Isaiah Jackson and Max Keiser: Swan Signal Live E15

Episode 15 was broad­cast on June 17^th, 2020 at block height 635,216. We were joined by Isaiah Jackson, author of Bitcoin and Black America, and Max Keiser, host of the Keiser Report. Swan Creative Director Jason Don joined and Head of Educa­tion Brady Swenson hosted.

Subscribe to the Swan Signal YouTube channel and Swan Signal podcast.

Episode Summary

• 00:00:00 — Welcome to Swan Signal Live 
• 00:03:17 — How Bitcoin can help Black America econom­i­cally, “Buck the Fanks”, and Bitcoin as a choice 
• 00:08:11 — Biases in the legacy finan­cial system against black Americans 
• 00:11:57 — What Bitcoin needs to become a serious opt-out option 00:14:16 — Using Bitcoin today 
• 00:15:20 — Bitcoin’s adoption as a medium of exchange and an oppor­tu­nity for disen­fran­chised communities 
• 00:19:54 — The impact of politics/legislation on Bitcoin and joining the revolution 
• 00:23:47 — @IAmCharacter’s speech at a protest 
• 00:26:44 — George Floyd, “cantil­lion­aires”, and viral elites 
• 00:30:21 — Inten­tions versus incen­tives, piracy, and Bitcoin as an uncon­fis­cat­ible treasure 
• 00:33:16 — Black Wall Street 
• 00:35:10 — Bitcoin’s circular economy and regula­tory hurdles 
• 00:36:33 — How to help Bitcoin grow, get others involved, and find common ground 
• 00:42:58 — The response to Bitcoin and Black America 
• 00:45:05 — Black Chain and supporting small businesses 
• 00:46:22 — Supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and using Bitcoin to defund the racism industry 
• 00:55:33 — Resources for Bitcoiners 
• 00:59:10 — Bitcoin’s geopo­lit­ical impact and reshaping the world economy 
• 01:04:05 — Reshaping the Bitcoin narra­tive to fit the audience 
• 01:05:56 — Closing thoughts

Transcript

Brady Swenson:

Welcome to the Swan Signal podcast, produc­tion of Swan Bitcoin, the best way to accumu­late Bitcoin using automatic recur­ring buys at swanbitcoin.com. I’m Brady, head of educa­tion at Swan and on behalf of the Swan team, welcome to the Swan Signal podcast.

Brady Swenson:

Swan Signal pairs up great Bitcoiners for compelling discus­sions that are unique on the Bitcoin content scene. Every week we broad­cast Swan Signal live on Twitter @SwanBitcoin, YouTube, YouTube.com/swansignal, Facebook and Twitch, and we publish the audio here on this podcast.

Brady Swenson:

Swan is as easy as it gets to accumu­late Bitcoin. One, you auto fund USD from your bank account to Swan. Two, we auto stack BTC for you. Three, you can auto withdraw that BTC to your own wallet if you so choose. And that’s it. One, two, three. You can use one of the ref links of our guests today, Isaiah Jackson, to get started, swanbitcoin.com/Bitcoinzay, Z‑A-Y, and get $10 dropped into your account after you start auto stacking with Swan.

Brady Swenson:

And speaking of our referral program, we want you to join it. It’s called the Swan Force. You can sign up at swanBitcoin.com/enlist. You’ll get a custom landing page with your avatar and message at the top. You are in 0.25% of every Swan plan purchase your refer­rals make for three years. And they get $10 of BTC dropped into their Swan accounts. Every­body wins. You do not need to be in the United States to join Swan Force. You can sign up US-based customers from anywhere in the world. We’ll pay you in sats.

Brady Swenson:

All right, today, we are joined by Isaiah Jackson, author of Bitcoin & Black America, and Max Keiser, host of the Keiser Report, and Jason Don, aka Brekkie von Bitcoin, creative director at Swan. I’m glad you found your way here. I hope you enjoy.

Brady Swenson:

Today we have with us Isaiah Jackson. He’s the author of Bitcoin & Black America.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to be on this platform. Thank you for having me.

Brady Swenson:

Absolutely, man. And of course, we have the one and only Max Keiser. He’s host of the Keiser Report. Welcome Max.

Max Keiser:

Yeah, hey. Hey every­body. Great to be here.

Brady Swenson:

And we’re also joined by Jason Don. You’ll know him better as Brekkie von Bitcoin. He’s creative director at Swan. Welcome Brek. How’s it going?

Jason Don:

Well, thanks for having me. And Max, I have to say as usual, your sunglasses are amazing and I want them.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, Max-

Max Keiser:

Yeah, it’s all avail­able on the Swan merchan­dise store.

Jason Don:

Maybe. Coming soon. Coming soon.

Max Keiser:

That’s swanbitcoin.com/Max.

Brady Swenson:

There you go. Hey, and Max, congrat­u­la­tions on getting your handle back.

Max Keiser:

Yeah, fantastic. The Swan people, they’re so attuned with every­thing that’s great in the universe. They helped me to get my original Max Keiser Twitter handle back. So thanks so much Swan, team Swan.

Brady Swenson:

All right. That’s awesome. Glad we could get that back, @MaxKeiser. The @RealMaxKeiser handle is now Max’s alter ego, but he’ll be tweeting back on Max Keiser.

Brady Swenson:

All right, there’s lots to talk about here. Let’s start out with talking about one of Isaiah’s tweets that he tweeted out a little bit ago on June 1^st. It read like this, “I am not saying Bitcoin can stop police violence, but when the smoke clears we need an economic solution to make our commu­nity self-suffi­cient. Bitcoin has to be a part of that strategy because of censor­ship resis­tance, scarcity and remit­tance payments.”

Brady Swenson:

Isaiah, let’s discuss this idea a bit deeper how Bitcoin might be able to help make a differ­ence for Black Ameri­cans on this front. How can Bitcoin help Black America economically?

Isaiah Jackson:

Absolutely. When I wrote the book and some of the work that I’ve done, one of things that I saw is that a lot of Black Ameri­cans don’t have any leverage in this economy and don’t have any sort of plan B if this economy goes to shit. And every­body needs that plan B and I think Bitcoin is that solution. And unfor­tu­nately, we haven’t had as much traction as we should’ve over the years. However, that is picking up.

Isaiah Jackson:

The reason I wrote that tweet and put it out is because at the time, like now, people are unemployed, 40 million unemployed, money printer go burr, or [inaudible 00:05:07]. The Fed is just printing trillions of dollars. We need to exit from this economic system. And in our commu­nity, especially so, we should be at the forefront because we have seen nothing that indicates that it’s going to work for us in the long-term. So I wrote that tweet because yes, the riots, the protests, getting your voice out is good, but econom­i­cally if it doesn’t change then we’ll be doing the same thing next year.

Brady Swenson:

Absolutely, man. Max, you got a take on this front?

Max Keiser:

Right. Well, Bitcoin is uncon­fis­cat­able. That’s an impor­tant attribute for Ameri­ca’s Black commu­nity because they unfor­tu­nately, have had their wealth confis­cated time and time again. And we see it. For example, in 2008 finan­cial crisis when the biggest loser were Black homeowners who had their homes basically stolen by banks, who were making all those fraud­u­lent loans to begin with. And the decision was made to bail out the banks, not the people who were victims of the fraud­u­lent loans that were made by those banks.

Max Keiser:

So the history of Black America is a history of perpetual disen­fran­chise­ment. So Bitcoin is uncon­fis­cat­able. So that’s a key attribute. It’s money that once you put it into a cold wallet, that’s not going to be confis­cated. That I think that point has got to be driven home because the Black commu­nity lives in a hostile environ­ment, right? This is the White polit­ical system is… When it’s described as a system of White supremacy, that’s not incor­rect. That is correct. So this is the first time ever Black commu­ni­ties got a chance to amass wealth that’s unconfiscatable.

Jason Don:

To kind of add to that basically something that is also an impor­tant aspect of it is the opt-in nature of it. One of my biggest ah-ha moments was when I was just writing things out and I was realizing, I was like, “I never chose to use the dollar.” You know? People around the world, they didn’t choose to use their natural curren­cies. They didn’t choose central banks. They didn’t choose any of the quanti­ta­tive easing.

Jason Don:

Bitcoin is a choice. I choose to use Bitcoin every single day. I choose to hold it every single day. Whether you realize it or not, you’re making a choice to either hold it or not to hold it. If you’ve heard of Bitcoin, you’re making a choice whether you realize it or not. And choice is power and the ability to make a choice is powerful. And that’s part of why I think Bitcoin is so incred­ible because it gives you that power. So to disen­fran­chise commu­ni­ties take the power where you can, you know?

Brady Swenson:

I hear that, man. I hear that. Isaiah, in your book, Bitcoin & Black America, in chapter four it seems appro­priate to bring it up now, it’s titled Buck the Fanks. I recog­nize that Max has got the shirt on right there. He hasn’t flipped the letters though. It’s just straight up.

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah, I was trying to make it kid friendly.

Brady Swenson:

I appre­ciate that.

Isaiah Jackson:

But [crosstalk] version. Yeah, fuck the banks.

Brady Swenson:

Yep, there you go. So yeah, in that chapter you detail instances where banks have taken advan­tage of Black Ameri­cans. Could you run through some of those examples? Max gave one kind of broadly with the 2008 finan­cial crisis. Banks really took advan­tage there, but I know that there’s some specific examples you lay out there. How is the legacy finan­cial system biased against Black Ameri­cans in particular?

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. The legacy finan­cial system we see today has done numerous things. In my book I outline a few. The biggest one being, or the two biggest ones being loan discrim­i­na­tion and redlining. These two things have taken a massive amount of wealth out of the Black commu­nity or not even allow them to get that wealth.

Isaiah Jackson:

For those who don’t know what redlining is, banks basically subjected Black people to live in one area that was never going to increase in property value simply because they put all of the shit nobody wants near them, nuclear power ways, they’d build highways straight through their neigh­bor­hood. The trucking compa­nies, they sit in these areas. So the property taxes are never ever going to actually go up. So the banks had a hand in doing that in the 1940s and ’50s.

Isaiah Jackson:

Also, loan discrim­i­na­tion. A lot of people think that the problems Black people have, oh it’s old. Slavery and Jim Crow, that’s back in the day. And I specif­i­cally put examples from 2012 up to now. So we’re talking about in the last 10 years these are the discrim­i­na­tion loans, or discrim­i­na­tory loans that banks have made. And they’ve had to payoff either out of court or go to court for them.

Isaiah Jackson:

One of the specific ones is the Bank of America scandal where they put, I believe, it was 50,000 fake bank accounts just so they could get a good bonus. A lot of people… My mom was affected by that because she had, I believe, an old account with Wachovia and I’m sorry, I said Bank of America, but it’s Wells Fargo, they’re all shit, but it was Wells Fargo. She had an old account with Wachovia and they used the data from back in the ’90s to fake an account. And then she got notices that she had a new credit card account. And it’s crazy to see because they got away with it. They paid off every­body. And every­body just kind of forgot about it.

Isaiah Jackson:

But I wanted to outline specif­i­cally that the banks that you see every day, they don’t give a shit about you. They’re going to carry out their mission, which is to take your money and use it as they please. They don’t actually have the money that they say. We all know they only need 10% of the money that they claim they have in the bank.

Isaiah Jackson:

So all these things I outline in chapter four are basically to show you that we should turn our backs on banks completely and come up with a new solution. Bitcoin to me is that solution and there should be no question about it. I mean, I don’t think there’s a majority of Black people who are like, “Yeah, I would rather go with a bank.” Not really. They just don’t have a choice. But now that they do, we’re presenting that to them now.

Brady Swenson:

Brekkie, did you want to weigh in?

Jason Don:

I think he said it perfectly right there.

Brady Swenson:

Right? Yeah. So in the chapter there’s quite a few other examples and it’s undeni­able what has happened, especially with these very clear examples. And it goes back a lot farther than that too through history. Like Isaiah was talking about, when banks would not give loans to Black Ameri­cans if they were applying for loans to live in a certain part of the country, right? Used to be suburbs, things changed, but that denied Black Ameri­cans the ability or the chance to invest in real estate that would have gone up in value in maybe different ways, or to just have other oppor­tu­ni­ties in that front.

Brady Swenson:

So I appre­ciate that, sharing that. So let’s dive a little bit deeper into, you Isaiah, called Bitcoin the answer, right? So let’s discuss the idea that Bitcoin might be able to make a differ­ence for Black Ameri­cans. What specif­i­cally? Obviously, we have the confis­ca­tion resis­tance that we talked about and opting out of the banking system. What do you think we need to do? How does Bitcoin need to develop to make this a serious opt-out option as soon as possible?

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. So there are a lot of compa­nies, there are part of compa­nies who have worked to increase onboarding. Because when I first started and I’m sure when Max first started, Brekkie you, Brady as well, Bitcoin was very much the wild west. It was very techie and you kind of had to know what you’re doing. But now, we have on ramps, third parties that can bring people on to exchanges like Swan or to other places where they can purchase Bitcoin regularly. And going forward, what I would like to see from the Black commu­nity is that we embrace it. And the reason we should embrace it is because for one, censor­ship resis­tance, but it solves problems that directly affect us.

Isaiah Jackson:

So in the Black commu­nity, every­body is not Black and American. We have a lot of Caribbean, we have a lot of people from African countries, Zimbabwe, Ghana, who come here and are consid­ered… They are Black, but they’re not techni­cally Black Ameri­cans. So remit­tances is another thing. The exorbi­tant amount with Money­Gram and Western Union, that should be gone. They’re just as shitty as banks. Get them out of here.

Isaiah Jackson:

So being able to send money back home for a smaller fee is something that is specific to our commu­nity. As well as having our insti­tu­tions, such as the Black Church, collect Bitcoin for invest­ment or for a donation to keep as an asset long-term. So specif­i­cally, Bitcoin solves problems that we specif­i­cally have, not just on a broad level. It is, we’re fighting the Fed and we don’t want money printing, but it specif­i­cally solves those problems. And if we move forward from a store value to a medium of exchange, at that point, we start to see, “Hey, we can separate completely,” and then maybe 10 years from now, a unit of account to where we have completely separated and we have this inter­na­tional, global currency moving. So I think that’s the process of how Black people should see Bitcoin and the problems that it solves specifically.

Brady Swenson:

Nice. How are you using Bitcoin today? Are you using it as a medium of exchange at least from time to time?

Isaiah Jackson:

All the time.

Brady Swenson:

Mm-hmm (affir­ma­tive).

Isaiah Jackson:

I have about 70% of my holdings in Bitcoin. Well actually, as far as cryptocur­rency, 90% of Bitcoin, but 70% of my money is in Bitcoin and cryptocur­rency. I don’t just talk about it. I liter­ally live it. I’ve bought so much stuff with Bitcoin over the years. Some businesses have gone away. Shout out to [Gif.IO 00:14:58], I used to use them a lot. But other businesses have popped up. Lolli, they give you free sats for shopping, doing what you do. Fold app, you can purchase from Starbucks, Target. I’ve done it a million times purchasing with Bitcoin.

Brady Swenson:

Mm-hmm (affir­ma­tive).

Isaiah Jackson:

So yeah, I use it all the time. Cheap Air, it’s about flights. Bitcoin has a medium exchange is use. There are some things that can be fixed, but I think Light­ning Network as long as… and also, future devel­op­ment will solve that. If you think Bitcoin is done as far as devel­op­ment, you don’t know technology. We have a long way to go. So payments will get better. Some fees are a little bit more, but I’m willing to accept that as long as we can show that medium of exchange works. Yep.

Brady Swenson:

Absolutely, man. Max, what are the biggest imped­i­ments in your opinion to Bitcoin being adopted as a medium of exchange?

Max Keiser:

Right, so where we see Bitcoin being adopted right now and with great urgency would be in countries like Venezuela, Argentina, countries around the world that are experi­encing hyper-infla­tion, countries that are already coming under extreme stress because banks are failing. And the fiat money system is failing. And that has always been a big driver of Bitcoin and it always will be.

Max Keiser:

Here in the United States the Black commu­ni­ty’s a subset of the overall commu­nity that’s experi­encing extreme stress. Isaiah had mentioned the loan discrim­i­na­tion and redlining, that’s real. Also, gerry­man­dering is another polit­ical tool used to isolate and victimize commu­ni­ties like the Black commu­nity. And I call this instrastra­tive parti, where instrastrates are used to discrim­i­nate against.

Max Keiser:

If you’re a friend of Goldman Sachs you can borrow money at 0%, or if you’re Jamie Dimon, they’ll actually pay you to borrow money. Your borrowing costs are negative. If you’re not a friend of Goldman Sachs, if you are in one of these other commu­ni­ties that are already being gerry­man­dered and polit­i­cally discrim­i­nated against, your cost of borrowing, well, right off with a credit card that’s 20%. If you get behind on a payment, now you’re in a payday lending situa­tion that’s 3000%, 5000%, 10,000%, the annual rates of return.

Max Keiser:

So your ability to rise above that is virtu­ally zero. So it is a parti system. America lives in an instrastra­tive parti’ed system. Those who live on the wrong side of the law, the Bantustan, primarily the Black commu­nity in partic­ular, are traded like their human rights are being violated every single day by the banks. If you don’t live in Bantustan, you live in another part of the town then you get privi­leges that are not avail­able to every­body else.

Max Keiser:

So just to… That’s the adoption rate is driven by need. And that’s why I believe this Bitcoin & Black America book is so impor­tant and so vital, and why it’s so popular, and why it’s gaining so much traction. It’s because finally, in the Black commu­nity, in America there’s a way to escape the open-air prisons that are these commu­ni­ties maintained by these corrupt bankers.

Max Keiser:

So this is really a remark­able period that we’re living in and I think the Bitcoin adoption rate in America may be driven princi­pally by the Black commu­nity because they’re the ones that are the biggest victims of the banking industry.

Jason Don:

What’s inter­esting about these use cases and something I like to highlight about Bitcoin. Also, sorry about the airplane noise, I just moved near an airport. But Bitcoin is what you want it to be. So disen­fran­chised commu­ni­ties that want to opt out, that want to create their own circular economies, they can do that. You know? But at the same time, if you’re worried about wealth preser­va­tion, about being able to carry forward your money from gener­a­tion to gener­a­tion and build and do low-time prefer­ence activ­i­ties, Bitcoin works for that reason too.

Jason Don:

I transact in Bitcoin. I buy things all the time using the Light­ning Network, but like Isaiah, a lot of my wealth I’m storing in Bitcoin. So I think people need to sort of accept that and accept that it’ll be used in different ways. And Bitcoin adoption in America, let’s say, it will be as varied as America is, and that’s a good thing. Yeah, that’s what I got.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the biggest imped­i­ments is tax policy. And I really hope that we can get some change on that front. It’s just so onerous right now. And everyone should obviously report, I hope we see legis­la­tion change on that front. And I would really like to see some polit­ical will built up to change that. What other changes could we see polit­i­cally, legisla­tively for Bitcoin that would be pro Bitcoin, as we have seen some Bitcoiners in Congress already? What do you think Zay?

Isaiah Jackson:

Well, in my opinion, the best thing they can do is leave us the fuck alone. Just leave us to our own bearings. If you think we’re going to fail, then just leave us alone and let us fail because Bitcoiners who have been here long enough have seen Bitcoin die a thousand times. We’ve seen the articles, we’ve seen politi­cians talk about how it’s used for crimi­nals. The best thing you could do is just leave us alone.

Isaiah Jackson:

As far as regula­tion, Bitcoin itself really can’t be regulated. You can regulate the on ramps, you can regulate the exchanges, you can try and regulate some of the people, but really if you leave Bitcoiners alone, we build own economy by ourselves and we self-regulate. I think we do a good job of that, of self-regulating some of the scammers, getting them out of here, some of the people who are doing terrible stuff. I think we do a pretty good job of that.

Isaiah Jackson:

I think leaving us alone is the best policy. And if a politi­cian comes out and is like, “Yes, Bitcoin is not a govern­ment currency, but Bitcoin is software. Let the people who deal with it, deal with it. And we won’t have any hands-on, we won’t touch it. We don’t tax Bitcoin.” Only when you change it back to cash, our money, then we will, but if you just leave Bitcoin to itself, I think that will be the best polit­ical strategy for somebody.

Isaiah Jackson:

Hopefully, somebody comes with it. Most people they like it, but they still want to find a way to connect it to a bank, but the best thing to do is just hands off.

Brady Swenson:

Max, you have a take on this?

Max Keiser:

I don’t see any govern­ment proposals adding anything of value to the current monetary policy that is Bitcoin. It’s the hardest money every created in history. It already has the ability to elevate the conscious­ness of those who are partic­i­pating in it to a point where they see the current state of govern­ment is pathetic and useless. And what’s going to happen in my view is that more and more folks in the govern­ment will become Bitcoiners and will leave government.

Max Keiser:

The best thing they can do is quit their job as a senator, quit their job as a congressman, quit their job as a Federal Reserve Bank chairman, and get on with the revolu­tion because they’re just… I think we’re going to see more and more of that. Bitcoin has axiom as a fifth column inside the govern­ment right now, where govern­ment regula­tors in partic­ular whose job it is to try to regulate Bitcoin. Remember, they’re paid in fiat money and that fiat money’s becoming more worth­less every day. Just like any revolu­tion, once the cops and the regula­tors start to realize that they’re being paid worth­less fiat money, they leave their jobs and they join the revolution.

Max Keiser:

So look at the Ameri­ca’s police force, from coast to coast they’re leaving the police force because they don’t want to do that job anymore because they’re asked to do an impos­sible job, to defend an impos­sible currency. 10, 20, 30% of those police leaving the police force are going to be stacking sats and they’re going to find freedom from this night­mare. So it doesn’t matter what the govern­ment does. It’s no longer relevant.

Jason Don:

Yeah. I mean, there’s only really one thing I think the govern­ment could do that would be good and I don’t think it would ever happen, and that’s recog­nizing that trying to control, trying to manage the economy is a bad thing. And I think we’re just going to see the Fed keep trying and trying and trying until it’s too late. And arguably, it’s already too late. So, we’ll see.

Brady Swenson:

Addition by subtrac­tion. Yeah, I hear that. And Max, I appre­ciate your words, appre­ciate your words Isaiah. Completely agree with you Brekkie. I want to take this moment here to play a video that not everyone may have seen yet. Although, it was very widely circu­lated, over 300,000 views on twitter. This is @IAmCharacter on Twitter posted this video where he is talking about Bitcoin at a protest. Let’s bring it up here on the screen. Boom.

Audio:

And all you need is a phone to start using it. I want everyone to please start learning about a new finan­cial system. This system is called Bitcoin. It was created for this very purpose. So the elites do not have control of the finan­cial system anymore. With Bitcoin, they cannot turn on a printing press and give our dollars to their friends for bailing them out because they weren’t being respon­sible. You cannot bail people out, the elites cannot bail out their friends anymore. Please learn about this system. This system is called Bitcoin. It was created for this very purpose.

Audio:

A great resource is a man named Andreas Antonopoulos. You can look him up on YouTube. Please learn and support this system. You don’t have to put all your money into it. Like my brother said earlier, you can put weekly, $5, but we will no longer let the elites kill us with our own money. That is absurd.

Brady Swenson:

All right, again, that is @IAmTheCharacter on Twitter. Give him a follow. Very powerful words there. Max, you have used this new phrase, least it was new to me from your mouth, the term cantil­lion­aires. All right? And in that protest speech there, IAmTheChar­acter said that, “We need to please start learning about this new finan­cial system. With Bitcoin, they cannot turn on a printing press and give our dollars to their friends for bailing them out.”

Brady Swenson:

Of course, George Floyd was killed for the crime of counter­feiting a $20 bill. And the Fed, at this time in a crazy compar­ison, absolutely ironic, is printing trillions of dollars, most of which ends up in the hands of the very rich. So Max, cantil­lion­aires, can you explain this term that you’ve been using?

Max Keiser:

Right. Well, first of all, George Floyd was killed for allegedly passing a counter­feit $20 bill, is my under­standing. But the term cantil­lion­aire came out of my frustra­tion at people’s refer­ence saying those in the elite class as elites, right? Those who are getting this money first are described as the elites. And I thought that’s a misnomer. That’s a bad word to describe this group of larce­nistic scoundrels. So I thought cantil­lion­aire is a good way to describe them because it gets at the cantil­lion effect, which is basically been documented in economics for a long time.

Max Keiser:

The money printers really distribute the money through a network of their friends who use it first. A great example would be that banks use the money that is printed to buy back their own stock and make the execu­tive stock options go up in value by 1000 or 2000%. Then they go out and they buy yachts and property on Park Avenue or expen­sive paint­ings and assets that continue to go up in value because they continue this scam of taking the money that comes off the presses of the Central Bank to buy back their own stock, which makes them instant billion­aires. Then it trickles down like water trick­ling down a stream. By the time it gets down to the end of the stream, it’s pretty dirty, it’s useless, it loses its purchasing power. And you have this wealth and income gap that keeps getting wider and wider as a result of it.

Max Keiser:

So the cantil­lion­aire effect is becoming a quite sharp, the wealth and income gap in America now is greater than it was during the robber baron period, during the 1880s and 1890s when we saw the rise of the Carne­gies and the Mellons and those robber baron families. We have a much wider gap now than we did then. And we see it on the streets.

Max Keiser:

So the street, we call it the global insur­rec­tion against banker occupa­tion. The street protest, whether it’s Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Arabs Praying, every­where around the world it’s a rebel­lion against the cantil­lion­aires. It’s an inter­na­tional global insur­rec­tion against bankers, the banker occupa­tion. So that’s what I mean by cantillionaire.

Max Keiser:

They shouldn’t be called elites or described positively in any way. Just like you would never describe a parasite that’s… or a flesh-eating amoeba, you wouldn’t describe that as an elite amoeba or an elite virus, right? It’s a disgusting, flesh-eating virus that’s killing you. This is how you have to under­stand the cantil­lion­aires. It’s a virus, there’s a parasite that’s eating the economy from the inside and destroying the economy, and they’re incred­ibly dangerous and toxic.

Jason Don:

Hey Max, question for you. Do you think a lot of these people are knowingly doing this or are they simply playing the system and they’re incen­tivized to do so, so they are?

Max Keiser:

We know that they’re knowingly doing it because whenever the market drops 5% they beg the printers to print more. What’s that all about? When James Cramer goes on CNBC during the 2008 crisis and liter­ally gets on his knees and begs and begs Ben Bernanke to print more money. It’s disgusting display of cantil­lion­aires begging their printing lords to bail them out of their losing positions. And now today, what Trump is… Liter­ally whenever the stock market goes down, he liter­ally prostrates himself and begs Jay Powell to print more money. And he’s begging them to go into negative interest rates.

Max Keiser:

So we know that they under­stand the cause and effect. We know they do it on purpose. They know that they’re ransacking the economy. It’d be like asking Bluebeard the pirate know that he’s a pirate. Right? Yeah, he knows he’s a pirate. He wears a patch over his eye. He sails into town. He steals every­body money and he sings old songs because he’s a pirate. Right? Nobody denies he’s a pirate. He’s a pirate. These guys are pirates. They know they’re pirates. They engage in piracy. That’s their job. That’s who they are. And that’s what Bitcoin fights back against because it’s uncon­fis­cat­able. You can’t take my treasure because it’s uncon­fis­cat­able. It’s immutable. It’s uncen­sorable and it gets rid of the pirates.

Jason Don:

I don’t know about you guys, I could listen to Max rant for hours, upon hours, upon hours.

Isaiah Jackson:

All day, yeah. Just let him go. Yeah, I love it.

Jason Don:

Even if things get darker before they get brighter, I’m just glad we got Max keeping us [inaudible] up in here.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. Yeah, and I want to comment on what you said, Max, the robber baron era, the late 1800s. A lot of people don’t realize that the number one time for Black-owned businesses is now. The second biggest time was in the late 1800s.

Isaiah Jackson:

Before the currency got devalued by the Federal Reserve in 1913, we had Black Wall Street, you had Rosewood, you had Black Wall Street on Wilmington, in Florida, in Georgia. All of these commu­ni­ties were self-suffi­cient because the currency they used, it was a circular economy. They kept it within the commu­nity, people were able to gain wealth. And then we had the robber baron era, onto the Federal Reserve, which messed us all up, but of course, we not only got our money to debased, a lot of those commu­ni­ties got burnt down. So liter­ally brick and mortar burned down as well as your money gets basically burned to the ground as well.

Isaiah Jackson:

So yes, those things have amazing effect long-term because of those commu­ni­ties were able to stand hundred years, I’m pretty sure they would have a lot more prosperous places. So glad you pointed that out, Max. Yes, these people know what they’re doing. Definitely.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah. Isaiah, if you some more details about Black Wall Street and the kind of commu­ni­ties they were just talking about, I’d love to hear more and have you share it with our listeners.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah, absolutely. June 19^th, Juneteenth, which is the celebra­tion when slavery… Actually, it was a celebra­tion of when they told the slaves they were free. It was actually two years after it was passed, but Juneteenth is the celebra­tion of that. And one of the places that is focused during this time is Tulsa, Oklahoma. That was one of the biggest commu­ni­ties where there were Black-owned banks, there were hospi­tals, small businesses, every­thing. A circular economy like we said. They had supported themselves, they were fine. A lot of middle-class people there.

Isaiah Jackson:

However, because the people across town, the White people who live across town and the police were jealous, they liter­ally burned their city to the ground. They killed hundreds, actually thousands, men, women and children. This was not something… If you watch Watchmen the show, a lot of people thought that was fake. They was outraged because they thought, “Why would you put this? This would never happen in American history.” It was like, “No, no, this has actually happened. People got killed.” And the one thing I want people under­stand is that we can create a digital economy today and you can’t burn down Bitcoin.

Isaiah Jackson:

So good luck with that and as far as brick and mortar businesses, you can also protect yourself a lot better today than you could back then. And in my opinion, that histor­ical refer­ence should be what we focus on going forward for prosperity, building businesses, and then also what we have to do to protect ourselves. So that is basically Black Wall Street in a nutshell and we’re trying to bring that back now, just not Wall Street. I don’t give a shit about Wall Street, but name it something else, but just a good, middle-class economy with small businesses. That’s how the economy works.

Brady Swenson:

How do you think Bitcoin might allow that economy to exist in an easier way than the fiat system that we have now? Do you think it’d be more of a fertile ground for small and kind medium-sized businesses as opposed to privi­leging large corpo­ra­tions and creating corpo­rate monopolies?

Isaiah Jackson:

Absolutely. The one thing I’ve proposed is that you can invest in small businesses using Bitcoin. And one of the things holding back is regula­tions, but in a perfect world, if you wanted to get invest­ment as a business and it’s damn near impos­sible at a bank, but you had a good business plan and somebody had Bitcoin, liter­ally one or two Bitcoins gets your business off the ground. And what can happen is from that point, you can pay your manufac­turers in Bitcoin and then they can pay who they need in Bitcoin.

Isaiah Jackson:

Then you start that circular economy. It takes time, but that is something that I want to see. And being able to get invest­ment in Bitcoin in your company, you don’t have to worry. You can get it from anybody in the world. Somebody from Russia, somebody from Zimbabwe, somebody from Canada could invest in you using Bitcoin without these regula­tions stopping you. And your business could just get started just like that. We’re talking about a matter of minutes, not some convo­luted going through lawyers, all that stuff that you have to do as far as raising money.

Isaiah Jackson:

So that’s the vision I see long-term and I think that would be the ultimate win. It’s just regula­tion laws, you’re right, we have to jump through these minefields. Terrible.

Brady Swenson:

Hey Isaiah, we’ve got a question from Chase on YouTube. Shout out to you Chase and thank you for listening. What can the common viewer and Bitcoin holders do to help get others involved with this shift in the next few years? He says, “I want to get involved more and help people that need it.”

Isaiah Jackson:

So first, help yourself. Make sure you have Bitcoin and that you’re using it regularly. And what I would do is, or what I’ve done is every­where I go I mention it, even if I’m in a store that I know doesn’t accept it. I just kind of mention like, “Oh, it would be easier if it was Bitcoin.” I go to some places out here in LA and they’re cashless. And I’m like, “Well, then why don’t you have Bitcoin as an option.” And then most of them know what I’m talking about, but they’re like, “Well, we can’t do it right now because we just can’t.”

Isaiah Jackson:

Just talking about it is pretty paramount because some people just want to hear another person thinking the same they do. So just saying it out loud, I’ve got Uber drivers to accept it, people that accept it for tips, different restau­rants. Just talking about it is the best way to start. And then dollar cost average using Swan, which to me is the best service. And keeping skin in the game because you will be a big believer if you have money in it. You will do some sort of outreach and try to showing people how to use it. Once you’ve used it, you can’t go back. You go down the rabbit hole, you realize how great it is, that’s the best way to get involved.

Jason Don:

You know what else is inter­esting to kind of add to that is I think a lot of people may get discour­aged when they start trying to spread Bitcoin to people. Because you’ll talk to show owner or somebody, and granted, you never want to be too pushy about it, but I think don’t take the world on your shoul­ders. If you go to a bar, you go to a Starbucks, wherever, you talk to somebody and mention Bitcoin and they’re like, “It’s not for me right now.” That’s fine because guess what? The next time a Bitcoiner goes in there and talks to them, it’ll be the second time or the third time, and eventu­ally they’re going to pay attention.

Isaiah Jackson:

Yep, absolutely.

Jason Don:

So it’s not an individual thing. It’s a collec­tive thing.

Isaiah Jackson:

Yep.

Brady Swenson:

Max, what do you think somebody can do who really wants to help Bitcoin grow and get out there more? What’s the best your advice for that person?

Max Keiser:

Nothing. The protocol genius is self-contained and when we go through big price moves, it brings in a million more users, and then it plateaus and then it makes another big price move. So the protocol is hacking humanity. The diffi­cult adjust­ment is hacking the human species. And it finds the sweet spot every two weeks between greed and fear, and it sets out parame­ters for the protocol and the cash rate keeps going higher, and the price keeps going higher and it keeps dominating more of the global energy business, more of the global compu­ta­tional abili­ties, and it’ll pull in more fiat.

Max Keiser:

So this black hole that’s pulling all fiat and all energy into it, it’s going to happen. And I think ironi­cally humans might not be around when Bitcoin hits $100,000 a coin or $400,000 a coin because we have stupidly committed species-wide suicide with our stupidity. Bitcoin doesn’t need us. We need Bitcoin. And don’t try to change Bitcoin. Bitcoin changes you. And it’s going to keep going whether we’re around here or not. It doesn’t need us. It’s just going to keep going. Because it is just basically the protocol is growing in that way. And I can talk more about that, but there’s nothing now that’s going to stop it. It’s already trans­forming businesses, trans­forming people’s lives all over the world. You got about what, 80 or 90 million users around the world. That number’s growing pretty high. It’s got 65% of the market cap in the crypto space. It’s got 85% of the hash rate and it’s got 90% of the volume. All those numbers are going to go to 99%, right? It’s going to get 99% of every­thing and keep growing.

Max Keiser:

It’s like money meets a messaging app. Right? Those two things it’s like putting gasoline on a fire. I mean, this thing is… Every­thing resisted. Software has trans­formed every­thing and every­one’s lives now for a few decades. The last holdout that hadn’t been utterly trans­formed by software was money itself. In 2009 the fuse was lit. Right? Money stopped being what it was for thousands of years and it became something different and much better and does what it’s supposed to do much better.

Max Keiser:

And now, it’s just it’s happening whether we like it or not, whether we’re going to be here to enjoy it or not. I think people just need to chill out and under­stand that things are going to be a lot better now and get on with getting along. Get along to get along. This whole Black Lives Matter movement is a great oppor­tu­nity for race relations in America to calm the fuck down because Bitcoin is going to make every­one’s lives better, but not if we’re out in the street shooting each other. That’s fucked up.

Brady Swenson:

But Max, I can’t calm down about Bitcoin. Sorry Zay. I’ll hand it back to you in just a second. I can’t calm down about Bitcoin. It’s organ­i­cally like incen­tivizing all of us, you included, all of us here included, to educate, to market this thing. So yeah, I agree it’s inevitable, but Bitcoin is stuck with us. Bitcoiners shouting from the rooftops as much as they can. I don’t know if it’ll do much good, but I hope that it’ll make a smoother transi­tion. That’s my hope.

Brady Swenson:

Zay, what were you going to say?

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah, I was going to say, it always confuses me how people can be racist when they are getting fucked by the Fed just like we are. Why are we not fighting at the same time?

Jason Don:

Because they don’t know it.

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah, exactly. I’m like, “What are we doing?” Like, “What are you even talking about?” So it always is funny to me to see that and then say, “Yeah, but you’re still broke? What are even talking about here?” So yeah, it’s just funny to see that going forward. Bitcoin I think is not going to solve racism, but as far as changing the money, yeah, it’ll definitely change mindset. And when we feel like we’re all in this together, that’s when you’ll start to see people calm the fuck down, as Max so eloquently put it.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, yeah. All right. I want to go back to a quote from the IAmTheChar­acter Bitcoin speech that he made. He said that, “The legacy finan­cial system is used to oppress us.” Zay, I want to ask you, what was the response to your book before these protests came about and how has that changed since we’ve seen people holding up signs adver­tising basically your book, or recom­mending your book at these protests?

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah, so I do want to give a shout out to Max. He did the first inter­view for the book the day it came out, July 11^th of last year. So the recep­tion after Max did the inter­view and then with Pomp, Anthony Pompliano on his podcast, the recep­tion was great when it first came out. The problem was much like Max back in 2011, it was sort of ahead of its time. It came out during a dead period of Bitcoin. There wasn’t any excite­ment. There wasn’t… You know how every­body gets all hyped FOMO’ing in on price and then starts looking up different Bitcoin products.

Isaiah Jackson:

So it was a year before this happened, but I’ve had the idea for about four years now. And when it came out, the recep­tion was great, but the reason I think it’s picking up now is because of the protests. People are starting to examine, “Okay, what are we actually doing here?” And I think Bitcoin can be one of the solutions. But it was great recep­tion before. Nothing like the last couple weeks, but people who read it, liked it. That’s all I cared about. It wasn’t as many people, but all I cared about is that it stuck, that if you read it and you liked it and you were able to come up with a solution.

Isaiah Jackson:

It’s a solution-based book. It’s pretty short so that you can get through it and then start doing shit, which is why I wrote it like that. So the recep­tion of it was great before, just more people are catching on. Like they always say, “Overnight success takes years.”

Brady Swenson:

Yeah.

Isaiah Jackson:

A lot of people are like, “Oh, where did this book come from?” And it’s like, “It’s been around. [crosstalk] been around for some time.” But yeah, recep­tion’s been great and just glad to see it moving forward.

Brady Swenson:

So at the end of the book you talk about Black Chain and I think it’s blackchain.com, is that right?

Isaiah Jackson:

Right.

Brady Swenson:

Blackchain.co

Isaiah Jackson:

Blackchain­on­line, yeah, dot com, mm-hmm (affir­ma­tive).

Brady Swenson:

Oh okay. Right. Gotcha. Okay. Can you talk to us a little bit about Black Chain? What are you doing with that?

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. Yep. We’re still in beta testing mode right now. Sort of bringing the vision about that I spoke about before, investing in businesses using Bitcoin. The regula­tion hurdles are ridicu­lous. Just the research we’ve done and building. Every­thing is a hurdle in the US. May actually think about taking it out of the country because there are some economies that need it right now. And we can facil­i­tate it in smaller countries. But Black Chain is a way for businesses, small businesses to get loans in Bitcoin for their business. And it’s building a circular economy because when you get that loan you have to buy supplies that will also be avail­able to purchase from different people, peer-to-peer on an exchange.

Isaiah Jackson:

So those things are basically just trying to build a circular economy from scratch. Marketing-wise, our marketing tool is Black on Businesses, but it is for everyone, anybody can use the platform, and every­body can accept Bitcoin. So jumping through those regula­tions’ hurdles have been a thing, but Black Chain will be coming this year 2020.

Brady Swenson:

Nice. Decided to look at that, another practical solution. Your book is focused on practical solutions, which I really appre­ciate. And you’re putting your effort and time where your words are from that book and I appre­ciate that, man.

Isaiah Jackson:

Thank you.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah.

Jason Don:

I have a question Isaiah.

Isaiah Jackson:

Mm-hmm (affir­ma­tive).

Jason Don:

Kind of ties into what we were just talking about and also ties into the Black Lives Matters movement and every­thing that’s going on. How can White people, how can privi­leged people in classes, how can they be allies? What can we do? Here in LA I see tons of, which I think is a good thing in general, I see tons of signs on houses, “We support you. I’m not Black, but I see you, but we’re with you.” And part of me initially was like, “That kind of seems like virtue signaling.” But then I was like, “You know what? It’s better than them not being there, those signs.” But what are real things that people can do? And one other thing I say is I think a good place to start is just by acknowl­edging these things because most people don’t. They don’t talk about it.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah.

Jason Don:

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. I think the first step has been achieved, acknowl­edging it. I think every­body can acknowl­edge it now. So all right, we got that out the way because some people thought Black people were just talking out of their ass for years. But now, at least we’ve acknowl­edged it. So if you want to go forward, the first thing is consis­tency. Every­thing every White person is doing now, keep doing it. Don’t stop because the protest stop and people stop talking about it. Every­thing you’re doing now just keep doing it, stay vigilant.

Isaiah Jackson:

Also, the money aspect of it. Econom­i­cally of course, Bitcoin I think is a solution, but venture capital­ists, a lot of wealth in this country is in businesses and start-ups that venture capital­ists help fund. And 99% of venture capitalist money goes away from the Black commu­nity. Only 1% of venture capital money goes towards Black founders, Black co-founders, and Black women.

Isaiah Jackson:

So one of the things I would like to see is that venture capital­ists at least look at Black-owned businesses, at least bring them into to pitch, at least acknowl­edge that they exist because a lot of the software that a lot of Black entre­pre­neurs are building just needs money. It’s not a lack of ideas, a lack of work. Venture capital­ists have to take a deep look inside and think to themselves, “Is every great company owned four White dudes?” No, that’s just not the case.

Isaiah Jackson:

And being in the tech world, there’s a bevy of talented devel­opers and businesses. They just don’t get the atten­tion, nobody looks their way and they either have to shut down or they have to succumb to joining a company and given them their talent, like Google or Facebook. So I think money-wise, or social-wise, stay consis­tent with the message, and money-wise VCs start looking to invest in these companies.

Isaiah Jackson:

I am in no way asking any White people to just start handing Black people money. I saw that bullshit in Seattle where there was every White person giving Black person $10. Don’t hand me $10 like I’m some guy on the street. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about just recog­nizing the problem. Then, once you do, the invest­ment part comes easy because then you start realizing, “Oh, statis­ti­cally Black women founders are more successful than any other group. Why would I not invest in them more?” So it’s just paying atten­tion to the facts that have presented themselves and the money does help with that.

Jason Don:

Yeah. There’s one other thing I wanted to add and it ties into the idea of acknowl­edging things. How do I say this? Basically, a long time ago, and for background I’m Jewish, my background. And for a while I consid­ered myself White. And then I read this article that was basically saying that Jews should not consider themselves White and here are the reasons.

Jason Don:

And I found it incred­ibly inter­esting and basically, it was that maybe up until the middle of this past century, most Jews were not assim­i­lated, you know? They lived in their own commu­ni­ties, they dressed… You kind of knew what they looked like based on the way they dressed. And then, something changed where Jews decided to start assim­i­lating, to start wearing normal clothing and to basically pass themselves as White in order to gain the advan­tages of White privilege.

Jason Don:

I think this is something that a lot people don’t think about, but Ameri­ca’s a melting pot, right? If you’re Italian, or you’re Irish, or you’re any of these all these different cultures of peoples that are now lumped into the White category, it was not always that way for a very… Only recently did these things change. You know?

Jason Don:

So remember where you came from. Remember that there are other people who are at a similar position and can’t pass themselves off for privi­lege as easily. So I don’t know. I just thought that was important.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. Yeah, White­ness was kind of created and it was created with money. It wasn’t social thing. It was like well, yeah, White people can get loans and you look White so here you go. Italian, Russian, Jewish, it doesn’t matter. So it was created, trust me. It was very fabri­cated because you’re right. Ellis Island, it was a whole lot of immigrants that got discrim­i­nated against when they first got here in the ’20s. And then all of a sudden in the ’40s and ’50s they started getting loans and they’re a part of society. That’s just how that shit works. And it’s very recent. People keep saying it’s old. My grand­mother was born in 1927, so it’s not old. People still live in that [inaudible] time.

Max Keiser:

Yeah, well in the United States they have what I would call the racism industry. Right? The racism industry in America is huge. For example, the prison industry is driven primarily by racism. We know that prisons around the country do deals with local munic­i­pal­i­ties where they will take over the cost of running those prisons if the cops in that munic­i­pality guarantee occupancy, 98 to 100% occupancy of those prisons, those private prisons.

Max Keiser:

So they do things like pass laws, three strike laws, you go to prison. They changed the drug laws in certain ways. So the easiest popula­tion to put in prison if you have an instrastra­tive parti’ed state like you do in America are the Black popula­tion. So now, you’ve got huge numbers of Black males in prison in America as part of this what I would call the racism industry. So how do you get past that?

Max Keiser:

Well, you’ve got to defund the racism industry. And this is where Bitcoin could be strategic and impactful. In that suddenly there’s going to be a mad scramble to get into this gold rush called Bitcoin. And the industry simply moves on from the easy money of building prisons and arresting Black people, which is incred­ibly profitable for the private prison industry, which is a publicly listed compa­nies on America and they pay the execu­tives millions and millions of dollars to go arrest Black people and put them in prison. That’s their charter. That’s their mandate. That’s what share­holders demand. It’s an industry.

Max Keiser:

But you need something that’s more compet­i­tive that’s going to make people more money. That’s where Bitcoin comes in. Because if all fiat money is collapsing, and all these insti­tu­tions are collapsing, and everyone there’s a mad rush to Bitcoin, suddenly racism is not as profitable anymore and you’ve got something else to do. That’s the only way forward because as long as the culture, the economy, and the politics support this a parti’ed state in America, there’s going to be no change.

Brady Swenson:

You know Max-

Isaiah Jackson:

I just want to a little deeper. Oh sorry.

Brady Swenson:

No.

Isaiah Jackson:

I wanted to go a little deeper on that. The prison popula­tion, as a former teacher, the school to prison pipeline, they liter­ally build prisons based off third grade test scores. That was one of the first things they told us as a teacher because what they figured was that if you can’t read suffi­ciently by the time you’re in third grade, you’re probably not going to be able to do it by eighth grade, you’re probably going to be a criminal by high school.

Isaiah Jackson:

That’s liter­ally what they figured out. And they build prisons based off of that. And if you have an educa­tion system that’s poor in these neigh­bor­hoods, you’re usually going to be able to figure out who’s not going to be educated and then maybe move onto something where they may do crime later. But yes, that is liter­ally built on racism. And they have statis­tics, these people are not dumb. They have statis­tics and they have all of the manpower to carry it through. And they’ve been doing. So yeah.

Max Keiser:

Right. And there’s no break. There’s no break between slavery in America, Jim Crow laws in America and the prison indus­trial complex. There’s no break.

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah.

Max Keiser:

This is one continuum of racism and attempt at genocide essen­tially. Okay? So those are the facts. Now, what’s going to change? Well, you’ve got to change the profit incen­tive. You got to make it more profitable to get out of the racism business. That’s the only way it’s going to change.

Isaiah Jackson:

Right.

Max Keiser:

So that’s where Bitcoin can be impactful because it destroys all the current insti­tu­tions. It destroys the fiat money, it destroys the instrastra­tive parti. So now we have a new business model and now suddenly people are like, “Well, racism isn’t profitable for me anymore. I’m going to move on, do something else.” And that’s how you get the change. You can’t do it without sound money though. You can’t do it without real money, without Bitcoin. As long as fiat money’s around, you’re going to have this problem.

Brady Swenson:

Love the fire you guys are bringing. This is inspiring stuff. Zay, what resources do you recom­mend to Bitcoiners? Besides your book, if somebody wants to dive down deep in the rabbit hole, they’re sold, what resources did you trust when you were learning Bitcoin and what do you recom­mend now to new coiners?

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah, so the first few books I read, Mastering Bitcoin from Andreas Antonopoulos. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every Andreas Antonopoulos video that’s every come out. My first video intro­duc­tion to Bitcoin was the RT Report from Max. Also, making sure you read books like The Bitcoin Standard. Let’s see. It’s so many out there that are so good that I started with, go to Bitcoin websites. I mean, I probably read every Bitcoin book there is.

Isaiah Jackson:

But I would say those resources as well as YouTube channels such as ours or others that liter­ally every day, or every week, tell you about the market, describe to you what to do updates-wise. So those are some of them, but I would say Andreas Antonopoulos is great start. If you watch all his videos, you pretty much have a grasp on how it works. And yeah, follow that up with videos from people like Max, people like Sinclair Skinner from BitMari, his message as well. So yeah, it’s some great resources out there and I would start there.

Brady Swenson:

Nice. Max, what about you, man? [crosstalk] Keiser Report.

Max Keiser:

Well, I would direct people’s atten­tion to a brilliant 10-part series called To The Moon, which was written and produced by Stacy Herbert last year. It’s now online. It covers the first 10 years of Bitcoin. And it gives a kind of a deep dive into the first 10 years of Bitcoin, gives you great background and gets into the person­al­i­ties, the technology.

Max Keiser:

We had them on our show Keiser Report of course. We’ve had just about anyone who’s anyone in Bitcoin has been on that show. Starting in 2011 when we… That’s been really the background music to the Bitcoin revolu­tion has been the Keiser Report, if I will make that state­ment. So anyway, that series is a great encap­su­la­tion that Stacy, of course everyone knows is a genius producer and director. And this is her master­piece. It’s called To The Moon. You can find it online.

Isaiah Jackson:

Shout out to Stacy. Love you Stacy.

Jason Don:

I think every­body loves Stacy. It’s hard not to.

Isaiah Jackson:

Right.

Jason Don:

I’m embar­rassed to say though I haven’t seen that Max. So I’m going to go watch it. I’m putting it to the top of my list. I’m going to quickly shill two books that I love. Inventing Bitcoin by Yan Pritzker, our CTO. It was my favorite book before I joined Swan. I just think it’s so short and to the point and gets you to really under­stand how Bitcoin works and why it’s impor­tant from a really inter­esting kind of ground level to building perspec­tive. Then, another one is Gigi’s 21 Lessons. There’s an audio­book version. It’s really short. You just learn from a great Bitcoiner so if you don’t know about that one, go check it out.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, I love 21 Lessons. It sits on my night­stand. It’s one of those that I can just like flip open and read a chapter. And I love Gigi’s writing style. And I should also shout out Why Buy Bitcoin by Andy Edstrom. He has written a book that’s like if somebody’s looking to invest in Bitcoin, they’re sold and they’re ready to go, this is the book to give them on the strate­gies, investing strate­gies and getting into Bitcoin, and the case for investing in Bitcoin. Just to really under­line, under­score that.

Brady Swenson:

Yeah, so all right let’s close up with a topic that I’ve been inter­ested in lately. We’ve talked about how Bitcoin is kind of poised to reshape the American economy, hopefully improve the situa­tion, especially econom­i­cally, for Black America. Let’s go inter­na­tion­ally. And I know Zay, you have a chapter in your book called Inter­na­tional Cooper­a­tion. I know Max will have some thoughts on this as well. How do you think Bitcoin is going to reshape the geopo­lit­ical globe and world economic system?

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah, so well, one of the things I’ve noticed with the US is we are spoiled. We don’t think it can happen to us. We don’t think our dollar can be debased because nobody really alive in the US has seen the debase­ment of the dollar because nobody was around in 1913.

Isaiah Jackson:

So one of the things that I’ve noticed inter­na­tion­ally is that they get it instantly. It’s not like you have to convince them. As soon as you say there’s a money system that can combat govern­ment corrup­tion, they’re all for it because they’ve seen govern­ment corrup­tion. So one of things I want to see going forward, that we will see going forward in countries like Kenya and countries like South Korea, they’re ahead of us, way ahead of us as far as digitally. And as far as using Bitcoin, that is something that they will pick up faster.

Isaiah Jackson:

And to have a circular economy, you’re going to have to combat colonialism from some of these European countries, but a lot of these African countries can do that with Bitcoin. And I think we’ll start to see that once the money system is going, once the infra­struc­ture is there. It’s a lot to do, but nobody is relying on the govern­ment anymore in any country. So inter­na­tional cooper­a­tion is vital in my opinion.

Brady Swenson:

Max, let’s hear the fire, man.

Max Keiser:

Well, I think the way Bitcoin’s going to change geopol­i­tics is we’re going to… The question is always well, what if a govern­ment bans Bitcoin? What if govern­ments ban it? What are we going to do? I don’t think that’s likely at all because first of all, they really can’t. What I see to be the more likely outcome it would be a global hash war.

Max Keiser:

So govern­ments are going to start to accumu­late Bitcoin and other govern­ments are going to realize this is like a Sputnik moment. There’s going to be a race to try to control as much Bitcoin as possible. And we already see it now with Iran. Iran has got a signif­i­cant part of global hash rate right now. They’re not trying to come up with their own dedicated country currency. They realize that that’s a fool’s errand. They’re going after Bitcoin.

Max Keiser:

So once that word gets out in maybe the US or the Great Britain, or a European country will say, “Wait a minute. We can’t let Iran become the richest country in the world with the hardest money ever, right? We’ve got to get some Bitcoin.” So this’ll start a global hash war and this means the security of the coin goes up exponen­tially, which means the price goes up exponen­tially. This is how we get to 400, $500,000 a coin. This is why it is parallel to gold in many ways. So the global hash war I think we’re going to see that break out in the next six to nine months.

Jason Don:

Kind of as a corol­lary to the global hash war, we’re just going to see the money printers keep going burr to fund this hash war.

Max Keiser:

Right, and that just makes their fiat money less valuable, right? They’re going to debase their fiat money to try to compete in the hash war. And of course, gold will become a huge factor. So gold is like a handmade into the global hash war because a few countries like China and Russia have been buying huge number, hundreds and hundreds of tons of gold in the last 10 to 15 years. And in fact, they’re in an excel­lent position for this global hash war because they’ll be selling gold for hash power instead of fiat money and they’ll be able to buy a lot more hash power with gold than you can fiat money.

Max Keiser:

It’s like when gold was $140 a barrel, Russia was converting its oil into gold. Right? The oil/gold conver­sion was in Russia’s favor in a huge way. And now with the oil price down the way it is, they’re not really suffering like other countries because they accumu­lated a huge gold position. Unlike Saudi Arabia for example, that doesn’t really have any gold to speak of meaningful.

Max Keiser:

So now, think about that in terms of hash wars and gold. Those countries with a lot of gold gives them a lot of buying power to buy hash rate. Those countries with the very… Like Canada has no gold whatso­ever. Great Britain sold half their gold. They have less than 300 tons now. Those countries are going to be at a huge disad­van­tage in a global hash war. So the fiat money of course becomes increas­ingly worth­less. Only keep money in fiat that you’re willing to lose.

Jason Don:

I love that.

Brady Swenson:

All right, we got a question from the Telegram chats. Al Lacrosse, shout out Al. The question is for Zay, do you think Bitcoin faces inherent suspi­cion from the Black community?

Isaiah Jackson:

Yes because as a finan­cial asset, as a finan­cial tool, in the Black commu­nity a lot of times we have had people come into our commu­nity, tell us to invest in certain things, trust them with our money, and it never works out, or it doesn’t work out like we thought. So there is that sort of suspi­cion with Bitcoin.

Isaiah Jackson:

Also, a lot of Black people get their news from mainstream media. Unfor­tu­nately, they don’t really have any other outlet to get it than from cable, mainstream media. So when they hear it from them, they think that that’s a fact, which is sort of why we’ve been led astray and why I make the analogy that if you think about how Black people are misrep­re­sented in mainstream media, that’s how Bitcoin is. And once you say that, a lot of Black people are under­standing like, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” Because half of the time they put us as crimi­nals or thugs or we’re doing something crazy. And it’s like, “That’s not me. That’s not my family. That’s not anybody I know. What are you talking about?”

Isaiah Jackson:

And I think that’s what’s happening with Bitcoin in the media. And yeah, going forward, I think that analogy and being able to get Black people to realize that will get rid of the suspi­cion and get them to realize that if anything is actually worth… if it’s worth something, then the media’s going to bash it or banks are going try and bash it. And that should actually be encour­aging because if they’re not going against it, then they don’t have a problem with it and you’re not fighting against them. So the fact that they are, should be encour­aging. The suspi­cion is slowly moving away because a lot of Black people are just tired. They’re just tired of every­thing that they’ve been told or sold and this is a like a perfect storm actually.

Brady Swenson:

All right, thanks Isaiah. I think we’re about done here. Unless anybody else can throw in some questions into the chat, we’ll go to some closing comments. Isaiah, we’ll close up with you, but we’ll start with Max here to give some closing comments. Brekkie, feel free to jump in as well. Max, got any inspi­ra­tion for us?

Max Keiser:

Well, I love the fact that Bitcoin & Black America, Isaiah’s book, as he points out he came out a year ago or so, and now suddenly it’s really become a hot topic and a hot book. And this is the great thing about a book is that it can stay on the shelf a while and then find an audience like that. And when I started reading all these refer­ences and seeing signs in crowds, “Read this book, Bitcoin & Black America,” I was like, “Oh my God, this is so fantastic.”

Max Keiser:

And I think that’s an inspi­ra­tion right there for folks. People have been saying to me I should write a book now for 10 years. I keep procras­ti­nating. I’m like, “Dammit! I got to write my book now.” So anyway, kudos to Isaiah. This thing is a rocket ship. It’s awesome. I think the next year it’s just going to get bigger and bigger.

Brady Swenson:

Heck yeah, man.

Isaiah Jackson:

Appre­ciate that Max. I think you got the title for your book on your shirt.

Brady Swenson:

Agreed. You’ll have to sell it direct. Amazon won’t take that.

Isaiah Jackson:

Yeah. Exactly.

Brady Swenson:

All right, we have one more question coming in from Corey. Brekkie, you want to close out… It’s about ready to post up here. Brekkie, do you have anything you want to close out with? You’re on mute.

Jason Don:

There I am. So I’ll just say this, I agree with Max, something Max said earlier that this Bitcoin future’s inevitable 100%, but we’re all doing what we do because we believe that we can hasten it, we can get there quicker, we can educate people who need it. We don’t need the corpo­rate fat cats to adopt Bitcoin right now. We need people in disen­fran­chised commu­ni­ties to adopt it right now among various communities.

Jason Don:

So if you’re a Bitcoiner and there are people in your lives who you haven’t already bored to death with Bitcoin, talk to them about it. Tell them why it’s impor­tant to you and change some hearts and minds.

Brady Swenson:

Nice. All right, here’s the question from Corey and then we’ll finish up with Isaiah. The question is with Bitcoin, driver­less cars, faster internet speeds, remote work, online ordering, delivery of every­thing, how and where will we all live in the future? Will we have Bitcoin citadels, city states, or much more widely dispersed popula­tion spreading out into rural America? Max, what do you think?

Max Keiser:

Well, the worst-case scenario is what I call the casino gulag. So the casino gulag is we’re all basically forced to stay in our home and try to click on enough ads on the web to get protein pill. And it’s all based on games of chance. And you know the stock market has turned into a complete farce, right? So Hertz the car rental company is bankrupt. They’re selling stock, billions of dollars worth of stock in a bankrupt company. It’s never been done before. And the Robin­hood traders are trading it because it’s total discon­nect between the gamifi­ca­tion of the stock market and the economy.

Max Keiser:

So you’ve got these Robin­hood Gen Z forced to stay in their cells, they can’t go outside, trying to make a buck so they can order in a pizza. But it’s with a total gambling security like Hertz, which is a nonsen­sical nonsense, gambling lottery ticket. So it’s a casino gulag is what I see is this dystopian night­mare coming to reality.

Max Keiser:

On the positive side, I think that I see a big battle brewing and that’s a battle for energy. And the big tech giants are getting better at perpe­trating to the casino gulag. And the way that they’re going to get better at it is by co-opting artifi­cial intel­li­gence, or AI. And this is a huge energy drain as well. So I see there’s going to be a battle between AI versus Bitcoin for who owns the dominant global energy supply. And my money’s on Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is our only hope as humans to defeat AI and the techno­log­ical panop­ticon against the perpetual casino gulag state of misery. That’s my take.

Brady Swenson:

When’s the movie coming out?

Max Keiser:

It’s playing in my mind ²⁴⁄₇. I can’t get out of it. I’ve been living in it this movie for years.

Brady Swenson:

A glimpse into Max’s mind. What about you, Isaiah? How do you think Bitcoin’s going to affect the way we live?

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. So yeah, I definitely agree with Max. I’ve always said that the people that for humans, they may not under­stand Bitcoin, but AI does and they will be using cryptocur­ren­cies or Bitcoin in the future, so that battle will be there energy-wise. But, I think in the future what we’ll see is the adoption from govern­ments like China or Russia, maybe as a store value. And I think we will see exponen­tial growth simply because of that. It’s only going to take one major country to say that, “We’re backing up our currency with the hardest money there is.” And then every­body’s going to copy just like before. I think we’ll see that.

Isaiah Jackson:

I think we’ll also see the movement of people from cities, because like I said, this is sort of a perfect storm. Because of COVID, because of rising rent prices, because of the ability to work from home, I think people will move to rural areas and that Bitcoin citadels are possible, but it’ll be more commu­ni­ties of people that are like, “Hey, we use Bitcoin. We may use this govern­ment currency, but as a commu­nity, we use Bitcoin because we under­stand that it works.”

Isaiah Jackson:

So I think we’ll start to see that more. Actually, thinking of plans myself to have something like an embassy or some sort of place where you can sort of pass ideas. But yeah, I definitely see that in the future. And I think people are getting smart enough, or smarter, so they realize that the need for this is now.

Brady Swenson:

Absolutely, man. And I completely agree with that. I see people, Bitcoin driving people into smaller groups, smaller commu­ni­ties. I don’t really know my neigh­bors that well and I know a few people in my commu­nity, but they live far away from me, other edges of town, et cetera. We always get together.

Brady Swenson:

I just see Bitcoin kind of bringing together the way that we used to live in commu­ni­ties in America where we’re looking out for each other, we’re more indepen­dent, right? We’re more… have a personal respon­si­bility, we share that respon­si­bility with the commu­nity. If someone’s suffering in your commu­nity, you come together to help them out, as opposed to rely on a larger insti­tu­tion that’s sort of separated from the commu­nity, far from the commu­nity to take care of them. So that’s my kind of hopeful view of a Bitcoin future.

Brady Swenson:

All right, so I think we’ll wrap up there. I just want to say really quickly swansignalpodcast.com is where you can subscribe to this as a podcast. We’re also on YouTube at YouTube.com/swansignal. Isaiah, I’m going to give you the floor to take us out, man.

Isaiah Jackson:

Oh yeah. I just want to encourage every­body who has read Bitcoin & Black America, keep pushing forward. Thank you for the support. And going forward in the future, only going to keep the pressure on the people who have been our oppres­sors, the Federal Reserve, and making sure that our money is valuable in the future. So keep buying Bitcoin, keep pushing forward and definitely look out for the one-year anniver­sary, July 11^th of Bitcoin & Black America second edition coming out.

Brady Swenson:

Thanks to Isaiah, Max, and Brekkie for joining us. On Twitter, you can follow Zay, @BitcoinZay, Bitcoin Z‑A-Y, Max @MaxKeiser, that’s M‑A-X-K-E-I-S-E‑R, and Brekkie @BVBTC, and myself @CitizenBitcoin.

Brady Swenson:

On behalf of the Swan team thanks for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Swan Signal podcast. You can join us live next time on Twitter @SwanBitcoin, on YouTube at YouTube.com/swansignal. You can also find us by searching Swan Bitcoin at Facebook and Twitch. You can also join us on Telegram in the Swan Signal Telegram chat room. We have a lively crew there. They chat during the broad­cast so you can ask questions during the broad­casts or shoot them to us before broad­cast begins. We’ll work in some of those. That is at t.me/swansignal.

Brady Swenson:

Swan Signal is a produc­tion of Swan Bitcoin at swanbitcoin.com. It’s the best way to buy Bitcoin. One, you auto fund USD from your bank account. Two, we automat­i­cally purchase Bitcoin for you. And three, you can set up automatic withdrawals to your wallet all at incred­ibly low fees for recur­ring purchases. Up to 80% lower than Coinbase and up to 57% lower than Cash App for automatic, recur­ring purchases.

Brady Swenson:

Follow us on Twitter @SwanBitcoin, subscribe to the podcast at swansignalpodcast.com, if you are not already. All right, that’s it for this week. Thanks for joining us.

Other Episodes

Episode 8 –Andy Edstrom and Ansel Linder

Episode 9 –Rockstar Devel­oper and Jeremy Rubin

Episode 10 – Bitcoin TINA and CK Snarks

Episode 11– Gigi and Knut Svanholm

Episode 12 –Adam Back and Preston Pysh

Episode 13 –Alex Gladstein and Matt Odell

Episode 14 –Robert Breedlove and Tuur Demeester

Episode 16 –Gigi and Udi Wertheimer

Episode 17 –Aleks Svetski and Jimmy Song

Episode 18 –Stephan Livera and Marty Bent

Episode 19 –Mark Moss and Ben Prentice

Episode 20 –Samson Mow and Parker Lewis

Episode 21 –Lyn Alden and Jeff Booth

Links

• Isaiah on Twitter
• Max on Twitter
• Swan Bitcoin — the best place to buy and invest in Bitcoin
• Swan Bitcoin on Twitter
• Swan Signal on YouTube
• Swan Signal on Facebook
• Swan Signal on Twitch
• Swan Signal Podcast
• Swan Signal Telegram Chat Room