Shownotes
Time to dust off the history books. France, along with other European nations, has a long history of involvement with Africa. Much of this history is based on exploitation of both the natural resources and the people of Africa. The direct French involvement did not end in many of these countries until 1960.
This history, and the subsequent treaties established during independence of the African nations during the 1958 - 1960 time period set the stage for the continued economic exploitation of the African continent.
News and Links
https://cryptonews.com/news/voyager-digital-files-for-bankruptcy.htm
https://watcher.guru/news/coinbase-backed-vauld-suspends-services-users-disappointed
https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1545164108634460163
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=RvF30Mz2IZW63s1mjjau2Q==
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_possessions_and_colonies
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/K-12/French_16178.html
https://www.france24.com/en/20100214-1960-year-independence
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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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Transcripts
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode 61 of the Generational Wealth Cryptocurrency Podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, MacIntosh. Today, we're going to begin a discussion of the CFA.
Speaker:Please remember, as always, no one on this podcast is a financial advisor, and all
Speaker:information presented on this podcast is for informational purposes only.
Speaker:Now, I do want to explain up front that this is going to be a little different than normal.
Speaker:This will be a two-part episode. We will cover quite a bit of material, I believe, in this
Speaker:episode, and then we will have another episode that will wrap this up. Now, this episode,
Speaker:in particular, will probably be unique in that I will not be discussing cryptocurrency
Speaker:at all in the meat of this podcast. We will cover the news of the week, of which, of course,
Speaker:there is quite a bit, but the discussion that we will have will begin with some history.
Speaker:History, which I believe that most of my readers are not familiar with. You may even be unaware
Speaker:of this, but it's history, I believe, that's very important to the discussion that's going on
Speaker:right now, I believe, in a number of countries in Africa. Let's get started.
Speaker:So, before we jump into things, let's go ahead and discuss the news of the week.
Speaker:As normal, Bitcoin doesn't disappoint. There was a lot of news this week.
Speaker:Unfortunately, I think you could say that the majority of it was bad. Now, some of this is
Speaker:related to the ongoing Celsius 3 AC saga. On July the 1st, I believe I discussed this in the last
Speaker:episode, but this is actually very relevant. On July the 1st, Voyager announced that it would
Speaker:quote, temporarily suspend trading deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards effective
Speaker:at 2 o'clock Eastern time today. That was July the 1st. All right, keep that in mind,
Speaker:because what happened next? On Wednesday, do we have a date on this? July the 5th, four days later,
Speaker:Voyager Digital, which I guess is their official name, but Voyager files for Chapter 11,
Speaker:which is a type of bankruptcy, seeks to maximize value for all stakeholders. So, in other words,
Speaker:we're going to grab as much of the money and run as we can. Yeah. Okay. And I'll have a link to
Speaker:that in the show notes, but they are now filing for bankruptcy. So, the fallout continues. What's
Speaker:next? The Celsius story is actually, I believe, unwinding, and I think very rapidly. It's turning
Speaker:out that the whole Celsius – so, these are court filings as part of all of this – quote,
Speaker:faced with a liquidity crisis, Celsius began to offer double-digit interest rates in order to
Speaker:lure new depositors whose funds were used to repay earlier depositors and creditors. So,
Speaker:call me simplistic, but to me, that sounds like a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker:I'll have a link to that court document and Twitter thread in my show notes.
Speaker:It turns out the CEO of Celsius probably has been pretty misleading from what it sounds like to me.
Speaker:There's reason to believe that he was saying one thing and doing the exact opposite. So, like, he
Speaker:was – how can I do this without getting myself in trouble? Allegedly, he was kind of playing
Speaker:fast and loose with the money, probably creating a lot more issues. I think a lot of people have
Speaker:become very disgusted, frankly, with his behaviors. The final story about Celsius is this, that
Speaker:they paid off almost half a billion dollars at collateral for Bitcoin, closing a loan with Maker,
Speaker:and this is all on the blockchain. And then they sent $500 million of Bitcoin derivatives to
Speaker:a crypto exchange, which really doesn't look good.
Speaker:FTX, actually, it was sent to FTX. They actually sent 24,463 wrapped Bitcoin to FTX.
Speaker:So, there you go. I don't know where all this is going to end. I never claimed to know where
Speaker:this was going to end. I don't think it's going to end well, as I've been saying, for the little
Speaker:guys, for the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who have – they don't have a whole
Speaker:lot of money, but they've invested it and they put it in Celsius, and I don't think they're going to
Speaker:see that back. But we will continue to monitor that. We had one other news item this week.
Speaker:I have been talking about Compass Mining, about their issues with a service provider,
Speaker:a hosting service provider in Maine, that allegedly the service provider shut down
Speaker:their service because they didn't pay an electric bill, essentially. A very large electric bill,
Speaker:mind you, but an electric bill. So, on July the 8th, yesterday, very early in the morning,
Speaker:according to this, they announced that they were laying off 15% of their staff. So, apparently,
Speaker:they are reducing – I think they have about 85 employees. I'm not sure if that was before or
Speaker:after the 15% layoff, but they are laying off some people. And the executives, which how many
Speaker:executives can there be with 85 people, but there's probably a few, are taking compensation cuts.
Speaker:All right. And another item that I just saw is that
Speaker:Compass Mining had filed suit against the hosting provider because supposedly, or apparently,
Speaker:the hosting provider was blocking them from getting out the miners. That has been resolved.
Speaker:The court has ordered the hosting provider to let them provide access. And Compass has actually
Speaker:already updated their website saying, hey, we're going to get your stuff shipped back to our Denver
Speaker:Center, and we'll see about getting another provider up in that area. Now, it may take some
Speaker:months and so on and so forth, but at least people will have the option to get their equipment shipped
Speaker:back to them and put it somewhere else. If nothing else, turn it on at their house. All right. So,
Speaker:a little bit of good news there, at least for the little guys who are stuck in the middle.
Speaker:So, that's it for the news this week. So, here's what's going to happen. Let's jump into all this.
Speaker:Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to be talking about what amounts to French colonial
Speaker:Africa, the nations, the African states, specifically in French West Africa and French
Speaker:Central Africa that use a common currency, which we're going to discuss, called the CFA,
Speaker:and how that is hurting them economically. Now, similar arguments can be made for the countries
Speaker:who use the U.S. dollar, like El Salvador, and I have discussed that in the past on the podcast.
Speaker:And of course, we see El Salvador leading the way here, so to speak, where they declare Bitcoin
Speaker:legal tender. Just recently, we saw the Central African Republic declare Bitcoin as legal tender
Speaker:as well. So, I wanted to actually take some time to dig into this because I have a,
Speaker:how can I put this, I have a, I guess you could say a soft spot for what I would call the
Speaker:underserved, the underprivileged, people who are being, I guess you could say, held down
Speaker:by, really by governmental entities, such as what's going on, in my opinion, in this case.
Speaker:Without doing a whole lot of self-analysis, I guess I could probably trace this back to the fact that
Speaker:some of my ancestors, including my namesake, were Indians, Native Americans here in the United
Speaker:States. I have ancestors from both the Creek and the Cherokee tribes in the southeastern part of
Speaker:the United States. McIntosh, one of my ancestors, he actually was a chief of one of the Creek tribes.
Speaker:He was half Scottish and half Creek. His mother was Creek, and actually the Creeks traced their
Speaker:lineage through the mother, and he ended up becoming a chief of that tribe during somewhere
Speaker:around the very early 1800s, if I'm not mistaken. He was born in 1775. All right. And so, anyways,
Speaker:not to get off on all that, but I do feel like, and I have read up on this, a fair amount. The
Speaker:Indians, they certainly haven't gotten a fair shake from the US government. So anyways, I don't
Speaker:want to make this podcast about that, but the point is, when I read about this situation a month or
Speaker:so ago, it immediately struck me that really an entire continent almost is being controlled
Speaker:by foreign governments, and it's not to their benefit. Now, I will spend the next episode
Speaker:explaining all of that. I want to give some history so that we understand how we got to
Speaker:that place, because most people don't know a whole lot about African history, frankly, and French
Speaker:African history specifically. I did not. I barely knew, I've heard of French West Africa. I actually
Speaker:have a friend from back in grade school who was born on the Ivory Coast, and so I knew a little
Speaker:bit about it, but not very much at all. So when I read this interview, actually, I heard a podcast,
Speaker:excuse me, I heard a podcast of this woman from Toga describing what was going on and their fight
Speaker:for real freedom, which they do not currently have, not necessarily at this point directly,
Speaker:because of the French, but regardless, I believe that the occupation of their country led to that.
Speaker:I started digging in, so I've come up with a couple of podcasts worth here. I've probably
Speaker:done more research on this than I've done for any other podcast, and I hope you guys appreciate
Speaker:this. This might be different. I would ask you respectfully to listen. Maybe you disagree.
Speaker:I, you can't really disagree with the history I'm about to give. You may disagree with
Speaker:where I go from this next time, and that's okay. I'm fine with that. That's fine. But
Speaker:maybe this will give you a different perspective. So let's jump in. So I'm gonna have a lot of links
Speaker:in the show notes to basically online, like a lot of Wikipedia stuff that I will reference,
Speaker:so that you know where I'm getting my information from. Okay. So first of all, we're gonna
Speaker:basically talk about the French West African region, specifically, and also central,
Speaker:the French Central African region. So those two areas, France, I do want to mention
Speaker:France was one of the European countries that they dominated, essentially, Africa.
Speaker:They started dealing with Africa in the 1600s. By the 1800s, you know, they were kind of
Speaker:dividing up Africa among about eight, I think, different countries. In fact,
Speaker:let's see, I've got a list here. Where did that go? Here it is. They call it the Scramble for Africa,
Speaker:which is kind of a crazy title, but that's what it gets called.
Speaker:The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa or the Conquest of Africa,
Speaker:was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by seven,
Speaker:actually, seven Western European powers during a short time period of 1881 to 1914.
Speaker:Only about 10% of Africa was under formal European control in 1870, and by 1914, almost 90% of it was,
Speaker:with only Ethiopia and Liberia remaining independent. Even Ethiopia was actually
Speaker:invaded and occupied by Italy from 1936 to 1941. So the vast majority of Africa basically got
Speaker:divided up by Europe, and I'll read the countries off here in just a second. They were Belgium,
Speaker:France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and of course, the United Kingdom, so Britain.
Speaker:They had a conference. They literally got together in Berlin in 1884 and said,
Speaker:how are we going to do this? It's baffling to me that these things went on, but
Speaker:I don't know. It is what it is. It's what happened. So they basically got together, said,
Speaker:you go here, you go here, you go here, and they went out and annexed it. They conquered it. They
Speaker:colonized it, whatever you want to call it. And then they began, so they were using Africa and
Speaker:the countries that they were colonizing for cheap labor, including, I think, in Europe,
Speaker:including, I think, well, certainly in many cases, slaves. I actually checked because I did not know
Speaker:slavery actually had been outlawed in France itself. And I'm speaking specifically of France,
Speaker:and I've already mentioned there's all these states, but we are talking about
Speaker:the CFA, which is a French concoction, if you want to call it. And I'll get into that next week,
Speaker:but there's a reason why I'm only really talking about France. I don't have time to talk about all
Speaker:these other countries and their business, but France outlawed slavery in France in 1812 by
Speaker:Napoleon. I think it was 1812, but it was certainly somewhere around that time. However, slavery did
Speaker:slavery did continue outside of the France country itself well into the late 1800s.
Speaker:I had a link that actually said when it officially ended, but I don't have that in front of me.
Speaker:It looks like maybe in 1911. Yeah, somewhere around there.
Speaker:That doesn't mean just because they abolished slavery that they were not taking advantage
Speaker:of people, certainly. But I would just point out that that was eliminated, so to speak, in 1911.
Speaker:All right. So there are some basic facts. So let's dig in just a little bit. What did France itself,
Speaker:what were they controlling? They actually controlled a large number of people.
Speaker:They actually controlled a large number of countries in Africa and off the coast of Africa,
Speaker:including, interestingly, Madagascar, which I did not know. So they controlled Madagascar until
Speaker:it was pretty late, until 1960. So, I mean, that's only a few years before I was even born.
Speaker:So that's kind of crazy, but that's what it was. So we specifically are going to talk about
Speaker:these countries that are considered to be French West Africa and French Central, or I believe
Speaker:it's also called Equatorial Africa. So I'm going to run through this list here, and then I'm not
Speaker:going to refer to this list again, because it's too long. And this was not all of their
Speaker:places that they were occupying, as I've already said. I will have a list in the show notes,
Speaker:if you're curious. The Ivory Coast, Dahomey, now called Benin, the French Sudan, now called Mali,
Speaker:Guinea, or French Guinea, Mauritania, the Niger, Senegal, French Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso,
Speaker:French Togoland. It's now called Toga, which is actually where that woman was that I was telling
Speaker:you about with the interview, Cambia. That's French West Africa. And then Equatorial Africa,
Speaker:French Equatorial Africa is called Chad. I cannot even pronounce this previous name. It's actually
Speaker:currently Central African Republic, which of course is where Bitcoin was legalized. The Republic
Speaker:of Congo, Gabon, French Cameroon, which is 90% of the current Cameroon country. And Sao Tome M.
Speaker:Principe. Man, my French is terrible. Sorry. Okay. So that's a list of all the countries.
Speaker:Now, as I said, these countries, a lot of these were in the 1880s timeframe that we were talking
Speaker:about. Some of them are a little later. Mauritania, for example, was 1902. Senegal actually goes as
Speaker:far back as 1677. Togo, 1918, actually. So really at the start of World War I, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker:or right after World War I, somewhere around that time. Actually both parts of Gambia that they have
Speaker:listed here go well back into the 1600s. One is 1681, one is 1695. So a long time ago for some of
Speaker:these and they did not end for the most part for a lot of these until 1960. I see 1960 for a number
Speaker:of these. So basically this was the time period when there was a lot of unrest and they were
Speaker:turning over these countries essentially to somebody local. Now, I promise you the person
Speaker:that they left in charge, I hesitate to say that they would be a puppet, but most likely they would
Speaker:be a puppet of France. So I saw at least one in 1958. I think they were the ones that kicked it
Speaker:off, if I'm not mistaken. Guinea, French Guinea. If I'm not mistaken, this move for independence
Speaker:started there and spread to these other countries. So a lot of them ended in 1960.
Speaker:Basically they all ended by 1960, if I'm not mistaken, unless they had ended prior to
Speaker:1950, well 1958. There's a few of these that had ended a lot earlier. It looks like Nigeria,
Speaker:for example, had ended by 1927. So there's a few cases like that, but otherwise it was
Speaker:the late 50s or 1960. All right. Again, there'll be links in the show notes. You can take a look at
Speaker:that. All right. So that kind of sets the stage. I think it's important and I want to be careful
Speaker:about this, but I think it's important to kind of talk about this for just a second.
Speaker:France during this time period in theory was doing things to help these countries,
Speaker:but I also think it's very important to realize what they were not doing. They did build some
Speaker:infrastructure, roads, maybe some hospitals. They did things to improve disease prevention,
Speaker:like sleeping sickness, for example. But it's really important to keep in mind
Speaker:the goal of France and of all of these European countries. When they got together in Berlin and
Speaker:said, you know, basically pulled out a map of Africa and said, you get this and you get this
Speaker:and you get this. What were they looking for? They were looking for cheap labor. They were looking
Speaker:for raw resources. That's what they were looking for. What are some of the things you can get out
Speaker:of Africa? Gold, diamonds. Back then they didn't know about a lot of the things that are there,
Speaker:like uranium, bauxite, for making aluminum. You know, some of these other... Africa probably has
Speaker:more raw resources than any other continent in the world. And they just saw the things on the
Speaker:surface, gum from rubber, from rubber trees, certainly food. But what they did is instead of
Speaker:building infrastructure there to process the resources, they would ship it back to France
Speaker:and develop it there. So you saw this. I mean, basically we're talking about the 1900s, right?
Speaker:The division took place in the very late 1800s. We're talking about that almost 60-year,
Speaker:in some cases, 60-year time period of the 1900s, between 1900 and 1960. So they would ship back
Speaker:iron ore and develop iron and steel out of it. They would ship bauxite when that became important.
Speaker:I don't know when aluminum was discovered. Sorry, I don't know that offhand, but I do know that
Speaker:there's large bauxite resources there in central Africa, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker:Whatever the resource was, they would take it and they would pull it out. And in theory,
Speaker:they were giving them compensation for that. But the reality was... And this is actually written
Speaker:into the treaties that the Africans were forced to sign, in my opinion, when all this happened.
Speaker:But the African nation, well, let's say Togo, they had a treaty with France and they were required to...
Speaker:Basically, France got first right of refusal to any resource that they were shipping,
Speaker:they were exporting. And the prices that they were getting were below market. So they were getting
Speaker:first choice and they were getting extremely low prices. And of course, while they were occupying
Speaker:the country, they were not taking the time to build the infrastructure to take these resources
Speaker:and create finished products, which would be more valuable. What's an example? Well, bauxite.
Speaker:You ship the bauxite off on a ship, off to France, it gets smelted, mixed with whatever else
Speaker:aluminum is made out of, and you get aluminum. So there are other things that are used to create
Speaker:aluminum, but bauxite is a primary component of that. Now, is aluminum a lot more valuable
Speaker:than the bauxite, I guess, or whatever? Yes, it is. And so, France ends up economically much
Speaker:further ahead. So where does all this lead? During the next episode, I will be talking about how
Speaker:the policies that they put in place like this were really used to economically depress these
Speaker:African countries. And even though they were acting like they were there to help them. Now,
Speaker:it might be harsh to say this, but in my opinion, these are forms of economic slavery.
Speaker:And the CFA was a central part of this, and we will discuss all that next week. But in my opinion,
Speaker:these countries moving to a Bitcoin standard will be a way to break the control of France in this
Speaker:case. All right, so I'm going to stop there. I hope that background was helpful for you.
Speaker:Next week, and there will be one week gap, I'm going to be on vacation for a week, and
Speaker:I was not able to get all this ready before we left. So I'm going to put this out. It'll come out
Speaker:Monday morning, and a week from Monday, the next episode will come out. And during that episode,
Speaker:which I will finish my research, we will discuss this CFA, which is basically a unit, a monetary
Speaker:unit, and it was initially based on the French franc. So it was pegged to the French franc,
Speaker:now it's actually pegged to the euro. So spoiler alert. But anyways, this
Speaker:monetary unit is being used to control these countries. So we'll discuss that next week.
Speaker:I hope this little bit of history was helpful. I hope it wasn't boring. We have to understand
Speaker:where we're coming from so we can see where we're going, hopefully.
Speaker:I hope you guys have taken the time to go out and test drive the Fountain app. If you have not
Speaker:already, I've mentioned previously, they still have the program going where podcasts are promoted.
Speaker:And so you get actually paid to listen in sats to those podcasts. I'm actually going to attempt to
Speaker:get, I've thought about this quite a bit, and we'll see how it goes. I'm going to actually see about
Speaker:getting the generational wealth podcast promoted. So I'm going to put up some money in sats to do
Speaker:that. And so actually, when I do that, if you see it being promoted, you could actually then listen
Speaker:to it and get paid for it. That's fine. I'm not going to yell at you for doing that. I do hope
Speaker:if you're listening to this podcast and you find it valuable, that you take the time to get a
Speaker:podcasting 2.0 app if you don't have one already. And those are available at newpodcastapps.com.
Speaker:And take the time to try Fountain, try Breeze, try one of these other podcast apps and stream
Speaker:sats to support your favorite podcast. If you're getting value from this one, I would hope you
Speaker:would stream sats. Actually, I had some people earlier this week who were streaming this program.
Speaker:I got some sats from that. And of course, when you stream sats, people don't want to listen to
Speaker:this program. I got some sats from that. And of course, when you stream sats, people don't
Speaker:know who it is. I have no way of knowing. But whoever was out there doing it, I do appreciate
Speaker:it. I don't have any boosts this week, but I'm going to do this little experiment and we'll see
Speaker:what happens. So hopefully we can get a boost in the number of people listening to the podcast
Speaker:and we'll keep going on this journey, okay? So I'm not going to run through the thing about
Speaker:value for value. I just did it in a sense. Go to newpodcastapps.com. Take it for a test drive,
Speaker:right? And check out the Fountain app. If you like the content, I would love it, though,
Speaker:if you would tell your friends about the Generational Wealth Cryptocurrency podcast.
Speaker:All right. Thanks everybody for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I hope this has been
Speaker:useful. I know it's been a little bit different, but I do hope it's been useful. I would love to
Speaker:hear from you. I'm on Twitter at MacintoshFintech, and you can reach me by email
Speaker:at macintoshgenewalthcrypto.com. Now go out and make it a great week. I will talk to you all in one week.