Welcome to the Free Cities podcast.
My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this episode number 141 of the Free Cities podcast brought to you by
Veritas Villages. That's right, more on that later. Did you notice there's an S after the village?
I used to say Veritas Village all the time. Not anymore. Anyway, before we go on to that,
another announcement. Did you know it's now just 90 days to go until the Free Cities Conference
since 2025. You know what, this year we're heading back to one of our all-time favourite cities,
that's right, Prague. And if you've never been before, well let's just say I think you're missing
out. And I'm not even talking about the conference here, I'm talking about Prague. Prague's an
incredible place. It's not just where we host our conference, but it's a city packed with incredible
history and architecture and what i would call a vibe that perfectly matches the spirit and the
freedom of what the free cities foundation is all about prague's actually home to some quite
incredible landmarks you may not know this but it houses the world's oldest continuously operating
astronomical clock it has some of europe's most iconic examples of gothic architecture
One of my favorites is St. Vitus Cathedral, but they also have some more modern sites that I'm sure listeners to this podcast will appreciate, such as Parallelnypolis.
If you look back in the archive of this show, you will see interviews with a couple of the founders of Parallelnypolis.
It was the first Bitcoin-only cafe in the world, as far as I know.
they started selling coffee for bitcoin back in 2014 can you believe it and if you were one of
those people that bought coffee at parallel nipolis back in 2014 well thanks to the beauty
of ai i just worked out how much that coffee cost you take a guess i used a bitcoin price of 600
per bitcoin it fluctuated between 300 and a thousand and a coffee price of two euros 50
that's right folks you paid 650 for each of your coffees back in 2014 if you paid with bitcoin
i hope they were tasty in fact i know they were tasty i've had coffee at paralelipolis
it's great coffee anyway there's also some notable sites in prague tied to the country's darker
chapters like the Prague metronome built on the site of a towering Stalin statue that stood until
the 1960s and something that I would recommend everyone see the Museum of Communism that's right
folks sounds terrible but actually offers a sobering yet highly insightful look into the
country's totalitarian past. Now if that's not enough to entice you to come to Prague
for our conference, what about the food? The food's phenomenal and very reasonably priced.
At our welcome drinks for example, we'll meet at Fuse Bar. You'll get a sample of some of Prague's
heartiest and most warming Central European dishes, including beef beer goulash with dumplings,
fried hermeline, that's Czech cheese, with cranberry sauce and the national classic
Zvičova, marinated beef sirloin in a creamy root vegetable sauce. You're definitely thinking
about coming now, aren't you? Of course, the real reason to come is the conference itself,
where you'll hear about brand new Free Cities projects this year coming in from Latin America,
Southeast Europe and West Africa, some of which are being announced publicly for the first time
at our conference. People do seem to wait for our Prague gathering to announce things.
If you've been watching from the sidelines for the past few years, why don't you make this year
the year that you finally make the leap and join the movement in person. We've secured special
deals at three fantastic hotels all within walking distance of the venue but be quick
Prague gets very busy in October and the rooms won't last check the show notes for our Prague
guide and conference tickets of course and we'll see you there free cities conference.com that's
free citiesconference.com quick update also on our fantastic sponsor Veritas Villages they will
be at the conference this year and also note that I no longer say Veritas Village I say Veritas
Villages that's because they have a number of projects on the go right now here are the top ones
in panama veritas village coronado the one i normally talk about prime location 10 minutes
from coronado town and the pacific beaches ideal elevation for year-round gardening another one in
panama veritas village chirokee just launched june 2025 near volcan and boquette solar powered
community with riverfront home sites then in nicaragua you have playa pacifica beachfront
living with community amenities and lifestyle. This is also the closest beach community to the
international airport. And this one's hot off the presses. Veritas Village Atenas. That's in Costa
Rica. This is a brand new land acquisition in beautiful Atenas known as one of the best
climates in the world. If you're interested in any of these projects, Patrick, the founder of
Veritas Villages publishes his own podcast called Freedom Lovers Life and I was on it this week.
Check out the link in the show notes. We talk a lot about the current state of the UK
and why so many people are choosing to up sticks and move. Did you know the UK government just
introduced an online safety bill? You know something's not right when the government
starts using the word safety. I looked it up. It's horrendous. The stated reason for the UK's
online safety bill is to, quote, make the UK the safest place in the world to be online,
especially for children. Look, if you want my two sets, if your children need safety from porn,
that's obviously your responsibility. They're parents. Nothing to do with the government.
you just bring up thoughtful critically thinking internet savvy kids who can work this stuff out
for themselves you basically play a massive part in their lives you don't palm them off to faceless
bureaucrats who don't give a excuse my language shit about you kids these days well they'll sure
as hell know how to circumnavigate these things anyway if they really want to and if they're too
young to understand, you just protect them yourself. It's very easy. You tell them not to
go on these sites. Rant over. It's just so tiresome sometimes. Right, today's show, well,
it's about protecting yourself in a way. Protecting yourself from the ravages of
reckless government spending and the destructive force of inflation. I'm speaking with Jason
Cousins. He's the CEO of Glint, which is a company that allows its clients to spend their own gold
over electronic payment rails. In other words, you can use gold as money. See, I do get gold
bugs on the show. Anyway, we discuss gold as a store of value, medium of exchange,
fiat currency and government control constitutional gold currency in the u.s monetary choice
the role of government comparison of gold and bitcoin and economic equality and the solutions
this one is for you if like me you're very disillusioned with what you see around you
and are somewhat struggling to comprehend the rising costs of what i would call a very simple
way of life. Anyway, Jason's offering a solution that we seldom hear about and reveals some highly
important developments happening right now in the US that might pave way for the resurgence in the use of gold as money Obviously gold has been money for a very long time and is money it just some people don
understand that or know it. By the way, the Wizard of Oz gold analogy that Jason mentions in this
discussion, I'd never heard that one before, I checked it out, it's legit. The Wizard of Oz
is often interpreted as an allegory for late 19th century American politics,
particularly relating to monetary policy and the gold standard. This interpretation was
popularized by economist Henry Littlefield in the 1960s. Just so you know, Yellow Brick Road was the
gold standard. The silver shoes, which they were in the book, they became red shoes in the film
because they had colour, they're free silver. Dorothy is the American people. The Emerald City
is fiat money or Washington DC. The wizard is the president or a political leader. The scarecrow,
American farmers, the tin man, industrial workers and the cowardly lion is, well, he's a guy called
William Jennings Bryan who was a populist leader but I think it represents any cowardly politician
who really doesn't stand for much.
Well, how about that anyway?
See, you learn a new thing every day.
Right, I've been speaking for too long.
I can feel my voice going actually.
Time for the Alpha, grab a chair.
And this week, why don't you lock yourself away
in that secret vault you have under the house?
You know, the one full of gold bars?
And while you're down there, join me
for the next couple of hours
as we both sit back, relax
and enjoy my conversation with Jason Cousins.
I watched the whole film industry change over a period.
I started when it was pretty analog.
yeah and by the time i finished um everything even drone technology you know historically we
used to use something called a like basically you had to employ an op a guy to fly a helicopter
with a camera on the front of it and there was only a few of them around the world we used to
use a guy in south africa you had to fly him in you had to fly his special camera in that he
attached the thing you know and all those kind of things have suddenly you can make a kick-ass film
with hardly any money and hardly any equipment and podcasting is the same now i i basically an ai
does 50 of it now and it won't be long before i can instruct it to do everything except the
conversation which is what you want yes that's the best part but even then i think there's someone's
a google or facebook or someone's brought out a podcast um tool where they just you'd give it the
subject and it creates two people and they end up talking to each other well you can you can do that
and actually i've done it a couple of times out of fun but once again i think that's one of those
things that ai has a moment sorry can you pass me that again let's get that out about that yeah um
everyone looks at that and goes oh that's fun it's created a podcast but then you don't now no one
wants to listen to that podcast because they know it's an ai generated one and i think we talk about
this a lot on this podcast yeah you know what are the jobs of the future going to be who's
safeguarded what you know and and it appears that as long as you can put a premium on being a human
being yeah in some shape or form you're okay and in podcasting hopefully people won't want to listen
to you and me in ai form talking i'm not sure they'll know otherwise though that's the thing
i know but we'll be able to you will be able to prove authenticity with you'd have cryptography
I mean, I think what could really, a great thing to happen.
I mean, if you read, for instance, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Yes.
You know, the guy who plays the guitar or something is paid as much as everybody else, if not more,
because this is when they get to Eden, you know, when they get to Galt's Gulch.
Yeah.
And if I remember rightly anyway.
And, of course, that should be the way the world is maybe.
And I think maybe what this AI does is, as you said, where you really value human interaction.
That could be a waiter who's looking after you.
Barista.
Or a cook, a barista, a musician, an artist.
And then the people who really don't add that much value, like bankers, people in finance.
A lot of bankers listen to this podcast.
And it's like, well, actually, if the AI can do a lot of that work, then actually it's the wage disparity.
is the problem a banker does a great job you know fine serve a useful purpose in society but
it's the wage disparity the fact that you know the cantaloupe effect and all that and how people move
how those close to money supply benefit disproportionately from everybody else
and i think that's the potential leveling field for me which i i kind of look forward to do you
know what though that already started happening before ai even was a thing if you think about
trades people and i remember like i used to work in london i used to work for the independent in
london the newspaper i don't even remember it yes right i was a job in photographer at the
independent when i started out and i was on about i think i was on about 295 a day or something which
for me was just like phenomenal every day i couldn't believe it you know someone was paying
me to go and take photos but my if i am if i employed a sparky he was probably about 110 125
maybe yeah or maybe a hundred back then the sparky is now 300 a day at least and the job i used to
have which doesn't exist anymore obviously um but there are still people that do that kind of job
i think they're they're paid probably 200 or less so you know obviously i suppose ai in a way did
get rid of my job it was more like the internet and technology in itself but certainly you know
I know a lot of people now who are advising their children to,
you know,
think long and hard about what they want to do in life.
And at the end of the day,
nothing wrong with being a trades person.
You know,
it used to be,
everyone should be white collar.
Now it's like,
do you know what?
The blue collar people are sitting pretty.
They've all got nice houses.
They're driving around in big cars and they've got a lot of workflow.
They're turning,
turning work down,
you know?
Yeah,
for sure.
So I don't know.
I don't know.
My,
I hope podcasting is safe because it's a massive human element to it.
your business is probably safe if you think about it i mean you could streamline it i suppose can
you well i think yeah i mean i think that glint could be one of the first fintechs that gets to
scale to millions of users and still only has 35 people working in it um in other words the
efficiencies around the business are there but at the end of the day there's still logistics
there's still physical metal that needs to be moved from one cage to another the back end and
things like that we better better um better say what you do let me let me say what i think it is
and you tell me if i'm right because i you basically you've created a gold backed kind of
a way of paying sort of storing some gold in a in a reserve somewhere and then paying
in normal life through is it the visa network master code i mean i think simply put it's it
Glint is a gold-based electronic gold currency.
It's a, yeah, Glint is an electronic gold currency.
So you choose to buy X amount of gold,
which hopefully preserves your purchasing power over time.
And as you spend, it's chipping bits of the gold off.
Yeah, I mean, it's democratized access to it.
So people can buy pennies worth of gold, literally,
or as one of our clients have $100 million worth of gold.
And, you know, this is money, hard money,
and that is something you should be able to save and spend.
And so we allow you to do both.
And spending can be done either through the incumbent financial system
using, you know, a Glint MasterCard.
Almost anywhere in the world where this is accepted,
you can spend your gold.
That's as in where a MasterCard is accepted, yeah.
Or with the app, you can do it peer-to-peer to other people too
who have got a Glint account.
And is it true?
No one's ever done this before?
Is that something you could do before?
I mean, I know you can buy gold ETFs and you can buy paper gold
and you can do all this kind of stuff.
We're the first company in the world to enable physical gold
to be able to spend in real time at the point of sale.
So there were a couple of systems or people attempted to do things
where you could buy gold like you can and could on any of these gold exchanges
and be able to then sell it quick sell it transfer the funds into a digital wallet and then be able to spend those funds But of course what you doing there is you just selling your gold transferring it to a digital wallet which could be transferring to your bank that process can take time and whilst it sat in that wallet it it not got the
qualities of gold which is outside the banking system and you know uh free from destructive
effects of inflation or at least insulated from them so yeah we we i spent a long long time trying
to get that right so you could do it all in real time i mean i like the way you say gold is money
because i'm a i'm a bitcoiner so i i i think bitcoin's money and i think obviously there's a
massive amount of connect of you know similarities between the two but you know gold's problems i
suppose are the port is the portability which is hopefully resolved i mean how does it work when
you buy some gold? Have you got reserves somewhere or do you have a...
We don't want to take risk and there's no need for us to do that. Gold is one of the
biggest markets and it's one of the most liquid markets in the world. It's as big as the S&P
500 or just thereabouts depending what year or decade you're in. Central banks are always buying
and selling it as well as other institutions and individuals all over the world. So there's no
problem with liquidity and um so yeah you can buy any amount and you can it sometimes that's net off
with the with the people on our platform which happens you know instantly we don't have to have
any more gold coming into the vaults or it is ordered through often to the market and the gold
moves from the cages that belong to the liquidity providers and into the cages that belong to our
clients but it's probably a world that not many people know much about the way gold functions and
even what's going on in the world of gold because it's for such a is the biggest asset by market cap
in the world right yeah and um most people don't really have much contact with it yet what's
happening in gold is really super important geopolitically right i mean 100 like the you
know since whatever we came off the gold standard i suppose it's what do you like what is going on
in gold at the moment i know that a lot of people are buying gold especially old institutions they
appear to realize that in this chaotic period of history we're going through one of the things you
can do to sort of insulate yourself is to buy gold right well i think i think i'd like to go
back to the basics you know basically gold has been money for 3 000 years and it it became money
or was decided to be used as money by different civilizations separated by time and space and ocean
you know which is quite incredible so it's kind of been through that evolution of tally sticks and
boulders and shells and things like that that people were using as money because of course
that barter didn't work too well because I might want to buy some eggs off you. Sorry,
I might want to buy something off you with my eggs, but soon you might be sick of the amount
of eggs I was giving you and that type of thing. So gold eventually became, very quickly became,
the store of value and medium of exchange on the planet. And that, as I said, across time and space,
you know, people in different parts of the world came up with the same conclusion.
and of course they brought in what I call inferior metals like silver and copper and and so on to to
deal with de minimis payments because this gold as it was a finite source you know became quite
valuable and how do you deal with small payments and so you had that but um it's it's it's it's
today it's as you say it's it's the it if you look at all the central banks they hold dollars
and they hold gold. Gold's overtaken the euro as the second reserve currency on the planet.
And, you know, it's...
What about the fact that, well, I mean, I'm thinking about 1971 here. When 1971 happens,
it was basically one country saying to all the others hey do you know all that gold that we're
holding uh it's ours now you can't have it back kind of thing like well i think i think what was
happening is after world war ii and the breton woods agreements the world wanted to go onto a
gold standard and so they had to decide how that was going to happen the u.s already had the most
gold of any of the nations and so they said look okay we'll we'll effectively the u.s dollar backed
by gold will become the reserve currency of the world and you'll all be connected to the u.s dollar
okay so that the gold the world is on a gold standard and everything's going okay until
1970 you know 1969 1970 you know the u.s is fighting an unsustainable war in vietnam it
can't afford the rising costs of that war because of course back then you couldn't they couldn't
print money it was backed by gold and they're supposed to have a certain amount of gold to back
the dollar and um i think it was de gaulle called out the u.s you can see on youtube there's a video
of de gaulle talking to the united nations i think and he's saying i don't trust you americans
you know what are you doing you i think maybe you're printing money that you don't have gold to
back and so actually for those two years as i understand it the way the story goes the french
navy was being used to you know ship take us dollars into new york harbor and ask for the
gold in return they wanted the gold they were redeeming their dollars for gold which countries
could do of course most people don't know even in america that actually gold was illegal to hold
in america as an individual between the 1930s and the 1970s so it was only the governments who
who could redeem this uh these dollars for gold and of course you can imagine what was happening
the gold was being depleted at Fort Knox
which is probably why
Trump and Musk have been saying recently
we wonder if the gold's really there or not
and so Nixon and his team went off
and then came back and decided that they were going to temporarily
come off the gold standard
so it wasn't that some people mistake the fact it came off the gold standard
because it obviously wasn't working, it wasn't very good
well it wasn't working for those who wanted to cheat
and wanted to be able to pay for unsustainable things that they couldn't afford.
And of course, since then, we've had this meteoric exponential growth in the money supply.
And again, you say a lot of people don't understand gold.
I don't think most people understand how our fiat currency is made, our paper money.
And I certainly didn't, you know, back in the day.
It wasn't until 2008 that I, during the global financial crisis, that some of the listeners of this podcast won't even remember.
If you're 35 plus, you kind of are a teenager, didn't really care.
But we really came to the edge of total collapse in our financial system.
I mean, hours away.
If you're a British listener, Alistair Darling was the treasurer at the time.
And he's come out quite publicly and explained what was going on.
Hours away from the whole financial payment system collapsing.
And it was then the first time that I realized that money in the bank isn't there.
A fractional reserve system means that there isn't any money there
and that money depreciates in ways completely outside of our control
because governments are able to print as money.
Money is printed at extraordinary levels.
I think in COVID, 20% of all US dollars were printed in one year.
of course when you print money it it it devalues it debases it gosh there's so much to talk about
on this isn't there i mean um where do you begin so well i've got a question then because
um like you say um governments will always government and when they see an opportunity
to cheat which they did in 1971 they will and i suppose herein lies the problem with gold
is unless you're unless it's a bearer asset unless you and me are actually swapping a piece of gold
with us now it kind of happens in the ether and isn't it isn't it likely that whatever happens
the system might always trend towards the people in power saying right let's let's have an eye we
can't ship tons of gold around because it's too heavy and you need like armored vehicles and guards
and stuff so let's let's write a piece of paper it represents this bit of gold i'll send that
or a digital note now i suppose and when it pops up the other end we know we're good but we don't
have to move the gold and i would guess probably that's always going to happen isn't it well i
think it always happens when you're trusting governments to be able to manage your money
correct and uh you know that happened in roman times when the oreos was you know their way of debasing the gold currency was to drill a hole through the middle of the coin and take that gold out and create another coin with it and pretend that coin was worth the same before the hole was drilled Sorry since the hole was drilled But I think what
Glint's a private company and people have a contract with us and it means they own their
gold. That is their gold, it's not ours. It's not like a government that's issuing a fiat currency
that may or may not be backed by something.
That's not what it is.
This is your gold.
That's not our gold.
It's not Glint's gold.
That's Glint customer gold.
If Glint goes bust,
it remains the property of the customer.
It can't even be touched in a bankruptcy.
So it's very, very different to a fiat currency.
And of course, the gold doesn't ever move.
This idea that it has to move all the time.
Most of the gold doesn't move.
Very often.
Sometimes it does.
But it doesn't create an incumbents
on the ability for it to be used electronically.
The ownership of that gold can move instantly
from one person to another through electronic instruction,
just in the same way that a token can as well.
We were talking earlier in the lift, actually,
about London and places on the up and places on the down and stuff.
And people know this.
I do think of England and London in general
as a bit of a downward spiral at the moment.
And one of the ways we see that is the government
appears to be slowly looting everyone of as much money as they can through taxes through whatever
yeah um and the ultimate tax is this 6102 isn't that what it's called where they just take away
your stuff which is i think you mentioned just earlier was that from 1930 to it was in the u.s
from 1930s 1970s they banned personal ownership of gold it was confiscation of gold but at the time
I think people don't understand necessarily the context.
At the time, until 1971, the gold price,
there was a fixed price between the gold and gold.
Dollar was gold, so to speak, kind of thing.
And so when the nation, when they came out and they said,
we need your gold, it's kind of your duty to give us your gold, we need it.
Then people really didn't feel that they were going to be losing out
because you were given the equivalent amount of dollars
and the gold price never changed.
But then it didn't double.
Of course, when they unleashed it.
And as a free market, then, of course, that's exactly what happened.
But I think that therefore I just because we're already in that situation, I don't think that could happen again.
You don't?
I don't. I hope not. I mean, look, I think I think some of the society's filled with all kinds of challenges.
I was just actually thinking about writing a tweet or writing an article about this.
I listened to a podcast about Gary Stevenson, the podcaster, you know, this morning.
I thought, well, I agree with some of the things, but not all of them.
Who's that?
Who's Gary Stephenson?
He's a blogger, podcaster who, you know, he's apparently a trader who's now talking quite…
Oh, not Gary's economics.
Yeah, Gary.
He's talking a lot.
Oh, my God, that guy is so annoying.
He's talking about a lot of things.
And his solution, though…
Is the state.
His solution is tax harder.
Is the state and taxation, yeah.
But actually, let's look at the…
I think actually in there, in this conversation, you know, the problems, the situations, the
symptoms are all quite real and actually the the conclusion and what you do about it is the hard
bit i think that people don't understand but i think what people see and what people have to deal
with on the face of it are these rising prices the rising prices of housing for instance is one of
the biggest ones that really comes through although you know inflation food this month in the uk is
four and a half percent so that's really hits those who are least well off and you know i was
born in Sunderland which is you know one of the cities most furthest away from the money supply
where it's created in London and I feel like all through my life no matter how hard I've worked
it's always felt like I'm swimming against the tide because no matter how much you save
as you save the things you're saving for become further out of reach and that's maybe that's a
good idea of good pivot into explaining this you know how how is money made or it's money it's made
in two different ways one banks have the ability to just literally create out of thinner ex nihilo
is the latin term of it out of nothing and yes they have some constraints around the ratios of
how much they can create out of nothing it's it is linked tenuously to the amount of deposits we
all put into the bank but i think most people think that you know today that the way that you
borrow money is you're borrowing money that other people have put into the bank no you're not you're
borrowing money that they create out of thin air you know they maybe they can they can print five
times as much on that keyboard out of thin air than they actually have deposits and um of course
there is another way which is that central banks themselves can print money out of thin air and
give that to governments to buy their bonds when no one else wants to buy them so when the government
wants to pay for things that are unsustainable and wants to increase its debt etc and no one
else wants to buy it the government will step in and do that as quantitative easing this fancy word
which i first came across during the 2008 financial crisis don't worry the bbc said the government is
implementing a plan of quantitative easing i'm not sure that everybody felt as comfortable if
they'd said don't worry the government's going to get you out of this problem by printing a
beep load of money you know my nana would have understood what that meant that meant down the
road it's going to lose its value and she wasn't particularly financially literate
but if we go back to the bank can printing out money when we let when we borrow it of course
who can borrow that money well as a young man in Sunderland I could not borrow money you know I
didn't have any and you have to have money to borrow money um and the more money you have the
more you can borrow. So of course, and the way the mortgage market works and property and assets,
of course, I can take £100 and I can borrow £500. Or if I have 20, let's put it into mortgage terms,
I have £20,000, I can get a mortgage for £100,000. But if I've got £100,000, I can get a mortgage for
£500,000. And this is, so the more you have, the more you can borrow. And of course, this is why
five men in America own more than 50% of the whole United States of America. That's because
they've been able to borrow increasingly larger and larger and larger amounts of money to the
point where it's in the absolute billions of dollars. And they go out and they buy all these
assets. Meanwhile, the young man from Sunderland is trying to save up for his mortgage. And those
assets that are being bought up by the rich are going up in price because there's a relatively
fixed amount of them of course it takes time to build new houses as various governments try and
stimulate that it doesn't really have an effect because the effect of the money printing is much
greater and that's why we have this you know if you're if you're a lower class don't have much
money well nothing much changes for you but the middle class has been eroded away they they have
at least a chance of trying to buy a property and meanwhile the rich are just getting richer and
richer which is why we have this 0.1 percent of people only most of the country and i think if
people really understood that i so that that's the first of all people don't understand why things
are going up in price you know i remember when inflation started to hit rishi sunak came out
in parliament and said yes inflation being caused by the rising prices of food and the war in ukraine
well the war in ukraine had only just happened started and the rising prices of food are not
the reason we have inflation the bbc does the same thing always you know we have a rising price
inflation now at 4.5 because food prices are going up no that is the consequences of inflation or that
greedy people are charging more yeah which is also ridiculous yeah absolutely no one in the right
mind you're trying to be competitive my my my wife she's she's she's got a business and it's in
it's in fashion retail and they're absolutely being demolished because their margins are getting
squeezed and nobody wants to do that but if people understood how money's made and how this benefits
the rich then maybe we can start to look at what the real solutions would be but nobody seems to
want to talk about that of course the richest in society who are often the most influential don't
want to talk about it because it suits them um and i'm not sure anybody in government even
understands how this happens so you know apparently one day i heard that somebody noticed that uh
One of the chancellors at the time was sat there in parliament reading a book called How Money is Made.
You can't make this stuff up.
So I don't think many people understand it.
I don't think any politicians understand it.
So then how can we even get to the solution?
Of course, you can understand why Gary is saying we need to redistribute the wealth.
At the end of the day, the system is benefiting those disproportionately from those further away from the money supply.
So maybe it's a good idea.
Why don't we just redistribute it?
Yeah, that seems maybe a good idea to a lot of people,
especially those ones who are really struggling.
And I'm sure a lot of people will vote for that. But the problem, of course, is that you get, in the same way, the existing monetary system benefits people disproportionately and has unintended consequences.
redistributing wealth and letting a government decide how that is done also creates distortions
in the economy misallocation of resources who gets that and could end an even worse situation
which we have seen in previous socialist communist type scenarios which don't obviously work
i'm not saying i know what the solution is some might say we need to move to a sound money
world, that of course is something which I think is very difficult for the world to turn to.
Because all governments are using the same monetary system. Gary himself in his podcast
this morning said something about your rising house of prices isn't just an English thing.
It's not just a London thing. You can't blame the mayor for it. It's happening all over the
country. In fact, it's happening in every country in the world. So I'm not sure that everyone's
going to agree at the same time to come off you know a fiat currency system or a fractional reserve
banking system and i and so i thought to myself well why don't we just enable our own bottom-up
return to sound money why don't we uh why don't i help find a way to make gold which is you know
created when two neutron stars collide as being money and still is money uh across different
countries and different cultures used by central banks these biggest institutions why don't we just
enable that as you know money that everyone can use at the same time of course back then someone
called satoshi was also thinking of something using the electronic means and of course we've
gone down slightly different routes but yeah i mean for me um i'm hoping that we can we've
democratized it so you can buy just a as i said a cent's worth a penny's worth or millions of
dollars if that's what you want are capable of doing because i believe everyone should have an
equal opportunity to prosper. What you've just alluded to in the two big problems was at the
heart of both of them was the government. Right. Which is true. And I agree with that. I agree that
centrally planning anything that big is not possible. The market will make way better
decisions that have millions and millions of individual people choosing. But the problem with
the government is the government won't do what you tell them to do if it diminishes them that's
the thing this is why i like bitcoin for example because bitcoin as a hard money standard if it's
adopted does actually defund the government and arguably gold would as well but you're relying on
the government to kind of protect the rights of gold owners though that's the problem if you see
what I mean? Like with Bitcoin, with digital, you know, decentralized money, you don't need anyone
to protect it other than the people who are mining Bitcoin and causing the network to be the strongest
sort of digital network. And once you join, and if governments start getting in on Bitcoin and
deciding, right, it's a reserve asset for us as well. And if it ever becomes peer-to-peer cash in
a meaningful way, they're stuck. Because unless they can convince you and me to use paper Bitcoin,
they can't keep doing their former thing. And the good thing about Bitcoin, which is where I think
it differs to gold in one respect, is you can identify real Bitcoin very easily and cheaply.
You don't, you know, which is, you know, the reason why I would always choose real Bitcoin
rather than paper bitcoin because it's like don't give me the the vaporware i want the real stuff
it's just as easy do you mean what exchanges sometimes sell you and things like that well
just any any abstraction of bitcoin you know an etf or a or basically like the government
unless you're holding your own key you don't really own you of course yeah and and really if
if the government what what would probably happen almost certainly is at some point because i think
most people, like you say, they don't understand money, especially in government. And as a result,
they don't really understand the threat of something like Bitcoin. And when it becomes
too late, which it already is, as far as I'm concerned, you know, albeit I revolve in circles
where things like gold and Bitcoin are much more prevalent. So, you know, it's not the real world.
It's a small number of people, but potentially it's the real world because everyone that
realizes it doesn't really go but I'm gonna know when anyone go back and say
actually yeah that that system's better you know but they will try and create
sorry they will try and create a paper version of everything because that's the
only way so they say right this is government Bitcoin we hold the Bitcoin
in reserve but we issue you with the thing that's difficult with Bitcoin
because it's so easy to get the actual thing whereas with gold yeah I can see
you know I I'm not gonna carry gold bars or gold coins around in my pocket so the
The paper version of it is much more important.
Well, I mean, look, I think there's lots of similarities between the two.
You know, people do and should, I think, hold gold, some gold coins and some gold bars and keep them in a safe somewhere or put them in a safety deposit box.
I think, you know, some people say if you don't hold it, you don't own it.
Look, I think everyone should have some physical gold with them.
At the same time, you can have a product like Glint, which allows you and looks after your gold in your vault.
And of course, the government could have gold and they do have gold and the two systems could participate.
You can have, I mean, I'm expecting that one day Glint is a foundation of a global gold based financial services ecosystem and payment system.
Call it GoldFi, you know, maybe instead of DeFi.
But, you know, I think regulation, you know, we do live in a regulated world, increasingly regulated with government overreach.
overreach and you can already see with bitcoin and other currencies that that is being regulated
you know we have the genius act coming in now and we have uh what's the other one coming soon um
what in the big bill or in the no we in the u.s they've got the in the u.s they've got this um
genius act that allows you know it explains how bitcoin can be used and then they've got
another one which is coming in i can't remember what it's called clarity or something like that
which is all other crypto assets.
And that was a stable coin.
It was to do a stable coin and back by the US dollar.
But already, you know, you can see what's happening with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
You know, people holding their own coins are increasingly regulated away from being able to do that
because, you know, government wants KYC and they want anti-money laundering and all those types of things.
And if you've got your own coin, oh, you know, we can't trace that as well and as easily as that.
and you can see all the big exchanges
it's very similar to Glint
well actually I don't know
I'd have to look into the terms and conditions of those exchanges
I don't know if you really do own that gold
that bitcoin
and in some British exchanges
effectively you're exposed to the price of gold
but actually the underlying asset is actually owned by the exchange
which for me is like
well you're not really owning it at all
so what am I trying to say
well you can physically own it, you can own it through a custodian that's outside of government
and of course government could do their own thing.
So I do believe that you could have a gold system that the government is using
but you can still have control over your own gold and your own money.
I suppose my question is then why would the government give up the fiat system?
It's literally the best thing that's ever happened to the government.
I don't think it will because as you say there's lots of reasons why they want to be able to do that
including printing their own money.
I mean, the US has had the ultimate privilege since 1971,
an exorbitant privilege of being able to print
because it could print as much money as it wanted.
And because they effectively moved off a gold standard
to a petrodollar standard.
So one of the questions people might ask is,
well, when the dollar came off the gold standard,
why would anybody in the world use the dollar?
Why would they carry on doing it?
And the answer is, is because they flew to the Middle East,
as some of your listeners will already know,
And they did a deal with the Saudis and said, look, if you carry on insisting on accepting dollars for your oil, we will protect you militarily.
And so it went from a gold dollar to a petrodollar.
Of course, what we've seen just recently, maybe the last 10 years with COVID and with the war in Ukraine, etc., as the dollar was weaponized again for the next time.
It's been weaponized a lot of times, but it was weaponized again against the Russians.
is this demise of the US dollar, especially in the East.
And so now, you know, people are paying for oil in all kinds of different currencies, including gold.
So whether it rubles or whether it renminbi or whether it the Chinese yuan or whether it gold they now using other currencies And so that tie has been broken And so there definitely an erosion should I say in confidence in the US dollar
But it's still, at the end of the day, the main medium exchange on the planet.
And I think it's going to be a long time before that's broken.
And I think central banks in America certainly believe that.
But it's interesting to see what's happening at the state level.
so i don't know if you know anything about constitutional gold currency is that a u.s thing
yeah so about two years ago i heard that um glint had been mentioned at the texas senate
and i i didn't quite know what this was about it was something to do with this thing called
constitutional gold currency and they said look if we pass this legislation we are um we're going
to need a platform like glint so i got in touch with the people and said what's all this about
And it turned out there were six different states thinking about using their existing constitutional right to make gold and silver an authorized currency in America.
Actually, not necessarily the physical gold.
Well, maybe I'll tell the story like why they're doing this first.
So the states are here worried about $37 trillion of debt.
I mean, that's a big number.
Is that the US debt?
A trillion is a big number.
A trillion seconds ago was 36,600 and something years ago.
A trillion.
And there's $37 trillion of debt.
How did they build up so much debt?
Well, you know, because the British government can't do that.
We saw how Liz Truss, how long she lasted in government before, you know, before getting chucked out just by simply, you know, suggesting they might be borrowing some money.
The U.S. had this huge debt because they could print, you know, everyone needed the dollar.
And the U.S. Senate actually, bipartisans declared that that $37 trillion worth of debt, it was $36 trillion just a few months ago, you know, now it's $37 trillion,
was a matter of national security.
And everybody knows it.
And the US states certainly feel it and think about it.
They're worried about CBDCs.
They're worried about inflation.
All of these things coming from a fiat currency system,
the US dollar.
But what can they do about it?
Because the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 10,
Clause 1, specifically says that no state
may make its own currency.
except gold and silver.
As in backed or you're allowed to spend gold.
But like a certificate of ownership for gold is considered gold.
Right.
It's been tested at the Supreme Court numerous times.
But effectively gold ownership, gold, can be used in the payment of debts.
Yeah, five states, only five states.
Well, this was six states when I first met them two years ago.
And they hadn't passed the legislation there.
They were thinking about it. Texas had already built it, went on to build its own gold depository.
But they only meet every two years to do legislation.
And the second time, I think, they got themselves into a mess because they tried to impeach their treasurer or something like that.
So they went from being first mover to being not the first mover.
This year, 22 US states have been considering, drafting or even passing laws to do with constitutional gold.
As of today, just over the last few months, we see that Utah was the first to pass legislation with bipartisan support, nearly in every state bipartisan support, because the Democrats see this as an economic justice issue.
You know, the Republicans see it as a freedom issue.
And but unfortunately, in Utah, the governor vetoed the bill.
So not sure why.
His excuse, I think, was that he didn't think that technology existed, although he'd had a committee looking into this.
And I'll come back to that in a second.
It's quite interesting who was on the committee.
Do you know who the governor was?
Yeah, Cox is the governor.
What's his track record previously?
I'm not too sure.
I've learned a lot about US politics as I've gone state to state and helped some of these amazing people with their arguments.
because one of the challenges, of course, is that people go,
what are you talking about making gold and silver currency?
Are you expected of going around and chipping a bit of gold off at the Starbucks?
So I've been able to go into capital buildings and show legislators,
look, it's really easy, you can do this already.
Wait a minute, before you go on,
what's the difference between that, though, and what you're doing?
Because you don't even need constitutional gold, do you?
Well, we'll come on to that.
Let me just name the states that have done this.
So actually, as of today, Florida, one of the biggest states, Texas, the other big state, Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas have all put into law that this is now gold and silver are now authorized currencies of the United States of America.
That like legal tender?
Is that the same thing?
Yes, yes.
It's part of it.
But they're saying now transactional gold, right?
Gold that can be used in transactions electronically through electronic instructions.
And does that mean I can now go into my local council offices in Texas and insist on paying in gold? Is that right?
Well, we'll come up. Let me break it all down a bit. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. You can already do this with Clint. So what's the reasons you would, the state would want to do this?
Well, the group actually who I met who were driving a lot of this and helping and facilitating a lot of this grassroots activism, because for once, actually, this wasn't a movement that was across America being driven by billionaires, which is often the case with legislation.
This was mainly a grassroots activism movement.
And they're called the Economic War Room.
A guy there, Kevin Freeman, Russell and Mike at the Economic Forum in Dallas.
and they believe in various developments
that are going to make America great again.
And this was their main emphasis
and has been for the last couple of years.
And they came up with three Ts,
the three Ts of why state governments
need to get involved.
The first one is trust.
The second one is taking.
And the third one is taxes.
So obviously I'd say the one difference
between Bitcoin and gold
that I think is meaningful
is knowing whether the value is really there.
So is there really the gold in the vault?
And of course, with Bitcoin, you know that
because it's computationally proven to be there.
And I think that's one of the biggest differences
between the two.
And I think a lot of the other differences
that the Bitcoin community and the gold community
argue about are non-existent
because you can make anything
an electronic ledger in relation to it.
The underlying value, is it really there?
The value, of course, in the Bitcoin
determined by the algorithms,
the value of the gold because it's intrinsic
in the vault and of course the state government can make sure that they audit that for the citizens
you know and government closer to the people is better government than it further away i know
we might think it even even we want even really far away yeah but anyway um uh so they can check
and do the audits on the gold that's trust and and that the the state getting behind it should
create a lot of trust for the residents in the across america because you know anybody in america
You'll be able to use Florida gold currency, even if you're up in Ohio or somewhere.
Second one is taking.
We said before, between 1930s and 1970s, it was illegal to hold gold as a citizen.
And of course, now through this initiative, it means that because it's a state authorized currency, the federal government can't come in and just confiscate it.
And they do have this incredible system in America.
The states are supposed to be able to keep the federal government in balance and vice versa.
And one might say that the federal government's got stronger over the last 100 years and so on.
But this is the states pushing back.
We saw it with Texas kind of pushing forward their rights to be able to defend their border, etc.
And now we're seeing this with constitutional gold currency.
And the third one is taxes.
So at the moment, gold is taxed as a collectible.
So back in 2011, Utah, for instance, was one of the first states to make gold coins legal tender.
They actually said that, you know, the gold eagles, which were minted by the Fed, we're making them legal tender using our constitutional right.
But the IRS came out and said, yes, I see what you're trying to do.
But actually, our interpretation of the Constitution is that this was meant to be for functional money.
And, you know, your gold coins, you can't tell me you're going to pop into Starbucks and pay for your Starbucks with a gold eagle, which is currently worth, what, $3,400 or something like that.
That's an ounce.
Yeah.
And so actually we going to rather than letting you take the tax away on this legal tender you just made we actually going to increase it It going to be going to classify as a collectible You now pay 28 tax on this Now that a very interesting position that they put in place
And actually, not that long ago, the federal government under the Biden administration came
out and clarified it again and said, look, for something to be proper legal tender, it
needs to be, well, for something to be authorized currency in America and not be taxed, it needs
to be both legal tender and functional money. And I think they were positioning this because
in relation to CBDCs and the movement and enthusiasm around cryptocurrency,
because they were trying to say, look, it has to be both functional money and legal tender.
Now they're saying cryptocurrency might very much be functional money, but it's not legal tender.
And no one can make it legal tender, federal government or the state.
but um it and but cbdc's for instance would could be legal tender but not sorry why can't someone
make what why is it forbidden to make say bitcoin legal tender in the u.s is that in the constitution
in the constitution the constitution actually says that nothing can be money except gold and
silver so their whole fiat currency system in 1971 is you could argue is legal right
so while the paper was backing
by the way just a clause
I'm not a constitutional expert and there are other people
know this state much better than me
but as I understand it the constitution
even says that you know it should be gold
and silver and of course
it was until 1971 when they
temporarily came off maybe we're still
temporarily off
yeah they could probably say that couldn't they
but of course
by having the IRS explain it this way
by having the federal government
explain it this way they're actually confirming what the states can now do the states maybe they
maybe they forgot maybe they weren't cognizant about the facts the other body in america that
can make something legal tender is a state and so yeah the states can make it legal tender and
this of course using technology like glint is is is functional money another question they keep
popping up so the constitution says nothing can be money except gold or silver but a state
can still override that no estate can't make nothing but gold and silver a currency and
i see what you mean so and so it's a technicality that people aren't using gold and silver at the
moment because really when paper when when paper money was backed by gold they were using gold
yes and it kind of just got lost in the ether that little rule nixon did this magic trick right
exactly but but why didn't anyone bring up the constitution then i don't know maybe they did um
It was probably national security.
There's always been discussions in America about this.
Even The Wizard of Oz is an allegory about money.
The greenbacks is Oz.
The yellow brick road is gold.
Dorothy's shoes originally were silver,
but because it was Technicolor, they came out,
they decided to make them ruby.
The monkeys represent a bunch of people, I think.
I'd have to check this.
I've never heard that one.
Yeah, you should check it out.
You should check it out.
The Wizard of Oz is an allegory for the monetary system
and the arguments at the time that were going on about gold and silver as money.
But going back to what we were saying, it means then,
so the three Ts, trust, taking, and taxes,
it should mean that capital gains tax should fall away
on gold and silver used as an authorized transactional platform of a state.
and I think the movement for this is really hoping that that will happen sooner rather than later.
So in other words, the path is now open for that capital gains tax to fall away,
which it arguably couldn't do on a crypto or Bitcoin currency.
And we'll see what happens.
There are various ways that could happen.
The IRS could volunteer to just do it or they might need Congress.
And I think probably the easiest way is for an executive order from the president.
We'll have to see what happens over the next few months.
Gold is money.
That's the, I mean, this is what annoys me about the way Bitcoin is treated, because Bitcoin is money.
And if you're an economist or a scientist, Bitcoin really is money, just like gold really is money.
You know, when you look at the different factors that make something a money.
Yeah, it's a private.
Definitely created money.
Right.
But that's what annoys me about people saying, oh, you know, we talked about this on this pod the other day.
Farage came out at the Bitcoin conference and said, oh, I'm going to slash capital gains taxed on Bitcoin to 10%.
And my first thought was, well, you're still taxing it, though.
It's money.
Why are you taxing money?
Money is a, it really, Bitcoin, in my eyes at least, is a great money because it doesn't have other uses in the same way that gold does.
It's a great money. It really is a money that I can store my value in in an exchange with you.
Look, I don't disagree. I mean, I'm kind of pretty frustrated by some of the arguments that go on between the Bitcoin community and the gold communities in some areas where they seem to be having a battle with each other.
Look, they're both. I'm delighted that we have some cousins who are working on the same problem.
At the end of the day, we've both got the same problem.
We're both trying to find solutions to the same issue.
And of course, this is what our enemies want, is to fight amongst ourselves.
And actually, I just think gold is just another answer to the private ownership of gold.
Being able to be able to transact electronically, a bottom-up return to sound money through gold,
is really one of the solutions that we've got there.
And I know lots of people who own cryptocurrency that like gold as well.
And what really Glint's looking forward to is clarity on cryptocurrency laws and regulations.
I think it's being led in the United States.
I think it'll end up going the same way whichever way the States does in Europe and in the UK as well.
And once that clarity is in place, then I'd love there to be a bridge between Glint and the cryptocurrency world.
And that's what we're planning on doing as soon as that clarity comes through.
I think in my case, I don't care about the kind of debate.
It's whether or not it works for me.
Yeah, really.
It's all it is.
Yeah.
If gold holds my, you know, preserves my wealth well and I can transact in it easily, I'll use it in a glint card or whatever, you know.
Yeah.
Same with Bitcoin.
I really don't care about the politics of it.
I have no interest in that at all.
It's purely like, does it work or not?
And we've seen that they do behave slightly differently.
So Bitcoin is still a risk-on asset, a form of money.
Gold is still risk-off, although that's changed recently.
What do I mean by risk-on in case people don't understand that?
Well, obviously, when the stock market tends to go up,
Bitcoin tends to go up.
When the stock market tends to crash, Bitcoin tends to go down.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Bitcoin went down.
Gold normally works the other way around.
when the stock market's working well,
gold's not doing so good.
When the stock market is going down
or Russia invades Ukraine, it flies.
But of course, we've seen a dislocation in that recently
and gold's just going up no matter what's happening.
And of course, that is to do with
an increasing lack of confidence in the US dollar.
But I mean, going back to the,
remember I said that there was a group of people
that put together a committee, so to speak,
in Utah to look into this whole thing
about constitutional gold currency
and whether it would work.
there were some really interesting people on that committee because you know one of the things i
often get heard is that you'll it'll never happen i mean when i was trying to set glint up i was told
you wouldn't be able to do it technically or you wouldn't be allowed to do it and i still get this
now even though these u.s states are passing these laws i get people saying to me yeah but they're not
going to let that happen i'm like hang on a second florida this is the trump mafia down there
DeSantis didn't just, the law just wasn't passed unanimously, nearly unanimously across both parties.
He came out and did a full on press release about it.
This is the whole Trump land down there.
You know, the AG, the Attorney General, the Patronus, the CFO of Florida.
These are people running the country, really.
They're all part of that group.
And on this committee in Utah, they had Wall Street titans like Gary Crittenden, who was the CFO of American Express. And you had Randy Corrales, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.
And his view is, look, people should have choice. He's definitely a libertarian.
He said people should have choice. If they want to be able to store their value in gold, they should be able to do so.
But I think that he and the people running the country believe that the dollar is still going to be the medium of exchange even if its store of value is diminishing its position as a store of value is diminishing
But of course, they're shoring up that store of value position by passing all this legislation around stable coins.
And of course, Tether is one of the biggest buyers of US treasuries because it's offshore and it's not audited.
We never know quite how much, but if it's involved in 80% of all Bitcoin transactions, then you know it's going to be quite a lot.
Well, monetary choice is the final boss of everything, I think, when it actually comes to it.
And I personally don't think that will happen through a decision made by someone.
I think people will be forced into that predicament.
And that's why I veered to the Bitcoin side, because I see it as a Trojan horse that will basically, by the time it's too late, the only way to, as most Bitcoiners know, the only way to play Bitcoin is to join in.
And once you join in, the rules are very strict and you can't break them.
And governments join in in the end and they can't break them.
But the only thing the governments can do, we've seen this time and time again, of course, is that they can make things illegal.
Yes.
And, you know, holding Bitcoin or gold, we've both seen how they've been made, they have been made illegal, I think, in some countries or some situations.
China?
Yeah, and overregulation as well can effectively make it less effective and stuff like that.
And I think you're a brave person if you go against the government and do something that's illegal.
And look, that's a world we're talking about, which I hope and pray we never get to, because it's going to be a pretty difficult, bad place, the scenario where you're having to deal with the gold and the gold coins in your secret vault at home or your Bitcoin.
on your USB stick or whatever,
which you've got to hide because no one can see that.
I mean...
I do wonder, though, during the 6102
when they confiscated the gold,
I wonder how many people just didn't give it in.
It must have been a huge amount.
Some people, but you've got to remember the context.
Again, the dollar was fixed to gold.
What benefit did it have for them?
The gold price wasn't going up.
It was staying static.
Yeah, but if you realise what was about to ensue.
If you did.
If a free market versus the government market.
There were some people, I'm sure, who hoarded their gold.
I would have thought a lot.
Yeah.
What I don't understand, right, just talking about it with you now,
is how come no one's done this before?
It just makes a lot of sense.
Well, you know, it does, but you needed the internet.
And the same for Bitcoin, you know.
And you've got to remember, it didn't happen.
The internet, it wasn't that long ago.
We've had credit cards for a while, haven't we?
Why wasn't there a gold-backed credit card?
Why didn't someone think that up?
Is it just because we're in inflationary times, the memes out there now that people are losing their purchasing?
Look, I think inflation's insidious.
You know, most people don't have, up until COVID, they didn't really think about it.
I agree.
You know, in 1970, I get the fingers a bit wrong sometimes when I do this, but roughly, let's call it roughly, a house cost in the US $20,000 or 20,000 grams of gold.
Okay.
A house today maybe costs $250,000.
And that 20,000 grams of gold buys you three houses.
But people, it's not like it's happened fast.
And if you're born between, you become a teenager, as I did in 19,
so you become an adult, say 1990,
and then you start thinking about buying a house,
You don't really feel the inflation that much.
It's insidious.
You don't realize what's happening.
And yet even their target of 2.5% is quite a lot.
And over my lifetime, the dollar and the pound have nearly lost 90% of their purchasing power.
90.
Listen to that.
They've nearly lost all of their value.
It's the greatest unfair immoral tax that exists on the planet.
So, of course, Nigel Farage is still going to want to time tax Bitcoin a little bit because they're going to lose their ability.
to effectively tax you and get money for unsustainable projects through inflation.
And so I think the psyche, most people on the street weren't cognizant about what was happening
until, and I think that's one great thing about the Bitcoin movement,
and a lot of young people as well, driven to despair, really, the inability to buy houses.
And we have a whole generation of people now who are never going to feel
that they're never going to be able to own a house.
I remember sat in France.
I was at one of these in this restaurant
where they have these French style dining
where you're sharing a table together.
And there was this American woman
and her daughter visiting Paris sat next to me.
And then, yeah, we got chatting and her mom said,
yeah, I've told her just forget the idea
about buying a house.
And it was absolutely shocking.
And so I think the younger people coming through
as being part of this Bitcoin revolution.
But I think that's one of its challenges as well,
of course is that there is a huge amount within the cryptocurrency which has got to get rich quick
situation which is driven by the inequality and then you've got gary's uh you know vision being
welcomed by a lot of people because out of desperation let's just tax the rich and move
the money over here and that's my biggest concern and worry is that capitalism itself is getting a
bad name because it's believed that capitalism isn't working for the people when in fact it's
the fuel on which the capitalism is running that is the problem and if people realize that because
actually capitalism is much better than socialism capitalism you should be rewarded for the hard
work that you do whatever that work is and that money that you have should be solid that really
money what it really is is the ledger of promises between us all and that really should be a
beautiful thing but of course it people look at money in very different ways now it's it's funny
though you say people look at money in different ways i do think that people are starting to think
about money it's like you say since covid especially because inflation is now noticeable
like prices have pretty much doubled yeah really doubled that's like venezuelan style inflation but
all i know is my mum she was i was talking to her on the phone the other day and she she said i buy i
used to buy this there's one bar of chocolate she buys it's one of those expensive dark chocolate
ones it used to be 199 it's now 399 for the same bar because they've obviously refused to make the
quality of the chocolate lower but that's a massive increase that's not too even at two and a half
percent you lose you know your purchasing power quite quickly over say five ten years but at 100
percent yeah it means out of the you know it's out of this world it's crazy and they do actually
change the ingredients so that you know they make the bars smaller shrink inflation and i've heard
now they're changing the recipe so instead of using a good quality sugar or honey or something
they're now putting other things in which are lower quality of course yeah and and it's shocking
The burger when I was born costs 55 cents.
And then I think across most McDonald's, it's about $6.
I went into one in New York and it was nearly $11.
For a burger?
For a burger.
A McDonald's burger.
Yeah.
Yeah, they got the thing called the McDonald's index,
which kind of shows inflation because the burger itself hasn't changed much
over the last 50 years.
Look, it's all shocking stuff.
And I think we're at an inflection point.
I never thought for one second governments would be getting behind gold and silver, albeit state governments.
We've had a small country, the governor of a central bank of a small country even get in touch with us and say, please launch Glint in our country because we've got large inflation.
I'd love to be able to do that.
But of course, a lot of the funding for fintechs around this is all in the crypto community.
So that's one of the things we've struggled against.
What about, where are you based in the UK here?
Yeah, we're founded in the UK.
Obviously, I live in the UK, but our biggest market is actually in the US.
I was going to say, because surely, I don't know anyone who would want to start a business here now,
let alone one that's involved with money and finance.
Jesus.
I mean, for example, do you pay cap gains on gold here when you buy and sell it?
Yes.
But there's no tax, right, when you buy physical gold, isn't that right?
No, not when you buy it.
Yeah, there's no VAT.
VAT, yeah.
But there's a capital gains tax, which again, like all of us.
So how does that work with a glint card then when you want to pay?
Yeah.
Does it automatically work out how much gold you've got, how much it's gone up, how much?
spending and then what tell them well yeah i mean look it's a reality it's a real problem same with
cryptocurrency as well so we we set up we started working with kpmg we built a platform together
that allows effectively your anonymous data to be sent to kpmg's computer it calculates your capital
gains tax and sends you back a report and that you know that's that can be done within seconds but um
But still, it's being done.
It's so annoying that gold is money.
Like gold has been money.
There's a proven track record of being money.
It's not like you can say, well, gold's not really money, is it?
No, no.
It's like, yeah, gold's money.
Central banks, it's a currency of last resort.
They're not holding other currencies.
They're holding gold and dollar.
And they're not, you know.
Yeah, it's money and nothing else.
As JP Morgan said, gold is money and nothing else.
so do you think that it might be seen as money i mean obviously in the states it's kind of
now i'm thinking europe do you know the states the these six states if they were pulled together
their gdp it'd be something like the third biggest country in the world so it's massive
what's happening in america we'll see what happens generally speaking america sneezes
and sometime later in Europe we get a cold and I think that um I think we're already seeing I think
Bitcoin I mean I'm not the expert on crypto but you know we're seeing changes happening aren't we
within the crypto community um people starting talking about Britain now being able to have
gold bait sorry crypto based ETFs and things like that yes but um it's painful what's going
I don't even look anymore.
The UK is, I don't know, Europe as well.
It's like anti-innovation.
You get the sense that the government is way too big,
way too expensive, way too unproductive,
and the people working in there have got no interest in things,
people being left free to really innovate and do what they want
and make money for everyone and spread it around.
I mean, I was actually qualified as an architect
after working six years, studying for six years
and then practicing for two years in Hong Kong as an architect.
I decided to get out of it and I went into virtual reality
for a few years because I thought all this regulation,
no one's ever let me build what I want to build.
I've got to take my hat off to some architects
like Zaha Hadid and stuff in that practice
who've ended up developing that kind of organic architecture
that I used to love and never thought would be able to build it, you know.
But they're probably not building it in this country.
No, no, they're out in the Middle East.
They're building it in the Middle East or, you know, et cetera, yeah.
So that kind of undemocratic censorship you get with architecture,
I always joke with people,
next they be telling me what I can and can wear And I think that the You probably can already in some shape or form i bet you they can well you can wear nothing can you i don know if you went outside wearing nothing i
sure when i wouldn't last red underpants just red underpants do you know what though what gold ones
please what what is a little bit concerning and you said the same thing yourself i agree with you
here is the kind of gary's socialist economics type people yeah really people i know a lot of
people that really think he's preaching the word yeah yeah it's like but you can understand why
can't you well no because if you think it through no absolutely no you can see what what that what
it's the immediate promise you know if you take in america five people owning more than the bottom
50 of america that's that's hundreds of tens if not hundreds millions of people five people five
blokes own more than they do and they are struggling their food prices are going up four
and a half percent a year everything's getting difficult it's the have-nots versus the have-yots
why and and and all they know is that the system is benefiting those five guys then of course i can
see why people go yeah tax tax them it's not fair capitalism isn't working tax them and redistribute
the wealth. What's the solution to them? They don't necessarily understand. I mean, it took me
a long time to understand how this system works. I'm still learning about it every day. Even the
politicians don't understand. And of course, I'm worried like you are that actually what's going
to happen is you'll get, you end up with two situations where we end up in society where the
populace either votes for a hard right or a hard left. And if the hard left looks like socialism,
high taxation you know that type of thing hard right don't want to think about that either
but no one's coming up and standing up and putting forward another an alternative argument
to the taxation one i don't think and i think the reason they're not is because
the realization that the majority of people have never had or even contemplated the thought of
is that the government's the problem that there's this understanding this general understanding that
most people have which is why when gary gary's economics whenever he whenever he kind of argues
any point he he defaults to the government solving it without even thinking about the fact that maybe
there might that the government isn't the one that solves these problems that the government
creates these problems really and only solves them if it's in their own interest i mean i mean i think
I think that I would say, you know, I'd love to speak to Gary because he's, I mean, he obviously cares.
He thinks he cares or he seems to care about the disparity in the world and the economic situation that society is facing and the problem that causes.
And he's from a working class background, too.
He understands that he's lived in those places, you know, you know, Sunderland.
I mean, I don't want to name out.
I don want to name places but you know Cornwall everywhere anywhere basically on the fringe If you go far enough out a few hours outside of london it totally different to london i mean people who people who just been brought up in london don know what it like at other parts of the country
they've you know it's unbelievable it's like chalk and cheese and and this arrogance that you get with
some entrepreneurs who you know they believe that their entire success is down to their genius well
I'm sure they're very clever people, probably very driven, but they've had a hand out.
They've had a hose pipe of money since COVID.
They had a hose pipe of money pointed at them.
If you can't do well when you've got a hose pipe of money pointing at you, you've got to think about it.
Gary, you shouldn't talk about him too much, I suppose.
But I only need to know one thing about Gary that basically clouds my whole impression of him.
is he does not understand Bitcoin in the slightest.
And with that, he speaks very confidently about it
in a way that isn't true,
which makes me wonder about everything he says.
Because, you know, you have to put in thousands of hours
to understand Bitcoin and to understand even simple money.
What is money?
And when he talks about Bitcoin,
he talks about it in a very confidently wrong way.
and that's a really massive red flag really and obviously yeah he he's he's he thinks that
stealing from someone to give to someone else is the correct way to solve problems which
you and i obviously don't um well i all i'd say is that i think uh in a way that's what happens
at the moment though money is stolen off people through inflation and given to other people so it
is happening that way the other way around at the moment i can see why people are attracted to the
idea of reversing that but i think the solution is far from that but the problem is it it's i mean i
i'm spending my time if i could wish i could spend more time in trying to make the situation simple
to understand for people what um what is the result in the u.s currently then what position
are you at with that whole being able to call gold money?
Yeah, well, the law has been put into action,
and in some states they have instructed their CFOs
or their finance directors or whatever of the state
to make some rules around it.
And they're quite simple rules in America,
and that's not as heavy regulation as over here.
It's things like making sure the gold is audited.
I know Florida, that happens in June next year.
But I think in Louisiana and in Missouri, I think the legislation is a lot lighter.
And therefore, it might just be weeks away before we can do that.
Okay, quickly before we go, future.
What's the future hold in the world of gold?
Well, the world's a dark place, but there's always a glint of hope.
And that's why we call it glint, apart from the fact that metal always glints.
But I think that it a world that hasn had so much uncertainty for a long time And I don feel good about that I worry about it for my kids and their kids
And I think that we've got to have other solutions.
I think that those solutions have presented themselves.
Innovation, capitalism, you know, entrepreneurship has developed those solutions.
Glint is one of them.
Bitcoin is another.
you know um and and and so on xrp whatever it is these are all solutions to a problem that private
market's bringing and um so far we've seen recently although we saw a terrible reaction
to these private market initiatives with the former u.s initiative administration and the same in
in europe europe and the uk a little bit um i think things are changing at the moment i think that
the weather the winds are behind us a little bit but as we say
um i worry about the problems that society faces because of inequality and what that might mean
for us all when it comes to government overreach don't like leaving it on a sad note but i'm going
to take that as a positive one that the solutions are here yes the question i my i will always
say that the hardest money wins in the end and and people will always choose once they understand
the product they will and they will choose the one that preserves their wealth yeah the only
thing that might happen is they might not be allowed to and if they do i think there's geo
arbitrage these days you can yeah you can find another you can find another place yeah i mean um
you know a lot of people mention throw gresham's law at me saying no one's going to spend their
money they're hard money i'm like well you've obviously got too much rubbish money because
thea's law says that good money drives out bad and it's a much more mobile world than we used
to live in as you say and another good another great thing another initiative you know free
private cities etc is a wonderful thing it's another choice for people and uh people are
voting with their feet we've seen that with um i think the biggest exodus of millionaires out of
this country that we've ever ever seen correct well and let's hope you weren't you're not one
of those you might be i think i might be in about 10 years i don't know i don't know how much longer
i can do this but i love i love this country i mean every time i fly back into it from holiday
etc or traveling abroad i just look at how those green pastures and the woods yeah it's just
it's bountiful and it's a beautiful place and i love the people um but i'm sure we'll work it out
That's what makes it more painful to look at some of the things that are happening here.
Anyway, Jason, thanks for coming in.
It's been great.
And yeah, I'm a gold bug now.
So thanks.
Thank you.