The Bitcoin Dictator — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00I've traveled to El Salvador six times in the
2. 0:02past four years, and I've uncovered a deeply
3. 0:05uncomfortable truth I have to share with you.
4. 0:07And it raises two uneasy questions we've all
5. 0:10been avoiding. Is El Salvador's president,
6. 0:12Nayib Bukele, a Bitcoin dictator?
7. 0:15And if he is, is that really such a bad
8. 0:18thing? But first, an uncomfortable truth.
9. 0:21One the global Bitcoin movement has decided
10. 0:24to look the other way on.
11. 0:26Under the state of exception,
12. 0:27the government suspended article 24 of the
13. 0:30Constitution that hand security forces the
14. 0:32legal power to tap your phone,
15. 0:34read your private chats,
16. 0:35and monitor your entire digital footprint.
17. 0:38No warrant. No judge.
18. 0:40And yes, that includes you,
19. 0:42the Bitcoin influencers,
20. 0:43the tourists, and the holidaymakers.
21. 0:45Nobody has the right to privacy.
22. 0:47This is hard for me to share as I've covered
23. 0:49Bitcoin country for about five years.
24. 0:51I've documented how Bitcoin bank,
25. 0:53the unbanked and I may even sold some of you
26. 0:56on visiting Bitcoin country or maybe even
27. 0:58moving there. But there is a grim truth
28. 1:01hiding behind the headlines,
29. 1:02one that few journalists and fewer
30. 1:04Bitcoiners, I would say,
31. 1:06are willing to say out loud.
32. 1:08Is Bukele a Bitcoin dictator?
33. 1:10And if so, so what?
34. 1:12Behind me is the Oslo Freedom Forum.
35. 1:15It's where the people who've actually
36. 1:16survived dictatorships come to fight back on
37. 1:19this stage at the Oslo Freedom Forum.
38. 1:22Activists, journalists,
39. 1:23human rights defenders they all advocated for
40. 1:26one thing dismantling dictatorship.
41. 1:30Now, from this free press vantage point,
42. 1:32I feel compelled to ask six questions about
43. 1:34El Salvador, six questions that I really hope
44. 1:37you'll sit on and think about before you hit
45. 1:39the comments with, fuck you,
46. 1:41Joe. You're just a European hater.
47. 1:43You're hating on Bitcoin country.
48. 1:44Well, I hope question five goes some way
49. 1:47towards exonerating me,
50. 1:48and I hope question six really wakes you up.
51. 1:51At the very least, I hope this sparks some
52. 1:53honest debate about the state of Bitcoin
53. 1:55country. Just quickly.
54. 1:56About 80% of you watching this are not
55. 1:58subscribed to my content. If you get
56. 1:59something out of my on the ground reporting,
57. 2:01please hit subscribe as it genuinely helps me
58. 2:03keep doing it. On with the video.
59. 2:08As Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper goes,
60. 2:10Bitcoin is a peer to peer cash system.
61. 2:13No middleman. Bitcoin exists to take away
62. 2:15power from the center and to hand it back to
63. 2:18the individual. So why would a so-called
64. 2:21Bitcoin country hand its president the power
65. 2:24to read everyone's messages,
66. 2:25with no warrant and no recourse?
67. 2:28Since March 2022, this country has lived
68. 2:31under what's called the state of exception.
69. 2:33Think of this like emergency powers,
70. 2:36it suspends article 24 of the Constitution,
71. 2:39which means that the state can tap your phone
72. 2:41and read your messages without asking a court
73. 2:44for anything.
74. 2:45It's not very Bitcoin, is it?
75. 2:46The human rights monitors confirm this
76. 2:48directly. This emergency is supposed to be
77. 2:50temporary, but by law,
78. 2:51Parliament has to vote to renew this every
79. 2:53single month, and they have almost 50 times
80. 2:56in a row. Nearly 50 months of emergency.
81. 3:01And there's no real way to argue this or
82. 3:02debate this inside the country.
83. 3:05Salvadorans that would like to speak out,
84. 3:07they can't. And that's not some wild guess.
85. 3:09Here at the Oslo Freedom Forum,
86. 3:11I quietly spoke to several Salvadorans about
87. 3:13this. They explained that it's now completely
88. 3:15normal to self-censor,
89. 3:17and that people think twice before saying
90. 3:19anything in public about the direction the
91. 3:22country is going in.
92. 3:23One of only three opposition legislators left
93. 3:25in El Salvador's 60 seat parliament,
94. 3:29Claudia Ortiz, stood on this very stage and
95. 3:32she said it out loud.
96. 3:34The message to every Salvadoran is simple
97. 3:38stay quiet or you are the next.
98. 3:42She's saying in public what most Salvadorans
99. 3:44are only whispering in private.
100. 3:47What does that tell you?
101. 3:48The country's very own Human rights
102. 3:49commission has now said that the violence
103. 3:51that justified all of these temporary powers
104. 3:54has already passed.
105. 3:55So the threat is gone,
106. 3:56but the emergency powers are not.
107. 3:59Why? El Salvador's sweeping new data law
108. 4:01exempts the state from anything touching
109. 4:04national security.
110. 4:06Then it hands officials a right to be
111. 4:08forgotten. The Human Rights Watch reported,
112. 4:10could force outlets to delete reporting.
113. 4:13The rules don't bind the state,
114. 4:15but they can erase the press.
115. 4:17It's a censorship law with a privacy label.
116. 4:20Do you understand now why I'm filming this in
117. 4:22Oslo and not in El Salvador?
118. 4:24The citizens privacy against the state is
119. 4:26gone. The state's privacy against the
120. 4:28journalist is now protected by law.
121. 4:30So ask yourself, which way round should that
122. 4:33be in a free country?
123. 4:35And here's the question that nobody in that
124. 4:37gorgeous tropical country is allowed to ask
125. 4:40out loud. Why is the special law still here
126. 4:43at all? Because if it's so safe now and
127. 4:46buccal, he keeps telling us how damn safe it
128. 4:48is, then why does the leader still need to
129. 4:51listen in to our phone calls?
130. 4:58Now, you're probably familiar with the Chivo
131. 5:00story. When the Bitcoin law came into effect,
132. 5:02Salvadorans could gain $30 of free Bitcoin
133. 5:05into their brand new Chivo wallet app,
134. 5:08provided that they scan their face and the
135. 5:11give away their ID details.
136. 5:13This is not exactly in line with the Bitcoin
137. 5:15ethos, and of course, it creates a giant
138. 5:17honeypot of biometric data.
139. 5:19But equally, it's not a smoking gun.
140. 5:21Lots of financial apps do this nowadays,
141. 5:23and KYC requirements are getting stricter and
142. 5:25stricter all over the world.
143. 5:27The real scoop is that Chivo didn't just
144. 5:29collect your data, it reportedly censored
145. 5:33your money. Now, back in 2023,
146. 5:35Mike Peterson, who is the founder of Bitcoin
147. 5:37Beach and someone I really look up to in the
148. 5:39Bitcoin space, he went on the record to say
149. 5:42that Chivo was censoring transactions that
150. 5:44came from wasabi, a lady that works with us.
151. 5:47She had her wallet basically frozen,
152. 5:49shut down. They were concerned about
153. 5:52transactions that I had sent her from wasabi
154. 5:55wallet. The reported reason for this shutdown
155. 5:57of those private transactions was pressure
156. 6:00from regulators in the US.
157. 6:01Privacy is a right.
158. 6:03It's important for Bitcoiners.
159. 6:04If you're going to flag transactions,
160. 6:07then you're going to defeat what's trying to
161. 6:09be accomplished here.
162. 6:10So you can't use private Bitcoin in the state
163. 6:13friendly wallet. And then who could have seen
164. 6:16this coming? That giant biometric honeypot of
165. 6:19data. It was leaked on the dark web,
166. 6:21more than 100GB, and more than 80% of the
167. 6:24population's private information was leaked,
168. 6:26including those facial recognition photos,
169. 6:29dates of birth addresses,
170. 6:31etc.. Researchers called it one of the first
171. 6:33times in history that an entire populations
172. 6:36biometric data was dumped onto the internet
173. 6:39in one go. One important caveat here,
174. 6:41because I want to maintain some sort of
175. 6:42neutrality. Chivo wallet denies that this
176. 6:46data leak came from them.
177. 6:47But let's just join the dots for a moment
178. 6:49here. The state built the wallet.
179. 6:51Then it effectively data mined as much of the
180. 6:54population as possible.
181. 6:55And two years later, all of that data ends up
182. 6:58on the dark web. This is the cost of doing
183. 7:00Bitcoin from the top down.
184. 7:02Everything that Bitcoin was built to avoid.
185. 7:04It's much better when it's done from the
186. 7:06bottom up. Amigos de la zona de derechos
187. 7:15humanos y lo digo también entre Los
188. 7:18criminales. Pero si no lo hacemos ahora
189. 7:20cuando. Now think about where you actually
190. 7:23see the Bitcoin branding in El Salvador.
191. 7:25That big flashy Bitcoin country display that
192. 7:28you see when you land in San Salvador.
193. 7:30Guess where it is. It's in international
194. 7:33arrivals. You fly domestically.
195. 7:34You don't see it. Then the Bitcoin office
196. 7:36tweets almost exclusively in English.
197. 7:39And then Nayib Bukele himself.
198. 7:41He announced the entire Bitcoin campaign on
199. 7:43stage in Miami in English to a mostly
200. 7:46American crowd. That is why next week I will
201. 7:49send to Congress a bill that will make
202. 7:51Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador.
203. 7:53The conferences, the content,
204. 7:54the energy. It's aimed at me.
205. 7:56It's aimed at you watching at home.
206. 7:58So I went looking for the other side of it,
207. 7:59the Spanish language Bitcoin education from
208. 8:01the states, the campaigns aimed at actual
209. 8:03Salvadorans in their own language and
210. 8:05actually really struggled to find it.
211. 8:07Mi primer Bitcoin or my first Bitcoin,
212. 8:09the NGO which used to be headquartered in El
213. 8:11Salvador. It's since moved out of the
214. 8:13country. Now, when I looked at how the
215. 8:15government talks about Bitcoin,
216. 8:16the loudest, most polished material,
217. 8:18it faces outward in English to us,
218. 8:21not inward in Spanish to the Salvadorans of
219. 8:24Bitcoin country persona.
220. 8:31Extranjero nunca antes de hoy.
221. 8:34Wow. If you ask a regular Salvadoran outside
222. 8:37the bubble, for example,
223. 8:38the taxi driver who lives away from the
224. 8:40tourist zone, or the woman who runs a shop
225. 8:42just a mile up the hill away from El Zonte.
226. 8:45A lot of them don't know what Bitcoin Beach
227. 8:47is. For us, it's an international story,
228. 8:50but for them it's just a rumor.
229. 8:52If you genuinely wanted people to adopt the
230. 8:54hardest money known to mankind,
231. 8:56then you teach them in their own language.
232. 8:58At scale, it looks more like a marketing
233. 9:01campaign for foreigners than a genuine
234. 9:03economic strategy for Salvadorans.
235. 9:05It's beautiful branding pointed at people
236. 9:07with the passports and the capital.
237. 9:09And Bukele is a razor sharp operator.
238. 9:12He knows exactly who's watching and who's
239. 9:14clapping. The Bitcoin country strategy.
240. 9:16It's not for them.
241. 9:18It breaks my heart to say it, but it's for
242. 9:20us. I mean, equally, let me be clear about
243. 9:22who this video is aimed at.
244. 9:24I'm not having a go at El Salvador or its
245. 9:26people because for five years I've filmed
246. 9:28extraordinary, hard working Salvadorans
247. 9:30who've changed their lives with Bitcoin
248. 9:32technology. They did it from the bottom up
249. 9:34because they chose to.
250. 9:35Mama Rosa, who saves in Bitcoin from her
251. 9:37pupusa stand. Napo, who turned one taxi into
252. 9:40a fleet of taxis with Bitcoin in mind.
253. 9:43These are the real Bitcoin stories.
254. 9:45The people of El Salvador have earned every
255. 9:47bit of safety and hope that they fought for.
256. 9:50None of my questions are aimed down at them.
257. 9:52This is about punching up at the powerful,
258. 9:55sophisticated government.
259. 9:56Because when a state borrows the language of
260. 9:58freedom, sovereignty, and decentralization to
261. 10:01sell itself to the world,
262. 10:02the people who actually believe in these
263. 10:04words have a duty to hold it to them.
264. 10:06That's what this video is.
265. 10:12Question four now Bitcoin,
266. 10:14it tends to attract skeptics,
267. 10:15contrarians, and people who naturally
268. 10:17question power.
269. 10:18There's also a couple of like flat earthers
270. 10:21and sun cream Nazis in there,
271. 10:22but it's mostly contrarians and skeptics.
272. 10:24But why are the two people guarding the
273. 10:26official Bitcoin narrative so cozy with
274. 10:29regimes that crush dissent?
275. 10:31Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert they advise the
276. 10:34government on its official Bitcoin strategy.
277. 10:36But for 13 years, right up until the day that
278. 10:39Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022,
279. 10:41they hosted a show on RT,
280. 10:43the Russia state propaganda channel,
281. 10:45and they do not take kindly to journalists.
282. 10:48They take even less kindly to Kindly anyone
283. 10:50asking hard questions about Bitcoin in El
284. 10:53Salvador. My name is Stacy Herbert,
285. 10:55and I don't give a fuck what the media says.
286. 10:57Fuck those guys, fuck the media and fuck
287. 11:00Cointelegraph.
288. 11:03Yeah. So that was me on a stage like this at
289. 11:06a Bitcoin conference in 2023.
290. 11:08Now Stacy says she doesn't care about the
291. 11:10media, so she's not going to care what I say
292. 11:12in this video. But this should show you how
293. 11:14that project and that government deals with
294. 11:16scrutiny going from Russia Today to the
295. 11:20Bitcoin office.
296. 11:22Oof! Credit where credit is due though.
297. 11:24Max and Stacy have kept El Salvador Bitcoin
298. 11:27only. They made sure the Bitcoiners,
299. 11:29the grifters, the scammers,
300. 11:30they kicked it out of El Salvador.
301. 11:33But the deal for the influencers and the El
302. 11:35Salvador Bitcoiners seems to be quite simple.
303. 11:37Either you take the money you read from the
304. 11:39damn script, or you get ostracized and
305. 11:42sidelined, and it's bigger than Max and
306. 11:45Stacy. Some of the loudest privacy voices in
307. 11:47Bitcoin. People who will spend all day on
308. 11:49Twitter calling Europe a dystopian state or
309. 11:52the EU a surveillance state.
310. 11:54They go completely silent on El Salvador,
311. 11:56but it's the same surveillance,
312. 11:58the same erosion of rights,
313. 12:00just under a different flag.
314. 12:02Now, I'm not going to read you out a list of
315. 12:04names, but I'll just ask the question that
316. 12:06they should be asking themselves.
317. 12:08Is your defense of privacy a principle,
318. 12:11or is it only for the countries you don't
319. 12:14like, the ones that don't call themselves a
320. 12:17Bitcoin country? And sure,
321. 12:23right about now, someone's definitely typing
322. 12:24in the comments. Well,
323. 12:25it's easy for you to throw mud at El
324. 12:27Salvador. You live in Europe.
325. 12:29The UK jails people for tweeting.
326. 12:31You know what? You are completely right.
327. 12:33The war on encryption,
328. 12:35chat control, digital ID creeping in CBDCs.
329. 12:38The fourth turning is here and I don't like
330. 12:40it. But I recently uncovered the corrupt
331. 12:42officials and the KYC data leaks in France
332. 12:45that led to French attacks on Bitcoiners
333. 12:47there. The link is on screen right now if you
334. 12:48want to check it out. The point is, though,
335. 12:50that the West is getting more and more
336. 12:51draconian and it worries me.
337. 12:53But here's the difference. Europe never stood
338. 12:55on a stage and told the world it was the home
339. 12:58of freedom money. Brussels isn't selling
340. 13:00itself to Bitcoiners as the great Cypherpunk
341. 13:02experiment, but El Salvador.
342. 13:04It did both.
343. 13:05It built the surveillance,
344. 13:07it wrapped it under the Bitcoin flag,
345. 13:08and it sold us that same flag,
346. 13:11a surveillance state that admits what it is,
347. 13:13is at least being honest with you.
348. 13:15But a surveillance state that markets itself
349. 13:18as this Bitcoin freedom project,
350. 13:20while it reads its own messages,
351. 13:22is something far, far worse.
352. 13:24By the way, if you want to defend your
353. 13:26financial privacy, then a great way to do so
354. 13:29is using Bitcoin.
355. 13:30Bitcoin is a Bitcoin lightning self-custody
356. 13:33wallet. Scan the QR code on screen to get
357. 13:35free Bitcoin from biscuit.
358. 13:37Cheers. Biscuit. Final question and thanks
359. 13:43for sticking with me thus far because this
360. 13:45one really panics me as a journalist.
361. 13:47So if the state and the country is long safe,
362. 13:50then why sustain those oppressive emergency
363. 13:53powers? This isn't the privacy law.
364. 13:55This is the state of emergency,
365. 13:57effectively martial law.
366. 13:59Let me explain. So the last time I was in San
367. 14:01Salvador, I got a haircut and a pedicure.
368. 14:04Journalism. Pro tip by the way,
369. 14:06the local salon is a great place to spend a
370. 14:09day and chat to. Locals.
371. 14:10Get a sense of what's happening on the
372. 14:12ground. But naturally,
373. 14:13the ladies, the hairdressers,
374. 14:15they were all in adoration of Buckley.
375. 14:18This guy has like a 90% approval rating.
376. 14:20He is incredibly popular because,
377. 14:23you know, he saved the country from the
378. 14:25gangs. Then I got talking to this local kid.
379. 14:28He was 21 years old and covered in tattoos on
380. 14:31his neck, on the side of his face,
381. 14:33everywhere. But under the state of emergency,
382. 14:35where the normal rules of arrest are
383. 14:37suspended, a police officer saw him walking
384. 14:39down the street one day.
385. 14:40They saw his tattoos and they thought that
386. 14:43was enough time to handcuff him and throw him
387. 14:45into jail. He spent three months in prison
388. 14:48with no lawyer, no trial and no phone call,
389. 14:51and he only got out because one of his
390. 14:52clients at the hair salon was a lawyer who
391. 14:54fought so hard to get him freed.
392. 14:58Criminals. Criminals sobre todo Los lideres
393. 15:01enfrenta en la justicia.
394. 15:02Pero Los innocentes Q ustedes llaman de
395. 15:04manera mal intentional de margen de error
396. 15:07libre en Los liberan.
397. 15:10Los human rights groups have documented
398. 15:12thousands of innocent people who were swept
399. 15:14up in the same way.
400. 15:15Police officers have described being handed
401. 15:17arrest quotas.
402. 15:18A number of bodies that they had to bring in
403. 15:20each day. I asked him,
404. 15:22after three months in a cell,
405. 15:24thinking about nothing but presumably resent
406. 15:26for the regime and El Salvador.
407. 15:28Surely he resents Buckley.
408. 15:30And he looked at me and he said, no,
409. 15:32I'm fine when it comes to this regime.
410. 15:34I'm neutral. That floored me.
411. 15:35And that's the nuance that Bitcoin and crypto
412. 15:38tourists like me, we almost always miss.
413. 15:41Because before Buckley,
414. 15:42ordinary Salvadorans lived in genuine terror.
415. 15:45Gangs were taxing their shops,
416. 15:47killing their kids, and booklet crushed those
417. 15:50gangs. That part is real,
418. 15:52and I don't think the Salvadorans will be
419. 15:54quick to forget it.
420. 15:55So the trade for the average person is
421. 15:57brutally simple.
422. 15:59You give up the abstract stuff like the
423. 16:00privacy, like the due process or the free
424. 16:03press, and in exchange,
425. 16:05your child walks home alive.
426. 16:07Put it this way.
427. 16:08And of course, safety always wins.
428. 16:11But this is precisely why Satoshi Nakamoto
429. 16:14built Bitcoin. It was so you had the ability
430. 16:16to opt out and to refuse to take part in this
431. 16:19trade at all. The whole point was a shield
432. 16:21that the state cannot take off you,
433. 16:23even when the state is frightened,
434. 16:24even when it has a genuinely good reason.
435. 16:27With Bitcoin, you can opt out a government
436. 16:30that asks you to hand over that shield has
437. 16:32not understood Bitcoin.
438. 16:34It's just trying to tap into one of the most
439. 16:36powerful brands that this century has ever
440. 16:38seen. So let me be honest about where I've
441. 16:40landed, because at some point,
442. 16:42a journalist has to stop asking questions and
443. 16:44explain what they think.
444. 16:45Now, I believe that Kelly is a dictator and
445. 16:48it's not because of the Bitcoin stuff.
446. 16:50That's just one small part of it.
447. 16:52The suspended constitution eliminating
448. 16:54presidential term limits,
449. 16:56the permanent emergency.
450. 16:57The tens of thousands who are jailed without
451. 16:59trial, the spyware on journalists phones,
452. 17:02criminalising independent journalism and
453. 17:05establishing a de facto one party state.
454. 17:08The list goes on and on.
455. 17:10This is the dictator's playbook,
456. 17:12and I know that for some of you,
457. 17:14this is not the worst thing in the world. I
458. 17:16mean, look at what Buckley has done.
459. 17:17He took a tiny country nobody could place on
460. 17:20a map and made it world famous.
461. 17:23He took one of the most dangerous places on
462. 17:26earth and made it safe.
463. 17:28And he did more than anyone to put Bitcoin on
464. 17:31the global stage.
465. 17:32I'm not blind to any of that.
466. 17:34It's real and it matters.
467. 17:35But Claudio Ortiz said it on the stage
468. 17:37yesterday. And popularity is not legitimacy.
469. 17:41So here's what the Oslo Freedom Forum has
470. 17:43taught me if we don't do the actual work of
471. 17:46journalism, if we don't ask uncomfortable
472. 17:48questions, if we don't speak truth to power,
473. 17:51then we lose that truth.
474. 17:53Claudio Ortiz asked the journalists in the
475. 17:55room to do one thing yesterday do not live
476. 17:58with his name.
477. 18:00Live with the name of the people that are
478. 18:02being silenced. Challenge the narrative.
479. 18:06Challenge the narrative,
480. 18:08she said. Demand accountability.
481. 18:10So that's what this is.
482. 18:11I'm not here to pretend that a safe
483. 18:13dictatorship is a happy ending just because
484. 18:16it stacks SATs.
485. 18:17Because the people who actually live under
486. 18:19it, the ones that had to speak to in whispers
487. 18:22in another country, they can't say that for
488. 18:24themselves. And if those of us with a
489. 18:25platform and a passport won't say it for
490. 18:27them, then what exactly is all this freedom
491. 18:30money for? I'm Joe Nakamoto,
492. 18:32reporting from the Oslo Freedom Forum.
493. 18:34Hit subscribe and I'll see you on the next
494. 18:36video. In the meantime,
495. 18:37check out this video of another real life,
496. 18:40real world Bitcoin adoption story.
497. 18:42Check it out here.