Shownotes
This episode I complete the discussion of the CFA and how France uses it to control the monetary policies of the fourteen member countries. This include devaluation of the CFA (multiple times) as well as policies used to tilt import/exports into the favor of France.
News and Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc
https://www.dw.com/en/africa-and-france-an-unfulfilled-dream-of-independence/a-54418511
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/061015/top-exchange-rates-pegged-us-dollar.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_status_and_usage_of_the_euro#Pegged_currencies
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I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
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Music Credits
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Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8342-rock-guitar-intro-07
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Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6040-funky-life
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Transcripts
Hey everyone, no one on this podcast is a financial advisor.
Speaker:All information presented on this podcast is of course for informational purposes only.
Speaker:And now that we have the legal stuff out of the way, let's jump on in.
Speaker:Welcome to episode 62 of the Generational Wealth Cryptocurrency Podcast.
Speaker:I am your host Macintosh, and today we're going to be talking about the CFA and how
Speaker:developing countries get scammed.
Speaker:All right, all right.
Speaker:It is so good to be here.
Speaker:Of course, I've been off for a week.
Speaker:I planned on putting out the episode at its regular time yesterday morning, Monday morning.
Speaker:And unfortunately, to be perfectly honest, I was too tired to record and I had not been
Speaker:able to pre-record it before I left.
Speaker:So here we are.
Speaker:It will be Tuesday, July the 19th when you get this, and we will wrap up our discussion
Speaker:of the CFA and French colonial Africa.
Speaker:And what I would argue is a modern version of colonialism.
Speaker:In reality, very little from what it used to be.
Speaker:I actually took, of course, well, I did a lot of preparation for this episode and for
Speaker:the last episode, a lot more than I normally do.
Speaker:And this time I actually wrote out quite a bit because I wanted to stay focused.
Speaker:There's a lot of stuff going on here.
Speaker:There's no way I can cover everything.
Speaker:But I did try and simplify it down a bit to try and do this in about 30 minutes or so.
Speaker:We've got some news to talk about.
Speaker:It's been interesting and we'll get into this after the meat of the episode.
Speaker:We've had a number of people streaming the episode this week.
Speaker:And by streaming, I mean streaming sats through a podcasting 2.0 app such as Fountain.
Speaker:And we've had some boost.
Speaker:And in fact, I went back and finally figured out how to export my information.
Speaker:I use Satoshi Stream to handle kind of the back end of all that.
Speaker:And I was able to actually export a Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker:And so now I've got a list of the boost.
Speaker:I've got the user's name, their username for the Fountain app, and of course, the amount.
Speaker:I'm going to update all of this.
Speaker:A lot of these, of course, did not occur necessarily this week.
Speaker:But I think I've only done one time where I mentioned a boost.
Speaker:And I'll probably mention them again, our very first boost.
Speaker:And turns out there's quite a bit more going on there.
Speaker:So I know this, maybe this in particular, this little aspect of it, my lack of tooling
Speaker:really is maybe frustrating.
Speaker:We've discussed this before.
Speaker:Podcasting 2.0, this is new stuff.
Speaker:This is a new frontier.
Speaker:So please be patient.
Speaker:I will get it worked out.
Speaker:And I'd love to be able to kind of provide on a week-by-week basis people who boost.
Speaker:It's very quickly.
Speaker:I may actually mention some of the people who stream because, in fact, I've noticed
Speaker:now that I've got this report, I see the same people streaming.
Speaker:I'm probably going to mention them this time.
Speaker:That certainly won't be happening every time.
Speaker:But regardless whether I'm able to mention your name or not, I certainly appreciate the
Speaker:support that we're getting.
Speaker:So let's jump into the discussion.
Speaker:After we get done with this, we'll probably, we'll do the users at that point, the listeners,
Speaker:I should say.
Speaker:We'll cover the listeners.
Speaker:And then we'll do the news.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let's go.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So of course, last week, which that episode actually has been listened to quite a bit.
Speaker:So thank you.
Speaker:I was a little hesitant.
Speaker:I put it out there.
Speaker:It turned out basically to kind of be a history lesson of French colonial Africa, West and
Speaker:Central Africa specifically for the majority, if not all of their countries that were colonial.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I don't know how to put it, but that they were involved in.
Speaker:How about that?
Speaker:And then, of course, basically the very late 50s and 1960, they ended up making a bunch
Speaker:of agreements with these countries to, in theory, give them their independence, which,
Speaker:I mean, they are independent.
Speaker:They did give them their independence, so to speak, but they also basically gave them
Speaker:a bunch of stipulations.
Speaker:They have to keep their currency in the French central bank for a lot of it.
Speaker:I think at this point, it's like 50%, which is still an astonishing amount.
Speaker:Very much controlling their monetary policies and, of course, creating this CFA.
Speaker:There's a couple of variations of that, but we're just going to call it the CFA.
Speaker:That is tied initially to the French franc, which now it's actually pegged to the euro.
Speaker:They do this, in my opinion, and I don't think this was a mistake.
Speaker:They do this as a form of, basically, of economic colonialism, and I'm going to call it colonialism
Speaker:and I'm going to continue to call it that until proven otherwise.
Speaker:I see no other way of looking at it.
Speaker:I spent some time, and there's links to a number of the articles that I was looking
Speaker:at if you want to look at this in further depth, but as an example, let me read this
Speaker:to you very briefly from an article, which I do have in the show notes, it's dw.com.
Speaker:It's the website, Africa and France, an unfulfilled dream of independence.
Speaker:This is actually, if I'm not mistaken, a fairly recent article talking about one of the things
Speaker:is that the young people in France are getting frustrated with this whole situation with
Speaker:Africa because they do, I believe, view it as some manifestation of colonialism, and
Speaker:they've figured out that the African people just frankly are not being treated very well
Speaker:in all of this.
Speaker:But this actually said, let me find this real quick, in 1962, the French president Charles
Speaker:de Gaulle, he was president, Charles de Gaulle was president during this timeframe, 1959
Speaker:through 1969, basically for a 10-year period.
Speaker:So he was actually president during this entire decoupling, so to speak.
Speaker:So frankly, at least for the initial groundwork, I would place the blame firmly on him.
Speaker:Oh, and by the way, I want to throw this out.
Speaker:I know I sound like I'm being very hard on France, and I am, but this is just a very
Speaker:obvious example of this economic colonialism.
Speaker:Now, the United States, where I live, we do the same type thing in a different respect,
Speaker:in different countries, certainly, in different respects to an extent, but we, in my opinion,
Speaker:perform this same type thing.
Speaker:And I believe that's one of the major reasons why countries push to have currencies pegged
Speaker:to them.
Speaker:So basically, at this point, we've got the United States dollar, which there are a number
Speaker:of countries pegged to that currency, and then the euro.
Speaker:And there's a more modest list, essentially, of countries, but there's still a list of
Speaker:countries.
Speaker:And if they're developing countries, so basically all these African countries that we're talking
Speaker:about, then they say, well, we're going to give you economic stability by pegging you
Speaker:to our currency instead of whatever your local currency is.
Speaker:And there's probably a bit of truth to that.
Speaker:There's probably maybe even a lot of truth to that.
Speaker:But on the flip side, the part that they don't ever talk about is that it does tie you to
Speaker:that country or to that country's currency.
Speaker:The US dollar, El Salvador, we've discussed this.
Speaker:Of course, El Salvador used to, well, the US dollar is legal tender in El Salvador.
Speaker:Recently, what, a year ago, a little over that, they made Bitcoin legal tender.
Speaker:So it's basically the equivalent.
Speaker:Now, the problem was El Salvador, yes, they had stability, quote, stability, because they
Speaker:were using the US dollar.
Speaker:But the US government, they have no control of the monetary policy, and that's important
Speaker:because the US government is over here printing money like a crazy person.
Speaker:And what does that do?
Speaker:We know that this drives up interest rates, not interest rates directly, sorry, inflation
Speaker:rates.
Speaker:We're seeing that right now in very obvious ways.
Speaker:And yet, we get benefit from that in the sense that we get checks, right?
Speaker:During COVID, they were, what, three times or whatever they sent out checks.
Speaker:Do you think they sent checks to El Salvador?
Speaker:Do you think they sent checks to any of these other countries that use the US dollar for
Speaker:currency?
Speaker:No, of course not.
Speaker:And then the other benefit that we get, there are things that benefit from inflation, frankly.
Speaker:And in my opinion, the stock market rise that we've seen over the last 20 years, roughly,
Speaker:until very recently, has been in large part because of that money printing.
Speaker:And also, the strong rise in some assets like real estate.
Speaker:I believe that houses are worth more now, not because there's tremendously higher demand
Speaker:than there was 10 years ago, but because the money is worth less because we've been printing
Speaker:it so much.
Speaker:So El Salvador gets none of the benefit.
Speaker:Their real estate doesn't go up because ours does, quite the opposite.
Speaker:Their real estate, it's just not the same.
Speaker:So the point is, they're not getting benefit from that from our policy.
Speaker:Now the policy is not good for us, certainly in every way, and I hope people understand
Speaker:that, but we do get some benefit from it.
Speaker:They just don't get those benefits.
Speaker:And it's the same with the euro, right?
Speaker:The euro, actually, inflation rates came out while I was off on vacation.
Speaker:The US, 9.1%, highest rate in more than 40 years.
Speaker:So we just keep cranking up there.
Speaker:I don't know where it's going, but that's what they're reporting.
Speaker:As I always say, I think it's quite a bit higher than that.
Speaker:But okay, sure, we'll go with 9.1%.
Speaker:The euro at the same time, so this is the currency of much of Europe, 8.6%.
Speaker:So they're at their highest level in a long time as well.
Speaker:So very similar things.
Speaker:We've not printed as much as we have, so to speak, during COVID, but they have similar
Speaker:policies.
Speaker:They can do essentially the same thing.
Speaker:And again, now we're talking about these West African countries, specifically, keep in mind
Speaker:there are other countries that are tied to the euro as well.
Speaker:But all the CFA countries, it is pegged to the euro.
Speaker:While this is going on, are they getting benefits from that?
Speaker:No, of course not.
Speaker:They're getting the inflation, okay?
Speaker:And another thing that they're getting, now let's go back in history just a little bit.
Speaker:As I was digging around, again, not in control of their monetary policy.
Speaker:The monetary policy of the CFA countries is it's being set in France, let's be honest.
Speaker:Now I love this quote, oh man, it baffles me that countries can think like this.
Speaker:But I'm going to read it, stay with me, going back to monetary policy, not being in control,
Speaker:this kind of thing, 1962, French president Charles de Gaulle, who if I'm not mistaken
Speaker:is kind of a hero in France.
Speaker:He certainly ruled, ruled, he was president for 10 years.
Speaker:So it must have been multiple terms, he probably did pretty good.
Speaker:He commissioned his advisor Jacques Foucault, now I hope I'm not butchering these French
Speaker:names.
Speaker:I do apologize to all the French speaking people, including Madame Moser, my high school
Speaker:French teacher, lest that woman's heart have to listen to me try and speak French.
Speaker:In 1962, oh sorry, he commissioned his advisor to build up French Africa basically, all right?
Speaker:And this is a quote by somebody in this article, Foucault built a network of personal contacts
Speaker:between the French leadership and the elites of the former French colonies, Paul Melly
Speaker:told DW, the website, dw.com, these were often very personal connections, but they also had
Speaker:an opaque, very paternalistic, very controlling character.
Speaker:So this is, if you think about it, what you would expect in a situation like this.
Speaker:So you've got the leadership in France, Charles de Gaulle, et cetera, who are basically their
Speaker:pals, so to speak, in a sense, with the leaders of these West African countries.
Speaker:And mind you, the leaders, the people in charge of these countries, probably to a person did
Speaker:very well, they probably did.
Speaker:It's the country people who suffer.
Speaker:Anyways, Foucault, again, the advisor to the president, came up with the treaties that
Speaker:are still in force today, and this is the part I want to emphasize.
Speaker:In exchange for military protection against attempted coups and the payments of hefty
Speaker:kickbacks, African leaders guaranteed French companies access to strategic resources such
Speaker:as diamonds, ores, like iron ore is an example, uranium, gas, and oil.
Speaker:The result is a solid presence of French interest on the continent, 1,100 companies, 2,100 subsidiaries,
Speaker:and the third largest investment portfolio after Great Britain and the United States.
Speaker:I mentioned this next line last week.
Speaker:France also retains the right of first refusal on all natural resources and privileged access
Speaker:to government contracts.
Speaker:Of course they have a very large military presence there, and so on and so forth.
Speaker:I'm not going to read through this whole article.
Speaker:I like this article specifically because it does talk about how the young people are kind
Speaker:of sick of this, and I'm glad they are.
Speaker:But not only do they have this right of first refusal, part of the treaty is that the African
Speaker:countries would buy finished goods from Africa, and they would only ship out, export unfinished
Speaker:things like iron ore and diamonds and uranium, these raw natural resources, and we discussed
Speaker:this last week as well.
Speaker:So the French benefit because now they've got a great market for their product, and
Speaker:the Africans suffer because what?
Speaker:Iron ore, for example, is worth far less than steel, bauxite worth far less than aluminum.
Speaker:If they're not being allowed to create the infrastructure and products that generate
Speaker:these products, you're not prospering, even though Africa is sitting on this big pile
Speaker:of natural resources.
Speaker:So again, the French are benefiting from this, and it just goes on and on and on.
Speaker:It's all slanted in their economic favor.
Speaker:I had a quote, oh man, I can't find this quote, and I think this kind of sums it up, and we're
Speaker:going to get into some details after this and we'll move on.
Speaker:But this attitude, all right, so in 1945 when the CFA was created, so the French Minister
Speaker:of Finance, and I'm not going to try and pronounce his name, it's Rene Plevin, I guess I am going
Speaker:to try and pronounce his name, said this, and this is a quote.
Speaker:So understand, understand, this is so frustrating, understand, you got to set the scene.
Speaker:I gave all the history, France goes in, France conquers, and let's call it what it is, all
Speaker:of these countries.
Speaker:They set up puppet governments, they set up whatever, but France is in control.
Speaker:And then in the 1960s, of course, they give them this, or 1960s specifically, they give
Speaker:them this semi-autonomous independence.
Speaker:So this was actually in 1945, and this was when the CFA was created.
Speaker:Again, the French Minister of Finance, in a show of her generosity and selflessness,
Speaker:Metropolitan France, wishing not to impose on her faraway daughters the consequences
Speaker:of her own poverty, is setting different exchange rates for their currency.
Speaker:Now it's quote, their currency, even though it wasn't, but they're just manipulating
Speaker:it.
Speaker:And this happened a number of times, and they did it sometimes because the French franc
Speaker:was being devalued, they did it sometimes, as far as I can tell, just to create more
Speaker:imbalance.
Speaker:And one of these times, there were several times that that happened, and one time was
Speaker:in 1994.
Speaker:So this hasn't even been that long.
Speaker:And I'm going to include an article from the New York Times in the show notes, from February
Speaker:the 23rd of 1994.
Speaker:And this was a direct result, okay, I'm going to read the first two paragraphs of this article.
Speaker:And this was because they cut the value of the CFA in half overnight.
Speaker:A wave of price increases, labor disputes, demonstrations, and violent clashes has spread
Speaker:across West Africa in recent weeks, prompted by France's decision to devalue the currency
Speaker:used by tens of millions of people in more than a dozen of its former African colonies.
Speaker:Nearly a month after the value of the African franc was suddenly and sharply cut in half,
Speaker:when France bowed to Western pressure to end what is amounted to a subsidy.
Speaker:Now, that's what the New York Times says.
Speaker:People are trying to adapt to painful price increases in nearly everything they eat and
Speaker:drink.
Speaker:Prices for pharmaceutical products, nearly all of which are imported, have soared.
Speaker:The cost of drugs for malaria, the continent's biggest killer, have nearly doubled in some
Speaker:places, putting them out of reach of many Africans and so on.
Speaker:That article will be in the show notes, but that is just an example.
Speaker:So they devalued the currency overnight.
Speaker:That happened twice when, for no real reason, I don't buy the reason they gave.
Speaker:That's a load of baloney.
Speaker:And again, these countries did not have control over their own economy.
Speaker:And it was still in control of the French, and this is why I say, and it still is in
Speaker:control of the French, and it's why I say it's economic colonialism, plain and simple.
Speaker:These countries are not sovereign.
Speaker:They do not have control of what's going on.
Speaker:And it's very sad.
Speaker:And we see these countries.
Speaker:Look, France would say, wow, we're helping them out.
Speaker:They can't make it on their own.
Speaker:And yet you go and look at what's gone on in these countries during this time period
Speaker:for the last 60 years.
Speaker:And it's been nothing but deprivation.
Speaker:It's been nothing but people taking advantage of the system, the elites.
Speaker:Oh, and another interesting thing, which I just came across, is one of the things that
Speaker:France did, and I don't know, I hope it's in one of these notes that I'm including,
Speaker:but I can back this up if need be.
Speaker:They did not allow the countries to have parliaments, and they only allowed them to have presidents.
Speaker:And that seems to be, on the surface, a rather strange thing.
Speaker:Now, of course, here in the United States, we have a president, but we also have a Congress,
Speaker:which in large part acts like a parliament, in my opinion.
Speaker:So we have two parts of Congress.
Speaker:You have the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Speaker:And they said, well, you can have a president.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why is that?
Speaker:I'll tell you, it's because it's easy to control one person.
Speaker:So in whatever country it is, you've got your guy who you put in place, whether overtly
Speaker:or covertly, you got it.
Speaker:You got the nation.
Speaker:Oh, well, we don't like that because that's not going to benefit us.
Speaker:Ring ring, you know, hey, buddy, you can't do that.
Speaker:Oh, OK.
Speaker:I'll take care of it.
Speaker:You can't do that with the parliament.
Speaker:If you have 100, 200 people who are running the country, so to speak, who are voting and
Speaker:doing this kind of thing, you can't buy off all those people.
Speaker:Not all the time, certainly.
Speaker:So it's much more difficult.
Speaker:So they just said, no, you can't do that.
Speaker:I thought that was interesting.
Speaker:Just another thread in this tapestry of this economic colonialism.
Speaker:All right, let's go through a few more details.
Speaker:I need to get back to my notes.
Speaker:This is why I wrote out my notes because I was afraid I was going to get off on track.
Speaker:The CFA created December 26th, 1945, and that is actually the same day that France ratified
Speaker:the Bretton Woods agreement, our agreements, plural.
Speaker:And I'm not going to discuss that on this podcast, certainly on this episode, but the
Speaker:Bretton Woods agreements basically said everybody's going to peg to the US dollar, which is nuts.
Speaker:But that's what they did.
Speaker:I think it was basically in return for the United States, basically keeping Axis powers
Speaker:from winning World War II.
Speaker:But that's just me.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:So World War II ended September the 2nd, 1945.
Speaker:The Bretton Woods agreements were signed in December, same year.
Speaker:Now call me crazy, call me a conspiracy theorist, but I'll go with that.
Speaker:Why else would they say the US dollar?
Speaker:Why else would you peg all these currencies to the US dollar?
Speaker:It makes no sense.
Speaker:That is literally right there how the US dollar became the global reserve.
Speaker:And frankly, as a US citizen, I of course have benefited from that, but that was the
Speaker:wrong thing to do in my Austrian economics viewpoint.
Speaker:Just throw that out there.
Speaker:Okay, so basically the same time they signed that agreement, they created the CFA franc.
Speaker:And so there were a number of valuation changes.
Speaker:Some of them were because the French franc after World War II was very weak.
Speaker:So they basically felt like they had to do that.
Speaker:I can, I guess, give them that from what I understand, to be honest.
Speaker:But there were several times where, like I said, overnight in 1994, January the 12th
Speaker:is when it happened, they devalued it 50%.
Speaker:And I think that was strictly for their benefit.
Speaker:I see no other reason for it.
Speaker:And I think any other excuse is garbage.
Speaker:Okay, it's guaranteed to be convertible to French francs or euros by the French Treasury.
Speaker:I remember when they started, it was francs, of course, the euro came later, 1999, I guess.
Speaker:So I mentioned already, these countries have to keep, I think it was originally like 60%
Speaker:of their national treasury essentially in the French central bank.
Speaker:And apparently they didn't do a very good job of even keeping track of whose money was
Speaker:who.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So there's 14 of these countries, they're all dumping money into the treasury and the
Speaker:treasury doesn't do a good accounting job.
Speaker:Good job, guys.
Speaker:They did lower it.
Speaker:It is still there.
Speaker:I think it's at 50% right now.
Speaker:So you got that going on.
Speaker:Oh, let's see.
Speaker:I'm going to, well, here's these currencies were created and there were multiple currencies.
Speaker:They all ended up, just call them CFA, but they were created to spare them of this French
Speaker:franc devaluation.
Speaker:At least that's the idea.
Speaker:And maybe that, I don't know, maybe that initially did work.
Speaker:But it did make them easier for them to import goods from France and also made it harder
Speaker:for them to export goods to France.
Speaker:And of course, this is a big act of generosity.
Speaker:I give you the quote from Rene Plevin, which I read earlier.
Speaker:You know, we're after, I don't know, several hundred years of colonialism.
Speaker:We're going to call you our faraway daughters, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker:I'm not a fan of somebody who's living in my country who benefits from my country's
Speaker:resources, et cetera, et cetera, calling me their son or their daughter, whatever the
Speaker:case may be.
Speaker:I kind of would tend to respond that with some choice words that I don't say.
Speaker:But you can imagine, right?
Speaker:Very demeaning.
Speaker:So anyways, I don't know.
Speaker:I think there's plenty of evidence to show, frankly, that France has used this to their
Speaker:economic advantage.
Speaker:Now, again, I've concentrated on France, but you can see this type stuff happening all
Speaker:over the world.
Speaker:There's not necessarily, see, we used to enforce colonialism, so to speak, with guns.
Speaker:Oh, well, we're the guys who have guns and you don't, so here in the United States, you
Speaker:need to go live out west on a reservation, right?
Speaker:Now it's done economically.
Speaker:Just to give you another example, one of the poorest places, I just Googled to verify that
Speaker:this was accurate.
Speaker:The poorest county in the United States, at least in 2021, is Buffalo County, South Dakota.
Speaker:You know where Buffalo County, South Dakota is?
Speaker:You probably don't.
Speaker:For those of you who aren't necessarily in the United States, South Dakota is in the
Speaker:northern part of the country.
Speaker:It's in what's called a plain state.
Speaker:It used to be inhabited by a Sioux Indian tribe or tribes.
Speaker:And those Sioux have been moved to, if they weren't killed, don't get me started on that,
Speaker:but if they weren't killed, they were put on reservations.
Speaker:And much like treaties that France made with West Africa, the United States government
Speaker:by force of arms made treaties with all the different Indian tribes.
Speaker:So anyways, Buffalo County, South Dakota, the poorest county in the United States.
Speaker:And that county is primarily composed of the Crow Creek Indian Reservation inhabited by
Speaker:the Crow Creek Sioux tribe.
Speaker:So well over 100 years after they got pushed onto a reservation, they are still economically
Speaker:destitute.
Speaker:Now, you can make the argument possibly, well, they can go do their own thing.
Speaker:There's a lot to systemic poverty.
Speaker:And when you're not allowed access to ways to improve yourself, even generationally,
Speaker:you tend to stay that way.
Speaker:You can make it very difficult and it's still true.
Speaker:So I don't want to sound like I'm dissing France.
Speaker:I would love to actually visit France one day, but I will not not talk about a subject
Speaker:because of, you know, being concerned about, I don't know, hurting some country or some
Speaker:person's feelings.
Speaker:And I freely talk about my own country, so I don't feel like I'm picking on France in
Speaker:this case.
Speaker:As I've mentioned very briefly, and I have relatives who were ancestors who were Indians
Speaker:and they were mistreated by the US government directly, my direct ancestors.
Speaker:And they were removed from their lands, and so on and so forth.
Speaker:So I have a little bit of, well, I just don't have any problem discussing this stuff.
Speaker:And if people don't like it, then that's okay.
Speaker:Maybe you can skip these episodes, of course, we're already 40 minutes into it, but regardless,
Speaker:you know, I think these things are important and I really wanted to make the, to wrap this
Speaker:up very quickly in the last five minutes and then we're going to move on to our listeners
Speaker:and to the news.
Speaker:This is all terrible stuff and I get that.
Speaker:But I have hope and the reason that I have hope is because these countries, I hope, are
Speaker:starting to see Bitcoin specifically as a way out of this mess.
Speaker:So we've already seen the Central African Republic, one of these countries declare Bitcoin
Speaker:legal tender.
Speaker:We've already seen El Salvador, pegged to the US dollar, declare Bitcoin legal tender.
Speaker:I would love for all these countries.
Speaker:Now they may want to stay tied for now to these, what, CFA or US dollar or Euro or whatever,
Speaker:but at least give people an option.
Speaker:I don't want to be tied to some other country's ideas of my economic freedom.
Speaker:Because when you get another country involved, whether it's France or the United States or
Speaker:any of these other countries that do this, they do it to their advantage every time.
Speaker:It's not a charity.
Speaker:Governments are not charities.
Speaker:Governments do things generally for the people in power's best interest.
Speaker:Sometimes that just happens to align with a country.
Speaker:France, they're not being the nice people here.
Speaker:They're just not.
Speaker:This is not to benefit these countries and somehow pay off their colonial debt or something
Speaker:like that.
Speaker:You can't do that.
Speaker:Those countries, just like my ancestors, they will never get that back.
Speaker:My ancestors will have always been moved off their lands.
Speaker:The people in West Africa will always have been under the rule of France.
Speaker:Now, they can leave that rule and they can leave it economically as well is what I hope
Speaker:happens, but it will always be there.
Speaker:Anyways, I hope that tied it all up in a nice little bow.
Speaker:It will be a long road, but Bitcoin specifically has a lot going for it for these countries.
Speaker:I'm going to discuss this on another episode.
Speaker:I just listened to this podcast today, actually over the last few days, but it was this crazy...
Speaker:I'm not even going to explain it.
Speaker:Let me just say, the people who are talking about how Bitcoin is in a quote, environmental
Speaker:disaster, I can flip that argument on its head just like that in the space of 15 minutes.
Speaker:There's not a thing that any environmentalist or anybody who...I would dare Elizabeth Warren
Speaker:to get on here and talk to me because she's a senator for the United States.
Speaker:She hates Bitcoin.
Speaker:She thinks it's of the devil, basically.
Speaker:She would love to see it banned because she thinks it's this environmental disaster that
Speaker:just consumes energy and provides no value.
Speaker:I'm going to call Bologna on that.
Speaker:I will do that.
Speaker:I don't know what episode.
Speaker:It may be the next episode.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It's really interesting, the things that are permeating up, that are bubbling up through
Speaker:the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Speaker:This one to me is fascinating and frankly could help 2,600, if I'm to understand, municipalities
Speaker:around the United States alone.
Speaker:It could happen other places too.
Speaker:I'm going to talk about it in context of the United States.
Speaker:I'll just tease that out there, but Africa, South America, quote, developing countries,
Speaker:these countries in various ways can all benefit, in my opinion, from Bitcoin.
Speaker:It's a long-term play.
Speaker:You can't just go in there and flip a switch and suddenly everything's cotton candy.
Speaker:Rainbows and unicorns, I think, is the saying.
Speaker:It's part of the process, gaining your sovereignty and your control.
Speaker:That's one of the big things about Bitcoin, specifically.
Speaker:They're talking about people gaining financial sovereignty, and they do that through Bitcoin.
Speaker:These countries can do the same thing.
Speaker:We'll talk about this stuff from time to time.
Speaker:I probably will never spend so much time on a topic that maybe people aren't necessarily
Speaker:interested in, but this was of great interest to me.
Speaker:Let's move on.
Speaker:Let's talk about some listeners.
Speaker:I am so happy, again, that I finally figured some of this stuff out.
Speaker:I know I've mentioned this before.
Speaker:Signs of New Growth gave us a boost a while back.
Speaker:Signs of New Growth, I appreciate that again, but there's a few others.
Speaker:I wanted to mention this.
Speaker:If you're using Fountain, there's a few users on here who clearly, it looks like one, two,
Speaker:three, four users who are using Fountain.
Speaker:The reason why I know is because they have usernames that are like user803285 blah, blah,
Speaker:blah.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:There's like 10 more numbers.
Speaker:You can change that right in your profile.
Speaker:My profile is Macintosh.
Speaker:You can follow me on Fountain if you'd like.
Speaker:I don't know why, but you could.
Speaker:The thing is, I can't do anything with these four people who've provided value for value,
Speaker:and I don't know who they are.
Speaker:I do appreciate it if one of those was you, but we had a few others.
Speaker:Some of these were boosts.
Speaker:I had a few messages.
Speaker:I'm going to try and read all the messages.
Speaker:I think there was a couple, but I'm just going to read the names out.
Speaker:This is a total.
Speaker:From top to bottom, actually, signs of new growth, buddy.
Speaker:You are still at top, 3,300 SATs.
Speaker:Appreciate that.
Speaker:Takurip, T-A-C-U-A-C-R-I-P.
Speaker:You can see how professional this is.
Speaker:Here's our next one, 321 SATs, and I think that one's a combination of streaming and
Speaker:boosting or just streaming.
Speaker:Tomato Monkey, 188 SATs, and then I've got some of these users I was talking about.
Speaker:Cloromon, 10 SATs, Tipinon, four or five SATs, Team Leader Official, three SATs, and Michael-C-H-I-C-H-E, one SAT.
Speaker:I appreciate each and every one of those.
Speaker:I know Michael's was a boost.
Speaker:He actually had a message.
Speaker:I'm going to try and find these messages real quick as well.
Speaker:Signs of new growth, which, of course, this was back on the 50th episode.
Speaker:That's when he did this.
Speaker:He said congrats on the 50th episode.
Speaker:I know I've covered that, but Tipinon, four.
Speaker:Hey, look at us.
Speaker:Who would have thought?
Speaker:Not me.
Speaker:I'm not sure what you meant by that, but we'll go with it.
Speaker:There was one more.
Speaker:I thought, oh yes, Cloromon.
Speaker:I thought you were the Michael's.
Speaker:Michael didn't have a message, actually.
Speaker:He said hola, now we're switching to Spanish, which is worse than my French, hola, bro.
Speaker:So hola back at you.
Speaker:Again, appreciate it.
Speaker:That covered every episode of our first 62 episodes, actually whether they were streams
Speaker:or whether they were boosts.
Speaker:Going forth, I'll do as they come in, and they may not come in every week, at least
Speaker:for a while.
Speaker:I certainly hope it gets better as we move forward, but I'll read out the new ones.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:I'm thinking about making a little leaderboard type thing on the website.
Speaker:We'll see.
Speaker:There'll be something else I have to keep up with, but it would be awesome to be able
Speaker:to see who's leading the horse race, so to speak.
Speaker:Again, if you're on Fountain, very easy to change your username there.
Speaker:It would make it a lot easier.
Speaker:Otherwise, I'll just skip them, and that's fine.
Speaker:I still appreciate it.
Speaker:It doesn't mean I appreciate it any less, but I would love to give you a shout out.
Speaker:All right, again, appreciate it.
Speaker:Let's move on to the news, and we'll wrap this up.
Speaker:This has gotten to be a pretty long episode.
Speaker:There was some news, and of course, it's been a week.
Speaker:I'm going to mention this very briefly.
Speaker:I don't know what's going on in Russia.
Speaker:I'm not speaking about the war at all, but as part of that, they started taking payment
Speaker:in Bitcoin, if I recall correctly, because of the ruble being banned essentially for
Speaker:international payments.
Speaker:Now Putin just signed a law banning crypto payments, so I don't know, whatever.
Speaker:They'll figure it out at some point.
Speaker:I actually think you're going to see crazy things like this, where you'll see countries
Speaker:that say, hey, we're going to do this.
Speaker:No, we're not.
Speaker:Hey, we're going to do this.
Speaker:India has gone back and forth about crypto a number of times.
Speaker:These countries will come around.
Speaker:They will have to.
Speaker:They won't have a choice.
Speaker:I don't know, maybe Russia is working on their own central currency, but central currencies,
Speaker:I've discussed this before.
Speaker:I don't think they're any different than paper.
Speaker:If the US creates an official US dollar, digital, they can just print those just like they can
Speaker:print paper.
Speaker:There's a difference between that and Bitcoin, where we know the process.
Speaker:We mine every 10 minutes, we get a block, and we're going to run out in 21 million.
Speaker:All right, Ethereum, we've talked about Ethereum.
Speaker:I gave an update recently.
Speaker:The merge has a date.
Speaker:Now I don't know, the date's pretty close.
Speaker:It could still be pushed back.
Speaker:So they're down to the last test net before they move to the main net, to the final, the
Speaker:actual net, if you want to call that.
Speaker:The date is September the 19th.
Speaker:Actually, it says the week of September 19th.
Speaker:It'll be right around the 19th.
Speaker:I don't think they can actually predict exactly when.
Speaker:If this final test net merge goes smoothly, and they've been getting better as they move
Speaker:through them.
Speaker:So we'll see.
Speaker:If it's not perfectly smooth, they'll probably bump it a few days and fix whatever issues.
Speaker:So that's real good news if you're holding Ethereum.
Speaker:And there'll be a link to the show notes, in the show notes on that.
Speaker:The final bit of news I wanted to talk about.
Speaker:If you've been following, Sri Lanka has been in a lot of trouble of late.
Speaker:And I'm going to dive into something I don't really like going into.
Speaker:But it's important to understand, in my opinion, what's going on here.
Speaker:So Sri Lanka is having issues, which you don't hear about, you say, oh, they're protesting.
Speaker:If you even see that.
Speaker:But well, the other day, as an example, the presidential palace, I want to say, they basically
Speaker:stormed it, took it over.
Speaker:The president and one other very high level person have now resigned.
Speaker:But it's all about economics.
Speaker:People are having severe issues.
Speaker:And why is that?
Speaker:Nobody ever explains that.
Speaker:Well, I actually heard and got some understanding of what's going on.
Speaker:So last year, they stopped using basically artificial fertilizers.
Speaker:Of course, Sri Lanka is, you know, they grow, it's very agricultural.
Speaker:They grow a lot of rice, this kind of thing.
Speaker:And this was to meet climate change mandate.
Speaker:And I'm going to leave it at that.
Speaker:And I'm not even sure what the program is called.
Speaker:Because of that, their crop yield was much lower this year.
Speaker:I think they had about a 20% failure rate, 20% less overall.
Speaker:And that has caused the price of staples like rice to soar.
Speaker:Plain and simple.
Speaker:Now, I'll leave it at that.
Speaker:But the story is, the Sri Lankan central bank reiterates crypto warning following the protesters
Speaker:seizing presidential palace.
Speaker:So I'm not sure why these two stories are actually put together, but I want to read
Speaker:very briefly here.
Speaker:Thousands of Sri Lankans.
Speaker:I think it was a lot more than thousands, but took to the streets of Colombo, which
Speaker:is the capital, to protest the government's response to the economic situation.
Speaker:The central bank warned the public against crypto purchases due to lack of regulatory
Speaker:oversight.
Speaker:It's not authorized to license any companies in Sri Lanka to offer crypto-related services,
Speaker:including exchanges, ICOs, initial coin offerings, and mining.
Speaker:So they're not banning it, but they're saying, hey, you shouldn't do this.
Speaker:But hey, our whole country's burning down, so whatever.
Speaker:If I were in Sri Lanka and I had any money, which I probably wouldn't if I lived there,
Speaker:that I could set aside, I'd certainly have it in Bitcoin myself.
Speaker:I wouldn't care one bit what they said.
Speaker:Oh yeah, inflation in Sri Lanka was 54% in June.
Speaker:And interest rates are at 15.5%.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:But don't do crypto, people, because it's scary.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:Anyways, I'm not going to be flip and say Bitcoin fixes this like some people do, to
Speaker:be honest.
Speaker:But it does help.
Speaker:It does help.
Speaker:So there'll be a link to that in show notes.
Speaker:And that's it.
Speaker:That is it for this episode.
Speaker:Again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but for those of you who have supported
Speaker:the show, I do really appreciate it.
Speaker:It's been exciting, basically every day, a little of this week, a little bit has dribbled
Speaker:in here and there.
Speaker:And I don't know what happened.
Speaker:I don't maybe, I think maybe a few new people found the show.
Speaker:I have not done the promotion yet with Fountain.
Speaker:I haven't had time.
Speaker:Of course, I was on vacation and I just, I haven't had time.
Speaker:I got to send off an email or whatever, get ahold of the people there at Fountain and
Speaker:get that set up.
Speaker:But it is coming.
Speaker:In the meantime, there's lots of great podcast 2.0 apps.
Speaker:You can go to newpodcastapps.com and see a whole list.
Speaker:Fountain, if you've never done this, is a great way to get started right now.
Speaker:You can, well, as far as I know for the foreseeable future, you can stream shows and receive sats
Speaker:for doing that.
Speaker:I'm actually building up, I support various shows, but I listen to a lot of stuff and
Speaker:I don't necessarily, I don't support every show I listen to.
Speaker:So I kind of build up some sats here and there.
Speaker:You can do the same thing.
Speaker:It's a great way to get started.
Speaker:The Generation Wealth Cryptocurrency Podcast supports podcasting 2.0.
Speaker:Of course, it's a value for value podcast.
Speaker:We don't have any sponsors and we have no advertising.
Speaker:Yay, no advertising.
Speaker:You can support the podcast in three ways, time, talent, and treasure.
Speaker:If you want to support the podcast and has the time or talent, I got stuff that needs
Speaker:to be done, guys, chapters for the podcast, transcriptions.
Speaker:There's other stuff.
Speaker:We can come up with it.
Speaker:Treasure is just what it sounds like.
Speaker:If you find the content valuable, and I hope you did, you can support the podcast by streaming
Speaker:sats from podcasting 2.0 app or boosting.
Speaker:I should really mention that every time and send the message when you boost.
Speaker:I would love to hear from you or send support via PayPal to macintosh@genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:If you send something and you don't hear about it and you wanted to hear about it, please
Speaker:let me know.
Speaker:Send me an email.
Speaker:Send me a Twitter, a direct message, macintosh@genwealthcrypto.com is my email.
Speaker:And I already said you can get the podcast apps at newpodcastapps.com.
Speaker:If you'd like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about the Generation
Speaker:Wealth Cryptocurrency Podcast.
Speaker:Thanks for being here.
Speaker:I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker:I know it's been different.
Speaker:I do hope it's been helpful.
Speaker:I hope it's given you some insight on kind of governmental level things maybe, and how
Speaker:governments can control really other countries, frankly.
Speaker:Anyways, I'm on Twitter at macintoshfintech.
Speaker:You can reach me by email.
Speaker:I already said that, macintosh@genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Now go out and make it a great week.
Speaker:We will be back Friday.
Speaker:Talk to you soon.