The EU Just Declared WAR on Your Wealth!

The European Commission recently released a report that indicates more wealth taxes and higher exit taxes are likely incoming. There's essentially a point of no return. Once your debt to GDP hits a certain level, you cannot survive. You literally might have to sell. When you play by the devil's rules, you know, you're not always going to like these rules. And sometimes you're going to have to do things you may not necessarily want to do or have planned on doing.

Could you be trapped inside the walls of your own country? The European Commission recently released a report that indicates more wealth taxes and higher exit taxes are likely in coming. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bitcoin Banter. I am pleased to have our friend Adam Semecka here. And of course, Tony is back with me. Don't forget to stick around for the

donkey of the week at the end. It's a great one. You're going to love it. Gents, let's talk a little bit about this. So we've got the European Commission dropped research on how to collect more taxes without making you angry enough to leave. And this is from Katie over at CitizenX. She said, TLDR, higher wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, plus exit taxes incoming. We're seeing more and more of this, guys. Tony, you've been the one talking about this a lot. I would love to hear your

perspective, first and foremost. Man, I've been calling this for the longest time. I'm just surprised it happened so quickly. I thought, you know, we'd at least have another five, ten years before we see these headlines. But this is just confirmation that the thieving criminals are extremely desperate and they're pissed because they are losing relevancy and they're losing

their grip over pretty much everything these days. And they're taking it out on their citizens by, you know, concocting these creative ways to continuously extract wealth from as many people as possible. And that's why a lot of folks, a lot of smart money is, you know, packing up and leaving. Plan B residencies these days are absolutely not luxury items anymore. They are a must-have if you don't want to find yourself literally hostage in your own country to a bunch

of thieves. So it's very sad that, you know, we're actually living and witnessing this reality. But Again, you know, these are all symptoms of a system that's dying. You know, the legacy system is dead. And the separation of money and state is, you know, well underway. And these are, you know, this is what happens when the mothership comes crashing down. So these guys are desperately trying to remain in power. You know, there is a new currency out there that is keeping them in power.

And, you know, people have a choice now. And they don't like it, obviously, because they've been used to getting their way and stealing for God knows how many decades without any resistance. Well, now there is real resistance and it's giving them the middle finger and they don't like it. So to all citizens of Europe and eventually worldwide, if you don't want to find yourself fighting this headache, take measures now. Don't wait until it reaches your front door. Pack your bags.

Give us a call for Plan B if you need assistance. and will help you come to places where they're not doing these retarded games, where they don't treat their citizens like criminals, where they're not continuously trying to extract from you day and night, where they welcome you, let you live and let live, and benefit from the incentives and values that you voluntarily bring onto their jurisdiction. What do you want me to tell you, man?

It's wild times that we're living, but with every piece of bad news, there's always an opportunity. And I think this is crystal clear. The news here is that this is news, right? I think the new thing that we're seeing is that they're just publishing it. I think it'd be hard to argue that this is something that hasn't been being done for hundreds and thousands of years, simply, you know, finding out how to tax your citizens more

effectively, right? This is, you know, at least even just in our, you know, in the United States where I live, we had the Boston Tea Party. And then following, we kind of staved it off a little bit with that. And starting in 1913, it just kind of reset all over again with the new central banking regime in our country and the IRS. And we haven't really fought it since 1913. And it's just been kind of a slippery slope of continual decline in funding our overlords, so to speak.

And it's just progressively getting worse. You know, every year, you know, we're paying more and more in taxes. And this is a global thing, too. It's not just in one particular country. And then we see, of course, here the European Union or the European Commission publishing this research. Right. So I think really all that's happening here is they're just, you know, telling us what they're doing.

Whereas before, it's mostly been under wraps because they know people aren't going to be paying attention. You know, all the NPCs, they're just living their lives and paying their taxes. Most people are perfectly OK with that. They know that. And they're just shifting the Overton window just, you know, an inch at a time. So that's what I see here. I don't think this is anything new necessarily other than the fact that they're now willfully bringing the public in on the conversation.

To me, it's an entirely predictable restructuring of sort of what already exists. There are exit taxes in many countries. My understanding of the report is some of what they've identified is that the way it's been structured historically isn't quite working to raise the revenue that they want. And when you create a socialist hellhole, more people are going to want to leave. And we've obviously been down the wrong path in many nations within Europe.

And so we're going to see more and more people trying to get out. And, Tony, to your point, schedule some time. You go to the link below. You can schedule some time to learn about how we can help you with the Plan B process. We make it very simple for you. The other important thing I'll add, though, while you're on the call with our team, talk to them about self-custody or your Bitcoin, because there is no way of escaping this.

If you want to comply, and I'm not encouraging everyone to evade taxes or anything like that, but if you're looking for an out and you're looking for a way to move your wealth quickly, you have to be your own bank. And that is a non-negotiable, in my view. Take self-custody of your Bitcoin. Get out as quickly as you can and make sure that you've got a place that honors your freedom, your liberty, wherever you might end up. But I think you guys nailed it.

It's completely unsurprising to me at this point. And along these lines, guys, we've got related news. So it says Netherlands unrealized gains

taxes moving forward after a 61,000 plus signature petition forced parliament to review the tax. The latest update looks bleak. So the cabinet is sticking with January 2028 rollout of a box three accrual tax. Why not a capital gains tax on sale? Officials say it's too unpredictable. The government prefers a steady, reliable stream of tax revenue over timing taxes when assets are actually sold. We're going to see this more and more. The Netherlands is the first, probably one

of the worst, if I were to speculate. It's going to be the only option for these countries who are probably, first of all, letting in many, many, many illegal immigrants and the welfare states growing in many of these jurisdictions. And people are getting desperate, looking for options. And they're not going to raise enough revenue to fulfill their obligations to their people.

And so what do you do? You just you leave the coffers. You take everything that you possibly can. Adam, what's your what's your thought on the Netherlands? If you live in a country that is attempting to or imposing unrealized gains, first of all, that's an attack on human rights. But secondly, I have two words for you, and that's jurisdictional arbitrage. You need to leave. And Bitcoin makes that possible.

And I think that, you know, anybody that's trying to impose this is going to find out really fast, you know, how easy it is to accomplish that goal with Bitcoin. And that goal being what I was referring to and alluded to is jurisdictional arbitrage, leaving your country for a country that's going to treat you better.

And you know as mentioned earlier Bitcoin Way is actually a great way to start that process if you interested You know I talked to many people that have accomplished this goal and it a lot easier than most people think if they just have the right process in place. And so I know this is a service that these guys offer. I'm not formally associated in any way, but again, I just wanted to point out that I have heard great things about

this process, and it is something that is working today. You don't have to wait until this legislation gets put into place to find somebody that's going to treat you better. If your government's essentially threatening to steal your money, why stay? Just leave. That's my opinion. Adam, you raise a good point. On the timing, they say 2028. What you have to remember is, first of all, the good news is for this particular proposal, it appears like you have a little bit

of time. The bad news is this isn't the only stupid thing that a government is capable of doing. And the exit taxes, we don't know when those are coming, but there are a host of other bad things that they can do to make a situation worse and move your timeline up to where any of this stuff really matters. Tony, what do you think about the Netherlands? Yeah, man, you guys nailed it.

I mean, for me, when I hear these words, unrealized capital gains tax and exit taxes, I mean, it's just insane to even utter these words because that automatically assumes that the state owns you, that you're a product of the state and, you know, by hook or by crook, you owe them this money, which is lunacy. Prior to 2009, you know, unfortunately, if you didn't, you know, go to war with these people and, you know, violently refused to comply, well, you know,

things played out the way they did. But now there is a viable option, you know, a peaceful option. And that's, you know, simply by not using their product, their money. Bitcoin in self-custody, It's not an investment, guys. This is your ticket to freedom. Bitcoin has destroyed the concept of sanctions. It's destroyed the concept of losing access to bank accounts. It's destroyed all of that. And it's restored the power to 8.3 billion people, at least those who are paying attention to it.

And so if you don't want to be like a cow to a thieving state, You pack up your stuff and you leave to a jurisdiction that is not going to steal from you. And you do it the intelligent way by taking your hard-earned time and energy, your money, and putting it into something they cannot remove from you. No matter what they say, no matter what legislation they write, no matter what regulation they spew out.

If the Bitcoin is in your self-custody, no living force on this planet can remove it from you. So that is a fact. Iran has learned this lesson. Russia has learned this lesson. Every bloody soul that has been on the other side of a weaponized currency has learned this lesson. Now, it's the populace that is going to be required to learn this, and very quickly. Because as you can see, these desperate psychopaths are not stopping.

And if you think you're going to appeal to emotions and mercy and clemency, you're delusional. You take your freedom. That's never going to be taken from you. You have to do it yourself, protect yourself and your loved ones. And there are options. We can definitely help you with all of it. But if you're the do-it-yourself type, you can also find tons of resources online to do it for free. But do something instead of just waiting around hoping things will miraculously get better.

They absolutely will not. Speaking of options. Yeah. Tony, I was just going to add, you know, Bitcoin gives you that optionality, like you mentioned, but it is also the only thing that can make all of this optional. You know, compliance is optional because of Bitcoin. If you don't want to comply with this, you don't have to as a Bitcoiner.

If your government's not holding up their end of the deal, if they break the contract on their side, it's up to you if you want to follow their path, you know, with Bitcoin. If you're using their money, you don't have a choice. They can change the contract and, you know, revoke all of your rights and you have no recourse. But with Bitcoin, they have to gain your approval. And they have to do that, you know, by not doing stupid crap like this. 100%, man.

You have the power when you control your body. So that's the position anybody should be desperately, you know, like sprinting towards. I think you guys nailed it. Hey, for everyone who's tuned in, do me a huge favor. smash the like button, make sure you subscribe to the channel if you're enjoying it. We'd really appreciate it and would love any of your comments in the comments as to what you think about everything

going on. How is it going to play out? Of course, it's going to be a wild couple of years as we see more of this unfold. Alrighty, guys, Adam, I want you to comment on this first because I think you're maybe a little bit more sympathetic to Michael Saylor than Tony and I are. So let's see if we can get into some real banter here. So Saylor has said we will probably sell some Bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market, just to send the message that we did it.

He has been on record saying, never sell your Bitcoin now. He said that on Twitter, and I think he said it elsewhere, but it wasn't at a shareholder meeting. It wasn't at a board meeting, I suspect. But I'd be curious how you interpret this move. Yeah, so I am sympathetic to Michael Saylor specifically and strategy and some of this other stuff. And here's my position.

I don't think you need to necessarily participate in a revolution to approve of one. So that's where I stand. You know, I like seeing all this all this play out because I think ultimately it's not so much great for Bitcoin as much as it is bad for fiat and in the central bank system.

So that is the part of it that I definitely approve of and support. So I like paying attention to it. I've never once told anybody to buy paper Bitcoin over real Bitcoin, and I never will. But this is really good for Bitcoiners, even if it's not something that you have in your portfolio. So don't feel like you're missing out on anything because this isn't real Bitcoin. Paper Bitcoin is not real Bitcoin, and it can't provide any of the things that we have already talked about and that is continually talked about on this channel.

But let me just say, I've been following this one pretty closely as of late. And, you know, historically, I think that there's really kind of two conclusions I come to. First is, you know, potentially Michael Saylor is publicly coming to the inevitable conclusion that many of us have been harping on for a long time. And that is that Bitcoin is money, right? It is something that needs to be used as money to be effective. And kind of, you know, along those same lines is what he's saying here.

we will probably sell some Bitcoin to pay a dividend. That actually goes to the second point. My second point is that they're also doing this, in my opinion, as a message that helps with the language of how they're actually funding the dividend payments because there's no shortage of people out there claiming that strategy is a Ponzi. We've all heard that. In order for it to not be a Ponzi, they have to have the ability to sell or use, you know, proceeds to fund the

dividends rather than new investments, right? I don't know if necessarily they're going to actually follow through with this. They may or may not. But this doesn't bother me as a Bitcoiner, and it shouldn't bother you as somebody that holds Bitcoin, because, you know, Bitcoin is made to be used as money. And I'm not saying that there's any benefit to selling Bitcoin to using fiat necessarily, at least long term. But using Bitcoin as money is a prerequisite for the growth and adoption of

Bitcoin. I actually tend to agree with most of what you said, Adam. If you have done the trust me bro thing and you're a strategy shareholder and you trust Michael Saylor, even though he's

not showing proof of reserves and you think that the financial engineering at play here is genius part of what you opted into is Michael Saylor is a very smart man and he knows what best And if he thinks that they going to end up with more Bitcoin and whatever metric you tracking that going to move strategy in the right direction he's operating in your best interest as a shareholder. That's what it means to buy strategy

shares or any shares of any other publicly traded company. You're trusting the execution to someone else. And that's why I'm a Bitcoiner and not a strategy shill, is because I don't have to worry about it. All I have to do is stack sats, stay humble, take it into self-custody and not think about it anymore. But Tony, I would love to hear your thoughts on Saylor. This is an interesting one. And of course, social media has gone wild about this because he's literally eating his own

words here, so to speak. But the silver lining about this is that, yes, as you said, out of this you know, categorically confirms what we've always been saying, that Bitcoin is money. You know, it's not some sort of investment to make, you know, more paper. The fact that he might have to sell is because he literally might have to sell. It's not because he wants to. You can't expect to play the Wizard of Oz forever and have nothing, you know, go sideways, right? He is, after all,

heavily involved in the most corrupt monetary system humanity has ever known. So at some point, you know, when you play by the devil's rules, you know, you're not always going to like these rules. And sometimes you're going to have to do things you may not necessarily want to do or have planned on doing. But again, if you understand Bitcoin and you've shied away from any of these products,

This is just, you know, sideline entertainment. Like whatever he does is only going to affect him and his shareholders and whoever is using his product. Maybe it causes some, I don't know, some psychological sentiment in the market, you know, on those that don't really understand Bitcoin.

But again, we've been through these roller coasters many, many times, and I don't see why this would be any different. It'll come, it'll be a big hoopla, and then it'll pass. And at the end of the day, those that are holding Bitcoin in self-custody, using it as savings, using it as money, always win and prosper in the end.

So if that's part of the journey of, you know, part of Bitcoin's history, Bitcoin story, so be it. But, you know, again, this is Michael Saylor's problem, not a Bitcoiner who understands what Bitcoin is. Nothing Michael Saylor does can affect, you know, how Bitcoin works. That's important to understand.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, this is where I really want the comment section to come to life. I would be fascinated to know what the reactions are, because I know we're going to have some people who own strategy, some people who are hardcore, 100% Bitcoin folks. I'd love to know what you think about Saylor talking about potentially selling Bitcoin after he's reiterated many times he's not going to sell Bitcoin.

All right, guys, up next, we've got U.S. national debt has surpassed the size of the entire U.S. GDP for the first time since World War II.

Not a great looking chart. Guys, this is, you know, this is just an extension of clown world. It doesn't surprise me at all that we've reached this point. But Adam, why don't you take this one first? What's your what's your take on what's happening with debt versus GDP?

There is a fair amount of research that's been done in terms of measuring the debt to GDP and historical success, right? So there's essentially a point of no return. Once your debt to GDP hits a certain level, you cannot survive, at least historically speaking. I believe the longest standing survivor of a catastrophic debt to GDP level is Japan. And the U.S. is basically right up there with them. I mean, Japan's in free fall right now as we speak.

And in the U.S., I think capital markets and bond markets are not too far behind. I mean, this is really just a, I would say, like a vital sign of congestive heart failure of our internal infrastructure, monetarily speaking. But it is important to note that this is very bullish, so to speak, on Bitcoin, both adoption and price, because as the system continues to fail, more people are going to open their eyes to Bitcoin because they're going to be desperately searching for other solutions.

And they're going to come for the money. They're going to stay for the freedom. Again, this is just another one of those things that it's really bad on the surface. But under the surface, you have a solution that is actually better than the previous alternative. So I'm not really too worried about the collapse of the fiat system. There's a potential for a smooth transition from the central bank fiat regime to a hard money system being Bitcoin.

I'm not sure how high I place the probability of that, but it's not out of the question. Tony says zero. Let's hear what you had to say about that, Tony. Man, when I look at this chart, I automatically see that comic strip of the bomb diffuser running away. And so with the little, you know, quote on his shirt, like, if you see me running, you better be right behind me because, you know, the thing is about to blow up. And so this chart is a perfect reflection of that T-shirt, right?

Hopefully this, you know, opens up more eyes and makes people finally believe, you know, what, you know, conspiracy theorists have been saying for the last 17 years, that this day is coming. Well, and now, congratulations, it's finally here. And you can try to look up, down, left and right for solutions to try to protect yourself. But the only real lifeboat to all of this is something that is completely off of it, right? And like a separate dimension. And that is Bitcoin in full self-custody.

So when this whole thing collapses, and collapse it will, because, you know, it's clearly indicating it, you'll be on the sidelines. I feel really, really heartbroken to the pain that a lot of people are going to go through because that's the only way they're going to believe it. Unless they blow up, it's always going to be something that happens elsewhere to other people.

But unfortunately, you know, the day that, you know, that pain has come home. And so I hope more people pay attention to this and, you know, take proper measures to, like, lessen the pain, because pain is unavoidable at this stage if you haven't done anything yet. But you can definitely, you know, try to reduce it as much as possible. My hope is that a lot of normies woke up to look at this chart and they just had this aha moment. They're like, something's not right.

To Tony, your point that the bomb diffuser is running away. And they say, I need to take a look at what I need to do to protect myself. And the thing about this, though, man, is that normal people, regular people don't look at these charts. They have no idea these charts exist. So they will literally wake up one day like I did to like a nuke on their life. And that's, you know, that's it. Yeah, that is probably a fair point. I'm being optimistic here. I'm just being hopeful.

Again, if you're listening, you stuck through it this far, you must be enjoying the show. Make sure you like, leave a comment, subscribe to the channel. We would really appreciate that.

And we are we finally arrived at our donkey of the week. And of course, it's no other than the famous Mr. Peter Schiff. So he said anyone paying $78,000 to buy Bitcoin is not getting in cheap based on the historic price range in which Bitcoin has traded since inception, $78,000 is a very high price to pay. Just because some people paid more, that does not mean paying less than they did is a bargain.

And he's, of course, getting just steamrolled in the comments by all of the Bitcoiners who have been wondering, are you going to be saying the same thing when it dips from a million to 800,000

and then from 5 million down to 4.3? And Peter Schiff, he could be our donkey of the week. I think almost every week we just like to mix it up for fun but Tony I let you take this one first and provide your comments to Peter Schiff and then we do have one more related story that I going to touch on very briefly because it kind of adds a nice kicker to it man this guy is so funny he just one of these people that simply doesn know how to quit man like and he keeps

he keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper like he reminds me of you know when like somebody breaks up with you and you can't you can't stop back mouthing them even though they're doing much better than you and you're still like that loser who's been dumped this is this is what peter schrift reminds me of he's like wrong 700 times but yet he insists on spewing the same rubbish over and over hoping maybe someone will believe him right but to me it's just you know like it's

just he's just an annoying buzz and i've learned to completely ignore him like i only pay attention to him when you know stories like this come up tony i bet you his his uh the the income he generates from from trolling on twitter about bitcoin it has been more financially productive for him than any gold he's ever held that would be my guess he's made very possible man i mean the level of ignorance that's out there is unmeasurable and of course guys like him are going to profit off of

of that ignorance. It's just for how long is it going to last? Yeah, I think you got it. What do you think, Adam? You're probably right, Michael. He probably makes more on his tweets than he does from his gold holdings. I'll also say, I think Peter Schiff is actually right here in one very specific scenario. He says anyone paying $78,000 to buy Bitcoin is not getting in cheap. That is correct under the presupposition that the fiat currency does not continue to get debased.

It's a big presupposition. If they stop printing money and we can prove that, then he's right. Then he's 100% right. That's the problem though. He's not. They will never stop printing money. He's measuring in a fiat denominated unit that will perpetually be debased. The denominator is going to infinity. The denominator in Bitcoin is 21 million, ever. And that is why he's wrong.

And again, that presupposition, I say it a little bit tongue-in-cheek, just because we all know that that is never going to happen. Yeah, it will happen when Mary Poppins comes flying through my window. Yeah. All right. I'll believe it. So this was the real kicker I wanted to share.

So Zero Hedge reported on this. I listened to an interesting article on audio that was written by someone at the Mises Institute. It says Fort Knox is full of impure gold, unfit for international transactions. And I was looking into this a few days ago, so I don't remember all the details. But I know when they confiscated gold, there were, you know, there were a lot of individual citizens, banks were turning in their gold.

And the standards, I think, were different, you know, 100 years ago for the purity of gold. So there's a lot of like 90 percent pure gold, which isn't suitable for international transactions that the government's collected. and to go figure out which bars are adequate, which ones aren't, to verify if they're even real gold, all of this stuff. Like this is, of course, the irony. We didn't get the Fort Knox audit. You know why? Well, first of all, the gold probably isn't there.

But second, doing an actual audit, going through some meaningful sample size of the gold would be a multi-year process if the gold's there. And then they would probably find out something that they didn't want to find out, that all the gold's unfit for international transactions. Like it doesn't even meet the purity standards that we need. So I'll let you guys take one more shot at Peter. Any gold bugs out there? Adam, what do you have to say to this? We don't know and we never will know.

You know, that's the whole point of this. They can say whatever they want about the golden Fort Knox. And we have no choice but to believe them. With Bitcoin, you know, we can all audit the chain every 10 minutes with our nodes. We can all verify all the Bitcoin is where it's supposed to be. And then it is real Bitcoin. and we can verify it with, you know, a hundred dollar machine that's running in our basement.

So, you know, I don't think that there's really any merit to spending a ton of time on this because they're just going to keep moving the goalposts on us. You remember, you know, a year ago when they said that they were going to audit Fort Knox. Yeah, that didn't happen and never will happen because then they can't say what they want to say and they're never going to give us transparency in that. So Bitcoin is better. Yeah, absolutely, man. I completely agree with you.

I'll just add that it's become a moot point as far as I'm concerned. Like, who cares? First of all, you're never going to get the truth from them. And whatever you discover is clearly not going to be good news. But does it really matter? Like living in the digital world with AI, like who cares about the gold? Whether it's here or there, like it doesn't really matter. It's a relic, right? It's like trying to hoard onto fax machines in an era of email.

And the beauty of Bitcoin is that it's technically sophisticated, but it's mechanically very elegant. When you begin to understand just functionally how it works and what it's doing, and I would encourage everyone to go read the book Inventing Bitcoin by Jan Pritzker. I think it's a great overview of this. It becomes very evident why when we talk about something like auditing gold, it's effectively impossible at any broad scale.

Never mind all the security, insurance, risk, transportation, all of that in Bitcoin, I think, really comes into focus. for a lot of people. So guys, I think that's a good place to wrap up for everyone who's tuned in. We really appreciate you being here. Be sure to check out the link below. We're going to show you where you can schedule a call with our team, both for the plan B that we were talking about and taking your Bitcoin into proper 100% self-custody. I'm also going to drop a link to

our newsletter below. Every week we send out the highest signal, funniest newsletter in Bitcoin, lots of great memes, but we educate on a variety of topics, whatever tends to be current at that point in time. So I encourage you to do that. And by the way, if you subscribe to the newsletter, You also get invited to things like live streams and webinars that we do with some incredible guests. So make sure you do that. And then, Adam, I'm going to let you do a little handoff here.

Tell people about MANA if you'd like. And Bitcoin is Better. I know you've been working on some other projects as well. Yeah, so we'll start with Bitcoin is Better. Bitcoin is Better is a nonprofit organization dedicated to education and outreach. No corporate sponsorship or affiliation there in terms of the message that's being delivered. So you can understand that when you're seeing any content from us, it is pure and it is all about the mission of Bitcoin itself.

We're focusing on essentially advertising commercials, so to speak. And we have a really cool community curation and feedback mechanism for getting the Bitcoin message out to the normies, if you will. So if you're interested in helping those normies learn about Bitcoin and putting commercials on essentially public television, go check out BitcoinIsBetter.org. You can vote on your favorite video advertisement. And when it gets funded, we put it on cable TV.

Mana, as you can see here, this is a payment app. It's basically a layer two self-custodial spending wallet. If you guys are interested in using your Bitcoin as money, of course, it is my first recommendation. And so if you're looking for something to be able to use your Bitcoin in a more freedom-loving way, check out Mana and hold your own keys. And then I'm also at Adam Semeca on X. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. Awesome. Adam, good having you back. Tony, great seeing you, man.

We will be back again next week with Bitcoin Banter. But guys, I appreciate you coming on. For everyone who tuned in, thank you so much for being here. cheers guys