about Bitcoin in twenty twelve. I read the white paper. I've always been, you know, like a math geek in high school. I started studying econometrics when I was seventeen at uni. so I always I had a love of the intersection of math and, and technology. In, in university, you, you learned to code on MATLAB, studying econometrics. So, I-- when I read the white paper, to me, it was the answer to every problem basically in, in the centralized capital market system or financial, global financial system. So, fell in love with it, but it was still early days, so I, I kind of kept an eye on it, but, you know, you don't know where it was heading. Nobody knew where it was heading at that point. and then when WikiLeaks happened, that's when I knew, okay, no government will ever be able to stop this, the net-network is just gonna continue to grow and scale, and that's when I decided, okay, I'm gonna, you know, dedicate more time to it, and I joined a, it was a Telegram group, I think it was still early days, two hundred and fifty members or something like that, and called Whalepool, and it was a lot of the The old Bitcoiners in there, like Charlie Shrem, you know, and Bitcoiners like Charlie Lee and, and, Vinny Lingam from Cifec, you had Phil Potter from, from Bitfinex, and I kind of that's, it was a toxic maxi group, so they were always, you know, the others would try to bash Bitcoin, and then you had these toxic maxis trying to plead the case, and that's how I kind of learned more about the space internally where most information was immediately shared, like Bitfinex would come in and, you information there before they shared it anywhere else, and you had a lot of people working in the industry in that group. And I started lobbying in there for Suriname to be, the country where we build this new system, basically that, You know, Bitcoin was, was developed to, to kind of replace, because we don't have a capital market, we don't have capital market infrastructure, we basically have almost no financial or payment rails, you know, digital infrastructure. Since anything that was developed since PayPal basically doesn't, doesn't really work here. We're pretty financially isolated. So I saw it as the perfect environment, for Bitcoin to thrive and solve most of the problems that I, as an entrepreneur, and- Just based off of my own history, you know, my dad was murdered here because of corruption, and it was a, a legal battle still ongoing that I, I currently have the honor of filling his shoes in, is fighting the largest bank in the country. And a couple of days after he unveiled that corruption publicly, he was assassinated. And I've dealt with, you know, that corruption basically growing up, and I saw it as a solution to that as well. So I was lobbying for it ever since then. And I think it was 2017, 2018, when from my second company, from civil engineering, we had to kind of decide what we wanted to invest into, and I was already obsessed with Bitcoin, so it was obvious to invest into, developing the capital market here. So that's what I've been fully focused on and obsessed about and passionate about for the last, Six years to twenty seventeen, eighteen, yeah, seven ish." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:47", "start": 287.23, "text": "Yeah, long background. And so you have a range of experience and work that you've been doing. So you mentioned a civil engineering company, and then also on the technology side, you have another interest, is it? And then also now this whole presidential campaign as well. So, yeah, I mean, there's lots of things we could sort of jump off into. I know you also, it seems to me, you also had an interest in Austrian economics as well. So I'm curious to hear, how you, how you Rabbit hole as well." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "05:12", "start": 312.18, "text": "Well, I, I guess that's basically just, yeah, I think I was just a weird kid always diving into books and, you know, bullied and then hiding in the library. So I think most of my knowledge comes from just reading. and I was fascinated by, just, I mean, you read about political ideologies, right? Communism, socialism, capitalism. you look at the US market and you look at how the US market developed, how capital markets developed, I was pretty obsessed with- Tech stocks, particularly in tech companies, my dad was always very innovative. So we'd have the newest technology here, you know, immediately when it came out, and we had our-- in our own company, he'd sell computers, so I grew up tinkering with computers. So I always had a love of tech, and when he passed away, my psychologist told me to, you know, pick new idols to, to model after or kind of use as inspiration, and I had Gates, Jobs, and, Ford. Kind of, that I, that I'd admire, and, you know, just following tech, you kind of see how, the capital market in the US evolved and That's where the curiosity for, for, I think Austrian econ- economics started. And I've, I, you know, I'm not, I'm no expert, so I, I, I wouldn't call myself an expert. I just happen to have agreed with a lot of the, the ideologies and a lot of the views, some more than others, you know, some, like for, for example, in terms of tech, then I tend to agree more with a neoclassical view, in terms of big tech and, and, and, monopoly Police, for example. But then on the other side, I tend to agree more with just Mises, Rothbard, in terms of, yeah, just Standard today's Austrian economists, but basically just the, yeah, that's where, that's where the, the, the, I think the curiosity started," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:13", "start": 432.57, "text": "in my views on competition. It's not that you've been sort of deeply reading Mises and Rothbard and things like this, but you have maybe more of a looser, appreciation for free markets. I think that's, that's kind of what I'm, that's kind of what I'm getting from you here." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "07:26", "start": 446.08, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I, I have the books I've read, I think years ago, but for the last time, I've actually bought a, a few more to take a deeper dive. But I read most of my content online ever since I was able to read on the internet. Basically, that's where I do most of my research. I think most people, right? No, but I like to read paper as well, so I have- Both." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:49", "start": 469.24, "text": "Great. Okay, so let's, let's chat a bit about Suriname. I'm sure, you know, there's probably a lot of listeners who aren't that familiar with it. So can you maybe just give us a bit of an overview, a bit about Suriname and a little bit about what you're trying to achieve with the presidential campaign?" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "08:05", "start": 484.96, "text": "Suriname is a pretty small country on the northern coast of Latin America. We're right between Guyana and French Guiana and Brazil to the southern border. So you have Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, Brazil on the other side and at the bottom. We're 93% forested. We have a population of about 600,000. We're a former Dutch colony, so we're a native Dutch speaker. We have about three point, four billion GDP, so a pretty small economy. We only live on that seven percent of land. It's, you know, it's, it's primarily forest and a little bit. It looks like a small village basically of the city. It's, it's a UNESCO heritage site, so it's old colonial buildings, old wooden colonial buildings. We don't have a metropolitan city like most, you know, most people are used to. In terms of development, it feels like you're going back in time sometimes. Sometimes we're pretty behind in terms of technology, like websites aren't very normal here to have, or keeping them up to date isn't, isn't normal either. No e-commerce whatsoever, no payments digitally, debit cards aren't new, Mastercard and Visa aren't widely spread. So it's a, a really cash based economy. In terms of regulation, we're very outdated as well. It's most 1950s Dutch regulation. Our banking sector is very conservative. Our central bank doesn't really function like a central bank. Our, our national currency is a Surinamese dollar, and that's also gone through three iterations. We had a Surinamese florin, a Surinamese guilder, and then Surinamese dollar." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:44", "start": 583.91, "text": "I see, yeah. And, can you speak a little bit to To things like the economic kind of stats, like as I'm looking up now as an example, GDP per capita is about six thousand USD. So, you know, it's, it's not like the poorest of the poor, but it's, it's, you know, give us a, a sense of like, you know, average income and things like this." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "10:05", "start": 605.47, "text": "Inflation has hit us pretty hard. Average salaries are around $175-$250 US, depending on where you, you know, which sector you're looking at, and that's basically due to inflation over the last four and a half years. It's been pretty bad, so people don't earn high salaries. With a bachelor of science, you can range, you know, from $500 US And if you're, you know, with a tech degree, you could earn somewhere around a thousand. Managers tend to earn more, but we don't have a huge capacity of skilled labor. A lot have left, and not, not a lot of developers since, you know, there's not a lot of development happening. It's, it's a small sector. We're rich in oil and gold. Especially, in oil, we're estimated to have more oil than, Guyana next door, and Guyana has done, forty percent GDP growth year over year more, in other years. It's the fastest growing economy in the world, and Suriname is, estimated to grow at a, grow at a faster pace, so we'll be a leader in, in global oils starting twenty twenty-eight, and in terms of gold, well, you know- Eldorado was in the Guyana Shield. there's a, there's a reason why they came to look for gold here. there is a significant amount of gold. We have gold, we have a lot of natural resources. The eighth largest mine in the world is here. You have Newmont mining in our interior, and you have another gold mine that was recently taken over by Sijen. We have a pretty big size of government for a small population, about sixty-eight thousand, government employees on And a population of six hundred thousand, and about half of our working population works for government, so you can just imagine the problems that creates in our economy, in our economy, sorry." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:01", "start": 721.11, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it sounds like, yeah, a very large, a lot of these employees are, yeah, as you said, working for the state. And so can you talk a little bit about some of your ideas on, you know, what, what can be done here? What, what's the general idea that you're hoping to achieve? If, if you are elected and if, you know, you're able to make progress there." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "12:21", "start": 740.98, "text": "So for the past six years working in the capital market and I've ranged through multiple sectors. So I started twenty-one years ago with logistics, so I'm in freight and, you know, working at the port, so you get a sense of commerce, trade, e-commerce, and then civil engineering for about a decade, so you get a sense of, help develop all the roads at Newmont, so you get a sense of how that sector in industry works, and then developing the capital market, you kind of get a sense of, kind of get a sense, you, you completely ingrain into the financial sector here, and there's no skills and capacity to build that capital market, unfortunately, even though the IMF mandated it since 2011. So unfortunately, none of the banks had the capacity within, their companies for anyone to develop it. So that's basically how I rolled into, you know, working with, with government, working with the financial sector, at least interfacing with them, right? I've been mo- for most of my life anti-government, anti, politics, so political activist, completely on the other side of the spectrum, so not, not a politician at all. I've been very, you know, advocating a lot against government. but basically because of my work in the capital market, that's how I gained more exposure here and established credibility and more relationships within the financial sector and from government. So I'm, I'm usually the expert they turn to if it's anything capital markets related, financial structures, instruments. And that's basically a combination of, of things happening that led me to this point, to be honest, you know, for actually running a campaign and running in office, being a political activist, you, you know, you're in, in contact as well with all the other political activists. We're all friends, we all support each other. and there was a movement a couple of years ago when there were large protests in the country to lobby for what we call a Saakka cabinet, which is basically a technocratic Democratic government that takes over for about two years and cleans up, you know, restructures and basically solves most of the issues that our country is facing, and then afterward you'd have new elections. So that's where I'm, I've, I've always been kind of on the fence, right? Because you're, you're Fighting against the system, but then you also have to kind of clean up the problem that, that, that governments here that lack the skills, and capacity to actually execute and are corrupt and have created. Other political parties have, have tried to recruit me as well, so I, I've always been a little bit on the edge, but always very much against it. And then basically last year, I was working with Jan three, you know, nation state adoption here to get Bitcoin as legal tender. I asked basically Edwin, how do I get legal tender in Sur, oh, how do I get what happened in El Salvador to happen in Suriname? because I'd been to El Salvador twenty one, to, to lobby as well, and, and didn't, Didn't, didn't, they didn't really, help in any way whatsoever. He said make sure to get Sampson on the flight. So I'd been working with, with Sampson and government here, where we'd, we'd have meetings with Minister of Finance, Central Bank, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and, and, large commercial companies here like energy and a commission that's working on the hydro dam for about a year before Sampson came in November. And Sampson came, met with the president, and I arranged that he meet with the Banking Commission, central bank, Minister of Finance, and, and basically every institution in, or large financial institution in this country. And after a while, things kind of became silent, and you didn't hear anything back, where, whereas the president was very pro, innovation and, and actually said that he would, you know, he wanted to be like, you know, global leader in tech and would adopt Bitcoin as legal tender immediately. Then I revealed more corruption or, or stumbled into more corruption and publicly revealed it as well. And Sampson was the one that actually gave me the push. He's the one that said, \"You know, you understand the bonds, you underst-understand the capital market, you have the authority, you're basically enough and the credibility enough to, to something that was unseen for them to get that many institutions and people aligned for, for meetings within that short timeframe. So why not go for it? And after a couple of months of considering and frustration with, with corruption, more corruption being unveiled, this government is worse than any we've had previously, I decided to take that leap. And, you know Being a, a, not just a Bitcoiner, but, but, but being very, how do you say this, principled in terms of free market dynamics, innovation, pro-innovation, against bureaucracy, against corruption, against systemic- corruption that we've had here. I have a certain way of, of thinking that fits perfectly both with Austrian economists and, and fits perfectly, of course, with, with Bitcoin and, and being a toxic maximalist myself. You kind of have a, a particular way of looking at things, right? Or and handling with them. So the way I look at reforming the country and restructuring most of the problems that the country is facing is from that perspective, that viewpoint. So then you look at, okay, what is, what is causing corruption, right? Our constitution, for example, has needed to, to be changed since 1987 after the revolution, though governments promised then That it would happen, there was never, a referendum was never held, the constitution was never changed. So you have too much power centralized at the top at the moment. The president has executive power, which, you know, if I win is a good thing, or when I win is a good thing, but, it's bad of course for, for the population itself. So decentralization of power and governance is very important, and we need to achieve that with our constitution So for that we have on the team Samuel Coleman. So my approach was get me the best minds in the world, get me the, you know, the best Austrian economists you can find, because those are most aligned, of course, with creating a free and open market, deregulating, reducing the size of government, that's something that's very important for us, and reducing corruption. Samuel Coleman, a Swiss parliamentary member, he's helping with the, the, the constitution, for example, looking at deregulation, even though we don't have a lot of regulation Like for example, in the financial industry, the, the sector, the central bank does have a, a hands-off approach and tries to encourage innovation so they don't over-regulate. there's still, you know, regulation that needs to be replaced or, or needs to, to be framed differently if you want to encourage innovation, right? And if you want to structure policy properly. So we have a, a team that's working on that. We have a privatization team, and then there's privatization in two fronts. So you- We have three hundred and eighty plus government owned companies. There's a lot of state owned companies here, that need to be privatized. Most of our utilities, you have oil company, Statoil International, oil company, gold, like literally everything, exports, fishing, our ports, our, our national air carrier, everything is, is state owned. So you need to privatize a lot of industry, right? A lot of the, the private sector, sorry, public sector needs to be privatized. but then On the government side, a lot is inefficient or doesn't work or has such ingrained systemic corruption that you can't-- it doesn't function properly and you can't fix it by, by simply just improving like a government structure in that sector, like for example, healthcare, education, public works, I can, I can go on. But basically, we have seventeen ministries, and Philip Bagus, for example, he's, on the, the Syrian committee, they looked at the amount of minis- Countries we, we have, and we can reduce that down to six. so you can reduce the size of government, privatize, and this is one of the quotes I love the most, \"Who will build the roads?\" Right? Okay, we've been building roads for over a decade. We don't need government to help us. In any case, they make a classic libertarian" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:45", "start": 1244.85, "text": "question, \"Who will build the roads?\" Yeah. Exactly. Back to the show in a moment. This show brought to you by CoinKite dot com, the creators of the best Bitcoin hardware security devices, such as" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:59", "start": 1259.08, "text": "We use Bitcoin hardware security devices to keep our keys offline, our private keys offline. Now, the way these work is you can do that setup, write down your twelve or twenty-four words on the, the seed word cards, and keep that secure. Now, you can use this device to interact with the Bitcoin network using software such as Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, or Bep2 Desktop or Nunchuk, as a few examples. Now, you have a range of security features that you can use with these devices, such as Such as passphrases, you can use seed x or, or my favorite is multi-signature. Now, if you're starting in a basic way, just start with the device and the USB-C cable, plug it directly to the computer and use it that way, and then later improve your setup. But I believe these devices are great at helping secure your coins, especially as you start to migrate up into multi-signature security. But don't be disheartened or don't be, scared away, they are accessible, and I think you actually do learn about Bitcoin in the The process. So to get yours, go to coinkite dot com, use code levera to get a discount on your cold card. The lead sponsor of this show is Bold, the best place to buy, sell, and save Bitcoin. For listeners in the US, Bold lets you secure your financial future with complete peace of mind by integrating a low fee Bitcoin only brokerage with next gen multisig vaults. With Bold, you can smash buy Bitcoin or set a DCA plan for only zero point nine nine percent fees and seamlessly deposit the Bitcoin direct to your Bold Vault. The Bold Vault is a Two or three collaborative multisig where you hold two keys and Bold holds one as a redundant backup, protecting against loss or theft. You can use Trezor, Ledger or Coldcard hardware wallets to spin up a Bold Vault in just a few minutes, and the Bold Vault is the only collaborative custody vault available with zero monthly fees. They're also offering zero fees on your first ten thousand dollars of Bitcoin buys and twenty five dollars of free Bitcoin when you buy a hundred dollars of Bitcoin or more. Try Bold today and upgrade your stacking experience over at getbold dot io. I O. And now, back to the show. So, so let me just quickly summarize a few things, 'cause we've, we've gone into different topics, right? So I guess as I'm, you know, I'm just replaying what you've mentioned to me, you've mentioned- Issues around the constitution and needing to fix that, I'm not sure exactly the detail there, maybe we can get into that later, but you mentioned that there's a lot of government employees, there's a lot of government ministries that could be, let's say, eliminated or consolidated or whatever you wanna use, whatever word we wanna use, afuera, right? If you're taking inspiration from Mila in Argentina, and then also from the Bitcoin perspective, obviously having, you know, the ability for people to use Bitcoin, I think so, and, I guess the other a-element is that there's, the theme as well coming through from what you're speaking about is that there's been a lot of corruption in the state and it's about Finding a way to either eliminate that role for the state or find a way for it to not be as corrupt. So I'm curious, do, do you have any ideas there on how to make it less corrupt or what to do to fix these kinds of things?" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "24:05", "start": 1445.0, "text": "So Bitcoin in, in its, in itself, in its essence was developed to fix that corruption, that systemic corruption that, that's caused by centralization, right? Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:15", "start": 1455.37, "text": "well, I mean, I would say that's, that's true at the money level, you know, but not necessarily at the individual state, nation state level, right? But yeah, go ahead." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "24:24", "start": 1464.21, "text": "Let, let me, let me lay out the plan here. So our central bank doesn't really function like a central bank. When I was working closely with the governor, for example, there was no treasury department, there's no compliance department, you know, it's basically just a wallet for the government, to put it simply. So they don't use the traditional instruments that a central bank uses, right? open market operations, reserve requirements, interest rates. They don't control any of those three instruments to, to control the economy, to stimulate or nothing can easily be done. Basically, so it doesn't function anyway. We've already replaced the co-the currency three times already, so there's no reason why we need the SRT And I think that is the core, the, the core where you can solve a systemic corruption, right? If you change, separate money from state, basically you don't have the central bank in control of, the money supply anymore, not, not in control of the currency anymore, but basically you force government as well to use Bitcoin as currency and, and by de facto, be more transparent. So open source government, build a system, s-build a system on Bitcoin. So what I'm talking about About is not a reserve strategy. I'm not talking about just making Bitcoin legal tender and then you can choose between, you know, one or the other, and then we'll still have our currency. I'm talking about actually replacing the currency and making Bitcoin our money, right? And in a couple of years, Bitcoin will just be money. We, we won't be talking about the name of it. We will just be talking about, okay, and it's, it's money, right? It'll replace the fiat currencies and it'll just be the, the next iteration from, from shells. Shells, sorry, to, to paper to digital. So we wanna be the first country to actually use Bitcoin as our money Salaries in Bitcoin, pricing in the supermarkets in Bitcoin, companies, like everything needs to, to be denominated in Bitcoin. And basically what you create there is a completely" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "26:32", "start": 1591.76, "text": "How do you say it? Uncorruptable system. How on earth would a government that uses Bitcoin as money Be able to be corrupt, like if all expenses aren't- No, no, no. I'm sort of- I'm" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:47", "start": 1606.55, "text": "not, I'm not fully, I mean, I'm, I, I agree with the idea of, you know, let people use whatever, you know, money they want and not have capital gains on it, but I think the point where I'm not quite sold, just being honest, is- The fact that the government, that the state uses Bitcoin doesn't mean there won't be corrupt individuals who maybe run away with that Bitcoin or, you know what I mean? Like, so certainly, yeah, absolutely, as a Bitcoiner, as a libertarian, you know, we want freedom of choice, low taxes, low regulation or zero if we, if possible, zero taxes, right? Zero taxes, but, there needs to be some other system, I guess, or some other principle, I guess, that Holds people accountable, that" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "27:27", "start": 1646.63, "text": "exactly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:27", "start": 1647.49, "text": "You know what I mean, like whether that's good business and government controls, these kinds-- maybe that's a little bit more how I'm thinking about it. Can you maybe, you can explain or respond to that?" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "27:35", "start": 1654.87, "text": "How, how I view it is if the government has its own, its own spending, right? right now it's very centralized in the city. If you decentralize governance, similar to the Swiss federal model, you bring the budgets and governance closer to the people, to, to, for example, in Suriname come to every district. Basically, you can, and as government, that's perfectly fine. Why wouldn't it, you know, why is it-- There's no reason why it shouldn't be live, that you can actually see transparently how funds are being spent in real time. So you can see how, for example, Bitcoin is transferred from wallet to wallet. There has to be, of course, a system for tendering, right? You're, you're in, in some, some industries, you're gonna have, tendering, and some industries, especially for privatizing, for example controlled by government, so they'll just, you know, be run by, by private sector, and you need to create the right foundation and legal frameworks, policies around them to, to, Protect consumers to kind of maybe prevent, like for example, what happened in the US with the, the healthcare system. So, but that is-- That's why I have the Austrian economist to, to help, you know, with, with how do we properly, structure this, make sure that it doesn't evolve in the wrong way and, and, and not over-regulate to make that sure, not create more bureaucracy, but c- create more efficiency into the system. But basically for what will be a reduced form of government, you can create- Create an open source government. You can have it completely be online, completely be trackable, and the moment that someone goes away with your Bitcoin, you will see that that person just took your Bitcoin, right? If they're a government official or someone con-- that has control over certain funds. we even floated the idea, I, I, I really like that, of, having a corruption bounty in the system, right? So you can have anyone anywhere in the world basically lo- Looking through this system, looking for corruption in it or vulner-vulnerabilities for corruption in it, and give them a reward for finding that corruption, similar to bug bounties in regular software companies." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:48", "start": 1788.19, "text": "Yeah. So that's how I view it. Yeah, so I, I think I'm, I'm sort of getting that part, that part makes a bit more sense to me in the idea of kind of decentralizing the power, as you mentioned, the Swiss cantons is, is, I think, is a good example. I think most libertarians would agree with that, this idea of, you know, federalized institutions as opposed to a very, very powerful, you know, one central overall government having smaller local decision-making hubs of power is certainly, I think, a good thing. Yeah, more direct" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "30:18", "start": 1818.09, "text": "democracy as well," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:19", "start": 1819.47, "text": "right? Right. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm maybe, I'm less of a fan of democracy personally, but I mean, I understand, you know, that's, that's the world we're in today. But, I think democracy ends up being a way for people to vote themselves more things, and it just kind of- Especially if people have very, you know, socialist-leaning ideas, they can vote for things that, you know, to take other people's stuff. Some things," }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "30:41", "start": 1840.58, "text": "if you look at, if you look at, then taking Switzerland again as an example, for example, universal basic income in, in Switzerland, the Swiss voted against it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:51", "start": 1851.3, "text": "Yes. And I, I would say that was, you know, that's probably a cultural strength that they had. Yes. exactly. So you'd have to, you know, because it is a wealthy country and has had, you know, you know, for, for so long, it has had this very, you know, a certain culture about it that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "31:07", "start": 1867.02, "text": "But that's the idea here too, right? Like we're actually one of the, the wealthiest countries in the world by, by natural resources. Starting twenty twenty-eight, there will be about two country in just royalties from the first well. So that's just one well, we have more, right? More in development. so more FIDs will be coming over the next couple of years, more wells will go into exploitation. so we'll have more royalties flowing in. Just imagine the currency being by default Bitcoin. The sovereign wealth fund by def- default in Bitcoin, right? So and you want, you want the people to, to own shares in, in, in-- Why, why do we need government, for example, in between, you know, or, or in control of the sovereign wealth fund, for example? So if you have Bitcoin as a sovereign wealth fund for the nation, for, for generational wealth, for, for generations of, of, of Surinamese, you know, the basically a hundred plus year- Hundred plus years in the future, it's continuously accumulating. That is by the fact of basically a vacuum for, I think, more wealth flowing from other countries, right? Because fiat currencies will lose value in relation to, to Bitcoin over time as Bitcoin increases in terms of its fiat value, but it will accumul-- accumulate more over time in terms of fiat if we convert all of our royalties immediately to Bitcoin and how we use that sovereign wealth fund versus how other countries- structure and, and use their sovereign wealth fund, fund will of course be completely different, right? Because most, most sovereign wealth funds, if you look at them right now, they have a strategy of acquiring certain, securities, for example. With a sovereign wealth fund that's denominated in Bitcoin, in a country where the de facto currency is Bitcoin Basically, you'll have to think differently, very low time preference, about how you invest and what you invest into. I think that's where the dynamics will change, where the, where the shift will come in, in how we look at capital markets as a whole, because right now I look at a capital market and I look at what's happening, for example, with the Bitcoin reserve strategies, and that's basically a continuation of this system. I don't see how that can be less manipulated or how you can't keep printing dollars, especially if you have a Bitcoin reserve, backing it, you can just print more." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:37", "start": 2017.22, "text": "This show brought to you by mempool.space, the world's leading Bitcoin visualizer, and now they've got an accelerator program. So if you have a transaction that you sent at a fee that was too low to get confirmed, now you can fix this with the mempool accelerator. The way it works, you can go and search your transaction, scroll down, click accelerator, and you don't need an account, you can pay with Lightning, and then it'll show you it's now in the process of being accelerated, and then after a few minutes, it's confirmed. And so this is a great way" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:07", "start": 2046.96, "text": "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/slash-accelerator. Yes, I think the whole, the whole strategic reserve question has, it has brought up a lot of arguments back and forth, and I think there are actually really good arguments both sides, but I guess the, the principal sort of answer would probably be, you know, the state shouldn't tax people so that it can, you know, bu-build a strategic reserve, right? Because that's, you know, if you're a libertarian, you believe taxation is either theft or extortion, and so therefore it shouldn't do that. I mean, the other, let me, if I had to steal, man," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:03", "start": 2102.79, "text": "Start holding Bitcoin, then over time that kind of advances the process of Bitcoin becoming the money of the world, and therefore takes away the control, right? Because most Bitcoiners believe in the idea of separating money from state, and so I guess you could sort of make that argument, okay, maybe it's like a short-term pain, but it's a long-term gain because we're gonna bring about this kind of Bitcoinized future where the state doesn't control the money sooner, maybe. okay. Give" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "35:32", "start": 2131.55, "text": "governments more- More power and hope that they relinquish power is basically the thinking there, right? Yeah, I mean," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:38", "start": 2138.48, "text": "I, I think there are, there are kind of interesting nuances you could make there, right? So as an example, if we're talking about the federalized system, right? I could, I could make an argument saying, \"Well,\" Maybe more controversial, but maybe you want states to have the power to do income tax so that the federal government, so that they're not dependent on federal government for money, right? So it's kind of like you're trying to take the power away from the federal to bring it down to, you know, and yes, the best, the ideal, the ideal case is at the level of the individual, but the ideal is you're trying to decentralize it further down, right? Yeah, so, so" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "36:10", "start": 2170.06, "text": "if you're, if, okay. Like for example, one of the, one of the, the Figure out how we can eradicate taxes, right? Globally, you have a movement right now for more taxes, more, more control, more surveillance, more financial control, and especially coming out of the US with, with, with FATF. So you have more financial control and, and more surveillance happening of global citizens. Eight billion people be-paying for, for, three hundred and seventy-five million. But basically, if you rethink taxes Like we, we agree, tax is theft, right? And I don't see, for example, in a country like Suriname, where you don't see anything basically like our taxes, I have no idea where it's going besides just paying government salaries, right? So it's an inefficient system anyway. I gave them the, the, the, the, the, the instruction basically, figure out for me how we can just eradicate taxes. How do we- Have a system that is services based, because government should just, just be service. We should be in service of the people, so not, not much different than, than a utility company basically. How can we change it from a tax to a service fee? If you're, for example, you need to pay for garbage being picked up, for example. Maybe we'll privatize it, but maybe it does need to be, no, it doesn't really need to be managed by government. There are some things that might still need to be managed by government." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:41", "start": 2260.52, "text": "Yeah, I mean, basically, of course, we can talk about the kind of perfect anarcho-capitalism idea, but of course, we live in the world today and, perfect, we live in a world with, you know, where So, you know, I think I, I, I," }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "37:55", "start": 2274.51, "text": "well, Nostr, we have Nostr for, for, for us." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:59", "start": 2279.04, "text": "Right, right. You're gonna, you're gonna log in with your Nostr key and enter that, enter the border that way. No, but I mean, let, let's, I mean, so there's a certain level of like, what is realistically achievable kind of in the shorter term, and what's kind of, okay, longer term. What's gonna take a little bit longer. What could actually become like a fully privatized system. Look at it" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "38:24", "start": 2303.71, "text": "That's why, why we have an entire battery of Austrian economists and international experts that are figuring out the sequence. What can we do, and, and the roadmap, like what can we do immediately, what's going to take longer, how do we privatize certain sectors, certain ministries, for example, how quickly can we do it, and how do we do it efficiently? I think something that you're overlooking is the fact that we have a really small population. Right. And that, that is a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:49", "start": 2329.46, "text": "fair point, right? It's, it's instead of moving this big cruise ship, it's, if it's a smaller ship, you can turn more nimbly and so on. So we can be very agile. That is a fair point. So" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "38:58", "start": 2338.0, "text": "you can, you can, you can do certain reforms within a very short amount of time. Like if you look at Millet, Millet changes more things in a week Than we would need to do in a year, right? And a lot of the regulation and, a lot of the problems that he faces there, especially with the large population, definitely much larger landmass. More geopolitics, for example, like even, even Bukele, Bukele was able to, you know, transform the country from the murder capital of the world to one of the safest in the region. That takes a pretty very strong headed approach by a leader, right? To, to, to, and, and a very strong will to, to affect change. And he even has a population that's ten times the size, the size of ours, right? And then the, the, the upper flact, the area that is developed, where, where his people are living, is, is much larger than ours. So you have a system here that is so far behind, like the gap in, in development. They have a dollarized economy, we don't. So the develop- the gap in development, the financial isolation, the amount of people in the private-- like, it's a little village, we all know each other, it's very small You can really change things within a short amount of time. So, and I mean, people thought I was crazy for thinking that you could put a country on a Bitcoin standard when 2017, they thought it was unimaginable. And then 2021 comes and Bukele makes it legal tender, and suddenly it is possible. Now the entire world is talking about Bitcoin reserve strategy. So I think instead of thinking \"Why not?\" or asking \"Why not?\" Just help me figure out how we can and how we can as quickly as possible do, everything, and even if we only achieve Fifty percent of, you know, the plans that we've laid out within the first year, for example, then we'll still be ahead of ninety-nine percent of the world" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:06", "start": 2465.8, "text": "I see. Yeah, and so, like, I guess a couple other things that might be interesting, people might wanna hear your answer. As you mentioned, there's a lot of state employees, right? I think you said, sixty-eight thousand, sixty-eight thousand state employees. Isn't it gonna be hard to win votes if there's a lot of, you know, people who are currently g-earning their salary from the state when obviously you're looking to cut the size of the state?" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "41:31", "start": 2490.87, "text": "Well, actually, they're the ones protesting this government. They're not, yeah, they, they, literally you had a, a protest going on, I think this morning or yesterday, where they're complaining that they can't buy bread, and this is one of the ministries. so government has been hiring five thousand to six thousand people every, every, term, right? So they've basically been buying votes. Like food buying," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:54", "start": 2514.06, "text": "yeah, yeah." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "41:55", "start": 2515.18, "text": "Exactly. they keep people uneducated as well, because then it's easier to get votes. And they earn on average a hundred and seventy-five to two fifty. And that's, that's all across the board, working for government. So we've figured out a transition plan, and that's also what we're ironing out right now, how to transition those people in a period of two years, have them, have them earning the same or more, and then transition into other industry. We wanna focus and diversify the economy specifically on, in technology, financial services. We're not a big, we don't have a big population, we're not an economy of scale, we can't go into mass production of certain things. It doesn't make sense for our own economy. Some things don't make sense for exports, it'll also make our, our economy too reliant on one specific manufacturer, for example. So if you're looking at how to solve that problem and you wanna look towards twenty thirty, twenty fifty, where's the world heading? Then tech- Technology and, and s-specifically financial services is somewhere where you can diversify especially skilled labor into and, you know, borderless be able to, to, to earn, to earn an income. So that's where we want to focus on primarily in transitioning that amount of labor. It is, it is, pretty significant. And, you know, s-for example, our energy transition strategy, looking at nuclear modular nuclear, for example, we wanna create a, an, an, an legal framework, an environment where innovation in thorium, for example, can thrive, where innovation in nuclear energy can thrive Where you can create new industries and attract skill and talent and attract foreign companies that are stifled, for example, in the US or other, other countries of the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:48", "start": 2627.94, "text": "world, yeah. And that could be true even from a Bitcoin perspective, as I could imagine there might be, I mean, hypothetically, if, if you win, there might be some, you know, Bitcoin companies who could easily come and set up there and maybe they would see a favorable regulatory environment, that kind of aspect." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "44:05", "start": 2644.85, "text": "When I win, Bitcoin companies, for example, mining and, and nuclear could, you know, very well tie into each other. The hydro dam that needs to be developed for a nine hundred, eighty megawatt capacity, that would tie directly into mining because right now the current government is trying to force a deal through parliament where the country only earns thirteen percent and it's for bauxite mining Which would destroy one of our, our, our mountains and, preserved rainforest. So, Bitcoin mining has a much smaller footprint, and you can basically use the capacity from the dam, develop new industry and focus on, on mining, for example. And I mean, we still have about what, a hundred twenty odd years to go, right, for, for the mining industry. So, I definitely diversify into, into that as well. But I say, and I say when, because I think there's, there's a misconception on, m- how much I really need to, to win to enforce most of this change. It's a mult- it's a multi-party system, so it's not like the US, you don't have two parties, two presidential candidates, and then two presidential candidates battling it out against each other. That's not how our system works. it's a parliamentary system, so you have fifty-one members in parliament. Each political party has fifty one candidates. You vote on a person, one man, one vote in our system, and this is the first time that we have one, one man, one vote. Before that, it was post colonial weighted system based on districts. So now we have historically the first elections where we'll have one man, one vote, so that makes the elections a lot more fair as well. The political party I'm in is the one I voted for my entire life, the one with the most integrity, and also the oldest in the country. It's seventy eight plus years old. It Independent. And the MPS is currently in government. They were in the coalition, but due to corruption, they decided to step out of the coalition and then move to the opposition. I think it was last year, two years ago, last year. And the NPS, based off previous elections, already has at least six seats, nine if we use the weighted average, that we use for one man, one vote. So we already have a, a large piece of parliament, and that is- Without me on the team, right? So now you have the old guard or old guard, the oldest, older generation in the party, or how do you say this? not as modern, don't really appeal to the youth, and forty-five percent of voters are under, under thirty-five. So you have a huge, piece of, of, of the population or section of the population of, of voters that actually want change and want innovation And want, younger leadership and are tired of corruption. Like the entire country is tired of, of systemic corruption, to be honest. And none of the parties have vision, not even the NPS at the moment, you know, without me added to the mix, and none of them have a plan how to tackle, how to tackle inflation, how to tackle, tackle the country's economic problems, how to diversify, how to, how to develop this country looking, you know, twenty, thirty, twenty fifty, how to have a regional strategy, like a strategy for the continent, for Competitively place the country, for example, in logistics, you know, with our, our runway being one of the longest and a strategic location that the country has, we can actually, on both ocean and air freight, have a competitive advantage and, and kind of be a, a funnel for, for the region. None of the other political parties have these types of views, and I appeal to, you know, the, an amount of voters that are looking for, for integrity, or looking for leadership, or looking for anyone with a Vision or a plan to actually change the country, so that's who I, appeal to, and that is, is growing within the party as well as outside of the party. The party has five thousand volunteers that do groundwork door to door. We have thirty thousand members that are, you know, active members, and that's increasing as, as we approach the elections because people are looking for the non-corrupt party. So that's the beauty of this one. So The, the commission or the, the team that we've assembled of international experts, you know, you, Raheem, for example, yeah, they're all working on an implementation plan They're not working on a, like, an election propaganda, nothing. They're working on an implementation plan, which means May next year, how do we implement this? And that's structured also within a commission in the, the political party itself. So it's carried by the party. So which means once elected, you have at least, at the minimum, nine members of parliament that will be pushing these policies through parliament. And with me on board, they'll be getting more seats, depending on how many votes I can get as a person. Five thousand eight hundred votes for one seat, right? So every multiple that I get of five thousand eight hundred gets us more seats in parliament, and I d-d-die by Estimates I can attract a-- and, and make sure that the, the, the party gets at least twenty seats in parliament, and our goal is thirty-four seats in parliament, super majority" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:27", "start": 2967.18, "text": "And that would give you the ability to actually pass the legislation you want to actually get the changes through without having to do as much of the kind of frustrating- No, actually," }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "49:35", "start": 2975.47, "text": "we can, we can push, we can push a lot of the policies because it's just basic things that have needed to be done for, for over a decade, right? So a lot of it are things that you just push through parliament, and they have support of the other-- So even if we work with, for example, or need to form a coalition government, let's say, for example, we don't have, thirty-four seats, and we need to form a coalition. I also have support from the other parties." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:00", "start": 3000.1, "text": "I see. Okay, interesting. Right. Yeah. One other area, I'm just curious to hear your view. One aspect that people- Let's say might be skeptical of, maybe not of you, but I mean, just of generally, with some of these intergovernmental organizations, right? We're talking here like, you know, the IMF, the FATF, OECD, some of these kind of, they try to exert pressure from the outside, and in some cases, maybe that's the interest of people inside the US government, maybe it's people inside the EU, maybe whoever else. Do you see much pressure coming from the outside into Suriname, like from those kinds of entities?" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "50:37", "start": 3037.45, "text": "So our IMF program ends in March." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:42", "start": 3041.5, "text": "Okay." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "50:43", "start": 3042.64, "text": "Elections are in May, so this will be our last, right? We start, we don't have pressure from the outside, we're Pretty much financially isolated. We have one correspondent bank that the banks work with. Our financial system is completely outdated, it's about fifty years behind. We have no capital market, so we're not linked into that centralized, corrupt system that is the, you know, the global capital market at the moment owned basically by companies like Citadel, Fortress, Intercontinental Exchange, all tied into each other, all heavily manipulated. We're not tied into that system. And we have an abundance of natural resources. We have a significant amount of oil and I am not, like the leader of Venezuela. I'm not going to, you know, have a, a communist government, that abuses the population. The, the whole plan is to, the whole goal is to make me irrelevant as quickly as possible and decentralize power as, as quickly as possible. I mean, if you look at the Swiss federal system, the most people I ask, even in, in our industry, have no idea who the president of Switzerland is." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:50", "start": 3110.07, "text": "Yeah, I think that's a great point. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "51:52", "start": 3112.34, "text": "No, I mean, I've heard" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:53", "start": 3113.16, "text": "the same question, and it's a good thing. It's like, yeah, Maya, that's a good thing that we don't know that we don't want to, we don't want that. That's what you want" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "51:59", "start": 3119.49, "text": "here. That's exactly, that's what we want here. So preferably, I would never have to be elected again. We'd never need a IMF program again because we have, so a term is five years, right? So twenty twenty-five, twenty thirty. Royalties from oil start flowing in twenty twenty-eight, so we have that Already, you know, within this term flowing in. So even if I have nothing innovative to do in 2025 What is basically impossible because we do, you know, we're gonna do citizen-citizenship by investment, we're gonna do special economic zones, we're going to do the deregulation, we're going to, create better taxes and, and, and, Stimulate pri-private sector growth and, you know, build an environment that is, that is actually good for, for development from, from foreign direct investment. some of the strategies similar to Singapore, for example, citizenship by investment can attract a lot of capital, instantaneously as well. So There is no reason, especially with the amount of debt that we have, which we can also restructure, you know, with Bitcoin bonds, for example, there is our financial structures we can use to restructure our current bonds, which aren't favorable to the country anyway. We don't have that amount of debt that it isn't Re-structureable it is, especially with the resources that we have. And just in the back of your mind, keep the three hundred eighty plus private companies, public companies, sorry, that need to be privatized. So just imagine the airline, the utility company, the state-owned gold refinery, the state-owned oil company, which, you know, just eleven billion total just invested into the oil industry here. Starting January twenty twenty-five, you'll have massive development happening. thanks to offshore oil, Total's, you know, starting that eleven billion dollar investment next year because they need to prepare for, for, production happening in twenty twenty-eight, right? The shore base is being developed, so real estate is going insane. So we have a lot of things going for us already. That give us enough negotiating power on a geopolitical stage. And basically, where we're irrelevant, the world doesn't really care about us at the moment. You know, only the smart ones are here right now, the ones that are aware of the amount of oil we have. So you have the US interests here, you have the, the Dutch already, you know, obviously, poking their noses here, buying up land, some of, some companies are buying up land already around the shore base, so you, you have private interests here. So that puts us in a geopolitical advantage, the amount of oil we have, the amount of gold we have, and then just add into the mix that we want to be a global innovator" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "55:01", "start": 3300.83, "text": "Right, in terms of nuclear, we're five degrees from the equator. You have Kourou next door, the French launch base. We're ideally located for a launch base in Suriname. It decreases the amount of rocket fuel you need for launch and increases the amount of payload, which makes it more efficient to launch a rocket from here. If he's going to be launching thousands of rockets, you know, we're referring to, why wouldn't he have a launch base, for example, in Suriname? Or multiple launch bases in the region. So there's, there's so much industry and innovation we can tap into over the next twenty, thirty, fifty years That there is no reason for us to be dependent on, the IMF still, for example." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:47", "start": 3347.41, "text": "Great. Okay. Well, look, I think there's a lot of interesting things in here. Certainly, whether you're a, a Bitcoiner, you're interested in the economic zones, free private cities aspect of it. Yeah. Obviously, I think, as a-- if you're a Bitcoin entrepreneur, that this could be interesting, even if you are a person who wants to go and work from, let's say, this kind of thing could certainly be, could pos-- could be So let's leave it there. obviously we'll link, in the show notes for people, so the link, the website is maya twenty twenty five dot com slash plan. Any final comment, Maya?" }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "56:21", "start": 3380.59, "text": "I'd say, you know, just imagine if you could be in Singapore early or if you could be in Salvador before they announced legal tender, and imagine if you could be in a country where you're actually earning in Bitcoin. We have five months, I need as much help as I can get, so get your ass over here as quickly as possible, and if you can figure out how to help or support in whatever, whatever way. Feel free to reach out. I'm, I'm excited for this to, to, to start happening next year, starting May. There's, there's nothing really to stop us at this point. The party has enough seats already. Help us get more." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:58", "start": 3417.6, "text": "Fantastic. Alright, well, listeners, check it out. And Maya, thank you for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "maya_parbhoe", "time": "57:02", "start": 3421.78, "text": "Thank you." } ] }