Check Your Financial Privilege - Alex Gladstein

Written by Alex Gladstein
Read by Guy Swann
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Alex Gladstein has a lot to say about Bitcoin, human rights, financial privilege, and personal freedom. In Check Your Financial Privilege, he says it, starting with the fact that anyone born into a reserve currency like the euro, yen, or pound has financial privilege over the 89 percent of the world population born into weaker systems.

In Nigeria, human rights activists depend on Bitcoin for donations after crackdowns by authoritarian regimes. In Cuba, after a dual-currency system devalued the peso, those who saved in Bitcoin managed to stay afloat. In El Salvador, where remittance fees and exchange rates can eat away a simple money transfer to family members in need, Bitcoin offers hope with lower fees and faster transactions (and now it’s legal tender).

As CSO of the Human Rights Foundation, Gladstein is uniquely positioned to detail the rise of Bitcoin from cypherpunk dream to the real-life Bitcoin stories happening to real people across the globe. For people around the world, outside of Wall Street, Bitcoin offers a means of freedom from inflation, political strife, and an outdated monetary system. For these people, the majority of the world’s population, it might even save their lives.