Juno News - Can you opt-out of inflation with Bitcoin？ (Ft. Matt Spoke)

00:00:00.200 Politicians and pundits all across Canada are now talking about cryptocurrency, but who is telling us the truth?

00:00:06.220 We're going to try to make sense of it all today on the show. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.800 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the program.

00:00:24.580 So as you know, I was pretty critical of last week's conservative debate in Edmonton.

00:00:29.400 I didn't think it really allowed for much of an exchange of ideas.

00:00:33.000 However, one of the most interesting and explosive moments of the debate happened when the candidates began criticizing and piling on Pierre Polyev for his positions about crypto.

00:00:43.860 It seemed like some of the candidates didn't really understand the difference between decentralized currencies like Bitcoin versus a government centralized digital currency.

00:00:55.080 And you could see that Pierre Polyev was kind of smiling because it really showed almost like a generational divide where most of the candidates, I would say five out of six, just don't really understand Bitcoin or blockchain or cryptocurrencies.

00:01:06.860 And Pierre sort of has a monopoly on this topic.

00:01:10.180 And so I wanted to bring in someone today to help make sense of this entire topic and help us understand what the real issue is.

00:01:17.360 And so I'm very pleased today to be joined by Matt Spoke.

00:01:20.880 Matt is one of the leading experts in conservative circles when it comes to cryptocurrency.

00:01:24.840 He's a founder and CEO of a company called Moves, which is an all-in-one financial app that helps gig workers manage their business.

00:01:32.060 Matt is based in Toronto and he's become a leading advocate for the potential social benefits of decentralized technologies in the world.

00:01:39.120 He's been published in Forbes, The Hub, and other outlets.

00:01:42.260 And you may recognize his name.

00:01:44.420 We had his brother Chris spoke on a couple weeks ago.

00:01:46.900 Chris also is a policy advocate.

00:01:49.440 He writes in The Hub as well.

00:01:50.280 He talks about housing policy.

00:01:52.200 So, Matt, it's great to have you on the show.

00:01:54.460 Thank you for joining us.

00:01:54.960 Yeah, awesome to be here.

00:01:56.060 Good to be here, Malcolm.

00:01:57.340 So let's just start off by asking like a very sort of basic question.

00:02:01.360 For people who aren't really familiar with these terms, don't really know what we're talking about,

00:02:05.380 if you could help us understand like what is blockchain, what is decentralized currency, what is crypto, and what is Bitcoin?

00:02:12.040 Just give us a little overview, please.

00:02:14.380 Yeah, I mean, I think without getting into the technical weeds, because you'll read a lot of stuff online that gets into language

00:02:19.800 that most people will just glaze over at because it's a very technically heavy or a lot of technical jargon in this industry.

00:02:27.260 I'd say broadly, the idea that sort of underpins Bitcoin and a lot of the experiments happening in the cryptocurrency space

00:02:33.180 is sort of a concept of building a currency system that is detached from any central authority

00:02:38.560 or detached from a central government that acts as sort of the issuing body of a currency or the layer of trust underpinning a currency.

00:02:46.280 There's a technology that underpins a lot of these currencies that sort of broadly become known as blockchain technology.

00:02:52.080 It is important to understand that this is sort of like it's not all of these currencies are not equal.

00:02:57.400 There are some currencies that have been around and proven the resilience for a lot longer.

00:03:00.960 There are some that are a lot more experimental.

00:03:03.120 You'll hear lots of negative sort of skeptics in the media that will point to the examples of some of the more,

00:03:09.920 you know, some of the more, the big news items of frauds and scams and Ponzi schemes and others

00:03:15.600 to try to distract people from sort of like what is the underlying technology and what's its potential?

00:03:21.160 I think broadly, I like to think about this as like as people lose confidence in their governments,

00:03:26.360 not necessarily, you know, their government's ability to to to maintain sovereignty over their countries,

00:03:32.220 but just their government's ability to make good decisions, good decisions as it relates to monetary policy.

00:03:36.900 We're now being given a choice as to are there other assets that we can flee into?

00:03:42.440 And I'd say particularly Bitcoin has proven itself quite resilient and almost it's almost on a level playing field of a lot of national currencies.

00:03:48.500 If you if you were a resident of Venezuela, you know, Bitcoin would be a very attractive currency for you.

00:03:52.940 So there's lots of debate around whether that translates to Canadians and whether that translates to Americans and other Western countries.

00:03:58.300 But I think there is something to be paying attention to.

00:04:01.440 And I think the risk that the conservatives, you know, last week really started to show is you want to be careful to not position yourself as sort of the party of the neophytes like that.

00:04:09.980 Anything that you don't understand and anything that is new, you automatically take a negative tone towards it.

00:04:15.140 And I think Chiara is definitely standing out as somebody who at least, you know, not only has an open mind,

00:04:19.140 I think he actually very fundamentally understands what's going on in this space.

00:04:23.040 But anyways, we can get into it in more depth.

00:04:24.640 But that'd be my word of caution is like if you don't understand something, it's better to not have an opinion than a strong opinion against it.

00:04:30.100 So, yeah, well, and also just to make sure that the points you making are clear, because there's obviously a big difference between a decentralized currency.

00:04:38.180 We could talk about some of the pros and cons about those like versus what the governments are trying to do, which is roll out their own sort of version of digital currency.

00:04:46.140 So we'll definitely talk about government's version of digital currency.

00:04:49.340 But I do want to ask you because, you know, you said if you live in a country like Venezuela, it might be better to use Bitcoin as opposed to the centralized currency.

00:04:56.540 Well, as we've seen this month, the price of Bitcoin has plunged its lowest since 2020.

00:05:00.640 According to New York Times, more than $300 billion of Coinbase was wiped out in a crash in crypto prices.

00:05:07.000 Look, I've been following Bitcoin for maybe about 10 years.

00:05:10.240 And I remember back in like 2015, people were saying, oh, Bitcoin's over.

00:05:15.340 It's done. And there's definitely been ups and downs and it's been a wild ride.

00:05:19.540 But but there does seem to be sort of a fundamental instability when it comes to the value.

00:05:25.440 So I'm wondering if you could help clarify, like why you think it could be a better alternative to a government managed government monopoly, you know, of just a regular currency that we that we've had for the last 50, 50 years or so.

00:05:40.140 Yeah. And I mean, I think it's worth being clear here.

00:05:42.340 And this has probably been lost in the shuffle as it relates to the conservative leadership race.

00:05:46.340 I don't think anybody is suggesting that we drop the Canadian dollar and I'll start paying for our groceries in Bitcoin.

00:05:51.340 I don't think that that's in the cards today.

00:05:53.340 I don't think that that's in the cards for the foreseeable future, maybe ever.

00:05:56.340 I think what Bitcoin is introducing to the world is a new form of asset that can exist within a portfolio of assets similar to gold historically as assets are discovered by the market.

00:06:08.540 Their prices can be extremely volatile, right?

00:06:11.140 So this is a this is an asset that by global sort of penetration metrics is only scraping under 5% of people in the world that have actually touched or held a Bitcoin or held a fraction of a Bitcoin.

00:06:23.740 We're very much in the early days of global adoption.

00:06:26.540 And as people discover the asset in some periods that will lead to very high volatility and upward price momentum and as markets sort of correct, that can lead to very aggressive volatility downwards.

00:06:36.740 I think anybody interacting with the space needs to go in eyes wide open and consider that there is a lot of risk when assets, newer assets like this can be volatile for a long time.

00:06:46.740 I think what's to sort of decouple the conversation is to like, what is the price of Bitcoin today? What was it last week? Was it last year versus what does the long term potential of this new type of currency design represent in the future?

00:06:58.940 We should be thinking about policy from the perspective of like the next decades, not the next month.

00:07:04.940 And I think we've seen a lot of this sort of distraction from, you know, I got an email from Patrick Brand's campaign last week talking about, oh, you know, if you would listen to Pierre Polyeb, you would have put all of your dollars into Bitcoin and lost 50% of your dollars.

00:07:15.940 50% of your life savings. Nobody is advocating for that right now. So it's really like the long term potential. When you go from 5% adoption to 30% adoption to 50% adoption, all of a sudden the volatility associated with this asset will change quite a bit.

00:07:28.940 It's also worth noting that while the markets for Bitcoin have corrected aggressively, so have the markets for every other regulated traditional asset in the world. I mean, the price of stock on Netflix and Shopify and all these other companies are also feeling a lot of pressure as the market's correct.

00:07:42.940 And I would say that the cause of a lot of that is actually government monetary policy. I mean, it's the amount of money that we've inflated and put into the system that effectively fueled this huge run up in the stock markets that had sort of a trickle down effect into the crypto markets.

00:07:56.940 And now all of a sudden, governments are starting to pull back on their money printing. They're starting to sort of revisit their quantitative easing policies. And then they're turning around and blaming the crypto markets for volatility. You know, it's a little bit of an unfair assessment when you consider sort of where all this money originally came from over the last two years.

00:08:14.020 Right. And just to go back to Patrick Brown, sort of straw man, it's like, you know, with any investment strategy, you're not gonna put all your eggs in one basket, right? Like you're even even if you're playing if you're putting money in the stock market in a mutual fund or an index fund, it's like you're going to put some money in, you know, energy stocks and money in tech, and you're going to try to have a very diversified portfolio.

00:08:33.020 And so why not include precious metals or decentralized currency? Matt, I'm really glad you mentioned inflation, because one of the things that I sort of get frustrated upon, you have, you know, Prime Minister of our country who openly admitted during the last election that he doesn't really think about monetary policy doesn't really care. You know, he did go on to say that, you know, what he thinks about his families and how they can afford things, but how can you decouple those, those two, the line from the administration, which is parroted by the legacy media, is that inflation is just caused by globalization.

00:09:03.020 Global forces, and it has nothing to do with monetary policy, nothing to do with the Bank of Canada, nothing to do with the debt that Justin Trudeau has acquired during the pandemic. And so I'm wondering if you could if you could sort of comment and help us understand the connection between monetary policy, how the government spends and and the printing of money with inflation and and sort of help help clarify that issue a little bit.

00:09:27.020 Yeah, I think, you know, I'm not, I won't pretend to be an economist or somebody who's got, you know, a deep, deep background in monetary policy. But but I think, you know, the really the basics in my mind, are that we we live within a system of fiat currency, which effectively means governments can decide through their central banks, but also through their own, their own fiscal policy, how much, how much debt they want to take on how much money they want in the economy.

00:09:51.020 And generally, the money that we have in our wallets are in our bank accounts is all just backed by our level of confidence in our government's ability to repay that debt. So we're effectively sitting on IOUs that we call Canadian dollars, these are IOUs that somebody will honor the value of that dollar when it comes time for me to actually withdraw it from my account and spend it in the economy.

00:10:10.020 As, as the proportion of how much of these IOUs sort of exist, this is, you know, as central banks inflate the currency supply, the level of confidence sort of decreases over time. And, you know, we don't see the huge negative consequences, the way that you might in economies where there is more hyper inflationary environments, but, you know, we're on a slippery slope towards a set of Western, you know, what historically would have been stable economies that have gone probably a few steps too far.

00:10:39.020 And overusing this lever, you know, it's easy to point to the world's average inflation and say, hey, it's not our fault. It's really the world is going down this, this, this path.

00:10:48.020 But I think it really points to the fact that most Western economies are suffering from the exact same, the same illness, it's governments that don't know how to constrain themselves as governments that would rather spend and be responsible and think about sort of the future impacts of their decisions.

00:11:02.020 You know, Bitcoin in this context is really interesting to me because it sort of brings us back to a conversation around a sort of hard money standard, you know, before the 1970s, the world existed on a gold standard for the most part.

00:11:17.020 And the gold standard effectively restrained government's ability to decide unilaterally how much money they wanted to put into their economies because their money in theory was backed by physical reserves of gold.

00:11:27.020 And, you know, I think it was the Nixon administration that sort of started pushing away from this in the 1970s, but because they wanted to spend more than they had in their reserves.

00:11:36.020 And naturally, there was a tendency and then every government around the world that had sort of pegged themselves to the US dollar, which was quite common after World War Two, all of a sudden had to decouple their pegs from the US dollar and all start moving towards this sort of fiat standard.

00:11:48.020 And it started this, this, this very quick path towards government debt being a norm.

00:11:54.020 And I think there are scenarios when government debt is totally appropriate, but when it becomes sort of like our, our, our modus operandi, we don't know how to operate without debt.

00:12:02.020 I think it leads to, to, to potentially a slippery slope that we're going to start feeling the consequences of in our generation, maybe not our parents' generations, but yeah.

00:12:10.020 Well, Canada's lived through it, right?

00:12:12.020 Like anyone who's familiar with the financial situation I've studied a little bit in the nineties, Canada couldn't find anyone to buy our debt.

00:12:18.020 And the New York, the Wall Street Journal infamously called Canada, the Canadian dollar, the Northern peso, and, and said we were basically an honorary part of the third world.

00:12:27.020 And it basically caused the liberal governments under John Crouchet and his finance minister, Paul Martin, had to drastically, drastically, drastically reduce the size of government.

00:12:37.020 So we've, we've been there as a country, we've learned that lesson, seen the norm was heading back towards fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets until Justin Trudeau rolled around and, and really did something unprecedented with the amount of, of spending.

00:12:52.020 Well, thanks for clarifying that.

00:12:54.020 I did, I did want to ask you a little bit about the politics on the conservative side, because Pierre Polyev was getting sort of attacked from all sides on during the debate last, last week.

00:13:04.020 Uh, there, you know, there's two components of it that were interesting to me.

00:13:07.020 One lesson Lewis's attack sort of fell flat because she didn't really seem to understand the difference between, uh, like I said, the decentralized currency and a government digital currency.

00:13:16.020 Um, but, but, but, but there is some truth to the attack that Patrick Brown was saying because Pierre, uh, at a campaign stop in London, Ontario, back in March, uh, he said that Bitcoin lets Canadians opt out of inflation.

00:13:27.020 Uh, Canadians need more financial freedom.

00:13:30.020 He said that the government has ruined the Canadian dollar, so Canadians should have the financial freedom to use other money such as Bitcoin.

00:13:36.020 Canadians need less financial control for politicians and bankers and more financial freedom for the people.

00:13:42.020 Uh, obviously, you know, like we mentioned, the price of Bitcoin has gone down pretty tremendously.

00:13:47.020 Um, so I, I'm, I'm, I'm wondering what you think of the lines of attack, uh, Pierre's, uh, line there about, uh, opting out of inflation.

00:13:55.020 Um, do you, do you think, do you think Pierre's onto something or do you think he was being a little reckless with that comment?

00:14:00.020 Um, I mean, I don't think he was being reckless.

00:14:02.020 I think he's trying to make a point that requires a little bit of exaggeration to say, uh, you know, I, I, I think the, his, his, uh, his critics will, will obviously jump to the most extreme interpretation of what he was trying to say.

00:14:13.020 And this is what his opponents in the conservative race had been sort of accusing him of is suggesting that we should all be fleeing away from the Canadian dollar towards Bitcoin.

00:14:20.020 Um, which I don't think is what he intends.

00:14:22.020 I mean, I, I, in fact, I know it's not what he intends to say when he talks about this.

00:14:25.020 I think he's talking about a design of a monetary system that is worth, uh, us having an open mind to it's worth us as a country, encouraging our citizens to be more educated on and, and, and, and frankly, designing policies that don't penalize people if they want to, uh, be exposed in this market.

00:14:40.020 And then, you know, at that, that, that stop in London that you're referencing in particular, that's one of the business is a business that as an example decided, you know, the last couple of years to shift some of its balance sheet from Canadian dollars into Bitcoin as an example.

00:14:53.020 Um, you know, I think we're, we're Pierre's message really resonates with me is that a lot of this comes down to individual choice.

00:14:59.020 Uh, you know, what, what national currencies represent effectively is a monopoly on how we, how we decide to spend money and how we decide to save money.

00:15:07.020 And so you, you know, historically you've been sort of locked into your national economy from the perspective of like, even if you live in a country where you really don't trust the monetary policy, you have no choice to hold your life savings in that, in that reserve currency.

00:15:18.020 Uh, your bank accounts will only hold that currency.

00:15:20.020 Your, the stores in your local city will only accept that currency.

00:15:23.020 Um, and you're sort of trapped if all of a sudden you feel like your government is going in a direction that you disagree with.

00:15:28.020 There's not a very easy path to call it exit your national economy.

00:15:31.020 Right.

00:15:32.020 Uh, I think Bitcoin definitely, and, and, and some of these other cryptocurrency experiments that are, that are popping up, they represent a potential choice for customers.

00:15:41.020 It doesn't mean that they, they automatically go and replace our, our dependence on a Canadian dollar.

00:15:45.020 Uh, but to your point earlier, I think this, it's a very reasonable thing to say that people's portfolios could have some exposure to the space.

00:15:51.020 I think that exposure should, should, um, should match the risk profile, right?

00:15:56.020 So the risk profile of this industry is still quite high.

00:15:58.020 Uh, you know, so maybe that means that people hold 1% of their assets in Bitcoin, you know, nobody's suggesting that you go put a hundred percent of your assets into this volatile asset class.

00:16:07.020 Uh, but it will continue to evolve and continue to grow and continue to represent a larger and larger percentage of the global economy.

00:16:13.020 And I, I fundamentally believe that that's true.

00:16:14.020 It's not a matter of, of if, but when, and these little moments of volatility that they were experiencing.

00:16:19.020 I mean, the best thing that I like to do is I sort of like to say to people zoom out, you know, on a month to month basis, it might look very volatile.

00:16:25.020 But if you look at a trajectory, if you look at a trend line that sort of averages out the prices over a two year historic trend line, it's, it's been a very, very good, well-performing asset over its life.

00:16:35.020 You know, it's maybe a 13 year old asset or something around there.

00:16:38.020 And, you know, two years out, if you average out the price movements over two year periods, it is consistently performed.

00:16:44.020 And, and this is why less than 5% of the world actually owns Bitcoin.

00:16:48.020 I tell people who have a better understanding of sort of how gold fits into the global economy.

00:16:52.020 Like imagine if the world was just first discovering gold, you know, what would be the, the reaction to people if they started realizing that there's this asset that people care about.

00:17:01.020 We would see huge volatility in gold markets.

00:17:03.020 The only reason we don't is because gold has sort of established itself as a normal asset over hundreds and hundreds of years.

00:17:08.020 Bitcoin is just on its way up towards, you know, a similar status, I would say.

00:17:12.020 And, you know, my, my big bet in this space that I've been very bullish on for a long time is that Bitcoin will probably overtake the markets for gold in the next five to 10 years and could become a new gold standard like asset.

00:17:23.020 That doesn't mean that national governments are going to flee to Bitcoin.

00:17:26.020 I think there is a need to have your own monetary policy in your country, but there's also a need to constrain government's ability to just spend recklessly and print money recklessly.

00:17:34.020 And hopefully this introduces a balance.

00:17:37.020 Well, and it's interesting, just historically, whenever there's a recession, I don't know if we're in a recession or heading towards a recession, it seems like that's the direction we're going.

00:17:46.020 It seems like there's always a lot of panic and people sell, which is the worst idea when an asset goes down, whether it's a stock market or Bitcoin, like don't sell, hold and see what happens.

00:17:55.020 That's sort of the advice that I seem to think is the best from financial advisors I listen to and talk to.

00:18:01.020 I want to I want to touch on this idea of the difference between Bitcoin and a central bank digital currency.

00:18:08.020 You tweeted in response to Pierre Paliev if Bitcoin represents monetary freedom, the central bank digital currency represents monetary surveillance and control.

00:18:18.020 So, Matt, what is the risk of a Bank of Canada creating its own competing digital currency?

00:18:23.020 I think there's probably two big themes here.

00:18:27.020 One one is more a theme of just like modernizing and bringing technology into our monetary system, which I think generally speaking, we should all be in favor of a lot of the rails and payment systems that we rely on as a country are quite antiquated.

00:18:40.020 You know, they were built decades and decades ago and they lead to a lot of inefficiencies in our banking system.

00:18:45.020 This is what you experience as a consumer.

00:18:47.020 If you want to transfer money to somebody else's account and there's a two day delay or anything along those lines sort of represents these inefficiencies that still exist in our banking in our banking system.

00:18:56.020 So I think if the conversation is should we be modernizing and bringing technology into our monetary system that I think, you know, we should all be encouraging of that.

00:19:05.020 I think the risk is that what digital currencies represent is effectively a new vehicle to replace cash.

00:19:11.020 And what cash is fundamentally is an anonymous way to transact.

00:19:17.020 And I think it's extremely important in a country that sort of prioritizes freedom that we maintain the ability for our citizens to transact anonymously.

00:19:28.020 I mean, you can imagine, you know, the dystopian view of every time you go buy a pack of cigarettes, your insurance company finds out about it and your premiums go up because you're now you represent a higher health risk or whatever.

00:19:40.020 Right. So, you know, probably more recent examples around what what happened with the trucker convoys in Ottawa and across the country over the last couple of months.

00:19:49.020 The ability for governments to sort of step in and freeze bank accounts and sort of interfere with what is to, you know, adults wanting to transact with each other in what ended up being lawful, you know, in lawful circumstances.

00:20:04.020 And so I think what I worry about is that governments will not stop at modernizing and using technology to make our systems more efficient.

00:20:14.020 They will realize that this technology provides them new tools and new levers that they haven't previously had.

00:20:18.020 The government today could not theoretically freeze a hundred dollar bill sitting in your wallet.

00:20:23.020 But if it's a digital hundred dollar bill that they've issued to you, then all of a sudden they can theoretically freeze it.

00:20:27.020 Sarah, this move away from cash towards digital cash effectively controlled and managed by a central bank, but with significant influence from a government.

00:20:37.020 I think it should be cause for skepticism.

00:20:40.020 I think there are ways to have technology without censorship.

00:20:44.020 I think it probably needs to be something that gets discussed in terms of policy and legislation where we think about this very carefully before we rush to implement anything.

00:20:54.020 I mean, the best anecdote I can sort of say around why I'm cautious about this is that the first government to do this at scale in the world is the Bank of China.

00:21:04.020 So you ask yourself why the Bank of China rushed down the path of building a central currency.

00:21:08.020 It wasn't to provide more freedom to their people.

00:21:10.020 It was to provide.

00:21:11.020 It was to create more capital controls and to be able to effectively observe in real time what's happening in the economy from people sending money to each other on their cell phones and peer to peer payments.

00:21:21.020 People buying groceries at the grocery store that control.

00:21:25.020 We should be very careful before we just hand it over blindly to our government in the name of efficiency.

00:21:30.020 You know, Bitcoin as an example on the, on the other end of the spectrum is again, more of a representation of something analogous to gold, but with, with easier ability to transfer it and send it to each other.

00:21:43.020 Cause you don't have to carry around heavy gold bricks in your wallet.

00:21:46.020 A government could not change the supply of gold.

00:21:49.020 They could not decide that the gold you own in your, your home safe is no longer valid.

00:21:54.020 You know, so it has characteristics that, that, that keep it valuable irrespective of the government of the day.

00:22:00.020 Um, and I think that, you know, it's important that we have that option in, in, in, you know, in the world.

00:22:06.020 So I don't think it's a one or the other.

00:22:07.020 I think if we're going to go down the path of digital digitizing our, our, our monetary systems, uh, we need to be very, very thoughtful before we rush down that path.

00:22:15.020 Well, I'm glad you brought up the trucker convoy and the seizing of bank accounts, because that was probably one of the most terrifying things that has happened, uh, so, so far this year, so far in this administration.

00:22:25.020 And I think it really raised a lot of concerns, not just in conservative circles in Canada, uh, but in technology circles and people all over the world were sort of like, okay, this could be a potential roadmap for authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.

00:22:39.020 One of the things that finance minister Christia Freeland said was that they were also going to be cracking down on Bitcoin and Ethereum and NFTs and, and, and these other sort of decentralized modes.

00:22:50.020 Do you think that the Canadian government has that power?

00:22:53.020 Do they have that authority?

00:22:54.020 Do you think that they will be able to step in and, and, and stop those kinds of transactions?

00:22:58.020 Because this isn't the whole purpose of, of decentralized, um, not giving the government control.

00:23:02.020 So what did you make of Christia Freeland's, uh, comments about that?

00:23:06.020 Yeah.

00:23:07.020 I, before I answer that, I'll say that anybody should be concerned about what happened at the trucker convoy.

00:23:12.020 Not, not simply whether or not you agreed with, with that group and that protest and, and, and whether you support the current government or not.

00:23:18.020 I think the idea that any government in power, whether it be liberal, conservative, NDP, whatever, uh, has the, the, the authority and the levers to, um, to silence their, their critics and their opponents.

00:23:31.020 Uh, if it were a conservative government and this were a, a protest, uh, uh, on, on, on a progressive issue against a, a, you know, pro let's say Stephen Harper was still in office.

00:23:40.020 You wouldn't want Stephen Harper to have the ability to do what, what Justin Trudeau did during that, during that time.

00:23:45.020 So I think we really need to approach these things, you know, with a nonpartisan lens that this is just a lever of control that if we hand this to government, it is impossible to pull it back.

00:23:55.020 Um, and we need to be very, very careful about that.

00:23:57.020 And, and, and, and I think, you know, some people will sort of speak to this being, you know, a step towards conspiracy theories, but it's just, you know, once you hand the lever over, you're never getting it back.

00:24:06.020 And so, uh, as it relates to Christian Freeland's comments, I mean, I do think they're concerning.

00:24:10.020 I think there's still highlights in my mind that there's a giant misunderstanding around what this technology is and how it works and what it represents.

00:24:17.020 Um, even the language being used, not only by, by Christian Freeland, but also by some candidates on the, in the conservative race today.

00:24:22.020 Elizabeth Lewis would be a good example as they speak about it. 0.67

00:24:25.020 And you, they, they have a choice of words when they're describing it.

00:24:28.020 You can tell that they have a very significant lack of understanding.

00:24:30.020 Um, you know, it, it is a little bit, um, contradictory.

00:24:34.020 What Christopher Phelan is suggesting, but the government does have the ability to make this industry, um, uh, suffer through frictions that it otherwise wouldn't have to suffer through.

00:24:44.020 I mean, there are regulatory boundaries around this industry.

00:24:47.020 If you want to be able to interact with a Bitcoin exchange and connect your bank account or, or open an account with, uh, you know, most of these exchanges in the Canadian context have something analogous to sort of know your client and it's money laundering process.

00:24:59.020 That is, that is regulated by either provincial or federal government regulators, depending on context.

00:25:04.020 Uh, the Ontario Securities Commission and its sort of counterparts across the country are quite heavily involved in this space.

00:25:09.020 Um, the government can make this industry's life more difficult.

00:25:13.020 Uh, it cannot wish away the existence of this industry.

00:25:16.020 And so I, I think where, where we run a risk as a country is if we tighten our grip too much, we're, we're effectively pushing people to countries that are more open-minded and welcoming to the innovation that's happening in this space.

00:25:27.020 And, and over the long-term Canada will just be, uh, on the losing side of that, of that bet.

00:25:32.020 And, you know, this innovation is happening.

00:25:34.020 We've already seen flights of capital flights of talent to countries that have been more receptive and open-minded.

00:25:41.020 And I think there is a way to balance, uh, an openness to innovation with some protections and regulations and sort of some baseline rules, uh, that the industry should be expected to adhere to.

00:25:52.020 Um, but to try to, to, to pretend that you can sort of put the genie back in the bottle, uh, I think is, is naive and is going to lead to some really bad policy decisions.

00:26:02.020 Well, I'm glad you mentioned that.

00:26:03.020 So I think, you know, my husband and I lived in the Silicon Valley for a few years.

00:26:07.020 And, uh, one of the things I was sort of struck by was how many Canadians there were down there.

00:26:12.020 There's Canadians in every company.

00:26:14.020 Someone told me there's a hundred thousand Canadians that live just in the Bay Area.

00:26:17.020 And there were a lot of Canadian events.

00:26:19.020 And to me, it almost struck me as a little sad that so many Canadians leave Canada, uh, to go to the Silicon Valley.

00:26:25.020 And I know this phenomenon happens, uh, you know, in Hollywood and music and in finance, like in New York is also full of Canadians working on wall street, but you know, I, I, I, I wish Canada did more to retain that talent and to, uh, promote at home.

00:26:39.020 You wrote a great piece, uh, over in the hub where you talked about Canada needs a new infectious variant of entrepreneurship.

00:26:46.020 Uh, so I'm, I'm wondering, just final question for you here.

00:26:49.020 Um, what, what can Canada do to, uh, keep more entrepreneurs, to attract more entrepreneurs, to encourage more Canadians to become entrepreneurs?

00:26:58.020 Like what is Canada doing wrong and how can we create a better environment to, to, to keep these kind of tech people that, that, that tend to leave and, and go, you know, create businesses and make their millions elsewhere?

00:27:08.020 Yeah.

00:27:09.020 I mean, I, I think without getting into sort of like policy prescriptions, you know, Christopher Freeland's comments on Bitcoin is a good example in my mind.

00:27:15.020 Like what, what exists in Silicon Valley that doesn't exist in many other places in the world is, is, is an, is an openness to sort of the, the, the crazy idea.

00:27:23.020 The, the, the person who's sitting in the coffee shop talking about something that in most contexts, people would roll their eyes at this person and say, listen to that crazy person talking about this idea.

00:27:32.020 In Silicon Valley, that's the norm, right?

00:27:34.020 You, you're, everybody is expected to be thinking outside of the box is expecting to be talking about ideas that are so far fetched today.

00:27:40.020 Uh, but ultimately lead to the, the big breakthroughs and innovations that we, that come to become normal 10 years later, 20 years later.

00:27:47.020 Right. And, uh, whether that's the internet in the 1980s and 1990s, whether that's cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, you know, in the, in the last decade, you know, imagine listening to the person who was going to describe, uh, the Airbnb business to you before Airbnb became normal.

00:28:01.020 I mean, in, in, in, in Canada, we would have sort of laughed that person out of the room in Silicon Valley.

00:28:06.020 That was an opportunity to bet on a contrarian idea.

00:28:09.020 Um, I think we are, there's a, there's a cultural gap that, that, you know, we can, we can solve for by effectively encouraging more people that think this way to, to add, to congregate, right?

00:28:20.020 Like there's a concentration of people like this, there's a density of, of outside of the box thinkers in Silicon Valley.

00:28:26.020 That means that the moment you say a crazy idea, you're not automatically discouraged.

00:28:30.020 You're sort of your people are saying, Oh, no way. Yeah. Tell me how you would do that. Like, and, and, and it sort of pushes you down that path.

00:28:36.020 It's supposed to pushing you to sort of like reconsidering your crazy idea and going for something, maybe a little bit more reasonable and tame.

00:28:42.020 Uh, the best businesses of the last, you know, 20 years were not reasonable in their ambitions.

00:28:46.020 They were, they were, they were very crazy ideas in their time.

00:28:49.020 Um, and I, I think as a country, we need to be much more open to things that we don't understand.

00:28:55.020 We need to, we need to give the default assumption to entrepreneurs that what they're, what they're talking about and what they're working on is valid and worth pursuing.

00:29:03.020 Um, and, you know, all this to say that most entrepreneurs fail, most business ideas turn out to not be valid or, or not be successful, but it's in the process of allowing sort of a thousand experiments to happen.

00:29:15.020 That one really world-changing breakthrough sort of pops through.

00:29:18.020 But if, if you're squashing these ideas before they have a chance to blossom, then that'll never happen.

00:29:23.020 And so, um, you know, the government tends to approach this more from a perspective of like, how can we throw money at, you know, more government funded incubators and, and innovation programs and super clusters.

00:29:32.020 And, but ultimately it doesn't change this.

00:29:34.020 Like, you know, are we receptive to new ideas?

00:29:37.020 Are we receptive to people that are, that are going to go against the grain, uh, to create sort of new norms in the future?

00:29:43.020 Well, if anything, it sort of bogs down entrepreneurs because they end up having to fill out government forms to try to apply for certain innovation grants and, and, and it doesn't really lead them in the direction of, of true entrepreneurship.

00:29:55.020 Well, Matt, we really appreciate your time.

00:29:57.020 Thank you so much for joining us on the show and giving the great explanations that you did.

00:30:01.020 And I, I love your sort of optimistic entrepreneurship, uh, spirit.

00:30:05.020 I hope that that, uh, that, that, that spreads and that there's more, much, much, much more of that in Canada.

00:30:10.020 I really appreciate you coming on the show today.

00:30:12.020 Thanks, Candice.

00:30:13.020 Right.

00:30:14.020 That is Matt Spoke.

00:30:15.020 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

00:30:17.020 It is the Candice Malcolm Show.

00:30:18.020 Yeah.

00:30:19.020 Yeah.

00:30:20.020 Yeah.

00:30:21.020 Yeah.

00:30:22.020 And, yeah.

00:30:23.020 Yeah.

00:30:24.020 Yeah.

00:30:25.020 Thank you.

Juno News - May 17, 2022

Can you opt-out of inflation with Bitcoin？ (Ft. Matt Spoke)

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