Transcription
Last month, the world's elite attended the World Economic Forum's annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss what comes next now that their plans appear to be falling apart. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of economic nationalism seem to be derailing the W's globalist goals. But some are intent on getting them back on track by whatever means necessary. By any means necessary. By any means necessary.
That's why today we're going to summarize some of the most important panel discussions and presentations from this year's Davos Summit and tell you what they suggest comes next. My name is Guy. Stay tuned.
Well, let's start where we left off. If you watched our video about last year's Davos Summit, you'll know that the theme back then was "rebuilding trust." In practical terms, this meant finding ways to influence the outcome of all the elections held around the world in 2024 so that the W's people would win. To that end, last year's Davos discussions and presentations focused very heavily on things like online censorship in the name of safety and democracy and preventing the rise of populism. Naturally, one of the hottest topics was the possibility that Donald Trump would win the 2024 U.S. election. Well, he did, and as it happened, Trump's inauguration fell on the first day of this year's Davos Summit.
This is believed to be part of the reason why attendance was rather lackluster, but the bigger factor was likely the awareness that his presidency would greatly restrict the W's activities, which revolve around maximizing globalism. If you watched our video about why globalism is collapsing, you'll know the term describes an economic policy that transcends international borders and governments. The result has been the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few while making the average person poorer and more helpless.
As we noted in that video, the response to this is economic nationalism, which is basically an economic policy that factors in the health and wealth of the average citizen, not just corporate profits. In theory, this is why Trump and other such politicians were elected. We'll see if it plays out in practice.
Anyways, the theme of this year's Davos Summit was "collaboration for the intelligent age," which almost sounds like a signal of surrender. Recall that last year's theme was rebuilding trust, i.e., trying to control the narrative. They failed, and now they're asking for collaboration.
If you need proof of just how significant Trump's election is to the W, look no further than the fact that there were a few panel discussions related to the U.S. election outcome prior to the main event. They were all stunned by the fact that Trump was the first Republican to win the popular vote in 25 years. Opinions on the outcome varied significantly, with some essentially alleging the election was rigged due to Elon Musk turning X into a free speech platform, while others claimed that Trump intends to work closely with China to solve all the world's problems. Uncertainty was undeniably the unifying theme.
Now, obviously, some of the panelists brought up the fact that Trump launched his own memecoin, but the reactions were not what you might expect. Most of the panelists effectively shrugged their shoulders and said it's just Trump being Trump, with others pointing out that Biden also had ways of enriching himself. For context, many in the crypto industry consider Trump's memecoin to be a PR disaster. The panel discussions at Davos suggested this was not the case at all; however, that's probably because the elites are aware that it's common for leaders of countries to use their positions to enrich themselves. Trump was just more blatant about it.
Obviously, the appearance that Trump himself made a few days into the summit was the most watched. Trump slammed the rise in inflation, which he argues is closer to 50% because of pandemic policies, bragged about the investment the U.S. is getting, and promised to make it the AI and crypto capital of the world.
There was a small panel present, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. For reference, Brian has been one of the top proponents of ESG, the investment ideology that the W had been using to coerce companies to comply with its so-called agendas, which seek to implement the UN's Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs by 2030. More about ESG and the SDGs in the description.
Now, Trump slammed Brian for allegedly denying bank accounts and loans to conservative businesses, something that Brian had explicitly stated Bank of America would do to companies not compliant with ESG at a prior Davos conference. FYI, he also called out JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon for doing the same. Not surprisingly, Brian slammed Trump for his executive orders, which rolled back many of the ESG policies that Bank of America was pushing. The exchange was visibly uncomfortable, as were Trump's claims about making Canada the 51st state of the U.S.
Well, it's safe to say the attendees got their money's worth. And by the way, if you're enjoying the video so far, then be sure to smash that like button and subscribe to the channel, and ping that notification bell so you don't miss the next one.
Now, Trump's speech wasn't the only highlight of the Davos conference. There were many other intense speeches from other world leaders, starting with the unelected leader of the world, WEF founder and former executive chairman Klaus Schwab. Yes, you heard that right. Former executive chairman Klaus announced he would be stepping down as chairman last year, effective as of January 2025, which was last month.
In his final opening speech to the audience, Klaus said that he founded the WEF over 50 years ago to make the world a better place and that 50 years later, the world is a much better place. In other words, Klaus practically took personal credit for all the world's improvements in recent decades. This is insane, and the craziest part is that he wasn't the only one making claims along these lines, as you'll soon see. It really looks like the world's leaders are living in bubbles somewhere in the past.
Before we get to that, though, I need to underscore something that was said by Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter. She took the stage after Klaus did his opening speech and said something eye-opening: the collapse of Credit Suisse in 2023 almost took down the global financial system. As a reminder, Credit Suisse was one of Switzerland's largest banks and had over $1.3 trillion in assets at the end of 2022. The bank appears to have collapsed as a consequence of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the U.S. Credit Suisse was acquired by rival Swiss bank UBS to avoid imploding.
Now, back to those crazy world leaders living in historical bubbles. EU President Ursula von der Leyen definitely took the top spot with her speech. She began by saying that 25 years ago everything was amazing, and these days things aren't looking so good, but Europe is still amazing and competitive. FYI, Europe's largest economies are in recession or close to it, and regulations are killing innovation.
To her credit, Ursula acknowledged that Europe was lagging behind but proposed a disturbing solution to this problem. In short, she said that the problem is that Europeans have €1.4 trillion worth of savings that they aren't investing into the European economy. If only there was some way the EU could get at that money, she mused about how this money could be invested into the green energy policies that are currently bankrupting industries across Europe and seemed to brag about how 50% of Europe's natural gas imports were now coming from the U.S., not noticing that this is also contributing to high energy costs.
But back to the comment about European savings. This is something that ECB President Christine Lagarde also brought up during the final panel discussion about the outlook for the global economy. It was by far the biggest highlight of that discussion and paints a terrifying picture for Europeans. Christine said that Europeans need to "wake up and respond to the call" and invest their money into the EU. She added that Europeans "need to keep their savings at home."
When you combine this with the comments made by Ursula, it foreshadows extreme capital controls for Europeans. Put differently, European leaders are refusing to acknowledge the fact that the reason why Europe is struggling is because of their economic policies so far. Instead, they're doubling down and blaming the free flow of European capital for the reason why their utopian vision for Europe is out of reach.
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However, it's not just the free flow of European capital that's the problem, but the free flow of speech as well. If you've seen clips from this year's Davos conference, chances are they were either from Trump's speech or from the speeches made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Olaf's speech focused on the fact that nobody trusts government institutions anymore and said that they must be protected against attacks so that social consensus can be maintained.
He also pushed for Germany to go more into debt with public spending simply because other European countries have done the same. As you've probably seen, the real sound bite, though, was when Olaf said that he only supports free speech so long as it doesn't support the far right. In case it wasn't clear enough, the term "far right" is frequently used to smear those who are pursuing economic policies that are national rather than global, like the elites want.
To add insult to injury, Olaf claimed that Europe is doing just fine and is competitive, just like Ursula did. Yet Olaf's speech paled in comparison to Pedro's, which was seriously dystopian. The focus of his speech was social media, and it was like something you'd read in a book like 1984. He said that it's not good that the mainstream media is being replaced by alternative media and that fake news is the biggest threat. He called out PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and other tech elites for believing that they are above the law and "trying to overthrow democracy."
This is somewhat hypocritical given that Romania allegedly canceled its elections because of EU pressure after a "far-right" candidate started polling ahead of his rivals. Pedro argued that social media has become analogous to nature and therefore needs to be properly governed, i.e., controlled. To that end, he proposed three solutions.
The first of which is to eliminate online anonymity by requiring all Europeans to link their social media accounts to their digital ID wallets. To bring you up to speed, the EU is in the process of rolling out its own digital ID wallet, which will eventually be paired with its digital euro, which is expected to launch as soon as 2026. When you combine these two technologies together, you end financial freedom and free speech in the EU.
Now, the second solution Pedro proposed was to force social media companies to open-source their algorithms and enforce the EU's Digital Services Act, or DSA. For those unfamiliar, the DSA allows the EU to influence social media algorithms in the event of an emergency or even the possibility of an emergency. It's a law that you would never expect to see in a supposedly free place like Europe, but it's real and it's live.
Pedro's third and last solution to the threat that free speech poses to the EU was to fine social media companies out of existence. He concluded by saying that he hopes the EU will "make social media great again" with these policies, and the crowd erupted with laughter. Are Europeans laughing? I wonder.
Now, on a more positive note, some of the global elite at this year's Davos Summit did seem to show some self-awareness, slowly understanding that their globalist policies were the cause of their own troubles. Case in point, there was actually a panel discussion about the rise in economic nationalism around the world, believe it or not. But one of the panelists said that economic nationalism was a good thing. Another acknowledged that economic nationalism was growing because leaders seemed to be focused on global issues rather than those of their own citizens. Most of them were still skeptical, though, and the biggest skeptics were all Europeans.
It looks like they're just going to keep doubling down until the EU finally breaks. On that note, there was a panel discussion about the biggest global risks. According to the W, Nigerian Vice President Kashim Shettima warned that conflict was increasing in Africa and it could result in tens of millions of African refugees crossing into Europe via Morocco. The moderator said Europe would be happy to have them, implying she was fine with these conflicts and with the subsequent mass migration. Seriously, what's wrong with these people?
Anyway, unhinged comments aside, Kashim also claimed that the panelists weren't giving Trump enough credit for bringing peace to the world and noted how remarkable it was to finally have a ceasefire in the Middle East. It sounds like Kashim is hoping Trump can help settle things down in Africa too. Fingers crossed.
Now, another panelist in the global risks discussion who dropped a bombshell was Cambridge University Professor Jillian Tett. She rightly pointed out that the response to the pandemic by governments around the world was what destroyed people's trust in institutions. Specifically, she said they painted gray issues as black and white as they pertain to health and never apologized or even acknowledged this critical error.
This ties into another panel discussion titled "renewing the promise of democracy," which was as ridiculous as you'd imagine. Besides the fact that the title of the panel implied that democracy is somehow over because Trump won, the panelists revealed the true definition of democracy. Tan Hassan, the director of Human Rights Watch, said that democracy is not about voting; it's about maintaining institutions. She then said something along the lines of if the outcome of democratic voting threatens established institutions, then it is not real democracy. We are not making this up, I promise you.
The silver lining is that even these radical panelists acknowledged that they're losing control of the narrative because trust is becoming distributed and peer-to-peer rather than top-down. This is something that was first mentioned at last year's Davos, and this year it was a key theme in many conversations. This relates to all the comments and panels related to crypto, and boy do I have a treat for you here.
There was a panel about the U.S. dollar that began with a series of live polls, one of which asked attendees what the world's next reserve currency will be. A sizable percentage of the replies noted it would be a cryptocurrency. The best part, however, was the question period, where one of the audience members asked about global crypto adoption. One of the panelists shrugged it off, saying that crypto was used mostly for speculation and it was only being used for payments in a handful of countries like Nigeria.
It seemed he missed the memo about the incoming stablecoin regulations in the U.S. that could make stablecoin payments common in the U.S. and elsewhere. The caveat is that this could set the stage for a global financial crisis, as a panelist on another discussion about interest rates noted. That's because stablecoins are backed by U.S. government debt. This means that every time you buy a stablecoin, you're actually buying U.S. government debt behind the scenes.
Logically, the same is true in reverse. Every time you sell a stablecoin, the stablecoin issuer needs to sell U.S. government bonds. Now imagine a scenario where the stablecoin supply grows exponentially for whatever reason, be it due to crypto payments or speculation, since stablecoins are used to buy altcoins. If there was to be a massive crash in the crypto market or some other issue, there could be a rush of stablecoin redemptions. This would result in a massive sell-off of U.S. government bonds, which could theoretically push their prices lower and interest rates higher. This could cause systemic issues in the global financial system similar to a banking crisis.
This possibility is why another panelist said that crypto might already be too big to fail. This was CLS Bank International CEO Mark Baily de Jesse, and he made the comment during a panel discussion about crypto, which also featured Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire. There's not much to note about the panel, just that the W seems to be more bullish on tokenization than on actual crypto. In case it wasn't clear enough, tokenization involves digitizing everything you own, including your identity, and putting it on a blockchain.
Now, this is good if it's done in a decentralized way on a crypto blockchain, but very bad if it's done on a centralized blockchain controlled by banks and governments. You can probably guess which form of tokenization the W is a fan of. In case it isn't clear, consider the following quote from Mark: "Tokenized assets have value, but cryptos do not."
It's going to be awkward when more assets start being tokenized on crypto blockchains, creating value for their coins and tokens. This pertains to the crypto discussion called "crypto at a crossroads." If you're into crypto, chances are you've already seen clips from this discussion too. It featured Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Stellar Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon, and SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, among others.
One of these others was Leeta Ganago, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank. As expected, he took issue with the fact that crypto played such a big role in the 2024 U.S. election and questioned the idea of holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset. Meanwhile, Brian said it's the dawn of a new day for crypto, and not only that, but Brian pointed out that the room was mostly empty and said this made him bullish.
That's because it's a contrarian indicator. If the room was full, then it means that crypto is close to a cycle top. The underwhelming audience, therefore, suggests that crypto still has lots of room to run. After each of the crypto panelists shielded their respective products in response to almost every question from the moderator, Animoca Brands founder Yat Siu asked them about what would lead to crypto's mass adoption.
Brian bumbled on about human-readable names before answering stablecoin payments. At the same time, Franklin Templeton CEO Jennifer Johnson, who was also on the panel, predicted that stablecoin issuers would allow holders of their stablecoins to start earning a portion of the yield they're earning on their reserves, which are mostly, you'll recall, U.S. government debt.
Now, this is extremely significant. You see, companies in Web 2 and TradFi haven't given much to their users and customers. To put it lightly, in the case of Web 2 companies, they own all our data and sell it to advertisers for big bucks. In the case of TradFi, they charge high fees and keep most of the gains they make from playing with our money.
Realistically, most people using Web 2 products and TradFi services would not switch over to Web 3 and DeFi. But this could change if crypto companies and projects are allowed to share some of their spoils with users. Stablecoin issuers sharing a portion of the yields is just one of many such examples.
We could see products like SAND's crypto phones and SUI's handheld gaming devices airdropping tokens that cover the cost of the devices and then some. We could see services like Helium Mobile introducing on-chain affiliate programs and rewards. Even crypto wallets could give away crypto in order to attract users. If stuff like this does start happening, it could change the game in a big way. Legacy products and services would be unable to compete, and it could result in the true mass adoption of crypto.
This is probably the kind of reply that Yat was hoping to get from Brian, but well, I guess we're the first to do it justice. And this brings me to the big question: what comes next? The answer really seems to depend on where you are in the world.
In North America, it seems the elites are realizing that economic nationalism is the new norm with Trump at the helm, and we are already seeing huge changes to that effect. Evidence for this can be found in how quickly oligarchs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg bent the knee to Trump following his election victory. Although many have taken this as a sign that not much is going to change, others believe this marks a paradigm shift in how the U.S. is run.
One of these contrarians is macro analyst Vincent Delard, who believes that the way Trump is interacting with globalists like Jeff and Mark is the same way that Vladimir Putin handled the Russian oligarchs after he was elected. Initially, he was friendly, then he purged the ones who were against him.
In Europe, meanwhile, the opposite seems to be the case. The globalists are still firmly in control, and it looks like they're prepared to purge dissenting citizens and pillage all the others to hold on to power. Comments from Ursula and Christine about European savings are seriously messed up and genuinely concerning. Olaf and Pedro's speeches suggest that this kind of thinking is endemic in current EU leadership.
The worst part of it all is that the EU's current leadership is very difficult to change democratically. This was noted during a panel discussion at last week's Davos, and if it's true, then Europe is in for a dark time. To put things into perspective, 400 people were arrested for things they posted on social media in Russia in 2023, but over 3,300 people were arrested for things they posted on social media in the UK. When faced with these facts, it's no wonder people are skeptical of democracy. This clearly isn't democracy.
Now, in the global South, meanwhile, leaders there are breathing a collective sigh of relief in response to the change in U.S. leadership. The consensus seems to be that Trump is a peacemaker, and it's remarkable how many times this came up during panel discussions. Emerging economies seem optimistic about him, the exception being Latin America, where Argentina's Javier Milei seems to be Trump's only cheerleader.
With all that said, though, it seems that peak globalism has passed, and in retrospect, it looks like the W recognized this a long time ago. Klaus's decision to step down as its leader last year was probably him recognizing that the globalist world that he and his cronies put together is quickly coming to an end.
Now we get to wait with bated breath to see what the rise in economic nationalism will mean for all of us. If you watched our aforementioned video about the end of globalism, you'll know that what comes next could be a rise in inflation as businesses come back onshore and the costs of goods and wages start to rise. This is going to suck, but eventually, it will pass, and we should all be much better off as a result.
The catch is that the average person might not recognize this. The worst-case scenario would be for the pendulum to swing back towards globalism even more aggressively because of discontent among the masses. Then the whole world could end up like Europe, and not in terms of food and architecture.
Okay, if you made it this far, then you must have enjoyed the video. So if you did, smash that like button to let us know and subscribe to the channel, and ping that notification bell so you don't miss the next one. Why not check out our recent one on which cryptos Donald Trump and his family are holding? That's right over here.
Okay, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you again soon. [Music]