EP97 Zachary Kelman on law and bitcoin

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is with Zachary Kellman. I've had him on the show about a year ago, enjoyed it so much that I wanted to get him on again, get a little bit of an update on what he's doing, how things are going with Kellman Law.

And yeah, I really enjoyed this one. Before we dive in, I just want to say, firstly, apologies for not putting out a lot of content over the last couple of weeks. Things have just been absolutely crazy in my personal life, and also with everything with 21ism.

It's just been difficult getting anything really out there, but I promise to do better over the coming weeks. I've just recorded a couple of episodes that will be coming to you over the next few days.

So, thanks for bearing with me. And I also want to say thank you to my sponsors for allowing me to continue the show. Coin Floor UK, who has been with me from the start. Thank you, and for anybody who is in the UK, they're looking to dollar-cost average.

They're looking to buy weekly, monthly, or even daily. You can do this directly from your bank. And if you click on the link in the show notes, you will get a 30% discount on your purchases.

I'd also like to say thank you to CryptoClokes, my new sponsors. They are so busy at the moment. They are putting out so many amazing products. Just everyone that I speak to who has got their hands on, either the node cases, the block limits, or any of the other fantastic things that they're printing at the moment, love them.

If you haven't checked them out already, go to CryptoClokes.com. Enjoy the show. Zachary, can you hear me? - I can hear you now. - Ah, brilliant. How are you? It's been a long time since we last spoke.

- It has, it has. - I was just looking at the Sats Per Dollar price last time we spoke was you could get any 10,000 Sats for your dollar. Looking forward to hearing from you, and what else has changed, and what you're up to.

What are we at now, Sats Per Dollar? - I think 2,900-ish. - All right, that's what, about 3X. - Yeah, not too bad. - Not too bad. - Not too bad. - Yeah, not so bad at all. I mean, what are you thinking of the direction or the market?

I know that's not really expected to talk about, but that's something I think that now we can kind of see a stronger relationship between regulators and the price. I'm thinking we can write some deliberate action there.

- Yeah, I know we're not supposed to talk about the price and everyone says, "Oh, it doesn't matter," but it also does. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've come to the realization a while ago that I just don't know, and that whatever I try and guess is gonna be wrong, and just that long-term this thing does very well,

but I don't know, like I'm, I don't know what can be done behind the scenes to manipulate things, but to me, it's the best asset on the planet. To me, it's the only way that we secure our freedoms.

And so I just stack with every penny that I have and I literally don't care. I've just sold my house, living out of a cardboard box to stack like genuinely because I'm that confident, but I don't know.

Short term, I just, I really don't know. What's your feeling? - Yeah, I know you're, it's definitely a short versus long-term thing, I'm a hundred percent with you long-term. Okay, so I'll say I had a couple recent realizations from some recent events.

So I know some people who were close with the Trump administration back in 2017, when, I should say December, 2017, I think whenever it was that they launched the, yeah, that's what it was, when they launched the futures market.

And I remember Steve Mnuchin on camera kind of bragged, they popped the bubble with that, right? It was a one-sided short market. That was his public statement, he's on record stating that.

And Trump recently came out in a very telling interview. So, you know, Trump's always saying things like he's a little bit of an exaggerator, obviously, so he'll say, you know, the gas prices are now $7 and things like that, trying to compare pricing when he was president to pricing now.

The first thing he said when he was asked about the Bitcoin price, oh yes, you know, when I was president, Bitcoin was $3,000, $4,000 and so forth. And the Biden administration, now what?

So it's crazy, 60, 70,000, something like that, right? But it's quite telling because it shows you that price is on the mind of the regulators and of politicians. I mean, if you're thinking of it from the perspective of there was a Congressman Brad Sherman a couple of years ago that said Bitcoin is bad for the dollar.

And we know this week, what was he saying, we have to be more like China, we have to ban Bitcoin, we have to be, you know, it's gonna hurt the dollar. I don't think he's wrong though about it being bad for the dollar.

I think that's kind of a feature, not a bug, right? - Yeah, for sure. - So I think there is, basically what I'm trying to say is I think that as much as we hear regulatory goals stated and how Bitcoin, you know, is bad for those regulatory goals like anti-money laundering and so forth,

I think deep down the real fear is it's bad for the dollar and that's why getting the price down is an actual goal for regulators. So I believe that's the case. - What do you think then long term with that in terms of like if they want to try and suppress price and create fear and regulate it into oblivion?

Do you think this thing just goes more underground and in that case, do you think then actually the value will go up and then all of that work that they're trying to do will actually go against them?

Or do you think coming from your sort of line of work, do you think that they have a real shot of trying to slow things down at least and create fear and create enough of a pain in the ass for enough companies and everyone to slow things down?

- Slow things down, I think yes. I think they'll successfully slow things down. I think that they've been able to create price movement downward in the past. They could do it again longer term to different question.

It's like the question we're asking is can the world get together to collectively ban or harm this thing? I think the answer is it's possible. It's possible to ban it, it's possible to kill it in theory.

Will they? They haven't had a lot of success with those kinds of international agreements. The interesting part is the US is sort of pushing for this on a global level because they want to maintain that is kind of banking financial system hegemony.

But the countries that are harshest on it more recently are countries like Russia and China and India. Places that have monetary, they have to maintain their currency in this tough financial world that creates trade flows and flows of funds and banking relationships that run through New York and Europe second early

and China and other countries not being the primary beneficiaries of it. So it's China and Russia pushing it. I think we'll see, I think China's CB... The question is what's China going to do with their CBDC?

It doesn't seem to me that the world where everybody just invests in CBDCs makes sense. The investment energy comes from finding a safe haven for your assets and maybe making money off speculation.

It doesn't come from how people are thrilled with the blockchain technology and just want to hold CBDCs because they think it's cool. Like that meme with the guy with all the gold on saying I'm in it for the technology, that's not it.

So I don't think China can have an effect of CBDC unless they integrate crypto into it. It may be the case that China is launching their CBDC so that they can then have it act as rails for crypto in which case we'll see a massive crypto boom.

It's an effort to kind of push off the dollar. Maybe behind the scenes they're all working together to kill crypto though, I don't know. I really don't know the answer. I know they're trying to do it effectively, I don't know.

But that's my thesis is a lot of countries are working to try to stop it and to what extent do we still have populism, you know, actual democracy, efforts of the public to influence what their governments do.

If the answer's, there's still a lot of that. Then it'll get stopped if not, it won't. And I think if you want to look at the past few years, you can look at larger scale governments for smaller governments and see what they do.

And certainly small governments with like Singapore, Switzerland, things like that are more experimenters. But also if you break down Europe on the EU level, it's very harsh on crypto. You have a European level government whose goal is to maintain the euro in much more kind of monetary goals, whereas the nation states of Europe

are much more pro-crypto. I mean, France and Portugal have laws that basically exempt all on chain transactions from cap gains, Germany's trying to push their banks into it. So there's a big divide between less accountable, you know, super national groups, like, you know, G20 or the European Union or even maybe United States

versus the state level. You can see the same thing there, the states are, and then even mayors are trying to push for pro-crypto legislation in a larger, less accountable government level, they're trying to crack down on it.

So we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, it definitely seems as though all of the bigger governments that have something more to lose are gonna be tougher on it. And the smaller nations that have less to lose, like we've seen with our Salvador, are gonna be the ones that are going to be a bit more open to these sort of things.

Because it would be very hard to give up. You know, if you have the dollar and you have all that control, it would be very difficult. If they've come to accept and understand quite how fucked they are, like if this thing really takes off, because, you know, a couple of years ago, it seemed as though they were kind of just saw it

as like a stupid little thing that they wouldn't really worry about because it's never gonna catch on and they can easily control it. And all they just didn't understand quite how powerful it is.

And it seems like certainly over the last six months, they're starting to step their game up. That's from sort of what I'm saying. Are you feeling the same? Are you thinking that it's like, they've just suddenly realized, oh dear, like this, actually we need to try and do everything we can like right now,

especially when you've got more and more of the population, although still a very small percentage who are realizing just how much of their time has been stolen and just how bad some of these policies are.

And they're starting to ask questions about, well, you know, where does this money come from? And how have they suddenly printed all of this? And what are all these stimmy checks coming from?

And there are more, it seems, people sort of questioning it. Do you think that that plays into it some way? >> Yeah, I mean, I think that's the background of what leads to interest in Bitcoin especially and other cryptos as well.

And it's kind of like, if you look at that combined with the price, those are kind of the two biggest questions. Because it's easier for people to have been in crypto to say, oh, well, why aren't people buying more?

Well, the price is high. You know, so you go through these cycles where people are speculating, oh, where's your real money coming from? What's going to happen to the economy? Because you look, in my opinion, we're kind of in the death throes of this older dollar Brentwood system.

And it's being kept afloat first through the petrador and now through kind of these other tactics that make it so that it's the only game in town, essentially. Like finding ways of making it difficult to use other currencies and putting the dollar at the center of trade flows and global reserves and just finding enforcement mechanisms

to keep it that way and keep down alternative investments. So people reaching this awareness about it is leading to-- it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's going up because everyone's kind of realizing it and buying it.

And then the price is going up, but then people don't want to hold-- keep buying at that price and so that if the government can help to create-- institution can create negative news. And obviously, everybody knows the China FUD meme, but it's the same thing with other governments.

They can find ways to create news or help create perception that, nope, the bull market's over. It's going down now. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. My optimism comes from the point that they push it down low enough.

It's a buy opportunity. I mean, the people that were not willing to buy it at 50 and 40 are going to buy it at 20 and 30 on an off chance that it could still work. I don't think they can actually crash it without banning it to the point where it's not seen by people.

It's OK, well, if the whole ship sinks, at least I have this little lifeboat here, that's always going to be a sales pitch for it unless they actually make it legal. Is there a small part of you that just wishes that they do that and that there are enough idiots who sell thinking that if they regulate it enough, that it will stop it?

And then this thing really crashes so that we can buy at really, really nice prices and then only the true hodlers and people who are really interested in this get their hands on it and then we wait another few years because it seems like enough people genuinely believe that governments and regulators have the power

to stop this and to my mind, they don't. And anyone who thinks that they do is a little bit short-sighted because this is very, very, very hard to stop. And I don't think that these governments are effective or efficient enough to do it.

But maybe that is just me with rose-tinted glasses because of my hatred of these type of systems. But maybe you would tell me different and think that maybe there is a way from the way you say it.

Well, I think you're right that governments are a bit too and have to do something about it, but I think there's a confluence between government and central bank economists and into the financial industry that has a lot of brain power behind it.

And I worry more about that than about politicians writ large. I think that the goal, again, and this is just speculation, but I think the goal may be to allow the traditional financial world to get enough of it by crashing it in different ways so that they can have a foothold on it so they can actually do the kind of leverage trading

to keep the price down that they'd like to do. If you listen to Larry Fink, who's the head of BlackRock, I believe, I've heard him talk about this in pretty revealing ways about why can't you get-- I think CMBC person was more or less hinting at why can't you guys leverage it.

And he said, no, you can't get enough leverage on it. It's hard to do that with, to short it, to keep the price down artificially. I mean, but that's just my opinion. I think that's the case with a lot of markets.

I think since the introduction of-- I don't want to call it the petrodollar, but since the end of the US agreeing to transfer gold for dollars and back with gold, the main way of keeping the financial system in place has been force, or threat of force.

And rather than actually providing value for the dollars that underpin it, it's making sure it's the only game in town. And yeah, can-- it's more of a question for really sophisticated quant.

Can they crash the price enough where the traditional financial world that benefits greatly from the current kind of global financial system create mechanisms to keep the price artificially low?

And I don't know the answer to that. But I mean, honestly, it feels like the answer is no. But the question is, can they transfer the value away from the holders into the traditional financial world and can then the traditional financial world find ways of financial magic to keep the price down?

The answer is, if everybody keeps holding, that's not going to happen. They're definitely going to try. I'm 100% with you, though. They're going to try. And they're going to do all sorts of fuckery and re-hypothycate it and leverage it and do all sorts of-- they do whatever stupidity is already happening now.

They're going to do that again. But the question is, when they create all these regulations, which they will do, and they try and control as much of this asset as they can and everything's I/O use, and they leverage it and they don't actually have control of these coins, then I kind of see it as, well,

anyone who's a real Bitcoin or anyone who really knows how to use this, it's not that hard to spin up a node, have your own coins that you just don't use their system. And then does it really matter what the price is at any one time?

Because you have your own way of doing commerce with other Bitcoiners. And eventually, those coins are going to become more useful. Because which ones do you go for? Do you go for the cut coin, which the idiot who fucked up the financial system in the first place now control?

And you can only do things that they tell you you're allowed to do, and that's one system. Or you have Bitcoin in its current form, where it's, I'll do what I want, it's my money, I've earned it, it's my time, and I'll use that.

And to me, I can't see that anyone would look at the two options and go, oh yeah, I'll buy the Goldman Sachs version of Bitcoin, but do you know what I mean? Like, I just, I can't see how they're going to pull that.

I understand that there will be, you know, lots of investors and all that sort of banking cartel stuff, and they'll all do whatever they do, and maybe the price will be, it would be valuable for a while.

But eventually, logic must win, I guess, is what I'm thinking, or that it bifurcates completely, and it's just like, because they won't accept the blacklisted coins that have been used in coin joy, or Darknet markets, or anything else.

So they'll keep them out, they'll use them themselves behind the scenes, obviously, but they won't, you know, the public won't be allowed to see that. And then all the rest of us will use proper Bitcoin.

So in some ways, it would just be like taking the full supply, and then they just take a little bit of it, or a percentage of it, and we just carry on. Yeah, I'm a bit more pessimistic. My, so one of the realizations I made working in anti-money loaner and compliance at banks was, you get, you know, they tell you look,

you're catching bad guys and criminals, but the focus is mostly on sanctions, and so on, you know, obviously sanctions are decisions that are made by countries to designate certain countries as rogue states that you can't do any business with.

To me, I don't, I have a tough time thinking of that as a moral decision in the same way as, say, agreement that people that, you know, murder people should go to jail, right, like, this country's bad.

It probably has more to do with global politics than it does with one country actually being right and the other country being bad. I mean, there's probably some exceptions for sure, but in general, I don't think that's the case.

I think it's more political. It's more of an expression of political will. So I watched a lot of sanctions, you know, as they got put in place, Iran sanctions, for example, and the implications of it, and what happens when they try to get around it, ditto for sanctions on, you know, or even sort of like softer forms of pressure

on dictators in the developing world and things like that, and watch the money flow and kind of what they were trying to do with it. And the realization I made was that the current financial system we have, and the anti-money laundering rules and sanctions rules around it, it's more, it's less about we have this real world of money

and that's where all the real value is, and there's the outside world where they have bad money, it's more that this is the money that gets you access to all the quote unquote good stuff.

So if you think about it like Disney bucks, you know, you need to, and I think you can use dollars at Disney, but let's say hypothetically, you can only use a Disney bucks there. It's a way of holding on to all the good stuff.

Everyone that wants to go to Disney has to get the good stuff, the good money. You know, if you're in Iran and you wanna go by Versace, you probably need to find a way to help someone commit serious crimes and they'll go to jail or get in trouble, or you just leave, you have to go to France

and comply with the rules and get the good stuff, which ultimately means removing the sanctions and doing what the world tells you to do. And I use sanctions as one example, clearly this applies to all kinds of different areas, but it's a way of getting this kind of global order to force everybody to comply with their rules

and the carrot they're getting is, I get access to the good stuff. If you look at like a third world leader, you know, a lot of the time they want their kids to go to these French schools or American schools and things like that, they wanna be able to go there on vacation and have villas and Latin American leaders

and wealthy people wanna be able to have a place in Miami. You know, overall getting access to the good stuff for themselves, for wealthier people in these places is a huge powerful tool.

So if the financial wizards can maintain that dichotomy, create more of a dichotomy, maintain that division between the crypto world and their world by harassing every crypto business, by making it so that if you put your money in there, there are exchanges of your life's easy, if you keep it off, your life's hellish,

you know, going after people in various ways, that I think that will have, they could make enough pressure that I think they'll be able to push people around on it. So that's my concern. But you know, the other issue is how perennial is the efforts of the people outside of that to push it to what extent is this about actual revolution

and money and value and to what extent is it just people jumping on a trend of the small percentage of people that did it. My other pessimistic outlook on this comes from, if you look at social media, most people agree that social media censorship is bad, but the problem is we end up with alternative media that doesn't censor people.

It's just a kind of ghettoized version of the speech that's not allowed on the other platforms. You don't get a diverse group of speakers on the alternative free speech platforms, you just get the ones that were banned.

And most people prefer not to hear that even if they would rather they have the right to say it. So yeah, I think we might end up with a similar dichotomy of all the people that are interested in crypto as a hedge, but then they don't realize that the whole point of, at some point in time, it's like,

if you're holding all your money in Wall Street, essentially, and they're the end up cornering all the market for it, they're gonna find ways of putting in liquidity pools and suppressing the price, you know, and I wonder to what extent that's kind of already gradually happening with the yield farming pools.

I don't know what's being done with that. I would assume it used to, at least during the bull market, be used to push the market up, but maybe it could be used to push it down. - Yeah, when you were working, so that I explained this because my knowledge of law is literally zero, like literally zero.

And so you were talking about, you were working, and you were working around this kind of sanctions stuff, you were doing something you were involved in that, like to what level were you involved and at the time, what was your feeling on it and did working in it change your feeling on all of it, if that makes sense, like,

'cause to me, it's just such a different world. - Right, yeah, I mean, I wasn't that aware of what I was doing when I first started it. I didn't quite understand what it was. This was like, maybe 11 years ago, 12 years ago, something like that.

I first got into it. And essentially the role is, I actually had multiple different banks, different roles. So I've played most of the roles. There's probably two key roles, at least at this time for banking.

There's usually a sanctions role in particular, but that kind of fits into the other two. But it's mostly investigations, transaction monitoring, where your suspicious activity comes up at the bank, and it might be a violation of money laundering rules or sanction rules or whatever.

It gets flagged by an automated system and you have to manually investigate it to figure out whether something bad happened or not. And then due diligence, which is your reviewing client files, sometimes it's done at inception when the client joins, sometimes it's done longer term.

And in the background are the rules you're supposed to look at. Did they commit money laundering? Did they commit sanctions violations and things like that? These all came from the 2001 Patriot Act, at least not so much the due diligence one, but the investigations one.

And these are the things that are being pushed by regulators, the regulators are acting like it's absolutely wild and crazy that Bitcoin exchanges don't transaction monitor and all their clients find the source of funds and so forth.

Even though these are the entire world financial system operated with all this, without any of these prior to the Patriot Act, it was just pushed through because of 9/11 and terrorism. And so it's hand ringing over how horrible the world would be without a panopticon reviewing everyone's transactions

and deciding whether you're allowed to spend money or work with financial institutions, is kind of wild considering the world wasn't a cesspool of crime prior to the Patriot Act. But anyway, yeah, that's kind of the job.

When I first started at my view as, "Oh, well, "I guess I'll be deputized to help them catch crime." My perception overall was that I think when the Patriot Act first came out, they were just kind of figuring out how do we develop these systems.

They weren't many actual, there wasn't much litigation, there weren't many banks getting penalized for it, then about 10 years later, or Patriot Act was 2001. So I guess it wasn't until 2010, 2011, 2012, post-financial crisis, that I think that both parties kind of got together and were like, hey, the Republicans have this terrorism stuff

and the Democrats have a lot of their voters are very anti-bank, why don't we split the baby and go after banks, but only for this anti-money laundering stuff, since that's what I guess they really cared about.

So there were massive penalties, some of these banks, and interestingly enough, they were mostly non-US banks. I don't know of any major US banks, other than there was one that got a big penalty, but this was, I think it was Citigroup, but it was for something different than money laundering them.

But anyways, foreign banks, HSBC famously got, I think, two billion, three billion penalty, some European banks, BNP Perry Bible, you've got a big one. And at that time, I think they started taking it more seriously and actually trying to do real compliance, and I think before then they weren't taking it that seriously.

And I think that's when it really got ramped up from the bank's perspective where they actually started asking themselves, is this a real criminal, is money laundering here really going on, whereas I wasn't working at the banks before then, but I assume they weren't as serious about it.

I mean, if you just look at it from raw financial, a numbers perspective, $3 billion, we'll just say $1 billion penalty in theory, if you forget the time value of money, that's what, that's a thousand, that's what 10,000 compliance officers at 100 grand a year or something to pay for that.

So yeah, I don't know if I would do my math, right? But no, that's 100 compliance officers for 100 years or something, right? So that's a lot. So for them, it became worth it to build compliance programs to look at that.

But yeah, anyways, the goal that they had was, look for suspicious activity based on automated generated alerts and have humans investigate it, and then have background investigations on all the banking relationships that you have.

And a lot of what we hear about the developing world, people being unbanked or losing their banking relationships, comes from that in the past decade, where the big US-based banks have correspondent relationships that allow these people to trade money over the, around the world, and they look at some small bank in Africa or South America

or whatever and go, no, this is too high risk for us to maintain from an anti-money laundering compliance standpoint, you're off the map. And it's been bad for those countries. - And those people, right?

Like I say, I don't understand the compliance stuff, I don't understand, to my mind, it is useless and it harms way more people than it helps. That's my understanding of it. But it's kind of, it's almost like it's forced Bitcoin to come into being, like it's forced more and more people to be like, well, I can't transact,

I can't have an account, I can't do anything. And all these fat cats and all of the people who are moving like serious money and really doing proper money laundering and real actual terrorism, they're getting away with it.

You know, it's like, it just seems as though, I so often I will hear stories where people are like, oh, you know, just simple stuff like, oh, I went to the bank today and I tried to pay some money into my wife's account.

Oh, well, we had to provide all this evidence of where the money had come from and show all the hops before and they asked for your inside leg measurement and then I had to come back with new forms of ID and blah, blah, blah, and it's like, for what?

Like, how successful is this stuff in actually stopping any crimes and how much money goes into doing it and how much do they stop people from living their lives and causing, you know, it seems like they just caused a load of harm.

Is that just, again, me being, you know, more on the sort of anarchist side of just like this whole thing is just bullshit or is there some, or am I actually being reasonable and it is something that should be stopped?

- I think it's a little abode. I mean, I think, this is my honest take. Some of it is anti-fraud. So if you're doing compliance for a bank, the anti-money laundering and sanction stuff is pure goalkeeping.

You know, you're not actually gonna get credit for anything. You're just stopping them from doing bad things that could get them in trouble. The only time you, you know, if they get in trouble, then how do you really measure your value, right?

Because you're just stopping the bad thing from happening. So you can't say, oh, I'm bringing in all this money for the company as a division. Both anti-fraud is a bit different. So anti-fraud are a lot of these charge back risks and everything else that happens at banks.

If you can actually cut down on that, you can actually save money for the bank. So I think a lot of the anti-money laundering compliance resources get pushed toward anti-fraud. So they're getting really, you know, serious about questioning and asking and figuring out what's going on with your bank account every time you spend anything.

So that's one, you know, it's the same thing when you go to the department of motor vehicles or I don't know what they call it in the UK, but wherever you have to show tons and tons and tons of ID to prove who you are, these are all mechanisms they're using to, you know, to stop the fraud because the fraud actually is a serious issue.

So to that extent, I get why they're doing it. It is very annoying and, you know, certainly Bitcoin, that's what, that's a Bitcoin case for Bitcoin being fraudulent criminal money moving, right?

'Cause there is no charge back in Bitcoin. It's why hackers and people like that use it. It does have that utility, I mean, it's hard to deny it. On the other hand, like I was saying before, I, you know, the extent to which they're requiring, there's just a lot of hand ringing around criminals

using the banking system and things like that at day. There's, you know, had discussions with people about it and they'll just go into histrionics about how I'm, you know, you're promoting, you know, human trafficking and all these different things.

And I think it's, I'm not saying it's not exaggerated, but yeah, I also think you're right that the financial institutions are doing this already, even in spite of all these laws, it's not removing all these things.

It's probably allowing those in privileged and powerful positions to get away with things and not the others. If I had to guess that's how things tend to work historically. Just concept competition.

Yeah, I think that's probably true. I don't know for a fact, but I haven't worked in the banks in about a decade. You know, maybe a little less than that, maybe like six, seven years. But yeah, it's been a long time.

So I don't know to what extent it's changed since then, but based on the arc of history and it seems like that's more likely the case. But yeah, I think to me, I do believe on, this is again, this is my opinion, that I think a lot of this more serious anti-money laundering or compliance requirements and efforts put forward by the banks

or designed to create a dichotomy between perception, the perception of them being compliant, how difficult it is to comply in other banks. I think, and of course also crypto and other businesses, the more they up the ante and spend money on compliance and create sophisticated systems for compliance,

the more they create an industry average that's higher and the more difficult it is to compete with them. It's like a monopolistic tool. And I think it applies to crypto especially 'cause it's in a lot of ways that technology's not adaptive to that kind of panopticon way of looking at everyone's money and tracking everything.

And yeah, be honest, I think they are, I think there are people in various think tanks, NGOs, groups, very powerful groups that would like to have a system where money's all known and tracked and controlled.

I think that's, some people say that. It's not my opinion. Some people have said issued statements about this. And so it's not, I do believe that's also part of it. Definitely feels like that's the way that things are sliding, sliding or being pushed.

It seems cash is slowly being eradicated. These systems are sort of asking for more and more information and it does feel as though people who don't opt out if they allow this to happen will have no more privacy at all.

Everything would be tracked, everything would be known. And it just, I don't know, it just feels so wrong. It just feels so Orwellian. It just, it doesn't feel right to me at all. And it just, I just like, I question the motives.

It feels as though they know that this system is, it has to end at some point. And they know there's only one way out at the moment. And that's basically theft of everyone's time. And you have to tie them in and tie them down and not allow anyone to escape.

And it just, if that's what they've realized and that's what they're doing is like, oh, we can't let anyone escape from this shitty system that we've made. We can't allow anyone to be free.

Let's clamp this down. Then to me, that just shows the sort of people who are making the decisions. And it tells me like people need to man up and whatever happens with the price, whatever they do, however they try and control it, do not sell.

Like do not ever think about selling if you want freedom for your children because this only seems to go ever one way. And it doesn't matter who you vote in or what you do. And especially with all this COVID stuff that's been going on over here in the UK.

And I know it's the same in America. It's just like, it's so scary. Like it really genuinely concerns me to a point where I sometimes have to take a step back. I sometimes have to like take a couple of days off Twitter and away and not speaking to anyone because I'm like, I feel like I turn into like a nutty conspiracy theorist

where I feel like the whole world's against me. But it does feel that way. And it feels like we kind of have to fight this. - Yeah, and unfortunately I do think that the record human behavior shows that people are more likely to go along with something like this.

And with these increasing controls on people's money and it seems that people would rather go, people don't want to believe, I find this like, I think most people divide into two groups. One, people just want certainty.

So one, they either, they believe everything they get in the news and things like that. Just a lot easier is less conflict to kind of hold core beliefs where they're telling you the truth or you're just cynical and don't believe anything.

And you can just reject it all. And either way, you end up with a lot of certainty and you can function and make better, more rational decisions. It's not as complicated and difficult to deal with.

If you realize how complicated it actually is, you're just confused and frustrated all the time and you deal with lots and lots of uncertainty. And I think the problem is that the incentives tend to all lie on the believe everything side of it.

The disincentives are on the don't believe anything but you often find yourself correct a lot when you have that view. So it's really just people choosing that because personally, it's your personality is what it boils down to.

Personality-wise, do you prefer to know what's true or do you prefer to be comfortable and happy? I think most people prefer the latter even if they're not aware of it. - It's definitely an easier life, isn't it?

- So do you want the blue color, the red pill, right? - Yeah. - Like from the Matrix. - Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, it is that. And I feel like Bitcoin is just, it really opens your eyes to so many things.

And yeah, it sort of, it attracts a certain type of person who generally seeks truth 'cause otherwise you wouldn't bother to do all the research and understand it, you just literally read one headline and be like, oh yeah, well, it's used by drug dealers and pedophiles, right, forget that then.

You know, you have to be bothered to dig a little bit deeper and be a little bit skeptical. But once you do peel back that first layer, it shows you so much more. And this whole idea of personal responsibility, it sort of leaks I find into every other aspect of life.

And so you find your question, it's like, okay, they've obviously lied to us about the money. What else have they lied about? And you're like, oh, well, they've lied about food and they've lied about education and they've lied about, you know, pretty much everything that you can ever think of.

And so then it's a constant scramble to try and find out, well, this is the lie that I've been fed, well, what's the truth? And the truth leads you to a healthier, happier, better, more free life, but it's really, really hard.

And it's so time consuming that it can become really quite overwhelming. - Well, I'll say one positive thing, which is what you're saying is correct. People to use their rational mind and research and figure out what's going on is time consuming and the percentage of people that will do it is not that high, but I do think that social IQ

and ability for people to discern who's lying and who's telling the truth, who's fake and who's not fake, I think that's quite common. And I think you're seeing more on Twitter and online in general, people are, they may not know all the facts, but they know they're being lied to and when and who and how more so

than I think most people realize. So that, you know, that's kind of perennial and broadly human capacity, maybe not a majority, but it's a lot. So people that are lying publicly, people can smell it intuitively, even with common sense and basic intuition as opposed to uncovering some falsehood and then kind of digging through

and figuring out a broader truth. And even that's just becomes a rabbit hole. And like I said before, either you pivot toward, it's all a lie or you start trying to discern it for yourself and it kind of never ends.

And I will say this too, in the past few years with COVID and a lot of other issues, I know a lot of people who were on the one side of, hey, I believe everything, you know, to the, just broken, they lost their compass to figure out what's true and not true.

And they're just, they're kind of lost it, you know, and a lot of that, I see following with the QAnon stuff and things like that. People are just kind of, they want to believe they find a new locus of what to believe.

And it's just part of this human nature of not being comfortable with a lot of uncertainty. - Yeah, and how do you feel in terms of like, you know, obviously you are there to protect people who are being wronged in this industry.

And so with what you're seeing going forward, like put it this way, a lot of the people that I speak to on a day-to-day basis are so far on one side of like, fuck the law, fuck the government.

Don't care about anything, I'm not going to listen to anything, I'm going to do things my way and we will win. And I'm sort of, I want that, but I'm also realistic in the sense that like we're going to, we're going to have a battle, which is going to be fought with like pens and laws and all of that side of things.

And so how are you looking at the people who are going to be caught up in this, who are like, I'm not going to sell, I'm going to stand for what I believe in. On the other side, there's going to be these people who are going to be attacking them in any way that they can because they want to keep control.

How do you see that playing out? Do you think that this is going to become a larger industry where these businesses are going to have to have more and more protection so that they don't get themselves into serious trouble they can't get out of for doing the right thing.

They genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing, but suddenly the law goes against them and they find themselves in a world of trouble trying to deal with something they don't understand and they need someone like you to stand up for them.

They need someone who understands this stuff and who can fight like, do you think this is going to become more and more necessary? - Well, yes, I definitely, like I said, I think the reaction, when you hear Brad Sherman say it's about the dollar when you see congressional or senatorial hearings where people come in and say,

hey, we need to ban the whole damn thing and get rid of it, now the mask is coming off, right? That's, if they were, they're, and they have to keep pushing the same rhetoric, it's about the environment, it's about money laundering, things like that, but really it's about the dollar and maintaining the financial system.

I mean, if you just forget the existence of Bitcoin, forget AML, forget any of these things and just look at what the Fed does, the Fed has goals of keeping the dollar strong and the financial system afloat overtly.

I mean, with the skull, keeping any plummet low and inflation moderate, you know? So that, the Bitcoin is a threat to that. That's kind of the realization. It is a threat to monetary policy writ large for most countries, including countries that are sitting outside of this dollar-based system for the most part.

So that, you know, so that's where their efforts will continue to, whatever powers they have to stop it and, you know, as desperation levels get higher, they'll do more and more, they'll step further and further a field of their, what they see as their sources of legitimacy.

We have to stop climate change, so we have to kill Bitcoin or harm it or whatever. Oh, well, then we'll just use volcanoes. Oh, well, no, actually, it was always about money laundering. You know, so, I don't think that's gonna subside and I think there's gonna be more and more need for help from attorneys.

In terms of the overall trend with the price and holers and whatnot, to me, I kind of look at it like, it's like, you know, it's like a wave. You know, you have these waves that come against the beach.

Everybody thinks that this wave is all it is and you look at the price, if you look at the chart over history, it's clearly waves come in, they drop off people, most of the people, just like the water, received back in and, you know, you have a lot, but every time also, some of the new people enter and they just hold.

So that's why the watermark keeps getting higher and higher. So every wave that comes in, it leaves some percentage to just panic and sell and some percentages hold, or even the ones that panic sell probably leave keeps some of it.

So every time it goes in and out, it leaves more, it's just gonna keep growing over time, but we're too short-term oriented in terms of how we look at things and panic and think as animals.

So we're not gonna really look at it from that perspective, human lifetimes are limited, but yeah, overall it's just gonna keep going up, it's just waving in and out, or at a down turn now.

My opinion is it's gonna keep going down for a while. I don't think we're pivoting back up anytime soon, but it eventually will pivot way back up, way above where it was before. So I don't think they'll be able to stop it, but like I said, my concern is less about price and more about not your keys, not your crypto

and to what extent can the older financial world just get access and control of it by forcing you to custody it with them. And then once you do, you could get labeled as a criminal or whatever it is and it just gets used and taken, right?

So that's kind of my concern. - That's my question. So it's like there's gonna be people who are gonna be labeled as criminals. Like I've already said, like many times on this show, I won't be surprised with the things that I say, which I believe and like I'm being honest and it's heartfelt and I'm doing this

because I believe that it is for the good of me and my family and the people that I care about is to hold Bitcoin to not use the pound or the dollar and to speak out and be honest about freedom of speech and be honest about some of the concerns that I have.

But I will not be surprised if I get labeled all sorts of criminal because of what I do. Like I do think that we're gonna go full on 1984. We are going to have thought crime. We are going to have all this stuff.

And that's really my question is like, how can this be for legally and how are you sort of, I know you guys take on like bigger cases and I know that that's kind of, it's probably more businesses and stuff, but is it gonna be more and more necessary that anyone who speaks freely, anyone who really cares about freedom

and cares about this stuff is gonna have to have in their back of their head. Like I'm gonna have to have a bloody good lawyer because they're probably gonna try and lock me up because they don't want anyone to be free and they don't want this honesty, they don't want the truth to come out.

Because once it does, once it really comes out and everyone realizes that they've been duped, it's game over for them. And that is obviously something they don't want to ever give up. They'll do anything to stop that happening, it seems.

- Yeah, I agree with you. We have the legacy of the legal systems that were created over the past couple hundred years. I think they are being eroded. But it's hard to erode them, you can't do it overnight.

So the, and certainly, the people that work within these institutions and working for law enforcement at a high level and prosecutors and government officials and whatnot, it's a lot harder for them to violate it.

They have to come up with excuses and things like that. And I'm not, I don't want to delve too much into politics, but for me, I think a big piece of it, for me in the US, one of the big issues and maybe this is just because I'm a lawyer was when they're going after Trump and they had his lawyer and obviously it was communications

with him recovered by attorney client privilege. So then they just found charges against the lawyer. I'm not saying those charges weren't legitimate, but it shows you if they didn't just decide, okay, screw attorney client privilege, you know, we'll just take its force and disease anyway

because the courts are still in place to prevent that at this point. The goal is just eroding over time, at least for as far as I can tell, it seems like it's just eroding these institutions over time.

It's not something you can do overnight and tactical. And to me, I'm looking a lot at this kind of US configuration with what's going on in terms of passing laws and things like that. You know, there's efforts to, you know, to pack the Supreme Court, things that could actually lead to significant erosion.

And they don't appear to be happening, but the law fair approach of using within the system to change things and get legal opinions and kind of just chip away at it over time does seem to be effective.

So my view is I think you'll see a lot more efforts from within the system than efforts to radically reform the system. That's more of a US-focused perspective. I think the UK is seeing a lot.

It's a lot unclear there already in especially in terms of free speech and things like that. - Yeah, it's, maybe that's why. Maybe I'm seeing that from my perspective here. You know, sometimes you just get like a feeling in your stomach and mine has been the last six months.

The last six months, I've genuinely, there's been times where I've censored myself, which like I'm ashamed to even say because I should never do, I should never do it. But there are times when I do sort of start to censor myself because I genuinely think like, I'm just gonna get thrown in jail and they're gonna throw away the key.

I'll never come out. If I continue to like be honest, 'cause it's just not acceptable in our society anymore. Like it's not, it doesn't feel, it feels very different to it. It did even a couple of years ago.

And I think maybe it's like the whole COVID stuff has accelerated it. But, you know, just stupid things. Like the fact that people think it's acceptable to say, like ask you if you've had a vaccine and which one.

And like, are you like, why would I share my medical data with a complete fucking stranger, you lunatic? But they think that they have the right. And people like attacking each other over things like this.

And if you say, look, my opinion is this, but you know, I'm happy for you to do whatever you want. It seems that there is, it's like become acceptable to attack people for their beliefs and for their speech and for anyone who wants to fight for freedom.

I don't know, like maybe just, it's a whole generation gone soft. Like it feels like most of the people who are around me in my age group are just soft and they've all just allowed it. They've just gone, oh well, we'll just do whatever's needed 'cause it's easy.

And you know, let's just, let's just get back to normal. And you know, it's not just COVID stuff. It's kind of with everything. - Great. - And so what it feels to me is that me and a few others who are still outspoken and do still have these dreams of freedom are becoming fewer and fewer and more and more obvious.

And like one day, yeah, we just get put into a cell and then what, that's really like a genuine concern now. So the people that are over here, the other Bitcoiners I know, we're all sort of like, well, where do we go?

Like, what do we do? Because it's pretty scary. Maybe it's different in America, I don't know. - I think on the numbers, it's very different in the US, but it's the same phenomenon. I mean, like the way I look at it, it's like this.

I think people have a really, people have a misunderstanding about this fascism versus communism distinction. So, you know, if you look at totalitarian systems, they do divide between those two groups, in my view.

You know, all the communist systems, what they're doing is they're taking Marx's views and using that as kind of a system to, you know, to a moral framework and system to kind of organize society around rigidly.

And they don't work for that reason because his ideas weren't, you know, more actually practical in the real world and they just get more, the more it's attempted, the more they kind of push those, like the more communist societies that exist, especially the Soviet Union, the more obvious it is that it's just idealistic and doesn't work.

Fascism is very different. You're not taking a ideological framework that someone came up with in the 19th century and saying, here's our new Bible, we're gonna, organize society around it.

You're taking a preexisting society and its values and ideas and using that to create totalitarian regime. And it's a lot more effective. And in that sense, I think China is a good example of modern fascism.

They have an ethnic group, the Han Chinese, have traditions, beliefs, you know, and so forth. And they're using those preexisting environment, you know, human sociological environment to create totalitarianism, it gets a lot more conformity.

I mean, the Nazis use German mythos and, you know, things like that to gain compliance because the public in large part was already proud of it. So we now think that nationalism or that fascism is tied to nationalism and ethnocentrism and things like that and to the extent that a society is purely nationalistic and ethnocentric, you know,

like China, it works, and that is fair to say. But I think most modern Western societies are not that way. And so that form of fascism is more about kind of whatever you know, is kind of secular humanist, moralistic framework is, and we've created a new culture around that.

And so people are looking at this as like a left-wing communist Marxist thing. It's not, yeah, it has elements of that, but those elements are present in society already. And it's just kind of fascistically conforming to that and demanding compliance to it.

We have become that society now and it's just conforming to that framework now. So the problem is that people already were susceptible to these things, they watched, you know, they watched the news, they're in like, think of this way, a lot of, but some point it's going to be 70, 80% vaccinated.

Those people have already been vaccinated, being vaccinated is a value that they've been taught and they believe it's positive. And so the people that haven't followed that value, it's going to be really easy to get them to go after that minority and believe they're bad and evil in the same way any other system where you look

at the minority and believe they're bad and evil. I mean, quite literally in Nazi Germany, the Jews were the source of disease and everything else. Well, that's what's going to happen in a few months from now that people that haven't been vaccinated are going to be told though the source of your disease

and pain and suffering is very easy to motivate people to attack and hate those people. So unfortunately, I think we're less than a year away from overt, maybe violence, maybe just public hatred and we're seeing a bit of that in the US, but elsewhere, people that won't get vaccinated, I don't think it's going to be a bridge too far

to say force these people to become vaccinated if they don't comply to it. I mean, if you ask people before vaccines came out, what percentage of you thinks everybody should be forced to be vaccinated?

It's probably very low. Once they've all been vaccinated, even if you're seeing complications and news come out that shows it's not necessary for everyone to be vaccinated, especially children, these people are going to already be like, no, I've been, it's a value out, you know, and these bad people are spreading it, you know.

And so it's the only way to stop it is to force them. So let's just force them. Because they've done it, it's like it's like, it's confirmation bias almost and it's like, well, well, I've done it.

And if it doesn't actually work and it was a lie and I've done it, then I must be stupid. And I can't be stupid, I can't be wrong. And the people in my family who have been telling me not to do it, they can't be right.

And I've had it, so I'm now on this side and they're in their tribe. And it doesn't matter how much data comes out, it doesn't matter that you're having a vaccine that you now have to have another one and then a booster and you're going to continue and everyone's told you that was going to happen and it still spreads it

and that no one was actually dying from it. None of that matters because they're in that tribe. And so what happens then? Like, again, there's a lawyer's perspective. To me, I always thought like, okay, in the UK, it would come to a point where if there's a forced vaccination that we would have some kind of right where we'd go,

hold on, you may have taken freedom of speech, but sovereignty over one's body to force someone to take something out of their body or put something into their body that they do not want, that's rape.

Like, that's literally, that's what it is. Like, it is completely unlawful, I would have thought, but it seems as though it will get passed. So from your perspective, like, is there any way that people can fight something like that and say, hang on a minute, like, leave me alone?

Like, this is my body, what are you doing? Like, because where does it lead? Like, it seems like where does that actually lead? It's just like a very, very slippery slope where you're basically saying you do not own your data, you do not own your speech, you do not own your thoughts and you do not own your body.

And therefore, what are you? - Yeah, so I think in the US, the Supreme Court at this point is probably still configured in such a way where they'd stop something like that from happening.

There seems to be a lot of pushback in the US from governors and groups that are on the other side of the aisle from this, which if they were, if you'd presume that they know they're facing some all powerful force and would back down, so it must not be that powerful if they're not willing to do that unless perhaps they're planned.

They're, what's it called? Control opposition, again, this is all getting in and into kind of tin full hat territory. - No, I love it, that's where I live. (laughing) - So there's that, so I don't think they could do that now in the US.

And I definitely think that the effort is to encourage people, I think you'll probably end up with the vaccine passports and things like that and just be second, third class citizen, more likely than they'll force a vaccine on people in my view.

But it depends on where it goes. We're gonna end up with tons of booster shots and the vaccines don't really work. Will the public be pissed about it? I mean, you'd assume that you kind of have to go back to your framework of how you look at people prior to all this and to what extent,

there's gotta be some percentage of people that took it and they're like, I got screwed. Or obviously in the event that it is like, there is a negative side effects and things like that, which haven't had enough time to see if that's the case or not.

I mean, I'm not someone that just assumes it's bad. I'm someone that kind of just, like I said, I deal with a lot of uncertainty. I don't really know. I don't take for granted that everything's hunky-dory, but I don't assume it's bad either.

I don't really know. That informs my decision-making. But yeah, assuming it is bad and it isn't working, what percentage will just go along with it, what percentage won't? I definitely believe in my mind that a much larger, there's a huge, we call like silent majority, who doesn't agree with most of these things,

and doesn't go along with it in the US. I don't know if that's the case in Europe. - But we're soft here. We're British, like everyone used to, you know, it's like the British bulldog. And it's like, oh yeah, that's how British bulldog.

That's a lie, we're fucking poodles now. We are soft, soft, soft. Like no one can stand up for anything anymore. I'm embarrassed to be British, it is a disgrace. There are a few who sort of redeem things and there are a few who will stand up, but they're leaving, like they're leaving quick.

And what, like is it possible then that, so for people who maybe have these different views, they want sound money, they want some freedom, they wanna be able to run their business, they wanna be able to interact and say what they want.

Like with what we're seeing with El Salvador taking Bitcoin on, do you have any views on will there be any smaller nations that will either take it on or might form somehow? Would there be some way that this whole citadel theory could play out, but on a larger scale and could compete somehow on the global stage?

Would you think that these existing powerhouses will just crush them if they try? Like what do you see happening in that sense? - Okay, well, okay, what is, if you look at Latin America in general, these Latin American countries, they tend to have more radical politics than the rest of the world does.

That's just, and if you ask me, well, look, I mean, I can get into my theory on it, but I think basically, democracies have kind of a natural life cycle, especially in places that are new countries that don't have, didn't have a large preexisting culture when democracy kind of started to spread in the 19th century.

So Latin America, these kind of places that didn't have preexisting hierarchies and culture in the same way, that were long lasting or government traditions that were long lasting in the same way.

As Europe, and what they end up with is a system that over long period time just gets calcified, it becomes very corrupt, self-interested system that benefits the stakeholders within it. And then people look toward radical politics because they, through cycles of electing new leaders who promise things and can't do anything,

they say, okay, we need to do something that shakes the whole thing up, it's the only possibility because we have this calcified corruption issue. So that's why I think you end up with Latin American countries having this more extreme politics.

The same time I mentioned earlier that there's a situation, a positive thing, I would say, in social media and elsewhere where people that are full of, you know, baloney, most people can just tell a large percentage of the population, especially Gen Z and younger people, can increasingly tell who's genuine, who's not genuine,

just intuitively raw kind of, what do you say, just intuition or common sense. - A gun failing, yeah. - Yeah, exactly. Now, that's leading to more political dichotomies. The people that think that often are fall on the far end or far left or right wing, end of the spectrum, if you're on the left,

it's like, okay, I don't, these are all corrupt, neoliberal people that are dishonest. Anytime they say anything, they can point to their bias and never have to listen to them on the right, it's kind of a similar thing.

It's more recent phenomena, but a lot of Gen Z, you know, kids look at it that way. And I think for Latin America, in particular, it seems to be the place where these crypto laws are more likely to be adopted.

You have maybe an opportunity for far left and far right groups to kind of coalesce around it. I mean, they have a much more politically aware anti-establishment element in their politics, which is why they lead to radical political changes so often it's much more volatile.

And if you listen to the, what's the guy in South Salvador, he's making points that are appealing to both of these extremes. He brought up something about United Fruit the other day, United Fruit was a kind of imperial, was a company that the US, Americans had owned, it was being threatened by a leader in Guatemala,

I believe, who'd come in. And I think he was a far left guy, I don't remember, but the US more or less ousted him. And the message is, hey, there's this imperialism thing that for Latin American countries, they're very aware of.

And it's appealing to both ends of the spectrum, and this is something that looks a lot like that, this American Western imperialism thing. So I think a lot of Latin American countries are attracted to that, and the public's are attracted to that in a way that's not true everywhere.

So I'm optimistic about those countries, but they're trying to get, they're trying to crush them, they're going to use the environmental thing, they're going to use the, it means money laundering thing, you know, obviously El Salvador is a big, is a big money laundering, has a country with a lot of crime.

I mean, I know there's a group in the US called M13, which isn't that really a very organized criminal organization, it's very decentralized, but I believe their main focus, their main headquarters is El Salvador.

So will other, if other countries start to, it's possible other places could move into that, but they're facing international pressure. To me, the big question mark is going to be Mexico.

Mexico has a potential to really pivot toward crypto in a way, and if it does that, that changes the whole complexion. But yeah, obviously there under a lot of pressure from the US and other places not to do that.

Mexico, people look at it as a vassal wacky of America, which has become more so since NAFTA was signed in the early 1990s, but I still think it's more, it's more of a, it's its own country, it certainly looks at things from a different perspective, not just an American, you know, they're not an American client state.

Current leadership in Mexico is certainly more anti, independent will say than it has been historically. So I could see that happening in Latin America more than anywhere else these days, and that seems to be a market shift with El Salvador taking this position, other countries not as much, but yeah, I'm optimistic about that region,

I'm pessimistic about most of the other places I used to think would adopt it, and I think they're, you know, either they have their own monetary issues like China or Russia or whatever, or they are heavily influenced by, you know, larger, bigger economy with lots of carrots and sticks,

like smaller countries in the Caribbean, places like that. So yeah, it's just so interesting to see though, wouldn't it? Like, obviously El Salvador's interesting, somewhere like Mexico would be wild, because my view would be you'd have more and more, you know, if they go more towards that freedom loving side,

they have Bitcoin rather than some shitty fiat currency, and they slide towards freedom when everyone else is going the other way. You would think that it would attract a lot of money, a lot of businesses, a lot of excitement, and people who just have had enough and want to try something different,

and if they're then pulling in all the Bitcoin, then they're gonna become a much more powerful nation, and so it could sort of set off a domino effect where other countries a couple of years down the line go, "Wow, did you see what they did?

"And did you see all the wealth that's come in?" And whatever wealth that was, it's now 20X. And, you know, how this is changing things, and then these countries that are leaning that way are becoming more wealthy.

The ones that, it's actually, what it is is like, you're seeing it where you could see it, where countries are like the individuals. The individuals that have been drawn to Bitcoin are generally more freedom loving.

They generally seem to lean more towards that kind of libertarian or anarchist ideals. They seem to be more on the side of freedom. And then if you have that playing out on a country level, it's not just individuals who want freedom who are getting more and more wealthy and have more and more influence,

but it would be the same with the countries. And then these authoritarian nightmare states like the UK will suddenly go, "Oh shit, like we've really fucked up here." And then maybe they have to play catch up and maybe they realize that people don't wanna be treated like slaves, people don't want to be taken advantage of.

And it's not actually gonna fly anymore because there's competition now. There's actually somewhere else they can go. They can go, "Nah, I've had enough. I'm taking my intellectual capital.

I'm taking my Bitcoin and I'm fucking off out of here and I'm going somewhere better." And that that's not really been possible before. There's not really been that somewhere where you could go to that was strictly better.

- Well, America used to be like that in some ways, you know historically, but yeah, it's not case anymore. When you think about why these countries do this or don't, it's, I'll put it this way, it's like this.

On one side, there's a very transparent, obvious explanation for why they would do it. And then there's a very mysterious, convoluted and hard to understand reason why they wouldn't, right?

So on the one hand, we know why they would do it. If you look at Canada's strategy and this was even the case with crypto in early days versus the US, often Canadian regulatory and I guess economic environment is geared toward doing, they see what America is doing and they see opportunities based on American policy and seize them.

And I think Canada was very friendly to crypto, especially in the early days. Now that's changed a lot in the past year or two. I think Mexico, it's the same thing. Clearly these other countries that are developing world have massive opportunities to bring in intellectual capital money, it's obvious, right?

Like, you know, you don't even need, it's obvious. So we ask ourselves, why won't they do it? Well, the reason they won't do it is that there's incentives not to do it in this mysterious geopolitical world of world leaders in countries and NGOs and enforcement groups that happen behind closed doors that we don't really understand.

And the only thing we can see is I'm come out, shout about money laundering and environmental issues and whatnot. And so that's the public face of it, but I don't really know the private face of it.

I just know the results which are countries doing what's against their entry. I can speak to some smaller countries. Some of the smaller countries, I think some of their leadership are looking to the people that are running the countries run for office and then they wanna work for an NGO.

They wanna be the head of the World Bank, they wanna do this, that or the other and personally benefit themselves. It's a form of corruption, if you ask me, but they certainly would look at themselves as anti-corrupt in the institutions they're trying to get into would.

So there's that level, but I don't know if it's threat, threats of sanctions or other penalties are personally going after, you know, the leaders of the countries that do this or whatever it is that they're planning to do.

There must be some incentives not to do it. I'm sure that, well, what would be the pushback to me if I said this, oh no, they're just high-minded idealists that don't want money laundering and bad things to happen in their countries like that.

Okay, sure, but to me, there has to be some hidden motive or disincentive that we don't really understand. - There has to be, but I just feel like it's like the same with the no-coiner, like they can, they can for years go, oh, I'm not interested in that.

No, it's stupid, stupid internet money. No, I'm not bothered. Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. Oh, my friend's in finance. He says it's a stupid blower and you can hear all these, you know, the environmental and all the different stuff and it's not Bitcoin, it's blockchain.

And just, you can hear stupidity for years. And then they see the price 10X and they go, how do I get that Bitcoin? And I kind of feel like there must be a tipping point where these countries would go, right, how do I get some of this?

Because at some point they realized that they're not going to win this game and they either need to jump on board or drown. And like, maybe that's like a hopeful dream, but, and I'm sure there's gonna be all sorts of corruption, all sorts of meddling to try and stop it.

But I don't know, like it feels like why couldn't there be a small country, like a group of, even if it's a group of Bitcoin, there's enough of them to go, right, we're gonna buy this island or a string of islands and we're gonna set up our own thing and we're gonna run on Bitcoin and anyone who runs a Bitcoin business,

you can come over here, here's the legislation, here's how it works. You have to work within these basic guidelines. Basically don't be a dick and be honest and be upfront and this is how it works.

And if you cross those lines, you're in trouble. But as long as you meet these basic criteria, you're fine. And all the taxes go to something that you can see and everything is actually shown so that the corruption can't be there like it is in every other country.

And like, I don't know, like I guess that's a utopian dream. But I just, like, yeah. - I would say it's utopian. I mean, the issue is not that it couldn't work, it would work. The problem is it would be sanctioned and the rest of the world would stop them, people from there from getting the good stuff, so to speak, as I said earlier.

The better approach would be some kind of whack-a-mole thing where tons of countries in the developing world are all doing this, and I don't think that's off the, I think that could happen.

I don't know the level of control that it's, you know, like we have a world with lots of developing nations that have democratic, to one degree or another institutions or at least volatile political climates with public, with public full of common sense who might support things that benefit them.

I don't think it's gonna be easy to maintain control over that. I think that's the same with vaccinations or bitcoin or anything else. We don't have a global government effort to create and coordinate one or still somewhat nascent.

And yeah, I think that there's more, we're definitely moving to a place where the developing world is freer than the non-developing world, simply due to lack of resources to form powerful police states, right?

- Yeah, maybe it's a dream that can come true. - And so in terms of the lack of mold, us, you know, like developing world people, saying, seizing opportunities that we've, you know, foisted away from ourselves onto some other, you know, unknown groups.

Yeah, I could see that happening. Western people moving to those places, sure, helping it happen. But a bunch of Bitcoiners going to one country and trying to do that, I think would just, they'd just would target and quash it.

- Drop a big bomb on us or something. - Probably wouldn't lie. (laughing) - It'd be sanctioned, you'd just see vice articles about the pirates of blah, blah, blah, you know, island and just they're all criminals.

Every single thing you could attack it with from a kind of left frame would just be done and it'd be a racist, sexist, you know, misogynistic island of monsters who, you know, any story that came out that was negative would just be the most the biggest news story you've ever heard, you know, it'd be something like that.

And they wouldn't even necessarily desanction it, they would just make it a verbotent subject to discuss and place to visit. You wouldn't even be able to get past the first 20 layers of what's wrong with it to explain what's good about.

- It's so true. - It's so true. And so what's happening with your business and cases, when we last but you had a couple that you couldn't talk to me about, are there any bits that you couldn't talk about and like give me some insight at the moment of what you guys are doing?

- I wish I could. I can definitely say that there's been a lot more aggressive efforts put forth by federal law enforcement on crypto businesses than there was last time we spoke. And it's a less open environment for crypto than it was back then.

And like I said, my thesis is, I think it's the price. I think that's, if you hear Trump talk about, we gotta get the price down. There's a lot of, 'cause the thing about Donald Trump is that, and this is why I think the elites hate him so much, is he says the quiet part out loud too often.

And I think Brad Sherman saying, hey, they're gonna kill the dollar. That's him saying the quiet part out loud too. When Donald Trump, when he was asked, when he was running for office, hey, Russia's Putin's a bad guy, blah, blah, blah.

He goes, hey, we kill people too. We're also, we're doing the same stuff. It's saying the quiet part out loud, right? So when he says, do a Biden, the gas prices are so high. By the way, Bitcoin prices are so high under Biden.

He knows, and US leadership knows that there's a policy desire to get the price down. And they'll tell you, no, it's nothing to do with the price. It's freedom and we're all free, but we just worry about the money laundering and the criminals and the hacking and the- - Part of that's right, yeah.

- So, yeah, I think that's behind it. I think they, and remember, these people have tons of priorities and they work for government, so they're incredibly inefficient and slow. So it's, right now it's a priority, it probably gets pushed to the back.

I know that the French central bank a couple of days ago said we have two years to come up with a regulatory framework for it, and I think that kind of means, come up with a plan to kill it in the long run or prevent people from having their own control of the money in the long run.

I think that there, if you look at it from our perspective, it looks bleak. If you look at it from their perspective, it also looks pretty bleak. I don't see how they could come up with this global pentopticon and control that they need to do it.

Also, even if, assume that it, assume the worst case scenario with Bitcoin, why would, maybe the original Bitcoin or tech people would just adopt a new crypto and stop the Bitcoin? I mean, now it sounds crappy to most Bitcoiners, but if it actually, they actually have this scenario where they get control of the market and, you know,

I don't, I could see a scenario where there's a consensus in the Bitcoin space that it's Govcoin is now, it's not, you know, after they try to pull the move of starting, I'm starting to, you know, take everybody's Bitcoin and convert it and, you know, and so forth.

I think you might actually, it would be like an emperor has no close moment in the public would say, okay, new, new coin now, we're gonna use this one, and you know, you can't be best of the eaters.

- I think if that happens, we're fucked. My personal opinion is we have one chance and it's Bitcoin, because of the Immaculate Conception, because the way that this is played out, because we had that time to build the network, because of many, many factors.

It's why every single alt coin that has been created is basically useless and always will be and always will be centrally controlled. I have some respect for the use of Monero in certain dark markets at the moment, but other than that, I mean, my personal opinion is absolutely fucking pointless.

And if they did manage to control it, then I do think we'd be lost. That's kind of why I do what I do, because I'm so, you know, the idea of not having it, I just can't bear, like, because that's the hope, like Bitcoin to me is this hope of freedom.

And I really don't think that there would be another way of doing it under the radar, 'cause they're on it now, like they weren't paying attention. They were slacking, they were slow. They didn't jump on it.

They probably could have caused, they probably could have shut this thing down in the first few years, but I really don't think they can now. And like you say, they can play their games and they can do what they want, but I kind of feel that they are coming to that realization that we can't probably beat this.

It's gonna be practically impossible. And the only thing that we can do is just throw shade on it, slow it down and make things as difficult as we can for as long as we can to leach as much as we can until we die, 'cause most of these people are old fucks.

Like, they're probably just thinking, "Well, let's just have a good life the next, "how many years, let's just leach as much power as we can." And we may lose this eventually, but we don't wanna lose it now.

That's kind of how I see it. - Okay, so I might, these are a little different. I think Bitcoin, 'cause I remember early days when it was Bitcoin and a bunch of pre-Ethereum, wacky altcoins and whatnot.

And, you know, everybody, part of the Bitcoin, everyone got into it for mostly kind of liberty reasons. Some people were speculating, but once Bitcoin achieved liftoff and was in the multi-hundred dollar range, everybody looked at the other altcoins as an opportunity to make money in the same way.

They were like, "Well, Bitcoin did it. "Lightcoin could surely do it." Lightcoin got to like 30, 40 bucks at one point early on, but they had ridiculous. - Yeah, ridiculous. - And they had just crashed to $3 and stayed there for what felt like hundreds of years, but was really like a couple of years.

But yeah, to me, the issue with the other coins is that the energy behind them is speculative and that Bitcoin is there. And if it became obvious that Bitcoin wasn't Bitcoin anymore, I think then you could have a genuine ideological, if you could be ideologically driven or whatever, you know, liberty, whatever you wanna call it.

People driven not merely by speculation, but by belief in this alternative vision for money that that could develop the same energy. So that's why I'd not, and again, I'm looking at this from the perspective of the regular that wants to kill it.

If you look at it from their view, it's a whack-a-mole thing where you don't actually get to kill it by killing Bitcoin, but maybe you're right, maybe it is a one-time thing and I think it's certainly wise to look at it that way.

- No control, everything else. It's like, I find it laughable when people are like, "Oh yeah, well, Ethereum's gonna be useful." It's fucking not because it's gonna be essentially controlled.

And it's so easy to essentially control it, especially if they go to this proof-of-stake, then it's just like the old banking system. It's so stupid to do that. And I think they must know it.

I almost feel like it's so stupid that they must be a group of spooks or something like that, where they're managing to convince people using very clever marketing and buzzwords and people like, "Oh yeah, this is gonna be amazing, smart contracts, yay."

They don't realize that it's like, you can control this thing. There's a reason Bitcoin stands and they desperately wanna stop it, but they can't. If they wanted, if they really saw something like Ethereum where any of these is a threat, they're stopped at tomorrow.

It's really not a threat to them. - The hard fork thing with Ethereum Classic really stands out when you think about that, but I guess the main, yeah, I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying.

I'm just saying, I think the problem is the energy behind all these other ones is speculation about the price up and now you can't deny that's become a big part of Bitcoin as well recently.

Every time it goes up in value, that's really my biggest annoyance with the Bitcoin community is whenever the price goes up, it's full of just shills and most of the people are just interested in the price getting up and, you know, it's, I prefer the down markets actually.

I feel like it's just been kind of not as cool and not as fun since the, you know, the ERC 20s came out. - Yeah, I agree with you. - I agree. And also like, I find it cringy, the number go up people.

I find it just like, it's not, you know, yeah, it's cool. I'd love the number to go up because it would give me some more freedom and time and, you know, it'd be great, but it's not what this is really about.

And I also, although I have no interest in any of the altcoins and I would never, ever invest in them, I did in the beginning, but I would literally not put one penny in any of them. I don't care that they're there and people with all the infighting who are like, "Oh, you know, they attack each other "and they attack these coins."

They're actually quite useful because it creates like a smokescreen around Bitcoin and it allows regulators to get confused because they don't really know what's going on and they think this blockchain thing could be of interest and they may be going over after these other cryptos and stuff and all of that money and energy

that goes into these different projects, some of it goes to founders and pre-mines and people who just steal other people's money, yes. But some of it also will create things that will be useful and then we actually take it into Bitcoin.

And so to me, I do look at it like the more the merrier, I feel sad for people that get duped into it and lose their money with a lot of these altcoins. But I do think probably overall it is going to be a net good because anything useful, we can just take pretty much.

And even if there is this, you know, like a lot of people dream of this multi-coin universe, whatever, there probably will be something that will be useful somewhere. It's just like it won't be able to stop all governments from controlling it and there's always someone behind it.

There's always somewhere to go and hit with a hammer. Whereas with Bitcoin, it's so decentralized at this point that it's like, where do you go? What do you do? What do you, you know, you want to go and close mining down in one country?

Well, okay, fine, it's going to move elsewhere. You want to go and close down one business, another 10 pop up. And so that's where I see this thing going. And I do think it's a waste of energy where people have this infighting.

You should, you know, we should allow people to invest and do what they want. And, you know, it doesn't really, it doesn't affect Bitcoin. It's not like someone's going to go and, you know, I go and make Maxcoin tomorrow and I change a couple of parameters.

And like Bitcoin's going to be scared. Like it just, no one cares. Yeah, I don't get the bit the toxic side of the Bitcoin Maximalism debate for simple reason, which is that if you really believe in it, why would you need to engage in these tactics to make it successful?

Shouldn't it just succeed without your need for these tactics? And is it possible that by engaging in these tactics, you know, like, especially as people say, it's by any means necessary.

It's like the Saul Alinsky, you know, tactic, any tactics on the table, you know, total war theory of it, be as toxic as possible, no consideration of the negative side effects, just coin go up at all costs.

People have advocated for that openly as what their mantra should be. Obviously that you have to be able to see that there's negative side to that. But yeah, to me, it's just, if you think it's correct, you shouldn't have to do anything.

It should just work. You know, it's like that saying, if you love something, you let it go, if it comes back to you, it's yours, if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be. If you're trying to force, you keep trying to force this thing that you believe is inevitable, it doesn't even make sense.

So I'm almost admitting that you don't think it's inevitable at which point you've killed your own argument. - Oh, it's true. There are some bits of the toxicity that I sort of agree with, but most of it, I don't.

So there are some where it's like, if there's a blatant scam or scammer, and he is or she are taking advantage of people and lying to people and stealing from people, then I'm like, okay, if you wanna be toxic with them, you wanna call them out, you wanna call them on their bullshit and state facts, go for it, like I'm all for that.

And the same with like the flooding of climate, you know, climate fud and all these sort of stupid things. I'm all for people being toxic and saying, you know, no, this is bullshit. Here's why and going back on the offensive because we are being attacked by media.

We are being attacked with all these false narratives trying to put people off and scare people away. So that's fine. But yeah, the toxic where it's like literally just constantly attacking other projects or coins or things like that, to me, it's just, it's just, yeah, like you say, it's a waste of energy.

Like, what are you, what are you doing? Why are you bothering? If you believe in this thing, you know it's gonna work anyway. Like, yeah, just fucking let them get on but even if it's cheap.

- Yeah. When people say, oh, I just want it to get more coins. If you really, if that really is, the people that say do anything to get the price to go up that also say I wanna accumulate as many coins as possible, wouldn't you want the price to be low so you can keep accumulating now before it inevitably blows up in value?

Like I just don't understand the perspective. I think that I think it's intellectually dishonest. I think they don't, I think they know it's more fragile than they admit that it is and then that they, and again, if you believe that it requires you pushing it to get it to go up, then why not altcoins?

That seems to be what pushes them up. So maybe that the Bitcoin community thinks that it's the same thing or is acknowledging that it's the same thing in that regard, in which case it's a case for altcoins as well.

- Yeah, there's definitely a group like that. - I think that just comes with understanding. I think here. - They get a lot of attention too. A lot of it is they just get, they get a positive feedback and more attention.

People clap their hands and so that's reinforces it too. - Yeah, that's true. That's definitely true. And it's that like, you know the early days when you first work out what this thing can do and you're running around telling everyone and like, "Oh my God, it's amazing."

And let me tell every single person because it's so exciting. And then after time you're like, you know, at the beginning someone would say to me, "Oh Max, Bitcoin's a scam, it's useless, it's this."

And I'd get all like emotional about it and upset and be like, "No, because of X, Y and Z "and trying to spend my time and explain." And now I'm just like, "Yeah, it is, don't buy it." - Yeah, for me, from the very early days, I always kind of knew that this crackdown on it was gonna happen.

I never thought for a second it wasn't gonna happen. I mean, at 2013, 2012, when I was first getting into it, I was like, "Yeah, 'cause I was working "in the anti-money laundering compliance at the time."

I was like, "Oh yeah, they're gonna try to kill this thing." I didn't know that anti-money laundering and all these things would become so useful. I just thought maybe it's an angle for me to get in the industry 'cause I was really interested in it.

But yeah, I kind of knew it was gonna come and it actually came faster and more forceful than I ever would have thought, you know? - Yeah, it's definitely speeding up. And so I'll push one more time.

I know you can't tell me specifics, but can you give me anything of like, I'm so interested in just what you're having to fight with and what you're having to do in your industry. Is there anything that you can tell me that, like, isn't gonna dock someone or even a case or anything?

- I just don't know who's listening. It's a government and law enforcement and people like that are listening. I don't wanna, you know, tip my hat at all to them. - Fair enough. - I could talk more about like the vanilla non-governmental facing stuff.

And yeah, we do a lot of work with people that have been screwed over. One thing I'll say I've noticed a lot is a lot more people that are getting real or not and it seems in many cases it's real.

The exchanges are screwing them over in different ways and preventing them from getting their coins. I don't wanna name the exchange, but there's one particular exchange that I believe uses MLKYC as a tool to make it really hard for people to get their money off the exchange already.

And I think that's done intentionally to maybe they have to return it nine times out of 10, maybe one time out of 10 they get to keep it and then they might be keeping. - And that might be generating millions of bucks for them.

So I've noticed that trend, which I find really annoying in the space. We get a lot of attention for that. If anybody is listening has had that experience you can reach out to us at kelman.law on the internet www.k-e-l-m-a-n-1-l.law.

I mean, I'm hoping you put the link on the page or whatever so you can find it. But yeah, we've seen a lot of that and we're able to recover it most of the time. And every time there's a legitimate claim for it.

But yeah, we've seen a lot of that and I definitely think at least in some instances it's become part of their business model. I can't prove that, but I believe that. - It makes sense, right?

Because the type of people, they're not going to want to give their information. It's suddenly like, "Oh, it's like shotgun KYC." And then some people are just going to go, "Oh, it's not worth the hassle and step back."

And they know that-- - Well, it was that. Now it's become people that have KYC'd and they've done everything in the exchange. - Oh, right. Words are sorts of funds, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And they show them a sorts of funds, they don't believe it. And it's gotten to the point where it's pretty egregious. I think we've hide behind that explanation. Well, we're not sure, but I think at some point in time it could be too much of a hassle for them, especially when you have lawyers threatening litigation.

I think normally they'll fold with that. So that's become a big thing for us and it's very disappointing to see the anti-money laundering things be weaponized in that way. So yeah, I think that's a trend I can talk about that I find very annoying in the space recently.

- So what will happen is someone will come to you and say, "Right, I've gone through this. "I've done all my KYC. "I've shown them sorts of funds. "I've said, "Oh, right, I've sold my house.

"That's why I bought the Bitcoin. "They haven't accepted it. "This has been ongoing for X amount of days "or weeks or months. "And then they'll come to you. "And then can you talk to me about "what that procedure looks like?

"And also, if you are to win, "is it that you just get their funds back? "Or can you actually sue them for being an asshole? "How does that count to suing or whatever it is work? "Can someone get some extra sats for their loss of time "and stress and the fact that someone "hasn't done things properly?"

We can't usually get extra money out of it, and so we can't sort of take these on unless it's a large amount of money. So if you're saying, "Oh, we lost a couple of grand on this," it's, you know, might have probably not worth it.

- Yeah, yeah. - If it's significant, then yes. I don't know exactly what goes on on their end. I just know from having done this, the lawyer threatening you that actually has a background in this that actually understands it and can threaten litigation, it gets to the top of the compliance he quickly has a lot of the times.

I honestly think a lot of the times, I don't think it is AML arbitrage on their end. I think a lot of the exchanges are just, it's a hard business to run. I think a lot of people in the crypto space don't realize how hard it is to run an exchange.

Mistakes happen, problems happen, and I think coins get lost or they screw up. And, you know, that's really the leverage. But yeah, I don't know. There's not, normally with these lawsuits, the damages are the damages.

The most additional you could get would maybe be some interest on it. Maybe there's some instances where that if we can prove it, if they want to say no, and it's enough money and we could sue them, there's probably some more egregious penalties we could potentially get more money out of it.

But normally it's about getting the funds back. - That's cool. It's nice to know that that's an option for people. 'Cause it often feels that way. It feels like you're going up against, you know, a large company and you're a private individual and you're just like, oh, well, this is,

I'm just going to be emailing them for the rest of my life and calling for the rest of my life and I'm just never going to win. I'm just going to waste weeks and weeks and weeks and then you just give up.

And it feels just like a really annoying type of bullying. And so then it's nice to be like, so they then get an email and it's like Zachary Kelman and then they look at it and they go, oh, fuck, we're not going to mess around with this guy.

He's the other bully comes in. He's going to bully us and now we're going to release their funds. And so it's good to have that, you know, to have someone to stand up for people. - Well, they treat you like you're a criminal, you know?

And then suddenly when the pressure's back on them, they realize, oh, no, we were business. We have a serious legal issue here and they're on the defensive. And if you have to take them to court, you can add options available and they know that.

And when they realize, okay, do we want to handle this lawsuit or do we want to stop playing this game? You know, it's not a hard decision for them. - Yeah, it's sad it has to go that way, but it seems like that is often the case.

- You hear about these companies that from like a product liability standpoint, sometimes they face big lawsuits and lose tons of money. But also if they just cut the costs, only one tenth of the market are going to sue them.

And they, you know, overall, they look at the math and like, oh, let's just do it. - It works. It's a lot of it, yeah. - It happens all the time. Like, not obviously with crypto, but without doxing myself too much.

I've sold another property about two years ago. And I had this, I had this management company that like took, I think it was nearly 50 grand off me for a roof that they never told me needed doing.

And they basically were like, oh yeah, it needs to be paid before you can sell the property. And it was, it all felt very, very fishy. And the amount of money they were asking was way, way, way more than it actually should have been.

Like, I know, 'cause I know roofers, they're like, yeah, this is like four times more than it should ever should have been. And then when I finally was about to sell the property, they said, oh, well, we need to hold another like 20 grand or whatever it was, because there may be some other issues with the roof.

And then if there are, then the new buyer can't be the one who's paying for it, it would have to be you. So I had to then lock up all these funds. They've been in there for like two years.

The roof finished a year ago, provably finished a year ago. It definitely didn't cost what they said it did. But so like, this is what I'm saying. So for someone like me, I'm like, do you know what?

By the time I go and hire a lawyer and mess around and pay them their fee, I've lost that money anyway. I'll probably lose anyway, because they're a massive company and the legal system never seems to work in my favor.

So you just like, well, I have to write that off then. And so it seems that it's not just in Bitcoin land or in the crypto world, it's everywhere. And so having someone who can fight that corner is brilliant.

And I think you're right when you're saying they just sort of put it into their business model and they run the numbers and go, well, we can get away with this amount. And that means that, yeah, one person out of every 10 will take us to court and we might lose that, but we still better off.

And so they just take advantage of all these people. And yeah, it's really frustrating. It's part of the reason that the Bitcoin world really interests me so much. Because it's either transactions either done or it isn't.

And you either hold it or you don't. And there's nothing else in between. - Well, not your keys, not your crypto, right? - That's it, that's it. - Well, Zachary, it's been really, really good to speak to you again.

I'm sorry I went off on a bit of a rant. I've been, yeah, all this stuff has been going through my head for a while, all this corona stuff. I didn't want to really take it there and these legal things.

So it's a bit of a rant, so I apologize for that. But yeah, it was really good to speak to you. And yeah, like I said before, it's just, it's really nice to know that there's someone out there who's looking after people when they get taken advantage of and obviously it's not just individuals, it's gonna be businesses as well.

So if anyone's listening to this and has been wronged or has any issues, yeah, definitely reach out. And yeah, very happy to have you on our side. - Always a pleasure, always a pleasure to be on the show.

It's one of my favorite podcasts in the crypto space. So keep doing what you're doing. - Thank you. Well, I appreciate you sharing the show. I occasionally see you shared by you and I'm like, "Oh, that's pretty nice."

- Oh, that's a big thing. - Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And yeah, as I said last time, that would be cool if you're ever in London to go and grab a drink. It looks less and less like with all the travel restrictions.

But if it goes on much longer, I might just fuck off out to America. So maybe I'll see you there. - Yeah, well, whenever you wanna come, you let me know, we'll hide you away somewhere. - Awesome.

Well, yeah, thanks for coming on. Thanks for all the support. And yeah, listeners definitely reach out if you've been wronged. It's yeah, always good to speak to you, mate. - Thank you. Appreciate it.

- Speak soon. - Cheers.