Mark Chats with Sam Callahan of Swan Bitcoin

now is bitcoin and the decentralized technology that it has. Now, you know that I try to bring to you some education so you can understand the world a little bit differently, and some breaking news. And today I have a special guest so you can hear from somebody other than myself, and we are coming to you from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where we are at Bitcoin ski Week, which is pretty amazing.

We're getting to score some epic powder and have some amazing conversations and I grab someone to talk to you about this as well. So Sam, thanks for taking the time to come sit down with me. Yeah. Thanks Mark.

So Sam, you know you have I mean, you do amazing research at Swan Swan Bitcoin for everybody that's listening, and I guess you're doing research on just macro topics But one of them where you've really kind of been digging in deep is in the banking world, right, so BIS, Bank of International Settlements, IMAF, etc. And I know one of the areas you've been digging into is central bank digital currencies quite a bit correct, Yeah, yeah, Now, first off, I would say, do you think that CBDs CBDCs are

getting a lot of hype? Are they getting too much hype or not enough hype? I would say, I'd say the plausibility that one happens in the United States, it is probably getting too much hype. I think globally, maybe they're not getting as much hype. So I think there's a big difference between the developments that are happening in

the United States versus globally. And if you look at a couple of surveys from the Bank of International Settlements, so for instance, twenty nineteen, around twenty percent of central bank surveyed said that they were likely to issue a retail CBDC, and fast forward to today that numbers up to sixty percent. So it's accelerating globally. But you know, in the United States, I think there's a lot of

fear around the central bank digital currency. But there's a ton of hurdles that would need to be leaped over in order to issue one in the United States, and there's a lot of pushback right now, and that's encouraging to see. So frame up for US a central bank digital currency, because first off, I think most people already understand this, haven't thought through this, but I think it's

something like eighty percent of dollars transactions are digital anyway. Yeah, I don't want them to ban cash, but the truth is, if I admit it, I don't really use cash. I use debit cards and credit cards and wire transfers and ah. Right, and so the majority of transactions are already digital. So we have digital dollars kind of, right, So what's the big deal with a CBDC. So there's a difference between the digital dollars that we have today and a retail CBDC,

And there's three main differences in my mind. One is that a CBDC would be programmable, so you could have smart contract functionality that would execute on specific conditions so that you could do anything. You could say, hey, we want this certain cohort pup the population to not be able to buy this at a certain time, like and so you'd have this granular level of control that is

not capable with the current digital dollars. The other difference is that ninety five percent of digital dollars today are privately issued. They're issued by commercial banks, okay, and so, or they're on like PayPal or something like that, and so they have default risk and liquidity risk that that company could go under, like Papal could under, like PayPal could go under, right, and or the bank or the bank, just like in the global financial crisis, a lot of

people savings. They realize that those digital dollars are at risk. They have those risks. A central bank digital currency would

be different. It would be a liability of the central bank itself, and so technically it would be a safer form of digital dollars because the central bank itself can't really default technically because it has access to a quote unquote money printer even though they don't technically print money, they would be able to work with the Treasury or something happen and flood the market with liquidity, and so they wouldn't have that risk. Better. I think it's it's

that's their argument for why it's better. That's why they say they want to do that. And so it's kind of like a tough question because there's so many other risks to essential bank digital currency around privacy, around surveillance. Like I don't think the risk the risk outweigh the benefits, is what I'm saying. Yeah, And so I can't think of the third one off the top of my head

right now. But those are the two big differences. Oh that The third one is it could be a transmission channel for monetary policy and fiscal policy, and you'd be able to tax every single transaction that people make. So right now, take a piece off the top tape, a piece off the top of every single transaction. So let's just say hypothetically that cash would disappear, and it cash

is declining rapidly over the last say ten years. And so if cash is gone, even if I gave you a quote unquote twenty dollars just because you know, we made a bet on a sports game or something, they would technically be able to tax that transaction so it could bring more revenue to the state. And so that's those three main differences between central bank digital currencies and private and private dollars. Today, digital dollars is the transmission

channel for monetary, physical, and tax policy. It's programmable as well as it doesn't have default in liquidity risk, you know, on the taxing transactions piece right now, like we've seen the growth of venmo or PayPal, right, so venmo, like I can venmo you directly. It goes from my venmo to my credit card, credit card to my bank, my bank to your bank, your bank to your credit card, your to your venmo. Right, there's whatever, four to six people in the middle of that, and each one of

them taxes. Yeah, the transaction. Right. So if the government were to the government to fed whatever we want to call that, were to provide the CBDC channel, they're technically all of those in one so the venmo, the credit card, the bank, whatever, And if they took the same amount of fee that was already being charged there, that could be like the tax or the transaction feed let's call it.

That might be one way to look at it directly to the state, and then that would be a big revenue generator for the state, right and it wouldn't be any more than we'd be paying right now in venmo. So yeah, let's essentially yeah, and so technically it would be safer too, right, because of that most risk that it doesn't have that I explained, and this is why banks, the banking industry, and companies like PayPal are so worried about essential bank digital currency being issued because it would

disintermediate them. It would technically be a better option, safer option, and the thought would be that a lot of funds would flow out of their you know, their companies into the central bank digital currency. So if if we stay with some of the problems, first of all, actually, before we go into the problems, let me ask another question from a from a global macroeconomic standpoint, Like, the governments

of the world are going broke. The FEDS fighting inflation, they're losing and their fight against inflation, the government US government, the treasury is going broke. All the governments of the world are basically going broke. And so a lot of people think that the CBDC is the way that they

solve that. So like, hey, they're at the fiscal cliff, and so what they're gonna do is they're going to create this event and they're gonna switch out and put everybody onto a CBDC, and that's how they're going to fix the problem. I don't see how that fixes the problem though. I don't think it fixes the problem at all. I think it would be the exact same problem in a new shiny wrapper that has embedded surveillance. I mean,

it would be the exact same system. And they're looking at if you look at the design, they're leading designs, it's all out in the open. They write these research papers. They are recreating the current system. It's an intermediated central bank digital currency design. It's the same monetary system with all the same problems, just with increased control and surveillance. I mean it really is. So it wouldn't solve any problems. So the problems that got us here are one, they

print too much money. I mean that that's ultimately if we want to boil it down, right yea, and so and then you said the transmission problems, and I don't know exactly what you're talking about. Potentially, like let's say during the COVID of pandemic, they had a problem getting money out into this little inefficient inefficient, right, So if this makes it more efficient, that means they can put

even more money into the system. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's critics of CBDCs and one of them as this advisor for the Chicago Fed, and he wrote a comment in response to the Federal Reserves white paper on CBDCs, and he said that this will actually expand the balance sheet because they'll have to issue CBDCs, and if their liabilities on the Federal Reserve balance sheet, this could expand the balance sheet even more at a time where they're

trying to regain credibility and reduce their balance sheet. So to actually it would do the opposite. It would actually just they would print more money. And they're thinking about how do we get banks to go along with this, and one of their proposed solutions to that problem is, oh, we'll just pay him. We'll give them more scentible print money and pay the banks so that they won't go

out of business. And so they have all these problems of issue in a CBDCs, and a lot of their solutions to those problems are to print more money, which is, like you said, the root cause. Yeah, if you're just tuning in, you are listening to the Mark Mo Show, we're talking about the decentralized Revolution. I'm sitting down with Sam from Swan Bitcoin. We're talking about CBDC Central Bank

digital currencies. We're gonna dig more into the problems, maybe non existing solutions, and then we're gonna talk about the reality of what a risk we have potentially in the United States and other countries. There's some big news that broke this week about another country launching one. We're gonna talk about that. We're back with all that and more in a minute. Don't go away, we're gonna be right back. All right, welcome back. If you're just tune in, you

were listening to the Mark mo Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution, and I'm in the studio with Sam Callahan from Swan Bitcoin. He's the what the macro analyst, thereat lead analyst, lead analysts. Yeah, anyway, he spends a lot of time researching these topics. Let's just let's just say that, right, and too much time. Right, that's his job. He can get paid to research these things. And specifically, you've been really been digging into banking. So we're talking

about central bank digital currencies. Now back to that, we were talking about how they don't really solve any of the problem. So when people think, oh, well they're gonna they're gonna crash the markets and switches to a CBDC.

It's like that doesn't really do anything. I guess you could maybe look at like when gold used to be money pre nineteen thirty three, and then they switched everybody to a fiat money and then they devalued it, so everyone basically still had the same dollars, they just bought less.

So I suppose they could say, through some sort of liquidity event, like the banks are broke, FDIC is going to step in and give you money, but instead they give you a new CBDC money and now steve value because now they don't see FDIC doesn't have enough money. Obviously they are like a nine percent ratio or something something like that, something like that, so they have to

print away more money. So they're gonna give you your money, here's your money, here's your hundred thousand back, but it only buys you forty thousand worth of goods or something like that. Well, they'll I think what they'll do is if they do go along with this retail CBDC and issue it, they'll attach some kind of incentive stimulus, right UBI, And that's to try to get people to use it. And this is what other essential banks around the world

have done, so China did, that's Nigeria, Bahamas. They all have these these random incentives. It's like, you know, it's like somebody in a van trying to give candy to a kid, like, don't worry, it's safe. You know, here you go, and people might fall for that. But the adoption rates of other central bank digital currency have been

extremely low, extremely disappointing because people don't want them. And you look at the proponents of them, and they have a lot of arguments why is CBDC would be good. One of them is financial inclusion, promote financial inclusion. One of them is more efficient payments. One of them is it'll actually improve financial stability. Those are the three main ones, and when you look into the data, it actually does none of those things and actually worsens all three of

those things. All right, So once you dig into the data, dig into the facts, you realize that this is just a bad idea, Like if we look past the surveillance and the nineteen eighty four kind of style, what this would enable, it doesn't actually do any of the things that they think perceived benefits. So it's really just all risk. It's all risk to do this, and it takes a ton of time and resources to try to research it and build it, and it's a huge waste of time.

And that's why I pushed back against them. A huge waste of time, resources, energy, money, all those things. There's no perceived benefit from the greater good. There's perceived benefit from authoritarian standpoint. Yes, let's talk more about sort of this idea that they're hoping to increase, which would be greater inclusion. So I think it was in like twenty sixteen there was like two billion adults in the world

that had no access to banking. I think that numbers come down to billion and a half or something like that. But people all around the world, and if we take off our well, I guess it's a good question. When we talk about bitcoin and really global macro, we think about it from a global standpoint, not a very US standpoint.

And so if I think about this banking problem of being people under banked, it's a global problem, and most of those probably billion and a half people around the world don't have access to banking and typically don't have permission to join banking. So if you're a fifteen year old kid from I ran like you can't get a bank account, right, but these are maybe more not global issues,

they're more local issues. So I saw this week Australia's Central Bank is set to launch a live pilot of a central bank digital currency in the coming months, According to a Jane statement from the Reserve Bank of Australia, a research project to explore potential use cases in economic benefits of a central bank digital currency CBDC in Australia. So while we may see countries like Australia going with it, or you said earlier you think like the ECB might be next, maybe in the US we don't have it.

So this isn't really as much of a global phenomenon. It's more of like a local Well yeah, I give it an extremely low probability of a retail CBDC in the United States for a lot of reasons. One is just where the land of the free, and this is like really a not anti freedom technology, is how I

would call it. It leads to censorship, leads to surveillance, infringes on the rights and liberties of individuals, and it's really against American values and you're seeing a lot of pushback in Congress and then the Federal Reserve actually can't legally issue currency, so there would have to be new legislation passed to approve of CBDC. And I just think there's a ton of pushback. If you look at the

public comments in response to the Fed's white paper. I looked through every single one of them, and seventy three percent of those comments I deemed negative there against CBDCs. And I was really lenient in terms of what I considered positive comments. So seventy three percent of those comments were negative. The American people do not want this thing. And then there's there's other reasons why in America it just doesn't make sense, the financial inclusion. The FDIC did

a study on American households. Four point five percent of American households still remain the bank today, and the reasons in the survey from the FBIC were number one, high minimal cost to open a bank account, number two, privacy concerns, Number three they don't trust banks, and number four was high unpredictable fees. Now, essential bank digital currency would do none of those things. They wouldn't improve any of those things.

They would actually worsen them, because like let's take fees and let's take high minimal costs to open up bank account. Those two reasons it would cost money for commercial banks

to implement a CBDC system. It would take compliance costs with a MLK by C, it would take operational costs to build out the technology in the system to be interoperable with a cbd system, to create a digital wallet, to maintain the wallets, those all they would all cost money for these banks to do, and so the logical conclusion is that they will pass on those costs in the form of higher fees for their users, for their consumers, and so it would actually lead to higher fees and

it would actually lead to higher expenses and costs for consumers, which are the reasons they're in bank in the first place. And specifically, it would hurt small community banks. And small community banks are absolutely critical for serving underserved communities in America in terms of critical financial services. They make up fifteen percent of total loans, but they make up thirty one percent of loans to small businesses and thirty four

percent of loans to farmers. Wow. Right, So this is they would have a really hard time implementing a CDC CBDC system compared to larger banks because they don't have the profit margins, they don't have the technical capabilities, and so they would be forced to close. And this is the continuation of a trend of bank consolidation over the last twenty years. Right, So, like that's why it would really worsen financial inclusion, even though they say it's going

to promote it. It would cause these small and community banks to close up shop worse, like causing more financial it would cause financial exclusion. And so that's why I'm pretty passionate about this because I just think it's such a bad idea. It's such a bad idea. There's like no no positives in like all. But to your point about the consolidation of banks, you know, for a lot of people who haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this, the consolidation or the centralization of all these

decision making capabilities is a big problem. So central bank, I'm sorry, commercial or community banks know about their local community. Yeah, so, like, hey, I want to start avocado stand well in California, Like, that's probably pretty good business. If I want to do in Wyoming, it's probably not. And that's that local bank should know the difference of my local climate, economy things like that and should be making those decisions on a

local basis. And so as you start to consolidate those movements up and so now it's just one central bank, the FED going to tell me whether I should start avocado stand or not, like they don't have the information to do that. And so next thing, you know, small businesses suffer and it goes to big banks. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Markmas Show, we're talking about the decentralized revolution, of course each and every week. But I'm down sitting down with Sam Callahan. We are

talking about central bank digital currencies. We're gonna talk about banking. I want to talk about some other risks in banking as well, and then we'll speculate a little bit about some of the probabilities of some of these things happening. So we had lots to cover some very important stuff, some stuff he's super passionate about, and you should be passionate about as well, because this is going to affect you if you're not educated it. We'll be back with

all that and more in a minute. Don't go away, all right, welcome back. If you just tune in, you are listening to the Mark Moss Show, sitting down with Sam Calhan. We are talking about central bank digital currencies. He's the lead analyst over at swan Bitcoin. They put out amazing research. Go check them out. Swan Bitcoin easy place to get your bitcoin dollar cost average into bitcoin as well, So check that out. But Sam, so we were talking about, you know, all these things, and before

the breakoff, was talking about this. You were talking about the consolidation of the banking and I was kind of adding on and how that if we take the decision making away, this decentralized decision making from local banks that have local knowledge and try to consolidate to a federal system, that's going to be very bad for local businesses. And really it would consolidate all businesses where big businesses, big

national based businesses might get the funding and local don't. Yeah, and when you have consolidation of the banking industry, you have decreased competition, right, So like when you have only four megabanks, which there's a chart after the global financial crisis where it just shows the consolidation into basically four or five megabanks in America, right or basically globally. And when there's decreased competition, you can have exorbitant fees. They

can get away with that. They have this thing called junk fees, and it's a huge problem. It's the fourth reason, top reason why people remain unbanked is high, unpredictable fees. And I think that's a result of the consolidation. And so if CBDCs will make it harder for these small community banks to stay in business, it'll lead to higher fees because there's less competition in the banking industry. Now I want to talk about some of the risks for a minute, because you touched on it, but you didn't

really get expand on them. So like we saw like MasterCard is piloting a program to track your carbon score, right, so that's a problem. So like potentially with this ESG and all these carbon the metrics that are coming out, I could say, hey, your carbon score is too high, your credit card doesn't work, your bank account doesn't work, You've you've gone over your allotment of meat. So we saw there was a study done in the European Union just in the last couple of weeks and it basically

came out and they it was a research report. It was done on behalf of the government, so it's not policy yet. But they basically said, what is the right amount of meat for people to eat? And I forget the numbers, but it was something like avert person eats like two hundgram and they say, should eat eight. How much travel should each person have and they said I think they said each person should be limited to do I want to say it was one trip every two

years and then all these crazy metrics. Now this was just a research report, right, not policy, but if they decided those things should be policy or like they're talking about these fifteen minute cities, right, yeah, so hey, you've driven more than you can drive, so now you can't get gas, can't get more of it. I mean that's where this goes, right, It is where this goes. And

that's the programmable nature of CBDC. So I don't think people understand that it would be built into the money itself, Like just think of your cash as having an on and off switch and all of these restrictions and all of these controls. It would allow the government to use

money itself to push social agenda behavior behavioral economics. Yeah, and that's that's that's a terrible world, right, Like we don't want to be told what to do, and the freedom to transact, it's a prerequisite for a lot of freedoms.

It underpins it all, It underpins it all. So I don't think people quite understand the risks here because when what we're talking about a CBDC, what we're really talking about is fundamental rights and fundamental rights to transact, fundamental rights of privacy which would be infringed upon with this technology. And they know these risks in their own research. They

talk about these risks all the time. But they say, well, we can't have privacy like cash because we have to stop money laundering, right, criminal activity mlk i C. We have to comply with that. That's despite the fact that a KYC there's nothing to stop financial crimes, you know, and maybe even helps it, and maybe even helps it. The fence and report showed that the big banks laundered

like two trillion dollars or something like that. Yeah, and they paid minimal fees and fines, and it's like, really that inclusion that they have allows them to get away with it, right, And so they're basically saying that they're not gonna have privacy built into this thing. They say Actually there's a paper by the BIZ titled Embedded Surveillance. Yea.

So it's a serious issue and that's why I'm passionate about it, and that's why I just try to raise awareness, even though I think there's a low probability of it happening in the United States. I think this is one of this is a big issue that people should know more about because it's happening. The research and development is accelerating, and even in the United States, the Federal Reserve just

had a pilot. They just expanded their pilot with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to start piloting how one would transact with the CBDC. So they just keep kind of snowballing it, and even though there's a lot of pushback from the public and city and congressmen like Tom Emmer, Yeah exactly. He just passed an act. I think it's the Anti Surveillance Act or something like that. Cruise has also put a couple of things forward. Yeah, yeah, and

that Warren Davidson spoke out about it. So it's starting to gain traction and that's encouraging to see. Now let's talk about incentives. So we like to talk about incentives a lot. Show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome. Charliemonger said, I think so we have like the people. The players would be the people us, right, the retail users. We have the banks, We have the FED which is maybe part of the banks, and then we have like the government. Like these are kind of the four parties

maybe that we would think about and the incentives. So the people, our incentive is to try to keep as much freedom as we have and try to keep our costs low, predictable, privacy, all those things. So of course we don't want that. The banks wouldn't really want this because to the point you've made, most banks can't keep up with it. Even if they could, they don't want to spend the money, time resources to do it a lot of and won't be able to do it, and

so effectively this could cut the banks out altogether. And we have accounts directly with the FED, and all the commercial banks are gone. So the banks don't really want it, right well, even if so, they've kind of moved past the design of an account directly at the FED. Because the FED doesn't have it, they don't have the abilities

to serve a customer facing roles. They want that the commercial banks to keep that because they don't want all the risks, the operational risks, the security risks they want the commercial banks still evolve that what they want is a two tiered intermediated system similar to what we have, where there's just a little CBDC account at the commercial banks.

But even then they would disintermediate the banks because it would take their bank deposits out of those you know, those deposits would move from deposits at commercial banks into CBDC accounts, And deposits at commercial banks are their main source of funding, makes up seventy one percent of their

bank funding, and it's their cheapest form of funding. So if it flows out of their deposits into a CBDC account, it would still disintermediate the don't they park most of that back at the FED anyway, And that's what the reverse repot is. Yeah, So this is when they're when they're designed, they're trying to figure out how to make it work. It's so complicated, and if they start they're like, oh, well, we can do this, we can do this. But the fact is the fact that it has all these issues

before it even comes into existence. You have to ask yourself why would even risk it? Like why even if they're all these perceived problems already exists and they're trying to come up with like patchwork solutions before it even happens, Like why why go through with it? So the people don't want it, the banks don't want it. The government probably wants it because they get the power and the

control correct and they can control monetary policy easier. So I think it's interesting to see what's going on in Nigeria. You mentioned Nigeria. They rolled out the e niara and they've used, you said, like the van with the candy or whatever they I call it. They've used the carrot and the stick. So the carrot was, hey, we'll give you discounts on your taxi trips and your petticab things whatever,

and then not enough people were using it. And what's interesting is when you look at some of the comments of why people are like, we already have bitcoin, yep, right, we already have that. And this is no different than the nyara. And the reason why we don't use than auras because it loses, you debase it, it loses, right, So we don't use nara because you base it Eatra is the same thing, and you're still going to be base it the same way, So why would we do that?

And we already have a a bitcoin. So the carrot didn't work. So then came the stick, and the stick was, now what I think, You get no more cash withdraws than like twenty five dollars a day, so you can withdraw eat nyara, but you can't withdraw cash. So that was kind of the carret in the stick. But what I like is the people's response to that, which is like, look, this is no different than what we already have and we don't need that, and we already have bitcoin for

digital transactions and things like that. It's like they don't trust them, right, that's the underlying trust, and they've abused their trust, and so it doesn't matter if it's a new technology. They don't like the people that are issuing it. They don't trust them after years and years of harm that they've gone through because of their policies. And then Bitcoin, you know, I talked about these problems of like financial inclusion, Bitcoin actually solves them, right, So it already has or

it already has right. So like Bitcoin's open, it's permission lists you don't need there's no minimal cost to open up a quote unquote account in bitcoin. The fees are like transparent and predictable and lower, and so it fixes a lot of these underlying problems of why people remain unbanked. Yeah, I want to talk more about that in a minute when we come back. I also want to talk about the role stable coins might play today and maybe in the future, So I want to talk about that in

a minute. You're listening to the Mark mass Show sitting down with Sam Callahan from Swan Bitcoin talking about central bank digital currencies, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the dangers. We'll be back with more in a minute. Don't go away, We right back, all right, Welcome back.

If you just tune in, you are listening to the Mark Moss Show sitting down with Sam Callahan, the lead analyst over at Swan Bitcoin and make it really easy to get bitcoin if you wanted to, If you want to buy a little bit and want a DCA into a dollar cost average, which you should think about. We're down in Jackson, Whole, Wyoming at the Bitcoin Ski Week and we're giving you some important information between some runs.

Hopefully we're gonna get it in the powder. But we're talking about central big digital currencies, the good, the bad, the ugly, the scary. You need to be informed because this is something that's gonna could potentially affect your life, and we should all be arming ourselves with knowledge and trying to push back as best as we can. Now, two things I want to talk about. One you were saying right before we took a break all the things that they're hoping to solve with the CBDC, which is

more inclusion, meaning more people have access to it. A problem is if you live in certain parts of the world, like there may be no bank within hours from you, right so it's hard to get a bank account, or you don't have the proper ID or from the wrong countries.

There's all these reasons why inclusion is there. The fees obviously, like an El Salvador with the first time I visit a bitcoin beach, what I hadn't realized before because I've been there before is that they have access to banks, but because they don't have enough money that the cost to have the bank account is so high that they can't afford it. And the merchants they don't do enough volume to have a payment processor, so they just don't have banks. So there's lots of reasons why. So they

want to solve that the financial inclusion. They want to make it easier to send money across border, right, right, except for you'll solve all these different currencies, so the border problem will still be there, so it doesn't actually solve that. So all the problems that they want to solve have already been solved, both bitcoin and then mostly

with stable coins as well. Yeah, and I think that's it's the private sector, right, providing innovation, which is what the private sector is great at, responding to user needs in the marketplace. When you have public institutions that try to force innovation top down that nobody asked for. Now, I don't see anybody raising their hand saying I really want to CBDC with built in surveillance and restrictions. Yeah,

what you know. But bitcoin is being adopted at a grassroots level because people are or finding value in it and people are actually using it because it solves those problems and it works. It just works all right. So you could be hours from a bank and most people

have smartphones. Now majority of the world has smartphones. We're full adoption basically, so I can just download an app and instantly receive payment as a merchant or a retail person, I don't have to travel three hours to a bank, right, I mean, it's it's solved it instantly. Yeah. And the cross border payments. I like that you brought that up

because that's one of their big advocate. Advocates for CBDCs say it will help that, but like you said, it doesn't fix the underlying problems of why cross border payments are still slow and expensive, which is fragmented data standards, compliance with different mL KYC policies of different jurisdictions, differences in time zones of these correspondent banks. Like Bitcoin solves that.

The Lightning working hours, Yes, Lightning network solves that. And so it's it's just they are ignoring this private sector solution because it disintered mediates then because it removes the need of inter areas entirely. So how how is Lightning solved that? Well, Lightning those they don't know, people don't Lightning is a second layer payment protocol built on top of Bitcoin that allows for basically feeless, uh instant payments.

It's it's how we solved this problem of cross border payments as well as micropayments, because you can do it with final settlement, meaning nobody can stop it. It's censorship resistant, and it's fast, and it's cheap and you can use it all built on top of bitcoin. And so the Lightning network is what you know, Alsavodor is using it.

People in Africa are using it to send payments across borders within Africa at a fraction of the cross and these remittance fees are so high in Africa, and with these cross border payments that the savings that people have when they use Lightning is substantial, substantial. Think about what he said, I mean, just to make it easy if you're not if you're not following along. Is that like Venmo is like a way to send dollars on top of your bank account. Yeah, Lightning is a way to

send bitcoin on top of your bigcoin account. So I think about it kind of in those terms. The other thing I would say is that maybe you don't understand how this works. So like you're in the United States and you've got Venmo, like cool, whatever, But the lady that cuts my hair is from Afghanistan. She moved here from Afghanistan. I don't know, twenty years ago whatever. And of course we know the you know, US was in war over there for twenty years. We pulled out and

it was a big tragedy whatever. And so now the Taliban took over and they took over the banking system, and she still knows like women friends there and she wants to give them money, and she has no way to give them money because if she sends them money, the Taliban would just take it. So there's this massive humanitarian crisis going on where women specifically in Afghanistan are being you know, oppressed in a big way, and she from Afghanistan wants to help them, and she has no

way to give them money. And yet she could just transact enlightning and from her bed literally could send it free and instantly, and there's no way for it to be intercepted by the Taliban, yep, and completely permissionless right permission, So they can just send it. No, they don't have to ask permission from the banks to send it. They can just do it peer to peer. And that's the power of bitcoin, right. I think that's the from the get go that's been of the value proposition of bitcoin.

I think it's just so important to think about stories like that, And it's one reason why I really believe that people need to travel more, because sometimes we get really stuck in this US centric viewpoint where like I don't even tell you how much my hotel room is here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that I took on a plane in first class to sit here, and I'm sipping twenty dollars drinks at the bar, and like, what do

I need different money for? Right? Yeah, But like when you start thinking about these poor women in Afghanistan or even in El Salvador for that matter, Right, so I think it's like thirty percent of their GDP is remittances. Yeah, something like that. Right, So the thirty percent of the revenue is remittances. And if you for me to send someone money and to Elsava or wherever, like I'd have to go to my bank cash, go to Walmart or the gross store standline fill out the forms for Western Union.

That's gonna take me an hour. I don't want to do that. And then they may have to get on a bus and ride a bus for three or four hours to get to the city to get the cash, and then ride back three or four hours with the cash. Hopefully don't get robbed and then they pay depends on the transaction, but maybe twenty third of that in fees. Yeah, and now with bitcoin, I can do it from my bedroom and they can receive it in their bedroom. No bus, no no risk, no fees, no nothing. Yeah, it's a

completely antiquated system. And bitcoin is like a ferrari and they're still using a horse and buggy like that's or lightnings like a ferrari, I guess you could say. And you know, the average cost for cross border payments is around six six point three eight percent, So to send two hundred dollars, you have that in fees on average, and it takes about two to three days on average. And so that's a lot of money for somebody who's you know, a poor family in Africa trying to send

money back home to their other family. That's like that may not sound like a lot to a West Center who has a lot of privilege, but that is substantial amount of fees to pay just to send money back home. It's a substantial part of their paychecks. So that's this is why bitcoin can empower people and promote financial inclusion

and promote individual economic empowerment. Yeah, they say, there's what does this saying a standing army is no match for a good idea whose time has come or something like that, right, And so I think when I look at businesses and I look at technologies, you have technologies that are improvement offers. They're offering you a little improvement off of what they have. And then we have opportunity switches where it's something completely different and that's usually going to be, you know, a

hundred times or a thousand times better. And when you have that, there's just no way to stop it. And when you think about the Afghanistan, or you think about the El Salvador, you think about North Korea, you know, or even in the US, problems we might have like how do you send fifteen cents on an on the internet? Right? Yeah, there's just no other way. There's just not Yeah, and so it's not just a good idea that's come it's

solved the problem that has no other solution. I mean, it's a it's a groundbreaking technology, yeah, you know, it's it's it's one of those technologies that doesn't come around often that will change everything. And that's what I believe, similar to the Internet and similar to these grand, big ideas, big technologies that reshape our world, and that's what I think bitcoin is. Yeah. Well, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Maas Show and sitting down

with Sam Callahan. He is the lead analyst over at swan Bitcoin. Check them out. I use them. It's a great place to get bitcoin if you want to do that, they'll send it directly to your cold wallet and check out Sam's research when you're over there. You know. A couple parting thoughts, I just leave, is one really really take the time to think about the CBDCs. I'm not a big fan of politics and voting. I don't think

that it holds a lot of power. But at the same time, it's what we have and as long as I'm breathing, I'm swinging, and so we might as well use it. We might as well push back. We might as well slow the tide as much as we can. So do that, you know, talk to your friends, to your family, your co workers, push back on the politicians in your local area. Tell them you don't want to CBDCs, make your voice be heard, and opt out. Buy some bitcoin. Anyway,

That's what I got. Thanks, for listening until next time.