Episode
Money and Control
- Podcast
- The Jacob Shapiro Podcast
- Published
- Dec 29, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2771
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://jacobshapiro.com/podcasts/money-and-control
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Summary
What if the money in your pocket wasn’t a tool for freedom, but a mechanism for control? Inflation, surveillance, and financial exclusion actively shape who can save, speak, or participate in the global economy. Alex Gladstein joins the show to examine money as a human-rights issue, exploring how new digital tools are being used in places where traditional financial systems fail or are weaponized. Alex reframes money as a human-rights issue - tracing how digital currencies are reshaping power at the margins: enabling dissidents, protecting savings, and creating escape hatches from broken systems. It’s not about speculation or hype... it’s about sovereignty, repression, and what freedom actually looks like in a digitized global economy. -- Timestamps: (00:00) - Introduction (00:17) - Bitcoin as Freedom Money (01:46) - The Need for Freedom Money (04:04) - Global Financial Repression (10:12) - Bitcoin's Resilience and Privacy (20:00) - Case Studies and Real-World Impact (23:03) - Bitcoin and the Future of Nation States (25:01) - The Cost of War and National Debt (25:36) - The Role of Banks in Government Spending (27:06) - Bitcoin's Potential to Empower People (27:36) - Dictators vs. Bitcoin (28:51) - The Rise of Stablecoins (29:43) - Bitcoin vs. Altcoins (38:13) - Ethereum's Flaws (40:39) - Bitcoin's Impact on Oppressed Nations (44:43) - The Future of Bitcoin and Dictatorships -- Referenced in the Show: Alex Gladstein: https://alexgladstein.com/ Freedom Money Essay – https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/why-bitcoin-is-freedom-money/ -- Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.com Jacob Shapiro LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jacob-l-s-a9337416 Jacob Twitter: x.com/JacobShap Jacob Shapiro Substack: jashap.substack.com/subscribe -- The Jacob Shapiro Show is produced and edited by…