Today I talk with Ben Jarvie. Ben is a Bitcoiner working for Amber App, a Bitcoin-only exchange, and he is also a writer.
In this episode we talk about a piece that Ben wrote for Bitcoin magazine titled "New Zealand's Past, Pūtea, and Future: CBDC vs Bitcoin".
In this article Ben illustrates a fascinating perspective on the contentious relationship between state & centralised money, and the Māori people of New Zealand.
The very existence of a singular undemocratic Reserve Bank of New Zealand goes against the principles laid out in the Treaty of Waitangi for self-determination, though this is conveniently ignored to instead focus on a seemingly unending culture war that sees the Reserve Bank co-opting Māori imagery and symbols of guardianship whilst simultaneously engineering a recession.
More broadly the article outlines how New Zealand has always been at the mercy of overseas banks and the monetary policy of the crown and we are still paying for this today.
Ben and I explore various avenues of discussion here, and we arrive at a place that sees Bitcoin present an opportunity for the empowerment and self-sovereignty of not only Māori communities but all of New Zealand.
If you want to get in touch follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/TTOVpodcast or send an email to hello@thetransformationofvalue.com and I will get back to you.
Links:
Ben's article "New Zealand's Past, Pūtea, and Future: CBDC vs Bitcoin" in Bitcoin Magazine - https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/new-zealands-past-putea-and-future-cbdc-vs-bitcoin
Amber App - https://amber.app/
Amber App Telegram Tribe - https://t.me/theamberapp/1
Reserve Bank of New Zealand - https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/about-us/tane-mahuta-and-our-financial-system
I talk with Bitkiwi Paul, co-organiser of Bitkiwi, New Zealand’s premier Bitcoin events. We talk about quite a few things: minimalism in what we own, the work of Art in the Age of AI, meaning making and the role of sports in the nation state, all seen through a Bitcoin lens.
I talk with Rupert Carlyon, Founder and Managing Director of Kōura Wealth KiwiSaver. KiwiSaver is the voluntary retirement savings scheme for New Zealand and Kōura Wealth offers a Carbon Neutral Crypto Fund KiwiSaver product, which is Bitcoin only. This is a way for everyday kiwis to get some kind of Bitcoin exposure with government and employer matched contributions and tax benefits. New Zealand was very late to the game with retirement savings schemes and the impact of this is beginning to be felt with very low savings, and old-age poverty issues. With all the talk about the Bitcoin ETFs globally, it is interesting to explore how traditional finance in New Zealand interfaces with Bitcoin, and the regulatory challenges they have had to overcome to get this product launched.
Dash is part of the Tokyo Citadel Group, who I was able to meet when I was travelling through Japan recently. My impression from the Tokyo Citadel was that there was real interest in privacy, security, and the potential threats that Bitcoiners personally face from the nation state. Now this is not unfounded, and we have seen people being detained over things like coinjoins and through chain analysis. But I wanted to understand this perspective more and compare it with the situation in New Zealand.
Palash is an Indian Bitcoiner sharing his thoughts on how to bring Bitcoin adoption to the world’s largest democracy. We talk about the sudden demonetisation of certain cash notes by the Indian government, the new unified payment interface and Indian CBDC. Palash also discusses how households approach savings, purchasing and gifting gold, and the social roles of money.
Rabble is a software developer and hacker based in Wellington, New Zealand. Rabble was lead engineer at Odeo, where he hired Jack Dorsey into the company, which would later pivot into becoming Twitter. Since then he has been focussed on building impactful projects and social media with the open & decentralised vision that Twitter originally had in its early years but which was eventually lost. Rabble has created the Nostr client Nos.social, and is involved with Ahau.io, a Māori community tool built on Nostr’s predecessor protocol, Secure Scuttlebutt.