when we deal with something that is digital or we do something that could be digital the first thing that happens is we forget to think about the physical costs and the physical supports and all of the material things that go along with having a digital connection we don't think about the internet backbone the hardware the supports the end of it we don't really think about the costs of maintaining that but we only think about is oh look i can click on this thing here i can download whatever it is digital thing is it derives it's beautiful to it's just as good as all of the other digital copies and so it doesn't seem to cost anything but there are very real costs in there and the order of the digital serves to mask those what happens is this aura of the digital is not just concerned with cultural products it's actually something that extends throughout our culture and has literally expanded since the one nine hundred eighty s. so we get something like the housing bubble and it just burst in the last few years and the new possible bubbles in say i mean a simple bonds or government bond

and it's the same with digital currency some people will cheat people using digital currencies or do ponzi schemes or do bad things that's not a problem digital currency that's a problem of the way that one particular person was using that digital currency and so and digital currencies are just so much fairer across the board because you know exactly what the inflation schedule is going to be whereas as we've seen this last year with the u.s. dollar we have no idea how many more they're going to print from new york this week to the next the next month and and they keep surprising all of us with just how many more they decide to print we know that's not going to happen with the digital currencies that we use so there's no guarantee that the price your digital currency is going to go up over time but there's absolutely no guarantee that the value of your dollars are going to go down over time. but what if all the market makers just buy a huge amounts of many types of crypto currency and then become market make is in the limited amount of the block chains that that govern crypto currenc

so sometimes your local banks are working against your digital sovereignty as a way central bank digital guarantee will just find these a year of elections. how do you think uh, the powers that be easily managed to persuade? electra tool around the world will be voting this year, that the grocery shop analogy of how and economy works is the way the economy works . they seem to manage should be able to say there isn't enough money to pay for this. they will offer this in the manifesto. given that you are explaining something, even more complicated about the future of money. are you, are you asking me how they will the grocery store, i mean this grocery shopping that there isn't enough money. does that make any sense to you when the yeah, well, i mean, i suppose though the, the traditional way they, they try to present themselves as being like a house. so that's a very classic steps for rides, idea that the government has like a, is like a household like any other and it has limitations on as budgets. right. which is not true. i mean, one of the ways to think about this is to imagine like

technology industry or the digital payments industry by that i mean the sort of the mainstream digital payments industry not not the cryptocurrency community but the sort of the these is a must the cause of this will be what they tend to say is that this is a bottom up person ordinary people want to have the convenience and speed of their total payments and it's been driven by. this kind of groundswell of popular uptake but if you actually go back and you look at what's been happening over the last few decades the digital payments industry and the banking industry and also various states have actively been trying to push people into digital payment. this takes the form of you know on the one hand propaganda campaign to conflict convince you to move but also take the form of you know slowly degrading the cache infrastructure most slowly making it harder and harder to use the alternative such a story get pushed into the system and there's many many examples of companies working actively with state to help push the interest of the digital payment industry and i would imagine all such a.p.

now we've made it here again in this digital form. it's a very kind of puritanical way of thinking about money. and it's also, it has started to enact sure it, well, let's just get through a definition and then of money i should just say personally, you know, when i was 1st at the bbc in london, i go to loads of trouble. i was the only person on night shift when bearings banks went bust in the city of london, and i chose casino b roll pictures to illustrate voiceovers. and right from the top of the bbc they said, never use roulette tables ever a game. when talking about the finance you, however, use the analogy when defining money, what is money? the method level, if you're looking for the most kind of generic description, i would tend to say the money is a system of network access tightens um that enable us to access a network of human labor grads. um, that's a very broad way of speaking about it. um, and if you think about it, a lot of traditional ways of describing money, people imagine that there are some like value stored in mone

so those digital collectibles that have limited edition the digital objects that could be moved around graphs. and that's fine. um they have prices, they get price on the market, right? the sensor see, is that they're a competing monetary system to the us dollar. okay. um and so, and in order for that promotes is all of those objects to convince people that these are a alternative to be used. all of that the results are a lot of conservative minus the ideology, dr. step to present these things as being digital gold and always going to stop and that often those results and then drawing on lots of tribes, civil stare, etc, essentially, right? the idea that money should be a constrained thing, right? it shouldn't be like a commodity. and that's pretty much what market stacks are and people like that used to use when i was saying, oh, we can't afford to lose money, is a constrained commodity. so we got the cuts privatize everything and stop spending on health care and stop spending an education, right, because we can't find the money. right. so this whole idea that money is a constrained c

right of digital integrity. you already have an article, article 10 in the swiss constitution that says everyone has the right to his physical and mental integrity. i just want to add digital there. okay, good. now let's move on. so most space on the internet is privately owned, your thoughts on social media giants like facebook, twitter, youtube, censoring, free expression of the deplorable as they call them. in america in europe, i suppose they just use the term peasant is good enough. this is urgent. the mainstream corporate media, the social credit score is here, the social credit score. what you're seeing in china is here now it's in, it's in the united states, i presume it's in europe to some degree, your thoughts on how this fits into digital integrity. so the social score exists, those are already in switzerland for many years as a credit, as like a financial credit score. and it was impossible to, to challenge that in private companies. so it does because it does fit with digital integrity because digit

and to push people into digital payment. this takes the form of you know on the one hand propaganda campaign to conflict convince you to move but also take the form of you know slowly degrading the cache infrastructure most slowly making it harder and harder to use the alternative such a story get pushed into the system and there's many many examples of companies working actively with state to help push the interest of the digital payment industry and i would imagine all such a thing morgan's j. p. m. coin recently announced it also fall into that category now what about the role of these other credit card giants any day monetization scheme that happened recently in india yeah i sure there's people who've been trying to look into the background of what inspired that what happened was that the modi government and the initially claimed that you know it was trying to get rid of certain banknotes out of circulation in order to prevent what is called black money or in a money being hidden by the criminal underworld and then later

right of digital integrity. you already have an article, article 10 in the swiss constitution that says everyone has the right to his physical and mental integrity. i just want to add digital there. ok, good. now let's move on. so most space on the internet is privately owned, your thoughts on social media giants like facebook, twitter, youtube, censoring, free expression of the deplorable as they call them. in america in europe, i suppose they just use the term peasant is good enough. this is urged the mainstream corporate media, the social credit score is here, the social credit score. what you're seeing in china is here now it's in, it's in the united states, i presume it's in europe to some degree, your thoughts on how this fits into digital integrity. so the social score exist also are already in switzerland for many years as a credit, as like a financial credit score. and it was impossible to, to challenge that in private companies. so it does because it does fit with digital integrity because digital inte

see it could result in the widespread adoption of this digital r. and b. to be used in emerging markets economies and international trade countries would actually no longer be beholden and dependent on the u.s. dollar for trade. is the chinese ringback populace or for that matter any populace anywhere in the world ready for something like this that is so revolutionary how do you get people to suddenly start using digital currency instead of their credit cards and their regular cash that they've been using for the last so many hundreds of years i mean that is kind of emerging economies to begin with because that is actually the economies that are most comfortable with using things as digital content digital currencies such as china and such as india countries emerging economies with large populations of banks people people who don't have access to a bank account to actually don't own credit cards who have never own credit cards but every single one of them own mobile phones all of them are connected to the internet and because of that all of them have been

diary if i have it a digital history that i can look back on and and recall stages in life it has a downside be cruz well when you're a teenager you share things and say things that you probably don't want coming back to you 10 or 20 years lyta when you're a senior leader or an influence so there are some problems with this and we see very plainly one big problem that this younger generation faces through the digital and that is saga building putting down each other sometimes that they will say things that will shape things that will threaten our own one among. things that i would never cite priced advice there's a sense that because we're connecting through that digital isn't anonymity we would say are interact in a way that we wouldn't do physically together and that that can be a problem as well as of course the darkest side of the internet the security side the postal safety side the does come with this digital will take knowledge advance say to kids of information risk or one thing was in those last tales we humans actually just need simply far greater that than a time not hand

do you see a future for digital art and digital art exhibits? yeah. 100 percent. i think you're going to see that if i think you know, again, it's for me then. great on here. so i'm sort of, you know, with museum. they're usually banning. show about 2 years in advance, and obviously with colbert, everything got super messed up, and most museums aren't even open. but i think it's something you're going to be very quickly is. and i think there again, the math of benefit of you could have the same piece of art at 5 museums at one time. that's not the case with traditional art. one painting, it's got to move around all these places, created up with an act plays digital art is able to sort of like in multiple places at one time and sort of be able to be reached by a bigger community. but i guess the question there would be, would bring art exhibits to digital realm, like instagram or something will dilute the important so far. what i'm saying is i going to take to see rothko is an experience in self and i feel that are sort of thing does create a richer context for art

does actually move to this national digital current. see how does that affect decentralized currencies such as a big point that really become true competitors to than the digital dollar. well i mean if the us does adopt the same b.b.c. which is a very real possibility right now but quantum would be more valuable than ever because it's exactly what ben said they're not even competitors this is like comparing apples to oranges because the central digital bank currency will never replace because that is not a true crypto currency it's still centrally monitored and maintained it will still be subject to exact same problems that currency has today they'll still be subject to inflation and they're open to manipulation by central banks and make it even easier for the central banks to either tighten or loosen the quiddity over so c.d.'s these are merely a digital version of the our currency which makes it more dangerous than ever because that means every single purchase every single action will be tracked and we just talked about the currency c

will create this digital currency even in the near future. i think as an area likely because the pressure is certainly mounting for the u.s. to create the c.b.c. as its biggest competitor and the tech arms race just recently began testing its own digital currency that will be launched on we chat and so for us this means that they will fall further behind they've already lost the battle over 5 g. to china so now it's going to be digital currencies which essentially will command the future of international capital flows so right now that's the biggest concern because if china launches their digital army successfully this one where does all in a widespread adoption of the digital r. and b. to be used in emerging markets and international trade so countries will no longer be dependent and beholden to the dollar so a lot of this what's driving this decision right now is fall fear of missing out and it's kind of important to note that in many hearings the discussions are now revolving around how rather than if the u.s. should put together a c.d.c.

do you see a future for digital art and digital art exhibits? yeah. 100 percent. i think you're going to see that if i think, you know, again, it's for me then on here. so the sort of, you know, with museums, they're usually banning show about 2 years in advance. and obviously with call that everything got super messed up, and most museums aren't even fully open. but i think it's something you're going to be very quickly is. and i think there again, the math of benefit of you could have the same piece of art at 5 museums at one time. that's not the case. the traditional art, one painting. it's got to move around all these places, crated up to the next place. digital art is able to sort of like in multiple places at one time and sort of be able to be reached by a bigger community. but i guess like the question there would be, would bring art exhibits to digital realm, like instagram or something will dilute the important so far. what i'm saying is i going to take to see rothko is an experience in self and i feel that are sort of thing does create a richer context f

it will be in digital platforms and it will be impossible to build anything without using those digital platforms. and those who have those platforms who will rule the world. much like you make a car and then you want to modernize it about. modernization and will be carried out digitally it will be carried out through a platform that stores all the information and suppose let's say you want to change a bolt or a knot in the car so you have to go to this platform and work through this platform wherever owns that platform rules the world. so if we miss this point then we'll be lagging and we're not there yet and i hope that we will miss this point in these such platforms are evolving in us in europe and we are currently working on developing such a lot from unified but form within the eurasian economic union then we can do that we can do this in a fair way by sharing risks and activities among all the members of the union. with. so we no longer slaves to existing platforms we want to create our own platform. the savings banks burbank has made. significant progress in this matter and we ha

going on the forum well the digital. this year and you know a lot of people asked what can about china you know that china is pioneering the ways there and it's interesting is it actually you know they say well it's just you know but a way to transmit money into the system sheets or more efficient way you know disguising the actual is the real purpose of basically better control of. you know how the money is spent and where it goes but apart from china you know like the cold top because financial inclusion you know and you know developed income countries being able to use you money which anybody can use in the digital way on the very low cost base rate this is the whole point because look i'm a banking system it's very expensive right ringback. leeson like developing countries can the what if word all of this and brings a bank into the population through this infrastructure but then they wanted to can i sort of digitalize their charter and seize the open completely different opportunities but what else have the disadvant

government official to talk public publicly about digital currency is and in two thousand and thirteen in called bitcoin a shadow currency that c f t c should regulate so clearly you have some strong feelings about digital currency as to what are your thoughts on the chinese decision to band trading on these digital currency exchanges. hey bianco well i think it was you know it's to some extent in evitable that this was going to happen to some place i'm a little surprised that it took place in china because of what you just reported about the large number of investors over there but that may be exactly why they ended up doing it so what i've been saying for years is that digital currencies have a place in our modern financial society and system but they need to be appropriately regulated not overzealous regulation and if they didn't if the enthusiasm for bitcoin and other digital currencies didn't embrace some sort of regulation that you would see overzealous regulation and they would do things like the chinese have done both with the i c o o's banning the use of coin offerings and wha

so at the moment when you take out a loan, a new digital currency, or new units of that digital fee is crated by some dollar digital dollar deposits in your bank account. and it's backed by dad. but because with that is so now over leverage the solution to that is a movement towards centralization, where you can let the bank go boss. but you just issue the digital currency directly from the central bank, and you allow financial technology companies and banks to build on top of the central bank digital currencies. while it is a de leveraging and it is a solution, it comes with the removal of free market. capitalism comes with the removal of all those. those things. that's a one, a currency that's in these ones that removed from governments being graded. and it moves us towards an algorithmic artificial intelligence lad complete the centralized central bank, digital currency that is used to enforce government agendas, fiscal agendas. if you're not spending your money in the correct way, then there will be, you know, algorithmic penalties on that. that will be automated tax collection. it

and so a couple of questions so when japan appears to introduce a digital yen. you know what do you think about a national crypto currency in the 2nd part of the question is the pushback you hear from people is that well what have countries outlaw because and that there is another thought to this that actually though it's just saying there's more likely that countries will want to get into competitive bidding to add to their strategic reserves and acquire bitcoin that's the flip side of that argument but how do you come down simon on this sovereign digital crypto coin now in the pickle in space and how's that going to play out the things current see is going to be 100 percent digital very soon or is he is in some countries. the interesting thing that people confused is people often think. that you know the central bank digital currency is the same thing as what we've already goltz because the money is already digital and there's a war on cash and cash is virtually disappeared anyway there is i see a major major difference it's who creates the central bank digita

they'll have the biggest digital footprint of any previous generation as you said probably by the time they wanted to use of their more photos of them they know they grandparents and right current right their parents put together for their entire lots and the amount of video and just a digital. footprints a pretty big now because from the youngest age there are there on social channels that chatting and sharing and and so they just leave a long legacy a long history that can be great in that i have if you like a digital diary i have it a digital history that i can look back on and and recall stages in life it has a downside be cruise well when you're a teenager you share things and say things that you probably don't want coming back to you 10 or 20 years lyta when you're a senior leader or an influence so there are some problems with this and we see very plainly one big problem that this younger generation faces through the digital and that is cyber bullying putting down each other sometimes that they will say things that will shape things that will threaten our own one among. things t

they're immersed in the digital space and they tend to take that digital or a thinking and apply it to their actual house and they fail to see that their actual house has real cost involved in that house and i think you also make a connection to labor and how laborous. is fit fit into that equation well the problem here is that when we shift to a digital capitalism following on this kind of for basic expansion of the r. of the digital where we shift from a material physical capitalism one that's based on actual production and wages and labor and all of that to an immaterial on the danger and this is what i think it's happened is that we've had this transfer from this digital realm into the less than digital grounds such as the financial markets in the form of financialization because financialization at a kind of basic level is a reshuffling of immaterial commodities if you take say the gold index and you generate a commodity based on selling futures based on the gold index put it in the physical gold so you end up making money based on something else that may not actually be connec

the digital space should be developed and i think he. likened it to how the internet was developed so i mean much more i think even the f.c.c. hasn't to see if d.c. is sort of been out there trying to share information and let people know in this space what they should and should be doing i think that's right i think to see if the seed took an early view that this is out there there's nothing we can do to stop it really so we might as well figure out what the problems are they embrace virtual currencies as a commodity and they early on to exercise jurisdiction over derivatives based on commodities as well as using their anti-fraud authority to root out potential bad guys in this area so i think the sea of the sea has taken a very very pragmatic view from the beginning i think it's very careful to say they haven't a dos the product but they simply recognize it's there and it has to be dealt with it can't be ignored it's good to send out warnings to investors they've done a lot of lot of education into absolute commended for that but they'

payment via phone credits throughout africa and other parts of the world this is a myth like digital money more of a positive thing can you talk a little bit about that you know the best way to think about this is you know if you are living in an all cash economy it certainly helps to have some new option available to you as you know i'm not saying it's terrible to always have it all payments because what digital payments do allows it allows for you to interact with people that are far away from you so you can actually start to do internet commerce and so on. but a lot of what's been happening in the what's called financial inclusion which is attempt to push digital payments into. places. you know and african countries and various places where people lack access to bank accounts that actually many of the big digital players like master card and these are behind those pushes and they're often trying to strong arm governments into pushing their private corporate interests and sort of masquerading them as public you know the development projects for the for the greater good and so we ne

stories a heartwarming stories about digital payments in kenya actually many activists on the ground in those countries are very concerned about that yeah you know this centralization of these coins of course a corporate agenda is pushed by titans like amazon and i just read that labor for example all their technology goes through amazon web service cloud and every single override gets fourteen cents goes to amazon so there's a huge initiative to centralize all this for the cloud like amazon and others now getting back to facebook for a second and their face coin or whatever that they're going to call it i don't think it's been announced yet but they are already in hot water for harvesting data from billions of people around the world and the platforming tens of thousands of activists they're already acting as a hugely bad actor and on so many different fronts and now they want to bring in their digital coin do you see this on par with what's happening in china when you make a differentiation brad when you think oh absolutely it's you know what big companies like facebook realize tha

digital accounts for them before this kids even can walk or talk or take a decision whether they want to be instantly here how are out for a family now what effect will this presence from birth have been jan now stop. well it doesn't come without challenges of course you know and the most. they'll have the biggest digital footprint of any previous generation as you said probably by the time they wanted to use of their more photos of them they know they grandparents and write parent write their parents put together for their entire lots and the amount of video and just a digital. footprint a pretty big now because from the youngest age they're online they're on social channels that chatting and sharing and and so they just leave a long legacy a long history that can be crites in that i have if you like a digital diary i have it a digital history that i can look back on and and recall stages in life it has a downside be cruz well when you're a teenager you share things and say things that you probably don't want coming back to you 10 or 20 years lyta when you're a senior leader or an in

well that some of it i mean you think about it think about digitizing recording and transferring data whether or not it's music or movies or computers or. other things that mean money is the next logical thing to be digitized and it will happen and i think it will be of great value the question is how fast does that happen and does it happen in an appropriate way with meaningful. consumer protections and so far like i said that nobody seems to have gotten it right and i think that's going to china is a great example of that slowing things down so i don't agree with mr diamond the bitcoins a fraud it's not based upon much it's based upon you know the error i guess is not based upon much and i do think it's not just you know a risk for people but somewhat of over of a raffle but people are adults they know they could lose their money and if they have that disposable income that they could go poof that's fine but i do think there's just this trepidation and reluctance to embrace digital anything like there was with you know moving from floppy disk other types of computing technologies of

but what happens when you mixed digital games with actual physical sports? something like digital. the answer is yes. ah, with prison is preparing to host the 1st ever gains of the future. a cyber contest with a physical dimension players are putting their online and real arena skills to the test. as pioneers of the fidgeted movement, one of the innovators, eager to soluble is on the verge of redefining sports and gaming. he tells us what's behind this synergy, and if it's the future, why not truly cyber spar work combination? it's kind of a hybrid between what's happening in the real world and what's happening on screen . if this is the old philosophy, you cannot achieve a good results in the digital. while not having a good physical form, we're trying to drag them out of the computer from the you know and get them on the field, get them on the beach. ah, well, basically inventing different kinds of sports including that, that problem geisha of the cyber sport within the physical reality and vice versa. we're experimenting with all saint blue. the stakes are rising that you know,

with the news of central banks around the world creating their own digital currency as well many have wondered if and when the u.s. might follow suit well now we have a better idea as the u.s. federal reserve has now partnered with mit to develop a hypothetical digital currency over a 2 to 3 year period in other words this is a digital equivalence to cash that all reserve board governor brainard said given the dollar's important role it is essential that the federal reserve remain on the frontier of research and policy development regarding c.b.c.'s but many are questioning its safety and whether or not it will actually bypass central banks well for more on this we're joined by political host ben so on and christiane i ben let's start with you because this is something that we've talked about multiple times on this show that the fed will soon attempt to create its own digital currency now i think it's fair to say this move doesn't catch you as a surprise break down what this could look like would we have a digital wallet separate from your regular bank accounts well essentially that's

people an oct out in the nexus because when central banks and governments create the digits digital currency is going to be all full effects on your privacy or freedom your ability to spend your money as you choose is going to be intersected with compulsory vaccines is going to be intersected with your ability to get on a plane in the future and the anti money laundering regimes and automated tax collections are going to be all intertwined and we're just going to have more and more into connection with the central bank digital currency so that's where bitcoin really comes in and then people lost well will they ban it we already have seen use cases we've seen that china and exchanges and it push the price from $3000.00 arts of the $20000.00. overseas part of that was a speculative bubble correctives and now we're starting to stabilize a bit more so i think we'd be very naive to think that governments wouldn't try and ban bitcoin when they start to realise and it becomes a political power play and we already saw that you know with the with the gold in the pasta when it came to the mon

payment systems or digital payments in mind that facebook is not a bank it doesn't have the right to issue money and actually hold digital money so what's going to happen in the background is that companies are phrasebook will be plugging into the banking sector much like paper pulp plugs into the back banking sector and then runs a sort of private ecosystem on top of it as it were so actually the banking sector always i'm depends all of these digital payment systems and then these new companies are kind of inserting them so between you and the banks and i guess you got to decide you know do you what do you rather want facebook monitoring your payments or do you we to escape those systems entirely right that brings us back to bed coyne big point being of course its own its own ecosystem it's not tied to the banking system so it's becoming still the way to go if one wants to escape the the surveillance coins these banks and of these platforms like facebook and will it be able to compete in your view in two years three years four years down the road we've got some great scaling initiat