A conversation about Bitcoin’s ecological footprint, why Bitcoin is such a big organism and the shift from individual to nation-state adoption.
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Alex Gladstein joins the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast” to discuss his new book, “Check Your Financial Privilege,” and how Bitcoin opens the door to human rights around the world. When talking about Bitcoin’s detractors, Gladstein says, “Most of the critics that I’ve always been debating … they just live in this bubble of financial privilege and they can’t comprehend that Bitcoin could be useful for someone else.” His point being that people living in America cannot fully grasp the financial repression going on in other parts of the world.
Gladstein goes on to say, “The average person in this world has money problems and not just not enough of it, but also that it doesn’t work very well.” Those of us living in America have the fortunate situation that our currency works pretty well and has a global demand, since it is currently the reserve currency of the world.
According to Gladstein, Bitcoin levels the playing field. “The fun part for me is that Bitcoin just obliterates financial privilege. It just eliminates it at the base. Now, it doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to be equal. No, it’s not a redistributionary technology. It’s not some sort of Marxist creation. This is a technology that secures property rights and actually reinforces capitalism and free markets and open commerce.” Bitcoin having the same rules for everybody is what makes it powerful.
When discussing the implications of Russia settling oil contracts in bitcoin, Gladstein says, “I think that if they start accepting bitcoin for oil or something like that. That has this trickle down effect, a network effect across all the people who work for the oil company who now know this, and all of a sudden, all the people who are relatives of the people who work at the oil company, who read about this on the news.” If Putin is proud of this potential move, then the propaganda will spread on the news and the outcome will be tons of Russians buying bitcoin.
