Ben McKenzie

And...

i'm asking these merchants like can i buy you know the the taco and uh or whatever the pupusa and uh and in bitcoin and they look at me like the stupid fucking gringo that i that i am and appear to be uh uh and and it just happens over and over and over again so it was not used as money it never worked as money even the remittance thing didn't work at all it was two percent of remittances when we started recording it's even less now it's less than one percent and the reason is because the system doesn't work very well it's the same thing that plagues crypto more broadly

System doesn't work very well.

You know, the value of a crypto can suddenly collapse.

You can have trouble getting out of the system.

And so people would rather spend, these people do not have money to gamble with.

So that was a real revelation to me where it's like,

Because it just so clearly was a narrative that had been constructed for Westerners.

It had been constructed to convince crypto holders and potential crypto holders that, no, there was a future and it was happening in El Salvador.

They were going to build this beautiful Bitcoin city in eastern El Salvador.

I go there.

It's not happening.

It was never going to happen.

It's a total grift.

So I'd say without that was the moment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The story works because it's super simple.

Our system sucks.

Like everyone raises their hand and then they say Bitcoin fixes this.