Efrat Fenigson Sovereignty in an Age of Control

Joel 00:00:03.440 - 00:00:06.240 Hey, Efra, just quickly can you pronounce your last name for me as well? Efrat 00:00:06.720 - 00:00:07.520 Fennigson. Joel 00:00:08.160 - 00:00:58.340 Okay, yeah, let's go. Efra Fenigson is an independent journalist, public speaker and host of youf're the Voice podcast. Her path to sovereignty unfolded with the outbreak of COVID sending her to a journey of exploration as a dissident voice. She writes on her blog and international magazines covering freedom and sovereignty, growing global control, monetary changes, cbdc, bitcoin politics and propaganda, and is a critical voice of the Israeli government, including its response to the October 7th events, Covid and other human rights violations. Efrat is a former Chief Marketing Officer of Global companies with a tech and marketing background of 20 plus years who was featured by the Wall Street Journal as one of Israel's 2022 top tech leaders. Efrat, welcome to Here for the Truth. Efrat 00:00:59.540 - 00:01:02.580 Thanks for having me, guys. It's awesome to be with you. Joel 00:01:02.740 - 00:01:27.550 Totally, totally. Absolute pleasure. One way we always like to start these conversations, especially with first time guests, is we kind of really want to get deep into your personal journey, your personal hero's journey, some of the major catalyzing, transformative moments in your life that led you to evolving down this path. And like, we can start as early as you want. Whether it's childhood, what are some of the main things that come up when you think about how did my life kind of unfold this way? Efrat 00:01:29.710 - 00:06:19.030 Oh, wow. Yeah. I was born in Israel, 1980. I'm a middle, middle child. I have an older sister, a younger brother and I lived in a very happy house, a small apartment with my parents and my brother and sister. And what I remember from my childhood is what in the 80s is that it was very free and fun and liberated and full of exploration. And since I'm a Pisces, there's lots of, you know, wandering in my own imaginary world and having a lot of fun creating my, my little bubble reality. I loved discovering new things and learning new things. I was always curious by books and, and new subjects and topics and languages and everything interests me. Like I remember myself as a very, very curious child. I never wanted to get bored. Meaning, I mean, I could get bored and just do my own thing, but I always wanted to explore more things. So as a child, I would always go to a lot of extracurricular activities. I was dancing, I was singing, I was performing, I was doing art reading. I. I was also one of the best students in my class, always until the end of school because I really liked studying. I know many people have a bad experience from school. I had a great experience from school because for me, it was just one of those places where I can thirst my hunger for, For. For more knowledge and for. For learning and developing. And I had always, like, as growing up, I had always questioned, first of all, there was this stream of technology escorting my life as I was a child. You know, the PC came into our home and started playing around with technology. And I grew up with technology as many of my generation is growing with technology. And when I was 21, I decided to start studying computers. And I. I have a degree in computer science and I was a programmer in the beginning of my career journey. But I had the privilege of seeing technology enter our lives to the point where it is today. And I am very much still involved with technology in my new career today. And I don't think I will never not be, because I do believe technology is a great tool for the advancement of humanity alongside being a very dangerous thing for humanity as well. But technology is like one stream of my life, then if we're looking at creativity and curiosity and freedom and all that, I always really appreciated those things in my life. And the first thing that I started noticing as I was a teenager and growing up was the fact that I'm living in a country that is relatively small, that I never understood why we cannot take the car and just go to the neighboring countries. Like, why can we not go and travel in Jordan and Egypt and Lebanon and all the other places that were around us. And one of the things I clearly remember from my school and my upbringing was the perpetual weaving of the narrative of survival and wars into our education system. And, you know, as a child, as with most kids, it looked very normal to me because this is what you're being educated right today. I can say that this is indoctrination. But back in the day, this was like, Norma, this is what they teach us. So they teach us about wars and they teach us about the Holocaust and they teach us about all the prosecutions. And when you study about history, it's always about the, you know, pogroms and how, how Jewish people were always prosecuted around the world and, and, you know, some. And obviously you learn the Bible as well. So there's ancient, more ancient history with, you know, earlier stories about how Jews were always prosecuted and so on. So I always had this looming inquiry that I could never get an answer for of why do we live in a reality in which there is always. Joel 00:06:19.270 - 00:06:19.670 A. Efrat 00:06:21.670 - 00:12:29.750 Threat of prosecution, a threat of war, a threat of being haunted, being chased by someone, always Someone wanting to get us as a cultural identity. You know, growing up, you, you, you wonder, you know, whether this is really the reality or whether this is. Well, you question only when you get older, but as you're younger, you take it as a, you know, as a. As a fact. This is what's happening. And that's the reason why you cannot travel with your car to any of the neighboring countries and, and, and so on and so forth. And that's why you won't have any friends that are Arabs, for example. And then you start seeing things. I mean, I start seeing things like my grandfather, who was. He had a very interesting story where he came to Israel when he was a kid. And when he was very young, he was recruited to one of the commando organizations before the IDF even existed. This, before 1948, he was recruited to take part in what most Israeli and Jewish people in the world don't like calling The Nakba, the 1948 war, independence war, and all the events leading to it. So you took part in that. And as a very young, I would say brainwashed kid, he was. He had to do things that later in life he regretted and he felt really sorry for. But he also was truthful and authentic enough to say, to tell us the stories of what has happened and, and also to take responsibility of the fact that he participated in that and that he actually, he turned around completely. I think it was 20 or 30 years later, as he already had a family and, you know, started taking a more responsible role in life. He decided that he's actually going to devote a big part of his life to call for peace with our Arab neighbors and to be an activist for peace. And until the day he died, until when, I mean, until when he couldn't carry himself anymore. He became a peace activist. And he would go every Friday to the intersection next to his house with a sign saying Peace now. And he would teach. He would have Arab friends from Arab towns in Israel, places like Ramla and Ako, and places where you have both Arab and Jewish communities living side by side still until today. So. And he would make a point of fusing Arab people into his life because he would want to be the change that he wants to see in the world. And he had educated his six daughters, one of them is my mom, very differently than the kind of education that he was exposed to in terms of respecting other people, et cetera. So I had seen that too. And, you know, he also was. Sorry, you know, I'm giving you so many details, but this is great. But he was also brainwashed to believe that one of the things that could help humanity is communism, because then, you know, the. The. The workers of the world unite and we can bring the. The lower class to unite again. And, you know, he. He conflicted, I think, those messaging, because they were really. They were really manipulating people in Israel back in the 60s and 70s to believe in socialism and later communism. So he became also a member of the Communist Party in. In Israel. Not many people are. This is a very small minority in Israel, tiny. And he was part of it. But, you know, he was definitely. He had ideals and he had morals. So I had seen that on the other side. And then I had another example growing up, which were my other grandparents, both Holocaust survivors. And they went through. I mean, especially my grandfather on the other side went through hell and back. He. He was in eight concentration and death camps during the war, finished the war at Auschwitz Birkenau when he was released by, you know, by the Americans, I think. And he was one of those skeletons that you see in the movies. That's what he looked like when they released him from the camp with a tattoo and a number on his arm. And he made it so in some miraculous way, when all of his friends and family were murdered, he survived. He came to Israel. My grandma survived. She was hiding in Switzerland for five years with her younger brother, and she came to Israel. They met in Israel and they started building kibbutzim and the different villages in Israel. And the example I got from them was, you can go through hell, literally hell, and lose all of your family and loved ones and go through atrocities and still remain the most loving, caring, good, positive person you can be. They were amazing. Like, that couple was like the. They. They are still with me today as spirits. Like, I feel them. They're guiding me whenever I need them to. But they were really special people, showing me that love conquers everything and that you can always bring positivity to life. I. Maybe I'll stop here and let you ask questions, because I can go on and on, but I've received a lot of inspiration from a lot of different directions. Maybe one more thing before. Joel 00:12:30.230 - 00:12:31.110 Please. This is the. Efrat 00:12:33.430 - 00:16:39.330 My dad, when I. When I was. I think I was 12 at the time, and the peace treaties started to form In Israel in 1992, Isaac Rabin was the prime minister at the time. He tried to bring peace. He took my sister and they went to Jordan for a kind of delegation slash business trip, because it was allowed by then. Maybe it was 23, 24. I'm sorry if I'm conflicting the times. And I looked at that and that was one of the first times that we could actually do that after the peace treaties were signed around that time. And that was so. I was so happy to see that because it felt like there is hope and maybe my, you know, my crazy weird dream of, you know, going to visit our neighbors is something that can be possible one day. Little did I know about all the political and, and, you know, spiritual complexities that there are around this heavy topic. But, you know, as a child I, I saw that thing as a very uplifting and hopeful thing. And I was always, you know, my parents were like left wing and they were all pro peace. And then When I was 14, I was at the peace protest that happened in, in Tel Aviv the night where Itzhak Rabin was shot and killed because the trajectory that he was carrying was of one of peace. You know, he was trying to bring peace with the Palestinians and with Jordan and Egypt and many of the neighboring countries, and they shot him down. Now we obviously know who the shooter is because he's in jail for life, but, you know, there is a conspiracy theory behind that of who else was involved in taking him down. Like many other presidents or political figures are being taken down if they don't follow the trajectory of endless wars and conflicts, etc. Anyway, this was a major turning point for me because I was really upset to see that. And I think since then and until more or less Today, it's about 30 years. I think Israel has been going downhill since ever since. And, you know, if there was a little bit of hope around that time of something good being built in the last three decades, it's just been so disheartening to see the trajectory of things. Around 2020, I decided to go out to the streets as well and protest and be a vocal voice to show how, you know, I've had enough with the rotten, corrupt political scene in Israel and, and just the violations of rights again and again and again. And then Covid came and everything. So that's where my awakening story started. But yeah, I always felt like the place I'm coming from is a super complicated place. And I never knew that I had a bigger role to play in, in, in that reality until I think a few years ago when I understood that I chose to be born in that place at that time, with that kind of family, with those kind of examples behind me to. And with the skills I have and with the gifts I have gotten from God, I guess to reincarnate at that time and this place at this time today so that I can do what I'm doing now. I think this was a realization I had only in the last five years. Joel 00:16:41.010 - 00:17:14.860 Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all that. I think that provides so much context. It's gonna be very, very impactful for those who hear it for sure. Just for some context on, on my end, I'm Australian, but I'm culturally Palestinian. My dad was born in Jerusalem and I'm a first generation Australian. And so growing up for me it's like, you know, the, the rhetoric that I essentially grew up with was, you know, they were outcasted in the Six Day War, they were forced fled, and it was very, very anti Israel narrative that kind of dominated my worldview kind of growing up. Efrat 00:17:16.060 - 00:17:19.740 But I don't hold extreme citizen like an Israeli citizen. Joel 00:17:19.980 - 00:19:10.920 Yeah, my grandfather was a business owner. He was born in Jerusalem. This was Palestine, back at that. Well, my grandfather was a carpenter. Was a carpenter. I was a business owner and my dad and his siblings grew up in Jerusalem, Palestine. Then I think it was during the Six Day War. Was that late 60s, 67. Yeah. Then they had a choice between, I think, Canada and Australia and they came to Australia. I'm no expert on, on the details. This is all still blurry to me. And this issue is so complicated and so complex, you know, but the more that I kind of grow up and evolve in my personal ideas and viewpoints, it's like originally, like I never really believed in like anti Semitism, so to speak, but now it's like, I look around and it's like, it seems to me as though people just look for any kind of inclination to like, you know, negatively brandish Jews, to just collectivize Jews as like this evil race, as like this, the global conspiracy puppeteers or whatever it might be anytime that there, there might be the possibility of legitimate Jew hatred, you know, being risen, like they do anything to kind of desensitize the situation or turn it into a conspiracy or make it murky, etc. So like, I'm coming from myself still looking for moral clarity on this subject because it's so incredibly complex. So I'm kind of grateful to be sitting down with you in the terms of the context that you're coming from as well. But it's like, what is like the right way to like, perceive Israel morally? You know, what is the rational way to do this? What is the emotionally stable way to do this? Because it feels like there's so much extremism in how people view this topic, you know. Efrat 00:19:13.810 - 00:31:02.470 Well, it's a huge question and obviously, you know, I can only speak from my modest point of view as a, as a curious human being on this planet, not as a scholar in this, on this topic. I have also pondered on these questions just like you did for many years and for a long time, especially lately. And I don't always have the answers. But let's start with the first thing. When you say the perception of Israel. What is Israel? It's a name of a state, it's a name of a country, it's a collective. We all know that a collective is consistent of various groups. And the first mistake everyone makes does always is generalize and create one cohesive entity in their minds. There is this thing called Israel, right? You have people like me in Israel, you have people like my grandfather, you have different groups. You have extremists and radicalized fanatic people on the right, you have extremists on the left, you have. And the whole thing about right and left is bullshit in my eyes. I'm just using the term just to kind of, you know, it makes it easy for people to distinguish. But there are Zionists, there are ultra Orthodox that are non Zionists, that. There are religious Jews that are Israeli that are not orthodox, they're just lightly religious. There are traditional people that may not even wear a yarmulke, that, you know, they, they believe in God and just hold tradition and that's it. There are secular people, there are transhumanists and all this. There are, there is everything in Israel. So when you take this small country, yes, it is small, 9 million, 10 million people, depending what you count and what you don't. It is made up of so many groups and it's so hard to generalize this thing. Yes, the majority are Jewish, but then also inside of that, are you categorizing people based on their religion? Are you categorizing them based on where they were born? Are you categorizing them based on what part of their identity is a good factor for you to categorize them by? And the point is we categorize. We try to put everyone in boxes and we try to define people based on their nationality or race, or have they taken a vaccine or not? Or have they done what they're told or not? Or have they, you know, chose the right God or not? Or have they whatever virtue signal to the right thing today or not? And I am sick of that. Because if we are developed human beings, we have to start looking at Life from a different lens. That reductionist lens is so horrible for our future. We are perpetuating the same old, same old divide and conquer game, and it really doesn't matter. The truth is that in every collective, in every group, you have good and bad, right and wrong, dark and light, evil and kindness. You have it all coexisting at the same time in the same collective. Now, when I say collective, in my previous example, I refer to a country, but now let's take the same lens and put it on an individual inside of us. It's the same thing. We have that yin and yang. We have that duality existing because we are living in this third dimension. And, you know, we are bound to those laws of duality and polarity, and we play that game over and over again. So we have all of this inside of us. The only question is, how much meaning and importance do you give that? Or do you just take it as a way of looking at the world as a lens? Or are you believing in that? Does that become your truth, your lens? I don't believe in that. That's. That's why I can look at people that are living like Palestinians, right? People hate when I say that. I mean, when I say people, I mean Jewish people and, and. And Israelis. They hate when I say that, but I don't give a. They hate. When I look at our neighbors and I talk about their suffering and I talk about the horror show that is going on over there in Gaza or the dead kids or the. The atrocities that the Israeli government is performing, I look at it in exactly the same way when I look at the Israeli children that are being traumatized again and again. My son and myself growing up in a country where we have to go through wars and operations and missiles and, you know, I look at life, human life, with the same compassion, no matter regardless where you came from or what your race is or what your color is. And I don't give a damn about all these labels. I look at humans as humans, and I always say, I'm not on Team Pro or Anti, you know, right or left. I am on Team Human. That's what I care about. And let's touch on the point you raised about antisemitism. If we are looking at the Jewish collective and we're looking at history and how much we know, Jewish people have been prosecuted and haunted through the centuries and how nomadic they became, moving from one place to another in order to find a safe haven. And the whole story with the Holocaust and then coming to Israel, this more modern history, etc. We understand that there is an issue with a race, with a collective here that is going through some kind of prosecution or some kind of hatred. And I always wonder whether that hatred and, and prosecution is sometimes favorable or even arranged by powers that want to find a, how do you call it, a scapegoat? Like a, you know, someone you can sacrifice. They, they want to find that entity that they can drop all the hatred of the world on. Right. Just like now, you know, people are afraid and hate. Muslims, for example, like it's the same, like you need another group to hate and to fear. So all these, all these prosecutions, all this oppression, much of it is real. You know, my grandparents took part in some of it. I can see it happening all around the world. You know, my son is in Australia. With what happened in Sydney a few days ago, it's like it's real. Those things are happening. The hatred and the acts of violence are real. But are they starting from just free floating anxiety and hatred that is out there that people are using to transmute it and direct it to hate a certain group? Or is it. And what about the other side, like the Jewish people, are they participating in that, taking the role of the victim? To a large extent, I think many Jews do. I know this is going to be triggering for a lot of people, but I think there is a victim mentality for the Jewish people that as I told you about my upbringing, you know, in school I was taught when we're learning about history, when we're learning about how to be a citizen, we're learning about the Bible. Like the narrative that is there always in the background is they're out to get us. You have to protect yourself. You know, they hate you and it's dangerous out there and we're a little country surrounded by enemies. Those are the narratives that are being pumped to you from a very young age. I'm not saying some of it is not truth. There is always, there's always a string of truth in those things. But how much of it is truth and how much of it is also manufactured or engineered to perpetuate that state so that we can continue using entities or groups as scapegoats for that prosecution, for that never ending loop of violence which is, by the way, today, I know, related to the design of the monetary system of the world because it needs wars and it needs fear and hate to continue to work, to work effectively. So, so I believe there is, there's definitely anti Semitism, but it's also being hijacked and weaponized by the political leaders on the Jewish and Zionist side in order to protect themselves from criticism so that you cannot criticize them because everything you'd say would be considered anti Semitism. That too is happening. But there is also proper anti Semitism out there. And it's going to be very hard to distinguish between the two as we go forward. And when I came out on October 7th and voiced my criticism about the government and the, the policies and the, and the lack of response and, and how people were sacrificed for this to be enabled for this to happen, I was attacked by Israelis and Jews that I was rug pulling their worldview, I was rug pulling their identity. Because if what I was saying was true, and I think it was true based on my military experience, I had a valid case. And by the way, I know I was right because now that we have evidence, but we'll put that aside. But when I did that and they saw this, it triggered them so much because I'm rug pulling their worldview. And if I am right, it means that their state has betrayed them and that no one's coming to get them. And facing that truth was too much for them because they don't have a strong enough identity other than their political, nationalist, religious identity. And, and I felt sorry for those people, but they had to attack me because I was sick symboling that for them. And, and I was called, they couldn't call me anti Semite because I'm Jewish and Israeli. So they called me a self hating Jewish. Joel 00:31:03.340 - 00:31:23.100 I mean, that's the same accusations I get from Palestinians, like a self hating Palestinian. And when I try to hold Hamas accountable that I'm rug pulling the Palestinian narrative and everything you described about Jews with the victimhood card, it's the same thing that Palestinians are experiencing now. They play the victim cards to no extent because they think it's their ticket to freedom. Yerasimos 00:31:23.100 - 00:31:29.430 You know, it's similar in the United States with the black community, in the white community. I feel like this is something that happens all over the place. Efrat 00:31:29.510 - 00:32:01.970 Yeah, it's the same thing. The only thing that makes this super hard is when you're in the center of it, when you're actually there in the middle of a conflict and you, you dare to speak out from there, it makes it so hard because then you get, you know, physically and and spiritually attacked in your own circle. It's not like, you know me now being in a different country, speaking out, it's a little bit easier. But when you're there and you're voicing your crit them. It's so hard. Joel 00:32:04.210 - 00:32:04.850 Yeah. Efrat 00:32:05.330 - 00:32:15.130 You know, I think this is our duty to, to, you know, you. This is what you guys do with your podcasts. Shining light on truth, right? We're here for the truth. Joel 00:32:15.130 - 00:32:16.289 We're here for the truth. Yerasimos 00:32:17.090 - 00:32:31.090 Yeah, we're here for the truth. We're here to have a lot of different conversations. You know, they challenge one another often. I mean, we're there, we're here for nuance. We're. We're just here to grapple with ideas and the complexities of, of the world. But beyond that, even the complexities of being a. Efrat 00:32:33.070 - 00:32:35.230 You see, nuance is the most important thing. Joel 00:32:35.470 - 00:32:36.030 Yeah. Efrat 00:32:36.030 - 00:32:50.350 And having those, like holding a complex reality is something that most people cannot do. It has to be simplified for them. This is the tick tockinization of life. That's how I call it. Yerasimos 00:32:50.350 - 00:33:11.250 And this is why we often say like, sure, there may be some, some solutions in the political realms, but ultimately it's, it's a game of consciousness and psychology. And so the things we're talking about here, it's like people don't even have an identity unless they find something to compare themselves against and to other. So if there isn't the other, then who am I? And that's a deep question. Efrat 00:33:11.810 - 00:34:22.540 Yeah, that's a, that's the question of life. Because once you, once you spend enough time investigating that question and go deep and find the real essence of you, of who you truly are, I think we all get to the same point. There's this godly spark within us and we are here to co. Create something. And we, we are everything and nothing. And we're, we're just, you know, and it's just such a humbling experience to get to that point where you understand that it's not about you so much. I mean, yeah, sure, it's like you are here. Your physical body is here, your spirit is here, you're present. You're doing the best you can in this experience. You have been given and chose to take, but it's so much bigger than you. And then I think life really starts being interesting. It's a whole other level to the game. Yerasimos 00:34:23.769 - 00:34:47.929 Yeah. So I don't know if you have any other questions on like the, the, you know, Israel and Palestine, because I, I'm just having this poll to ask you a kind of a basic question, but I'm curious your thoughts on it. You know, we hear this phrase so often coming from every angle, like sovereignty, you know, this word, sovereignty, like, and I'm just Curious. Like what. What it means? Like what it means to you? Like that word on. On all the different levels. Efrat 00:34:49.270 - 00:34:58.150 Wow. Yeah, it's a word I use on my podcast as well, by the way. You know, you guys, we are using the same microphone emoji on our logos. Joel 00:34:58.790 - 00:35:01.150 I noticed that. I noticed that the font is also. Efrat 00:35:01.150 - 00:42:40.560 Very similar, and I think a similar font as well. Our logos look really similar. Sovereignty is one of the words I use to describe my podcast. I tell people that my mission is to help people reclaim back their power and regain more sovereignty in their lives. And I want to think that I am helping people go through the journey from red pill once they've woken up to orange pill to understand orange pill is Bitcoin to understand the new monetary system and its benefits for life. And one of the reasons why I put so much emphasis on sovereignty is because I believe it's a very interesting and easy lens to judge your life by. If you put the lens of sovereignty, you can keep asking yourself on every area of your life, how much power do I have over this area? How much of my power is in other people's hands or in other entities hands and not in my hand. And I am not sovereign enough. I'm not independent enough or responsible enough to take things into my own hands and, and. And control them. But when I say control, I don't mean in a. In a control free kind of way. Just because I have to have control over everything. No, just because we are living in a time in which we are giving our powers away, both physically, mentally, and spiritually. And if we are not careful to protect what's ours, our private property, our bodily autonomy, our money, our mind, and the way it is controlled and polluted, and our consciousness and the way it is controlled and polluted, then we are going to live life very weak. And we are going to be shaken by everything that happens, and we are going to be bound to be rattled by every little crisis or breakdown that meets us. And unfortunately, in the past decade and in the next decade, we are going to bump into many of those crises and breakdowns. And if we are not resilient enough, we're gonna break down, we're not going to make it. I think it's going to be very, very tough for people to just live their lives, to just live normally. So I think sovereignty is at the core of reclaiming powers for all these areas that I had mentioned. And when I look at financial sovereignty, which is one of the things that I care about very much, I mean, during COVID I put a lot of light over our bodily autonomy and health sovereignty because we need to decentralize medicine, science, pharma, health, we need to decentralize all of that and break down the sources of power on those world worlds and take reclaim back our power and sovereignty over our own body and decisions, etc. So that's one thing. But now I'm, I'm focusing on financial sovereignty and looking at how the same powers are trying to dismantle us from having agency and authority over what is ours. What we work very hard for, what we are trying to save for our future generations, what we want to privately transact with other people through, I mean money in the end of the day is a vehicle to transfer value between people and to create collaboration and create good functioning society. Economy is basically a way for people to transfer value in a positive way through space and time. And if we are being robbed from our powers over our time, space and value, then we are going to be helpless. Our lives are going to be very hard to live, they're going to be a prison. And I call for technological sovereignty, financial sovereignty. I call for people to start learning about the monetary system, to understand how it's work and how it works and how it's designed to rob us from that sovereignty and freedom. It's designed geniusly. And once we understand the way it's designed, we can also see how there are other tools and technologies out there that can help us reclaim that power back over our finances. And so sovereignty for me is key. And yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like I, I never thought I'm gonna do what I'm doing today. I, I don't have any education about like formal education about money or finances. I told you I had a degree in computer science and then I was a marketeer for 20 years. But when I, when I realized how they're clamping down on my freedom and sovereignty over my body and health and science and the way this, these systems are corrupt. And then I understood the same about the politics and government corruption, overreach, etc, I started, I wanted to learn about money because it was the next, the next step that made sense that they're going to clamp down on like if they did all of that and now I'm seeing everything they're doing, the next thing they're going to do is, is violate my, my private property because history is teaching us that. So I want to learn how money works because I want to protect what's mine, because I have a son, because I want to make sure that everything I managed to save by working really hard all those years is going to stay here for my son and I can support him. And I also don't want to be a slave and worked so hard. I want to do what I love doing in life, so I want to learn how it works so that I can. So I can be smart about what I'm doing here. And this is a theme in my life. I always wanted to understand systems and the way they work, because I understood very early on that if you understand the system, you can manipulate it, but not manipulate in a negative way, but just like you understand it, then you can work in it in the most effective way and get it to work for your favor instead of against you. And so I was eager to understand the monetary system. And I learned a lot about money and fiat, and I still do. I am a humble student. But the stuff I learned blew my mind off. It was like. It was insane. It was. To me, in my eyes, the monetary system is a bigger scam than Covid, than everything. Joel 00:42:40.800 - 00:42:41.200 Yeah. Efrat 00:42:41.200 - 00:42:48.670 It's like the biggest scam ever because it's also. It's been going on for so long, and people have no idea that it's a scam. Joel 00:42:49.070 - 00:42:49.550 Yeah. Efrat 00:42:49.790 - 00:42:57.870 I mean, they. They can tell a little bit, but they don't know exactly why it is a scam. And when you discover it, it's. It's incredible. And then you can see how it can be fixed. Joel 00:42:58.430 - 00:42:58.830 Yeah. Efrat 00:42:58.830 - 00:43:15.960 And that. That is very hopeful. That is my white pill moment. Because when you understand that there is a way out of this and that reality can look different and humanity can look different and everything can be different with. If we just adopt something else. Joel 00:43:16.120 - 00:43:16.600 Yeah. Efrat 00:43:16.600 - 00:43:18.360 Then there is a lot of hope. Joel 00:43:19.160 - 00:44:02.660 Yeah. Well, I'm very glad you answered the call to take this path. And we're all called in unique and unexpected ways. And I think the authentic being ultimately can't refuse the call when it comes in their life. I want to ask you, can you break it down for those listening? What is the relationship between the fraudulent economic system and human prosperity as a general umbrella, even beyond financial prosperity, spiritual prosperity, et cetera, how a fraudulent economic system plays out in this. And also, like, what does it look like when one accepts the orange pill? And how does that affect their outlook on everything else in their life? Because in my personal experience, it's actually quite deep. Efrat 00:44:04.900 - 00:44:07.540 It is quite deep. Have you taken the orange peel? Joel 00:44:08.830 - 00:44:10.270 Take about three quarters of a dose. Efrat 00:44:13.230 - 00:44:28.750 So when Morpheus was sitting in front of you and gave you, the pill, you told him. Wait a second, let me just cut that. Okay, but your question was kind of complicated for me, so I need you to simplify it. So can you ask that again? Joel 00:44:29.070 - 00:45:03.700 Totally. So the, the, the fraudulent economic system that we all live under, in terms of the way that we exchange value for fiat money, how does that actually diminish general human prosperity? And for someone to, for someone to live an actual prosperous life where they're exchanging value and they're able to store value and not have it diminished, you know, like what is, how, how deeply has it impacted the kind of live that, the kind of life that we get to enjoy and live because of this? Efrat 00:45:03.700 - 00:50:13.510 Great question. So. Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So the, the way the monetary system is designed is, well put it in simple terms, is to steal people's time and productivity. And let me explain how it does that or why it does that. So first of all, the system that we live under, this is like the oxygen we breathe. This is, it's. We don't pay attention to it. We take it for granted. It's always there in the background. We have money in our pocket. We never question what is it exactly. So it's really. We're oblivious to that. But the way this thing that we call money works is that there are entities that are able to create that, the supply of money, create that money that we use. That is called fiat money. Fiat is by decree. I say, so you do so. So the sovereign, the state says, I do so. You know, I print the money, you use the money I tell you to print. And you have to, as a citizen in a certain country. All countries around the world use fiat currencies today. They set the rules and they tell you that you have to use the currency that they supply you with in order to pay your taxes, in order to transact in that country. And there is a law for it called the legal tender. So each country will have a legal tender law, and you're obliged to use that. Otherwise they can throw in jail. And they do. So they have the power, the monopoly on power, the state, and they can dictate for you what kind of money you will use, while they are responsible for creating it. Now, what's the problem with them creating it? First of all, they have the mandate on creating it. That gives them a lot of power. So the state creates the money. That's already a problem because money, as we said before, is supposed to be a vehicle for us to transact and, and exchange value through space and time. Who bound it to a certain country? Why would a certain government decide the rules on that? Right. So if, if all is all, money is, is a vehicle, a technology, a medium for us to exchange value, why does the government need to be the one dictating what kind of money we use and how we use it? But we don't stop to say that. We just take it for granted that that's the way it is. So the first problem is that the state controls money now. They control how much they can print. And by controlling the supply, the quantity of the supply of money, they are basing the, that's the first way that they are actually robbing you. Why? Because the more units of money that they print, the less the money you hold. The same unit, right. The same type of money that you hold becomes less valuable because there are more units out there. So it's like taking a glass of wine and I'm holding the glass of wine, I'm responsible for the wine in there. But whenever I feel like I will pour a little bit more water into that wine and I will dilute it, there will be more wine, but the wine will be less good and it will be worthless. So that's the debasement of the currency or the delusion of the currency. And the state has to print more money because the fiat system lives under a, one of the canes, the Keynesian economy principles or rules are inflation. So there is this again underlying agreement that the, the role of the state is to print money and to take care of inflation. The central bank will be the one to set 2, 3% inflation a year, meaning that the, your money will be worth 2 to 3% less every year. First of all, why does it need to be worthless at all? Why do they need to keep printing money? That's one question. Secondly, the 2, 3% is a lie because they play around with that number a lot more. If you are basing your understanding of it on the cpi, the, the, the price index, the consumer price index, that's wrong because it doesn't take many things into consideration. That's another lie, it's another scam. So it's much more than 2,3% inflation. Sometimes it's 7,8 can be 10 or 15 behind the scenes and you don't even know about it. That means that every year is worth, let's say, between 7 to 15% less than the previous year without, without doing anything, just because the state is dictating that kind of law. So inflation is the real theft, because inflation, the fact that they can inflate the supply of money, create more and debase you in the process. Makes you poorer without doing anything that or that is already always existing there. The second thing is. Yeah, sorry. Joel 00:50:13.670 - 00:50:27.590 And just to even take it a step further, like you, they debase the money. Yes, but the root of money is the amount of life force you exchanged for it. So they're actually debasing the value of your inherent human life force itself as well. Efrat 00:50:27.590 - 00:54:32.330 Absolutely, yeah. That's why they're robbing you not just your time, but your livelihood and productivity. And they're actually stealing from your daughter or son or your future generations. Yes, absolutely. So inflation, we said, is one inherent symptom of the disease. The second symptom of the disease is what's called fractional reserve banking. So fractional reserve banking is the ability of the bank, the commercial banking system, to take the money that you give the bank as a customer. You give the bank your deposits, they can take that money and keep a fraction of it in reserves and loan the lend, sorry the, the 80 or 90 or even 100% of not 199 of it to other customers. By that inflating the supply of money even more, creating money out of nothing, if you will. Right. So, so you have the state through the central bank creating money through printing and inflating it through inflation. And you have fractional reserve banking inflating the supply of money even more by issuing debt. And on the way they are getting richer out of it because they charge interest on that debt. Because every new money that is created is created by debt. Fiat is a debt based system. Okay? Now the, the concept of debt is a concept that is important to learn because debt inherently is not a bad thing depending on how you use it. Right. We can take debt in order to fulfill future wish. We have for example, to buy a house. Right? We don't have all the amount of money that we want right now, so we can take debt in order to finance that. So debt is not inherently a bad thing. But when debt is the principle of the monetary system and every new money that is created is based on debt that is enslaving you all the time. So now if you take the inflation, the taxation you have to pay taxes with, with the same fiat currency that the country is using and the fractional reserve banking and all these different means and ways of the state to rob you from your productivity and livelihood and time and all that, you take all of that and you look at the way we are living our lives. We are, you can start to understand the hamster wheel chase that we are in. Because no matter how hard we work and how much money we make, we have this power, this source of power over here that is robbing us constantly by taxing, by inflating, by fractional reserve banking. All these mechanisms are working in the background and we have to comply with them. If we don't, we get sent to jail. Right? So we are working really hard, losing money. It's like a leaky bucket, right? It leaks energy all the time. We keep losing money and we work harder and harder and we have to maybe even take a second job or think about other investment, not sorry, sorry, other income channels etc and then the next thing that people have to resort to is investment. I have to start looking at the stock exchange. I have to start looking at maybe real estate for investment, maybe gold and silver, maybe whatever bonds. I have to start thinking creatively how I can minimize the damage that this fiat system is creating for me every day, all the time. I am a slave inside that system and I'm trying to fix it by learning how to invest, creating even a bigger problem. Because people on the most part don't know how to invest because it's really hard to, to beat that system and to close that gap between you and your hard working reality and the beast that keeps on sucking your energy. Joel 00:54:32.490 - 00:54:35.050 You're trying to play a game that's already rigged from the outset. Efrat 00:54:35.050 - 00:56:47.830 Ultimately it's the game is rigged against you. Yeah. And I mean some people learn how to invest and it's okay, but the mere fact that we are forced to learn how to invest, that pisses me off. Like we don't need to learn how to invest. We don't need to become financial experts. Like were your grandparents financial experts? I don't think so. Right. Like back in the day when people used whatever shells or gold as, as, as money where they requested to be also investors in stuff like probably not. I mean not that the monetary system in the past was perfect, but gold was definitely better in preserving value than what we have today. So you, you basically need money to perform three roles. One is store of value to store your value over time. 2 is medium of exchange to exchange that value with someone else over space over time. And three is unit of account. You need to measure stuff in, in the same monetary unit. That makes life a lot easier, easier and makes it easy to collaborate. And the money we have today is broken. It definitely does not serve us. Fiat does not serve us as a, as a store of value because it loses its value all the time. It doesn't serve us well in medium of exchange. I mean, yes, we can transact with each other, but there are so many restrictions, not just on cash, but also on global trade and exchange rates and things like that. And unit of account. Yeah, you can measure things in, in a certain currency, but it keeps changing because they keep printing more and because it's very hard to, to measure things when you are in countries that suffer from really bad economies, places with hyperinflation, for example, look at Argentina or Venezuela or other examples. So the money is broken and we need to realize that very quickly and then start thinking of how we can fix it. And luckily there is a solution out there. Yerasimos 00:56:48.470 - 00:56:49.590 What is the solution? Efrat 00:56:50.310 - 01:00:50.550 Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the solution. I mean, gold was. I mean, I'm a gold fan. I really like gold and I started my journey with physical gold and like understanding the values of gold and everything. But, but very quickly I understood the shortcomings of gold as well. It's physical, you can't move it around. You have to like to take care of storage. And there's a lot of shortcomings. And plus, the biggest disadvantage about gold is that we used to live on a gold standard. And the reason we have fiat today is because gold didn't work. We had to centralize gold because it was too cumbersome to hold it ourselves and to take care of it and the storage and movement and all of that. So we gave it to a custodian, to a third party to hold it for us, which was the bank or other entities. And when those entities started to regain power and started to exercise fractional reserve on top of the gold and started to print paper money to use the gold in a easier way for medium of exchange, then we understood that the more you centralize power in the hands of those banks or financial institutions, they start scamming you and they steal your gold and they confiscate your gold and we get to world in which you have to print paper money and then they make you trade in paper money that just represents gold and it's not the real asset. So gold has a lot of shortcomings. And then bitcoin fixes a lot of those shortcomings that gold has. Because bitcoin is very, is akin to digital gold. It has the same properties in terms of store value. It preserves your value really well over space and time. And the reason for that is because it has a fixed supply. It's, it's scarce and it's Very hard to make more of. So you cannot inflate it the same way you can inflate fiat. And with gold, yeah, you can still go mine more. It will take time, but there is a way to inflate gold as well. With Bitcoin, in the year 2140, we're gonna stop mining bitcoin completely and we're just going to trade what's within the system. Until then, we still have a chance to buy or mine some gold, some new bitcoin. But bitcoin basically makes it very, very easy to move money around. It's the best medium of exchange that I have seen, and I use it as a medium of exchange. And it's a great store of value because it demonetizes any other financial instrument and asset out there. It demonetizes real estate. All the other assets go to zero versus Bitcoin. And you can look at all the graphs and see how bitcoin is with time becoming stronger and stronger versus all other instruments like bonds and stocks and gold and silver and real estate and art, etc. So bitcoin is a mathematical certainty for me. I mean, the more you study, the more you gain that conviction and understand how it is not just a currency, it's also a protocol. So it's just like the TCP, IP Internet protocol. So there, there are many layers and it works in a very sophisticated way. Simple, yet sophisticated. And it fixes a lot of the centralization problems of gold and fiat. It is completely decentralized and it's spread over hundreds of thousands of nodes, which are basically computers or servers around the world. So even if it gets taken down in some place, you have other places for redundancies. The ledger on which every transaction ever made on Bitcoin is stored on each and every one of those hundreds of thousands of nodes. So it's truly decentralized and that gives a lot of power back to the individual that holds a node, but also to just any user of the bitcoin system. So it's, it's a truly miraculous system. I mean, there's a lot more I can say about it, but I will stop here. Yerasimos 01:00:51.190 - 01:01:13.170 Yeah. What motivated you initially, like, to get into it? And like a lot of people that are going to be watching this, our audience, some people have taken the orange pill, some people maybe taken a tenth of it, some people don't. Like, like, what do you recommend as the entry point? Like, read this book or watch this podcast or, or watch this collection of things or, or follow the thread. Like, what is your advice to people that. Efrat 01:01:13.170 - 01:06:19.900 So as I told you, it's. It's freedom, it's sovereignty. That's what got me to bitcoin because I was looking, you know, when in 2021 with COVID and all this that was going down and me not taking the vaccines and, and because of that had to suffer consequences of, you know, at my workplace, at you know, my social circles, family and all that feeling horrible and understanding how the hell the holocaust could actually happen when people become so mean to each other and can daub each other in and all that. Out of that really low desperate place, starting to try and protect myself and hedge what's mine. I got to learning about money because I needed to hedge myself against the state, against the government, against, you know, the powers that want to just enslave me. And when I learned about money for the first time and then, you know, discovered bitcoin, the first question I asked the guy that came to help me learn about it was can they really not touch it? Like can the government not touch it? Because I, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a hedge, I'm looking for a protection from those powers. And he said, no, they can't. This is censorship resistant money, meaning that they cannot stop any transaction. It's finite the way it works. And if you hold that bitcoin in your own self custody and not in a third party custodian service, just on your own device that you manage and you take care of, then it's yours. And no one can confiscate it unless you give them the access to it. Unless you give them, willingly give them the. Then you know, the seed phrase, the, the recovery phrase, the, the, the access to your keys. If you don't give them the keys, they don't have it, it's yours and they can never stop it. And I was like, damn, this thing actually exists. So that's what got me to get interested. And I thought, I'm just going to hedge what's mine, you know, park my savings there and that's it. But the more I learned about it, the more I understood that this is, it's. There's a reason why they call it magic Internet money, because this is really the next level of technology for the world. This is a decentralized protocol on which we can do so many things. And we flip around not just the way we transact and build economies, we flip on its head the paradigm of state power versus individual. We give back the individual, the power over what's theirs. And imagine A society or a world in which people actually have the power to say F you to the government. Not just because they are strong willed and, you know, have principles and ideals and morals. Like in Covid, some of us stood up and said it, but also because they own their property and they know that there's nothing that they can do to take it from us. So it gives us so much more confidence and agency to stand there and say, no, no, sorry, you're going to behave nicely to me because you cannot take advantage of me anymore. You cannot take my money, you cannot manipulate me, you cannot throw me to jail for not using your money, for doing whatever you want to do. Just think of how much power that brings back to life and to the individual. So that fascinated me and I decided to go deeper and learn more. And you know, four years later, look at me becoming like a speaker at bitcoin conferences. And, you know, I just released my, my bitcoin starter kit and put it out there on my channels and it went viral and people started sending it around to people because it's, it's like I, I just put together a kit of movies and podcasts and books and where, where should I start? When people ask me that question all the time, this is what I send them to. And they, they love it. Because everyone's curious. People understand that they are being robbed, manipulated and taken advantage of. They don't know how to snap out of it. There is a solution for it out there. The only thing that they have to face is their own skepticism and, and fears and concerns and debunk them. And that's why one of the things in my starter kit is a debunk video for all those concerns that you may have. Because the solution is out there. And it's just like during COVID when you were, when they were telling you, you know, this is safe and effective, you should take this. I mean, everyone's taking it. Why wouldn't you take it? You'd go, no, no, no, no. I'm going to do my own research here and I'm going to see whether this is good for me. The same thing here with bitcoin. You just. But you shouldn't be lazy because this is your money and this is your life and this is your kid's life. You should go and study and understand why this is good for you. Yeah, and don't take anything I said as truth. Just go and check. Don't trust, verify. Joel 01:06:20.060 - 01:06:55.600 Well, I mean, like all things in the post covert world, I think for those who choose to live more consciously and authentically. They realize that a path of radical self responsibility is absolutely essential in all arenas of life. And ultimately that's where power lives and where power is preserved as well. And like we can choose to turn the blind eye, we can choose to be lazy, we can choose to ask someone else to learn the information for us and pass it to us secondhand. But I mean ultimately if you want to change a certain aspect of your life, it's on you to go educate yourself about the thing, it's on you to go adopt it and figure out how it relates to your personal life, you know. Efrat 01:06:55.760 - 01:08:49.569 Exactly. And Joe, one more thing I would say is one of the most beautiful things about this technology that made me stay and learn it more and become so passionate about it is the fact that it is permissionless. I do not need to ask anyone for permission to use what's mine and to store what's mine and to handle it the way I choose to handle it. And speaking of sovereignty, that is the most liberating thing in my life. Like the fact that I have so much autonomy to decide what happens and what doesn't happen with my funds, with my savings, with my day to day. Like I'm, I'm also getting some of my sponsorship money in Bitcoin. Obviously I pay tax on it because you know, I don't mess with them. But you know, I, I, I can really be the owner and the, and have full autonomy over what's mine and zero permission asked. It's like, like f you, I am using this new global currency and you cannot stop me. And this is wonderful. I mean obviously you don't want to go to jail so you need to do this according to the laws in your country. But, but Bitcoin is essentially a peer to peer electronic cash system and it's non permission so you can use it with another person. This is peer to peer with no third party between you and the other person. And you don't need to ask permission from anyone. And this is going to be true forever for Bitcoin. Even if they regulate it and tax it and put laws in your country, you can still use it always peer to peer with no KYC or identification. You can also take some steps to make yourself private. So it's all possible. Yeah, it will always be possible. And that's very liberating. Joel 01:08:50.129 - 01:09:20.910 Yeah, I think it's, it's so common for people to overlook just the general collective quiet desperation and lack of morale that exists and how intrinsically connected that is to the way that their money and their life force and the fruit of their productive effort is just being stolen from them on a daily basis. And so the way people live their entire lives, the trajectory of their entire lives is so much so determined by. I'm just stuck on this hamster wheel working so hard. Efrat 01:09:20.910 - 01:09:21.430 Oh, yeah. Joel 01:09:21.430 - 01:09:47.950 To retrieve something which then someone just puts their hand in and takes a chunkload of it every now and then, and it's like, what is, what is this life like? Your livelihood, your spiritual well being is literally being siphoned from you. The moment that you enter this game and you live your entire life this way without ever really claiming full ownership of the value of your mind and effort, like, that's slavery. Efrat 01:09:48.990 - 01:14:04.150 Absolutely. That's mental slavery. And. And Joel, the moment you understand, once you have done the work and you understood what you have in your hands and you have moved most of your assets to this new world called bitcoin, which I've done, you feel so liberated from the old ways and the old system, the fiat system. I, by the way, I sold an apartment that I had as an investment for 12 years and, and I received a little bit of rent money every month for it, like many probably of your listeners have, or something like that. I sold it and I put it in bitcoin. So the moment you do things like that and you move, like your pension money, which is another hoax, another scam built in order to get you to just give them your money so they can use it for other things while you get older and keep working in that system. So pull out your pension money and also put in bitcoin. But once you do all that stuff and you move your time and energy to this new system that really liberates you, you then understand that, hold on, it also appreciates all the time because of the fixed supply, I can rest for a second and I can start thinking about what really I care about in life. I care about my family, I care about having a podcast. I care about helping the community. I care about whatever it is that you're passionate about. It frees you up to do that. And then you can start radically thinking about changing your life, changing career, changing. Like, start doing what you really love doing, drop your old job, like you can actually start living well, much, much better than before and really focus on what you love. So spiritually, Bitcoin really opens your mind to start thinking long term, start thinking about yourself, start thinking what you're really passionate about and allow you to do that. You have to take agency and make Changes in your life, you have to be courageous. But, you know, this is what we're here for. I'm sure your community more than anyone is not shy of these messages. So, like, you know, it gives you a kick up the butt to start thinking about life and stop procrastinating or using the excuse that, oh, but, you know, what can I do? I. I really have to do this thing for my work because otherwise, you know, I'm not going to be able to pay the rent. I'm not going to be able to do this. And, you know, with saving to bitcoin even a little bit every time, or moving your assets to it, your life changes dramatically. And bitcoin, and this is, I'm going to say, stuff that probably most of your audience is not going to resonate much with, because if they are not in bitcoin yet, but the ones that are will know. And I think Monica, my good friend Monica Bravo, that was on your podcast, also spoke about it, that there is something, there is a frequency that is very spiritual in bitcoin because it, as I said, changes the rule of the rules of the game. It makes people unite around a. A joint globe, truly global, one currency and all working for it instead of against it. And again, the power dynamics move from the state to the individual. So it has something that is dropping down a lot of the violence and the. And the endless perpetual fiat machines and extortion machines that we know from the fiat world today and opens up something very. A lot more peaceful, a lot more productive. A lot more. Yeah, a lot more spiritual in a way. So it's. It has that dimension to it. And many of my friends that are bitcoiners are also highly, highly spiritual people. And we find a common language when we. When we talk about bitcoin in a spiritual sense. Yes, it is in my eyes. It's. It's kind of a revelation or a discovery that was made, but maybe even given to us by some higher power because it really is about to change the way we live life. Joel 01:14:04.310 - 01:14:34.480 Yeah, it's almost like a digital fire that gains strength each person. It's like, around it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna ask you, like, how do you perceive, like, the creation or the inception of bitcoin from, like a spiritual lens? Because it's almost like humanity was given this lifeline in this incredibly dark period of time. And it's, you know, there's quite a divine synchronicity that exists there. You know, like, how do you. How do you relate to bitcoin coming to the world. Efrat 01:14:38.080 - 01:22:21.530 Look, the origins of it are obviously unclear. I mean we do know that there was an entity called Satoshi Nakamoto that wrote the white paper and created the code based on a lot of pre existing protocols or inventions that had that had been there before for digital money or for cryptography, encryption, etc. A lot of these rules and, and protocols that Satoshi used for creating Bitcoin and existed there before. But he was the first one to put it all together in such a way that would create this new protocol that actually worked. And it was very risky in the first few years of its origin. And it was also very unclear whether it's going to succeed and survive because it was so experimental that it could have gone right and also they could have hijacked it and killed it. But it was so small and unimportant that no one paid attention. Now it's also possible that it was created by three letter agencies and, and some state actors at the time. Just like DARPA created the Internet, right? It's possible. But the moment this thing became decentralized and in the hands of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, they lost control. You can no longer control something that is replicated and open source, so anyone can access the code and verify it. And it was never leaked or hacked in the 16 years of existence since, since it was created, which is unlike any other computer system or computer network on the planet. So I don't know how much you know about other computer networks, but banking, insurance, health, even governments, they all get hacked all the time. This is why we have an industry called cyber security. That's why we have people working in tech and trying to defend that. Because it happens all the time. You in Australia, you know, you know, you had it with Medicare, with whatever, with all these insurance companies. And the details leak. And those things are very prone to hacks. Bitcoin was never hacked. Like they never succeeded. There is something in the way that this is designed. And yes, there is a group of developers and maintainers working on that code all the time to preserve it, to make sure it is improved. All the time. They're wr writing new versions. It is happening. Of course this is not like happening on its own, but it's quite amazing that this is a shared joint project that needs the consensus of the community in order to change anything in a meaningful way. Like the fixed supply that I told you of 21 million coin is something that can never be changed. It's written in code. And that, that fact alone makes Bitcoin a miraculous invention, the fact that you have something that is by design scarce and can never be inflated already changes the rules of the game. So the fact that someone understood that that is a problem that needs to be solved, the other problems were more technological is, Is in my eyes, quite miraculous because Satoshi should have been a person or would have been a person that understood not just programming computer code, not just technology and protocols, not just money and finances. He also needed to understand economy, economics, and the underlying problems of society and the usury, manipulation and the violence and everything, and the, the power of third parties. And so there is something quite spiritual in the way that he approached to resolve those problems. Like, if we are being constantly enslaved and manipulated by the system, what are the core problems that I need to solve in order to, to fix that, to, to take those things away from the equation. And, and he managed to do that. And that is. And again, I don't know. It may have been a group of people, but it is a liberating force. It is a force for good. Because when you teach people, I take always Bukele, President Bukele of El Salvador as an example, because he's the only leader that I know of today that is actually teaching his citizens, again, 8,9 million people, how to reclaim back sovereignty over their money and finances. And he's actually putting bitcoin as a subject in schools. He's creating classrooms, special classrooms in schools to teach kids financial, financial literacy and bitcoin. And they have a whole program around bitcoin education. They have an actual government office called the bitcoin office in El Salvador. So I don't know of any other world leader that is. Is giving so much power to his constituents. Understanding, because he's a bitcoiner, he understands understanding what it does, understanding that by doing that, by creating a project called a node in every home, he wants to have a bitcoin node in every home. You are giving them more sovereignty. You are giving them more power. And when a leader does that, he essentially takes the power from himself and his government and gives it back to the people that tell me that this is not spiritual. Like you don't see that anywhere else in the world. This is divine. This is amazing. And the fact that we have this beacon of light somewhere in Central America that we can look up to. And I hold my head in disbelief every time when I think about the case of El Salvador. I've been there three times in the last 14 months to check for myself. I've even met Bukele for Dinner and spoke to him. And it's incredible what they are doing there because they are literally based on values of freedom and sovereignty, and they are giving it back to the children and to the adults. And they're making a point of encouraging any innovation, any entrepreneurship, any business initiative related to more freedom and more sovereignty and more liberation in this country. So when you look at that, I cannot be more inspired and more in awe of that invention, you know, and you know how it impacts lives in an immediate way when you do that. And it's not like El Salvador is perfect. No, it has a long way to go, but it is on a very positive trajectory, unlike many other countries around the world. So I hope I managed to answer your question, because it's hard to. Yeah, sometimes I just, you know, it comes in my dreams or whatever. It's spiritual in that sense, but I don't think I should share all of that with your audience. Yerasimos 01:22:22.330 - 01:22:23.130 It's all good. Joel 01:22:23.210 - 01:22:23.770 Is it? Yerasimos 01:22:23.850 - 01:22:29.290 I'm just curious, like, are there a lot of expats living in El Salvador? Is it easy for people, many in there? Yeah. Efrat 01:22:29.770 - 01:24:08.430 Huh? Yes. There's a big community of expats from all over the world. Australians, Canadian, British, German. A lot of German. Like, from all over the world. Even Israelis. Yeah. There are many, many expats. And there are beautiful circular economies in different places around El Salvador that are living only on bitcoin. Places like El Zonte. It's a small surfers village that is called Bitcoin beach. And they have merchants accepting bitcoin and people living only on bitcoin there. There's a little town called Berlin up on the mountains. I've been there. I've been to both places. Spoke to the merchants. You know, you speak to that old LA with no teeth selling, like, memorabilia in the market. And I ask her, you know, why do you accept bitcoin? And she says, because it brings all the tourists and I can make more money and then I can save my money. And instead of using my money just for tomorrow or the next day because they're so poor, we can use. We can think of how to use it for a week and sometimes even for a month because it's in bitcoin and it goes up and it's like. Like, she's so beautiful. And she tells me about how it teaches them savings. Like, those poor people never thought about the concept of saving before. We come from the west, we take it for granted. But so many people in worried and places and, you know, in. In third world countries or the the developing countries are not even exposed to that thing. So when you see what it does to people's lives, it's incredible. Joel 01:24:09.060 - 01:24:09.340 Yeah. Efrat 01:24:09.340 - 01:24:30.220 And a circular economy is a place where you will never sell bitcoin back for fiat. You will keep using it within the. Within the community. You will earn it, save in it and spend in it. No problem to spend in it, but don't sell it back for. For pesos or dollars or whatever or shekels, you know. Joel 01:24:30.220 - 01:25:07.920 Yeah, we'll. We'll wrap this up in a second. I've got a final question for you. Obviously, like, there's a certain archetype that evolves through the bitcoin maximalist community and bitcoin groups, et cetera. If you were to observe bitcoiners from the outside, where do you think their work lies? Where do you think they might be lacking? Where do you think that they might be a little bit rigid or dogmatic in their thinking? Like, how would you like to see the bitcoin community evolve based on how you see the trajectory of bitcoin maximalists? Yeah. Efrat 01:25:07.920 - 01:27:03.060 Yeah. So I think the bitcoin community, the maxis, the ones that go only with bitcoin and understand the value of it, should take the same level of conviction and curiosity that they have for this thing called bitcoin and expand it and extend it to other areas of their lives. And they're doing quite okay with like health and fitness and sometimes, sometimes food, but. Or nutrition, but they don't necessarily do that with pharma or education or geoengineering or many other topics that are there for you to explore. So I think that's one thing that the bitcoin maxis are a little bit rigid with. They're like, quite limiting or narrowing themselves only to work and learn bitcoin and maybe a little bit of something else, but they don't expand their horizons. And I think that that's missing. I think there. There's a very good analogy for bitcoiners as honey badgers, because it's an animal that, you know, just keeps on grinding and doesn't care what happens. And also it's not afraid of animals that are way bigger than it. It has a lot of courage. So bitcoiners, the maxis, are very much like that. And they will unite and use their power and be more active than other groups, groups in society that I know of. And on the most part, there is a higher percentage of awakened individuals in the bitcoin community than in any other community that I have seen, because it Just makes sense that if you discover the government corruption and the scams in money, you highly likely that you have seen the same happening during COVID and woken up to that stuff. And so there is a lot more potential for spiritual or mental awakening in the bitcoin community, and you see a lot of parallels between those two communities as well. Joel 01:27:03.060 - 01:27:04.940 So thank you so much. Efrat 01:27:04.940 - 01:27:09.300 And I think we have to wrap up because my. My good helper here has to go. Joel 01:27:09.700 - 01:27:16.260 No worries, Efrat. We so much appreciate your time. Is there any kind of closing statement you might have for the audience here? Efrat 01:27:17.460 - 01:28:42.110 Yeah, I mean, we didn't have a chance, I mean, because we dove so much into bitcoin. But maybe if we do this again, maybe time on my podcast, we can talk like close the loop and talk a little bit more about why I think this is also a tool for bringing more peace and how important is for people in this day and age where we go through all these changes to not just learn about money and become more financially sovereign, but also keep their mental and spiritual states intact, because we're going to need both in the upcoming years in order to be ready and rigid for what's coming. And I really think that there is such a beautiful complementary thread between those two. Two things, two topics in life that I truly appreciate. So, yeah, I really would love to, like, see how people can bring more peace to their lives, lower down their guards and literally physically lower down their arms to have less violence and more peaceful living as they create and build a new way of living with a new monetary system. Joel 01:28:42.910 - 01:28:51.570 Beautiful. Thank you so much. And where would you like to direct our audience in terms of, you know, whether it's your starter kit or Instagram or. Or the best place for them to connect. Efrat 01:28:51.570 - 01:29:12.290 So my ex, I think, is my number one daily channel, and also Noster, which is another decentralized protocol based on bitcoin. So I'm on Noster as well, and I'm everywhere else. I have a blog, the podcast, you're the voice. I will give you one link that will have all of it in it, so you guys can follow me anywhere there. Joel 01:29:12.850 - 01:29:23.950 Amazing. Well, we appreciate your time so much. I'm so grateful for the path that you've walked in life. I'm just excited to see how, you know, your world continues to expand and how you continue to impact people. So just thank you for being you. Efrat 01:29:25.150 - 01:29:34.350 Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate what you guys are doing. It's not every day that I get to see that people have that kind of podcast thanks. Yerasimos 01:29:34.830 - 01:29:35.510 Really appreciate. Joel 01:29:35.510 - 01:29:38.110 You take care. And everyone else, we'll see you next time.