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Today’s guest is Brazilian economist Fernando Ulrich, widely regarded as a premier Latin American expert on Bitcoin and a longtime advocate of free-market economics. His 2014 tome, Bitcoin: The New International Currency, played a key role in bringing the cryptocurrency into the mainstream in Latin America, a region scarred by persistent inflation and years of government mismanagement that have made alternatives to state-backed money particularly attractive. Ulrich, however, contends that Bitcoin need not supplant the dollar for the project to work, and he argues that its most meaningful contribution may be to erode the government’s monopoly on money rather than to become the planet’s dominant currency.
Nick Gillespie sat down with Ulrich at the Winds of Change conference in Buenos Aires to discuss whether the AI investment surge is siphoning capital away from Bitcoin, if Javier Milei has followed through on his pledge to reform Argentina’s economy, and how stablecoins threaten national currencies. The conversation also touches on the Austrian school of economics, the dangers of protectionism, and why Ulrich believes Bitcoin can expand individual freedom even if it never becomes the world’s leading currency.
0:00—Is Milei keeping his economic commitments?
4:29—Argentina’s central bank and its policies
7:35—Bitcoin as a payment mechanism
10:10—Bitcoin adoption and its volatility
16:38—Is AI hype a bubble?
19:03—Where Paul Krugman goes wrong on Bitcoin
23:13—China’s stance toward Bitcoin
24:24—Bitcoin versus stablecoins: key distinctions
28:25—The theory of subjective value
32:40—The Cypherpunks and the preference for exit over voice
37:49—Will an economic downturn hasten Bitcoin adoption?
40:04—Tariffs versus free trade
44:18—Why Bitcoin isn’t poised to substitute every currency
45:26—Nationalism
48:39—Bitcoin forecast for 2046
