Why Bitcoin matters for freedom in a digital age

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2022 on Sunday 16 October at Church House, London.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, governments, economists and journalists have regularly presented Bitcoin as dangerous and risky. It’s for criminals, they argue, it’s a ponzi scheme – and it’s destroying the planet.

By contrast, supporters of Bitcoin have argued that the world financial system is a cruel labyrinth – creating a situation where tomorrow is traded for today, where capital is strip-mined without consideration for the future and where our money is devalued by central planners and our liberties eroded and behaviour managed in order to engineer compliance. Bitcoin, they argue, has the potential to help us escape this labyrinth.

In Bitcoin is Venice, Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers explore the terrain of what they describe as a global, digital, sound, open-source, programmable currency. What might economies look like under a Bitcoin standard? What might this new form of capital do to our current governing bodies? Can Bitcoin bring about a new global Renaissance?

Join Allen Farrington in conversation with Jeremy Hildreth to assess why Bitcoin matters for freedom in a digital age. Do the risks of Bitcoin outweigh its opportunities? Or in adopting it, could we be embarking on a historical transformation on a par with the agricultural and industrial revolutions?

Get your tickets to the 2022 Battle of Ideas festival here.

SPEAKERS
Allen Farrington
investor; co-author, Bitcoin Is Venice

CHAIR
Jeremy Hildreth
author, Unfuckwithable Money and Brand America; travel writer; commentator, Wall Street Journal, Spectator, Monocle, the New York Post and the Washington Times