Rights Versus Privileges in a Global Financial System
Two critical questions about financial freedom and responsibility
ABOUT
As the second week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine begins, questions continue to arise surrounding crypto’s complexities in a wartime environment alongside broader questions about the future of money.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Wrejects.com.
On this episode of “Speaking of Bitcoin,” hosts Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy and Jonathan Mohan dive into two critical questions about financial freedom and responsibility.
The first question surrounds an emerging narrative of sanction evasion. Could bitcoin even be an effective tool for a nation-state to use to evade sanctions, given crypto’s relative market size to a nation’s reserves? Even further, how effective are these sanctions at all?
The second question lies in the distinction between rights versus privileges for financial freedom. Do nation-states or individuals have a right to transact, or is interacting with larger financial systems a privilege that can be revoked by whoever operates the system?”
HOST
Adam B. Levine joined CoinDesk in 2019 as the editor of its new audio and podcasts division. Previously, Adam founded the long-running Let's Talk Bitcoin! talk show with co-hosts Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.
Finding early success with the show, Adam transformed the podcast's homepage into a full newsdesk and publishing platform, founding the LTB Network in January of 2014 to help broaden the conversation with new and different perspectives. In the Spring of that year, he would go on to launch the first and largest tokenized rewards program for creators and their audience. In what many have called an early influential version of "Steemit"; LTBCOIN, which was awarded to both content creators and members of the audience for participation was distributed until the LTBN was acquired by BTC, Inc. in January of 2017.
With the network launched and growing, in late 2014 Adam turned his attention to the practical challenges of administering the tokenized program and founded Tokenly, Inc. There, he led the development of early tokenized vending machines with Swapbot, tokenized identity solution Tokenpass, e-commerce with TokenMarkets.com and media with Token.fm. Adam owns some BTC, ETH and small positions in a number of other tokens.

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